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On February 18 2011 06:59 TimeSpiral wrote:
Gentlemen, if I may ...
===================
I've thought and played - long and hard - and struggled to find answer to the Terran late game. This thread focuses on TvP, but let's face it, it is a problem in TvZ as well. To stay on topic ...
The conclusion I've come to is strikingly similar to the OP! We may be on to something.
• Marauder
-- Beefy, deals with armored units well.
• Ghost
-- AoE, helps versus Zealots, but really helps against immortals and HTs
• Thor
-- Lots of HP and good single target DPS.
• MASS Medivac with Viking and Banshee support.
-- You actually have to be mobile in late game.
(1) You can fight straight up, but the goal is to have enough medivacs to transport your entire army. Thwarting expansions and avoiding head on collisions as much as possible.
(2) If you stress them out enough they will move out at the wrong times and you will have to fight them head on. The beauty of this tactic is that the entire backbone of your army is beefy: marauders, Ghosts, and Thors.
(3) You can actually make this transition from mid-game relatively easily.
Commenting on Mech in TvP
==============================
(1) You cannot move. Seiged Tanks cannot move. You cannot move your army to attack. Have I mentioned that Siege Tanks don't move?
(2) Zealots. Tanks and Thors simply cannot fight mass Zealot.
(3) Mech's anti-air is really, really bad.
(4) Who in their right mind would want to force Stargate play from a Protoss? They have the best airforce in the game, hands down.
(5) It could even be argued that their robo tech is stronger than the factory tech. Both the Immortal and the Colossi do just as much or more damage than a Siege Tank plus they can move.
Jinro beat MC with mech, yes. MVP, probably the best Terran in the world, literally got a+clicked by 3/3 Zealots + some support units and his 20+ 3/3 tanks melted. They each maybe shot once or twice. I was like ... "dear freaking god ..."
CONCLUSION
============
AoE, HUGE effective HP pool, and mobility must be maintained in mid and late game TvP.
I actually tried this, it worked really well, BUT BUT BUT BUT, i lost LOL. No but jokes aside, this is really strong but what i ran into was it actually forces the P to make TONS of zealots 'cause your army basically crushes their gas heavy units. my suggestion is to do this, but make sure you have 2 factories with 2 reactors later game to pump out blue flame hellions, it'll do you wonders!
2900 masters
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On February 18 2011 16:50 Jayrod wrote:
Is this the part where we wait for someone in GSL to show you how to play the game?
I kid, but I honestly think terran is in a weird place right now. I think alot of terran players don't have the right mindset when it comes to how to win a given game. Its like you want an army comp that will defeat the protoss death ball. You won't find it... thats not how terrans built and if this game was each races deathball vs the other races deathball it would be dreadfully boring. I would challenge any terran to simply win their next 10 wins by not launching any big attacks. Win through attrition. You have the tools to win through attrition and/or containment. Good macro terrans are very rare because you have people like iechoic promoting bad builds that are easy to stop and rely on a drop to be effective. Its got half of these forums in the wrong mindset.
Tanks for instance. Tanks in TvP are not useful as your primary combat unit in a straight up fight. They aren't meant to be, but yet people seem to think they should compete with the protoss deathball. Tanks are best for controlling space and there are so many ways that you can use tanks to great effect that doesnt involve seiging them up in the open to become food for zealots. They are for containment. They help you win through attrition. Quite ironically, they aren't the best when it comes to seiging someones base normally. For a terran to beat protoss in the lategame two things need to happen. You need to be able to not get out expanded and you need to be able to not die. That is it. The protoss, even in deathball form, is at a disadvantage when attacking into a foritified position. The challenge for the terran then is controlling space... forcing the only stage for an attack to be where the terran wants it.
I dont think Terrans will win with anything other than patience late game against protoss. Protoss has too many tools lategame to defend with, making all attacks that arent a part of some sick timing really risky. IMO the terran should focus on gaining slight economic advantages throughout the game and wherever possible, but never attack for the sake of attacking or just because you hit 200 food. DONT attack unless you are sure you have a superior army, which will be very few timings.
