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i have always liked going tons o vikings and banshees lategame with cloak and air upgrades, while also having a couple rax pumping ghosts for the emp.
Scan send in viking fleet snipe obs shift queue them on important units ( coll , rays , CARRIERS ) as soon as the obs dies send in cloaked banshees and ghosts emp the shit out of w/e you can and do dps before the next obs jumps out.
so far its been really effective on Kr ladder but it is ladder so not sure if its a good ref point.(High Masters)
EDIT THEORYCRAFT:
Actually after thinking about TvP lategame a bit more i do believe that raven and HSM are really underused in the endgame situation, when most protoss players like to keep the ball of death a HSM forces him to either take massive splash or split up his army .
Option A :
He takes massive damage and you can prob beat his army or atleast force a retreat.
Option B:
He has his army split up a bit so you can prob swiftly take down the COL with the Vikings while also engaging with banshees and pick off important units.
I do believe this option is worth exploring and ill prob start trying it out more on the ladder if that ever reaches lategame. If it works ill post some Replays just don’t expect them 2 fast :D
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do you think nukes could be used to full potential in this matchup. if you went a normal combo, marauders, vikings, ghosts, maybe you could use nukes to pin armies down, harass expansions, and perform movement plays with your mobile army. i think this could be a cheap and hard hitting way to further abuse mobility.
what do you guys think?
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Thor + Banshee will wreck any ground comp w/o immortals AND void rays. However, the issue is getting the two tech lab factories and 4 tech lab starports that you need to pump it out in any reasonable time. Such a comp also takes 6 geysers worth of gas and really need upgrades to be effective. I've also been experimenting with just going pure (Say, 12 rax) marauder and dropping absolutely everywhere, since warpin storms are barely useful against a pack of 4 marauders killing your base.
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On February 17 2011 22:06 Fadetowhite wrote:
EDIT THEORYCRAFT:
Actually after thinking about TvP lategame a bit more i do believe that raven and HSM are really underused in the endgame situation, when most protoss players like to keep the ball of death a HSM forces him to either take massive splash or split up his army .
Option A :
He takes massive damage and you can prob beat his army or atleast force a retreat.
Option B:
He has his army split up a bit so you can prob swiftly take down the COL with the Vikings while also engaging with banshees and pick off important units.
I do believe this option is worth exploring and ill prob start trying it out more on the ladder if that ever reaches lategame. If it works ill post some Replays just don’t expect them 2 fast :D
Option C: he feedbacks the Raven
What i have found is that the potential dmg done by the HSM is not worth the high risk of insta losing the Raven to Feedback.
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+ Show Spoiler +On February 17 2011 22:28 Arantir wrote:
Thor + Banshee will wreck any ground comp w/o immortals AND void rays. However, the issue is getting the two tech lab factories and 4 tech lab starports that you need to pump it out in any reasonable time. Such a comp also takes 6 geysers worth of gas and really need upgrades to be effective. I've also been experimenting with just going pure (Say, 12 rax) marauder and dropping absolutely everywhere, since warpin storms are barely useful against a pack of 4 marauders killing your base.
Well you should be out expanding the protoss early to mid game so if the protoss has the deathball and you don’t have a minimal of 3 bases up and fully saturated, then the loss is mostly due to getting out macro’d and you should be looking to improve in that area of the game.
I do agree doing multiple small drops is a good way of getting a amazing cost vs benefit ratio for your 4 mara + medivac and you should definitely be doing loads of drops.
Plus if he does decide to warp in HT’s its actually a loss for him if you micro those mara and kill it, even if you get stormed.
TvP late game still needs to be fully figured out anyway so maybe greater strats will emerge as soon as more games go to late game.
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+ Show Spoiler +On February 17 2011 22:38 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 22:06 Fadetowhite wrote:
EDIT THEORYCRAFT:
Actually after thinking about TvP lategame a bit more i do believe that raven and HSM are really underused in the endgame situation, when most protoss players like to keep the ball of death a HSM forces him to either take massive splash or split up his army .
Option A :
He takes massive damage and you can prob beat his army or atleast force a retreat.
Option B:
He has his army split up a bit so you can prob swiftly take down the COL with the Vikings while also engaging with banshees and pick off important units.
