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I'm just going to copy the write up from my website from my website. I saw this build for the first time today in my practice group. Janook is 2.2K+ Diamond Terran and a sharp guy. He swears by this build and he really put it through the works today, showing it off.
It's a baller ass build.
Replay Pack: http://www.gosutrolling.com/replays/TvP - Thor Marine.zip
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So there I was, sitting with my jaw on my desk trying to figure out the madness that was unfolding before me. It’s nine minutes into a game and two thors, with +1 Plating and Strike Cannons, a handful of SCVs to repair the Thors, and several marines were absolutely shitting on every Protoss unit in their way. Moments later we see a gg, and our Terran friend, Janook, wins the game by a very large margin.
The Protoss player went Two-Gate Robo and then expanded. It’s a pretty standard build that effectively deals with marine/marauder pushes that dominate the ladder; you get a decent number of gateway units, a quick observer, and a few immortals. Two-Gate Robo can’t even come close to defending Janook’s build. Immediately after the game all the spectators went into a frenzy. “What beats that? How can you beat that?” We were all filled with some sort of mania and we couldn’t stop talking about what we just saw.
I’m still blown away. Janook has thought up a new TvP build and I think, honestly, it’s unbeatable. I feel like a Protoss might be shit out of luck for quite some time in TvP, if and when this build gets popular.
The Build.
We’ll get into the theorycraft in a second, but let me just give you a quick run down of the build:
10 Depot
12 Barracks
13 Refinery
15 Orbital Command
16 Depot
18 Factory
20 Second Refinery
22 Depot
26 Hellion
27 Armory
28 Tech Lab on Factory
32 Terran Vehicle Plating 1
32/38 Thor (make at 32, will take you to 38 food).
39 Depot
41 250mm Strike-Fucking-Cannon
43 Depot
45/51 Thor (make at 45, will take you to 51 food)
note: I left SCVs and Marines out. This is an economic build. You should be constantly making both.
When that second Thor is done, push with marines, and handful of SCVs for repairing. Drop your expansion as you’re pushing. You’ll be able to keep producing Thors and marines.
Alright, now for the fun part. Let’s talk about the overarching ideas behind this build. First, we have to start with the most noticeable upgrade: Strike-Fucking-Cannon. For those of you that don’t know because you never see it used: Strike-Fucking-Cannon is an attack that is researchable at Factory’s tech lab. Strike-Fucking-Cannon ONE SHOTS Collosi and Immortals and is on a 50 second cool down (per Thor). Strike Cannon also stuns a target when it shoots it, making it unable to move or attack.
The value here is obvious. You can one shot Immortals and Collosi, which are will be the power units of Protoss army you’re running into at 9 minutes.
Now the second upgrade is to vehicle armor, which effects the armor of the Thors. Unlike Strike-Fucking-Cannon which is essential, this choice is more a matter of style than anything else. It seems to be working very well for Janook though, so I’d grab it if I were you. It’s unlike that the Protoss player will have any upgrades, so Thors with upgraded armor will be more likely to stay alive than those without it.
Playing to live.
We made Janook play a grip of games back to back against various Protoss players to see if his build would crack. In each game his opponent knew what build he was doing. Out of eight games in a row, he lost two. Both games he lost were to the same thing and Janook swears that he can make one small change and he’d be fine. We’ll get to what it was that beat him in just a second.
Right now we really need to think about what Protoss can do to live through this.
Two-Gate Robo: Yay or nay? Definitely nay. Way fucking definitely nay. The Thors will one-shot any immortals that might be out and then then the gateway units will get mopped up quickly. Because you only have two gates you won’t be able to reinforce. This build directly counters Two-Gate Robo.
Three-Gate Robo: Yay or nay? Nay. Three-Gate Robo would do a better job holding off Janook’s push than Two-Gate Robo, obviously, but I still think you’d end up losing to his first push. Thors with Strike Cannons just deal with the Immortals so handily. After the immortals get one-shotted you’ll have to deal with Thors who have infinite life because of repair and marines blasting through your gateway units. Three-Gate Robo isn’t the most economic build of all time either. On the off chance you do survive the Terran’s first push (and every time Janook won he won with his first push) the Terran will be up an expansion because you can’t comfortably expand with Three-Gate Robo and be producing out of all the structures.
One-Base Collosi: Yay or nay? Surprisingly, nay. There is a replay in the replay pack at the bottom of this post of Janook playing someone who gets three quick Collosi. Collosi, without range, have the same range as a Thor. Janook one-shot two of the Collosi with his two Thors and then just dealt with the third normally. This was a pretty close game, and one I’d recommend watching. I thought Janook was going to lose, but he didn’t. At one point in time there are a gaggle of gateway units pounding away at a Thor and the SCVs just out-repair their damage.
Four-Gate: Yay or nay? Nay. In the replay pack that will be at the bottom of this post you’ll see Janook get Four-Gated close positions on Metalopolis. He scouts it, throws down a bunker, holds it off easily, and then pushes as usual. The Protoss player who Four-Gates and doesn’t win will be so far behind that he might as well just leave after the failed push. If you scout Four-Gate, don’t get Strike Cannon. The DPS from the normal Thor attack will be higher against gateway units.
Void-Rays: Yay or nay? Nay. Voidrays do well against Thors, but not well against Thors being repaired. In addition the Terran will be constantly producing marines. Groups of marines normally spell disaster for Voidrays.
Quick High Templar: Yay or nay? Nay. No one ever tried it, but it takes quite a bit of teching to get the Templar Archives built. Then, on top of that, you have to research Psi Storm. Storm will be great against the marines and SCVs, but not the Thors. I apologize for not doing the research, but I don’t think this can work.
Dark Templar: Yay or nay? Actually, yayish. As I mentioned early, Janook lost two games. Both the games he lost, his foe went Dark Templar. Now it’s worth keeping in mind that Janook’s opponents knew exactly what he was doing. So the Protoss players, in this example, got to do blind-DT builds without actually being blind. Even then, Janook swears that if he saved up scans he’d be fine. It’s also worth noting that he never walled his ramp. This is stylistic choice, and obviously he’s doing fine without walling as he’s sitting at 2.2K points on the ladder. I think walling with this build might be nice because in the games he lost to DTs, they just got to waltz right in and start eating away at his SCVs. I don’t know, I think Janook can figure out some workarounds and be set. You be the judge for yourself.
The replay pack.
I wholeheartedly recommend you download this replay pack. This build is wild. Click here to download the replay pack.
P.S.
I want to apologize to my friends who play Protoss, for sharing this build. I imagine this build will cause lots of frustration in the upcoming weeks.
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Socke stomped a similar build on Shakuras.
Had his expo up, had to sac it tho.
Edit: Give you quick rundown on the game. Opponent pushed with 1 Thor mixed with scvs/marines with strike cannon, Socke held but the 2nd thor was almost at his base. Socke defended that and went on to win. Trick was to attack them when the thors are halfway up the ramp, I think that helps with less scvs being able to repair or something. Anyway the T had an awkward angle and Socke was meant to get the surround with probuu but failed, still won though.
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I've played against this build before...
What happens if Protoss pushes before you get your second thor or strike cannons?
Or if they have 2 immortals and lots of stalkers? Focus fire form stalkers and immortals will nullify most scv repair.
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Not a new build, seen variations of this in the GSL. Very powerful though, although well played blink stalkers with shift firing scv before thor and blinking before death can handle any push.
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Reminds me of that one TLO game in gsl, could definitly be interesting.
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On November 17 2010 08:51 QuantumTheory wrote:
Socke stomped a similar build on Shakuras.
Had his expo up, had to sac it tho.
Edit: Give you quick rundown on the game. Opponent pushed with 1 Thor mixed with scvs/marines with strike cannon
Can you link this or at least me know what series this was please?
I mean, this build just seems so monstrous. I can't imagine the average ladder play being able to keep up with this.
Someone's said that maybe zealot slipknots on the Thors to deal with the SCVs, but then you have to soak up all the damage while killing SCVs.
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I've dealt with this build before and just careful colossi handling can stop this. stay out of range of thor that's just about it. Also early blink stalkers can stop this as well. scouting an armory basically gives away this build, well in my experience. Fast colossi also works well against this if they're trying to FE before they get the thors out.
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On November 17 2010 08:54 evoli wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 08:51 QuantumTheory wrote:
Socke stomped a similar build on Shakuras.
Had his expo up, had to sac it tho.
Edit: Give you quick rundown on the game. Opponent pushed with 1 Thor mixed with scvs/marines with strike cannon Can you link this or at least me know what series this was please? I mean, this build just seems so monstrous. I can't imagine the average ladder play being able to keep up with this. Someone's said that maybe zealot slipknots on the Thors to deal with the SCVs, but then you have to soak up all the damage while killing SCVs.
I'll upload it but before I do that I'll just check how similar the build is to the one posted.
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I think you need to be VERY careful with the word "unstoppable". Personally, I wouldn't even use it. Not even 5 rax reaper vs Zerg was "unstoppable", it was just very strong. Never underestimate the creativity of players who keep losing to the same thing.
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The amount of effort P has to put in to stop this is at least scary.. Very nice, Im impressed. Theres room for improvement for sure.
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I really recommend people download the replay pack before commenting, at least to see the specifics.
Collosi without the range upgrade have the same range as Thors, so they're getting one shot. Thors also break FFs, obviously, so range them isn't that easy.
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http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=166372
Socke made a few errors that would have absolutely demolished this.
Made 2 observers = 2 more Immortals (realistically, 1 more Immortal as you should always make an obs)
The probe surround, absolutely vital, these things will soak up the dps from everything, he failed to send them in for the surround when the thor was on the ramp, didn't matter though.
He EXPANDED. Idk if he thought cloak banshees or cross positions Shakuras but whatever is thought process was, it didn't matter.
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Important question is, does this hit before colo range?
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Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit.
Rant aside thor timing pushes are always scary. Usually when ive held off pushes like this I lose my expansion in the process. Sometimes im close enough to storm to make things interesting, sometimes not. Most often I just lose to it. It just really depends on if they bring the SCVs or not. If they dont, its simple, if they bring like 6-8 you know if you survive without losing too many workers youll be able to respond before he comes back for the killing blow
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Gnarg, it should. Download the replay pack, there is a game where someone goes one base Collosus. Even then, all Terran needs to do is turn around because they already have an expansion up -- so they're ahead.
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not new
User was warned for this post
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What about quick hallucination? Hallucinate an immortal, make the Thors waste their strike cannon, move in with the real immortal(s).
Of course, the 100 gas spent on the upgrade basically means one less real immortal, so that might negate the advantage...
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On a section of the forum where balance complaints really aren't appreciated is beginning the title of your thread with, "Unstoppable TvP?" Really a smart choice of words?
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United States17042 Posts
not that new, but great OP
edit: would be nice if the maps were bigger inherently.
also renamed the thread to be less...contentious (I didn't have a problem with it really, although this is obviously more descriptive)
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Mass chargelots with +1 will do the trick.
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United States17042 Posts
I feel like this build is kinda gimmicky,and is destined to fall to lots of random builds (15 nex comes to mind on certain maps that also make thors kind of a bad choice, like long pathing distance).
blink stalker openings as well can do okay, forcing the thors to run back to defend...
it's a decent build, but I feel like there are a lot of things that your P players haven't tried.
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...I like the "Socke stomped on this" argument. Because, if you watch that game, Socke was behind after he "stomped" on it, and managed to play his way back into the game.
-Cross
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hey all, i tried this once on a toss, and without a proxy fac, i really had a hard time, by the time i got there he had like a trillion units, i think 3 immortals, 6 stalkers and 2-3 lots. and his observer saw my army and so he just waited for me above the cliff. i can tell you know, if one thor leads the push up the ramp, and he stops and fights your army there, its absolute slaughter for the T army. i dont have a chance right now to watch the replay....if the spawn points of the t and p bases are far from each other - what does he do? does he just walk over? im dying to know actually, would love to get this build down.
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On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit.
I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army.
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On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit.
Rant aside thor timing pushes are always scary. Usually when ive held off pushes like this I lose my expansion in the process. Sometimes im close enough to storm to make things interesting, sometimes not. Most often I just lose to it. It just really depends on if they bring the SCVs or not. If they dont, its simple, if they bring like 6-8 you know if you survive without losing too many workers youll be able to respond before he comes back for the killing blow
I disagree, SCVs should be usable in combat.
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I played against almost this exact build on Steppes of War at the 1900 diamond level and won pretty easily with a fast 4 gate. I was able to bust with early stalker pressure before the first thor popped. I had 5 stalkers + 2 zealots vs his 5 marines and helion around 6:00 which is enough to bust through a wall off.
Once his thor popped he killed off my push but I had expanded and had killed 6 or 7 repairing SCVs and went on for an easy win.
If you let him build to 2 thors you will just die I think, not sure what toss can do. Its also unscoutable and hard to tell apart from fast banshees by scouting the front. I just like to 4gate blind on Steppes vs T and was able to win.
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What is the impact of the +1 Plating? I've been trying something similar from close spawns, but I've been using a Reactor Barracks to pump more marines instead of getting fast upgrades.
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United States8476 Posts
This is a very known strat and has been discussed extensively in various other threads. I watched a few replays and the first thing I noticed was that your replays are mislabeled. Your "2 gate robo expand" was actually a 1 gate expand into 2 gate robo. When you say 2 gate robo expand, most people will think 2 gate robo and then expand. I've practiced a lot vs a 1 thor rush build and this is what i've come up with: If you do the standard 1 gate expand into 3-4 gates, then this build is impossible to hold off. If you go 1 robo straight after the expansion and pump nothing but immortal from there, you might have a chance. 3 gate robo and 2 gate robo are actually both your best bets to stop this push if you scout well and get immortals asap and keep chornoing immortals. It's just that the OP's idea of what a 2/3 gate robo is is wrong.
Three-Gate Robo: Yay or nay? Nay. Three-Gate Robo would do a better job holding off Janook’s push than Two-Gate Robo, obviously, but I still think you’d end up losing to his first push. Thors with Strike Cannons just deal with the Immortals so handily. After the immortals get one-shotted you’ll have to deal with Thors who have infinite life because of repair and marines blasting through your gateway units. Three-Gate Robo isn’t the most economic build of all time either. On the off chance you do survive the Terran’s first push (and every time Janook won he won with his first push) the Terran will be up an expansion because you can’t comfortably expand with Three-Gate Robo and be producing out of all the structures.
The terran will have lost 6-10 scvs doing this push, so if you hold it off, you'll be way ahead. Also, 3 gate robo is about as equally economical as a 2 gate robo. The real difference between the 2 is flexibility.
Other random thoughts:
Also, the more sentries you have, the worse off you are vs this build. Use the hold pos zealot trick to kill scvs. This build is strong because from a normal 2/3 gate robo build, your observer gets to his base right when the push comes, so you have minimal time to prepare.
I also agree that this strategy is kinda abusive and that SCVs should get some attack priority.
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NOTICE ME
I was talking about this build with a friend and he suggested hallucination as a counter, and I actually think it could work....
The strength of this build vs immortals is based on your ability to strike cannon and instantly remove two of them. If you get hallu and 1-2 sentry, you can hallucinate several more immortals and make it basically impossible for the T to figure out which ones to cannon.
plus when they use strike cannons on the hallucinations, the thor is locked down and has 0dps while the real immortals get free hits in.
obv you would do this with a 2-3gate robo opening and go very light on the sentry, as they are just for hallucinate basically.
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On November 17 2010 09:28 Crosswind wrote:
...I like the "Socke stomped on this" argument. Because, if you watch that game, Socke was behind after he "stomped" on it, and managed to play his way back into the game.
-Cross
haha, true. But you missed the fact that he made LOTS of mistakes and still won. The most critical was missing the probe surround, he would have came out ahead if he just a moved them from his expo.
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On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army.
Yes.
However, repair time is tied to build time (rather than cost). Thors build extremely quickly, so they repair at a ridiculous rate.
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I'll give it a shot but i think i'll get gas first
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On November 17 2010 09:59 Severedevil wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army. Yes. However, repair time is tied to build time (rather than cost). Thors build extremely quickly, so they repair at a ridiculous rate.
At 60 seconds per, thors are actually one of the slowest-building units in the game. It just might not seem like it when a whole herd (flock? gaggle?) of SCVs are repairing one.
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Interesting, thanks.
Question: Tactically, how do you micro if protoss forcefields ramp or tries to cut 1 Thor off, and can then deal with each separately?
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Finally, something besides 1/2/3 rax expand medivac ghost pushes. This seems way more interesting/fun now.
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On November 17 2010 10:10 gavinashun wrote:
Interesting, thanks.
Question: Tactically, how do you micro if protoss forcefields ramp or tries to cut 1 Thor off, and can then deal with each separately?
Thors break forcefields.
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I'm glad you changed the title of the thread, because this isn't unstoppable. It is, however, a very cool opening with lots of available transitions that will roflstomp-punish people with flawed build orders or micro. This thread does something similar: link
The Protoss players in the replays had a few issues. The one replay that really comes to mind is that one where Mewtwo did a 1 Gate FE into a good gateway unit mix. He was up by 10 food, he even used Guardian Shield (unlike the rest of the P players) but he insisted on attacking into that narrow choke which made his Zealots near-useless...and then he did something weird with his micro that made his Zealots stand around and do nothing. Protoss could have held that easily with better micro/positioning. And that game with Socke is a good example of why you should never be able to break a good Protoss's ramp with this build. Pull some probes if necessary, FF the marines away from the Thors and focus fire them down.
That said, I think Thor openings like this have a lot of potential for getting your natural up and transitioning into mech or thor-banshee play. A 2-3 Thor push with 250mm if executed well may end up being near-impossible to defend for an early expand with a Robo relying on Immortals for defense. Then you can just contain at the ramp and extend your economic advantage.
IMO, the +1 mech armor is a better choice than +1 attack because Thors already overkill gateway units, but I think stim or combat shield would be a better choice simply because you have more Marines than Thors and stim will help you deal with Void Rays more easily.
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On November 17 2010 10:10 Aoi_10 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:59 Severedevil wrote:On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army. Yes. However, repair time is tied to build time (rather than cost). Thors build extremely quickly, so they repair at a ridiculous rate. At 60 seconds per, thors are actually one of the slowest-building units in the game. It just might not seem like it when a whole herd (flock? gaggle?) of SCVs are repairing one.
At 300/200 and 6 food, Thors are one of the most expensive units in the game. Their build time is the same as a Void Ray/Banshee, and very slightly more than an Immortal.
60 game-seconds is very fast for a 6 food powerhouse.
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On November 17 2010 10:10 gavinashun wrote:
Interesting, thanks.
Question: Tactically, how do you micro if protoss forcefields ramp or tries to cut 1 Thor off, and can then deal with each separately?
I'm under the impression that the rush is designed to kill the Protoss natural while getting your own; you don't really need to kill him outright if he decides to sac his expo and save his army. Of course if he loses his entire army attempting to defend your push, feel free to finish it there.
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not new, seen Into the Rainbow use this against NEXGenius i think. I do it v 1900 P's works about 70% of the time.
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On November 17 2010 10:10 Aoi_10 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:59 Severedevil wrote:On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army. Yes. However, repair time is tied to build time (rather than cost). Thors build extremely quickly, so they repair at a ridiculous rate. At 60 seconds per, thors are actually one of the slowest-building units in the game. It just might not seem like it when a whole herd (flock? gaggle?) of SCVs are repairing one.
Well if you mean slow compared to a marine or SCV then duh.....
In the same time it takes to build a Carrier, you can get 2 Thors.
Thors are the quickest building Massive unit in the game, and really strong for cost, but they've rarely been used previously.
Colossi 75
Ultralisk 70
Broodlord 74-ish
Carrier 120
Cattlebruiser 90 ------>OP, OP!!!!
HuK (TM) ship 160
That was a bit of a tangent.
Very good job OP, this is indeed a thread worthy of [G]
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Seeing as how my win percentage against protoss is like 30% I think I will give this a shot! thanks
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Hey,
As much as I enjoy the accolades, I am not ready to spread this on TL and would appreciate it if the OP would remove his post.
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On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army.
so let them repair vehicles out of combat, make it free for all i care as you lose time where they could be mining, but making 1 races workers a super effective combat unit is inherently backwards. Toss shields dont regenerate DURING combat and they can never fully repair damage done to their main armor, only shields. SCVs should not be able to repair during combat on combat vehicles.. buildings yes, thors and BCs, no.
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On November 17 2010 10:39 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army. so let them repair vehicles out of combat, make it free for all i care as you lose time where they could be mining, but making 1 races workers a super effective combat unit is inherently backwards. Toss shields dont regenerate DURING combat and they can never fully repair damage done to their main armor, only shields. SCVs should not be able to repair during combat on combat vehicles.. buildings yes, thors and BCs, no.
maybe multiple workers shouldnt translate linearly into multiple times faster repair.
like... 3 scvs should not mean 3 times faster repair. maybe some kind of exponential decay system like in Age of Empires II when constructing buildings with several workers...
but thx for this thread, its a nice and refreshing tactic. gonna go try it out now^^
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I have answers to DTs and Hallucinations but I want to test them further.
Again, I would really appreciate it if the OP would delete his post, I'm not ready to broadcast this build, or take credit for others who laid the groundwork for it, without a fully fleshed out post and strategy.
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Im findingt his works against week toss players, but not against decent ones, they just use there ramp to effectively, where your scvs cant repair and just focus them down, then your screwed. Although my push comes right around the 9 min mark, is that two late?
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On November 17 2010 11:57 Janook wrote:
I have answers to DTs and Hallucinations but I want to test them further.
Again, I would really appreciate it if the OP would delete his post, I'm not ready to broadcast this build, or take credit for others who laid the groundwork for it, without a fully fleshed out post and strategy.
There we have it.
It's a strong build, but as mentioned, it's not exactly new.
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On November 17 2010 12:37 Darpa wrote:
Im findingt his works against week toss players, but not against decent ones, they just use there ramp to effectively, where your scvs cant repair and just focus them down, then your screwed. Although my push comes right around the 9 min mark, is that two late?
if they hide behind their ramp, just expand urself and prevent him from moving out to take his expo. this sets u up for a stronger lategame, in particular as thors make for a quite decent lategame tvp army!
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On November 17 2010 10:24 johanngrunt wrote:
Well if you mean slow compared to a marine or SCV then duh.....
In the same time it takes to build a Carrier, you can get 2 Thors.
Thors are the quickest building Massive unit in the game, and really strong for cost, but they've rarely been used previously.
Colossi 75
Ultralisk 70
Broodlord 74-ish
Carrier 120
Cattlebruiser 90 ------>OP, OP!!!!
HuK (TM) ship 160
That was a bit of a tangent.
Very good job OP, this is indeed a thread worthy of [G]
If we're just looking at massives, then fair enough.
I guess the most relevant stat is the ratio of hp to build time (i.e., repair speed). Which would make 6.67 hp/sec for the Thor, 6.11 hp/sec for the bruiser. Not too shabby.
As for the build itself, sounds trippy - I'll have to give it a try some time too.
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On November 17 2010 09:57 sob3k wrote:
If you get hallu and 1-2 sentry, you can hallucinate several more immortals and make it basically impossible for the T to figure out which ones to cannon.
Unless of course he can scanner sweep  .
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I like opening one gate robo expand, and if i scout thors, throw down another 2 robos ASAP.
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I like this build seems quite strong, although u could maybe squeeze out 50 more gas for a reactor on your barracks? This way you could have alot more marines with your push to deal with the protoss units
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On November 17 2010 13:54 Dante08 wrote:
I like this build seems quite strong, although u could maybe squeeze out 50 more gas for a reactor on your barracks? This way you could have alot more marines with your push to deal with the protoss units
The problem isn't being so limited on gas that you can't get a reactor, but that reactors take such a long time to make. If you were to make an early reactor you wouldn't be able to make marines for quite some time. Seeing as you're only making marines until you're making Thors you'd be left really vulnerable to early aggression.
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Going to try this out. =_=
Screw you, Protoss!
How would this build also hold up in TvZ? Considering Zerg often have a hard time dealing with Thors and marines are great support stopping zerglings and mutalisks and providing extra damage against everything else.
And maybe not those exact timings but different ones. <_<
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On November 17 2010 10:10 Aoi_10 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 09:59 Severedevil wrote:On November 17 2010 09:31 XerrolAvengerII wrote:On November 17 2010 09:13 Jayrod wrote:
Its just the SCV repairing that needs to be fixed/nerfed/whatever. SCVs shouldnt be able to repair during combat. SCVs shouldnt be a combat unit. I very much disagree. scv's are the only way that terran can recover health on their mechanicals. While it is true that zerg dont regenerate quickly, and that shields don't regenerate in combat, the fact that a terran player must sacrifice income and resources (by taking scvs into combat) to keep their thors alive is a matter of importance and balance. When a terran player decides to repair, he loses the income from the scvs, and the resources directed to the repairing effort, not to mention risks total worker count. Also, consider that scvs built for the purpose of repairing take away from the resources that can be spent on the rest of the army. Yes. However, repair time is tied to build time (rather than cost). Thors build extremely quickly, so they repair at a ridiculous rate. At 60 seconds per, thors are actually one of the slowest-building units in the game. It just might not seem like it when a whole herd (flock? gaggle?) of SCVs are repairing one.
lol of course it's 'one of the slowest-building unit" it's frkn tier 2.5/3 however you wanna look at it.
It's the FASTEST built per population in the game. at 60s for 6 food. Pretty sure this is a much more important measure than just saying the Thor builds slower than the zergling.
@op, i used to think Z had it bad against this Thor/repair bs lol. But then realise we have banelings early. As P, your gonna have to use blink stalkers and shift-queue the scv's while blinking out. You should abuse the fact that Thors are so slow, and engage them as far away from your base as possible giving you more running space. Stalkers are faster than all units in that composition. If that doesn't work, spam chargelots and use hold position? lol iunno lol
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The easiest counter to this build is fast voidrays. Voidrays & zealots demolish this build as marines without upgrades die quite fast to the zealots while they have trouble even reaching the voidray.
The problem of course is that you will rarely if ever be able to get voidrays as a reaction to this build, because a stargate opening is pretty lousy most of the time (besides the terran can switch to 1-1-1 instantly if they would somehow scout your stargate before they finished the armory).
Immortals only work if you somehow mass them so you have at least double the amount compared to their thors, again quite a impossible tactic if you are waiting for an observer to scout what to do..
Range colossi offcourse demolish this build as well, it's actually possible to get them against this variation of the build but this one actually pushes quite slow, the better build is imo that of jinro -> proxy factory with a 1 thor push, completing strike cannon during the push.
In fact this particular build is rubbish, plating on the thor is complete crap and utterly useless. You shouldn't have the intention to keep making mech units if somehow the push fails as besides this push mech just sucks. Instead of getting plating you can get either a 2nd rax faster (with later 2nd gas) or just get a reactor on the first rax and push with way more marines. Plating does virtually nothing against stalkers and immortals and the zealots rarely hit the thor anyway because of the scv's...
Like I said before this rush is only strong because of a screwed attack priority with zealots, if zealots would just properly attack scv's this would be terribly easy to fend off with just mass zealots and perhaps 1 immortal.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145475
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On November 17 2010 14:19 evoli wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 13:54 Dante08 wrote:
I like this build seems quite strong, although u could maybe squeeze out 50 more gas for a reactor on your barracks? This way you could have alot more marines with your push to deal with the protoss units The problem isn't being so limited on gas that you can't get a reactor, but that reactors take such a long time to make. If you were to make an early reactor you wouldn't be able to make marines for quite some time. Seeing as you're only making marines until you're making Thors you'd be left really vulnerable to early aggression.
That depends on the build he scouts, still you could build a bunker at your ramp to hold off any sort of early push to get your reactor up. I know they take 50seconds to build, but losing that 50seconds of building time is worth having more marines to support your 2 thors.
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haha the funny part is, my buddy was just working out the timings against Hard AI and he attacked against a HUGE army of the computers and was like 'omg this push is about to fail' over vent. When he watched replay the computer had made 6 sentries and like 8 zeals then hallucinated a bunch of stuff... stalkers and stuff... really funny and thought provoking.
i liked the previous suggestion about the decay on scv repair. make it happen blizz!
