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Hey Team Liquid posters. I come begging for some tips.
I have a very high win ratio vs protoss (70%), above 60% vs zerg but I rarely win vs Terran, and I'm getting too frustrated to think clearly. But First...
Replay vs Terran (he spawned as random hence the building arrangement at the start)
My Profile
Basically my problem is I'm dying to a lot of early bio stim and very much esp stim bio-mixed pushes. Its at the stage now where I'm too scared to push out at all vs Terran as my forces get crushed regardless of what I do.
Is my macro too poor?
My build order poor?
Scouting terrible?
Bad unit compo?
Am I just tackling Terrans massively wrong?
I just need a fresh idea or tip so I can hopefully have a spark where I can "solve" this.
cheers,
DensitY
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Hey man,
Just a few quick things that I noticed.
1) When I'm playing Terran, I prefer the KCDC FE in order to get a good econ advantage over the Terran opponent. You can find the BO here: (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/1_Gate_FE_%28vs_Terran%29) Again, I personally use it, with good results, but you might wanna take a peek at other FE strategies. In my opinion, the majority of PvT will be decided by an economic advantage.
2) I noticed that you were focusing mainly on a Stalker/Sentry unit comp throughout. Again, this is maybe a personal bias of mine, but I prefer to have a zealot heavy army, with a few sentries and a couple stalkers mixed in to counter Terran bio/mech. This is because marauders can tear up stalkers pretty quickly. Effectively using FF and preventing kiting is key to surviving the early game long enough to secure your econ advantage, mentioned above. Further, zealots with the charge upgrade are very effective versus bio/mech, provided you have sentry/stalker/immortal/colossi in some variation providing support. Think of zealots as your meatshield. With charge and +1 armor, they can usually do work on a large biomass while the Terran player is FFing your colossi with vikings/ground. With him going thors/bio towards the end like he did, having zealots, immortals, and colossi with a few sentries and stalkers would've been a safe counter to his unit comp.
3) Once you established your build order, you went for a forge and a relatively early +1 attack upgrade. I would recommend, especially versus Terran, placing a higher priority on armor upgrades, as they will increase the survivability of your units against marines and marauders.
4) After the first attack he made against your expo, you went ahead and took a third. This probably sealed your fate, since he was displaying pretty hard aggression. PvT is about econ advantage, but you had no need to go for a third from what I saw. Your natural could've been more saturated and you looked like you were fine for resources in your main at least for that time. Your third expo took vital resources away from colossi and zealots at that juncture in the game.
5) Scouting could be improved, especially utilization of the obs and probe early just to see what he might be going for. You did get an early eye on those tanks and got a peek at his unit comp, so good on you for that.
Finally, usually I do a token move into colossi simply because its the easiest way to counter Terran bio early on. Once vikings come into play, I usually cross over to templar tech and see what I can get from that branch of the tech tree. The biggest takeaway you should have from this is: Take a look at the FE B.O.'s and see if they fit your style of play; Consider using zealots more prominently in your PvT matchups; Don't take a third when not necessary; Look at armor upgrades for survivability versus a Terran player.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
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Based on this game, I'd say a few things:
- You saw what race he was before putting down your cyber core. No need to place one of your most critical buildings in an exposed position after seeing that.
- Don't build static defence in places where it is unlikely to be useful. Your warpgates were cooled down, you could have spent those minerals on more zealots instead.
- Have some confidence in your own macro. If you've been macroing well and you've scouted well enough to make sure he doesn't have a composition that counters yours, move out and use your army to defend your natural, rather than pulling back and letting him pick at your buildings while you're stuck behind a choke point.
- The biggest one for this game: Don't charge into a line of sieged tanks without thinking. Either engage before he has a chance to siege, or find a way to drive him back letting him nail a big ball of your units with all that splash damage. In your case, things you could have done included engaging before he sieged, spreading your army more, leading with your immortals to absorb tank shots, and waiting until blink was finished so that you could flank his tanks with stalkers.
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Allrighty, I've watched the rep a few times. I'm going to give you a big list of bullet points, just coz that's generally how I provide feedback. It'll be too much to think about so just take a few things that sound good to you, and work on them. You don't look like a bronze to me!
