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I have to admit i win a lot of PvT in lategame, because most Terran can't really counter my HTs. Some of them can, but it depends on heavy ghost micro with EMPs but also snipe.
Most games I loose because of drops, multiple drops at all my expansions. I'm trying to feedback the medivacs, but a smart Terran wont use the ones with max energy. So Protoss has to split a small army at every expansion, so its mainarmy will be smaller or he has to go Phoenix to stop the drops. What do you think about this?
Sometimes i think so many Terrans are used to play 1 base plays and have no lategame experience yet. Like Protoss wich 4gated all day long and when people learned to counter it they were lost.
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I do blueflame hellion drops, followed by some kind of biomech with heavy banshee count. Works ok'ish at around 2,4k master and you dont have to worry about the lategame. Its very harass orientated though.
Imho you cant transition into mech from pure MMM. It takes too long. Sure, there might be certain situations where it does work, but generally it wont. If you have 5+baracks, reactor starport, a lonely factory floating around somewhere and no single mech upgrade, it takes too long for your tank count to build up. There is a huugee timing window where a decent protoss can easily overrun you.
So, i do: 1-1-1 opening, gas before baracks, no 2nd gas before i expand. constant scv and marine production you have about 4 hellions with blueflame once the first medivac pops -->harass expand, get more factories, start tank production out of 2 factories and hellion production out of 1 with reactor. siege expand with bunkers in direction of your opponent, harass with hellions and banshee the whole time. BE ANNOYING!
You are vulnerable to 4gates, so you need to scout with your 1st hellion. Get need atleast 1 bunker at your choke. The Protoss will expect cloak banshees, but thats ok.
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The above is really one of the style of builds I hate facing the most as protoss. Terran can prevent me scouting the fact that he's going the style of build, hence I'll be forced to get a fast observer in case he goes cloaked banshees, and in general just to actually scout, further delaying what I actually need to get to start making a proper composition to answer his choice of army.
Both races have their advantages. To me terran gets so many great choices of openers, and great variety of timings to push a semi all-in while protoss lategame has what terran had in broodwar, in the superstrong and hard to break deathball, which is then countered by mobility.
While it might not be the intended balance equilibrium, it does help somewhat create a balance in this matchup that one race gets a strong and diverse early/early midgame while the other struggles somewhat lategame.
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I've been having some sort of success with the following strategy:
1. Open bio and fake some agression while expanding. 2. Go for a raven and keep producing bio, this will shut down observer scouting and also help you survive (point defense drone rocks). 3. Expand again if possible, and stop all bio production and put down 3-5 factories with tech lab (depends if you are 2 or 3 base). 4. Get a lot of siege tanks and, when you hit a critical ammount (around 15) get thors and more ravens (2 more ravens should do it).
The idea behind this is to force the wrong set of units from the protoss. He will probably have high templars or colossus and a lot of zealots/stalkers. The tanks, if well positioned are able to dizimate the protoss forces (while the thors take the damage). 3 Ravens with lots of energy (which you should be banking through the game) will make wonders against a stalker heavy army.
A full 200/200 mecha army with some bio is stremely hard for a protoss to deal with, they're best response is probably mass void ray with some immortals, which is hugely expensive.
The tricky part of this build is to transition smoothly so that you don't die to any timming atack. Grummler's strategy suggestion a few posts above seems to be a farily reasonable way to transition.
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On January 21 2011 22:00 Autunno wrote: I've been having some sort of success with the following strategy:
1. Open bio and fake some agression while expanding. 2. Go for a raven and keep producing bio, this will shut down observer scouting and also help you survive (point defense drone rocks). 3. Expand again if possible, and stop all bio production and put down 3-5 factories with tech lab (depends if you are 2 or 3 base). 4. Get a lot of siege tanks and, when you hit a critical ammount (around 15) get thors and more ravens (2 more ravens should do it).
The idea behind this is to force the wrong set of units from the protoss. He will probably have high templars or colossus and a lot of zealots/stalkers. The tanks, if well positioned are able to dizimate the protoss forces (while the thors take the damage). 3 Ravens with lots of energy (which you should be banking through the game) will make wonders against a stalker heavy army.