Its time to break away from shit like hellion drop builds and other things that, when failed, leave you outrageously behind. Drops are great, but don't make one drop the centerpiece of your build unless your plan is to constantly keep their army split. What's happening is you are botching some thing that looks small, that gives them enough of an advantage to win 15 minutes later. Terran needs a new mid-game approach against protoss IMO and that should be to stop suiciding into a deathball. The "invincible collossus/phoenix army is actually quite poor at actually attacking a fortified position... If you can put the squeeze on a protoss at the right time and make him feel like he has to attack into your fortified position because if he doesnt he will lose. To be honest, the guy with the bunker layout is getting warmer than every post Ive read and on face value his post looked the most ridiculous. I guarantee you if you take a defensive positions with forward turrets and seige tanks set in a way where the toss is forced to break the contain to expand again or whatever, you will start winning more lategame with mech in TvP. Unfortunately, its going to take Jinro or Sjow to show you this.
Just started testing this vs a Master P, still working out the kinks but I can already tell you this may be the solution to us finally using mech and being able to compete with the deathball.
Terran buildings are the replacement for spider mines. With the armor upgrade they give you excellent tanking ability. Your tanks range just shells anything that comes close to your perimeter. Not to mention sensor towers help you see exactly where the deathball is so even if he goes around you can counter him as he goes around.
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When people talk about thors being a strong asset in the late game, have they encountered the situation, where the toss adds 2 void rays into their army? Suddenly the thors shoot their pitiful missiles instead of their cannons and their DPS plumments.
I have the feeling, that upgrades are really troublesome here, because neither air nor bio nor mech alone cuts it. Mech and air are quite gas intensive so you need to have two or even better three bases. That means you need infantry to enable you to expand. This in turn means a lot of barracks and infantry upgrades which will be wasted when you transition out of bio. So ideally you want to keep a bio component for efficiency reasons.
Lately I'm testing a Marauder/Hellion/Viking mix. With some success.
- Marauders: They are the meat and deal with armored ground. You can use them to pressure early and expand behind it. They are reasonably resistant to storm. They have trouble against chargelots and colossi and air of course.
- Hellions: Blue flame hellions have multiple advantages. They cost no gas, they can be produced with a reactor (meaning 4 hellions per factory and minute) and after blue flame upgrade has been researched, they don't rely on upgrades much. They can take care of chargelots, suicide into sentries and HT.
-Vikings: Vikings in sufficient numbers can take care of colossi and toss air. They don't cost too much gas and can be produced from a reactor. If the toss refuses to give the vikings any targets (gateway units only), they can be used to harass by landing in mineral lines.
This mix enables me to open up with 2rax pressure expand with 1 reactor and 1 techlab. I just don't get the marine shield. After expansion I add a factory with a tech lab, a starport with reactor and a barracks with tech lab. I get blue flame and then swap the factory with the reactor rax and end up with 3 tech rax and 1 reactored port and fact each. With the reactored port, I can get medivacs easily for drops, as all three core units have harass potential. Marauder for tech snipes and hellion/viking for killing mineral lines.
Also you are amassing gas with this composition, which allows for multiple add-on units like medivacs, ghosts and maybe reapers. With a steadily expanding number of tech rax, you can use one or two production cycles for reapers, that combine the harass abilities of marauders and hellions and partly negate the need for dropships (depending on the map). Furthermore with the armory busy with air upgrades, a later switch to BCs seems possible.
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On February 18 2011 17:18 Thrombozyt wrote:
When people talk about thors being a strong asset in the late game, have they encountered the situation, where the toss adds 2 void rays into their army? Suddenly the thors shoot their pitiful missiles instead of their cannons and their DPS plumments.
I have the feeling, that upgrades are really troublesome here, because neither air nor bio nor mech alone cuts it. Mech and air are quite gas intensive so you need to have two or even better three bases. That means you need infantry to enable you to expand. This in turn means a lot of barracks and infantry upgrades which will be wasted when you transition out of bio. So ideally you want to keep a bio component for efficiency reasons.
Lately I'm testing a Marauder/Hellion/Viking mix. With some success.
- Marauders: They are the meat and deal with armored ground. You can use them to pressure early and expand behind it. They are reasonably resistant to storm. They have trouble against chargelots and colossi and air of course.
- Hellions: Blue flame hellions have multiple advantages. They cost no gas, they can be produced with a reactor (meaning 4 hellions per factory and minute) and after blue flame upgrade has been researched, they don't rely on upgrades much. They can take care of chargelots, suicide into sentries and HT.
-Vikings: Vikings in sufficient numbers can take care of colossi and toss air. They don't cost too much gas and can be produced from a reactor. If the toss refuses to give the vikings any targets (gateway units only), they can be used to harass by landing in mineral lines.