I do believe this option is worth exploring and ill prob start trying it out more on the ladder if that ever reaches lategame. If it works ill post some Replays just don’t expect them 2 fast :D
Option C: he feedbacks the Raven What i have found is that the potential dmg done by the HSM is not worth the high risk of insta losing the Raven to Feedback.
its theorycraft and yes you will lose the raven if you send it in alone and from a predictable / scouted angle due too feedback.
however i am sure you can get it off more than 80% of the time if you engage from a unpredictable agle / with a distraction drop and i do believe it will be worth the cost of a raven if it lands.
however i will have to do some testing to actually back this theorycraft up haha so i will try to hit more P on ladder.
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I'm a gold toss player. In late game vs terran, I usually go for a typical bioball, zealots as meatshields, blink stalkers, 5-6 ranged colossus, 2 immortals, 3-4 sentries and high templars as an option depending on resources level. I'm not good at scouting late game because I'm too busy panicking, macroing and having my observers in the wrong parts of the map. Therefore I go for that army compo most of the time. If the terran goes for a bio army, it usually is a win, if he goes for bio+tank, it's a bit harder but still feasable. But in front of a big terran tech army, and especially one that would include lots of thors and cloaked banshees, I think I've lost every single time.
My couple of templars feedback won't help dealing with a big amount of banshees.
If I get lots of templars, usually terran will have a couple of ghosts that will nullify my efforts (either by emp-ing my temps or emp-ing his own banshees before the fight so they can feast on my colossus and templars with minimal risk).
The thors will then ruin my stalkers and zealots, even more so if they have some marine meatshields in the front line to protect the thors while they do their mass damage and some scvs to do their infamous repair job.
A couple of times I've scouted that mech army while it was building, build as many immortals as fast as I could, terran had upgraded his thors with the 250mm cannon : my immortals ---->instant mashed potatoes. Maybe Void Rays would have helped better but if you fail to win that one battle, well, you know how useless stargates are in a crisis management situation.
I know all of this could be improved by proper scouting, splitting armies, better army comp including lots of Void Rays (but even that has its downsides) etc etc but that's not the point, my only point is that at my little level of playing, mass thors, mass banshees, marine/ marauder frontline as meatshields, a couple of ghosts, a couple of tanks is a damn hard thing to defeat; other mixes are easier to defeat.
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On February 17 2011 15:26 GinDo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 15:13 Touch wrote:On February 17 2011 11:46 QQmonster wrote:On February 17 2011 10:40 iEchoic wrote:
I think tanks are actually terrible in TvP. Here's how the tank timeline goes:
1) Everyone accepts tanks suck since the recent nerf to light damage (this change was largely done for TvZ, in order to buff hydras and allow lings to take two shots with +1 armor, but a side-effect was that they became quite bad in TvP).
2) Jinro goes tanks vs MC. MC plays the worst he's had in a long time and makes loads of mistakes (and Jinro played well also, but not because of tanks), giving Jinro the game. People attribute the win to the power of siege tanks, seemingly unable to analyze the actual reasons the game went the way it did.
3) Siege tanks are now amazing
Thors and hellions have potential usage, but I can't see siege tanks going too far in lategame TvP. There are some strong early-game usages (like the way TSL_Rain did it against MC in GSL3) but I see no reason to use them late-game. Their damage is bad, their mobility is bad, they give you zero ability to harass, they open you up into another upgrade line (so you need to upgrade vehicle and bio). As is, bio is better in almost every situation. How often have you tried going mech in TvP? Tanks do sick good damage once you get critical mass and upgrades, sure they aren't very mobile but they make up for it by the fact that protoss can't actually take your army on straight up. You're right, in most situations tanks are bad at harrassing (except on shakuras, lost temple, delta quadrant cliffs etc.) but hellions can clear an entire mineral line. Vikings are also good at flying around and harrassing bases. Really? Every game I've seen when Terran goes mech is Protoss attacking the Terran army straight on. Not through harassment, drops, but pure amove attacks. This is so true. The mech army is the worlds most immobile force and needs to be practical impossible to kill. You beat it by out macroing with more bases slowly chipping at it and by abusing its mobility. Not 1a into the mech.