A full 200/200 mecha army with some bio is stremely hard for a protoss to deal with, they're best response is probably mass void ray with some immortals, which is hugely expensive.
The tricky part of this build is to transition smoothly so that you don't die to any timming atack.
Mhm, most (master) protoss will defeat you between step 3 and 4.
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On January 21 2011 22:08 Grummler wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2011 22:00 Autunno wrote: I've been having some sort of success with the following strategy:
1. Open bio and fake some agression while expanding. 2. Go for a raven and keep producing bio, this will shut down observer scouting and also help you survive (point defense drone rocks). 3. Expand again if possible, and stop all bio production and put down 3-5 factories with tech lab (depends if you are 2 or 3 base). 4. Get a lot of siege tanks and, when you hit a critical ammount (around 15) get thors and more ravens (2 more ravens should do it).
The idea behind this is to force the wrong set of units from the protoss. He will probably have high templars or colossus and a lot of zealots/stalkers. The tanks, if well positioned are able to dizimate the protoss forces (while the thors take the damage). 3 Ravens with lots of energy (which you should be banking through the game) will make wonders against a stalker heavy army.
A full 200/200 mecha army with some bio is stremely hard for a protoss to deal with, they're best response is probably mass void ray with some immortals, which is hugely expensive.
The tricky part of this build is to transition smoothly so that you don't die to any timming atack.
Mhm, most (master) protoss will defeat you between step 3 and 4.
I had just edited my post to say that you're strategy was a fairly good way to transition =P. Yes, my build is kind of raw because I've only used against diammond level Protoss, never faced a Master league one.
But the main idea is: mecha play is awesome, transitioning is the tricky part.
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the thing with all-ins or any early timing attacks is the following: their strength is not determined by the amount of damage they have to at least do for you to stay in the game, it is determined by the likelihood of this attack doing the required damage.
4gate and the polt attack are good examples. if these attacks get crushed, u lose. but in fact they almost always do decent damage. even if the opponent is prepared they have a good chance of doing enough damage.
the problem with tvp is that toss clearly has the superior lategame tech, so that their armies are stronger in a long game. at the same time, warpin mechanics, in particular in combination with amulet templars, shut down almost all harass. this means that the strongest weapon in the terran arsenal, their superior harassment options, dramatically lose effectiveness against toss in the lategame. therefore, terrans most of the times arent able to get an eco advantage in the lategame, so that they get rolled by the superior protoss tech unless they were already going into the lategame with some sort of advantage.
this means that a terran has to secure some sort of advantage in the early- or midgame if he wants to be able to fight a toss on even grounds in the long run. because of the strength of 4gate or 3gate + X attacks it is very risky to aim for some sort of direct economic advantage by fast expanding or something similar. this only leaves early timing attacks or harassment based openings (cloaked banshees, blue flame hellion drops) as feasible openings in tvp. or at least such openings have a higher chance to succeed than directly playing for the lategame.
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ok. 2.6 masters terran here.
A few weeks ago I had a lot of trouble when trying to play macro games against toss. I have found the comp you all are looking for.
heavy bio. Siege tanks from your one factor. Better upgrades than the toss. And ghosts around when you take ypur third
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thumbs up Black Gun.. think thats our only chance
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On January 21 2011 22:31 Black Gun wrote: this means that a terran has to secure some sort of advantage in the early- or midgame if he wants to be able to fight a toss on even grounds in the long run. because of the strength of 4gate or 3gate + X attacks it is very risky to aim for some sort of direct economic advantage by fast expanding or something similar. this only leaves early timing attacks or harassment based openings (cloaked banshees, blue flame hellion drops) as feasible openings in tvp. or at least such openings have a higher chance to succeed than directly playing for the lategame.