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In the replay pack the game between mewtwo and janook shows exactly why this rush works... The zealots bug out so easily. That game is a perfect example of how stupid zealot AI is in this case. I think mewtwo tries to do hold position micro in that but NONE of his 9 or so zealots attack in that game hence he lost, if they worked properly the rush would be repelled EASILY as he did do in fact the proper counter (mass gateway units, minimal amount of sentries, cut probes and chrono gates non stop).
I think there really needs to come a petition to blizzard to fix attack priority ASAP, this bug is terribly annoying with this strategy getting more and more popular each day.
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Why does he get vehicle plating against Toss? If he's doing this push that gas would be way better spent on combat shields.
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On November 17 2010 17:09 Dante08 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 14:19 evoli wrote:On November 17 2010 13:54 Dante08 wrote:
I like this build seems quite strong, although u could maybe squeeze out 50 more gas for a reactor on your barracks? This way you could have alot more marines with your push to deal with the protoss units The problem isn't being so limited on gas that you can't get a reactor, but that reactors take such a long time to make. If you were to make an early reactor you wouldn't be able to make marines for quite some time. Seeing as you're only making marines until you're making Thors you'd be left really vulnerable to early aggression. That depends on the build he scouts, still you could build a bunker at your ramp to hold off any sort of early push to get your reactor up. I know they take 50seconds to build, but losing that 50seconds of building time is worth having more marines to support your 2 thors.
I think without making the reactor you'll be able to get more marines out, for the 9 minute push. I don't know -- I'm too lazy to do the math now.
I wholeheartedly encourage for people to try to make tweaks and variations to see what works for them and what doesn't.
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On November 17 2010 10:37 Janook wrote:
Hey,
As much as I enjoy the accolades, I am not ready to spread this on TL and would appreciate it if the OP would remove his post.
No one else noticed this? I think it'd be nice to respect his wishes.
Interesting build anyway, personally I have NEVER used the 250mm cannons but now I want to try it out!
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One base ranged colossi beats it. Just kite till the end of time. Also 1 gate FE build should work fine. Just abandon the nat and guard the ramp, dont go too probe heavy and resources mined from natural should result with bigger army for protoss.
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On November 17 2010 10:37 Janook wrote:
Hey,
As much as I enjoy the accolades, I am not ready to spread this on TL and would appreciate it if the OP would remove his post.
Did anyone realize that the purported creator of this build wants this discussion to halt?
It's really funny that his post went totally ignored amidst all the 'thoughtful strategic planning' we have here.
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On November 17 2010 20:02 Quochobao wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 10:37 Janook wrote:
Hey,
As much as I enjoy the accolades, I am not ready to spread this on TL and would appreciate it if the OP would remove his post.
Did anyone realize that the purported creator of this build wants this discussion to halt? It's really funny that his post went totally ignored amidst all the 'thoughtful strategic planning' we have here.
lol, at this point it doesn't matter what Janook wants
the build isn't copyrighted, and as posted its been used before, if people want to discuss 2 thor timing attacks with strike cannons he can't stop them....
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I've used a similar build, but instead of mixing the thor with marines, I used marauders. I used the +1 damage instead of plating on the thor and skipped the strike cannon.
I do a quick push at the front to harass the protoss with a couple marines and a marauder at the start, tech up to thor and attack again with 1-2 thors and marauders.
I still need to keep testing it, but up to now its been fairly effective against roaches, stalker/robo builds and terrans that don't mass infantry. I've used mass speedlots when facing similar set ups (I play random). The suggestion made earlier to make VRs is good, you just need to micro the VRs a little bit. If you're facing a stimmed marine + thor build, I'd push into his base with a couple VRs only after he's moved out because they'll go down pretty quickly otherwise.
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On November 17 2010 20:35 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 20:02 Quochobao wrote:On November 17 2010 10:37 Janook wrote:
Hey,
As much as I enjoy the accolades, I am not ready to spread this on TL and would appreciate it if the OP would remove his post.
Did anyone realize that the purported creator of this build wants this discussion to halt? It's really funny that his post went totally ignored amidst all the 'thoughtful strategic planning' we have here. lol, at this point it doesn't matter what Janook wants the build isn't copyrighted, and as posted its been used before, if people want to discuss 2 thor timing attacks with strike cannons he can't stop them....
Maybe the thread starter should remove his name from the opener then. It's only right 
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I don't quite see what's wrong with discussing a build. Why doesn't Janook comment on what people are discussing since he's practiced this quite a bit?
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Hmm...interesting ideas here. I hope to see some more of this on the ladder soon PvT. At least a nice change up from mmm or 2port banshee.
As others have said this thread is already going and discussing 2 thor pushes which is not unique regardless of Janook's feelings as someone could reopen the exact same thread.
On the other side, posting your practice partner's build without their permission and tagging their name onto it without asking, well damn that's not very considerate.
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This is basically another 1-base gimmicky build encouraged by the horrible Blizzard maps. Cross your fingers and hope Toss doesn't see it coming.
I feel unimpressed ;/
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On November 17 2010 09:21 misaTO wrote:
Mass chargelots with +1 will do the trick.
i reckon by the time you scouted T's armory and fac-techlab, you already have stalkers and have gone for a different tech path. transitioning to twilight council will not only ruin your tech path, but your army as well, less minerals. and you'd need stalkers too.what if the T blocked your choke with the thor and a bunch of scvs are behind it for repairs? whats your call then? =.=
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On November 17 2010 19:51 Cheerio wrote:
One base ranged colossi beats it. Just kite till the end of time. Also 1 gate FE build should work fine. Just abandon the nat and guard the ramp, dont go too probe heavy and resources mined from natural should result with bigger army for protoss.
I would agree with this but doesn't the rush come too fast to get range ? Mind that I've only got rushed like this twice and I never had the chance to finish the range upgrade.
When my friend comes back online I'm gonna test a few games with this strategy (txs OP) and see what happens but meanwhile I'll share my idea and see if u like it:
Warp prism + Immortal, get the Immortal when Thor charges the strike cannon attack therefore cancelling it and wasting his DPS time by not doing anything.
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On November 17 2010 17:00 Markwerf wrote:
Immortals only work if you somehow mass them so you have at least double the amount compared to their thors, again quite a impossible tactic if you are waiting for an observer to scout what to do..
I can't test the timings right now, but wouldn't it be - theoretically - possible to chrono-boost two immortals and just WAIT for the thors to come up the ramp?
Yes I know, thors have way higher range, but i can imagine, with proper positioning the thor stuck "behind" shouldn't be able to use his cannon-thingy, so there should always be immortals shooting.
Of course the problem remains, that by seeing marines only there's a 50/50 shot he is going banshees...and then the early immortal would (again) lead to a buildorder-loss. Pretty much a coinflip concerning the scouting, it seems.
Tbh I kinda agree with the OP insofar that I have tested opening with DTs a lot recently, both vs terrans going for timing-pushs and vs MM-playing terrans....day9 even did a daily on this, it's really a surprisingly stable opening. I don't think that just with scans from only one OC the build of the OP has a chance to succeed, you would have to spam turrets with the SCVs, which is possible btw.
Although this is kinda a QQ, but I've found myself saying "screw it" more and more often when I suspect cute stuff from terran and just go for DTs. Since you can expand behind your harass quite reasonably while getting more gateways, the robo and - very important for the first battle afterwards - chargelots, it's nowhere near as dependend on a damaging harass as many would probably suppose.
On November 17 2010 22:25 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Warp prism + Immortal, get the Immortal when Thor charges the strike cannon attack therefore cancelling it and wasting his DPS time by not doing anything.
Sorry, but - bad idea: why? because you could get a 2nd immortal instead of the warp prism. It's not about the ressources, it's literally about time....you need every second you can squeeze out of your robotics, spend all the chrono-boost you have on immortals and for the love of little jesus don't get supply-blocked. I would never waste robotics-production-time on getting a prism, UNLESS my opponent somehow decided to camp down my ramp with 2+ thors (but then again I'd probably get the prism to warp in a couple of zealots in his mineral line)
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An early rush tends to kill this, which is why I tend not to try it anymore.
Pushing out with double Thors and Marines and a Hellion or two is strong, but until you get your first Thor you are amazingly vulnerable.
Against Zerg you could get a few Roaches at your door with nothing to defend yourself with.
It also has the problems of the Marines and Thors fighting for the same role: to be up front.
You want Marines in front to soak the Zealot damage and protect the SCVs/Thors from Zealot surround and Immortals. The 7 range the Thor has over the 5 range of the Marine supports this.
But, when you need to break an FF on a ramp, you have to send out the Thor in front, leaving it very vulnerable to focus fire.
A bunker helps, but that generally gives away that you don't have much else to defend yourself with.
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On November 17 2010 23:32 Thezzy wrote:
A bunker helps, but that generally gives away that you don't have much else to defend yourself with.
but it will also trick the toss into at least worrying about a cloaked banshee rush. and the counters to that are an instaloss against the thorpush, and vice versa.
but i agree with other who said that combat shields or stim would probably be better than vehicle plating. plating does nothing but reduce zealot dam by 2 per attack, but it doesnt make a notable difference on stalkers or immortals.
in particular, stim on the marines would make it more easy to defend against vrs and to get up that ramp.
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I'm pretty sure a well-microed 4gate can beat this build 9 times out of 10. Especially with dt in the mix.
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On November 17 2010 23:41 Rob28 wrote:
I'm pretty sure a well-microed 4gate can beat this build 9 times out of 10. Especially with dt in the mix.
4gate with dt before the 9 minute mark? sry dude, but what are u smoking?
this build is most vulnerable before the first thor comes out. u got nothing but unupgraded marines at that time. i think u will need at least 2 bunkers up your ramp if the toss hits that timing window with an attack. but if u scout it in time, it should be possible to be held off imho.
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United States8476 Posts
4 gate with sentries will break it, but no one gets 4 gate with dts....
I also have the same problem as sleepingdog with the scouting. From my experience with my practice partners, if you see marines, it's 40% banshee, 40% thor, 10% hidden bio build, 10% tank. You need immortals if you 2/3 gate robo to hold off the thor push, but immortals are useless vs the banshee build. Plus, the observer doesn't get to his base until it's too late. Besides abusing a "bug" with the scv repair attack priority, it's also a very coin flip build. This is what i've resorted to doing vs marines and bunkers. I start an immortal and time it so that when my observer gets to his base, I have just enough time to decide whether to cancel it or not. This way, you can get 2 immortals by the time the 1 thor push happens.
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Okay, fine, if this thread is going to exist, then I will contribute.
Firstly, regarding DTs and Hallucations.
If you start saving you scans up at 8:00, you will have 2 scans available during your push. I don't know how many DTs Protoss could stagger at you, I need to test this a little more, but theorietically you could handle them. Furthermore, if you expand behind the push and build an OC, you will have a 3rd scan ready if you need it.
Also, scans reveal hallucinations. If you see an unusual amount of immortals, and a bunch of gateway units, then you know something is up. Scan, reveal the halulcinationed immortals, and target the real ones.
The +1 armor is crucial. This build was original intended for TvZ, and so I would get the armor to help tank the lings on the thors. The armor is equally good in TvP. 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. Armor on a Thor is particuarly effective against Zealots ( which are the primary DPS of Protoss gateway units) because Zealots attack twice.
Regarding losing to an early push:
No. There are many builds that just rely on marines to hold back early pushes. This build is nice in particular because you use that first helion to scout the opponent. If you scout on properly, you should arrive at his base while his warpgates are transforming. This is plenty of time to throw up a bunker in time for teh 2nd wave of warpgate units. Also, your thor will pop in time to defend as well.
The first helion scout is important. You should be able to get into his base, see the entire layout, and if you feel like something is missing, add a bunker and start scouting the corners of the map.
Lastly, if there is no robo bay, you don't need 250mm cannons. Instead, you add a tech lab on your barracks after you started your first thor and the armor upgrade and research stim. This delays the push by 15 seconds I think, but it's totally worth it and will alllow your marines to take out the zealots much quicker.
A key point in the build is how you control your units while attacking.
Pull 8 SCVs and have them follow 1 thor with auto repair on.
Rally your rax and fact to the other thor, and tell all your marines to follow that thor.
Select your two thors and put them in a control group.
Select all your marines and put them in a control group.
With the 2 thors selected, and with the repair thor in front, 1A to the opponent. Don't tell your scvs or marines to attack, have them remain following their repsective thors.
If your Marines try to lunge ahead of the thors during combat to chase units, pull them back. You want the thors to tank.
If there are any collosus or immortals, 250mm them. If there are a BUNCH of collosi or immortals, scan first, then 250mm.
If you scouted no robo bay and got stim instead, stim your marines when the zealots engage.
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On November 17 2010 22:31 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 22:25 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Warp prism + Immortal, get the Immortal when Thor charges the strike cannon attack therefore cancelling it and wasting his DPS time by not doing anything. Sorry, but - bad idea: why? because you could get a 2nd immortal instead of the warp prism. It's not about the ressources, it's literally about time....you need every second you can squeeze out of your robotics, spend all the chrono-boost you have on immortals and for the love of little jesus don't get supply-blocked. I would never waste robotics-production-time on getting a prism, UNLESS my opponent somehow decided to camp down my ramp with 2+ thors (but then again I'd probably get the prism to warp in a couple of zealots in his mineral line)
But 1 thor > 1 Immortal with strike cannon so u would end up with 1 Immortal left anyway unless ur intention is to use the Immortals to try to burst the Thor down but I doubt u can before the strike cannons hit.
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On November 18 2010 00:01 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 22:31 sleepingdog wrote:On November 17 2010 22:25 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Warp prism + Immortal, get the Immortal when Thor charges the strike cannon attack therefore cancelling it and wasting his DPS time by not doing anything. Sorry, but - bad idea: why? because you could get a 2nd immortal instead of the warp prism. It's not about the ressources, it's literally about time....you need every second you can squeeze out of your robotics, spend all the chrono-boost you have on immortals and for the love of little jesus don't get supply-blocked. I would never waste robotics-production-time on getting a prism, UNLESS my opponent somehow decided to camp down my ramp with 2+ thors (but then again I'd probably get the prism to warp in a couple of zealots in his mineral line) But 1 thor > 1 Immortal with strike cannon so u would end up with 1 Immortal left anyway unless ur intention is to use the Immortals to try to burst the Thor down but I doubt u can before the strike cannons hit.
Very true - but again, why would I want one immortal + one prism, if I could have two immortals? I would need to micro the one immortal into the prism and back out when I could have the second immortal happily shooting at the thor allt he time?
This I meant with "ressources don't matter" - I don't care about the lost immortal, all I want is the 2nd immortal...and a third right after that if I get the chance. See what I mean?
Also there's always a slight chance my first immortal gets 1-2 shots of before it evaporates against the strike cannon. When the immortal is inside the prism there's nothing around that deals damage to the thor, which also means the marines will stay alive longer.
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ive been doing something like this build too but i dont get cannons or plating because i find activating the cannons makes it easy for zealots to surround and rape scvs with the slipknot trick.
Instead, by more or less the same time but with and earlier 2nd gas i can get +2 marine weapon damage which helps with early push defense and melts immortals hardened shield while thors rape gateway units. More specifically zealots.
Oh yes the addition of the ebay also lets you build turrets for detecting dts at your base and and build plantary fortress should you really need to should your push fail
Its sounds more effective to my play style but i will check the replays tonight.
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On November 17 2010 23:53 Janook wrote:
Regarding losing to an early push:
No. There are many builds that just rely on marines to hold back early pushes. This build is nice in particular because you use that first helion to scout the opponent. If you scout on properly, you should arrive at his base while his warpgates are transforming. This is plenty of time to throw up a bunker in time for teh 2nd wave of warpgate units. Also, your thor will pop in time to defend as well.
Not with marines from just the one barracks.
You'll have around 4-6 marines by the time something can come knocking.
One bunker, especially if there are stalkers around is going to have a hard time defending anything.
A walloff is tricky as Stalkers could snipe the depots, possibly supply blocking the Thor from being built.
Without stim (which you cant determine in time if you can get it safely) a Void Ray rush can be quite devastating as well.
Not saying this build will instantly die to any early pressure, but it is a risk to be aware of.
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On November 18 2010 00:06 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 00:01 Goliathsorrow wrote:On November 17 2010 22:31 sleepingdog wrote:On November 17 2010 22:25 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Warp prism + Immortal, get the Immortal when Thor charges the strike cannon attack therefore cancelling it and wasting his DPS time by not doing anything. Sorry, but - bad idea: why? because you could get a 2nd immortal instead of the warp prism. It's not about the ressources, it's literally about time....you need every second you can squeeze out of your robotics, spend all the chrono-boost you have on immortals and for the love of little jesus don't get supply-blocked. I would never waste robotics-production-time on getting a prism, UNLESS my opponent somehow decided to camp down my ramp with 2+ thors (but then again I'd probably get the prism to warp in a couple of zealots in his mineral line) But 1 thor > 1 Immortal with strike cannon so u would end up with 1 Immortal left anyway unless ur intention is to use the Immortals to try to burst the Thor down but I doubt u can before the strike cannons hit. Very true - but again, why would I want one immortal + one prism, if I could have two immortals? I would need to micro the one immortal into the prism and back out when I could have the second immortal happily shooting at the thor allt he time? This I meant with "ressources don't matter" - I don't care about the lost immortal, all I want is the 2nd immortal...and a third right after that if I get the chance. See what I mean? Also there's always a slight chance my first immortal gets 1-2 shots of before it evaporates against the strike cannon. When the immortal is inside the prism there's nothing around that deals damage to the thor, which also means the marines will stay alive longer.
U could just spam drop hit drop hit the immortal or trick the terran to use the cannon on it and then grab it. The fact that he's wasting seconds of insane thor DPS to try to get ur immortal with the ability sounds very helpful to me since it gives breath to ur gateway units. U can also let the shields of immortal recharge a bit while he's inside.
Think it like a reaver in sc1, it increases a lot it's hp even against marines like the good ol' tank dropship micro.
Edit: and u could drop some zealots behind to attack the marines ? I dunno how much it could work but it does seem to give more micro opportunity than just spam immortals and hope for the best...
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On November 18 2010 00:12 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Think it like a reaver in sc1, it increases a lot it's hp even against marines like the good ol' tank dropship micro.
I still think you fail to see my point - my point is, that the prism is ALSO built at the robotics-facility and builds only slightly faster. Why would I want to micro to make effective use of one immortal when I could have two of them already? The prism won't serve for anything else than the micro-purpose and chances are, marines kill all of my zealots while I'm busy with the drop-cutesy.
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On November 18 2010 00:17 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 00:12 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Think it like a reaver in sc1, it increases a lot it's hp even against marines like the good ol' tank dropship micro. I still think you fail to see my point - my point is, that the prism is ALSO built at the robotics-facility and builds only slightly faster. Why would I want to micro to make effective use of one immortal when I could have two of them already? The prism won't serve for anything else than the micro-purpose and chances are, marines kill all of my zealots while I'm busy with the drop-cutesy.
My point is that a microed single immortal with prism would be more effective than 2 immortals and also faster to make.
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On November 18 2010 00:11 Thezzy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2010 23:53 Janook wrote:
Regarding losing to an early push:
No. There are many builds that just rely on marines to hold back early pushes. This build is nice in particular because you use that first helion to scout the opponent. If you scout on properly, you should arrive at his base while his warpgates are transforming. This is plenty of time to throw up a bunker in time for teh 2nd wave of warpgate units. Also, your thor will pop in time to defend as well. Not with marines from just the one barracks. You'll have around 4-6 marines by the time something can come knocking. One bunker, especially if there are stalkers around is going to have a hard time defending anything. A walloff is tricky as Stalkers could snipe the depots, possibly supply blocking the Thor from being built. Without stim (which you cant determine in time if you can get it safely) a Void Ray rush can be quite devastating as well. Not saying this build will instantly die to any early pressure, but it is a risk to be aware of.
There are quite a few tech builds that feature constant one rax marine production, and while it is vulnerable to pressure it's not nearly as weak as you make it sound (see iEchoic's build, among others). A preemptive bunker can do wonders to fending off anything short of an all-in, and tossing down a second and a few repair SCVs if they're doing something like hard 4-gate guarantees you the win.
I haven't tried this build yet but I'm going to soon, it seems very well thought out.
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On November 18 2010 00:23 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 00:17 sleepingdog wrote:On November 18 2010 00:12 Goliathsorrow wrote:
Think it like a reaver in sc1, it increases a lot it's hp even against marines like the good ol' tank dropship micro. I still think you fail to see my point - my point is, that the prism is ALSO built at the robotics-facility and builds only slightly faster. Why would I want to micro to make effective use of one immortal when I could have two of them already? The prism won't serve for anything else than the micro-purpose and chances are, marines kill all of my zealots while I'm busy with the drop-cutesy. My point is that a microed single immortal with prism would be more effective than 2 immortals and also faster to make.
Warp Prisms are made of paper. They have off the top of my head 100 HP and 40 shields? While your idea of microing a shuttle and an immortal sounds good what generally happens is the warp prism gets focused down in 1 second. Then you are left with less DPS units. I am not saying that there isn't a way to make the micro shuttle viable. However, the 2 immortals spread out adds a large amount of extra DPS that seems to be more beneficial.
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warp prisms that die like flies.
Near marines and thors.
Carrying one of your few robo units.
Are you serious?
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Im sure this works... until protoss realizes that Dark Templars counters the living daylights out of it
feel free to correct me if im wrong, but i think a DT rush roflstomps any thor rush in the face (unless terran has saved up scans ofc)
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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 <.<
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How do you guys not understand the idea behind adding plating to this build? I think you are all theory crafting and none of you have actually done it. I execute it a bit different but the idea is the same. It depends on the thor going up the ramp first and tanking for marines, protoss almost always responds by focus firing with stalkers and with repair scvs compounding it +1armor will make this alot stronger.
My build basically involves 3 rax instead of one like this build, results in alot more marines so in my case I think that stim is probably more key then in this version, my version is probably more all in, but uses the income from 1base alot more efficiently I think.
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a voidray bo is maybe the easiest way to counter thor bo because:
- a toss should be able to have atleast 1 more vray if not 2 out if he does it inbase or till you reached his base ( thors are damn slow )
- imagine that not a single marine will die to toss his gateway units, which is very unlikely but best case scenario, they have to hit n run behind thors and further till all gate units are killed, the atleast 3 voidrays will be fully charged and took almost no dmg from ur thors and will 1shot ur marines so fast if they come back while they have no stim.
If protoss will loose 1 voidray its still 2vray against 2thor and theyr charged to fastly snipe all existing scvs while theyr also able to micro ezly away which buys him time aswell.
Other than vray, thors are great
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tried this one on 2v2. TZvZP. it worked. nice BO.
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Ha, it's pretty awesome. Obviously thor scv pushes have been pretty strong, but this is way more concrete and laidout. Just fooling around last night I think you might be able to work a marauder or two, or possibly even stim in for a few seconds after the push is wrapping up.
I see though that Janook is still working on it so looking forward to that.
Knowing blizzard though, they'll probably nerf some aspect, whether it's armory build time, scv repair, who knows, I could see why Janook doesn't want to announce it haha. 
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I use basically this same build in most of my TvPs, but I never thought of getting +1 armor instead of +1 weapons, so I'm definitely going to have to try that out. Also, I must say, it is extremely strong.
It's strong for two main reasons. What most Protoss have said (that if you engage on the ramp you can hold this off), is true. However, I think it's much smarter to not try and just all in the toss (situationally, of course), but in most cases you should use this to make the toss sac his natural while simultaneously getting yours up, and then you can either contain or retreat rather than just trying to break his ramp. In other words, use the push to get ahead, and then get more ahead, don't just try and outright win every time.
The second reason is that even if your push fails, this build transitions very well into 3/1/2, which I find to be much stronger against Protoss than MMMG or variants.
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Nice post, but the supply depot at 22 only takes the food cap to 35. The 1st Thor would not be able to be built as a result. The build order as listed does not work.
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I've been hit with a 1 Thor MM timing push about 2 minutes earlier than this before. This was when I went HTs BEFORE Robo Bay and also pre-patch. I managed to land a Feedback on the Thor but it was no use. Now I'm even more scared of this build, but thankfully most Terrans seem to just go MMM/Tank or Banshees.
(Note: I now go 3-Gate Robo and don't get HTs until I have a solid footing on two bases. I can't think of any way to stop 2 Thors that early on in the game, but I'm likely to push at around 5-6 minutes, which may be the deciding factor against this build.)
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I just faced this build last night. I'm not sure how well my opponent pulled it off but I went 1 gate robo FE and held it off pretty easily. I got 1 immortal and then 1 obs from my robo and when I saw his push coming with my obs i chronoed another immortal and by this time had 3 warp gates up. I target fired the thors with my immortals/stalkers right as they came up the ramp and they died quickly. After that the marine scv combo isn't hard to micro against. This strat is very all-in because their expo comes so late compared to 1 gate robo FE and 2 gate robo FE. The best thing I think a P can do to survive is just get an obs out as quickly as possible and then when you see it coming chrono immortals like mad. It may have worked better for the T if it was not on jungle basin or if he was able to engage me in the open field rather than my ramp.
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On November 18 2010 02:24 PaiNt) wrote:
It may have worked better for the T if it was not on jungle basin or if he was able to engage me in the open field rather than my ramp.
Yeah that's pretty key to this build. Jungle Basin is actually way better for a proxy thor, since toss tend to FE on that map, and a 1 thor push timing is close to impossible for an FE toss to stop. That being said, a proxy thor is pretty all in.
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http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/replays/39432
This is a replay of Kiwikaki and Tarson with the build failing, but just barely.
It's not the same precisely, but it's pretty similar. The most noted piece missing is the second thor. Although, Tarson's push is at Kiwikaki's ramp at the 8 minute mark For those who can't view; Kiwikaki goes gate-robo-stargate. He scouts with his observer and see reactored barracks but misses the armory and the thor until it's at his front, he may just think it's a marine/scv push (he sees them moving out from Tarson's ramp). I think the only reason tarson loses, is because he wastes his 250mm cannon on an immortal at basically half shields rather than using his marines to work on it and then the cannon on the other immortal. That immortal remains untouched and finishes off the thor, Kiwikaki also pulls about 9 probes off the line. Tarson has 7 accompanying his thor.
So maybe a map like Shakuras or certain metalopolis positions might be more microintensive in certain situations.
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I played this last night and was able to scrape out a win on steppes. Watched the rep like 5 times because I've never been able to defend this, but the Terran didn't make very many mistakes (2k diamond range).
I went 1 gate FE, noticed a reactored barracks and a bunker at the choke so I followed with 2 gates and a robo.
Expecting banshees, I chronod 2 observers, one to scout and one for my mineral lines. Obs scouted 2 thors that just started moving out with 6 scvs and maybe 10 marines.
I was able to chrono 1 Immortal out when it hit me at 9 minutes. I also had 12 zealots and I think 8 stalkers and a sentry when I engaged. It was quite one sided, he did not focus fire the immortal with his marines, but he did get the cannon off early. I was able to focus fire the Thor down before the immortal died. The other Thor also died quickly and the marines were toasted afterwards.
If the push fails, your basically done. The toss is mostly saturated on two bases and you roasted 6-7 of your scvs off of one base.
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Well one thing that's important is that I think is that you can inflict enough damage and/or exchange enough units to delay something for toss.
My toss friend pointed me to this thread/build and I was leery only because I wondered what kind of capacity terran could function after it failed. Whether or not it was all-in or not. It wouldn't seem that way unless you completely blow your micro and don't exchange units. But it allows for an expansion to get up or even as my friend and I suggested, you can transition back into a really pumping bio production, with stim ready for a second push a few minutes later.
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alot of my friends that play zerg claim thors are good against zerg so wouldn't this build do some damage to a fe zerg or mutas??
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Stop teaching people how to ruin my life and break my equipment.
Kidding. But seriously, these kinds of builds make me very angry.. It's almost impossible stop them. I think we'll see some changes to the Thor in an upcoming patch, or to how SCVs repair them/priority, something along those lines.
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Reading this makes me wonder why I barely ever see terrans using strike cannons against a toss who masses collossi - I feel like there would be some serious late game implications.