This mix enables me to open up with 2rax pressure expand with 1 reactor and 1 techlab. I just don't get the marine shield. After expansion I add a factory with a tech lab, a starport with reactor and a barracks with tech lab. I get blue flame and then swap the factory with the reactor rax and end up with 3 tech rax and 1 reactored port and fact each. With the reactored port, I can get medivacs easily for drops, as all three core units have harass potential. Marauder for tech snipes and hellion/viking for killing mineral lines.
Also you are amassing gas with this composition, which allows for multiple add-on units like medivacs, ghosts and maybe reapers. With a steadily expanding number of tech rax, you can use one or two production cycles for reapers, that combine the harass abilities of marauders and hellions and partly negate the need for dropships (depending on the map). Furthermore with the armory busy with air upgrades, a later switch to BCs seems possible.
I dont see this countering a Collsi+Phoenix Army. Once collsi hit a critical mass even rauders get toasted. I dont think theres much a way around focusing on bio anymore. If your relying on a tier 1 unit to deal your damage the protoss will counter you with his deathball. There is just to much aoe potentials for toss in the late game. Storm would hurt your composition as well.
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3k dia T here and I use to just get abused in TvP and felt absolutely hopeless and then I just started slowly adding Thors and blue flame hellions on top of MMM+viking toward the late game and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw how hard Thors rape gateway units and couldn't believe I was leaving them out of my games. Having several thors against the deathball makes your army just so much better and harrassing probe lines with blue flame hellions late game is just too easy. I'm winning like 35% of my TvPs now as opposed to like 8-10% (not an exaggeration) before I started adding Thors and blue flame hellions after templar/collosus tech. I've gotten better at controlling ghosts, too, and have realized their importance in this matchup. So my vote for late game comp is definitely your leftover MMM from the midgame, viking, thor, blue flame hellions, a few tanks, and like 2 ghosts, and they really have to be clutch ghosts. I usually end up with like 4 or 5 rax, 2 starports, and about 4 or 5 facts with two having tech labs. The multipronged attacks are a useful talent to have. blue flame runbys while sniping tech buildings/pylons with rauder drops works wonders.
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Thors seem to be working nicely against most protoss armies, but there has been a few games now where I feel I've lost mostly because I've fallen so behind on upgrades. Something like 2-2 on bio and 1-1 on mech just doesnt seem to cut it against a toss who goes double forge, spams chrono and gets beastly upgrades for all of his army. I guess its something we terrans just have to live with.
Another thing is the map problem: in many places the maps are just too narrow and you get owned by splash damage even with thors. I have no problem taking on the deathball on Shakuras or DQ, but metalopolis or xelnaga can be really tough. With thors the protoss army is actually more mobile than yours, which can also be a big problem.
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On February 17 2011 21:47 SevenTwoOffSuit wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2011 14:26 Touch wrote:
3.5k Terran. Personally, I prefer an aggressive style, which doesn't compliment mech or heavy transitions. So in order to maintain a strong economy, I only expand with Orbitals, upgrade fast, and never cease dropping/expansion sniping/attacking. For me, I think the game is lost against Protoss once they become established with a solid army with equal bases. Late game TvP is really about abusing the immobility of HTs and Colossus, and keeping armies small to reduce their effectiveness. This. I am also a 3.5k terran player, and I've found aggressive bio strategies to be generally effective. MMM armies are extremely cost efficient in small numbers, while protoss is most dangerous when they reach a critical mass of high tech units and can move on the terran bases with a single cohesive army. I think a lot of people seem to think that bio balls should be able to stand toe to toe with a high tech protoss army, and that is simply not true with large supply counts. Even if terran can trade armies with the protoss, large numbers of warpgates and chrono boost means protoss will be able to replace his army faster than the terran. Bio strategies can be very effective, but the terran must be as aggressive as is humanly possible. Drops in multiple locations, tech sniping, and even small land armies roaming the map are essential. The idea is to keep the protoss on the defensive for as long as possible. Ideally, terran should be sufficiently ahead in resources from his aggression to be able to overwhelm the protoss with sheer weight of economy, but often a good protoss can stop even the best bio aggression without suffering too much damage. Often terran will be forced into a late-game confrontation, and in that case it is essential to know the exact unit composition of protoss. If he has more collossi, terran needs more vikings, if he has more templar, more mauraders/ghosts are needed. An underused tactic in late-game TvP is ghost cloaking. Cloaked ghosts can walk right up to the protoss army and EMP everything without risk of getting sniped, and EMP is absolutely essential for a bio army to have any chance of standing even with a late game protoss ball.
