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In PvT I seem to have the most trouble against this comp. I feel the best way to beat it is to not play it. If i see they are going early tech I usually do some 3 gate pressure and try and win the game there, but I don't invest too much into the early game instead I just expand behind the pressure. It doesn't always go that way, but anyways, once it gets into mid-late game and im playing against the fucking Marine, siege banschee raven it tends to be either some kind of one base or two base all in and I don't know what to do against it. It really pisses me off.
I tend towards a more gateway heavy army against terran. I usually just have the robo for observers and an occasional immortal. What pisses me off is that once they get past the 8 min mark I can't seem to attack into their base because they have siege mode and their bunker'd in. So, I try and just expand while they're turtling which works. But when it comes down to their all-in, I'm not sure what kind of unit composition I need to beat their comp. I usually try and go with a stalker heavy army with blink and avoid their tanks, but when I have to do a full frontal engagement I get fucked. Any advice on how to deal with Terran's bullshit all-in's of this sort?
I posted the replay down below, but I just realized that you can edit your post, so as I said below, don't make fun for the embarrassing micro mistakes in the replay, but here it is so you don't have to search the thread for it.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125772-1v1-terran-protoss-jungle-basin
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If they do banshee marine and siege tank a sizeable ball of chargelots and stalkers should do fine. Keep up on scouting regularly, one or two void rays trolling around the map for tanks out of position really helps.
Or if you prefer robo play get some LOLossus with range upgrade, harass the frontlines just out of tank range then pull back.
That and not doing a full frontal assault is best for your well being
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Tank, Banshee, raven requires a lot gas, kill him/hurt him before he expands to keep his army size pathetically small, or do everything you can to stop him from expanding and getting his extra gases.
Also if he just stays on one base and is pumping 4 different units, 3 of which are very gas intensive, stay on one base yourself and just mass units, until you stop his first push, then expand
Also post a replay
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I play 2-1-1 vs this. All zealots + immortals plus however many phoenix you can chrono out by the 11 minute attack time.
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I play Terran, but I can give you a few ideas of what my weaknesses are when I go that comp.
Attacking that army head on is suicide most of the time (Unless you are ahead by like 50 supply or something). That being said, I think you have the right idea with the map control and expanding.
As for unit comp:
I would definitely invest in a colossus or 2, you don't need to spam them or anything, but the help clear out the marines. You already have the robo bay anyway.
Other option would be go 4 gateway and just pump more stalkers to hold the line.
As you get later into the game, the terran starts to run out of minerals (assuming you have map control so he can't really expand anymore). This is usually when he gets desperate and considering the all in to regain map control.
To prevent this, you need to wear down his army a bit more. Keep building more and more gateways and just keep warping in stalkers and zealots. A bunch of zealots with speed will decimate at least a tank or 2 before they die. By doing this, his all in becomes very weak.
Alternatively, if you have had a standoff and couldn't wear down his army without giving up map control, keep pumping out gateway units and building gateways, but get a stargate or 2 and make a handful of void rays. Begin to harass. If he has a ton of turrets, just kind of pick them off one at a time and make yourself a nice hole. you can get behind his tank line and do some serious damage. Then when he is crippled, you can rush the ground army in for the final blow.
Also some other tips. If you see him reposition his tanks, run in. Its a great time to punch a hole in his defense.
And sometimes you can avoid the PDD from the ravens. Send a few stalkers up, and when he launches, just step back. Sure, you can't move forward, but neither can he without taking alot more damage.
Hope this helps. I'm no expert protoss, but I figure if I were the terran in this situation, this is exactly what I would NOT want to see or be up against.
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3 gate expo with pressure right around when your expo goes up works great, you can generally snipe the tank and a decent amount of marines and completely delay their push.