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On November 18 2010 06:45 RiotSpectre wrote:
Reading this makes me wonder why I barely ever see terrans using strike cannons against a toss who masses collossi - I feel like there would be some serious late game implications.
They would never manage to get in range to use the ability, and the Colossi can just run away and cancel the skill/animation.
Thors are not doable against Colossi with range upgrade.
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I notice the OP doesn't test against 1 gate FE or fast storm. I don't know if 9min is long enough for the FE to have paid for itself, but I do know that storm >>> marines and scvs, and that thors with no support die pretty quickly to zealots, which a fast storm build will be heavy on. Worth testing IMO.
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oh yeah, can units under the effect of strike cannons be lifted off to cancel the effect?
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@ keilah, I think they can but that is a completely irrevant issue as it wouldnt be smart at all to make phoenix vs a thor. If you have a stargate up in time to get units out before this push you should obviously be getting voidrays as they actually do quite well against the thor while zealots clean up the marines.
The problem is just getting a voidray out in time, assuming you play somewhat standard and only scout with a observer after the first marine is out (what else can you do?) it is near impossible to get a counter to this that relies on tech.. voidrays will be too late, immortals will be in too low number (you need roughly 2 immortals per thor to deal with this) and range upgraded colossi obviously won't be in time either.
So far each replay in this thread of a thor push getting beaten was both poor play from the terran AND the protoss being very lucky to produce a counter fast enough. For example tarson executed the rush very poorly (he was late, hardly forwarded the factory and didnt follow up the attack properly) yet kiwi who was lucky to go with a very fast robo and scout the thor rush relatively quick only barely managed to get 2 immortals vs the 1 thor and even got behind in that push (he was behind afterwards, except tarson screwed up by continuing on thor after)
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Regarding TvZ:
This build is effective in TvZ, however a competent Zerg player, who goes baneling nest before lair will be able to crush it. This is known as "kyrix style". After the push fails, you are way way behind, making this very all-in if it doesn't work, whereass in TvP you can safely expand behind it.
Anyways, I'm still refining this build, hence why I didn't want it posted, but I'd apprecaite some people to help try and crush it.
If you think you can crush this build, please show me. Join me on #Janook at irc.quakenet.org.
Also, I stream games regularly, my stream is posted on TL.
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On November 18 2010 08:24 Markwerf wrote:
So far each replay in this thread of a thor push getting beaten was both poor play from the terran AND the protoss being very lucky to produce a counter fast enough. For example tarson executed the rush very poorly (he was late, hardly forwarded the factory and didnt follow up the attack properly) yet kiwi who was lucky to go with a very fast robo and scout the thor rush relatively quick only barely managed to get 2 immortals vs the 1 thor and even got behind in that push (he was behind afterwards, except tarson screwed up by continuing on thor after)
The funny thing is, Kiwi is KNOWN to open with very fast immortals, which - on paper - counters fast thors and STILL it was ridiculously close.
I'm generally reluctant to scream "imba", but this push can only be countered when you "anticipate" it - if you try to counter it when seeing the first thor it's definitely too late. And the armory can be proxied practicly everywhere.
I hate to say this, but this is yet ANOTHER push that only works....yes....because of (cloak) banshees. The thor-rush has basicly the exact same opening as a banshee-opening and requires a response that is basicly the exact opposite. The mere existence of banshees in the tech-tree screws up the scouting intel protoss gets - because if terran techs cloak, you want anything "but" a quick immortal.
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IF this build is done correctly, what is the earliest bunker that gets thrown up?
If it's started at, or later than 5 minutes, I can see the 5 Stalker Rush actually doing severe enough damage to stop this cold.
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Did any of the 2 gate robo or 3gate robo players try hallucinate nothing like making a thor waste its cannon shot on a hallucination.
IMO hallucinate is pretty good research the could allow you to keep your obs near your base in case of cloaked units. You could could keep it from getting sniped easier. You could still run a scout into the enemy base relatively quickly as hallucinated phoenixes are fast.
And to my knowledge scan does not reveal hallucinate but I could be wrong.
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On November 18 2010 09:05 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2010 08:24 Markwerf wrote:
So far each replay in this thread of a thor push getting beaten was both poor play from the terran AND the protoss being very lucky to produce a counter fast enough. For example tarson executed the rush very poorly (he was late, hardly forwarded the factory and didnt follow up the attack properly) yet kiwi who was lucky to go with a very fast robo and scout the thor rush relatively quick only barely managed to get 2 immortals vs the 1 thor and even got behind in that push (he was behind afterwards, except tarson screwed up by continuing on thor after) The funny thing is, Kiwi is KNOWN to open with very fast immortals, which - on paper - counters fast thors and STILL it was ridiculously close. I'm generally reluctant to scream "imba", but this push can only be countered when you "anticipate" it - if you try to counter it when seeing the first thor it's definitely too late. And the armory can be proxied practicly everywhere. I hate to say this, but this is yet ANOTHER push that only works....yes....because of (cloak) banshees. The thor-rush has basicly the exact same opening as a banshee-opening and requires a response that is basicly the exact opposite. The mere existence of banshees in the tech-tree screws up the scouting intel protoss gets - because if terran techs cloak, you want anything "but" a quick immortal.
I feel the same way after I crushed horribly by this thor pushed. It's way weaker than what's describe in the OP, but I'm completely off guard. In standard PvT lately, building more sentries is crucial to stop rines/marauders, and I built sentries and then expanding. I did scouts, but rines stop my probe from getting intels aside confirming that I saw a normal rines build. I did send another probe since I'm suspicious of drops or something unusual since no push come my way, bioballs push normally come way earlier. I managed to sneak an obs and saw thors, but it's way too late for me to respond. Sentries is completely useless against this build.
IMO, agression will work against this build, but again, scouts is the key. Perhaps getting obs earlier is good as anticipation.
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Regarding this build though, I basically did it since a month ago and relied on it to get into diamond without much effort at all. If your sole goal is to get into diamond without improving your game, this definitely is the way to go. It is very, very easy to do, nearly bothering on cheese, and most people before mid-high diamond level have no idea how to deal with it.
One warning though, if you are intending to rely on this build alone to get into diamond (i.e. do this build against anyone you meet), your game will deprove. Mine definitely did, and I became a worse gamer than I was even though I am ranked higher than I was. Thankfully, after you get into mid-high diamond and people learn to counter it, you 're forced to do other stuff instead of thor-pushing every single game, so unless you really improve your game, you aren't going to go any higher.
TLDR: This is a very strong build and it alone can get you into diamond no matter how skill-less you are, but if you rely on this build alone, you're probably not going to improve. In fact, you might deprove.
However, it is still a very very strong build and is worth busting out once in a while when you don't feel like working for your win These are my thoughts after using it for an extended period of time.
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This isn't really a "get into diamond" build. I've been in diamond for ages and I use it all the time.
It's especially good now that most Protosses fast expand or they expect marine/banshees and get a Stargate. Thor's Hammer punishes their greed.
But back on topic, the guide seems pretty weak. Thors can be focus fired and killed somewhat quickly. If they retreat to the ramp and focus fire on 1 thor as you move up, it will die.
My build instead has 2 raxes. Instead of the strike cannon/armor upgrade, I mine less gas and get more minerals. The 2 thors are used to tank damage and break FF while marines add a good amount of DPS. My attack is probably also faster and has higher overall dps. It's basically like the marine/banshee build except you no longer have all squishy units.
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I often do a build very similar to this one on smaller maps but ending with a ghost instead of upgrades. I guess I should try this but ghosts are just so awesome against protoss.
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This build is definitely stoppable I tried it out against my 2300 protoss friend a few times. I won the first two times but then lost twice in a row. For the first push, if they retreat up the ramp, cancel/abandon expansion and then run around their expansion waiting for reinforcements and eventually pull their probes they can shut you down without losing too many probes (and since u brought scvs your still probably about even, granted I was only bringing about 5 scvs so maybe If I brought more it would be more effective, but then I feel like its really all-in. Protoss should focus on killing all the marines first as they die really easily, then they just have to focus down your thor if they have enough units or start killing off scvs until they do. Then they usually have colosus by your next push and your in a much tougher spot.
You have to force the colllosus to constnatly retreat by moving your thors towards them so they cant shoot your infantry, this means your thors basically just absorb damage while you try to get your infantry to kill the protoss gateway units. Needless to say this gets harder to do the larger the armies get and if their are cliffs around for collosus to abuse. Overall I probably wouldn't bother doing this build much as I feel like its inferior to a polt timing attack.
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I find it very hard to believe that not one toss player that played didn't think to make a warp prism to lift the immortal and negate the stun and damage. Also with a warp prism you can zeal the marines behind the Thor by gating on the other side of the ramp.
The prism isn't even hard to get out at that stage.
Regardless, I had friends try this build on me last night a few times, and each time I ever caught them at a ramp, they lost. You should also not leave out sentries from your composition, because you can block the Thor by force fielding the SCVs up against it, separating the marines from the rest of the group, halving this early push's effectiveness. Generally, if you fight in a crammed place, you should almost always win this, losing several zeals and very few other units. Pulling probes is also immensely helpful if you couldn't make anything happen with your ff.
Excuse my spelling errors and any other atrocities in this post.
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the only thing i wanna know is why these guys that say "lol i beat this today against my 2900 diamond friend!" don't post the goddamn replay.
to you guys talking about warp prism shennanigans:
- if you watch socke's replay, he barely has a immortal out when the push comes. if you skip the observer and go straight to immortal, it might possible to get one immortal and a warp prism when the thor arrives.
- warp prisms are very fragile, specially against marines and thors, if you atempt to fly it over his army, you will lose it for sure in less than one sec.
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Why would you automatically assume that any Protoss player would suicide his prism into the marines? That's definitely the last thing you want to do, suicide units that is, in any game. The whole point of the warp prism is that it is cheap, comes out quickly, offers mobility for your army and gives you a positioning advantage, and it NEGATES 250 strike.
Chronoboost makes protoss buildings produce units faster, and as such chronoing your immortal and prisms makes them come out very quickly.
You shouldn't count put prism play because they aren't popular. Like any unit, they require a certain skill set to use effectively.
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I also agree that this strategy is kinda abusive and that SCVs should get some attack priority.
Only this. The problem is that its extremely hard to pick off the scvs in time. If scvs that repair in combat would get high attack priority it would solve a lot of the issues. If u want ur units to focus fire the repaired unit thats still easy to accomplish since thors (or bcs) are so effin big.
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On November 17 2010 09:57 sob3k wrote:
NOTICE ME
I was talking about this build with a friend and he suggested hallucination as a counter, and I actually think it could work....
The strength of this build vs immortals is based on your ability to strike cannon and instantly remove two of them. If you get hallu and 1-2 sentry, you can hallucinate several more immortals and make it basically impossible for the T to figure out which ones to cannon.
plus when they use strike cannons on the hallucinations, the thor is locked down and has 0dps while the real immortals get free hits in.
obv you would do this with a 2-3gate robo opening and go very light on the sentry, as they are just for hallucinate basically.
Best bet if you see more immortals than is possible is to use a scan. Scan reveals hallucinations, and the time and money you've invested into sentries and the research probably cuts into your muscle. Not a terrible thought, if he doesn't have a scan handy he could be in trouble, but a little too dicey to rely on.
Once colossi have the range upgrade they can micro outside of the thor's range 6 so they don't get hit by strike cannon. Not sure if that's feasible to have at the timing of the first push, and you would be most likely in the dark, but after the first push that's how Socke handled the thors in that game on Shakuras.
BTW, the builds weren't the same. Close, but not the same. The Terran attacked with ONE Thor and marines. If he had waited for the second Thor it would have been a much different battle. Maybe socke would have had more defenses and crushed it cold, or maybe he would have lost outright, i'm not sure but there is a big difference between 1 Thor and 2, and the 60 seconds you delay your timing attack matters a lot. They are not the same scenarios, so "Socke crushed this" is false. 1 Thor did manage to kill the expo, which was a success. I think he could have pulled back and milked that advantage to a victory but the long distance and Socke's awesomeness came into play as well. Janook's 2 thor attack will have much more muscle behind it, but also comes later. For better or worse, his build is different from the one Socke beat. Although to be honest, Socke was pretty battered after that first attack and it took some excellent colossus, high templar, and carrier control to pull it off. The transition into mass tanks didn't go *that* terribly but I think it was a bad idea. You really saw their weakness against zealots and blink stalkers. A transition into good ole mmmg with vikings probably would have faired better but we can talk about transitions all day. If you are upgrading mech armor and strike cannon you may be inclined to keep making thors as part of your overall strategy but you can make adjustments, like skipping armor if you want to go straight bio.
I really see this "build" as just an opening, a damn aggressive one, and if you take it for what it is you'll have more success. The similar 1 Thor opening used against socke, if you take it just as an opening, was pretty successful. Who cares if he threw his advantage away later by massing tanks?It doesn't make his <opening> any worse.
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On November 18 2010 00:55 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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thanks for sharing this. I appreciate it and will check it out later when I get home. Would this be good in tvt?
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On November 19 2010 05:46 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On November 18 2010 23:39 pxds wrote:
the only thing i wanna know is why these guys that say "lol i beat this today against my 2900 diamond friend!" don't post the goddamn replay.
to you guys talking about warp prism shennanigans:
- if you watch socke's replay, he barely has a immortal out when the push comes. if you skip the observer and go straight to immortal, it might possible to get one immortal and a warp prism when the thor arrives.
- warp prisms are very fragile, specially against marines and thors, if you atempt to fly it over his army, you will lose it for sure in less than one sec.
socke always builds 2 observers right away as far as I know. I think if he poked with units he could get the same information for less resources and get a faster immortal. Thats one huge beef I have with Socke's play... he scouts like a terran player, as though he has the privelege of maphacking a part of the map to see EXACTLY whats coming rather than extrapolating and narrowing down what you have to prepare for and THEN having the units to do so, which isnt possible with double observer rush
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What I don't understand is why its acceptable design to allow SCV auto repair to both stack & be used in combat. It seems intuitive that if terran mechanical units are balanced in such a way that they can be competitive without auto-repair, then when you allow a player to make X amount of mech, pull all scv's and attack, that attack is going to be disproportionally difficult to defeat (imba). I really think auto-repair is hurting this game. Not only is the thor one of the most versatile, cost effective and supply effective units in the game, but you make it nearly immune to melee and allow it to be healed faster than a small army can do damage.
I think game design like this which encourages all-in plays should be turfed.
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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.
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On November 19 2010 06:09 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On November 19 2010 06:38 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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 ?
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On November 19 2010 06:09 Goliathsorrow wrote:Show nested quote +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.
This post is pretty much spot on.
Also, putting the Marines in front of the Thor is how the Stalkers and Zealots pick off your Marines and then you have nowhere near enough DPS to break the toss. The WHOLE POINT of getting VEHICLE armor, is so that your THOR is a better tank than before, so your SCVs can keep him alive indefinitely (except vs Immortals, that's why you get 250MM Strike Cannon)and the Marines can clean up the Zealots/Stalkers.
The hero of this thread, Janook, even explained it himself that you use the Thor to tank and the Marines to clean.
Also, Zealots are a HUGE factor in this stage of the game, ESPECIALLY when it is this early. The earlier in the game we are, the more emphasis there is on each unit, and the more effective single fatty hard hitting units are (read: Protoss). This is why you get the vehicle plating, to deal with the high DPS of the Zealots smashing your Thor.
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very good build i started using thors much more against protoss after the medivac speed nerf
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hmmm, maybe the one base carrier rush (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=155731) might hold this off, the carrier is out at around 8min. Janook should ask Protoss_Carrier to test it.
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On November 17 2010 09:21 misaTO wrote:
Mass chargelots with +1 will do the trick.
It'd be nice if they did, but 6 SCV's repairing will cause your zealots to bug out. Until blizzard decides to fix this, people will continue to exploit this build.
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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.
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It is my personal experience that Thors are not cost effective without repair.
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Great thread. ill definitely watch the replays when I get home. I see its not likely viable vs zerg, but what about tvt? the questions been proposed already but I haven't seen a satisfactory. answer..
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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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On November 19 2010 23:48 Janook wrote: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
awesome, thanks. gonna watch it now. btw am i the only one who took almost a minute to figure out where on the 2shared site u can actually download the file? oO
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How well does a flying barracks cover up a Thor?
Can you cover your SCVs and Thor with a barracks to effectively give it a hell of a lot more HP?
Would prevent Zealots from targeting SCVs, prevent Thor being focused fire as much as possible. You'd have to move slower than my grandmother drives though. lol
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On November 20 2010 01:12 uAir wrote:
How well does a flying barracks cover up a Thor?
Can you cover your SCVs and Thor with a barracks to effectively give it a hell of a lot more HP?
Would prevent Zealots from targeting SCVs, prevent Thor being focused fire as much as possible. You'd have to move slower than my grandmother drives though. lol
You can still zoom in/rotate to target.
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On November 19 2010 23:48 Janook wrote: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
You can speed up the push by about 15-20seconds if you go refinery first or add 2nd refinery at 16. Gas is really taxing you by the time you make your 2nd Thor.
On the other hand, your BO gives more mineral slack to add in a bunker if required.
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I just tried this build out, I was super sloppy and it was late, but I completely rolled a 2 gate robo
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If you target the SCVs and/or Marines first the scvs will not surround the thor for repair. Then zealots, and a few probes if you FE get an easy surround on the Thor. No more repair. Clean up from there.
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I think SCV repair is retarded for pushes like this. SCV shouldnt be able to repair while the unit is attacking (makes sense, how do you repair a tank or machine while its systems are in use).
thinking about doing writeup justifying this with replays and statistics.
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That's funny, I read your post as "SCV repair is intended for pushes like this" and nodded my head.
I firmly believe SCV repair is working as intended. This push would get absolutely smashed into oblivion without it, despite including upgraded, incredibly powerful units, and equal food armies. Does that make sense?
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On November 19 2010 17:21 Dfgj wrote:Show nested quote +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).
Actually with the kcdc build you build 1 or 0 sentries(kcdc build involves a late 2nd gas so you dont have the gas for 4 sentries). You are chrono'ing 1 zealot / then stalker / then stalker/sentry from the gateway then possibly one more zealot or stalker chronoed. Warpgate reseach finished after your 3rd/4th chrono'ed gateway unit - along with 2-3 more gateways should finish warping in about now. So when warp gate research finished you should have a minimum of 1 zealot, 1 or 2 stalkers then either a sentry or another zealot or sentry. I actually dont make any sentries this early since Im not thinking to forcefield choke, but rather hold of any pushes with zealots or stalkers - and im only on 1 gas so sentries will severely delay robo.
The OP said immortals are not effective vs this, so pumping zealots out of 3-4 warpgates along with chronoboost you should have plenty of units to overwhelm this as long as your able to focus the scvs a little.
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I don't think the problem is that scvs can repair. That's a cool mechanic and it adds depth to the game. The problem is their attack priority, which I hate in TvT as well. Thor rushes are not that great in that matchup but it is SO frustrating to watch all your marines, hellions, and banshees attack the Thor and lose everything. Being able to kill the scvs first would make it much better.
It seems like a transition to m&m with thors and cloaked banshees could be pretty reasonable after the first push. What is your usual mid-late game plan Janook?
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If your push fails, you are usually able to hold the counter-attack with 2 bunkers and your next Thor + repair.
I transition into Thor/Banshee/Marine. Scan + Thor is very effective at taking out observers from a distance, allowing your cloaked banshees to go in and target fire collosus, and then kill everything else. With your armory, upgrade Ship Weapons, banshees will be your primary DPS.
This also brings you all the way up the tech tree, letting you get Ravens if DTs are a problem. Some people suggest getting them for PDD but I find that too gas heavy and cuts into my banshee count.
Also, simply having cloaked banshees allows you to do solid harassment throughout the game. A Terran that isn't harassing is a dead Terran.
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Protoss was ruining me very regularly.
Havent lost since i started using this build (about 5 games so far)
Enjoyable to use I even used it against a Zerg, and although it took 2 push attempts to work, it did work.
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On November 20 2010 05:19 Scrimpton wrote:Protoss was ruining me very regularly. Havent lost since i started using this build (about 5 games so far) Enjoyable to use I even used it against a Zerg, and although it took 2 push attempts to work, it did work.
Aww, that makes me happy.
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You're a gentlemen and a warrior Janook.
Repair isn't broken, Terran has 2ways to heal its units, 1 for Bio (Medi) and 1 for Mech (repair).
Stop trying to nerf our race, it's like saying toss shields should be returned to SC1 style (redic) or saying zerg just shouldn't auto-heal (obv not).
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@ janook
Staying with thors if this fails is not good, thors are simply a horrible unit in TvP later on unless the protoss makes phoenix. They are bad against zealots without mass repair and don't do well against regular colossus armies. If you transition it's better to just go tank + MMM imo.
If the push fails just add a tech lab to your rax, get another rax (which you should already be having) and a starport and just make MMM. Because you got a factory for thor doesn't mean you need to continue using it.. Most TvP builds include a idle factory anyways, you can always use the techlab on a new rax.
Also, please just please, CUT the stupid mech armor upgrade. It's incredibly bad as it does virtually nothing.... Stalkers do 12 instead of 13, immortals 48 instead of 49 and zealots don't hit your thor anyways.... Just get 250mm faster instead and ignore mech upgrades.
I thought about making a own thread about the thor push with a build without the nonsense in it but that would only dilute the attention this Thor push gets. In some of your games you simply lose because your thor push is horribly late due to getting useless armor first. If you skip armor you can almost exactly get 250mm and a thor when your armory finishes so you can push straight away with 1 thor. This makes it MUCH harder to counter as the protoss will have a hard time getting 2 immortals before 1 thor (whereas it's much easier to get 3 immortals vs 2 thor because chrono'd immortals build faster then thors) AND it will counter expansions much faster. Your 2 thor push style lets a 1 gate FE have a expansion up for a minute more which will let them get ahead too far in economy, if you push at 1 thor you will simply kill their economy much faster...
If this thread gets a bit more streamlined people might see the entire problem with SCV autorepair and SCV attack priority a bit more clear and it might finally get fixed. (or someone comes up with a really good way to micro agianst it except using the hold commando which simply doesnt work).
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On November 20 2010 05:31 Markwerf wrote:
@ janook
Staying with thors if this fails is not good, thors are simply a horrible unit in TvP later on unless the protoss makes phoenix. They are bad against zealots without mass repair and don't do well against regular colossus armies. If you transition it's better to just go tank + MMM imo.
If the push fails just add a tech lab to your rax, get another rax (which you should already be having) and a starport and just make MMM. Because you got a factory for thor doesn't mean you need to continue using it.. Most TvP builds include a idle factory anyways, you can always use the techlab on a new rax.
Also, please just please, CUT the stupid mech armor upgrade. It's incredibly bad as it does virtually nothing.... Stalkers do 12 instead of 13, immortals 48 instead of 49 and zealots don't hit your thor anyways.... Just get 250mm faster instead and ignore mech upgrades.
I thought about making a own thread about the thor push with a build without the nonsense in it but that would only dilute the attention this Thor push gets. In some of your games you simply lose because your thor push is horribly late due to getting useless armor first. If you skip armor you can almost exactly get 250mm and a thor when your armory finishes so you can push straight away with 1 thor. This makes it MUCH harder to counter as the protoss will have a hard time getting 2 immortals before 1 thor (whereas it's much easier to get 3 immortals vs 2 thor because chrono'd immortals build faster then thors) AND it will counter expansions much faster. Your 2 thor push style lets a 1 gate FE have a expansion up for a minute more which will let them get ahead too far in economy, if you push at 1 thor you will simply kill their economy much faster...
If this thread gets a bit more streamlined people might see the entire problem with SCV autorepair and SCV attack priority a bit more clear and it might finally get fixed. (or someone comes up with a really good way to micro agianst it except using the hold commando which simply doesnt work).
Thors are not bad versus Protoss, they serve as good meat shields and block up a huge portion of space, along with the fact that they actually do fairly well against Stalkers. The only issue is that Zealot/HT do counter Thors, but thats why you make Banshees with Thors w/ some Mauraders and laugh.
PainUser has a pretty good Thor/Banshee/Bio based army that does very well against P.
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@Markwerf
1) I am very happy with the Thor/Banshee/Marine late game composition. MMM just hasn't been working for me. I've been looking for something new and I'm happy with this. It's very strong but requires sharp micro.
2)I think you're partly right about cutting the armor upgrade. When I scout with my Helion, I choose whether to upgrade Armor or Strike cannons. If I see any kind of Robo build, I get strike cannons. If there's no Robo, I get Armor. You can afford one or the other, not both. Getting just one will make your push come about 20 seconds earlier. The reason I thought you could get both, as I do in the first replays, is because the build was fresh and I wasn't executing it as cleanly as I could. Now that I have the timing down, I realize you cannot afford both upgrades.
(By the way, you could also opt to get stim for your marines instead of either of the Thor upgrades.)
Furthermore, If you scout 1-gate FE, I agree you should push with your very first Thor, before any upgrades are done.
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On November 20 2010 05:31 Markwerf wrote:
@ janook
Staying with thors if this fails is not good, thors are simply a horrible unit in TvP later on unless the protoss makes phoenix. They are bad against zealots without mass repair and don't do well against regular colossus armies. If you transition it's better to just go tank + MMM imo.
If the push fails just add a tech lab to your rax, get another rax (which you should already be having) and a starport and just make MMM. Because you got a factory for thor doesn't mean you need to continue using it.. Most TvP builds include a idle factory anyways, you can always use the techlab on a new rax.
Also, please just please, CUT the stupid mech armor upgrade. It's incredibly bad as it does virtually nothing.... Stalkers do 12 instead of 13, immortals 48 instead of 49 and zealots don't hit your thor anyways.... Just get 250mm faster instead and ignore mech upgrades.
I thought about making a own thread about the thor push with a build without the nonsense in it but that would only dilute the attention this Thor push gets. In some of your games you simply lose because your thor push is horribly late due to getting useless armor first. If you skip armor you can almost exactly get 250mm and a thor when your armory finishes so you can push straight away with 1 thor. This makes it MUCH harder to counter as the protoss will have a hard time getting 2 immortals before 1 thor (whereas it's much easier to get 3 immortals vs 2 thor because chrono'd immortals build faster then thors) AND it will counter expansions much faster. Your 2 thor push style lets a 1 gate FE have a expansion up for a minute more which will let them get ahead too far in economy, if you push at 1 thor you will simply kill their economy much faster...
If this thread gets a bit more streamlined people might see the entire problem with SCV autorepair and SCV attack priority a bit more clear and it might finally get fixed. (or someone comes up with a really good way to micro agianst it except using the hold commando which simply doesnt work).
you actually do know, that they eat up stalkers, walk down forcefields, are immune to storm or collossi, oneshot immortals and arent bad vs zealots. one thor can take on 4 chargelots even without repair, this is 300 200 6 sup 400 8 sup and in 200vs200 sup fights, the supply are far more important than the cost. and have you ever seen thors with 3/3 upgrades? O_o you will cry yourself to sleep. you may also add banshees, because marine thor take really good care of phoenices. thors are always amazing. the only cost and supplyefficient counter are voidrays. just mix in hellions, marines, marauders and 2-3 ghosts and youre scary as helll.
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200 vs 200 fights are very rare in TvP, they don't matter much. Thor, banshee, marine is quite easy to counter with colossus, zealot, stalker, voidray or colossus, zealot, stalker, HT.
By going a thor based army you simply give up one of T's greatest strengths: mobility. Lategame thor play is just pretty damn weak.
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On November 20 2010 06:05 Markwerf wrote:
200 vs 200 fights are very rare in TvP, they don't matter much. Thor, banshee, marine is quite easy to counter with colossus, zealot, stalker, voidray or colossus, zealot, stalker, HT.