Also, I see you're from NZ. If you play on SEA and you want to practice in game (I'm mid Diamond Toss so not great but OK), PM me here and I'll help you out! Anyway, on to the notes...
Your build order is really crisp up until 15 supply or so. All good, but then:
* Walling vs terran. Fair enough he was random at the start but you knew he was terran long before the core went down. You're setting yourself up an awkward spot to defend there. You want surface area to hit him on your ramp. Chuck the core elsewhere.
* You skipped the zealot and yet the core was still delayed going down. You're in a lot of trouble vs a lot of builds doing this. Have a probe in position to plonk it down the instant the gate's done. No units at 5:00 scares me! Your gate goes idle again after the stalker but you have a boatload of gas. Sentry! Start getting stuff out sooner, seconds count at this start of the game. Queuing is better than idle gates.
* You save all your chronoboost except the very first, so you can rush out warpgates.... but why? You only have a single gate when warp finishes and nothing looking like a timing attack. If you're not 4 gating, just boost probes probes probes.
* You can't support 3gate + robo + forge off a single base. Less infrastructure and more units. Consequence = too many structures were idle too much of the time.
* Blind immortal first up... not ideal. Observer first unless you've already seen marauders rolling across the map. In this game you don't know his unit composition until it takes out your core. You need to get observers in and peeking around ASAP.
* Too many sentries. You had about 10 at that first big battle, most of them with full energy.. you could have cast about 40 forcefields, but you only used 3. (Note you don't need 40 forcefields anyway) Guardian shield doesn't stack btw. Spend less gas on sentries and instead get some earlier tech. Ideally, earlier colossus. The rest of your composition was weird too. If you're going to go heavy sentry, the idea is to cup big chunks of his army in a wall of forcefields and get your zealots to chop them up. But you only had 3 zealots, and 14 stalkers. Against bio you want more zealots, they do a lot more damage against bio (and take a lot less from marauders).
* It's 3 probes per gas. You only had 2 probes in 3 of your geysers.
* Preposition your units before the battle starts. Move the zealots out to the front, immortals/sentries behind them, stalkers behind them, colossi in the back. Take your time on this. You had a huge window before he pushed in. There's no reason to keep them in a random ball.
* In conjunction with above - move your units *during* the battle. The whole time, you basically had a single line of units shooting, with two more lines behind just pattering back and forth. This matters most against terran coz he's got range 13 siege tanks chewing you up. Watch the battle from 16:45 to 17:00 to see what I mean. This was even worse because you didn't have thermal lance for your colossus - get that ASAP, always!. But yes, move units during the battle. Ctrl-click your immortals and focus them on the tanks and/or thor. Target the colossi on tasty looking patches of bio. Etc etc.
* Expand earlier! Good effort with probe counts, but you ended up with 33 on one base for a longg time. When you're not under insane pressure, you need to expand earlier and move your defenses down to your natural choke. Less infrastructure spending (two random blind cannons included), and more units make this a more natural move for you.
* Reproduce army! Look at the production tab at 17:40 or so. Your opponent's building 2 SCVs, a thor, some marauders, and some marines. You have... 2 probes, plus hundreds of minerals and 5 idle warpgates. I get the feeling you don't like zealots much, but once you get charge they become fantastic vs your opponent's composition. And they're cheap! Buy em!
Good luck!
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I like Destiny's opinion:
In Bronze league you shouldn't worry about scouting, upgrades, learning multiple BOs, or strategy. You should just focus on macro, and basic mechanics.
Start every game with the same 4-gate build order. You can find one on Liquipedia, or with Google.
As Protoss if you want to develop good macro habits, try to:
Spend all of your Chronoboost. Never let the energy reach 100 on any of your Nexuses. It doesn't matter what you spend it on. As you begin to understand the finer points of the game, you will be able to make good choices on what, and when to use Chronoboost.
Never miss a warpgate cycle. All your warpgates are automatically hotkeyed to W, and the amount of warpgates off cool-down is displayed in the bottom left corner of your screen. Every time you see a number that isn't 0 warp in a Stalker. By building only Stalkers you will keep your money low, be aware of your money, and not have to make decisions on which unit to warp in.
Constantly build probes. StarCraft II is all about your economy. You need about 30 probes to saturate a base. You can continue to build probes after full saturation to prepare for an expansion so that it will kick in immediately as you transfer the excess workers.
