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Against the standard lings, banelings, muta mid-game Zerg play, Terran's response nowadays revolves around marines and tanks, which is a very powerful but also very delicate composition: not kiting well enough, taking a bad position, or sieging too late can oftentimes cost you the game. To solidify his army, the Terran player can add some thors, which are good against mutas (having range 10 and doing splash damage) and can sustain considerable damage from the banelings, although being weak against zerglings.
On the other hand, a good Zerg player will usually "magic box" his mutas, rendering the thor much less effective.
For that reason, a lot of Terran players prefer to stick to marines, tanks and medivacs alone.
But what about vikings?
Not your usual vikings, not the ones that fly by themselves all over the map to snipe overlords and drop on cliffs. Well, those vikings can be good too, of course, but are weak against a lot of the things Zerg can throw at them.
Basically, you're going to want to use your vikings as flying thors (or flying tanks), floating above your marine army.
First of all, let's do some comparing.
The cost:
Assuming we have a factory+tech lab versus a starport+reactor, and considering the cost of the supply, we find
Thor = 300 + (6/8 * 100) mins, 200 gas, 60 sec
Viking = 150 + (2/8 * 100) mins, 75 gas, 42/2 sec
The air attack to light:
Thor = 12 (+1 per upgrade) (x4); cooldown 3
Viking = 10 (+1) (x2); cooldown 2
The robustness
Thor = 400 HP + 1 (+1) armor
Viking = 125 HP + 0 (+1) armor
Here is a comparison based on 6 supply worth of units, i.e.: 3 vikings vs 1 thor
3 vikings cost 40% more minerals than a thor
3 vikings cost 12.5% more gas than a thor
3 vikings take 5% more time to build than a thor
Nevertheless, 3 vikings deal 87.5% more dps than a thor (+~2.7% per weapon upgrade point) (-~2.7% per muta armor point) when no splash damage occurs
Now, what does this tell us?
In fact, it doesn't tell us much, because the primary utility of the viking is neither in its dps nor in its robustness. Marine, here, are going to be your main damage dealers (and tanks are probably going to be the primary targets for the mutalisks).
1) We're primarily going to want vikings because of that range 9. This way, we keep the mutas at bay, so they can't easily pick on scatered units/reinforcements. If they come close too close to the vikings, the marines underneath start attacking, decimating them.
2) We're also going to want vikings for vision up the cliffs/spotting for our sieged tanks. Which thors cannot do.
3) We're going to want vikings to stop muta harassment in our own base. Once we have 2 or 3 bases, it gets harder for thors to defend against muta harass. Mutas will cycle between the main and the natural and take advantage of the slowness of our ground units and the fact that they have to funnel through the ramp. Vikings, on the other hand, are fast enough to defend two mineral lines, and will keep the mutas occupied until the marine force arrives (but don't engage directly the mutas until then, or the vikings will die).
Other reasons we might to choose vikings over thors:
1) It makes our army quicker. Remember vikings are 46.67% faster than thors.
2) Vikings don't take ground space, our marine ball thus moves more freely and we can kite banelings more easily.
3) If we're losing the battle, vikings can retreat much more easily than a thor can, being slow and easily surroundable by zerglings.
4) If we lose the ground war and win the air war (which tends to happen with banelings!), overlords become easy targets. We can also land our vikings to finish off the remaining Zerg ground forces.
5) At any moment we can harass overlords, or land and harass drones, if we see our opponent isn't defended well enough.
6) Vikings are decent against corruptors and excellent against broodlords, doing extra damage against armored air units. Thors are weak against both.
Reasons we might prefer thors over vikings:
1) Two words: splash damage. If your opponent doesn't magic box, choose thors against vikings any day of the week.
2) Thors are beefier any way you look at it.
3) Thors are undisputedly better than vikings when used as ground-to-ground units.
4) Those important upgrades for tanks will carry over to thors.
5) Strike cannons?
Misc things to note:
1) We do not want to mass vikings here. Do not forget that marines and tanks should remain the real damage dealers. As a rule of thumb, make 3 times more vikings than you would have thors at any point in the game. Unless of course you feel like transitioning to battlecruisers or something like that.
2) You can bind your marine ball and you viking fleet to the same hotkey.
3) If your opponent goes really heavy on mutas, of course, nothing prevents your from adding a thor to your vikings!
Any other advantages/disadvantages I've missed?
Thanks for reading!
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I used to have a build like this, a nifty tactic you can add in to this combo is to get a quick thorship with a few vikings, you use the thorship to snipe queens and then run the vikings in to kill overlords.