This. I'm only a 2.9k terran (but my tvp is my strongest matchup by far), and I think you have to be very aggressive with bio in the early game, because your units are more efficient than his, so all army trades will work greatly to your favor. For example:
Concussive shell upgrade timing -- you can usually pull ahead by a stalker, and then I usually do a soft bunker contain for a minute or so before the second immortal comes out while my second oribtal finishes.
Stim timing -- usually you can snipe an immortal or a couple of sentries as Toss is just getting his natural running, OR you could simply trade your armies for an advantage.
EMP timing -- I like to opt for fast ghosts in my TvP, because I've found the EMP timing attack is FAR stronger than the medivac timing attack. It's so insanely strong, I win my TvPs even before I start my third (and I do 2 rax FE).
Medivac timing -- split up your forces and do a double drop on his nat and main, try to be as efficient as possible. Focus fire on units warping in, and focus fire on stalkers so he can't snipe your medivacs (they're faster than sentries). He'll learn to split his own army, but he can't possibly cover his whole base -- take whatever you can get, pylons, potshots at sentries/stalkers, etc.
At the end of all these small timing pokes, you may actually have an army advantage even with his warpgate & chronoboost, due to the sheer efficiency of your bio units and bio upgrade timings. And with all the army trading going on, he won't have sufficient gateway units to perform the feared 2 collossus range timing attack.
Honestly, I think the key to the this matchup is getting fast ghosts on the 2 rax FE build. Yeah this delays your factory & starport, but the EMP timing is so strong, and it comes right before the first colossus pops out. I think it's pointless to try and think of an efficient 200/200 army against the toss deathball, because honestly their dps is like 2x ours, with like 2x our HP as well, it's kind of silly. We have to abuse our early timings, abuse medivac harass when it gets to 3 base and more, and have great viking/ghost micro.
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Honestly, I think the key to the this matchup is getting fast ghosts on the 2 rax FE build. Yeah this delays your factory & starport, but the EMP timing is so strong, and it comes right before the first colossus pops out. I think it's pointless to try and think of an efficient 200/200 army against the toss deathball, because honestly their dps is like 2x ours, with like 2x our HP as well, it's kind of silly. We have to abuse our early timings, abuse medivac harass when it gets to 3 base and more, and have great viking/ghost micro.
I dont know where exactly you take your numbers from, but I can see this happening if you are using bio all game long. Then its really pointless to try to fight 200 Protoss army. The game is designed (at least they say) to be balanced at every stage of the game, be it early, middle or late game. Terran bio is going to melt late game against 150+ Protoss army. Same happens for Zerg, but Zerg has unique ways how to deal with it. Mobility, army reproduction, tech switches, etc.. Not saying it all works how it probably should (Dealing with Colossus/Void-Rays recent hot topic..) But this is something that Terran lacks. So what is the other option for Terran? Its mechanical units. Those units are immobile as hell, cant be reproduced nearly as fast as said Zerg units. So there needs to be something where those units shine and don't tell me Terran mech cant take on 200 Protoss army effectively heads on? 
Anyways, good thread - useful discussion.
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On February 18 2011 16:59 hahaimhenry wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 06:59 TimeSpiral wrote:
Gentlemen, if I may ...
===================
I've thought and played - long and hard - and struggled to find answer to the Terran late game. This thread focuses on TvP, but let's face it, it is a problem in TvZ as well. To stay on topic ...
The conclusion I've come to is strikingly similar to the OP! We may be on to something.
• Marauder
-- Beefy, deals with armored units well.
• Ghost
-- AoE, helps versus Zealots, but really helps against immortals and HTs
• Thor
-- Lots of HP and good single target DPS.
• MASS Medivac with Viking and Banshee support.
-- You actually have to be mobile in late game.
(1) You can fight straight up, but the goal is to have enough medivacs to transport your entire army. Thwarting expansions and avoiding head on collisions as much as possible.
(2) If you stress them out enough they will move out at the wrong times and you will have to fight them head on. The beauty of this tactic is that the entire backbone of your army is beefy: marauders, Ghosts, and Thors.
(3) You can actually make this transition from mid-game relatively easily.