Don't get supply blocked. Construct additional Pylons before you get to full supply.
If you do only these things you will win almost every one of your games in Bronze. In some games you will get cheesed if you don't scout, and you will lose. But it doesn't matter now, you will learn how to counter cheese as you progress. By doing these things you will learn the basics of StarCraft, and as a result will move into Silver, Gold, Platinum. Of course as you do this and play more, your knowledge of counters, BOs, and timings will increase along with your APM. But without the basics of macro, you will not move out of Bronze/Silver.
Here is a replay of Destiny demonstrating his opinion. Although he is Zerg, builds Queens, and has good Transfuse micro, you will be able to replicate these results by building only Stalkers
Replay
Hope I helped.
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Hey guys,
Thank you all very much for all of your input.
I was able to have a few practice games with a diamond friend. Right now I'm focusing on the start of the match, esp utilizing my first gate way more, getting that zealot etc. I was able to hold off early bio pressure with 1 gate and safely expand into a second base. I fell to bits after that but baby steps. I also tried cutting back on sentries and getting more zealots and using the excess gas on Collosus, it made a noticeable difference.
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Hi,
I have been thinking what to say thats appropriate for the bronze league.. and i mostly agree with HairyProboscis.
do the basics:
- build probes constantly
- dont get supply blocked
- scout - information is key
- keep your money low
- keep your chronoboost low
Check your replays, wins and losses, for the things mentioned. Try to do one or two basic build orders and only adapt slightly, and keep the things mentioned above in mind. Imo, you shouldnt go 4 warpgates though. Try 3 gate expand or two gate robo with a fast observer. If you suspect any sort of mech play or dont get sufficient scouting info, do the robo build. If you know pure bio, you can stick with the 3 gates. Build mostly centries and stalker and expand. Force field usage is key, however. I know that this is prolly not that important for bronze - since people do weird and unpredictable stuff - but i thought its worth mentioning.
I said that scouting is important, however, you have to use the information. If you dont adapt, its not worth having.
Maybe check out some of Day[9]'s newbie tuesdays. http://day9tv.blip.tv
good luck
read that after my post:
Hey guys,
Thank you all very much for all of your input.
I was able to have a few practice games with a diamond friend. Right now I'm focusing on the start of the match, esp utilizing my first gate way more, getting that zealot etc. I was able to hold off early bio pressure with 1 gate and safely expand into a second base. I fell to bits after that but baby steps. I also tried cutting back on sentries and getting more zealots and using the excess gas on Collosus, it made a noticeable difference.
but, centries and forcefields are REALLY important for protoss early game. you dont need 40 centries, but lets say around 6 is really a good number. and dont have too many zealots in the mix. it is true that they are a good meat shield, and you should have a couple. but, if you split their army with ff's, and you have too many zealots, they will all die. once they are dead, and the ff's are gone, the rest of the bioball will kill you. I am not saying, dont use zealots at all. Just be careful, a little more stalker and centry heavy army is better once get the right forcefields.
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Few days later, few games later, and some progress 
Thanks again for the advice. It got me to Silver league
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Australia528 Posts
three things really
scouting - u didnt scout for the whole game i think. u have to scout against terran as protoss or you die... u were ahead the entire game and yet u didnt know this simply because u didnt scout. With the first attack, u took some heavy siege tanks shots and pulled back waiting for the first colossus. you didn't have to. If you'd scouted and seen that your army was vastly larger than his, you would've engaged and crushed the terran.
army comp - going stalker heavy against siege tanks is terrible. get more zealots and upgrade charge. especially if you get colossi. this i would say was a result of not scouting though so yeah...
force fields - FFs in the first battle weren't great. you cast ur ffs in front of the terran bio army. this is good if u want to delay the battle since they can't walk in. but if u want to engage, cast the ffs right on top of the bio army splitting them up. also, if T gets siege tanks be careful with ff positioning so that they dont protect the siege tanks from your units.
there were a number of small things you coudl easily fix (like the late cyber core) but all in all, your mechanics are fabulous. u had about 4 times the number of APM as your opponent and if you just scout and play reactively, i'd say you could reach platinum or even diamond easily.
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EPT