In the end vikings and thors is a bit of an investment. I think just marine+Tank+viking is very effective, Ive been watching Kawii Rices build in TvZ and he goes marine hellion(slight hellion) viking medivac to open. With a ton of vikings and marines and a turret or two muta harass is nearly impossible. This allows Kawii to get a fast 3rd. Once he saturates his third he throws down 3 facts and starts massing tank real quick and then pushes out and begins to rape the Z's expos. In one of the games I saw he actully used the viking ground mode to push, because armored vikings can soak up blings like a maruader, yet at the same time can actully dps lings like a marine, then he uses the marines for the AA.
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I think you have to look into the zerg's army comp, it is very useful t have one or two thors just two tank the damage and vikings so they can think twice in going muta harass. Usually from my experience when I fight against zerg with vikings I always have the vikings after the engagement so i use them for ovie hunting and keep building units.
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Back when TLO played Terran, I remember a game vs. Dimaga where he used some similar logic and went for mass vikings, killing any Mutas as they popped out and running away, and it sort of worked...
Fantastic thread, well-constructed and well thought out. Maybe we've been missing the most obvious counter to Mutalisks all along.
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The main interests of the thors are the splash damage, the range, and the ability to absorb banneling damage.
The range is great for defense, but not so much when you attack, because when you attack the zerg is forced to engage and enter the range of marines. Vikings don't absor banneling damage, they don't do splash damage, they really have only the range, but as I just said, it's not so much important when you attack.
In defensive mode, a single thor force the muta to magic box, and prevent the muta to snipe turrets. This is why thors are great to defend, and I don't think vikings can replace them. Against vikings + turrets, the muta will just snipe the turrets and fall back when the vikings come; and do it again, and again, exactly the same as a terran that has only marines and no vikings. Not to mention that the zerg may even be able to engage turrets + vikings.
True, the magic box render the thor much less effective, but it also render the muta less effective. This is why 1 or 2 thors are of great help, and can not be replaced by 3 or 6 vikings.
No need to have more than 2 thors, unless the terran is going for an almost full mecha army, in which case thors will have the ground upgrades, and viking will have no upgrades.
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Its been said before, but in a lot of games, the Zerg player will unintentionally, or intentionally, run by a Thor with clumped mutalisks. Its times like those when having a thor or two pay in spades. I think Thors with +2 weapons 2 hit mutalisks. So 2 thors with +2 is a pretty worthwhile investment in any TvZ.
I think incorporating a few thors into your composition is a good idea, for vision and some air superiority. I also think that it will become a new trend in TvZ
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Vikings get underestimated because they "suck against mutas" when their long range makes them very powerful with a marine ball underneath. This is just one of the amazing synergies you can get with the terran army. I think it would be better still having thors mixed in because after the muta ball gets softened up by a couple of thor hits the vikings will start killing them in one or two hits meanwhile the marines make it impossible for the mutas to engage.
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I really like this idea of incorporating vikings into our army comps. Once.i.hit.max.i.usually have around 3-5 thors in my army. Now i could instead put in 9-15 vikings and that would equal those thors but I was thinking about doing both. Cutting out 2 or 3 thors and adding in 6-9 vikings could have the best of both worlds I think just commuting to vikings might make you very weak to infestor which most zergs will have since they need the tech to get to hive. So a zerg seeing 9+ vikings might start cutting mutas for either corrupters or infestors both of which are good against a viking composition.
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I play a thor/banshee/marine build into viking/banshee/thor/marine at the 2300 Diamond level. When 1/1 armor is upgraded for both mutas and vikings, the vikings become cost effective because that extra armor helps negate the splash. Thus, later on, I start to get an air army.
However, comparing vikings to thors is not quite accurate because unless your plan is to go heavy air (like I do), vikings can't really do the job:
- Firstly, at 0/0, thors are better because they are very good at fending off harass (because they prevent focus fire).
- Next, if you plan to go MMM/tank, getting vikings is not that useful because they won't share the upgrade of the mech army. In this case, it's probably better to go thor.
- Magic box means that mutas can perform well against thors, but in the end, thors will still be cost-effective against them, whilst 0/0 vikings are not.
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I think it depends what you want to use as your comp.
If you want a more MMM focused army you could get vikings as well (as you have the starports for medivacs) and you dont want to start getting many facs for thors as you wanta more mobile force.
That being said if you want a tank heavy army thors are much better as the upgradees carry over from the tanks, and tanks are immobile anyway so thors aren't that big of a hider too your force.
I see this as being more of a stylitic choice, or even map based, if you want to abuse mobility and not have a huge army count or if you want that mass ball of distruction thats pretty versitile to anything zerg throws at you.
The only thing I could see having a bigger edge over thors is the fact that they can deal with broodlords better (without having to get double starport reactor when you scout the greater spire), but then whos gonna go broodlords when you have vikings?