Except that Toss can indeed 1a into the mech. That's what's wrong with it, you give up all the mobility and map control but don't get any real advantages in battle for it. Against decent Protoss players that is.
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Excellent thread, Id have to second the use of thors in the late game, their bulky, deal great dps, and cant get feedbacked making them an excellent late game TvP unit. I have also messed around with a thor/rauder/ghost/medivac/viking(if collsi) build and have had decent success with that.
Late game TvP's weakness isnt so much on the units IMO.
Its on the chronoboost/warp in versus mule.
Toss army/upgrades are scary as fuck late game. You can kill a late game army, but with warp in the toss becomes even scarier than Z late game cuz they have instant build units. Combine that with chronoboost which speeds up the high tech units as well.
Now a days every toss is all about upgrades as its the only way for their gateway units to out-do MMM. T has a very hard time competing with these upgrades thanks to chronoboost. Once a toss gets 2-2 with charge it is unbelivable how effective there units become. And if you think about it this generally happens around a time when T would want to start to transtion out of a bioball making it very deadly. Going from bio to mech is even harder because you have to invest so much into bio upgrades, that when you switch you lose all of that and have to start over. +0 tanks vs +2 armor zeals is a nightmare.
Im at a huge loss in this MU, toss always can get a 1gate FE now unless I go all in to the core. There is so many advantages toss have discover now a days, that the only thing I can rely on is drops. But good toss have easily learned to deal with this, Just stick a collsi and stalks in each base and you cant do shit.
This GSL shall be very interesting for us T's what will it be mech or bio???
Point at hand: Bio is losing viablity, while mech's viabilty is looking dim. Mass Starport??????!??!
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In my experience there are a few issues with the matchup - specifically those related to mech:
1) Protoss early aggression is very strong - so to play safe you are very limited in the early game, IMO a 1rax FE is never safe.
2) Tanks are really bad against chargelots - protoss has lots, they are light, they are cheap, they engage quickly causing splash damage to your own units and taking minimal splash themselves - tanks are also bad against immortals so you need to have marine or ghost support
-> I have tried tank/hellion and I find that it gets domolished by 1a collosus zealot army.
3) Not exactly mech but banshees cant cut it on their own - I have also tried the cute mass banshee with obs sniping vikings - this works sometimes but it IS a gimiky strategy that the protoss can easily solve with multiple obs and a little bit of micro
Now I havn't solved anything but I have a bit of an idea (2800 master)
I read a post the other day that said that 10 hellions beat 6-7 stalkers using amove (not sure if its true)
-> Perhaps if this is true a good new opening could be mass hellions, has anyone tried this? 1 Reactor factory can produce a ridiculous number of hellions (400 min/minute)
I imagine it could involve a 2factory reactor blue flame opening with mass hellions making up the main force. Micro would be intensive beginning with kiting back all the zealots, then move in close to the stalkers like roach micro to do splash to them all. I am purely theorcrafting that in this way you might be able to hold early and it is mineral heavy so conducive to a fairly quick XP (using gas to get early thors, so your early army would effectively be mass hellions plus a thor or two). In this way you could hold in the early game, do some badass hellions drops which are much more effective then infantry drops and I am intersted in getting to a final composition of thor banshee hellion. You wouldn't be able to kite as well once thors were on the field, but by then you have blue flame so it doesnt take too long to kite kill zealots with mass blue flame hellions so hopefully by the time the hellions are back to the thors you would have killed them all.
I think that thor banshee hellion is the best possible counter to protoss late game. The main issue, large toss splash damage is dealt with by thors absorbing it. The issue with banshees is that phenoixes own them, but thors own phenoixes - banshee/thor beats all protoss ground for cost. Hellions deal with zealots and help with any HT, but I don't think you will see many protoss responding with HTs to thors. What I would be most concerned about would be the voidrays, but you would already have some starport infrastructure in place, swap a starport onto a reactor and start producing mass vikings.
What do you guys think about this, have you seen any similar stuff? Anyone confirm the hellions v stalker data?