By going a thor based army you simply give up one of T's greatest strengths: mobility. Lategame thor play is just pretty damn weak.
and if the terran wants to max up, how do you stop him? propably outexpanding him... great, more probes using up supply. if the terran doesnt want to fight you, he doestn have to fight you. and i really dont see, how a thor hellion based army loses to zealot stalker? i really dont see this happen. but you gave the key word, which i already mentioned, voidrays. voidrays are the only counter to thors, use your unittester, check it out. and how hts should even do a dent to thors is beyond my wisdom. sure, storms burn hellions to the ground, but those are pretty mobile and can easily just come back and burn some zealots. and hts still have the same old problem, ghosts. srsly, if the zealots cant get a souround on the thors they melt. its as simple as that. stalkers really arent what you want to have, they are doing even worse than zealots and eat up gas, theyre not even costefficient, not to mention emp. ok, if you can get a giant blanket of psistorms off over the thors and this 5 times, theyre dead for sure, but srsly, thats not going to happen. the great thing about thors is, they are practically immune to aoe. i mean even storming roaches can be a pain in the ass, now imagine thors. and fighting them with collossi has like the same effect. a collossus will at best hit 2 thors, which is 60 dmg a shot. still not more dps than a single immortal for a lot more money. if you cant outmass him, you need voidrays.
also thors have a similar effect as archons. they spread out your amry a lot.
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On November 20 2010 06:31 ensis wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 06:05 Markwerf wrote:
200 vs 200 fights are very rare in TvP, they don't matter much. Thor, banshee, marine is quite easy to counter with colossus, zealot, stalker, voidray or colossus, zealot, stalker, HT.
By going a thor based army you simply give up one of T's greatest strengths: mobility. Lategame thor play is just pretty damn weak. and if the terran wants to max up, how do you stop him? propably outexpanding him... great, more probes using up supply. if the terran doesnt want to fight you, he doestn have to fight you. and i really dont see, how a thor hellion based army loses to zealot stalker? i really dont see this happen. but you gave the key word, which i already mentioned, voidrays. voidrays are the only counter to thors, use your unittester, check it out. and how hts should even do a dent to thors is beyond my wisdom. sure, storms burn hellions to the ground, but those are pretty mobile and can easily just come back and burn some zealots. and hts still have the same old problem, ghosts. srsly, if the zealots cant get a souround on the thors they melt. its as simple as that. stalkers really arent what you want to have, they are doing even worse than zealots and eat up gas, theyre not even costefficient, not to mention emp. ok, if you can get a giant blanket of psistorms off over the thors and this 5 times, theyre dead for sure, but srsly, thats not going to happen. the great thing about thors is, they are practically immune to aoe. i mean even storming roaches can be a pain in the ass, now imagine thors. and fighting them with collossi has like the same effect. a collossus will at best hit 2 thors, which is 60 dmg a shot. still not more dps than a single immortal for a lot more money. if you cant outmass him, you need voidrays. also thors have a similar effect as archons. they spread out your amry a lot.
I think his point about high temps was that storm kills the scvs and marines... I know it wasn't that clear but I can't think of any other reason since feedback doesn't do anything to thors anymore. I disagree with markwerf anyway. There is still a healthy amount of bio in the end game comp that includes thors and banshees. But you get a lot of banshees, scan and kill observors with the thors' high range and attack priority and cloaked banshees do a ton of damage. You don't mass thors, just get a few (IMO at least, i'm not sure if janook agrees). You can see this used to great effect by painuser in a lot of his recent games.
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yay a new build for my TVP ghost marine and banshee marine were getting boring, now i have thor marine :o)
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On November 20 2010 06:05 Markwerf wrote:
200 vs 200 fights are very rare in TvP, they don't matter much. Thor, banshee, marine is quite easy to counter with colossus, zealot, stalker, voidray or colossus, zealot, stalker, HT.
By going a thor based army you simply give up one of T's greatest strengths: mobility. Lategame thor play is just pretty damn weak.
So you're saying, MMM Viking Tank Banshee will be more effective than MMM Viking Thor Banshee? Won't using tanks also limit your mobility too? Or are you saying that you should fight within the tank blast radius with MMM..
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All i'm saying is that MMM + ghost + viking is simply the most effective combo for terran. Mech play in general only weakens terran and is only really usefull for minimal niche use, ie. tanks for maps that favor tanks very well, hellions for harass occasionally and thors for this thor push and to counter phoenix.
For late use mech is simply not that good, it's gas heavy, it's slow and doesn't do better against any of the unit combo's that simple MMM does. The amount of gas you save by going MMM can all be spent on counters to that same MMM, ie ghosts for HT and vikings for colossi. Along with upgrades being awesome for MMM that makes it the fantastic combo and why it's used all the time vs P. There is hardly no high level play including mech play vs P for a reason, it sucks by comparison to MMM.
(painuser is the only one i know going such a style and he is a subtop terran).
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On November 17 2010 08:51 QuantumTheory wrote:
Socke stomped a similar build on Shakuras.
Had his expo up, had to sac it tho.
Edit: Give you quick rundown on the game. Opponent pushed with 1 Thor mixed with scvs/marines with strike cannon, Socke held but the 2nd thor was almost at his base. Socke defended that and went on to win. Trick was to attack them when the thors are halfway up the ramp, I think that helps with less scvs being able to repair or something. Anyway the T had an awkward angle and Socke was meant to get the surround with probuu but failed, still won though.
Socke was smart to catch the thor on the ramp, but the ONLY thing that saved him was the marines had surrounded the thor and 3-4 scvs were unable to repair. Watch the replay if you don't believe me. This allowed Socke to kill the thor; otherwise he would have lost the game for sure.
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this is easy to counter... but i dont want to tell my fellow protoss players how so that terrans continue with this build ^___^
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Janook, my friend is lame and won't make a TL forum account, now he's not shutting up about the +1 armor as opposed to +1 weapons, so I'm asking on his behalf. I assume it's to make the scvs job easier to increase the effectiveness of their repair. He won't let it go. please help us. you're our only hope.
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this is easy to counter... but i dont want to tell my fellow protoss players how so that terrans continue with this build ^___^
Okay then I'll tell them how...
Here is an example against my terran practice partner, high diamond 2k+. We played mixed games while I worked on this opener to counter that and not lose to everything else. I discussed it a few pages back in a very long post. The timings around the 26 food mark is a little weird i have to figure out how to squeeze a pylon in there, but here goes. Ive stopped it 4 times now in a row against 2 opponents, but this replay can be used as an instructional video of sorts... because it shows the ebb and flow... basically even if he plays perfectly you can have the proper mix to stop it, and since you went fast phoenix, you have time to adapt ot literally any build.
http://rapidshare.com/files/431942018/PvT_counter_thor_push.SC2Replay
enjoy and dont sweat the small stuff, i havent lost to this push with this method, good repairs or not, but its micro intensive.
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fcking gay strat. no wonder ive faced this so many times past few days on ladder nd in tounrys. lol thanks alot TL.net! >:O
only gets me if they proxy the factory cuz i wont see the thor inc!
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Sv1:
The armor substantially increases the tanking ability of the Thor. The scv repair is what makes this push so strong, and the armor synergizes well with that.
But more importantly, why armor instead of +1 attack?
Well, if you do the math, you'll find that +1 attack on a Thor doesn't help you kill any Toss Gateway units with any fewer hits. Normally, in a large battle, upgrades like that are helpful because your other units will make the difference. But because you're attacking with such a small force, the odds that your supporting marines are able to finish off a unit BEFORE your Thor overkills it is small. Also, you only have 2 or 3 Thors, so you don't get much out of the attack upgrade. However, the armor upgrade is useful, not as your units increase in number, but as your opponents increase in number. If he's defending with a large gateway force, the armor upgrade will mitigate much more damage.
I also want to add that in my more refined version of the build, you cannot afford to get both the armor upgrade and 250mm strike cannons without delaying the push. I discovered this after solidly nailing the build order. When scouting with your helion, you must decide on one of the two upgrades. See a robo? 250mm. See no robo? +1 armor.
I think that if you want to attack with both the 250mm upgrade and the +1 armor, you will have 3 thors when both of those finish.
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Jayrod: Your opponent did not execute the build very well, and had a few significant micro mistakes during the actual battle. I'm confident that, even if I executed the build the same way, if I wound up in the exact same situation, my thor/marine composition would beat your composition.
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Hey dawgs.
The entire point of builds is to make an unbeatable one, not just one that can be countered if they see it's coming.
![[image loading]](http://palmgoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_more_you_know2.jpg)
Keep up the good work with making the undefendable terran build.
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On November 20 2010 13:16 Janook wrote:
Jayrod: Your opponent did not execute the build very well, and had a few significant micro mistakes during the actual battle. I'm confident that, even if I executed the build the same way, if I wound up in the exact same situation, my thor/marine composition would beat your composition.
Cmon man.
Listen:
Phoenix lifts 250 mm cannoned immortals, thereby nullifying it.
Protoss doesnt fast expo and holds at ramp thereby limiting the amount of repair.
It's a counter, i don't care that someone can make it 4 seconds faster, it doesn't matter. The real discussion should be on the fact that it's so difficult for protoss to scout and make a reply for this, not that the push came 11.215 seconds late.
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So is the consensus, get an Immortal, fight him on your ramp, FF the Thor? FF the SCVs? What's going on. I mean, short of being incredible, using max range Stalkers to pick off the SCVs while keeping your Immortal alive and separating the Marines so half of them can't shoot; what's a reliable way?
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On November 20 2010 14:37 Supah wrote:
So is the consensus, get an Immortal, fight him on your ramp, FF the Thor? FF the SCVs? What's going on. I mean, short of being incredible, using max range Stalkers to pick off the SCVs while keeping your Immortal alive and separating the Marines so half of them can't shoot; what's a reliable way?
watch my replay posted above, it works regardless of how well they micro, but its not easy
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The Toss' I've encountered on ladder that are able to hold the initial push do so by immediately chronoing Immortals and producing stalkers, no zealots. When the attack hits, you must focus fire one Thor the second it gets up your ramp. This maximizes their ranged burst damage and minimizes the repairing potential of the SCVs.
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On November 20 2010 13:55 Bungle wrote:
Cmon man.
Listen:
Phoenix lifts 250 mm cannoned immortals, thereby nullifying it.
Protoss doesnt fast expo and holds at ramp thereby limiting the amount of repair.
It's a counter, i don't care that someone can make it 4 seconds faster, it doesn't matter. The real discussion should be on the fact that it's so difficult for protoss to scout and make a reply for this, not that the push came 11.215 seconds late.
I haven't seen the latest replays, but the Thor play mentioned in the op expands as it pushes, so being able to hold at your ramp still leaves you in a losing position. Unless you can make something happen right, it quickly becomes 2 base to one base.
The slow speed and large size of immortals means that breaking a Thor/marine contain with them seems unlikely, since the terran army ought to chew them up quickly as they move down the ramp one at a time - and lifting them with the phoenix traps the units behind them. The SCVs brought along for repair can start bunkering the protoss natural (less useful on maps with back doors or in base expos).
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On November 20 2010 08:35 Markwerf wrote:
All i'm saying is that MMM + ghost + viking is simply the most effective combo for terran. Mech play in general only weakens terran and is only really usefull for minimal niche use, ie. tanks for maps that favor tanks very well, hellions for harass occasionally and thors for this thor push and to counter phoenix.
For late use mech is simply not that good, it's gas heavy, it's slow and doesn't do better against any of the unit combo's that simple MMM does. The amount of gas you save by going MMM can all be spent on counters to that same MMM, ie ghosts for HT and vikings for colossi. Along with upgrades being awesome for MMM that makes it the fantastic combo and why it's used all the time vs P. There is hardly no high level play including mech play vs P for a reason, it sucks by comparison to MMM.
(painuser is the only one i know going such a style and he is a subtop terran).
Oh I see. Yea MMMGV is my old standard build against P since WoL came out. Btw, I thought Painuser is a biomech user, just like OgS Top and STC? And I think he has pretty good fundamentals, though he is Aa bit underrated in the rankings.
I think a better example of terran who go mech heavy and is a subtop terran is Goody. ~XD~
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Are the VRs necessary? Also, do you think its possible to hold with ONLY gateway units, or 1 Immortals tops?
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On November 20 2010 15:11 Supah wrote:
Are the VRs necessary? Also, do you think its possible to hold with ONLY gateway units, or 1 Immortals tops?
by then, i really think you should have more than gateway units
i'm sure it's possible to hold it without VRs
Having face different variations of the this build, fighting at the ramp is probably the best general bet.
if a thor is the one leading the bust, you focus it/ ff behind it
if not, FF it and pick off whatever you can range against
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Hi Janook,
Doubt you remember me but you pwned me in the first round of a Z33k tourney I think
Anyways, I was wondering if you have tested this vs a more aggro 4-gate. I beat someone who I believe was trying to do this build on the ladder with a 10 pylon / 10 gate 4 gate that hits with 2 zealots, 4 stalkers, and a sentry(for GS) around 5:40.
The 4 gate in your replay pack is very conservative and doesn't cut probes so it hits around 6:15 and only with 4 units. Furthermore, the 4-gate your opponent did does not involve making a stalker before dropping the last 3 gates (which is super standard, I'm a bit surprised to see that your opponent doesn't build a single unit before warp gate finishes) and thus you were able to easily scout.
Have you tried this against a more aggressive 4-gate?
Obviously Toss can't be expected to blindly go for a super aggro 4-gate every game so this certainly doesn't qualify as a counter to the build but I think it is something that your build may be more vulnerable to than you realize.
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u know is it worth it to get 1 thor in your MMM build to break the FF?
sounds pretty good...
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On November 20 2010 15:19 megagoten wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 15:11 Supah wrote:
Are the VRs necessary? Also, do you think its possible to hold with ONLY gateway units, or 1 Immortals tops? by then, i really think you should have more than gateway units i'm sure it's possible to hold it without VRs Having face different variations of the this build, fighting at the ramp is probably the best general bet. if a thor is the one leading the bust, you focus it/ ff behind it if not, FF it and pick off whatever you can range against
Yeah, I'm more referring to something like an 1 gate FE 2 more gates down, you push up, notice Marines only (and not many, at that), and you have 2 Thors breathing down your neck with a Robo just starting. I suppose this stresses the importance of keeping that early Stalker near the T's front to poke now and then before you commit to two more gates, a stargate, a robo, or an FE next.
Edit: Also, I guess that's the importance of Stargate first so you don't roll the dice Thor vs Banshee
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On November 20 2010 15:04 Victim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 13:55 Bungle wrote:
Cmon man.
Listen:
Phoenix lifts 250 mm cannoned immortals, thereby nullifying it.
Protoss doesnt fast expo and holds at ramp thereby limiting the amount of repair.
It's a counter, i don't care that someone can make it 4 seconds faster, it doesn't matter. The real discussion should be on the fact that it's so difficult for protoss to scout and make a reply for this, not that the push came 11.215 seconds late. I haven't seen the latest replays, but the Thor play mentioned in the op expands as it pushes, so being able to hold at your ramp still leaves you in a losing position. Unless you can make something happen right, it quickly becomes 2 base to one base. The slow speed and large size of immortals means that breaking a Thor/marine contain with them seems unlikely, since the terran army ought to chew them up quickly as they move down the ramp one at a time - and lifting them with the phoenix traps the units behind them. The SCVs brought along for repair can start bunkering the protoss natural (less useful on maps with back doors or in base expos).
No, bungle is talking about this replay I made for educational purposes... hence why we sit around after the push
http://rapidshare.com/files/431942018/PvT_counter_thor_push.SC2Replay
Less than 100% perfect play on either of our parts, but its incredibly one sided in favor of the protoss with the phoenix trick. The OP brings 10 SCVs of his 28 or so to the attack. If thats held off he has 18, which the protoss has more like 30, and higher production. Honestly the expansion just feels like a way to not call it an all in, because out of the now 5 times ive held off the attack in a row, the terran hasnt been able to recover and my army is absolutely massive by comparison.
Re: the void ray, no not necessary, but if you know its thor coming you dont need more than 2 phoenix for the gravitron trick. its really important you lift your immortal as its casting and your first phoenix will have over 100 energy, while the second will get only one lift. You can actually cast beam during the 250mm animation putting it on cd and taking no damage from it. In doing so you've just weakened his push by 150/150 resources.
The expansion is superfluous, if your initial push fails, you lose the game... if not right away than in 5 minutes.
To be honest, the only thing I think that could make such a build "unstoppable" would be to some how work in a ghost to replace the cannon upgrade. if you can emp the immortals, they die to the auto attack even faster plus you get all that emp for other targets. Also if they DID open phoenix you might hit them with your emp and knock their energy off, though EMP is so small that you obv have to aim the immortals.
This push WILL NOT beat a properly controlled/macro'd phoenix/immortal/gateway combination. Any VRs you add once you've ascertained the push is coming just makes it even easier.
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Pretty easily stopped on anything but maps wIth close positions, usually I can get 3immortals and a 4th on the way. Don't try to expo because it will die, you have to engage on the ramp.
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So I just want to say that I've been doing this all day long and the only time I've managed to lose is on small ramp maps where the Terran opponent goes heavy 3 rax marauder/marine
Actually played a Protoss player who had three immortals and a handful of stalkers (1 base) and could only manage to burn down one thor, at that point the marines in the back target fired everything else and won in under 12 minutes
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I have played against this build twice tonight. The first I thought he was going banshees - I got 2gate stargate instead of robo first to deal with uncloaked banshees, and added the robo after. When I spotted his thors coming, it was too late. I did not think to lift the immy with grav until after I lost that game
The second time, I noticed he had early factory with hellions, but I had made a robo first and got obs. I saw the first thor pop after my stargate finished, so I started pumping immy, zealot, phoenix. After his first push failed, I added robo bay for colo, templar archives for storm (and had some with the final army comp), and basically owned the entire map. It was really no contest after he lost the first push.
The terran sacrifices economy, army comp, expo, and basically the game if the initial push fails. This is similar to most other all-in strategies where if the push fails, you are fighting uphill both ways in the snow with no clothes on.
1700 Diamond Protoss in E-Class division Scout Kilo (+315 point differential, ugh)
Replay :
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107028-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrant
BTW - to the OP, you didnt state 2gate stargate as a test BO that Janook went against. I think that fast banshees and marine/banshee/raven when scouted (which is fairly easy to do early) as well as this 2Thor push build are countered pretty easily by 2gate stargate
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Tarath,
I have not encountered an aggro 4-gate.
However, my gut tells me I would be able to scout that with my SCV and put down a bunker in time.
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Builds like these (played it a ton of times, and lose a lot more than I win) makes me wish they'd put energy back on the Thor for feedback.. Then you could at least counter the 250mm cannon if you scout the build. In this patch there is just not a single power unit worth investing in because of the 250mm cannon. Void rays get shat at by marines and phoenix will get laughed at with the +1 armor.
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On November 20 2010 18:25 Catreina wrote:I have played against this build twice tonight. The first I thought he was going banshees - I got 2gate stargate instead of robo first to deal with uncloaked banshees, and added the robo after. When I spotted his thors coming, it was too late. I did not think to lift the immy with grav until after I lost that game The second time, I noticed he had early factory with hellions, but I had made a robo first and got obs. I saw the first thor pop after my stargate finished, so I started pumping immy, zealot, phoenix. After his first push failed, I added robo bay for colo, templar archives for storm (and had some with the final army comp), and basically owned the entire map. It was really no contest after he lost the first push. The terran sacrifices economy, army comp, expo, and basically the game if the initial push fails. This is similar to most other all-in strategies where if the push fails, you are fighting uphill both ways in the snow with no clothes on. 1700 Diamond Protoss in E-Class division Scout Kilo (+315 point differential, ugh) Replay : http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107028-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrantBTW - to the OP, you didnt state 2gate stargate as a test BO that Janook went against. I think that fast banshees and marine/banshee/raven when scouted (which is fairly easy to do early) as well as this 2Thor push build are countered pretty easily by 2gate stargate
Watched your replay -- very nice job with the graviton beam trick.
I feel like I need to point out though that your terran opponent messed up pretty bad by putting the marines in front and attacking with the scv's instead of repairing. The idea is that the thors tank damage and take care of the immo's while the marines take care of the zealots. Not sure what effect (if any) this would have had on the outcome, since you really overwhelmed the push.
I kinda feel like if the terran sees the phoenix, s/he should just not use strike cannon and try to focus down the immortals with marines instead?
Anyways, a well deserved win for you. It's kind of a travesty that your opponent does a simple build then a-moves and rolls most protoss.
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On November 20 2010 18:25 Catreina wrote:I have played against this build twice tonight. The first I thought he was going banshees - I got 2gate stargate instead of robo first to deal with uncloaked banshees, and added the robo after. When I spotted his thors coming, it was too late. I did not think to lift the immy with grav until after I lost that game The second time, I noticed he had early factory with hellions, but I had made a robo first and got obs. I saw the first thor pop after my stargate finished, so I started pumping immy, zealot, phoenix. After his first push failed, I added robo bay for colo, templar archives for storm (and had some with the final army comp), and basically owned the entire map. It was really no contest after he lost the first push. The terran sacrifices economy, army comp, expo, and basically the game if the initial push fails. This is similar to most other all-in strategies where if the push fails, you are fighting uphill both ways in the snow with no clothes on. 1700 Diamond Protoss in E-Class division Scout Kilo (+315 point differential, ugh) Replay : http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107028-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrantBTW - to the OP, you didnt state 2gate stargate as a test BO that Janook went against. I think that fast banshees and marine/banshee/raven when scouted (which is fairly easy to do early) as well as this 2Thor push build are countered pretty easily by 2gate stargate
at the time the normal 1 thor push would come, you have 3-4 zealots 2 stalker and a voidray, i actually dont think youd stand a chance to hold it. do you maybe have a replay of this, too? and how do you think you would do vs. anything apart from thorrush with the stargate opening. the last one using a stargate first build ive seen was genius and he lost.
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The first time I went against that build I thought it was going to be banshees, and I lost horribly. I did not use grav beam, but I did focus the scvs first. I didnt even kill one thor
I have yet to face the build with a single thor push. I got the void ray in that replay after 2 or 3 phoenix, did I not?
Also, if he was repairing instead of attacking with the scv's, with the rines in the back, it probably would have meant I had less units to work with, but he still would have likely been behind. The problem against a build like this is that once scouted, you are either forced into 2gate robo stargate (or 2gate stargate robo, though less opportune), or you are rolled.
Vs heavy bio, a stargate first opening is practically giving away a free win - rines eat VR for lunch, and phoenix play is pretty negligible when there are 20 marines out there - unless I see few to no marines/marauders when I poke/scout, I will be going 2gate robo or gate robo gate as I believe these are some of the safer openings.
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On November 20 2010 17:19 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 15:04 Victim wrote:On November 20 2010 13:55 Bungle wrote:
Cmon man.
Listen:
Phoenix lifts 250 mm cannoned immortals, thereby nullifying it.
Protoss doesnt fast expo and holds at ramp thereby limiting the amount of repair.
It's a counter, i don't care that someone can make it 4 seconds faster, it doesn't matter. The real discussion should be on the fact that it's so difficult for protoss to scout and make a reply for this, not that the push came 11.215 seconds late. I haven't seen the latest replays, but the Thor play mentioned in the op expands as it pushes, so being able to hold at your ramp still leaves you in a losing position. Unless you can make something happen right, it quickly becomes 2 base to one base. The slow speed and large size of immortals means that breaking a Thor/marine contain with them seems unlikely, since the terran army ought to chew them up quickly as they move down the ramp one at a time - and lifting them with the phoenix traps the units behind them. The SCVs brought along for repair can start bunkering the protoss natural (less useful on maps with back doors or in base expos). No, bungle is talking about this replay I made for educational purposes... hence why we sit around after the push http://rapidshare.com/files/431942018/PvT_counter_thor_push.SC2ReplayLess than 100% perfect play on either of our parts, but its incredibly one sided in favor of the protoss with the phoenix trick. The OP brings 10 SCVs of his 28 or so to the attack. If thats held off he has 18, which the protoss has more like 30, and higher production. Honestly the expansion just feels like a way to not call it an all in, because out of the now 5 times ive held off the attack in a row, the terran hasnt been able to recover and my army is absolutely massive by comparison. Re: the void ray, no not necessary, but if you know its thor coming you dont need more than 2 phoenix for the gravitron trick. its really important you lift your immortal as its casting and your first phoenix will have over 100 energy, while the second will get only one lift. You can actually cast beam during the 250mm animation putting it on cd and taking no damage from it. In doing so you've just weakened his push by 150/150 resources. The expansion is superfluous, if your initial push fails, you lose the game... if not right away than in 5 minutes. To be honest, the only thing I think that could make such a build "unstoppable" would be to some how work in a ghost to replace the cannon upgrade. if you can emp the immortals, they die to the auto attack even faster plus you get all that emp for other targets. Also if they DID open phoenix you might hit them with your emp and knock their energy off, though EMP is so small that you obv have to aim the immortals. This push WILL NOT beat a properly controlled/macro'd phoenix/immortal/gateway combination. Any VRs you add once you've ascertained the push is coming just makes it even easier.
Hi I'm a Platinum player and have some questions.
In a real game how can you open 1 gate stargate vs a Terran because of the threat of cloaked banshees? How are you SURE he's going Thor rush and not a raven/marine/banshee push where Immortals are absolutely useless. Also if you're opening 1 gate stargate how do you play if he chooses just to go regular MMM with a timing push coming right after you take your expo. Please let me know as I thought it was impossible to open without Robo without a BO loss somewhere along the line, thanks.
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Hey ive found that the lategame transition to this is getting some Banshee's to help deal with collosii and Anything else really. Is there an issue with gettin banshees? When I deny his expo and put mine up Im usually tossing down an Sport and 2 more rax's and just keep pumping rines thors and banshess.
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Any chance of a 2 gate robo replay getting posted? The LT game was labelled 2 gate robo but it was actually a 1 gate FE. I'm curious how that plays out since it's a very standard opening and they could probably have a few immortals by the time your attack hits. Of course in a ladder game they will probably not make a blind immortal, especially since your front door looks like a banshee build. I've won a lot of games with marine banshee because the Protoss wasted resources on immortals. So since they don't want to roll the dice they should get an obs first. Anyway, to the point, 2 gate robo should be represented in the gauntlet.
I guess I could test it myself tonight now that my comp is fixed :D
And I don't think it's an auto loss if the attack fails. He was backing up his initial attack with more thors, and if they got picked off there wasn't much left back at home, but the best transition from the opening is probably just to drop some more barracks, reinforce with maybe 1 Thor to seal the deal (the third Thor can seal the deal but the fourth is either gravy or probably gets caught naked). Build the cc in base just in case, and bunkers can hold the ramp in case the push is a disaster. If the push is a disaster, though, you'll need a power unit to offset your army disadvantage and safely land your expo - I would go with a ghost for emp. Once the expo is up and running drop two starports and get banshees going with a few medivacs. In this scenario I don't expect to make many thors after the initial push, maybe 3-4; gas is going into banshees, ghosts, and upgrades.
Of course that is all theoretical, but a transition is easy enough if you don't overcommit and i don't feel boned if the initial attack doesn't win. The transition feels good as I think thors, ghosts, and banshees require different responses. Gateway units with immortals don't do particularly well against bio and ghosts, especially with some medivacs. The cloaked banshee/Thor dynamic is also great for mid-late game. Of course, if you get trounced and lose everything without doing any damage you'll probably be too far behind and eventually lose but that is true for any build. I can't imagine doing no damage without at least trading armies though. You should probably always kill the natural if they FE, and if you play carefully you should trade enough resources to account for the 5-6 scvs you brought along, and your expo should be ahead of theirs even if it sits in your base making scvs and mules for a minute.
Actually, a healthier way to look at the opening is probably not as trying to win the game, but secure an advantage that allows your expo to be as far ahead of him as possible without fear of counterattack. A lot of times you'll win outright, but the longer you're in his base racking up favorable trades, killing pylons or probes or gateways, NOT suiciding in for the immediate victory, and macroing at home, the further ahead you'll be. If you can't break up his ramp, don't charge it anyway just because "that's the build", you can get a nice little contain with bunkers and thors, and shoot ahead in economy. If he techs to colossi I would say salvage and head home, get some starports and milk your lead.
I am also concerned about colossi WITH range (seriously, don't skip this upgrade). They can stay away from the cannon and do a lot of damage, but that problem is nothing new to Terran. I'm not sure if you can rush a colossus and have range done before the thors come knocking, probably not, but later on if they come out you will need air support or a great concave. Again, this problem exists for just about any Terran build. If you can get a handful of banshees and kill the observor with the thors you'll be fine, as long as you can get to that point. Actually, that's the best late game solution to a Protoss ball that I've seen.