Commenting on Mech in TvP
==============================
(1) You cannot move. Seiged Tanks cannot move. You cannot move your army to attack. Have I mentioned that Siege Tanks don't move?
(2) Zealots. Tanks and Thors simply cannot fight mass Zealot.
(3) Mech's anti-air is really, really bad.
(4) Who in their right mind would want to force Stargate play from a Protoss? They have the best airforce in the game, hands down.
(5) It could even be argued that their robo tech is stronger than the factory tech. Both the Immortal and the Colossi do just as much or more damage than a Siege Tank plus they can move.
Jinro beat MC with mech, yes. MVP, probably the best Terran in the world, literally got a+clicked by 3/3 Zealots + some support units and his 20+ 3/3 tanks melted. They each maybe shot once or twice. I was like ... "dear freaking god ..."
CONCLUSION
============
AoE, HUGE effective HP pool, and mobility must be maintained in mid and late game TvP. I actually tried this, it worked really well, BUT BUT BUT BUT, i lost LOL. No but jokes aside, this is really strong but what i ran into was it actually forces the P to make TONS of zealots 'cause your army basically crushes their gas heavy units. my suggestion is to do this, but make sure you have 2 factories with 2 reactors later game to pump out blue flame hellions, it'll do you wonders! 2900 masters
Do you have a replay?
I agree that blue flame helions will be important if Zealots hit the field. Sometimes it's easy to forget that helions exist in TvP because, they are basically lol. One stalker can kill infinity helions, but if you have a Stalker-Killer army, as long as you don't gimp your supply with too many helions you should be able to lift your army and fight the Zealots with Helions and Ghosts.
I know how you feel though. I've been in late game with Toss many times. Lost temple, I'm on six bases, and I just cannot keep up with the chrono-boosted tech switches. It actually feels impossible.
It's actually insane in late game how FAST Toss can throw down 4 Stargates and chrono out 8 VRs. It happens really, REALLY fast and scouting in extreme late game, when it is half map versus half map, is not an easy thing to do. If Toss decides to mass VR in late game and you didn't have the game sense to build LOTs of Vikings it's over.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
On February 18 2011 23:44 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 16:59 hahaimhenry wrote:On February 18 2011 06:59 TimeSpiral wrote:
Gentlemen, if I may ...
===================
I've thought and played - long and hard - and struggled to find answer to the Terran late game. This thread focuses on TvP, but let's face it, it is a problem in TvZ as well. To stay on topic ...
The conclusion I've come to is strikingly similar to the OP! We may be on to something.
• Marauder
-- Beefy, deals with armored units well.
• Ghost
-- AoE, helps versus Zealots, but really helps against immortals and HTs
• Thor
-- Lots of HP and good single target DPS.
• MASS Medivac with Viking and Banshee support.
-- You actually have to be mobile in late game.
(1) You can fight straight up, but the goal is to have enough medivacs to transport your entire army. Thwarting expansions and avoiding head on collisions as much as possible.
(2) If you stress them out enough they will move out at the wrong times and you will have to fight them head on. The beauty of this tactic is that the entire backbone of your army is beefy: marauders, Ghosts, and Thors.
(3) You can actually make this transition from mid-game relatively easily.
Commenting on Mech in TvP
==============================
(1) You cannot move. Seiged Tanks cannot move. You cannot move your army to attack. Have I mentioned that Siege Tanks don't move?
(2) Zealots. Tanks and Thors simply cannot fight mass Zealot.
(3) Mech's anti-air is really, really bad.
(4) Who in their right mind would want to force Stargate play from a Protoss? They have the best airforce in the game, hands down.
(5) It could even be argued that their robo tech is stronger than the factory tech. Both the Immortal and the Colossi do just as much or more damage than a Siege Tank plus they can move.
Jinro beat MC with mech, yes. MVP, probably the best Terran in the world, literally got a+clicked by 3/3 Zealots + some support units and his 20+ 3/3 tanks melted. They each maybe shot once or twice. I was like ... "dear freaking god ..."