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Ok... reluctantly I'm going to post the replay. I'm pretty embarassed about the number of mistakes I made in this game, but this comp has been frustrating me and it just threw me off, the whole effort felt futile. Anyways, I notice there are a couple points early game where I could have pushed in and won I know that. I think the chargelot / stalker comp sounds the most reasonable to me. Let me know what you guys think. Go easy on my horribad mistakes tho ; )
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/125772-1v1-terran-protoss-jungle-basin
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yes, and I am aware how dumb the last engagement was, but I saw the tanks unsieged and I meant to blink ontop of them. either way it was dumb, but like i said, this build really frustrates me.
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If you're going a gateway heavy composition you might want to try getting double forge and chronoing attack and armor upgrades. Banshees and marines are really hurt by the armor upgrade (ie. banshees have 2 shots/marines have low damage) and upgraded damage chargelots will tear through a terran marine heavy composition and are great against tanks. The ravens make stalkers a bad choice in great numbers as they are costly and nullified largely by PDD (as well as scaling poorly with upgrades). Don't omit stalkers entirely, just don't count on them killing many banshees when the banshee numbers start to get higher. The banshees really need to be countered by one port pheonix or archons/storms (fewer medivacs-->better storm) if you're good. If they have tanks and banshees/raven(s) then you have enough gas to get the robo for the critical obs., zealot legs, and a stargate for pheonix.
Conversely, you could just out expand them with the map control you have while they're teching.
So long as you can adequately defend the inevitable banshee harass (ie. obs. and stalkers/pheonix) why not just take a third?
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The POLT build. More commonly known as Marine/Banshee/Raven. Ultimately the most feared timing push a Protoss can face. You see the opening banshees and think, “STALKERS!!” but then shortly after a cute little Raven pops out and all of a sudden, “Oh great…PDD.” The push then comes and your stalkers are rendered almost useless. The marines tear through the stalkers and zealots, any immortals you had do almost no damage and the banshees clean up house.
The thing most capitalizing this build is the valuable PDD. Without that the attack is still deadly, however SO much less deadly than with the PDD. The only thing I have possibly come up with to deal with this push is to work off of the fast expansion build that I have stated above. When poking around with the first zealot and stalker, I see a bunker and some marines. That is an insta trigger to me saying, “Tech” or basically the POLT build. Hardly any Terran goes for fast Banshees and then doesn’t follow up with a Raven and marines. It’s pretty stupid not to. One of the keys to holding this off is to get the 2 extra gateways and 1 robo for an observer to hold off the possible cloaked banshees, but NOT OVERREACTING to the banshees. So many times I’ve seen players get SO many stalkers to kill off the banshees. In reality you only need a maximum of maybe 5 stalkers to deal with any sort of banshee harass that will come at you. You can then go into the base with the second observer you make to see how many starports are being used. If you only see one and a Raven you need to stop stalker production. Right when you see that Raven the only thing I have seemed to find to work is to automatically get a stargate so you can pump out phoenix’s. This seemingly random unit in PvT easily passes by peoples minds when they think of holding off this build. Usually people won’t even bother thinking to get a whole new tech tree knowing such a serious push is coming. However, phoenix’s do bonus damage to banshees meaning they die extremely quickly. They also drain PDD’s unbelievably fast with their two attacks. PLUS an even super generous bonus Blizzard has inputted is that marines DON’T autotarget phoenix. Phoenix have a smaller attack priority than the zealots running into their faces, meaning the phoenix’s are free to shoot down the PDD banshees AND raven unless focus fired by the Terran. While you are making the phoenix to get rid of the air threat of the POLT build you should be making primarily zealot/sentry out of your gateways. Zealots are amazing against marines especially with the +1 armor and the guardian shield AND force fields to keep the marines from running. Sentries also do not get blocked by PDD’s so if you can’t get enough phoenix out in time, or if they are focused down before they can do their full effect you can always focus the banshees with the sentries. This is an extremely micro intensive defense and requires some practice to get down right. Even with this defense in my mind I still get rolled over by cleverly timed pushes and different variations like with tanks or ghosts and the like. It’s an overall dreaded push that will luckily be made easier to deal with once the 10 second reduction buff comes into effect for the phoenix’s, allowing you to easily get a good enough amount for taking out the key aspect of this build, the PDD.