This has gone on pretty long. In summary, you aren't dead if you don't win the game with the first attack. Don't treat it like an all-in and it won't be. While committing fully to attack is potent, Protoss users will learn how to beat it. Get used to transitioning and playing smart and you will be in better shape. How often did 5 rax reaper win the game with just reapers? Very rarely, but the transition into two base bio play off the economic advantage you created was incredibly strong. <the build doesn't suck because you charged in and didn't win the game right away>
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I just went up against a Protoss earlier and I had no idea what I was doing but I saw 2gates and expected an immortal so I just did a blah whatever build and went thor with SCVs and marines.
I sort of eeked out a win and it felt like he could turn the tide of the battle around but at the same time thor just continues walking and shooting. Also, one hit kill on workers is just hax. O_O
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so i finally face this
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107211-1v1-terran-protoss-lost-temple#rd:units
i had no problem, this was on LT
went 1 gate robo, saw marines, assumed banshees so i had a second observer on the way when my first was at his base
used my ramp won no problem, he tried expanding, i had even built a paperplane accidentally, did a drop and tried to lift up a canon'ed immortal (didn't work)
i'd like to know if the 2 thor push was executed right though?
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this build is amazing i use it all the time i just started yesterday and got promoted in like 2 hours of laddering and thanks janook for answering my question a couple days ago
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On November 21 2010 07:16 megagoten wrote:so i finally face this http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107211-1v1-terran-protoss-lost-temple#rd:unitsi had no problem, this was on LT went 1 gate robo, saw marines, assumed banshees so i had a second observer on the way when my first was at his base used my ramp won no problem, he tried expanding, i had even built a paperplane accidentally, did a drop and tried to lift up a canon'ed immortal (didn't work) i'd like to know if the 2 thor push was executed right though?
He did the build basically right but he didn't micro for shit nor did he bother to scan the high ground to spot that immortal that was pounding on his army like 5-6 times before he even saw your army. (he could have 250mm sniped that immortal on the edge of the cliff) He put his Thor on a ramp that cannot get SCV surrounded. If the Terran player cannot get in a good position with his army he isn't supposed to A attack and suicide his army, he needed to stay back and keep you from expanding while he gets a base ahead. He didn't bunker up when he lost his entire force (i doubt even with three bunkers he wouldn't be able to hold your army off).
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no question this is going to get slapped down in the next patch. blizzard has already said they're looking for ways to "nerf" the scv repair on thors. they have already done so by making it smaller but they might try something different this time.
If you're toss, good luck stopping this at the moment because there's nothing much you can do.
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On November 21 2010 11:22 Parra wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 07:16 megagoten wrote:so i finally face this http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107211-1v1-terran-protoss-lost-temple#rd:unitsi had no problem, this was on LT went 1 gate robo, saw marines, assumed banshees so i had a second observer on the way when my first was at his base used my ramp won no problem, he tried expanding, i had even built a paperplane accidentally, did a drop and tried to lift up a canon'ed immortal (didn't work) i'd like to know if the 2 thor push was executed right though? He did the build basically right but he didn't micro for shit nor did he bother to scan the high ground to spot that immortal that was pounding on his army like 5-6 times before he even saw your army. (he could have 250mm sniped that immortal on the edge of the cliff) He put his Thor on a ramp that cannot get SCV surrounded. If the Terran player cannot get in a good position with his army he isn't supposed to A attack and suicide his army, he needed to stay back and keep you from expanding while he gets a base ahead. He didn't bunker up when he lost his entire force (i doubt even with three bunkers he wouldn't be able to hold your army off).
i agree that he can definitely setup a contain, but for how long?
from my understanding, he will not have more than 20 workers mining vs my 40 workers
it won't take long before i macro up a bigger army, warp stuff down, intercept reinforcements and bust through the contain
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You get zero benefit from having more than 24 workers on minerals. The contain is breakable if he has less than that on minerals (or, maybe, if he has less gas income), and its most certainly breakable the moment he invests in a command center, but your worker advantage doesn't really kick in until you get an expo up.
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I just played a guy that did this but proxied his factory and I scouted his army coming with my ob and cancelled my natural nexus and added 2 more gateways (but he was starting to attack me anyways) and I held it off pretty easily by just chrono immortals all the time and making stalkers.
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From my experience so far it is very risky build that easily can be overran by Protoss if you do not execute it perfectly. But since Protoss will auto-win the game if it gets past 12 minutes anyway, no matter what strategy Terran does, it is certainly the best option yet.
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I've tried this strategy and have yet to lose a game against protoss (I'm Gold Rank 11, and the highest Protoss I took out was a Platinum Rank 4). However, I found that taking the initial hellion and four marines as soon as the hellion pops really helps keep them on their toes. The end push is weaker, but it helps get some scouting intel and lets you know their unit comp (because strike cannon might not be worth it if they aren't going robo facility.)
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On November 21 2010 14:07 megagoten wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 11:22 Parra wrote:On November 21 2010 07:16 megagoten wrote:so i finally face this http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/107211-1v1-terran-protoss-lost-temple#rd:unitsi had no problem, this was on LT went 1 gate robo, saw marines, assumed banshees so i had a second observer on the way when my first was at his base used my ramp won no problem, he tried expanding, i had even built a paperplane accidentally, did a drop and tried to lift up a canon'ed immortal (didn't work) i'd like to know if the 2 thor push was executed right though? He did the build basically right but he didn't micro for shit nor did he bother to scan the high ground to spot that immortal that was pounding on his army like 5-6 times before he even saw your army. (he could have 250mm sniped that immortal on the edge of the cliff) He put his Thor on a ramp that cannot get SCV surrounded. If the Terran player cannot get in a good position with his army he isn't supposed to A attack and suicide his army, he needed to stay back and keep you from expanding while he gets a base ahead. He didn't bunker up when he lost his entire force (i doubt even with three bunkers he wouldn't be able to hold your army off). i agree that he can definitely setup a contain, but for how long? from my understanding, he will not have more than 20 workers mining vs my 40 workers it won't take long before i macro up a bigger army, warp stuff down, intercept reinforcements and bust through the contain
lol I was reading your post, mega, and I thought, "Huh, that sounds a lot like the other day when I completely screwed up a two thor push on LT... Wait a minute..."
Yeah, this push requires good micro, and I completely biffed it. That was my third or fourth time trying it (first time losing), and the first time someone had actually used their ramp effectively. Most of my opponents when I've tried this build have engaged away from the ramp for some reason, which is an awful idea. Holding at the ramp is probably the best way to fight this, but Parra is right, if I had scanned the cliff earlier and micro'd worth a damn, the push might've gone better (maybe not winning outright, but at least trading equal resources worth of units).
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Also, I was using this build in a tourney last weekend (except I wasn't completely screwing up my micro, like against megagoten hehe), and noticed something important for using this in a series. If it is a BO3, if you use a thor rush in game one, sending a hellion scout in game two or three can tip off your opponent that it is coming.
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I've been thor pushing since the beta. It certainly does not "directly counter 2/3 gate robo".
My friend likes fast chargelots against terran and they really rip this build up.
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On November 21 2010 22:59 MockHamill wrote:
From my experience so far it is very risky build that easily can be overran by Protoss if you do not execute it perfectly. But since Protoss will auto-win the game if it gets past 12 minutes anyway, no matter what strategy Terran does, it is certainly the best option yet.
Naaah, don't form these perceptions too early. Try the more decent late game build orders from the guides/casters/TL. The part in bold is certainly not true.
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I think you doubt the power of Void Rays my friend. I myself am a Toss and started a thread on an idea that I would like to popularize: The 2 Gate Stargate (shamless plugging). Anyways, I got a replay pack from someone who is diamond, don't know exact rating, but definitely 1000+, a terran did a 2 thor timing push and the 2 Gate Stargate build pretty much erased it. Yes, the Terran had marines, and yes, he had 2 thors, but when it came down to it, the marines couldn't hit the VRs, and the Thors did too little damage, and so even with repairing SCVs, the Toss not only held it off, but destroyed it. I actually didn't recognize it as a 2 thor push until reading this post.
Just a heads up though that VRs+gateway units are really good against this build, and most others for that matter against Terran. Looks like the BO creative play is back to you. Try and counter 2 Gate Stargate b/c I know it can be stopped, but the only time it has, at least so far, is when there is an error on the Toss's part.
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i watched 3 of the replays, the build is neat but I noticed that the protoss players werent very good either..
I'm pretty sure a pure zealot force with a couple sentries for gaurdian shield flanking this push in open ground would rip it to shreds as long as after the marines are dead he focused down the scvs instead of letting his units run in circles trying to target the thors. The guy who went for the fast collosi + zealot had the right idea but he faught at his ramp instead of on open ground. It could have worked at his ramp too if he hid some zealots by his natural to come from behind as the terrans push was on his ramp.
Basically positioning + army composition = push dead
However, that's not to say the build isnt good. It definitely forces a reaction out of protoss and nobody said you have to go the whole 9 yards if you scout that it won't work. I would send a scv out before your push to make sure the road is clear too.
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On November 23 2010 02:03 Thunderflesh wrote:
Also, I was using this build in a tourney last weekend (except I wasn't completely screwing up my micro, like against megagoten hehe), and noticed something important for using this in a series. If it is a BO3, if you use a thor rush in game one, sending a hellion scout in game two or three can tip off your opponent that it is coming.
BASTARD, haha. I just got back and figured I'd search TL to see if this was a build... I wish I saw this thread before the tourney haha. The first time seeing this was a total mindfuck, was fully expecting banshees, which means I pump out an obs instead of immortal first. Its hard to have more than 1 or 2 immortals to defend and they just get cannoned :O
Thunderflesh was rollin through protoss xD
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Argh I'm so paranoid now that terran is going to be nerfed again because this build is so powerful. It seems like whenever terran comes up with an extremely powerful strategy, like mass tank/mass reaper vs zerg/ or now this, that it always results in the race becoming weaker in a patch.
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Build aint that powerful lol. Just good when protoss play right into it, or don't macro well enough. Terran shoulda been walling in with DEPOTS at least...
The Colossus guy coulda easily got range, and should have. If terran can get thors and 250 cannons protoss can get colosuss and range! Gesh. Mewtwo was the most creative but kept getting himself in a horrible concave, and poor execution of the zealot SCV killing technique. And second game played into it with immortals.
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Yeah I doubt this works against good toss that's cause i just got raped by it when the toss does the Nexgenius allin with handful zlots + 3-4 VRs. When i push up into his ramp his zlots eat my marines while VR melts my thor.
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+ Show Spoiler + in the gsl, nexgenius just ROFLSTOMPED a cheesy noname terran who attempted this thorrush by using blinkstalkers and dts.
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Zealot / Sentry / Void Ray
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-168119.jpg)
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Interesting, I've been trying to find a NON cheesy way to beat competent Protoss players (other then 3 proxy rax marine or 5 rax ALL IN w/ scvs marine push.
Fast proxy thor with repair usually worked, but this 2 thor push seems safer and has a better metagame incase it fails. Thanks OP
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Z9lHS.jpg)
This build has been working pretty well for me, thanks Janook! You're making many a nerd cry.
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Lately I've been doing a 1gate/1stargate fast expand against this where I can simultaneously timing attack and expand before the 2nd thor comes out (~7min)... It will at least kill the first thor and possibly even a bit of his base/scvs. The attack is 2 void rays/5 zealots and it revolves around your voids bringing his wall-in down/charging up out of range of the marines. If he tries to run the marines towards the voids then you engage with your zealots. If the thor comes into play you focus voids onto the thor, preferably keeping your zealots in between the marines and the voids.
Sometimes the game is over right there, but a decent terran will stop this push. Even though he's stopped the push he doesn't have enough forces to counter. After that I've got my expo up and I throw down 3 more gates and a robo (once fully saturated at your main you can cut probes to get the production buildings out). Pretty easy win from there. Zealot/Immo/Void 2 base push is a fierce combo against this build.
Also, I know a lot of people think stargate openers are risky against terran because of cloaked banshee, but if you make the same timing push against a cloaked banshee build you will either:
A.) force his banshee to retreat and spend the cloak defensively, thus giving you time to get a robo and observer out (in this case you can win quite easily by playing a macro game because you'll have a considerably earlier first expo); or
B.) engage in a base trade (his banshee vs your voids + zealots)
It's practically a win/win, because even if scenario B occurs it's fairly beneficial to trade bases when you only have 1 enemy banshee attacking yours, but possibly 2 voids + zealots attacking his. And lift off is not as scary when you have voids. When your timing attack hits and you spot cloaked banshees you should probably also make your expo at a far, random base so that you're not revealed when your main nexus falls. If you scout the thor build then just make the expo at your nat.
I should also mention that I would only use this if scouting an early tech build; otherwise 1gate/fast expand is my staple against terran.
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I've tried this a few times, it seemed to do a decent job of killing or denying his expansion while letting me get mine up with nearly no harass.
I see a lot of people talking about what can beat this, but this build doesn't really have a definite tell until you see the armory correct?
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I play toss and I ran into this build again last night, I was trying the 13 units at 6 minute 4 gate and for some reason I was off by 30 secs, as I went to his front door he had like 2 Thors with a handful of marines, he wiped the floor with my units, I still managed to kill 1.5 thors lol and his marines before having to retreat. Strangely enough he didnt counter, he and I both macroed up and he hit me with like 10 Thors with cannons and a buncha marines and wiped the floor with gateway units, 3 VRs, and 5 Immortals. :/
I have ran into this build 4 times and only managed to beat it once with a 3 Gate Robo using Immortals, and I think the only reason why I beat him is because his units were too spread apart on rally.
Im still trying to find a way to beat this!
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as a 2k terran using this build the times i do lose using it are to 3 gate robo's with constant chrono boost on the robo and focus fire on marines.
really when it comes down to it if your marines die you will not significally damage the toss players army or economy if he micros his stalkers right and doesnt just let them die.
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A 3-gate robo just stopped me from doing this. I even went 1 thor fast with proxy factory. He found the factory but my marines got there in time to scare him off (thor was almost ready when my marines arrived and he probably realized that and ran). When I came up his ramp his stalkers and 1 immortal were waiting up there, and it seems like it's just impossible to move up the ramp with a thor surrounded by SCVs while so many stalkers are focusing you. But maybe against 3 gate robo it really is better to just get the 2nd thor and cannons, but still that just means he'll have that many more stalkers to stop you from moving up the ramp without taking too much damage.
Against most other builds it seems to me like doing it with 1 thor and proxy factory is more difficult to stop than waiting for 2 thors and building them all the way at your own base, though on some maps the factory is definitely harder to hide.
Of course I'm not nearly as good as many players here, but good enough to figure out how many units me and my enemy are able to get after X minutes. Maybe it's just my micro being bad, but it seems like 3 gate robo (or possibly even a fast and well-executed 4-gate) gets too many units too fast.
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Wait for 2 thors, never attack with one. I can focus down I thor even being repaired with immortals, but it's really hard to kill 2 thors with scvs. Against a robo build, if you wait for 2 thors, strike cannon two of the immortals, then the protoss is dead.
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proxy 2 gate beats this because you have nothing to defend. Even scouted and tech switch + bunker, still lost.
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On November 25 2010 01:59 wmd221 wrote:
as a 2k terran using this build the times i do lose using it are to 3 gate robo's with constant chrono boost on the robo and focus fire on marines.
really when it comes down to it if your marines die you will not significally damage the toss players army or economy if he micros his stalkers right and doesnt just let them die.
I started using this build only yesterday and I've been doing great.
A couple of ideas I've been toying with for this push, is taking one SCV to try making a bunker behind the thors, and/or have a quick followup (blue?) hellion drop in his minerals while you're pushing up his ramp/expansion.
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[/QUOTE]
Hi I'm a Platinum player and have some questions.
In a real game how can you open 1 gate stargate vs a Terran because of the threat of cloaked banshees? How are you SURE he's going Thor rush and not a raven/marine/banshee push where Immortals are absolutely useless. Also if you're opening 1 gate stargate how do you play if he chooses just to go regular MMM with a timing push coming right after you take your expo. Please let me know as I thought it was impossible to open without Robo without a BO loss somewhere along the line, thanks.
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If you watch the replay, the response is the exact same to the thor push as it is to a banshee push. I go 1 gate stargate, chronoboost a fast phoenix and scout. If you see a tech labbed starport and can find no armory, its a raven or banshee, if you find the armory its a thor. Either way you need a robo as your next building and another gateway to make sure you have enough of an army with your tier2 units. You can see aTnSocke do this opener alot versus terran, sometimes he opens robo then stargate if he suspects banshee/raven... sometimes he opens stargate then robo if he didnt get much information with his initial poke. I prefer stargate then robo because phoenix can cover more ground, quickly, and you'll be able to really come up with the right response before the aggression comes.
you'll notice in the replay I open zealot zealot stalker, which is fine vs an early push with good micro and allows you to get an ultra fast phoenix. The robo comes online a full minute before any cloaked banshee is possible anyways so if you need to make an observer you have time and you have flying units that get a ton of bonus armor vs banshee so they wont be able to poke in and get away at half hp cause your stalkers couldnt quite kill them.
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On November 24 2010 16:11 naveedx983 wrote:
I've tried this a few times, it seemed to do a decent job of killing or denying his expansion while letting me get mine up with nearly no harass.
I see a lot of people talking about what can beat this, but this build doesn't really have a definite tell until you see the armory correct?
if you see alot of marines at the front and no tech labbed reactor you know hes teching to something, if hes not getting stim and hes not getting a thor or banshee, his build is shitty.
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On November 25 2010 01:50 Roblicious wrote:
I play toss and I ran into this build again last night, I was trying the 13 units at 6 minute 4 gate and for some reason I was off by 30 secs, as I went to his front door he had like 2 Thors with a handful of marines, he wiped the floor with my units, I still managed to kill 1.5 thors lol and his marines before having to retreat. Strangely enough he didnt counter, he and I both macroed up and he hit me with like 10 Thors with cannons and a buncha marines and wiped the floor with gateway units, 3 VRs, and 5 Immortals. :/
I have ran into this build 4 times and only managed to beat it once with a 3 Gate Robo using Immortals, and I think the only reason why I beat him is because his units were too spread apart on rally.
Im still trying to find a way to beat this!
read the whole thread there are several ways to beat this, but none of them allow for mistakes
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- p user, 2000 points -
This build is the most retarded build in the universe. He denies ur scouting,
you need a robo bay, and then for each immortals you make he insta kills it, so immortals are supposed to be the counter unit to thors? oO
I have never won against this build if I did not have twice the bases or twice the army or three times the skill. On a equal skill level, he barely loses any unit. Would really like to know if someone has a build that can scout him (remmeber we have to guess between thors or banshees) and that can kill his army in A COST EFFICIENT WAY
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On November 25 2010 04:09 Laeryck wrote:
and that can kill his army in A COST EFFICIENT WAY
This is where this BO is phenomenal as T. I have to say there's no better feeling than having an opponenent GG'ing, then looking at the score screen seeing both your armies where at about the same power, but his line goes all the way down while yours barely moves.
The only way to beat this push is manually killing SCVs. You simply CANNOT overpower it with 1A unless the Thors are really badly positioned, and the reason is retarded AI ignoring SCVs that are not in "attack" mode. Once SCVs are down, kill marines, THEN the thors.
And while Immortals are supposed to be the counter of armored units, 250mm actually hard-counter robotics units so I wouldn't count on them for that. What you need is many gateway units. Sentries can mess up repairing SCVs with FF as well.
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On November 25 2010 04:04 Jayrod wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2010 16:11 naveedx983 wrote:
I've tried this a few times, it seemed to do a decent job of killing or denying his expansion while letting me get mine up with nearly no harass.
I see a lot of people talking about what can beat this, but this build doesn't really have a definite tell until you see the armory correct? if you see alot of marines at the front and no tech labbed reactor you know hes teching to something, if hes not getting stim and hes not getting a thor or banshee, his build is shitty.
Protoss may not see the rax at all if it is built inside the base, but it doesn't really matter because they'll see a handful of marines and possibly a bunker. You should easily be able to tell whether it's barracks play or tech. But the awesome part is that all the tech play looks the same at the ramp! It could be a hellion drop, banshees, thors, or a polt style attack which is actually really heavy on bio after all. The appropriate responses to all those openings differ as well. Sure, immortals are nice against thors but you really really don't want two or three immortals against marines, banshees, and a raven. Phoenixes are pretty good if you think he's going for a starport but pretty marginal against marines and thors. Of course it isn't impossible, but you have to be balanced in your preparation against the possible tech builds and it's pretty risky to try to blind counter.
So even if there is a magical unit mix that shuts this down I wouldn't worry about it. No sane person on ladder is going to be blind countering thors, and in a tournament bo3 just mix it up. A safe balanced build can still stop the thor push but it's silly to call the opening bad because "I can make the perfect composition of units to obliterate thors based on scouting marines at your ramp".
I actually think that positioning and patience from both players matters more than unit comp.
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On November 23 2010 02:24 Setev wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 22:59 MockHamill wrote:
From my experience so far it is very risky build that easily can be overran by Protoss if you do not execute it perfectly. But since Protoss will auto-win the game if it gets past 12 minutes anyway, no matter what strategy Terran does, it is certainly the best option yet. Naaah, don't form these perceptions too early. Try the more decent late game build orders from the guides/casters/TL. The part in bold is certainly not true.
You misunderstand. Protoss will autowin the game after 12 minutes because this guy got into diamond using a bunch of all in builds/3 rax and actually has no idea how to play late game.
On November 23 2010 04:47 CurLy[] wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2010 02:03 Thunderflesh wrote:
Also, I was using this build in a tourney last weekend (except I wasn't completely screwing up my micro, like against megagoten hehe), and noticed something important for using this in a series. If it is a BO3, if you use a thor rush in game one, sending a hellion scout in game two or three can tip off your opponent that it is coming. BASTARD, haha. I just got back and figured I'd search TL to see if this was a build... I wish I saw this thread before the tourney haha. The first time seeing this was a total mindfuck, was fully expecting banshees, which means I pump out an obs instead of immortal first. Its hard to have more than 1 or 2 immortals to defend and they just get cannoned :O Thunderflesh was rollin through protoss xD
Has anyone thought of trying void rays when they see a bunch of marines, they work against thors and banshee harass alike, although they would be less effective against a marine banshee push.
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Has anyone thought of trying void rays when they see a bunch of marines, they work against thors and banshee harass alike, although they would be less effective against a marine banshee push.
I think I see the flaw in this proposed strategy...
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seems interesting.. will check this out
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Terran is my Off race and I mean I have like maybe 50 games under my belt as Terran and I pulled off this build against a 1900 toss who did 2 gate expand with them attacking me with 2 immortals and a handful of gateway units
TvP 2 Thor vs 2 gate Robo Expand
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I've played this guy 3x on the ladder and he did the exact same build all 3 times the thor push. This ccan be held off with a FE its a little tricky sometimes you have to sac the expo. but basically if you have the same number of Immortals as thors you an come out on top with ff behind the thor while they go up the ramp and just focus down the thors quickly.
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I've played this guy 3x on the ladder and he did the exact same build all 3 times the thor push. This ccan be held off with a FE its a little tricky sometimes you have to sac the expo. but basically if you have the same number of Immortals as thors you an come out on top with ff behind the thor while they go up the ramp and just focus down the thors quickly.
Just one quick observation though: FE close to thors can be tricky as they are massive and shatters FE's on contact.
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On November 25 2010 20:11 klillas wrote:
Just one quick observation though: FE close to thors can be tricky as they are massive and shatters FE's on contact.
FE - Fast Expand
FF - Force Field
But On a note to Proto_Protoss' comment, the one thing most people do not realize with this build is that is a an FE crusher, while you expand yourself.
Also, I never engage (read, go up the ramp) without a scan and if I see that P goes for the bottleneck defense, I simply don't push, or then position only 1 thor on ramp, 2 next to ramp and if the Protoss engages with immortals, they are toast.
I dunno really if P is doing all they can as I'm only 1,4k Terran, but I also make mistakes.
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The easiest response to this is just to chrono immortals like a mad men and get stalker, immortal, zealot with just 1 sentry. Focus all the stalkers and immortals on the thors 1 by 1 and if you have enough you should be able to kill them fast enough so that repair doesn't really get into effect. A few zealots + probes should be going after the marines at the same time.
The problem of course is getting the immortals in time so what I always do vs terran is to scout for a tech lab rax or not. If not you get the robo up asap and get a observer and a immortal. Chrono out the obs and fly it over immediately, making sure to have some map control so that if he comes in with a cloaked banshee you see it coming. If you see the thor build immediately nonstop chrono out immortals and you should have 3 by the time 2 come knocking at your door.
Because immortals on chrono build quite a bit faster then thors the best way for terran to perform this is to actually push with 1 thor. It's much harder to get 2 immortals vs 1 thor then it is to get 3 or even 4 vs 2 thors.
Using a phoenix to lift your immortal can work i guess but i think its just unneccesary tricky. Marines and the thor can take down the phoenix really fast and if you didn't do it exactly right the thor will just 250mm again. Your immortal is afterall not shooting while its being lifted so it doesnt really matter if the thor is not shooting either at the same time especially if you invested so much in a do nothing unit like the phoenix in this scenario.
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lol theres a super simple way to beat this...4 gate and sit at a xelnaga as u will have map control due to him not having very many units early on....when he moves out just flank behind and base trade, u will kill half the terran base by the time he gets to yours.
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On November 26 2010 14:47 visselli wrote:
lol theres a super simple way to beat this...4 gate and sit at a xelnaga as u will have map control due to him not having very many units early on....when he moves out just flank behind and base trade, u will kill half the terran base by the time he gets to yours.
Except that as soon as he sees you heading into his base, he can fly off all of his buildings and kill any Stargates you have in your base as soon as he gets there, then you can't possibly win the base-off...
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wouldn't a 2gate zealot push crush this really hard?
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On November 26 2010 15:07 gwombat wrote:
wouldn't a 2gate zealot push crush this really hard?
I assume the Terran would wall in. I'm not saying you're wrong, but what advantage do you seek to gain?
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OMG easiest counter to this is 2 Gate Stargate, which will crush the 2 thor push completely when it comes to you, if you made VRs, which I usually do. If you just macro with 2 Gate Stargate, then there is no need to micro against this Unit Composition b/c the VRs plus zealots plus stalkers plus sentries means you will just roll him over with your units. After that it is GG for terran because Toss expands, makes a robo + robo bay, makes collossi and VRs off 2 base, pushes your front and byebye terran.
Reason I say easiest is because it doesn't require chrono-boosting gateways or stagates, nor microing units, nor actually know that it is coming. If you just do this BO: 2 gate stargate, you auto-win against this.
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What do you guys do when he just camps his ramp? It seems like even if I did kill some of his units, if he's waiting up there with stalkers I just can't move up no matter what. Am I supposed to just expand in this case or is there a good way to micro better and successfully move up the ramp? I'm afraid that if he camps his ramp and I camp below his ramp and expand, by the time I can gain an advantage with the expansion he will have enough units to drive me out, and due to how slow my thors and marines are compared to his stalkers I can't really run away either. What gives?
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Maybe transition into standard biomech? Get a few more rax, an expo and stim and instead of thors get tanks out of your factory.
Just put some bunkers down his ramp and a few sieged tanks, watch out for backstabbing warpprisms though.
Works at my level =p (lower tier diamond)
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wouldn't a 2gate zealot push crush this really hard?
Yes a 2 gate zealot push WOULD crush it... but you dont go that build if he gets 2 gate zealot
so lets say - you wanna go for lets say phoenix and you see that he already build turrets (highly unlikely but nvm  ) You probably will stop your phoenix build and go for sth else (if you have no stargate/phoenix at that point) yes you will probably have less then with an optimal build but he is behind, too
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I tried this build against a toss who did something interesting on Lost Temple. He expanded relatively quickly to one of the other mains (not his natural). He camped the ramp at his main, so I didn't feel comfortable pushing up the ramp. When I finally scouted his expansion moments later, he backstabbed my main while my thors and rines were on the other side of the map.