I think it's really crucial to distinguish between early- and midgame: Because early on everything holds true what you've written, playing greedy can bite you in the ass against 4-gaters. But after you've confirmed that you are playing against a macro toss, I do NOT understand why so, SO few terrans go for a quick third. Instead many decide to suicide parts of their armies. Meaning, they press T and move in, get cut in half, lose half of their army and retreat. Why...just: why? I mean, everyone and their grandmother knows that toss love their sentries. Also everyone knows that toss will never attack before colossi or HTs are out, unless they are going for the aforementioned early aggression. So, once both have established their expansion, in my opinion it's incredibly safe for terran to get a fast 3rd. Back this up with drop-play to keep toss busy. I completely agree that terran cannot enter lategame on even footing, because the amulet-tech will give toss an inherent advantage. Nevertheless, if you manage to be ahead on bases, toss will have a hard time to capitalize.
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Your really can finish off the protoss at the late game but you can force them to gg by keeping their robo/stargate unit count low. When the protoss techs he techs hard and the futuristic war machine of another planet are scary. Colossus, void ray, phenoix, dts, and high templar all viable and scary as hell options. My advice is to constantly apply pressure, or dont let him get pass a certain number of units. Constantly send an scv to check on the protoss' army size and composition. Dont worry about losing alot of your army because you can hold stalker/zealot/sentry off with bunkers and MM all day every day, just worry about killing off colossus or target fire any thing that you wouldnt want your opponent to have alot of in the late game and back off. Rebuild your army while making an expansion, if he tries to push with only 1-2 tech units punish him for it. If he tries to pressure you with gateway units punish him for his lack of tech. Attack again once you scout that he has more colossus or whatever and use this push to take a 3rd base. Add on barracks and what ever tech structure you like to use (factories or starports). Harass with drops or banshees. This will provide you with additional scouting. If you have kept his tech count low you should be able to deny his 3rd when ever he tries to take it. Constant scouting is important though, because you have to know what and how many of X the protoss has or when/where he tries to take his 3rd.
Another way to deal with the robo/stargate ball of death is to go thor/viking/marine/marauder/tank. To do this you play like you would anyways but when you get your 3rd you get extra factories instead of barracks.
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I think this is the main problem in TvP: Terran are too strong early game, but very weak late game (at least in this matchup). Even if you try to play a standard game and "scout better", you will still mostly need to all-in if the protoss fast expands, because you can't match him in the long run. And on the other side, protoss almost always need to expand if he doesn't want to fall behind economically, because he can't match the terran on 1 base and without any tech.
So yeah, you most likely need to 1-base all-in to stop a protoss that fast expands, but I wouldn't recommend it since we need people to try things if we want to metagame to upgrade a bit.
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To win lategame TvP, you need to do drops and be everywhere at once. The Protoss deathball is so immobile at the later stages that it's very prone to drop-heavy playstyles. Expand aggressively (Use dem Planetaries) and drop everywhere and you'll be fine if you can keep your macro going.
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I'm surprised so many people struggle with bio fe builds in tvp. I use almost nothing but variants of 1/2rax fe, occasionally 1/1/1 allins but not often. I consider tvp my best matchup, I was 36th NA before the masters patch.
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On January 21 2011 21:35 GruGloG wrote: As a mastersleague toss I´ll have to say that I have had more and more success in defending these allins (just abusing forcefields and be really slick about using every warpin from your gates until the push comes is usually the key), and I do not think that making this your standard build is the way to go about tvp.
The Protoss giant ball of doom is almost unstoppable in a heads up fight once the armies max out, and this is a fact that terrans have to keep in their minds when heading into a lategame tvp. However, the one thing that the protoss ball does not have is mobility. Terrans who abuses marauderdrops from the midgame and forward to really keep the protoss economy at bay the whole time are a pain in the ass to deal with since 2 medivacs with marauders craves like an half army to deal with since they are so beastly in small battles. I do believe that this is the way terrans have to play to be able to succeed in lategame tvp (I have no opinion wheater this makes a "balanced" game or not, it´s just the way I feel about the matchup).
I can understand that storm feels very hard to deal with for terrans since the bioball is fragile in big battles, but if you dont ever get to that huge fight your big deathball wont do you any good.
Also, thors are incredibly strong lategame as long as you have something to deal with those chargelots.
