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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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just wondering how long does it take for 3-4 sentries to kill off PDD?
If it's not that long, you don't really need to go Stargate since your unit composition most of the time has sentries in it. I like to go Zealots/Stalkers/Immortal/Sentries with an observer behind my army. Make sure it's behind your army because Terran tend to scan and focus fire the observer with their marines. If it does take a long time, then yes, your best option is to get some phoenixes out. Phoenixes do help in numerous ways against this build buy killing off the PDD, Raven, Banshee, and lifting up the backbone of the ground army, the tanks. But yes, you want to expand once you see this build b/c it does take a long time for the Terran to build that army up.
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Void/phoenix/zealot/sentry demolishes this composition
Emphasis on the zealot/phoenix
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On January 09 2011 15:47 FearTHeFrO wrote:
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.
this move does not come around the 8-9 minute mark. it comes at 11 minutes.
early expo is necessary. if not he contains you and it's even worse.
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On January 09 2011 13:54 wargasm wrote:
What's there to nerf? The counter's right there in this thread.
They're actually not really nerfing it, but buffing the defense. Phoenix's have 10 less seconds of build time now to help deal with this push. Once the new patch comes out as long as you scout the build you can easily hold it off.
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Ok, so I understand the unit composition that you're aiming for. So say you either FE on 27 or 3 gate expand just a bit later, you throw up a robo bay and scout exactly what they're doing around 8 mins or so. To me, it seems that you ought to be on 2 bases for when this push comes because it does not seem logical to me to try and defend this push on one base.
So, you're on 2 bases with what? 3gate / 1 robo / 1stargate? and then add on a couple more gates as soon as possible? I feel like you're not going to be fully saturated at both bases by the time the push comes (approx 11 min mark). Which is why I feel like you should be producing out of 3gate 1 stargate rather than the 5 gate 1 stargate?
Does this make sense?
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On January 10 2011 07:45 Acridice wrote:
Ok, so I understand the unit composition that you're aiming for. So say you either FE on 27 or 3 gate expand just a bit later, you throw up a robo bay and scout exactly what they're doing around 8 mins or so. To me, it seems that you ought to be on 2 bases for when this push comes because it does not seem logical to me to try and defend this push on one base.
So, you're on 2 bases with what? 3gate / 1 robo / 1stargate? and then add on a couple more gates as soon as possible? I feel like you're not going to be fully saturated at both bases by the time the push comes (approx 11 min mark). Which is why I feel like you should be producing out of 3gate 1 stargate rather than the 5 gate 1 stargate?
Does this make sense?
I have about 3gate/robo/stargate. Not really producing out of the robo unless I can. But I can have a decently saturated double base by the time this comes. Obviously this push is still extremely deadly even if you react to it perfectly, but this is the best way to deal with it. 1 base vs this is just gg.
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You had only stalker/sentry. Sadly that beats nothing.
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Oh, thanks for your input KingofGods. As i said previously, I was frustrated by that point and was not playing well. But keep contributing your positive input!
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I agree with negative Zero - templar are an excellent choice. You already say you like to go gateway units - so don't change that so much. Just try to transition Chargelots- > Templar. Chargelots will help a lot against siege and marines (try to get an armor upgrade or two as you will be dealing the damage mainly with templar. Use the templar to feedback the raven /pdd and banshees (works really well on fully charged banshees and ravens - 1 shots them. You can also storm the banshees if they clump together. I'd suggest getting stalkers and 1-2 sentries for ff/guardian shield. Shield does nothing to seige but it'll really cut marine's dmg. Dump the rest of the gas into obs (i'd make 2 but keep one back in case they snipe using marines and the raven). If you can try to have a pylon hidden behind where they attack so you can flank (kinda like a proxy). Warp in a templar and some zealots once they move up and seige their tanks. Run the zealots in and have them take some of the seige dmg.
Also archons are incredable damage sinks. I'd suggest using them once your zealots are gone to clean up the banshees and allow another 1-2 warpins.
Another weird suggestion is to use hallucinated immortals and phoenixes. The immortals take a ton of tank damage before they die (tanks to 20 damage to their shields) and hallucinated phoenixes will exhaust the pdd very quickly.
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Chargelots are essential to this build, however, VOID RAYS ARE NOT. I've learned this the hard way, and getting phoenixes are a much better investment than void rays. Although they can't hit ground, they can shred banshees, waste PDD, kill vikings, and lift siege tanks. Void rays fall far too easily to vikings/marines compared to phoenix.
Your chargelots are key to destroying marines as you use your phoenix to snipe banshees. Focusing on vikings is bad, because your chargelots take the damage for it. After all, if there are no banshees/ravens left, you can take out the vikings with stalkers (should the phoenixes need support.)
Keep up on upgrades (forge and cybercore), this sort of matchup is extremely macro focused considering that you shouldn't get robo because warp prisms, observers (raven+viking=snipe), and immortals (marines go through hardened shields) are useless. Colossi are easily destroyed by vikings, and thus, are not as good as pure phoenix/chargelot/sentry. HT's... could be good, but are expensive. Keep that in mind. Cannons will obviously be needed to sense cloak @ the mineral line.
If you need a heavier tank for your zealots, immortals come to mind, but I think archons would be better because they are the same tech as HT's.