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yah chargelots fed me my ass in this build
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Very good build but you gotta do it quickly before they can get 3-4 immortals. Even with 8 scvs or so repairing a thor you cannot withstand more than 1 immortal + other units attacking your thors.
But this is a very strong opening, just don't delay your attack too much.
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Maybe my timing is off but i lose to toss who chronoboost spam their immos, so they just have 3 out when i get there.
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lol at the people saying how "simple" this is to counter.
I am around 2200 diamond and I've basically won almost every game vs Protoss for the past 500 pts with this build.
Even if they stop it, you've got an expo up before theirs because you killed their expo or they had to cancel/not expand. Then it's just a standard macro game where your Thors can Strike Cannon the Colossi.
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This strat is pretty great thanks! Helped me move to platinum
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Sure, there are some BO's that will crush this, such as 2 gate zealot, but what if you're trying to play safe?
The past few games vs T I've been getting crushed by this build @ 2000 diamond. Granted, I am FE'ing. I've been 1 gate FE so much vs terran, now when I encounter this build I'm pretty screwed.
Does this build pretty much hard counter 1 gate FE? Is there a way to stop it if you do decide to expand? Also, what if you just want to 1 base, I assume to counter just go for heavy immortal/zealot play?
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On November 28 2010 15:46 headies wrote:
Sure, there are some BO's that will crush this, such as 2 gate zealot, but what if you're trying to play safe?
The past few games vs T I've been getting crushed by this build @ 2000 diamond. Granted, I am FE'ing. I've been 1 gate FE so much vs terran, now when I encounter this build I'm pretty screwed.
Does this build pretty much hard counter 1 gate FE? Is there a way to stop it if you do decide to expand? Also, what if you just want to 1 base, I assume to counter just go for heavy immortal/zealot play?
Don't think it is possbile to beat with 1gate expand, unless you go something like 2/3 gate then robo straight after and pump immortals non stop. Something like steppes it is an auto lose though. Even if you get enough immortals off a regular 1 base play to stop the rush, you end up being set behind like another Terran player has said, terran gets his expo whilst you just lost the majority of your forces + no expo, and very late Colossus against strike cannon Thors...it isn't very easy to beat, I've only won when the Terran mis micro'd really badly...
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Main issue I have with 1-gate FE is the scout timing. You'll scout the front and see marines+bunker so its gotta be this or banshee...so you HAVE to get out at LEAST 1 observer so you know if you are going to have cloak coming your way. But even if you chrono out an observer and chrono an immortal while your observer finds out what tech he went you will still be looking at best 2 immortal when the pushes arrives with fairly low gateway count. that doesn't even take into account that by not making a 2nd obs you leave yourself vulnerable if cloak finishes while your first obs is at his base and will have to cancel an immortal and wait out the observer buildtime while he rapes your probes.
I wonder if putting cannons down in the mineral lines and going either charge tech or DT's could be a viable transition from 1-gate fe in response to 1-base tech build, takes care of cloak and chargelots would tear up marines+get easy surround for hold position scv kills. I just really hate going early stargate since it has no aoe transition.
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On November 28 2010 17:11 xseverityx wrote:
I wonder if putting cannons down in the mineral lines and going either charge tech or DT's could be a viable transition from 1-gate fe in response to 1-base tech build, takes care of cloak and chargelots would tear up marines+get easy surround for hold position scv kills. I just really hate going early stargate since it has no aoe transition.
Interesting idea, would like to hear some responses on this.
The only thing I don't like about it is it leaves you completely in the dark. I could see you failing pretty hard to a 2 port banshee/raven/marine push. With the heavy emphasis on zealots, PDD and banshee/marine will mop up stalkers. DT would get rolled on.
I hate being confined to go robo in almost all match ups. Hopefully in the future someone makes something like this work.
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I am interssted what ppl who meets blind DT build do, What I have tried is to wait in base with 1 turret up at wall-in. Build starbase swap star/fact to get a raven out and push right after that while expanding. Push will consist of 4 thors. I won that game but I do not feel it was optimal in that situation. Any suggestions?
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Awesome done this a few times and got 23 wins until I try this agains a mass zealot build
= instant FAIL
![[image loading]](http://us.starcraft2.com/images/wallpapers/wall9/wall9-800x600.jpg)
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On November 28 2010 17:11 xseverityx wrote:
Main issue I have with 1-gate FE is the scout timing. You'll scout the front and see marines+bunker so its gotta be this or banshee...so you HAVE to get out at LEAST 1 observer so you know if you are going to have cloak coming your way. But even if you chrono out an observer and chrono an immortal while your observer finds out what tech he went you will still be looking at best 2 immortal when the pushes arrives with fairly low gateway count. that doesn't even take into account that by not making a 2nd obs you leave yourself vulnerable if cloak finishes while your first obs is at his base and will have to cancel an immortal and wait out the observer buildtime while he rapes your probes.
I wonder if putting cannons down in the mineral lines and going either charge tech or DT's could be a viable transition from 1-gate fe in response to 1-base tech build, takes care of cloak and chargelots would tear up marines+get easy surround for hold position scv kills. I just really hate going early stargate since it has no aoe transition.
I think with a 1 gate FE build you can JUST about manage to get out 1 more immortal then they have thors with this push. If you do your usual zealot poke and see no sign of marauders / tech lab you generally want to put down the robo ASAP. Very important to scout the proxy spots in the meantime with your first few zealots and stalker (if they don't have rauders this shouldn't be risky anyways). Also when you send out the first obs having your units spaced in the popular banshee routes to your base is also vital as that way you can retreat the first obs if you see a banshee coming in.
Then if the thor isn't proxied and you chrono out the immortals immediately non stop you SHOULD be able to get 2 immo's for when the first thor arrives (you can let the expo nexus take some damage from rines + thor before you hit with all) and if they went with 2 thor you should be able to get out 3 nearly 4 immortals.
It all kind of depends on your robo timing though, what i generally do is get 2 zealots while the cyber is being made and then a stalker. After the stalker is done you should have poked with the first zealot already and you can then either make a sentry (if he went marauder) or just a robo if he stayed on rines.
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On November 30 2010 00:49 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On November 28 2010 17:11 xseverityx wrote:
Main issue I have with 1-gate FE is the scout timing. You'll scout the front and see marines+bunker so its gotta be this or banshee...so you HAVE to get out at LEAST 1 observer so you know if you are going to have cloak coming your way. But even if you chrono out an observer and chrono an immortal while your observer finds out what tech he went you will still be looking at best 2 immortal when the pushes arrives with fairly low gateway count. that doesn't even take into account that by not making a 2nd obs you leave yourself vulnerable if cloak finishes while your first obs is at his base and will have to cancel an immortal and wait out the observer buildtime while he rapes your probes.
I wonder if putting cannons down in the mineral lines and going either charge tech or DT's could be a viable transition from 1-gate fe in response to 1-base tech build, takes care of cloak and chargelots would tear up marines+get easy surround for hold position scv kills. I just really hate going early stargate since it has no aoe transition. I think with a 1 gate FE build you can JUST about manage to get out 1 more immortal then they have thors with this push. If you do your usual zealot poke and see no sign of marauders / tech lab you generally want to put down the robo ASAP. Very important to scout the proxy spots in the meantime with your first few zealots and stalker (if they don't have rauders this shouldn't be risky anyways). Also when you send out the first obs having your units spaced in the popular banshee routes to your base is also vital as that way you can retreat the first obs if you see a banshee coming in. Then if the thor isn't proxied and you chrono out the immortals immediately non stop you SHOULD be able to get 2 immo's for when the first thor arrives (you can let the expo nexus take some damage from rines + thor before you hit with all) and if they went with 2 thor you should be able to get out 3 nearly 4 immortals. It all kind of depends on your robo timing though, what i generally do is get 2 zealots while the cyber is being made and then a stalker. After the stalker is done you should have poked with the first zealot already and you can then either make a sentry (if he went marauder) or just a robo if he stayed on rines.
I can't agree with this. I did a lot of testing with a friend and the timing is just not in favor of P. If you wait for observer to spot thor/armory, it's too late.
You basically have to go blind DT or make a mad dash to colossus to counter this build, it's that effective. If you have a replay proving me wrong, please provide it because this build makes me never want to FE vs terran again. It's almost impossible to stop if you choose to FE, and hard as hell to stop even if you don't.
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what is it about this build that makes it so difficult to stop? i play zerg and have not come up against this build. it really seems like something is going to get nerfed in this build, just curious what exactly is so troublesome.
i think something will be nerfed because of how easy this is to execute and how hard it is to stop. reapers used to be so frustrating and blizz nerfed them. i see the same happening to this build in some fashion.
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On November 30 2010 04:52 Vaporized wrote:
what is it about this build that makes it so difficult to stop? i play zerg and have not come up against this build. it really seems like something is going to get nerfed in this build, just curious what exactly is so troublesome.
i think something will be nerfed because of how easy this is to execute and how hard it is to stop. reapers used to be so frustrating and blizz nerfed them. i see the same happening to this build in some fashion.
The problem is how fast Thor build time is and repair. It's almost impossible to defeat without colossi for splash on SCV/marine or DT delaying the push all together.
Sure, you can hold position micro zealots to try to kill scv, by then half your army is dead because 10 marines and auto-repair thor are demolishing everything.
Void ray might be another viable option. I know a single charged VR can kill a thor outright even with a few SCV repairing, but you would have to count on the terran having poor marine control or splitting up his units so you catch the thor alone altogether.
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The best (or worst, depending if you are on the receiving end) thing about this build is how hard it is to micro to attack SCVs, plus a good attack that includes SCVs usually requires the opponent to use his probes which makes this even more of a micro hell for the protoss while overall the terran player has much easier micro to perform. I wouldn't be surprised if that is also why it is not seen at the absolute top levels of play, that is, because their micro is so perfect that they can overcome the problems "normal" players have when dealing with this build.
Therefore I also bet that the nerf will come in a form of modified AI, so that targeting repairing SCVs will not be as difficult (most simple would be to make SCVs that are repairing a unit/structure have an equal attack priority to the actual unit/structure they are repairing).
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what is it about this build that makes it so difficult to stop? i play zerg and have not come up against this build. it really seems like something is going to get nerfed in this build, just curious what exactly is so troublesome.
Zergs have banes to take out repairing scvs. Moreover, lings are very effective at wasting the dps of thors. Also, by the time of this thor push, zerg can have a more powerful economy than protoss.
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Anyone tried this on the PTR? Did the change turn this from extremely powerful down to something that is still useful, or did it make this build useless?
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There are actually two relevant changes in the PTR build: 1) the repairing SCV priority change, 2) the damage buff to Void Rays vs. Massive.
My experience is limited and low level, but my impression is that the build will be playable but beatable.
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How come Terran seems to be able to throw away SCVs and not instantly be thrown back on the macro side?
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a phoenix and 100 energy will do the trick :p
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On December 09 2010 07:42 kPk wrote:
a phoenix and 100 energy will do the trick :p
Phoenix can't lift massive units. I don't know what else it would do but instantly die.
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Singapore147 Posts
On December 09 2010 07:42 kPk wrote:
a phoenix and 100 energy will do the trick :p
err how will that help? phoenix can't lift thors.
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Phoenixes can lift your own unit (immortals) to dodge the strike cannon.
Which will allow your immortals not to get instagibbed, therefore allowing them to fight.
Of course, this assumes you went 2 gate-robo-stargate, and that build is so flimsy, especially when you do it blind.
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On December 09 2010 07:49 tetramaster wrote:
Phoenixes can lift your own unit (immortals) to dodge the strike cannon.
Which will allow your immortals not to get instagibbed, therefore allowing them to fight.
Of course, this assumes you went 2 gate-robo-stargate, and that build is so flimsy, especially when you do it blind.
I am pretty sure the phoenix would be killed almost immediately by marines. I don't believe the immortals can be lifted while the cannons are going off since they are stunned (correct me if I'm wrong). If they were lifted before the cannons, the thors would have free reign over the other units since immortals are the main damage dealers to thors and the thors could just cannon them after the lift was over.
So unless im wrong about them being lifted while stunned, phoenix are pretty useless.
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Cloak banshees into thor marine push with a raven, the banshees force robo tech...then the thors with strike cannons own all robo tech
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I think what makes this strong is obvious. The change from energy -> cooldown & how crazy strong the thors regular attack is. 2 attacks for base 30 damage on a fast attack speed? +3 damage for each attack with each upgrade? It is a big investment and protoss just don't have an ability like NP to change the table (now that feedback isn't doing anything to them)
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On December 09 2010 06:36 galzohar wrote:
Anyone tried this on the PTR? Did the change turn this from extremely powerful down to something that is still useful, or did it make this build useless?
When I first saw the new changes this build was the first that came to mind. I would HOPE that with the new changes, it would buff P against/nerf T using this build. 2 gate stargate pumping out a few VRs should have about 3 by the time the thor push gets there and a phoenix to scout.
The VR damage buff in combination with some gateway units pounding away at the SCVs without having to individually target them
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On November 30 2010 04:52 Vaporized wrote:
what is it about this build that makes it so difficult to stop? i play zerg and have not come up against this build. it really seems like something is going to get nerfed in this build, just curious what exactly is so troublesome.
The only unit P has at that time that's strong against a thor+marine composition is the zealot, but zealot AI gets bugged out by the SCV repair surround.
Zerg doesn't have the same problem. Zerglings are fast enough to hit the marines. Roaches are decent against thors and their range attack doesn't bug out. Banelings kill the SCVs without having to individually click each one.
It's still decently strong against Zerg tho. It's just borderline impossible to stop as P.
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1 gate FE into DT was definitely able to beat my 2 Thor push, even when he messed up and lost 3 DTs to one scan. Since we playing on Steppes, if I'd been a bit sharper I could have started an aggressive turret faster (at around the ramp into his natural), covered it with an extra scan, and pushed in more slowly. I could have saved one more scan and built turrets faster (I didn't pay sufficiently close attention to the completion of the ebay); he could have spaced out his DTs more - the timings seemed pretty dang close.
With a longer rush distance, the DTs would have been up sooner (relative to my army reaching his natural) and could harass more easily on the path between bases, so they'd be even more effective. Thus far, they've been the most successful followup to 1 Gate FE at stopping the Thor rush.
However, that applied when we just working out what stops the Thor rush - he was playing mostly blind to my tech. A PDD push building behind the wall would wreck that DT transition, and look mostly the same from the front, even if a gas steal would slow it down somewhat.
Note that I've been using a slightly different build then the one listed in the OP - I add a second rax so I get more marines, don't get plating, and only add the hellion after the 2nd thor finishes since it can generally reach the slow army just in time for the battle that way (so I am a bit more blind). I like marines; they tend to be pretty good against most of things good at killing Thors.
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On December 09 2010 07:54 Avid221 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2010 07:49 tetramaster wrote:
Phoenixes can lift your own unit (immortals) to dodge the strike cannon.
Which will allow your immortals not to get instagibbed, therefore allowing them to fight.
Of course, this assumes you went 2 gate-robo-stargate, and that build is so flimsy, especially when you do it blind. I am pretty sure the phoenix would be killed almost immediately by marines. I don't believe the immortals can be lifted while the cannons are going off since they are stunned (correct me if I'm wrong). If they were lifted before the cannons, the thors would have free reign over the other units since immortals are the main damage dealers to thors and the thors could just cannon them after the lift was over. So unless im wrong about them being lifted while stunned, phoenix are pretty useless.
You can lift them into the air with phoenixes during the 250mm firing from the thors
There are a few replays showing it can be done and I have done it once in a custom just to try myself and it does work.
Always throws the terran in a loop when they see the toss using phoenixes on his own units :p
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hopefully with the new patch this build wont be as strong. Part of the problem is that it's to hard to target the scv's repairing the thor because they hide under/behind the thor and its too hard to click on them.
The only way ive been successful in defending this is to pull probes and have them help kill off the scvs and marines.
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9 Supply Depot
11 Refinery
13 Move SCV To Gas
13 Barracks (Naked)
13 Move SCV To Gas
15 Move SCV To Gas
17 Refinery
17 Orbital Command
17 Marine
18 Move SCV To Gas
18 Supply Depot
18 Factory (Naked)
18 Move SCV To Gas
18 Move SCV To Gas
19 Marine
20 Calldown MULE
22 Marine
23 Armory
23 Hellion
26 Supply Depot
Waypoint 1 satisfied:
5:00.00: 47M 238G 33E 26/ 27S
Income: 651M 215G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory
Units: 20 SCV 3 Marine
Research:
Waypoint 2 satisfied:
5:13.69: 157M 287G 41E 27/ 27S
Income: 735M 215G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory
Units: 21 SCV 3 Marine 1 Hellion
Research:
27 Factory Tech Lab
27 Supply Depot
27 Move SCV To Gas
29 Calldown MULE
29 Thor
35 Marine
37 Vehicle Plating 1
38 Marine
39 Supply Depot
40 Marine
41 Thor
48 250mm Strike Cannons
48 Supply Depot
48 Calldown MULE
49 Marine
51 Supply Depot
51 Marine
53 Thor
59 Marine
62 Marine
63 Calldown MULE
Waypoint 3 satisfied:
8:48.69: 932M 229G 12E 64/ 67S
Income: 1036M 228G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory 1 Armory 1 Tech Lab
Units: 33 SCV 10 Marine 1 Hellion 3 Thor
Research: 250mm Strike Cannons Vehicle Plating 1
push about when you think cannon and plating will be done when you reach the opponent's base. The 3rd thor should be done about when you arrive at your opponent's base (the 8:49 mark). this BO was based on a program:
0:02.00: 50M 0G 0E 6/ 11S - Build SCV
0:19.00: 69M 0G 0E 6/ 11S - Build SCV
0:36.00: 91M 0G 0E 7/ 11S - Build SCV
0:53.00: 124M 0G 0E 8/ 11S - Build SCV
0:57.90: 100M 0G 0E 9/ 11S - Build Supply Depot
1:10.00: 57M 0G 0E 9/ 11S - Build SCV
1:27.00: 101M 0G 0E 10/ 11S - Build SCV
1:31.09: 75M 0G 0E 11/ 19S - Build Refinery
1:44.00: 79M 0G 0E 11/ 19S - Build SCV
2:01.00: 149M 0G 0E 12/ 19S - Build SCV
2:01.09: 99M 0G 0E 13/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
2:07.94: 150M 3G 0E 13/ 19S - Build Barracks (Naked)
2:07.94: 0M 3G 0E 13/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
2:18.00: 60M 15G 0E 13/ 19S - Build SCV
2:35.00: 129M 36G 0E 14/ 19S - Build SCV
2:35.00: 79M 36G 0E 15/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
2:52.00: 199M 67G 0E 15/ 19S - Build SCV
3:09.00: 280M 99G 0E 16/ 19S - Build SCV
3:09.00: 230M 99G 0E 17/ 19S - Build Refinery
3:26.00: 296M 132G 0E 17/ 19S - Build Orbital Command
3:26.00: 146M 132G 0E 17/ 19S - Build Marine
3:39.00: 215M 156G 0E 18/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
3:39.00: 215M 156G 0E 18/ 19S - Build Supply Depot
3:43.69: 150M 167G 0E 18/ 19S - Build Factory (Naked)
3:43.69: 0M 67G 0E 18/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
3:43.69: 0M 67G 0E 18/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
4:01.00: 106M 127G 50E 18/ 19S - Build SCV
4:09.00: 107M 155G 55E 19/ 27S - Build Marine
4:09.00: 57M 155G 55E 20/ 27S - Calldown MULE
4:18.00: 135M 187G 10E 20/ 27S - Build SCV
4:35.00: 268M 248G 19E 21/ 27S - Build SCV
4:35.00: 218M 248G 19E 22/ 27S - Build Marine
4:43.69: 267M 280G 24E 23/ 27S - Build Armory
4:43.69: 117M 180G 24E 23/ 27S - Build Hellion
4:52.00: 106M 209G 29E 25/ 27S - Build SCV
4:55.69: 100M 223G 31E 26/ 27S - Build Supply Depot
Waypoint 1 satisfied:
5:00.00: 47M 238G 33E 26/ 27S
Income: 651M 215G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory
Units: 20 SCV 3 Marine
Research:
5:09.00: 151M 270G 38E 26/ 27S - Build SCV
Waypoint 2 satisfied:
5:13.69: 157M 287G 41E 27/ 27S
Income: 735M 215G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory
Units: 21 SCV 3 Marine 1 Hellion
Research:
5:13.69: 157M 287G 41E 27/ 27S - Build Factory Tech Lab
5:13.69: 107M 262G 41E 27/ 27S - Build Supply Depot
5:13.69: 7M 262G 41E 27/ 27S - Move SCV To Gas
5:26.00: 137M 308G 48E 27/ 35S - Build SCV
5:43.00: 287M 373G 57E 28/ 35S - Build SCV
5:43.00: 237M 373G 57E 29/ 35S - Calldown MULE
5:48.69: 300M 395G 11E 29/ 43S - Build Thor
5:52.35: 50M 209G 13E 35/ 43S - Build Marine
6:00.00: 108M 238G 17E 36/ 43S - Build SCV
6:02.94: 100M 249G 19E 37/ 43S - Research Vehicle Plating 1
6:17.00: 208M 202G 27E 37/ 43S - Build SCV
6:17.35: 163M 204G 27E 38/ 43S - Build Marine
6:17.35: 113M 204G 27E 39/ 43S - Build Supply Depot
6:34.00: 255M 267G 36E 39/ 43S - Build SCV
6:42.35: 332M 299G 41E 40/ 43S - Build Marine
6:48.69: 379M 323G 44E 41/ 51S - Build Thor
6:51.00: 114M 131G 46E 47/ 51S - Build SCV
6:56.32: 150M 152G 49E 48/ 51S - Research 250mm Strike Cannons
7:02.39: 100M 25G 52E 48/ 51S - Build Supply Depot
7:02.39: 0M 25G 52E 48/ 51S - Calldown MULE
7:08.00: 94M 46G 5E 48/ 51S - Build SCV
7:08.31: 50M 47G 5E 49/ 51S - Build Marine
7:25.00: 297M 111G 15E 50/ 51S - Build SCV
7:25.00: 247M 111G 15E 51/ 51S - Build Supply Depot
7:33.31: 280M 142G 19E 51/ 59S - Build Marine
7:42.00: 374M 175G 24E 52/ 59S - Build SCV
7:48.69: 436M 201G 28E 53/ 59S - Build Thor
7:58.31: 299M 37G 33E 59/ 67S - Build Marine
7:59.00: 260M 40G 34E 60/ 67S - Build SCV
8:16.00: 503M 104G 43E 61/ 67S - Build SCV
8:23.31: 579M 132G 48E 62/ 67S - Build Marine
8:27.67: 605M 149G 50E 63/ 67S - Calldown MULE
8:33.00: 704M 169G 3E 63/ 67S - Build SCV
Waypoint 3 satisfied:
8:48.69: 932M 229G 12E 64/ 67S
Income: 1036M 228G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory 1 Armory 1 Tech Lab
Units: 33 SCV 10 Marine 1 Hellion 3 Thor
Research: 250mm Strike Cannons Vehicle Plating 1
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Waypoint 3 satisfied:
8:48.69: 932M 229G 12E 64/ 67S
Income: 1036M 228G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory 1 Armory 1 Tech Lab
Units: 33 SCV 10 Marine 1 Hellion 3 Thor
Research: 250mm Strike Cannons Vehicle Plating 1
i know a better one:
0:02.00: 50M 0G 0E 6/ 11S - Build SCV
0:19.00: 73M 0G 0E 7/ 11S - Build SCV
0:36.00: 106M 0G 0E 8/ 11S - Build SCV
0:53.00: 150M 0G 0E 9/ 11S - Build SCV
0:53.03: 100M 0G 0E 10/ 11S - Build Supply Depot
1:10.00: 91M 0G 0E 10/ 11S - Build SCV
1:27.00: 147M 0G 0E 11/ 19S - Build SCV
1:27.00: 97M 0G 0E 12/ 19S - Build Refinery
1:44.00: 139M 0G 0E 12/ 19S - Build SCV
1:51.96: 150M 0G 0E 13/ 19S - Build Barracks (Naked)
1:57.00: 32M 0G 0E 13/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
1:57.00: 32M 0G 0E 13/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
1:57.00: 32M 0G 0E 13/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
2:01.00: 53M 4G 0E 13/ 19S - Build SCV
2:18.00: 110M 36G 0E 14/ 19S - Build SCV
2:35.00: 179M 68G 0E 15/ 19S - Build SCV
2:52.00: 261M 101G 0E 16/ 19S - Build Orbital Command
2:52.00: 111M 101G 0E 16/ 19S - Build Refinery
2:54.20: 50M 105G 0E 16/ 19S - Build Marine
3:19.20: 213M 152G 0E 17/ 19S - Build Barracks Reactor
Waypoint 1 satisfied:
3:27.00: 232M 117G 50E 17/ 19S
Income: 555M 114G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 1 Barracks 1 Orbital Command
Units: 16 SCV 1 Marine
Research:
3:27.00: 232M 117G 50E 17/ 19S - Build SCV
3:27.00: 182M 117G 50E 18/ 19S - Build Supply Depot
3:35.35: 150M 133G 55E 18/ 19S - Build Factory (Naked)
3:35.35: 0M 33G 55E 18/ 19S - Move SCV To Gas
3:44.00: 58M 53G 60E 18/ 19S - Build SCV
4:01.00: 140M 95G 69E 19/ 27S - Build SCV
4:01.00: 90M 95G 69E 20/ 27S - Calldown MULE
4:01.00: 90M 95G 19E 20/ 27S - Move SCV To Gas
4:09.20: 174M 118G 24E 20/ 27S - Build Marine
4:09.20: 124M 118G 24E 21/ 27S - Build Marine
4:09.20: 74M 118G 24E 22/ 27S - Move SCV To Gas
4:18.00: 169M 149G 29E 22/ 27S - Build SCV
4:35.00: 315M 210G 38E 23/ 27S - Build SCV
4:35.00: 265M 210G 38E 24/ 27S - Build Supply Depot
4:35.00: 165M 210G 38E 24/ 27S - Build Marine
4:38.39: 150M 222G 40E 25/ 27S - Build Armory
4:43.25: 50M 139G 43E 25/ 27S - Build Factory Tech Lab
4:47.57: 50M 130G 45E 25/ 27S - Build Marine
4:52.00: 51M 146G 48E 26/ 27S - Build SCV
5:05.00: 159M 192G 55E 27/ 35S - Build Marine
5:05.00: 109M 192G 55E 28/ 35S - Calldown MULE
5:09.00: 161M 207G 7E 28/ 35S - Build SCV
5:12.57: 168M 219G 9E 29/ 35S - Build Marine
5:12.57: 118M 219G 9E 30/ 35S - Build Supply Depot
5:26.00: 229M 267G 17E 30/ 35S - Build SCV
5:30.00: 244M 282G 19E 31/ 35S - Build Marine
5:43.00: 382M 328G 27E 32/ 43S - Build SCV
5:43.39: 337M 330G 27E 33/ 43S - Build Thor
5:51.16: 150M 158G 31E 39/ 43S - Research 250mm Strike Cannons
5:54.42: 50M 19G 33E 39/ 43S - Build Marine
6:00.00: 86M 39G 36E 40/ 43S - Build SCV
6:00.94: 50M 43G 37E 41/ 43S - Build Marine
6:19.42: 293M 109G 47E 42/ 43S - Build Marine
6:19.42: 243M 109G 47E 43/ 43S - Build Barracks (Naked)
6:24.78: 176M 128G 50E 43/ 43S - Calldown Extra Supplies
6:24.78: 176M 128G 0E 43/ 43S - Build Supply Depot
6:27.78: 120M 139G 2E 43/ 51S - Build Marine
6:44.84: 310M 200G 11E 44/ 51S - Build Thor
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:44.84: 10M 0G 11E 50/ 51S - Move SCV To Minerals
6:47.91: 50M 0G 13E 50/ 51S - Build SCV
6:54.78: 98M 0G 17E 51/ 59S - Build Marine
6:54.92: 50M 0G 17E 52/ 59S - Build Marine
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
6:54.92: 0M 0G 17E 53/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
7:04.91: 126M 29G 23E 53/ 59S - Build SCV
7:19.42: 270M 81G 31E 54/ 59S - Build Marine
7:19.78: 225M 82G 31E 55/ 59S - Build Marine
7:19.92: 177M 82G 31E 56/ 59S - Build Marine
7:21.91: 154M 90G 32E 57/ 59S - Build SCV
7:21.91: 104M 90G 32E 58/ 59S - Move SCV To Gas
Waypoint 2 satisfied:
7:44.92: 418M 177G 45E 58/ 59S
Income: 832M 228G
Buildings: 2 Refinery 2 Barracks 1 Orbital Command 1 Factory 1 Armory 1 Reactor 1 Tech Lab
Units: 29 SCV 17 Marine 2 Thor
Research: 250mm Strike Cannons
so if we assume 1 hellion = 2 marines, then my push is 5 marines stronger. i dont think the vehicle plating is worth the difference from 12 marines (or 10 marines 1 hellion) to 17 marines. in particular not when the patch hits and the tankability of the thors gets a serious nerf. the zealots will first kill the scvs instead of the thor, and then they will attack the thor but the scvs are gone so that armor/no armor upgrade doesnt make a difference anymore anyway.