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On February 17 2011 22:54 Mercury- wrote:
Except that Toss can indeed 1a into the mech. That's what's wrong with it, you give up all the mobility and map control but don't get any real advantages in battle for it. Against decent Protoss players that is.
While protoss can 1a into mech in the right circumstances, they can't simply do it any time they like. When a protoss does take on a mech army head-on, they've generally spent some time building up a composition designed for that purpose, which means chargelots, immortals, often colossi for the extra range to hit the tanks, and sometimes phoenixes to lift tanks during the attack. What that means is that mech can achieve a good contain, but you shouldn't expect it to last forever. You have to either close the deal or tech-switch.
However, I agree that mass tanks as your main force isn't the best option in TvP. Thors are definitely scarier to the protoss army overall, and make a good core for your forces with the right upgrades and support.
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On February 17 2011 23:57 statikg wrote:
In my experience there are a few issues with the matchup - specifically those related to mech:
1) Protoss early aggression is very strong - so to play safe you are very limited in the early game, IMO a 1rax FE is never safe.
2) Tanks are really bad against chargelots - protoss has lots, they are light, they are cheap, they engage quickly causing splash damage to your own units and taking minimal splash themselves - tanks are also bad against immortals so you need to have marine or ghost support
-> I have tried tank/hellion and I find that it gets domolished by 1a collosus zealot army.
3) Not exactly mech but banshees cant cut it on their own - I have also tried the cute mass banshee with obs sniping vikings - this works sometimes but it IS a gimiky strategy that the protoss can easily solve with multiple obs and a little bit of micro
Now I havn't solved anything but I have a bit of an idea (2800 master)
I read a post the other day that said that 10 hellions beat 6-7 stalkers using amove (not sure if its true)
-> Perhaps if this is true a good new opening could be mass hellions, has anyone tried this? 1 Reactor factory can produce a ridiculous number of hellions (400 min/minute)
I imagine it could involve a 2factory reactor blue flame opening with mass hellions making up the main force. Micro would be intensive beginning with kiting back all the zealots, then move in close to the stalkers like roach micro to do splash to them all. I am purely theorcrafting that in this way you might be able to hold early and it is mineral heavy so conducive to a fairly quick XP (using gas to get early thors, so your early army would effectively be mass hellions plus a thor or two). In this way you could hold in the early game, do some badass hellions drops which are much more effective then infantry drops and I am intersted in getting to a final composition of thor banshee hellion. You wouldn't be able to kite as well once thors were on the field, but by then you have blue flame so it doesnt take too long to kite kill zealots with mass blue flame hellions so hopefully by the time the hellions are back to the thors you would have killed them all.
I think that thor banshee hellion is the best possible counter to protoss late game. The main issue, large toss splash damage is dealt with by thors absorbing it. The issue with banshees is that phenoixes own them, but thors own phenoixes - banshee/thor beats all protoss ground for cost. Hellions deal with zealots and help with any HT, but I don't think you will see many protoss responding with HTs to thors. What I would be most concerned about would be the voidrays, but you would already have some starport infrastructure in place, swap a starport onto a reactor and start producing mass vikings.
What do you guys think about this, have you seen any similar stuff? Anyone confirm the hellions v stalker data?
Agreed except that once again, as you said you can nullify HT with a couple of ghosts, either emp-ing the HTs or emp your banshees before the fight so feedback is useless. Storms are gonna be pretty useless vs thors too , so yeah all in all if toss goes HTs vs mech it's -in my mind- a lot of resources wasted - if he scouts your build he's not gonna go HT and probably focus on air . My only reserve is about hellions, even with blue flame they're pretty weak for late game and probably hard to micro in the middle of a huge fight to make the damages you expect them to do...but there's micro kings out there, so....I don't know, might be handy in some cases, I'll leave that to others.
As for the hellion early game harass, it feels a bit like the echoic build
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189624
but if my memory is good, he said on day9 daily it wasn't very efficient vs terran and zerg, but not protoss because early stalkers will own blue hellions, not the other way around. I haven't experimented but if you do, let us know the results ;d
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Has anyone attempted going mass air?
Vikings from Reactor Starports can quickly take air control and if you keep your Banshees cloaked their energy won't be much of a target for Feedback.