That exactly is the problem. Terran can't win lategame straight up fights. They can win if they get a significant advantage before the battle happens (money emps) or if they manage to wear down the protoss so they have an advantage in army size and economy. This is NOT balanced ... why ? Why does the terran have to do continuos multi-pronged drops in order to even stay in the game while the protoss just sits in his base and waits for the terran to make a mistake ? Many terrans have gotten very good at this and actually win a lot of games with it. However, what many ppl don't realize is that protoss, too, can to drops. Almost noone does, however ... why ? Because protoss don't have to, they can just win in a straight-up battle. I wager that, in the current state of the game, once protoss figure out how to multi-drop like top terrans do atm, it will be lights out for terran in lategame TvP.
TvP is fine. Fine as in it's about 50:50 win ratio. However, terrans mostly win early game and protoss mostly win late game. Some people say that's because terrans are bad at macro or that terrans just don't have lategame figured out yet - that's bullshit. It's as wrong as saying protoss don't know how to defend in early game or they just have the wrong strategy. It's just simply the design of the matchup. Until something changes, terran will have an advantage in the early stages (6-12 min) due to some very strong timing windows and protoss will have the advantage in the late stages of the game (15min+) because their high-tech units are much more efficient in the matchup. And of course, as a terran, i will try to end the game early (while I have the advantage) rather than fight an uphill battle in the lategame (assuming my goal is to actually win the game).
It's just that simple.
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On January 21 2011 21:39 sTRRike wrote: I have to admit i win a lot of PvT in lategame, because most Terran can't really counter my HTs. Some of them can, but it depends on heavy ghost micro with EMPs but also snipe.
It's true. In short, to avoid a lengthy imba post: in my view, P has more dirty tricks in his sleeve (all sorts of HT, DT and/or warpin play, archon toilet, cheap cloaked detection, archon toilet), mistakes cost T more than P (not noticing HTs or DTs, getting in a vortex etc.) and TvP is prone to require disproportionately better micro of the Terran player. At least as long as you don't prepare a good timed attack with lots of MMM (that you need for sheer survival, which is even then not guaranteed) or a good later one with tech stuff (which can be riskier). So my favourite way is to go to a Prot's base practically as soon as I'm done with infantry tech lab upgrades for this reason and even then do a frog jump to shut down his production and supply limit at the same time by taking down pylons. No offence, guys. If I played Prot, I'd be doing the same things. I'd be happy to hear some complaining about Terran if only for noting down and future use.
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I'm a terran that loves to use this build, and I dont believe the Polt timing attack is an "allin" unless you bring more than half your scvs to repair/attack. I do believe that having some 3 - 4 scvs is fairly important to having this attack successful though.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Polt_Timing_Attack_(vs._Protoss)
Kinda like the 7 roach rush is not an allin unless you bring more than half your drones.
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I'm a 2.5k master terran myself with about 200 points in my bonus pool, FWIW.
Protoss is definately my most difficult matchup at the moment. I usually go with the FE + MMM build, add vikings and ghosts and try to kill the toss as fast as possible. That seems to be the standard among the "pro" people as well. I have to agree with the guy above that its kinda ridiculous as it stands right now - the protoss can sit in his base and get his ball of death, and you HAVE to abuse a hole in his defense to be able to compete. Sometimes I get lucky... But way too often I dont and end up losing to attack-move colossi + gate units.
Once its 3-4 bases and the templars join the fight, its pretty much impossible unless you can get some perfect drops and wreck his economy.
I personally consider the matchup kinda broken.
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I've moved away from Bio play in my TvP games as well.. Protoss have great counters to MMM, Colossus or HT's w/ storm just seem to melt my army...
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lots of all ins.. sometimes the terran will just push with some kind of stim timing on two bases before the p has any kind of meaningful tech and the p misses an ff or 2 and just kind of dies..
sometimes picked apart by harass style with banshee/blue hellion which doesn't outright kill the protoss but in the later stages of the game they just don't have enough
macro games are usually won by the terran when they make a transition to thor or tank/ghost/bio instead of just staying on mmm + viking for too long
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