CONCLUSION
============
AoE, HUGE effective HP pool, and mobility must be maintained in mid and late game TvP. I actually tried this, it worked really well, BUT BUT BUT BUT, i lost LOL. No but jokes aside, this is really strong but what i ran into was it actually forces the P to make TONS of zealots 'cause your army basically crushes their gas heavy units. my suggestion is to do this, but make sure you have 2 factories with 2 reactors later game to pump out blue flame hellions, it'll do you wonders! 2900 masters Do you have a replay?I agree that blue flame helions will be important if Zealots hit the field. Sometimes it's easy to forget that helions exist in TvP because, they are basically lol. One stalker can kill infinity helions, but if you have a Stalker-Killer army, as long as you don't gimp your supply with too many helions you should be able to lift your army and fight the Zealots with Helions and Ghosts. I know how you feel though. I've been in late game with Toss many times. Lost temple, I'm on six bases, and I just cannot keep up with the chrono-boosted tech switches. It actually feels impossible. It's actually insane in late game how FAST Toss can throw down 4 Stargates and chrono out 8 VRs. It happens really, REALLY fast and scouting in extreme late game, when it is half map versus half map, is not an easy thing to do. If Toss decides to mass VR in late game and you didn't have the game sense to build LOTs of Vikings it's over.
I'll be happy to play you with mass Hellions vs your mass stalker
Infinity.372
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On February 19 2011 00:04 infinity21 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 23:44 TimeSpiral wrote:On February 18 2011 16:59 hahaimhenry wrote:On February 18 2011 06:59 TimeSpiral wrote:
Gentlemen, if I may ...
===================
I've thought and played - long and hard - and struggled to find answer to the Terran late game. This thread focuses on TvP, but let's face it, it is a problem in TvZ as well. To stay on topic ...
The conclusion I've come to is strikingly similar to the OP! We may be on to something.
• Marauder
-- Beefy, deals with armored units well.
• Ghost
-- AoE, helps versus Zealots, but really helps against immortals and HTs
• Thor
-- Lots of HP and good single target DPS.
• MASS Medivac with Viking and Banshee support.
-- You actually have to be mobile in late game.
(1) You can fight straight up, but the goal is to have enough medivacs to transport your entire army. Thwarting expansions and avoiding head on collisions as much as possible.
(2) If you stress them out enough they will move out at the wrong times and you will have to fight them head on. The beauty of this tactic is that the entire backbone of your army is beefy: marauders, Ghosts, and Thors.
(3) You can actually make this transition from mid-game relatively easily.
Commenting on Mech in TvP
==============================
(1) You cannot move. Seiged Tanks cannot move. You cannot move your army to attack. Have I mentioned that Siege Tanks don't move?
(2) Zealots. Tanks and Thors simply cannot fight mass Zealot.
(3) Mech's anti-air is really, really bad.
(4) Who in their right mind would want to force Stargate play from a Protoss? They have the best airforce in the game, hands down.
(5) It could even be argued that their robo tech is stronger than the factory tech. Both the Immortal and the Colossi do just as much or more damage than a Siege Tank plus they can move.
Jinro beat MC with mech, yes. MVP, probably the best Terran in the world, literally got a+clicked by 3/3 Zealots + some support units and his 20+ 3/3 tanks melted. They each maybe shot once or twice. I was like ... "dear freaking god ..."
CONCLUSION
============
AoE, HUGE effective HP pool, and mobility must be maintained in mid and late game TvP. I actually tried this, it worked really well, BUT BUT BUT BUT, i lost LOL. No but jokes aside, this is really strong but what i ran into was it actually forces the P to make TONS of zealots 'cause your army basically crushes their gas heavy units. my suggestion is to do this, but make sure you have 2 factories with 2 reactors later game to pump out blue flame hellions, it'll do you wonders! 2900 masters Do you have a replay?I agree that blue flame helions will be important if Zealots hit the field. Sometimes it's easy to forget that helions exist in TvP because, they are basically lol. One stalker can kill infinity helions, but if you have a Stalker-Killer army, as long as you don't gimp your supply with too many helions you should be able to lift your army and fight the Zealots with Helions and Ghosts. I know how you feel though. I've been in late game with Toss many times. Lost temple, I'm on six bases, and I just cannot keep up with the chrono-boosted tech switches. It actually feels impossible. It's actually insane in late game how FAST Toss can throw down 4 Stargates and chrono out 8 VRs. It happens really, REALLY fast and scouting in extreme late game, when it is half map versus half map, is not an easy thing to do. If Toss decides to mass VR in late game and you didn't have the game sense to build LOTs of Vikings it's over. I'll be happy to play you with mass Hellions vs your mass stalker Infinity.372
Hey, infinity, I know you're just messin around, but I could use a good Terran sparring partner.