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On November 17 2010 09:09 QuantumTheory wrote:http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=166372Socke made a few errors that would have absolutely demolished this. Made 2 observers = 2 more Immortals (realistically, 1 more Immortal as you should always make an obs) The probe surround, absolutely vital, these things will soak up the dps from everything, he failed to send them in for the surround when the thor was on the ramp, didn't matter though. He EXPANDED. Idk if he thought cloak banshees or cross positions Shakuras but whatever is thought process was, it didn't matter.
Actually. ServanT STOMPED socke in that game and then protoss lategame imba against mech brought socke back into it.
ServanT killed the expo while taking his own expo, and if he micro'd a little better (his scvs were stuck behind marines while trying to repair the thor,) he could have done way more damage to Socke.
He was ahead by a mile after that rush, and this was on the longest map rush distance in the map pool. 1 gate expo is not at all good against thor rush.
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I really dislike how hyperbole this thread is. I was talking to Janook about this build, sharing my thoughts of disbelief. I was talking to him on the chat while he streamed. In the game he did the 2 thor rush and he won, but it was because the protoss fast expanded. He said that if the protoss FE's its pretty much an auto win, but if the protoss is staying on one base, he doesnt attack because one base protoss can typically hold this off. Instead, he said he likes to go 2 port banshee and expand when that happens.
So yea.... thread = extreme hyperbole.
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On December 16 2010 17:40 Techno wrote:
I really dislike how hyperbole this thread is. I was talking to Janook about this build, sharing my thoughts of disbelief. I was talking to him on the chat while he streamed. In the game he did the 2 thor rush and he won, but it was because the protoss fast expanded. He said that if the protoss FE's its pretty much an auto win, but if the protoss is staying on one base, he doesnt attack because one base protoss can typically hold this off. Instead, he said he likes to go 2 port banshee and expand when that happens.
So yea.... thread = extreme hyperbole.
will this build be viable after repair nerf ?
ps. oh and also vr buff ;/
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the thing that is going to affect scvs repairing the thors the most is zealots imo. It might be possible to while you are pushing out to build 2 hellions real quick to help compensate for this. But surely this will lose a great deal of effectiveness after the repair nerf.
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I just hit 3000 at NA ladder with this build, thank you. otherwise I would have never beat protoss late game army with collo/hts etc.
This is definitely stoppable by any toss build including 2+gate expo, With or without the thor repair patch I expect this being stopped on every attempt in about 2 weeks, just gotta get moar wins before more toss finds out how to stop it.
Note that I've been using a slightly different build then the one listed in the OP - I add a second rax so I get more marines, don't get plating, and only add the hellion after the 2nd thor finishes since it can generally reach the slow army just in time for the battle that way (so I am a bit more blind). I like marines; they tend to be pretty good against most of things good at killing Thors.
While this is interesting, I really think getting hellion out asap for scouting is the key for this build to work, especially on ladder where people go for blind DT just because they felt like doing so. I assume you are saving scans for dts as well, so you need something to check out enemy's expo along with every corners of the map if his pylon count doesn't add up after a scan etc.
I have been doing pdd/thor/banshee/marines if I feel like DTs are incoming, it's kinda like 13min 2/1/1 pdd banshee rush. I don't have solid build on it but I think it's a decent subtitude push if the thors were delayed by DTs.
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Okay so I don't know what has been said completely, but this idea for a push is absurd. Here is what I've been using and it beat a 4 gate that I ran into at favorable poisitions for them and it wasn't close.
10 Depot
12 Rax
13 Refinery
15 Orbital, Marine, Constant Marine production
16 Depot
18 Factory, @ 50% 2nd gas, @100% Armory, then Hellion, then Tech
21 Depot
@100 percent Armory done, Thor, Tech Lab on Rax, Research Stim
28ish, 35ish, and 43ish Depots
@ 100% Thor, 2nd Thor
@100 gas, Siege mode
@2nd thor, push with 12 Marines, Hellion, 2 thors, 5-6 scvs and start Siege tank and Expand
By the time your Thor treks across the map, even Jungle Basin or Steppes, your Tank will have siege and be about caught up. I've beaten 4 Warp Gate and 2/3 Gate Robo with this easy money. 250 Strike Cannon is definitely "win moar", as in, busting FFs and being a nigh unkillable machine is enough. Getting Stim is HUGE against non-Colossi builds and switching to Siege allows for easy transitions. I haven't always killed with this push, but I have always wiped their army, expanded, and been unkillable. As long as you scout properly and don't try to push against more than 1 Colossus, you should be fine. If they have Colossi, they haven't expanded, so expand and you have your tanks to cover your ass.
The Tank+Stim plan is the most stable plan, I believe, because you have armory for a fast +1 Vehicle weapons, and can throw down 2-3 more Rax, a Reactor Starport, and go MMM-Tank to hold off any pushes and take a fast third. With as many people getting fast HTs are they are these days, I believe that without Tanks, MMM is too weak to take a 3rd base safely. 2 base Protoss has so many strong options, that Tanking up and losing some mobility is the correct choice for staying economically ahead.
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On December 17 2010 00:53 ilsamsamchil wrote:
While this is interesting, I really think getting hellion out asap for scouting is the key for this build to work, especially on ladder where people go for blind DT just because they felt like doing so. I assume you are saving scans for dts as well, so you need something to check out enemy's expo along with every corners of the map if his pylon count doesn't add up after a scan etc.
Maybe my play is lacking, but I don't really expect to notice pylons unless it's one of the first few. Even without a need to hide tech, I still prefer to build depots in areas around the edge of my base to improve my vision; I assume that Protoss has at least same desire. Especially between warp in, and the greater likelihood that Terran going for drops or banshees that the Protoss player would want to spot. Hence I wouldn't expect all the Pylons to be in the same area anyway.
Similarly, on most maps I don't think I could get the hellion into any place the Protoss is defending, so it seems only slightly more useful than sending an additional SCV scout or marine.
Also, and this may be overthinking things a bit, scouting with the hellion seems like it reveals information about your own tech path that protoss would otherwise have to pay for. Most terran builds don't just randomly include hellions after all. Strategies centered on starport units that don't use Factory units usually lift the Factory and scout with that instead - revealing a hellion suggests that I'm not going for one of those builds. And it eliminates pure bio. Early tank attacks seem to get the techlab first. I mean, it's not exactly definite information, but it seems like Thor rush or hellion drop are at least roughly indicated.
What exactly is the hellion supposed to find in time to make meaningful changes to the build?
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just lost to this build...ehhh it is frustrating to handle this kind of build
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My friend who's a Silver P was complaining about how helpless he felt against a build like this yesterday. He said he target-fired the SCVs when he realized he wasn't going to kill the Thor, but the SCVs repaired each other fast enough to stay alive, lol.
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On November 17 2010 09:21 misaTO wrote:
Mass chargelots with +1 will do the trick.
this is how I would always go after my expo if my scouting reveals no starport.
this is a one base strat I might add as well. when I beat them I put down my third and its pretty much gg after that.
EDIT: erm maybe Vr's will make more sense with that boost to massive's and they can take care of tankplay really(charge on tanks roast rines when they are dead)
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This push seems to be pretty much autowin vs on most scenario unless something comes up that was unexpected(or toss gives up/doesn't expo), so I just like to find out everything that I can from my side as a precaution.
DT being the hardcounter for this, I would really focus on scouting every possibility that the toss might be doing something out of the norm, so I can fold the 2 thor timing attack when something doesnt look/feel right.
You can find offensive pylons(and possible moving forces), hidden stargate or dark shrine etc.
but you are right, it makes little difference if it's a hellion or scv that's scouting. I just like the fast guy in motorcart :D
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I always stop it with this build. IMO it requires far too much on the end of the protoss compared to the terran. My opener holds just about everything, its main flaw is transitioning to some type of aoe at a good time. Its not always easy to know when its safe to add that layer of tech.
http://rapidshare.com/files/437766980/PvT_phoenix_vs_thor_push.SC2Replay
My execution wasnt great (slow picking my immortals up, etc). His timings were pretty much the exact same as the other 50 million people that have tried this against me. If you know its coming in time its fine, but i feel that a fast phoenix is the only way to counter the 250 mm cannon and scout it in time. He fought me in a bad spot i suppose but his alternative was to take this army home and turn it into a macro game already behind. Opponent was 2250-2300 diamond or so.
Either way, you get the idea.
I think post-patch ill go back to FE vs terran due to repair nerf, but i dunno because i hate being in the dark and phoenix is a good way to know whats coming... maybe sentry expanding with hallucinate will come to be?
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On December 17 2010 15:45 Jayrod wrote:I always stop it with this build. IMO it requires far too much on the end of the protoss compared to the terran. My opener holds just about everything, its main flaw is transitioning to some type of aoe at a good time. Its not always easy to know when its safe to add that layer of tech. http://rapidshare.com/files/437766980/PvT_phoenix_vs_thor_push.SC2ReplayMy execution wasnt great (slow picking my immortals up, etc). His timings were pretty much the exact same as the other 50 million people that have tried this against me. If you know its coming in time its fine, but i feel that a fast phoenix is the only way to counter the 250 mm cannon and scout it in time. He fought me in a bad spot i suppose but his alternative was to take this army home and turn it into a macro game already behind. Opponent was 2250-2300 diamond or so. Either way, you get the idea. I think post-patch ill go back to FE vs terran due to repair nerf, but i dunno because i hate being in the dark and phoenix is a good way to know whats coming... maybe sentry expanding with hallucinate will come to be?
That game was pretty awesome. Yet again Jayrod does not disappoint with his infinite wisdom.
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1 gate FE rapes this build pretty bad, especially if followed by speedlots or void rays. And void rays do just great against thors whether they are repaired or not, especially now when they're getting bonus to massive.
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pretty sure this was designed to counter 1gate FE.
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yeah im thinking early pressure would crush this seeing as you have like 0 units till your thors are out.
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Just watched your replay Jayrod... That may be the sickest thing I've ever seen. Whoa ^^
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I have played against this build before
i was lucky i was expecting mass marine marauder
so i quickly teched up to high templar and psyonic storm and went mass chargelot high templar and i saw 3 thors coming up the ramp with scvs and marines i had 4 high tempilar and 10 - 15 zealots and 5 or so sentries i forced feilded behind the marines and scves and used my chargelots t oattac kthe front of the thors i used my psystorms on them and all the marines and scvs died and the thors had <100hp and i finshed them off with my chargelots
p.s his attack was at 11 minutes
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On December 18 2010 14:58 dooraven wrote:
I have played against this build before
i was lucky i was expecting mass marine marauder
so i quickly teched up to high templar and psyonic storm and went mass chargelot high templar and i saw 3 thors coming up the ramp with scvs and marines i had 4 high tempilar and 10 - 15 zealots and 5 or so sentries i forced feilded behind the marines and scves and used my chargelots t oattac kthe front of the thors i used my psystorms on them and all the marines and scvs died and the thors had <100hp and i finshed them off with my chargelots
p.s his attack was at 11 minutes
what u faced then was a chobo attack which has nothing to do with the timings intended in this build. the timing attack described in this thread hits at around 8.30-9.00 in the game, where its impossible to have storm or ranged colossi plus a sufficient force out. the whole idea of this build is to exploit the huge relative effectiveness of repair in small-scale battles. each second u delay the attack with such a build will reduce the impact of repair on the outcome of the battle.
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I'm finding as a general rule of thumb, go 1 gate stargate if you see either a wall off and the rax has no add on, and/or a bunker. Chrono your first phoenix to see what he's going while getting a robotics.
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i have a pretty awesome rep of a guy 2 thor rushing me on LT i had taken a secret super fast third lol and he takes out my natural and then my main (with 2 thors and some marines and scvs) all the while im rebuilding and macroing acorss the map.
the game goes into a stalemate when i kill all his scvs at his main but his army is too powerful to take on and i learn that roaches suck vs thors in small numbers.
the game is really fucking epic and i think really illustrates the mobility weakness of the thor army and the mobility bonuses of being zerg ^^. i think my final comp (and the one that worked the best) was mass speedling with a few banelings and all my gas went into mutas.
gonna post the rep tonight fo sho!!!
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great build, works every time. but the only thing i loose to with this build is fast DT because i didnt have scans. i think it will work against DTs if i have some scans saved up
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France12904 Posts
DT counters this build pretty well (even if you save scan) and I guess so do void ray builds. (even without dmg bonus)
@dooraven : quick HT don't work against this lol. One time I scouted twilight council and expected DT, I delayed my push to get raven, but HT were still here too late so I can't imagine how you will be crushed if the guy just do the push at the 8.40-9.00 mark.
Sending the probes help alot against this build btw
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This build works against some playeers, but in my experience good placed force fields counter this.
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On December 18 2010 21:55 TurK-FX wrote:
This build works against some playeers, but in my experience good placed force fields counter this.
Yea your right, let's forget that Thors walk over FF's.
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my standard buildorder of 1gate, 1 robo expand then 2 more gateways fairs quite well against this build. you can get out 3 immortals by the time they attack, along with a large stalker count. A big enough unit count to snipe the thors through repair.
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On December 18 2010 22:08 stroggos wrote:
my standard buildorder of 1gate, 1 robo expand then 2 more gateways fairs quite well against this build. you can get out 3 immortals by the time they attack, along with a large stalker count. A big enough unit count to snipe the thors through repair.
It is tested and there is no way you can get more immortal than thors by that time. Even if you get, you will be light on gateway units and marines will walk over you.
And yes, i didnt know if thors could walk over FF. I think those force fields screwed up my SCVs, so i couldnt repair thors. Next time i will try to back up little bit to break those FFs.
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On December 19 2010 16:21 TurK-FX wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2010 22:08 stroggos wrote:
my standard buildorder of 1gate, 1 robo expand then 2 more gateways fairs quite well against this build. you can get out 3 immortals by the time they attack, along with a large stalker count. A big enough unit count to snipe the thors through repair.
It is tested and there is no way you can get more immortal than thors by that time. Even if you get, you will be light on gateway units and marines will walk over you. And yes, i didnt know if thors could walk over FF. I think those force fields screwed up my SCVs, so i couldnt repair thors. Next time i will try to back up little bit to break those FFs.
i am positive that i can get 3 immortals out by the time 2 thors get to my base
at least on 90% of maps/positions
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Out of the four or five times I've tried this build I've only done it once successfully.
2.5k toss players seem to know how to respond to it.
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Great OP, detailed and really easy to read. As long as the SCV threat is fixed, I think this would be a little easier to defend against with a more zealot heavy army.
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On December 19 2010 16:47 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 16:21 TurK-FX wrote:On December 18 2010 22:08 stroggos wrote:
my standard buildorder of 1gate, 1 robo expand then 2 more gateways fairs quite well against this build. you can get out 3 immortals by the time they attack, along with a large stalker count. A big enough unit count to snipe the thors through repair.
It is tested and there is no way you can get more immortal than thors by that time. Even if you get, you will be light on gateway units and marines will walk over you. And yes, i didnt know if thors could walk over FF. I think those force fields screwed up my SCVs, so i couldnt repair thors. Next time i will try to back up little bit to break those FFs. i am positive that i can get 3 immortals out by the time 2 thors get to my base at least on 90% of maps/positions
Yea you cant get it if just focus on getting it, but then you are screwed if you opponent go for banshee&marine heavy. there is noway you can find out what he is doing until you get your observer out and check him. And as stated in OP first post, high diamond player exactly knew what was coming they tried everything to stop it and they couldnt stop it. So as long as it is executed properly you wont be able to stop it.
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I've had alot of fun with this build after I switched to random
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I just played a game where a player did this to me. Luckily like people have been posting, i scouted it and was able to get a good FF behind his thors so his scv's couldn't repair. Althought he did not stun my units and i have had trouble with that in the past.
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Thanks for the build. I've got a pretty good win percentage using it. And like you, when it does fail its usually because I did something incorrectly. Also, using this strategy really causes people to rage a lot. :D
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I've been trying to practice not using this build admittedly in preparation for the new patch... A shame too since its so powerful
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What happens in the new patch that will hurt this build?
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scvs will have the same threat priority as the unity they are repairing.
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Yesterday, I verified that this build is incredibly strong against lower ranked players. 4-Gaters are getting a taste of their own medicine. And yes, it usually invokes a quit without gg from most players.
Strike-Cannon completely evaporates an Immortal.
By the way, I'm not sure whether the attack priority change for repairing scvs will have that huge an impact here.
DTs are a good counter, other than that, the Protoss needs to be very sharp defending this or she or he'll get roflstomped. By the time you're at the enemy's base, your 3rd thor has finished, and you can usually safely expand.
I'm not sure whether defending the position above the ramp is the best thing for Protoss here, maybe withdraw inwards and add your probes to the defense?
In general: I recently started to incorporate a couple of SCVs into my army when I'm going Mech or bio with air support. A) SCVs are kind of a nice meat shield confusing your opponent's units , and B) repair is an amazing ability that should be exploited more. I don't know why I didn't start doing this sooner for units other than Thors.
Also, I think Thors have a place in early to mid-game TvP because of the oh-so-annoying force-fields that prevent ANY kind of pressure. Since the medivac nerf, drops have become much harder against Protoss.
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I haven't had a chance to try this variation of this build yet but I was wondering if anyone had tried pushing out after the first thor finishes and rallying the second thor to the first? Would it be a quicker variation of the original build or would the Protoss player be too strong at that point? I believe you could actually push out at about 7:45 with the one thor and several marines.
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this build is a beast, but it will be useless after patch when u can actually kill those fkn repairing SCVs
also, i've lost to this as zerg, so it may not be only a TvP build
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this build is okay, you should practice more thoroughly on players who have a better understanding of PvT. not saying these players were bad, but they had alot of timings off, and no one should ever 1 base 2-3 gate colossus , there wasn't much scouting either *i guess they knew what you were doing anyways* but a 4gate will do good if you have enough stalkers and a couple of sentries *guardian shield*, zealots are really just cannon fodder they die before they get to deal damage* if you see 10 scvs, protoss should pull 10 probes, you get the same food count in stalkers *or close to it with your probes* you can go on par or even beat this. i also think that if a gas steal happens, and then it does force terran to skip\ delay 250MM cannons that the build will be weaker since a 4 gate will have more reinforcements
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i wonder if we could get to the same effect after the patch by simply sending more scvs with the attack. its pretty all-in-ish anyway, if the attack doesnt do serious dam, u lose. the time he takes to kill off the repairing scvs is time he is taking dam and not attacking ur army. the real dam dealers are immortals anyway, and if u keep the scvs in the background, there should be no way for the fat, slow, lowrange immortals to get in position to attack them anyway.
it will be weaker after the patch, but i dont think the strategy will lose viability just because of the change in the scv priority. the bigger problem imho is the dam buff for vrs against thors....
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On December 24 2010 11:53 Subversion wrote:
this build is a beast, but it will be useless after patch when u can actually kill those fkn repairing SCVs
also, i've lost to this as zerg, so it may not be only a TvP build
The issue with this vs zerg is banelings force your marines to shoot and scoot, kill SCVs very easily and roaches are easily massed.
Sling/Bling/Roach is standard vs biomech. If the zerg tries to tech to spire too fast it could work as they may not have enough gas for enough blings with speed but other than that it "should" be a lot easier for a zerg to fend this off than protoss.
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In preparation for the upcoming patch, I've been trying a few things. I'm only a silver league player, never lost a game against protoss but found the build weakish against zerg and terran. By making a slight change to it, I've managed to get 10 wins a in a row, mostly against zerg.
I've been pushing around the 9 minute mark (bit slow, I know) but setting only 3-4 scvs on to each thor and keeping the marines in the middle. When faced by lings/banes/zealots/marines, the scvs (since there are only a few) clump up behind the thors so your opponent has to either run around to attack them, leaving time for your thors/marines to dish out damage, or stick to attacking the thors.
Benefits to fewer scvs:
Less damage to your economy if the push fails
Since attack priority is the same, the units will hit the thor first unless micromanaged around the back.
Banelings must either push through the thors and go for the marines or be wasted against the thors. Making this build much more viable against zerg.
No chance of getting blocked by FF since the thors are in the front.
Allows you to swap out some scvs for a second rax for bonus marines.
Since more scvs are getting resources, you can reinforce/rebuild your army much easier if your initial push is rebuffed.
Downsides:
Less units repairing the thors, which can make the initial push weaker.
Less scvs soaking damage when the patch changes
Also, for all the people commenting on having to base swap with some players doing this build, just have your third thor stay in the base and micro some scvs to it to fight off their army. You can do some serious damage to it while destroying their base.
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8 SCVs on 1 thor is the same as 4 SCVs on each thor if you have 2 thors... And right now this mostly works because those 8 SCVs surround the thor that is being targeted.
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So i'm wondering what the succcess of this build is agaisnt the 3 gate 1 stargate oGsMC Push i feel like he would only have 1 thor out and aobut 5 marines and with proper micro i should kill him (watchign thors kill void rays makes me Lol)
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I don't buy the stealing gas as working. The majority of the times I've won with this build I ended up not even using 250mm cannon. The only time I used it is if there are callossass. Immortals always go down hard to the marines.
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On November 18 2010 06:45 RiotSpectre wrote:
Reading this makes me wonder why I barely ever see terrans using strike cannons against a toss who masses collossi - I feel like there would be some serious late game implications.
It's awful, mass colossus start doing well vs mass thor because of range, and there are typically other units in front. I've tried it many a times.
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thank god in 2.0 scv attack priority is going to change so this thor mass repair will end.
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On December 27 2010 15:10 methematics wrote:
thank god in 2.0 scv attack priority is going to change so this thor mass repair will end.
This build will still be strong. The scv's will tank a fair bit of damage still, and they will get some repairing.
This build is the BANE of my existence. I've started going Vrs against it though, and it works decently.
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On December 27 2010 15:17 Jacobs Ladder wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2010 15:10 methematics wrote:
thank god in 2.0 scv attack priority is going to change so this thor mass repair will end.
This build will still be strong. The scv's will tank a fair bit of damage still, and they will get some repairing. This build is the BANE of my existence. I've started going Vrs against it though, and it works decently.
It could only get weaker, as if you want to hit the thor you can just manual target it. Now at least you can hit SCVs...
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This build is super strong if the toss player isnt that great of a micro player, it is easily countered by heavy zealot with stalker support. U have to micro the zealots and stalkers to kill the scvs. If you just attack ground, the zealots just go in circles and its gg...took me like a second before realizing this. But yeah lotsa zealots, 2 for each of his scvs and stalkers to "try to pick off this and that" and u pretty much lol at this strat as toss. 2 gate robo would beat this; although the robo is kinda useless coz if u scout into this, the immortal and collosus, as stated by the op are well...very very expensive cannon fodders.
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This build is really devastating. I made was doing similar builds since I really wanted to use Thors in TvP. So I tried some MM and Thor, worked somewhat good but turned out to be bad. Then I tried a Marines/Thor timing, it was better than the previous, but it was just 1 Thor without the Vehicle Plating. Ultimately, I think this build is much better, been using it against Toss the whole day and it's no loss so far. However I think the 2nd gas should be much earlier so that you can poke in as soon as possible, not needing to wait for the 250mm Cannons.
Nonetheless, great build. I'll cry if this doesn't work anymore post patch.
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ive been practising this rush a lot lately, im a gold 2v2 player, it failed miserably there, mostly because i play with a random partner. but I ventured off, for my very first time as a bronze player 1v1. Today alone i am on a 22 game winning streak with it in bronze, beating terran, toss as well as zerg. It even dummies the 8 roach rush, it was pretty damn close, but it still beats it. No game has gone past the 12 minute mark, I wonder when I will get promoted to silver.
Thanks for this strat its been a lot of fun, and i have been harassed a lot as well, being calld newbie and making fun of my strat, its actually pretty funny. Mostly from zerg players doing ling rushes and relying on them or roach rushes. Oh well a win is a win.
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I've been using this strategy pretty effectively in some of my TvP games, but I was wondering....after the changes to the SCV targeting priority in the new patch, is this build still going to be effective?
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On January 11 2011 17:51 janenba56 wrote:
I've been using this strategy pretty effectively in some of my TvP games, but I was wondering....after the changes to the SCV targeting priority in the new patch, is this build still going to be effective?
effective yes, but it will lose strength obviously. u gotta keep the scvs behind the thors. and ofc VRs will be an even better counter to the thors now with the dam buff.
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You'll just have to wait and see. No one is omniscient, we can't tell how it'll play out. I imagine it'll be much easier to stop, though.
Right now the key to stopping this is being very heavy on zealots. Then you can throw in whatever you like on top of that, but anything more than 2 sentries is probably too many. Stalkers do good damage to marines, and you can snipe SCVs from certain positions.
Getting a good surround is necessary though, so more zealots=good. Sometimes it's possible to interfere with the repairing SCVs if you have enough zealots and a proper position.
I feel like this push stops robo builds dead cold, but if you go for VRs it's like 50/50 and DTs/HTs are almost a guaranteed win.
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Well regarding dts, and hallucination as viable counters, any terran using this build ought to save one scan in the off chance that his opponent does go dt or gets hallucinated immortals/collosi
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This build has a lot of weakness. One of the most glaring ones is how weak it is attempting to push up a ramp. If the toss player engages on the ramp, especially with sentries, you can completely separate the thors+scv's from the marines on maps like delta quadrant.
It also loses outright to any 1 base play which is the optimal choice after scouting this build, and lets face it, its an extremely obvious rush to anybody who has decent scouting. 1 base immortals with 2 phoenix to lift the immortals to cancel cannons completely destroys this.
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wmd221: thors break FF. So sentries aren't that useful.
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On November 17 2010 08:51 QuantumTheory wrote:
Socke stomped a similar build on Shakuras.
Had his expo up, had to sac it tho.
Edit: Give you quick rundown on the game. Opponent pushed with 1 Thor mixed with scvs/marines with strike cannon, Socke held but the 2nd thor was almost at his base. Socke defended that and went on to win. Trick was to attack them when the thors are halfway up the ramp, I think that helps with less scvs being able to repair or something. Anyway the T had an awkward angle and Socke was meant to get the surround with probuu but failed, still won though.
It's kinda sad that you have to beat this by using some "trick" which boils down to a bug in the game.
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On January 11 2011 18:11 Ziken wrote:
Well regarding dts, and hallucination as viable counters, any terran using this build ought to save one scan in the off chance that his opponent does go dt or gets hallucinated immortals/collosi
Usually you'll have 3-4 DTs. You also have several zealots and at least one stalker, since it's necessary in a DT build to deny scouting.
Basically one DT is for your opponent's base. Then you'll have one more at the time of the push, and you can warp in 2 as the attack hits. You should be able to stop the push because the DTs will one shot the SCVs and marines, allowing you to mop up what's left with your other units.
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On January 11 2011 18:20 wmd221 wrote:
This build has a lot of weakness. One of the most glaring ones is how weak it is attempting to push up a ramp. If the toss player engages on the ramp, especially with sentries, you can completely separate the thors+scv's from the marines on maps like delta quadrant.