Other than that, though, I find this matchup extremely difficult.
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On January 10 2011 11:10 gamerkhang wrote:
Chargelots are essential to this build, however, VOID RAYS ARE NOT. I've learned this the hard way, and getting phoenixes are a much better investment than void rays. Although they can't hit ground, they can shred banshees, waste PDD, kill vikings, and lift siege tanks. Void rays fall far too easily to vikings/marines compared to phoenix.
Your chargelots are key to destroying marines as you use your phoenix to snipe banshees. Focusing on vikings is bad, because your chargelots take the damage for it. After all, if there are no banshees/ravens left, you can take out the vikings with stalkers (should the phoenixes need support.)
Keep up on upgrades (forge and cybercore), this sort of matchup is extremely macro focused considering that you shouldn't get robo because warp prisms, observers (raven+viking=snipe), and immortals (marines go through hardened shields) are useless. Colossi are easily destroyed by vikings, and thus, are not as good as pure phoenix/chargelot/sentry. HT's... could be good, but are expensive. Keep that in mind. Cannons will obviously be needed to sense cloak @ the mineral line.
If you need a heavier tank for your zealots, immortals come to mind, but I think archons would be better because they are the same tech as HT's.
Other than that, though, I find this matchup extremely difficult.
Maybe you find this matchup extremely difficult because you fail to make a Void Ray when someone does a Polt Timing attack against you >.<
Void rays allow you to win the air war and still be able to win the ground war, as a low number of phoenixes will lose to any decent ground army
BTW to all those saying chargelots, those take too long and are not worth the investment. 200/200 by 9 minutes? A wasted twilight citadel too, so it's real cost is 350/300 and it takes forever to research. Forcefields do just fine.
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Gemini has the right idea. I use the Polt a lot at 2700 diamond and win 90% of my games with it. Phoenixes are a real pain for the reasons he mentioned. One other advantage with Phoenixes are that they are so fast so if I go for a harass at their natural with my banshees before main attack at around 11 minutes, I run the risk of losing them which kills my main assault. Without Phoenixes, I can pick off a few probes, stretch the defense and then run back to the main army and move in. For this reason, I have gone extra marine heavy to try and deal with the Phoenix. After the patch, this build might be in trouble.
I doubt chargelot is really possible without some real sacrificing by the 11 minute mark. Same for HT's, although feedback is so nice so if it is doable, then you should do it. Colossi are reasonable vs my marines, but I usually see only one when I hit and that is not a problem.
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Acridice, do you have more replays against this build that you played recently regardless of outcome?
The Hellion harrass is so deadly in these builds ... and that's exactly what makes you build more stalkers. And the incoming cloaked Banshees also make you produce stalkers. This buys them time to make siege tanks for any aggression a Protoss would want to make.
And sometimes they'll even add a few Thors if the game goes long enough. But this is rare.
Does anyone think Carriers a viable unit to aim for against this build. And there's a difference between the Polt Prime attack which comes early and the 2 base turtle timing push. The second one comes later but with more units while the first one is a deadly one base timing attack.
Stargate play is crucial against this build I believe especially when the Terran has a lot of tanks. And the marines are a problem so either HT or Collo is important as well.
I feel this Terran build isn't as figured out by the tosses compared to the MMM build.
Immortal zealots and Phoenixes are important units to get against this build with a few sentries and stalkers as well. Would the NSPGenius vs RainbOw game in the GSL be similar to this strat we are discussing about?
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I ran through a quick game against a comp just to see exactly what the timing was like. There is no way you can get charge and have a decent army by the time the 11 min mark comes. What I did was go FE on 27, then cut probes for a sec (I forget exactly when) and built 2 more gates and a robo. As soon as robo was up i built observer and pretended to scout a POLT. Immediately after getting the obs in his base I built a stargate and 2 more gates, and chrono boosted everything I could out of the gates/stargate. I was able to have about 4 pheonix's by the 11 min mark. Honestly it felt a little light to me though. I believe I also threw down a forge at one point too. I need to work on the timings. If anyone has a good replay of FE vs POLT I would love to see it.
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In the second game, if you just produced more Observers and less Stalkers, I felt you could have won handily.
Especially painful when you caught his entire air force ~16 minutes, and then lost all your Templars with near-full energy because you brought only one Observer to the fight. Especially now that Observers are super-cheap, you should have a few back-up ones. Also, I could be wrong, but I don't recall ever seeing Feedback from you. You actually had enough Templar during that engagement to kill every Banshee, PDD, and Raven with just Feedback alone.
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I find this hard to play against, but one of the tactics I tried that actually seemed to help me was to do simple zealot drops in the mineral line - in two games they only used siege tanks to defend their lines and as a result the splash damage ripped up his own units. I would also recommend phoenix now that the build time's been reduced - if you can catch the banshees and ravens any distance away from the marines you can murder them, and cost for cost vikings don't do that well against phoenix. If they do that early Polt push when I'm not rushing I normally roll over and die though. It's the main terran tactic that screws me.
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Yeah scarecrow... you're totally right, I made several mistakes in that game, and it's kind of embarrassing, I lost a group of templars twice in that game. I was having a rough day and was gettin a bit tilted, not to mention I hate playing that comp.
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EPT