I'm low Diamond, so you'd likely murder me, but I'm pretty good at TvT, and I'd like to be great.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
I've beaten a number of mid master Ps with pure Hellions so no, I'm not entirely joking. Hellion is a great unit and Terran would be significantly weaker without it.
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I wanted to remind you that it's possible to make 12 tank in 12 min, most of mech player fail to do it
12 tank plus at least the same number of hellion are possible at 12 or even more, then u push...add viking if u see void(buld 4 less tank)
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Why would thors be an answer? Immortals are cost effetive vs them. Only reason thors sometimes work is that the toss dont get VR or enough Immortals.
My style (3k masters) is centered about getting a stronger economy than my opp and after a fast expand i Will try to use my mobile army to deny him his 3rd. This strategy used to work fine like 1+ months ago, but lately toss has to learned to deal with drobs. Learned to put cannons up and split up their armies. And when they get HT on 3 bases you can do shit. I can have 5 +bases. 200 fully upgraded bio /ghost army, with 15+bararcsks. And I will still lose. Sure you can get lucky emps of if the toss miscontrolls his HT, but even then he can warp in new HT and you can never attack the protoss. A mech/ghost tranistion might be the answer. But even that seems to put you at a disadvantage if you succesufly transition into it.
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It's very true that we can't expect to battle toss lategame with MMM + viking + ghost, but the problem is that I don't know in what I have to transition, and it looks like no one knows..yet..
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On February 19 2011 00:18 Garmer wrote:
I wanted to remind you that it's possible to make 12 tank in 12 min, most of mech player fail to do it
12 tank plus at least the same number of hellion are possible at 12 or even more, then u push...add viking if u see void(buld 4 less tank)
12 tanks and 12 hellions at the 12 min mark? Care to share a replay?
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On February 19 2011 00:56 Hider wrote:
Why would thors be an answer? Immortals are cost effetive vs them. Only reason thors sometimes work is that the toss dont get VR or enough Immortals.
My style (3k masters) is centered about getting a stronger economy than my opp and after a fast expand i Will try to use my mobile army to deny him his 3rd. This strategy used to work fine like 1+ months ago, but lately toss has to learned to deal with drobs. Learned to put cannons up and split up their armies. And when they get HT on 3 bases you can do shit. I can have 5 +bases. 200 fully upgraded bio /ghost army, with 15+bararcsks. And I will still lose. Sure you can get lucky emps of if the toss miscontrolls his HT, but even then he can warp in new HT and you can never attack the protoss. A mech/ghost tranistion might be the answer. But even that seems to put you at a disadvantage if you succesufly transition into it.
I've seen drewbie actually transition into fully upped battlecruisers with ghost support and completely crush his opponent, but that was only like 4-5 base with low scv count using mass orbitals.
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I dont know why you guys keep arguing that zealots beat tanks... its not the case. When Chargelots are on the field tanks beat tanks because of friendly fire!
Mass tanks is just the way you go for! Did you ever play towerdefenses? Maze, splash damage and something that clumbs up the enemy units will be simply the most effective army!
You have 3 problems with that approach. Tanks dont deal damage to zealots, because they are light and immortals just take 10 damage.... If both of them reach the tanks, they also start to cause friendlyfire.
2 questions.. didnt terrans in sc1 had the same problems because of zealots before the mass tanks became viable because ppl started to figure out stuff? Indeed they had!
Have you ever seen Flash beating 200supply protoss groundarmy with less than 10tanks? NO you did not. its because splash gets better the more units you have. 5 tanks get rolled by every force protoss has. 25 tanks on the other hand are unbeatable with groundforces!
so how do we deal with zealots in sc2? Its kinda easy! prevent them from reaching your tanks! As I stated earlier in this thread. I rarely ever lose fights with tanks plus barrackswalls. I prefer barracks to bunkers, because they have more hitpoints and you can lift them to use them again.
Take this into unittestmaps and you will see 300supply of protoss deathball melt like icecream in the sun under tankfire if the chargelots and immortals cant reach the tanks.
This style is obviously hard to play and maybe not suited for maps you cant split in the middle. Ive yet have to come up with an solid opening so I can transition into it without falling behind, losing to immortal allins and beein able to put pressure on a massexpending toss, keeping mapcontrol etc.
A build that feels just intuitive and strong.
Again.. when I reach lategame and have a huge mecharmy with upgrades and a few EMPs.. I never ever lose! As soon as you get your third safely, you have a good setup to win.