Add a Raven for stealth detection (allowing Observer sniping and cloaked Banshees to be untouchable) and PDD and you might get a long way.
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Have any of you tried to drop everywhere, meanwhile bunkering up to stop the counter? This only works late game, when you can afford to build a few bunkers with little cost.
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On February 18 2011 00:22 Thezzy wrote:
Has anyone attempted going mass air?
Vikings from Reactor Starports can quickly take air control and if you keep your Banshees cloaked their energy won't be much of a target for Feedback.
Add a Raven for stealth detection (allowing Observer sniping and cloaked Banshees to be untouchable) and PDD and you might get a long way.
This works wonder...if the protoss is bad at scouting. It happened to me once when I did not scouting at all and build a mixed army with one observer only thinking I'd get out of any situation just macroing fast and couting on the power of toss units. He came, killed my obs, then 20 banshees ravaged a 120 army in 20 secs and I was gone in no time. But if the toss sees it early enough, he can cut down zealots, and mass produce void, phoenixes, stalkers and 3-4 observers + cannons, kill your raven first and then you might lose all your banshees in no time and pbbly lose the match. The other mech builds are stronger in my opinion...
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
On February 17 2011 23:57 statikg wrote:
In my experience there are a few issues with the matchup - specifically those related to mech:
1) Protoss early aggression is very strong - so to play safe you are very limited in the early game, IMO a 1rax FE is never safe.
2) Tanks are really bad against chargelots - protoss has lots, they are light, they are cheap, they engage quickly causing splash damage to your own units and taking minimal splash themselves - tanks are also bad against immortals so you need to have marine or ghost support
-> I have tried tank/hellion and I find that it gets domolished by 1a collosus zealot army.
3) Not exactly mech but banshees cant cut it on their own - I have also tried the cute mass banshee with obs sniping vikings - this works sometimes but it IS a gimiky strategy that the protoss can easily solve with multiple obs and a little bit of micro
Now I havn't solved anything but I have a bit of an idea (2800 master)
I read a post the other day that said that 10 hellions beat 6-7 stalkers using amove (not sure if its true)
-> Perhaps if this is true a good new opening could be mass hellions, has anyone tried this? 1 Reactor factory can produce a ridiculous number of hellions (400 min/minute)
I imagine it could involve a 2factory reactor blue flame opening with mass hellions making up the main force. Micro would be intensive beginning with kiting back all the zealots, then move in close to the stalkers like roach micro to do splash to them all. I am purely theorcrafting that in this way you might be able to hold early and it is mineral heavy so conducive to a fairly quick XP (using gas to get early thors, so your early army would effectively be mass hellions plus a thor or two). In this way you could hold in the early game, do some badass hellions drops which are much more effective then infantry drops and I am intersted in getting to a final composition of thor banshee hellion. You wouldn't be able to kite as well once thors were on the field, but by then you have blue flame so it doesnt take too long to kite kill zealots with mass blue flame hellions so hopefully by the time the hellions are back to the thors you would have killed them all.
I think that thor banshee hellion is the best possible counter to protoss late game. The main issue, large toss splash damage is dealt with by thors absorbing it. The issue with banshees is that phenoixes own them, but thors own phenoixes - banshee/thor beats all protoss ground for cost. Hellions deal with zealots and help with any HT, but I don't think you will see many protoss responding with HTs to thors. What I would be most concerned about would be the voidrays, but you would already have some starport infrastructure in place, swap a starport onto a reactor and start producing mass vikings.
What do you guys think about this, have you seen any similar stuff? Anyone confirm the hellions v stalker data?
Nice start but you can't afford 2 reactor Hellions from 1 base, unfortunately.
I have been experimenting with a 1 reactor fac Hellion opening though. They are indeed quite strong vs gateway units in large numbers. Unfortunately, they're not very good against Colo or vr. Will need to experiment with different variations until I get something I like.
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3 possible compositions that I think are viable late game:
1. Banshee, BC, Viking, Hellions
- Mass Banshees are the workhorse. Vikings to protect Banshess against Protoss air.
- Hellions are the mineral dump. Marines/bunker defences at strategic points as needed.