I can see it working but I dont think its so much better then thors that every terran should rush towards it now.
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And then he stops building mutas and you have a ton of pretty useless vikings. Yes they can pick of overlords, but other than that and giving vision for tanks(Which medivacs can do) they are just big flying paper weights. But yeah, if he just keeps building mutas it might work.
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I like doing the usualy 1-1-1 opening, but instead of putting down tech lab and research cloak you go reactor and make vikings, and harass the shit out of some overlords. Ussauly u can snipe of atleast 3-4 of them, which is alot of supply to get back, and the vikings are usefull later on aswell.
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@Pl4t0: Why, thank you! I'm flattered.
@Elean: First, if you have good micro, long range is good for attacking. Siege tanks are the perfect example of that. You can "shoot and scoot" with your vikings (having 6 more range than mutas and being rather quick), retreating over the marine ball if they decide to attack. This way you can somewhat force the zerg to engage, which you cannot do with a thor. You're entirely correct in stating that splash damage is strong, even indirectly against magic boxing, but the fact that vikings deal 87% more dps for only about 30% of the cost (i.e. 3 vikings v 1 thor) does compensate this to some extent at least. Even with 3 attack upgrade for the thor, and 0 for the vikings, it still is 50% more dps.
As for the defensive mode, if the Zerg player has his magic-boxed mutas sitting over a turret, they will pretty much "snipe" it anyway (unless he has, like, more than 15... then be my guest and get a thor too!), and magic boxing over a mineral line does almost as much damage as stacking.
@Novachi: Well, that's precisely why, in this build, you don't get a ton of vikings. Only a few. Like I said, take the number of thors you would have, and multiply by 3. If your opponent transitions out of mutas, just go overlord hunting... and make more medivacs with your idle starport. Or take advantage of your air superiority and make banshees.
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On December 22 2010 01:49 jcroisdale wrote:
I really like this idea of incorporating vikings into our army comps. Once.i.hit.max.i.usually have around 3-5 thors in my army. Now i could instead put in 9-15 vikings and that would equal those thors but I was thinking about doing both. Cutting out 2 or 3 thors and adding in 6-9 vikings could have the best of both worlds I think just commuting to vikings might make you very weak to infestor which most zergs will have since they need the tech to get to hive. So a zerg seeing 9+ vikings might start cutting mutas for either corrupters or infestors both of which are good against a viking composition.
Vikings decimate corruptors. And I don't see how infestor is much better vs Viking than Thor, atleast Vikings make horrible neural parasite targets.
And as it's been said before Vikings standing infront of marines is going to shred lingbling to pieces.
I still think just for pure anti muta Thor is the way to go but tank/Viking is an easier composition to make mineral/gas wise than tank/Thor... I would think ideally youd want some of both, you'll have the tech for both anyways.
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@Novachi: Well, that's precisely why, in this build, you don't get a ton of vikings. Only a few. Like I said, take the number of thors you would have, and multiply by 3. If your opponent transitions out of mutas, just go overlord hunting... and make more medivacs with your idle starport. Or take advantage of your air superiority and make banshees.
I guess, but i think if he changed into roach/hydra you would have a window of time where you are weak, but yes i see your point and it will probably work if you have the needed micro
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I think thors are better in a marine/tank composition because it makes it so I can't snipe tanks without my mutas all getting hit by thor splash. If there was just vikings I think it would be much easier to snipe tanks with my mutas then thors.
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I think it depends on what the Zerg is doing.
Sometimes Zergs try to go light on muta, either because they are teching and went baneling heavy, or got a few infestors, etc.
They can do clever things like rush the baneling to get the marines to run back, and then pick off tanks with like 5 or 6 mutas. I think if you're emphasizing raw ground speed, a few vikings would def. be better against a zerg composition like that over a slow thor, as long as you protect them.
Against a Zerg who is MASSING muta, I can only see Vikings as a liability. In the mu I feel the only time it's worth it to make them is if you have a decent chance of holding the air for a bit. If you think they're about to spam mutas down, they're not a great investment.
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I think I'm not being clear enough here.
Maybe I shouldn't have compared vikings to thors in the first place...?
Think about your marines + vikings ball as marines with range 9 to air. For the most part, that's basically all there is to it.
We don't even need thors in TvZ in the first place. Many a pro never gets them. Why? Mainly because they're slow. And because marines deal perfectly fine with mutalisks, when the mutas aren't harassing all around.
Vikings just let you control a greater aerial area around your marines, somewhere between 100% and 250% more surface I'd say. And this is why you don't want a lot of vikings. Just enough so that the Zerg cannot ignore them without paying a decent cost. It's all about baiting the mutas to your marines; not trying to outmass the mutas with vikings.