Taken from my guide written on another site.
(Mods don't like me linking it, so I just took this part out.)
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Your game wasn't that bad.
You probably could have thrown down some more gateways. You had a larger army most of the game, but then towards the end, he had more production buildings and he caught up.
When you both engaged in the middle, you had just about even armies, but he had an advantage with the PDD.
If you had dropped more gateways instead of the 4th expo and backed up to your expo, you might have survived the battle to take him over later. This way, you would have had your cannons backing your army up and you could constantly warp in reinforcements. Also, an upgrade or 2 might have increased your survivability.
I don't think he just overwhelmed you or anything, just he had a slight advantage with the PDD and caught you out of position. This gave him enough to crush your army.
Other than that, it looked like a pretty even fight.
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You had the game up until the last engagement.
A lot of games come down to control and positioning in the big battle.
You have to be very sure you have the far superior army if you're going to blink into the enemy. But I'm sure you already know this, just need to learn from it.
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If I see this thread every damn day...
Does it mean the build's unbalanced, or does it mean that Blizzard's probably going to nerf it like they did with reapers/motherships/void rays to oblivion?
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What's there to nerf? The counter's right there in this thread.
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Yeah, i agree. no need to nerf. It is just another build that one must learn to deal with. I think the most viable thing I've concluded form the advice in the thread and my own experience seems to be the zealot stalker sentry comp with some pheonix mixed in.
So what I'm thinking is after say 3 gates and two base fully saturated, I tend to put up a robo and a forge for upgrades (sometimes the dual forge and chrono boosting upgrades) Someone pointed out earlier that the armor upgrades were very good against marines and banschees. i was not aware. i usually used the dual forge vs a bio heavy army. Perhaps though, the dual forge isnt necessary and +1/+1 would suffice on two base. So after scouting the 2 tech lab starports throw down stargate and boost out pheonix? Maybe the way to counter such a mix of units is to create your own mix of units (makes sense).
So, with two base fully saturated, maybe you produce out of 5 gateways and a stargate with upgrades from a forge? Then it seems it comes down to the correct unit composition. I obviously botched the unit composition in my game. I'd say the correct unit composition after giving it some thought would be ground army: 4/2/1 (zealot/stalker/sentry). And have as many pheonix as you can get out for the main engagement?
On another note, is it worth teching to templar? IMO it seems to be too much to try and tech templar while going pheonix and upgrades. What do you guys think?
Also, I think it is best to avoid the main army and do as much damage in the spots where you can sneak in as much as you can as with any game, but there comes a time I think when you have to engage the army head on. Or is that not the case?
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True, but I'm just saying that I see threads like this so much that blizzard might nerf it anyway. It seems they're more flavor of the month now if anything; totally not balance.
If you don't think so, think reapers mothership and all T3. People just get mass t2 or t1. It's not right.
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Templar would be a great help (storm > marines, feedback > ravens and feedback even helps against banshees), but you really can't afford to pump out of a stargate while making templar unless you've expanded a ton, because of how gas-heavy that is.
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there was a youtube tutorial video about this. basically what gemini_19 said. fast expand after 1 or 2 gates. when you poke their wall and see only marines in a bunker, you get your first signal.
get 3 gate robo and send obs to scout.
when it's confirmed. get up to 5 gate stargate and citadel and charge. zealot sentry phoenix will deal with it easily.
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phoenix/zealot/immortal. And a lot of these comments are kind of weird. People suggesting chargelots+void rays or something is really just dumb. Getting a robo+a stargate+charge is just way too much, you want to be able to defend it with as little tech structures as possible.
I believe this push comes around the 8-9 minute mark, how in the world could you possibly get charge+void rays out by then unless you are heavy one basing, and one base protoss vs one base terran is just a very bad idea.
Also, expanding around 50 food is good vs this, not a super fast expo but you do need to expand vs this.
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zealot phoenix stalker sentry lift tanks kill marines
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EPT