I start to kill my scvs when Iam maxed to get an even stronger army and rely purely on SCVs in gas and Mules. Obviously the protoss cant do the same thing.
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last night i was watching incontrol streaming and this particular game was against avilo. avilo had gone a considerable tank viking comp and crept across the map with some turret placement. i could have sworn he had the game but incontrol had chronoed immortals off of about 5 or 6 robos with zealots and eventually won the game. he was also starting to work on plasma shields as his other upgrades were maxed.
thinking back at it i think the only way avilo could have won was ghosts + a full mix of units from his production facilities.
i we can agree that for terran bio is the backbone and fodder for other things in your army. changing and replacing your tech is easier said than done, especially with constant engagements.
that said i think as terran approaches a 200 food army you need to constantly increase your production. i dont know think enough late games have occured for us to know yet, but 20+ production buildings seems like a good number to start. this is of course once you are on multiple bases.
terrans lack of mobile aoe i think needs to be amswered with numbers, unfortunately reactored units are pretty specialized. marines as good as they are require a lot of babysitting micro to increase their life, hellions are without a job once zealots are dead (though mineral line harassment is still available), and vikings are similar when your toss. might be going heavy templar. though vs col phoenix vikimgs are sort of like corruptors in which they have to be overproduced.
i think in general it comes down to ghosts and smart emps while also what you do in the midgame. a few months back there was a ghost mech build posted which i think went kind of out of style but maybe deserves another go around.
upgrades are also essential though given how spread out its almost impossible to get all 6 lines of upgrades going.
i think as it stands terran just wants to end the game before it gets into 4 base territory. i dont think theres really an answer or a catch all for terran late game
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On February 19 2011 02:01 DennyR wrote:
I dont know why you guys keep arguing that zealots beat tanks... its not the case. When Chargelots are on the field tanks beat tanks because of friendly fire!
Mass tanks is just the way you go for! Did you ever play towerdefenses? Maze, splash damage and something that clumbs up the enemy units will be simply the most effective army!
You have 3 problems with that approach. Tanks dont deal damage to zealots, because they are light and immortals just take 10 damage.... If both of them reach the tanks, they also start to cause friendlyfire.
2 questions.. didnt terrans in sc1 had the same problems because of zealots before the mass tanks became viable because ppl started to figure out stuff? Indeed they had!
Have you ever seen Flash beating 200supply protoss groundarmy with less than 10tanks? NO you did not. its because splash gets better the more units you have. 5 tanks get rolled by every force protoss has. 25 tanks on the other hand are unbeatable with groundforces!
so how do we deal with zealots in sc2? Its kinda easy! prevent them from reaching your tanks! As I stated earlier in this thread. I rarely ever lose fights with tanks plus barrackswalls. I prefer barracks to bunkers, because they have more hitpoints and you can lift them to use them again.
Take this into unittestmaps and you will see 300supply of protoss deathball melt like icecream in the sun under tankfire if the chargelots and immortals cant reach the tanks.
the highlighted part is the crucial misconception about tanks vs chargelots: charge is an ability that acts as a natural declumping mechanism. charging zealots automatically spread so that the tank´s damage is far below their potential damage against them. there was no such declumping mechanism in bw, if a group of zealots was clumped up before a-moving in, they would get the first volley of tankfire in their clumped up formation. in sc2 on the other hand, a bunch of clumped chargelots a-moving in does get automatically declumped.
additionally, it is almost impossible to overstate how instrumental spider mines have been for the success of mech in bw. they came basically for free and allowed to control space without an army. they made it very hard for a deathball to approach the own tankline without getting fatal damage even before the tanks fire their second shot. a vulture with 3 spider mines for 75 minerals is like.... 10 times more effective and strong than a blueflame hellion for 100 minerals. spider mines made vultures an extremely effective mineral sink. there is no mineral sink in sc2 tvp which comes even remotely close to this level of efficiency.
besides these points, the smartcast of tanks in sc2 means that tanks potentially grow very strong in large numbers, which made it kind of necessary to lower their base dam compared to bw. this means that low numbers of tanks are much worse in sc2 than the same number of tanks in bw. this makes the transition to mass tanks very difficult. the lack of spidermines doesnt help the transition either, compared to bw.
to sum it up, i think the tank in sc2 tvp is a botched unit which will never work like we are used to from bw. im convinced tanks are not the future of this matchup.
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EPT