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Nice OP.
Can someone please explain to me how mutas vs Thor mechanic works. I went in the unit tester had 9 mutas and a Thor. I took my mutas and right clicked on the Thor aka focus fire and they don't take AOE damage, only one of them came out damaged. The only way I could stack mutas was to select them and click inside the box which makes them stack momentarily but they'll take formation very soon again. Why stacking is good anyway ? Everyone is telling that the Thor has AOE but I've never seen mutas in a clump even if my thor got focused down. Thanks for the help
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I usually go heavy heavy thor, but I am forced to push before hive tech. If I put a little more money into vikings instead of thors I can push more slowly with tanks/rines and not worry about broodlords.
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vikings benefit from upgrades a TON against mutas (this has to do with the range 9/crit mass thing). A quick thor or 2 is probably a better response than vikings to early mutas (when you're on 1-2 bases), but getting a ball of vikings (with upgrades) is probably better later on when you have to defend multiple locations.
Nevertheless, thors are also far more effective on the ground agianst things like roaches and hydras.
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The advantage of going starport IMO is not vikings vs thors but the fact that ravens are easily mixed in. PDD stops mutas dead cold (so it makes a push into the natural, for example, VERY strong because the Zerg player is pretty much forced to engage badly or let it die) and Ravens provide mobile detection and nullify burrow.
Vikings compared to thors are roughly equal, I think. Vikings are a bit more mobile, but the range is similar and the damage output, in the end, is similar, because thor shots often get lucky while viking damage is more consistent.
Vikings tend to last longer, though, at least once you have a small group of them.
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Disadvantage is that mutas do clump up occasionally, and if two clump up thor wins in damage done, and the fact that vikings are better against zerg than thors if the zerg ONLY gets mutas.
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I am really liking vikings with maybe like 1thor, tanks and hellions. This makes efficient use of all your tech structures and is a really awesome and versatile combo. Also if he pulls a tech switch he is going to need hydras to fight vikings and vikings are NOT bad against hydras for cost (And they get owned by hellions). The key to this strategy is +1armor for vikings. When you get +1armor for vikings they beat mutas for cost. When you beat all the mutas, its OL hunting time. Also dropping 10 vikings on a mineral line is destruction, queen dies instantly and then kills alot of drones.
I find the biggest issue with thors these days is that the zerg just keeps making his muta ball bigger to the point where if you don't keep all your thors together they can get sniped or as soon as you move out, he comes in and kills your expansion, your thors are too slow to do much, maybe you can kill his 3rd or 4th, but by then your expansion is dead too and you can't retreat or split up your army because then your gonna get owned by mutas.
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On December 23 2010 00:56 farseerdk wrote:
vikings benefit from upgrades a TON against mutas (this has to do with the range 9/crit mass thing). A quick thor or 2 is probably a better response than vikings to early mutas (when you're on 1-2 bases), but getting a ball of vikings (with upgrades) is probably better later on when you have to defend multiple locations.
Nevertheless, thors are also far more effective on the ground agianst things like roaches and hydras.
Attack upgrades on vikings do scale better than attack upgrades on thors:
The cost of a vikings is roughly 0.43 the cost of a thor, if you consider mineral, gas and supply cost (but not building time). Thus, for every thor, you get 2.3 vikings.
Vikings shoot twice every two seconds = 1 / sec. Thus, 2.3 vikings has a rate of 2.3 / sec.
Thors shoot four times every three seconds = 1.33 / sec.
Which means that for every attack upgrade, you get a bonus of 2.3 / 1.33 = ~1.7 dps (per 1 thor equivalent) bonus for choosing vikings over thors.
According to the same logic, though, upgrading armor for mutalisk with benefit more against vikings than against thors.
Armor upgrades on vikings will also be of greater benefit than armor upgrades on thors, simply because the thor starts with 1 armor, whilst the viking starts with none. But this is a false argument, since 2.3 vikings are still much more fragile than a single thor.
This is because the thor needs to be robust, being so immobile. Vikings, on the other hand, can much more easily retreat to safety.
But, as many people have stated, including myself, the major concern remains that you'll probably want to upgrade vehicule weapon and armor for your tanks first, which will benefit thors. Altought ship armor upgrade isn't bad at all if you're going heavy medivacs.
The way I see it, upgrades for your vikings are only mildly important in this build. Vikings will neither been the main damage dealers nor the main targets of your army.
What is much more important, on the other hand, since you can focus fire with vikings, is having enough of them to one-shoot a mutalisk. Which means 6 or 7 vikings at 0 upgrade.
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EPT