- Banshees need to micro energy dump to prevent feedback from doing well though if you see templars.
Pros
- Upgrade synergy (focus on air upgrades)
- Lategame with BCs to yamato templars, you have a fighting chance in a 200 vs 200 clash.
- Mostly mobile till BCs are added.
Cons
- Immobile when BCs are added
- Huge mass stalkers/void/templar compositions would likely be cost effective against your air.
- Gas-limited. Hellions are not very complementary, more of an after-thought to dumping minerals.
- Slow replacement rate. If you wipe you're dead even if you wipe his army too.
2. Marauder, Hellion, Viking, Ghost
- Marauders and Hellions form the main bulk.
- Always have at least 7 vikings (preferably 8) to 2-shot colossus. If possible this can be increased to 14 vikings to 1-shot colossus.
- Hellions can kill zealots, sentries and templars fairly well. Use the speed to make opportunistic snipes of those 3 units.
- Marauders do well vs. stalkers, can at least do decent damage before they die to colossus / templar
- Ghost to EMP where possible.
Pros
- Infantry upgrades not wasted
- You can produce out of multiple facilities, and raxes are low-cost compared to the other buildings, hence this is the one with the best replacement rate.
- Unit synergy is high.
Cons
- You will still lose to death ball 200 v 200 w/o godly micro if there are Templars.
- Upgrades all over the place, no synergy.
3. Tank, Hellion, Thors
Pros
- Upgrade synergy
- Only composition that is likely more cost effective than deathball
Con
- Immobile like hell
- Slow replacement rate, you're dead if you wipe.
For all 3, sprinkling with 1-3 medivacs and 1-3 ravens for support.
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Hmm driving to school popped an idea into my head
a thor port build
Im thinking off of two base you could do 2-2-2 Get a ton of MM thors and banshees, try and take a quick third or focus on denying the protoss third until hes starved.
With 3 base you could prolly kick it up to 2-3-3.
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On February 17 2011 22:06 Fadetowhite wrote:
i have always liked going tons o vikings and banshees lategame with cloak and air upgrades, while also having a couple rax pumping ghosts for the emp.
Scan send in viking fleet snipe obs shift queue them on important units ( coll , rays , CARRIERS ) as soon as the obs dies send in cloaked banshees and ghosts emp the shit out of w/e you can and do dps before the next obs jumps out.
so far its been really effective on Kr ladder but it is ladder so not sure if its a good ref point.(High Masters)
EDIT THEORYCRAFT:
Actually after thinking about TvP lategame a bit more i do believe that raven and HSM are really underused in the endgame situation, when most protoss players like to keep the ball of death a HSM forces him to either take massive splash or split up his army .
Option A :
He takes massive damage and you can prob beat his army or atleast force a retreat.
Option B:
He has his army split up a bit so you can prob swiftly take down the COL with the Vikings while also engaging with banshees and pick off important units.
I do believe this option is worth exploring and ill prob start trying it out more on the ladder if that ever reaches lategame. If it works ill post some Replays just don’t expect them 2 fast :D
glad to see i wasn't totally being stupid  have you ever used battlecruisers in this situation at all? i know the expense the speed etc are all a little against them but the armour against stalkers from ground plus anti air of vikings seems to be pretty strong esp with a PDD. of course this is super super gas intensive and late game etc but it seems to be something that could (purely in theory) work as long as you don't lose out too badly in the EMP vs feedback battle
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That thor/banshee idea reminded me of a pretty sweet game/build that showed lots of potential. It was on JP and friends with Gretorp, he was playing TT1 on metalopolis crossmap.
I cant rewatch the game right now so the details might be a bit wrong, but he started with 1-1-1 for cloaked banshee harass. Soon he added 2 rax and went for a bio/banshee push to delay the third from TT1. Later he would add vikings, ghosts and thors to his mix for a really solid ball, meanwhile using banshees and biodrops for harass. He discussed air control alot and how it is important, and I think he is onto something there.
So banshees are definately a good option, especially if you can pull off some tricky stuff with cloak. Their dps is high enough to make them work in your big ball but at the same time to me they feel a little too fragile to be the "meat" of your army. A great harass unit and a good source of DPS though.
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EPT