It also loses outright to any 1 base play which is the optimal choice after scouting this build, and lets face it, its an extremely obvious rush to anybody who has decent scouting. 1 base immortals with 2 phoenix to lift the immortals to cancel cannons completely destroys this.
um in order to do that you (obviously) have to get both a stargate and a robo. so that cuts into your gateway unit count, and both thors and marine kill phoenixes pretty dam well, also marines and strike cannons kills immortals well
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This is stopable by ANY build the toss makes as long as you have 2 sentries and are skilled enought to split the scvs from the thor when you hit.
The idea in this situation is to BUY TIME to get what you want: a counter while he starts to move out just to make him go back could do the trick.
BTW: Saving 1-2 chronoboosts when you dont know whats going on is same as saving larvas when you dont know what a terran is doing, weird but effective.
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On January 11 2011 20:47 iloveav wrote:
This is stopable by ANY build the toss makes as long as you have 2 sentries and are skilled enought to split the scvs from the thor when you hit.
The idea in this situation is to BUY TIME to get what you want: a counter while he starts to move out just to make him go back could do the trick.
BTW: Saving 1-2 chronoboosts when you dont know whats going on is same as saving larvas when you dont know what a terran is doing, weird but effective.
the SCV's would be next to the thor at the time of the FFs right? So therefore the FFs would be directly next to the thor. And since thors are massive they can crush FFs. So the FFs would delay the push what 5 seconds?
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IM bummed, hahah i have been relying on this agianst toss and zerg for the last week.... 1.2 has basically thrown this strat in the garbage..... I lost twice today, which is rare against toss, who just had nothing but a few stalkers and zzealots..... then again against a zerg with mass amounts of speedlings. usually I walk right through those compositions.... They tear up the scvs , then thors crumple down shortly after.
Such a good strat,,, it will be missed. Thank you to the orginator of this post.... you done me good!
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Wow this build is very powerful so far I have won 2 games using it. To counter DT I think you could actually pretty much just build an eng bay and 1 turret at entrance with a few marines left behind. Build the eng bay after 2nd thor is out and while u expand and push. This will nullify DT's going into ur base but i reserved 50 energy every time i pushed for scan during the push to help counter any DT to try and kill the thors.
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On January 11 2011 20:53 valheru wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2011 20:47 iloveav wrote:
This is stopable by ANY build the toss makes as long as you have 2 sentries and are skilled enought to split the scvs from the thor when you hit.
The idea in this situation is to BUY TIME to get what you want: a counter while he starts to move out just to make him go back could do the trick.
BTW: Saving 1-2 chronoboosts when you dont know whats going on is same as saving larvas when you dont know what a terran is doing, weird but effective.
the SCV's would be next to the thor at the time of the FFs right? So therefore the FFs would be directly next to the thor. And since thors are massive they can crush FFs. So the FFs would delay the push what 5 seconds?
Try to draw this in your head:
lol protoss army
ramp thor scv ramp
ramp scv scv ramp
ramp ForceF ramp
ramp scv scv ramp
your second/third thor could be at anywhere, but it's most likely to be either above the ramp, or below the ramp where it's going to be moving in circle because it will be blocked by marine/scvs, while the thors at top gets crushed because of the lack of repairing scvs. attempting to move it down the ramp to stomp the ff will also get it killed because you need to move scvs that's blocking as well.
I am not implying this is an easy thing to do as protoss(you place your ff 1 matrix off and it will get crushed by thor), but getting it done allows you to stop the rush right there without any immortals or vrs at all.
anyway RIP thor/marine rush, best tvp strat in NA server with just about everyone from plat to upper diamond doing 1gate FE in pvt.
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I'm still using this build after patch and the effectiveness has barely decreased, winning about 60% of the games with the initial push and close to 100% vs fast-expanding protoss
Thanks a ton for sharing it Evoli
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is anyone else still rocking out this strat?
I still do it from time to time, i dont find it just a "toss" only strat. I have had great success using this against every race. With a tiny bit of tweaking when a zerg goes ling rush and/or bangs.
this works decently well against roach rushes, but its a pretty damn close battle everytime it does occure. out of the 2-3 thors you send, you may end up with 1 thor and like 1-3 rines at the end.
the very few times I have lost with this strat, were times i got caught on the ramp, so I either try to bait them down, most will come down to check out whats goin on.
Other than a few mistakes of crappy micro/lack of expeirnce, getting caught on the ramp is definatly the weakness to this strat big time. and banglings whos can follow up with roaches, have beat this as well. Well at least they beat me anyways.
But I find this a very good all race strat not just a toss strat. It still works fairly well. I have not really noticed much of a difference, mind you im a plat player, im sure anyone above plat have a way to just destroy and devistate this strat by now.
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for me this strategy does not work anymore since the patch.
Before the patch i had a 25-0 streak vs Toss with this strategy, since the patched i tried it like 10 times and won maybe 1 or 2 games more likely because my opponent screwed it.
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@LimboMessiah
I'm at work now so can't post any new replays, but the thor push is still viable. All the patch did was make it to where melee units would target SCVs that got in the way, stalekrs and immortals and other ranged units still target the thor. I have had admittedly less success with the push, but no where near the levels of failure you are discribing. Part of that is the patch, but most of it is the super fast 2-gate-robo builds i've been facing...thors outnumbered by immortals fall pretty hard.
I do have a couple threads on blizzards forums that talk about the thor and have replays. I will post the links here so you can read and view if you wish. If linking to other forums is forbidden, I hope a mod will kindly remove those links and inform me of the transgression...I think such links are allowed but I do make mistakes.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1965618624
That link leads to a topic on going thor early push into air tech swap. Kind of fun and works well post patch: the early thor is not meant to win the game just deal some damage and make the Protoss spam zealots and immortals.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1869409550?page=1
That link leads to a topic specifically discussing the viability of Thor post 1.2
The replays are on page 2
Enjoy and happy gaming!
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has anyone else had success using this against other races? I really like it against terran, against terran I like to wall off and use a bunker, just incase of a rine rush.
same with zerg, but its is very successfull against all races I find. I dont thnik of this strat as a Toss only strat.
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Does this build/strategy still work after the patch that increased the threat for repairing SCVs?
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On February 03 2011 19:56 DayDay87 wrote:
Does this build/strategy still work after the patch that increased the threat for repairing SCVs?
yes it does still work for me, but the successrate is lower than before the patch. but im still winning over 50% of my tvps where i use this build.
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On February 03 2011 21:52 Black Gun wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 19:56 DayDay87 wrote:
Does this build/strategy still work after the patch that increased the threat for repairing SCVs? yes it does still work for me, but the successrate is lower than before the patch. but im still winning over 50% of my tvps where i use this build.
50% win rate is pretty sad if ur using a specialized strat..no offense lol..u mite as well use a generic BO.
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Mass chargelots are effective vs both marines and SCVs, backed up by a void ray or two I think this kind of push wouldn't be able to do much damage.
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Noobie question about scv's and repairing (with any mech, be it thors, tanks, etc).
I tend to highlight my entire army and attack move.. (I know I know, I should be hotkeying my unit groups!)
But until I learn to do so... if I throw in SCV's into my army mix, and just click auto-repair, and then a-move the entire army... will the scv's be auto-repairing, or will they try to attack if the whole group is selected?
Thanks!
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I don't think this works very well after the patch as said before. Someone just tried this on me yesterday and got denied pretty badly and I won the game.
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On February 09 2011 00:21 YakiSOBA wrote:
Noobie question about scv's and repairing (with any mech, be it thors, tanks, etc).
I tend to highlight my entire army and attack move.. (I know I know, I should be hotkeying my unit groups!)
But until I learn to do so... if I throw in SCV's into my army mix, and just click auto-repair, and then a-move the entire army... will the scv's be auto-repairing, or will they try to attack if the whole group is selected?
Thanks!
They'll attack if they have nothing to repair, but as soon as there's something available for them to repair, they'll do that instead of attacking a unit. So yeah, basically they'll act as medics for your mech if you A-move with them.
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Awesome! Very very very glad to hear
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It's still a viable strat, if you see the Protoss has the counter to your army, don't push up the ramp and delay his expo as long as possible while your getting your own. Eventually pull back, drop 2-3 more rax with two reactors and do marine/marauder since he'll probably only have gateway and immortals. (collosus off one base is lol and he won't risk teching to HT's)
Also I wouldn't bring more than 5-6 Scv's for repair
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thors can be very useful for containment, just drop two bunkers if he has a hard counter and expo yourself
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You should always upgrade +attack on your thors over +armor
A +0/0 thor does 30+30 damage 60 total
+1/0 thor does 35+35 damage 70 total
+2/0 thor does 40+40 damage 80 total
+3/0 thor does 45+45 edmage 90 total
+3 attack upgrades increase thor damage to ground from 60 to 90, a increase of 50%? holy crap. its rare for any unit in this game to get that much of a percentage damage increase from upgrades. for example a zealot goes from 16 to 22 damage with 3 attack upgrades, a bonus of less than 50% and a higher percentage of zealot attack damage is knocked off with enemy armor than thors attacks
a stalker goes from 10(14) to 13(17) damage with 3 attack upgrades. a increase of only 30% to unarmored and even less of a percentage against armored.
you will not be massing thors in tvz or tvt. in both of those matchups you may get a couple thors however in both of those matchups you will always want to upgrade mech attack (for siege tanks) over mech armor every time
so the only matchup where this is in question is in TvP
in TvP do you upgrade thor attack or thor armor???
the best situation in tvp if you upgraded armor on thors is when zealots are attacking your thors. because armor hurts zealots the most of any protoss unit (except carriers which will not arrive)
however even against zealots +attack is better than +armor.
with +3 armor you can bring +3attack zealot damage from 20 to 14 against your thors, a benefit of i dont know how many percentage
or with +3 armor upgrades you can make your thors deal 90 damage to zealots, essentially 2shotting them
another reason why you shouldnt worry about zealots is because against protoss you want to lead with your thors (because they shred gateway units) with your marines behind the thors
once zealots charge in on your thors, your marines and thors will quickly vaporize all the zealots. next you will be fighting collossi and stalkers with your thors and marines. keep your marines behind your thors and your thors should 2shot all of the stalkers quickly.
the collossi must use their 9range to kite the thors because if any collossi get within 7range of a thor they will die to strike cannons. the problem is thors with +attack upgrades simply incinerate gateway armies so quickly that the thors will keep backing up until there is nowhere left to run behind the toss base then they get cannoned
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On February 09 2011 16:54 roymarthyup wrote:
You should always upgrade +attack on your thors over +armor
A +0/0 thor does 30+30 damage 60 total
+1/0 thor does 35+35 damage 70 total
+2/0 thor does 40+40 damage 80 total
+3/0 thor does 45+45 edmage 90 total
+3 attack upgrades increase thor damage to ground from 60 to 90, a increase of 50%? holy crap. its rare for any unit in this game to get that much of a percentage damage increase from upgrades. for example a zealot goes from 16 to 22 damage with 3 attack upgrades, a bonus of less than 50% and a higher percentage of zealot attack damage is knocked off with enemy armor than thors attacks
a stalker goes from 10(14) to 13(17) damage with 3 attack upgrades. a increase of only 30% to unarmored and even less of a percentage against armored.
you will not be massing thors in tvz or tvt. in both of those matchups you may get a couple thors however in both of those matchups you will always want to upgrade mech attack (for siege tanks) over mech armor every time
so the only matchup where this is in question is in TvP
in TvP do you upgrade thor attack or thor armor???
the best situation in tvp if you upgraded armor on thors is when zealots are attacking your thors. because armor hurts zealots the most of any protoss unit (except carriers which will not arrive)
however even against zealots +attack is better than +armor.
with +3 armor you can bring +3attack zealot damage from 20 to 14 against your thors, a benefit of i dont know how many percentage
or with +3 armor upgrades you can make your thors deal 90 damage to zealots, essentially 2shotting them
another reason why you shouldnt worry about zealots is because against protoss you want to lead with your thors (because they shred gateway units) with your marines behind the thors
once zealots charge in on your thors, your marines and thors will quickly vaporize all the zealots. next you will be fighting collossi and stalkers with your thors and marines. keep your marines behind your thors and your thors should 2shot all of the stalkers quickly.
the collossi must use their 9range to kite the thors because if any collossi get within 7range of a thor they will die to strike cannons. the problem is thors with +attack upgrades simply incinerate gateway armies so quickly that the thors will keep backing up until there is nowhere left to run behind the toss base then they get cannoned
This is not a good analysis because you haven't considered the repair rate. The thors are tanking damage for a longer time with armor upgrade and can thus be repaired for a longer time, adding more HP for the terran side, which in turn results in more damage for the terran side in the long run.
I'm not saying armor is better at all times. If you have a superior T army the attack is better. If you dont use scv's for repair attack is better.
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the problem is that the effect of armor, in particular in combination with repair, is nonlinear.
lets for example assume that 6 zealots are attacking a thor, thats 84 dam per 1.2 seconds. lets assume that the scvs repair the thor by 54 hps per 1.2 seconds.
this yields an effective dam of 30 per attack, which means that the zealots will take 1.2*10*1.333 = 16 seconds to kill the thor. now lets assume the thor has +1 armor upgrade. this means that the zealots will do 72 damage instead. this means that the effective dam after repair shrinks from 30 to 18. it now takes the zealots 26.66 seconds to kill the thor. thats an increase of 26.666/16 = 1.666. this means the survivability of the thor has increased by 66% by the one armor upgrade.
now lets assume the thor gets an additional armor upgrade, +2 armor. the zealots now do 60 damage, and 6 after repair. this means it takes them 80 seconds to kill the thor. 80/26.6666 = 3. this means that the second armor upgrade increases the survivability of the thor by 200% compared to the thor with only one armor upgrade. this is a higher increase than from zero to one upgrade. with +3 armor, the zealots would not be able to kill the thor at all.
in general, the formula is the following:
time to kill a unit = hps/(dps - rps),
where hps denots the units hit points, dps denotes the dam per second factoring in all upgrades and rps denotes the repair per second.
more generally, the effect of armor is a function of the form
c1/(x - armoreffect - c2),
which is clearly nonlinear in the variable "armoreffect". the real problem ofc is that the dps of the opposing army is diminishing during a battle, so that the nonlinearity effect of repaired units doesnt play a large role early on, but tends to increase over time. a good example is the case of 2thor pushes before the patch. the opponents army was dwindling while the scvs remained repairing. at the end of the fight, he was left with too few units to kill off the thor. all the single units coming out from then on were not able to break the repair and got destroyed. armor upgrades speed up this process to the point where the nonlinearity kicks in significantly.
to sum it up, this means that armor upgrades have the potential to yield infinite raise of efficiency, but they also have the potential to not do a lot. attack upgrades on the other hand have a constant effect on the efficiency of your army, but in general they only help if they reduce the amount of hits needed to kill a particular unit. the effect of armor upgrades, in particular if combined with repair, also depends on how quickly you kill off the opponent´s army´s firepower. this means that the question of whether attack or armor upgrades are better depends on the numbers and type of units on both sides of the battle aswell as on the attack and armor upgrades on both sides.
tldr: there´s no general answer, and a comprehensive mathematical analysis is rather complicated, far too complicated to treat it in a short forum post.
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i think the key to handleing this build is to make sure that you dont engade the thor on a ramp
either wait at your natureal or wait for the thor to come into your base and a zealot heave army would be able to win since the scvs are also auto attacked
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Hey man, I use a similar build in all TvX matchups, it goes a little like this:
10 supply depot
12 barracks
13 refinery
15 refinery
17 marine
17 supply depot
20 factory
21 marine
23 armoury
23 starport
23 reactor
23 hellion
25 supply depot
25 tech lab
25 thor
31 medivac-medivac
35 orbital command center
35 supply depot
35 thor
43 supply depot
43 tank-marine
49 tank-dropship-marine
49 supply depot
50 supply depot
55 marine
57 tank-dropship-dropship-marine
marine-siege mode
command center
currently 120:40 in masters league using this strat.
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On February 10 2011 03:44 eXwOn wrote:
Hey man, I use a similar build in all TvX matchups, it goes a little like this:
10 supply depot
12 barracks
13 refinery
15 refinery
17 marine
17 supply depot
20 factory
21 marine
23 armoury
23 starport
23 reactor
23 hellion
25 supply depot
25 tech lab
25 thor
31 medivac-medivac
35 orbital command center
35 supply depot
35 thor
43 supply depot
43 tank-marine
49 tank-dropship-marine
49 supply depot
50 supply depot
55 marine
57 tank-dropship-dropship-marine
marine-siege mode
command center
currently 120:40 in masters league using this strat.
What do you with the units? Rush? Drop? Pressure?
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On February 10 2011 03:47 SecretA5DC wrote:
What do you with the units? Rush? Drop? Pressure?
After the hellion is done, harass and scout. The hellion can only be at their base for 10 seconds, this is enough time to make them change their tech patch, stops baneling busts, and can delay fourgate. Bring the hellion back to base after the 10 seconds(it meets up with the rest of the build).
Take the first thor, two marines, hellion, and four workers and do a drop, this should land at 6:53 (median for most maps)
be conservative, don't loose that thor, pull back if necessary.
Once the last of the tank medivacs are done, load a total of 6 scvs and your force in the dropships and go for a second drop. Build two bunkers in their main. Siege should finish just as you land.
The second drop should happen at about 10:00ish
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On February 10 2011 03:58 eXwOn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 03:47 SecretA5DC wrote:
What do you with the units? Rush? Drop? Pressure? After the hellion is done, harass and scout. The hellion can only be at their base for 10 seconds, this is enough time to make them change their tech patch, stops baneling busts, and can delay fourgate. Bring the hellion back to base after the 10 seconds(it meets up with the rest of the build). Take the first thor, two marines, hellion, and four workers and do a drop, this should land at 6:53 (median for most maps) be conservative, don't loose that thor, pull back if necessary. Once the last of the tank medivacs are done, load a total of 6 scvs and your force in the dropships and go for a second drop. Build two bunkers in their main. Siege should finish just as you land. The second drop should happen at about 10:00ish
Sounds good, I'll give it a go. Got any replays?
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On February 10 2011 04:09 SecretA5DC wrote:
Sounds good, I'll give it a go. Got any replays?
Yup, I'm at school right now, so I can edit this post to contain one in about eight hours.
PS: I'm new to this forum, is it considered BM to have more than one quote in a quote?
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On February 10 2011 04:14 eXwOn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 04:09 SecretA5DC wrote:
Sounds good, I'll give it a go. Got any replays? Yup, I'm at school right now, so I can edit this post to contain one in about eight hours. PS: I'm new to this forum, is it considered BM to have more than one quote in a quote?
no, they get put in spoiler tags automatically.
btw is this ur profile?
http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/2276670/eXwOn
still diamond according to sc2ranks, but the winrate is indeed impressive. id be very grateful for replays aswell. your variation of a 2thor opening sounds interesting and potentially less all-inish than the one described in the OP.
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I've been reading post after post, But haven't really seen any mention of this. And excuse me if it's been said already.
Would a gas before rax make this build faster, to get the factory building asap? I would love to try this, but it would be interesting to see if this makes any difference. Anyone know the math?
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Alrighty, I couldn't find any on my hard drive, so I went on ladder with my most recent account and did it. Here is it:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/137279-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis#rd:units
I could make excuses about this match, but I won't. To be honest, I was sloppy. Cleaned up it works much better, which I'm sure you can do.
Edit: If you get a refinery before barracks you would have to cut scv production so you can afford it in minerals. Otherwise, use as directed.
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If the protoss is 2 gate expanding, then the observer should spot one base all in and toss should cancel expo and go 4 gate robo or 3 gate collussus or get dark temps, they are all viable. And void ray might work now with the bonus v massive but I'm not sure
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On February 10 2011 07:55 BananaSlap wrote:
I've been reading post after post, But haven't really seen any mention of this. And excuse me if it's been said already.
Would a gas before rax make this build faster, to get the factory building asap? I would love to try this, but it would be interesting to see if this makes any difference. Anyone know the math?
it would cost tons of minerals through less scvs working on minerals early on and through a delayed orbital. this would cost tons of marines for the push. additionally, gas before rax means that u wont have a marine out to chase his probe away for a long long time, so he spots u going tech very early on and can prepare accordingly.
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On February 10 2011 10:35 eXwOn wrote:Alrighty, I couldn't find any on my hard drive, so I went on ladder with my most recent account and did it. Here is it: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/137279-1v1-terran-zerg-metalopolis#rd:unitsI could make excuses about this match, but I won't. To be honest, I was sloppy. Cleaned up it works much better, which I'm sure you can do. Edit: If you get a refinery before barracks you would have to cut scv production so you can afford it in minerals. Otherwise, use as directed.
It would be awesome if you could get a few more of those replays man, defenitely interested in making this bo my main.
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I hit this build all the time on the ladder. 3 Gate Robo expand stops it no problem. I start producing more Immortals and Zealots once my Observer scouts the build. I have two Immortals and a bunch of Zealots out when the build hits, with a third Immortal on the way. Even with Strike Cannons killing the two initial Immortals, I've never had an issue holding. Just micro your Immortals back so the Thors are forced to move forward to Strike Cannon them. Then when the Thors actually do Strike Cannon, your Zealots will be right next to the Thors and get a ton of free hits.
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On February 10 2011 12:45 Black Gun wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2011 07:55 BananaSlap wrote:
I've been reading post after post, But haven't really seen any mention of this. And excuse me if it's been said already.
Would a gas before rax make this build faster, to get the factory building asap? I would love to try this, but it would be interesting to see if this makes any difference. Anyone know the math? it would cost tons of minerals through less scvs working on minerals early on and through a delayed orbital. this would cost tons of marines for the push. additionally, gas before rax means that u wont have a marine out to chase his probe away for a long long time, so he spots u going tech very early on and can prepare accordingly.
Thanks for the help. I have been trying both ways, and with early gas i can have 2 thors out and attacking at 8 mninute mark, but the added rines maks a lot of sense, and would help to really make it a sneak attack. Thanks for the help.
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It makes no sense to me why you delay your orbital command so late. Why not invest in it early? One mule will pay it back, and you'll probably be on your third mule by the time you actually get the OC.
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On February 09 2011 16:54 roymarthyup wrote:
You should always upgrade +attack on your thors over +armor
A +0/0 thor does 30+30 damage 60 total
+1/0 thor does 35+35 damage 70 total
+2/0 thor does 40+40 damage 80 total
+3/0 thor does 45+45 edmage 90 total
Wait what? Thors get +3 per attack per upgrade, not 5
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Thanks cant wait to try it out. I have been finding out that thors are pretty crucail for dealing with protoss. THis is another great example.
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Well i'm loving this build. it seems like everyone on the ladder is playing toss, but each time i do this build they either rage quit or say how terran is so OP, lol. it's kind of nice being able to so perfectly counter a 4 gate robo.
One addition that i've made to this build is if it's a really small map i've gone with a fast 1 marine 2 marader with concosive shell to scout and kill a few workers. messes with them and they assume that i'm fast expanding. Just after 9 minutes of play time i'm back in his base with the 2 thors a bunch of marines and my scv's. lol I love it.
Has any one else tried this. (ps i'm a low gold but quickly moving up
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On February 11 2011 05:55 [Atomic]Peace wrote:
I hit this build all the time on the ladder. 3 Gate Robo expand stops it no problem. I start producing more Immortals and Zealots once my Observer scouts the build. I have two Immortals and a bunch of Zealots out when the build hits, with a third Immortal on the way. Even with Strike Cannons killing the two initial Immortals, I've never had an issue holding. Just micro your Immortals back so the Thors are forced to move forward to Strike Cannon them. Then when the Thors actually do Strike Cannon, your Zealots will be right next to the Thors and get a ton of free hits.
That works, but only if the Terran being not very smart or suuuuper eager to kill you Immortals
Most people will just let the immortals sit in the back and do nothing, their range is 2 shorter than the Thors.
TL;DR Immortals have 2 choices, sit back and do nothing, or eat a strikecannon
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the replays dont show the highest calibre of play, having said that would flawless macro have made much of a difference?
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people still do this since the patch? seems pretty auto-loss if the protoss observer scouts you before 7 minutes O_O
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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
I've won my past 10 games doing just this build. i'm not diamond but i played 3 toss diamonds and this killed them, no problem. one thing that I always look for is the observer. just before my first thor pops is when it has usually just entered my base. the scan i feel is worth it to keep the element of surprise. and with my armory hidden, no real info was learned. now i just need a zerg build.
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Personally I hit with two thors at around 7 min 35 s - 8 min. During that time im constantly pouring marines out of one rax and should have about 12 with two thors. I pull about 10 scvs to repair as well.
I find that this strategy is great especially if you have 250 mm cannons. Proper micro of your marines is important because they deal the extra damage
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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.
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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 .
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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 :/
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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).
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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.
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How does protoss deal with this?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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If you've went a regular 2/3 gate robo you should have an observer+immortal out in time to scout this.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Thor rushes mainly became less viable after rapairing SCVs gained the same threat priority as what they're repairing. Prior to this change, zealots, probes and any other melee unit ran in circles trying to find surface area on the the thor rather than fighting.
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On July 04 2011 07:13 PaleRider09 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2011 04:58 goFLiP wrote: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.
Hey. This build isn't really practical because the ability to strike cannon immortals so they don't just kill the thors is quite integral to its success.
Because of the energy changes, the initial push can be significantly delayed unless you go in without the cannon on one of your thors and any subsequent waves are delayed as well, and you generally lose the ability to take down any immortals that are created while the battle is going on as the thor will die before the cannon recharges.
Also, thors are generally somewhat worse against protoss than before because they are vulnerable to high templar feedbacks.
Edit: While the SCV change did make thors a bit less effective, thor rushes were still quite good - the streamer Trump was winning in masters with a thor rush against toss until the energy patch.
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Post-patch, I started working on variation of this build. Obviously, strike cannons are no longer worth it, so I instead invest the gas I would've spent researching it (150g) on ghosts, pushing out with 2 thors, 2 ghosts, 8 scvs, and a gaggle of marines. It hits maybe 30 seconds later, but you have two EMPs ready to go, and the ghosts definitely contribute to overall DPS against zealots and sentries.
It still isn't as strong as the original version in the old patch, but if you catch your opponent's army out in the open (i.e. in the middle of the map or by their natural), it's pretty strong. If you engage at your opponent's ramp and they have decent micro then it can still get stopped pretty hard; your marines need to be able to burn down the immortals right after the EMP hits in order for this to work.
I've since switched to a macro build vs. toss, so I haven't really developed or practiced the 2 ghost variation much, but I think it might have some potential, especially in BoX series, when you want to catch your opponent off guard.
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On July 06 2011 22:47 Thunderflesh wrote:
Post-patch, I started working on variation of this build. Obviously, strike cannons are no longer worth it, so I instead invest the gas I would've spent researching it (150g) on ghosts, pushing out with 2 thors, 2 ghosts, 8 scvs, and a gaggle of marines. It hits maybe 30 seconds later, but you have two EMPs ready to go, and the ghosts definitely contribute to overall DPS against zealots and sentries.
It still isn't as strong as the original version in the old patch, but if you catch your opponent's army out in the open (i.e. in the middle of the map or by their natural), it's pretty strong. If you engage at your opponent's ramp and they have decent micro then it can still get stopped pretty hard; your marines need to be able to burn down the immortals right after the EMP hits in order for this to work.
I've since switched to a macro build vs. toss, so I haven't really developed or practiced the 2 ghost variation much, but I think it might have some potential, especially in BoX series, when you want to catch your opponent off guard.
I would imagine that would be quiet strong on the smaller maps due to increased flexibility of everything in the comp. Though depending on your build specifics, you'll prolly have issues vs 1 base since it sounds like you're delaying your beefy Thor tech for faster Ghosts.
Maybe it would be worth going heavy ghost/bio with 1 Thor (to tank and kill forcefields).
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On July 06 2011 23:06 Antisocialmunky wrote:
Maybe it would be worth going heavy ghost/bio with 1 Thor (to tank and kill forcefields).
Thats a pretty interesting idea actually, since you need the armory for upgrades anyway, and you dont use your factory, adding one or two Thors lategame vs Protoss to beark forcefield could be nice. I guess the downside is the loss of mobility
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Still sort of works if you catch a zerg off guard haha
I used to(before all the "nerfs") against zerg's and tos
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EPT
