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juw
76 Posts
@Yoshi: Bio in the OP's composition is a waste because there are not in high enough numbers with upgrades / medivacs to really add any synergy. Also, you should know that armour upgrades are effective against low damage dealers like zerglings. Thors and Roaches are high damage dealers. @Natsumar: how does this build make roach infestor not viable anymore? The OP himself says that roach infestor is direct counter. If you are going to get excited about new builds, at least read the whole post. | ||
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sylverfyre
United States8298 Posts
You still can't really STOP a thor deathball in its tracks (fallen victim to it a fe wtimes myself - even equal numbers of ultras with broodlord support often have trouble because of lack of surface area to attack. This kind of army is just super effective against pretty much any 1-A composition.) Playing against it, I think going for a mass expand / mass drop style is necessary. mass spines could probably slow the push too, and it should be very possible to mass expand even with hellions floating about - you just need to be able to respond with speedcreep roach and probably have a few spines at your later bases. The terran can't REALLY afford to be putting gas into things besides his mech if he wants to max his supply ever, so you shouldnt have to worry too much about cloak banshee harass or dropping things besides hellion/thor very much. Oh. Also, broodlords rock (though you need to cover them from the ground vs vikings. Muta/Corruptor will get shredded because they will bunch up like crazy trying to chase down the longer ranged vikings, and then the thor fire will eat them.) | ||
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Genome852
United States979 Posts
The build has a big weakness in the late-late game since the immobility of thors, and how far mining bases will be from your production facilities will seriously hamper your ability to defend them (esp. considering how fast ultras are). It is still a nicely written guide though. | ||
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kathode
United States265 Posts
I actually have been using a very, very similar build to this for quite some time now and it has been working out really really well, but now everyone is going to know about it D: Essentially I do a variation of this where I aim to do early 2 rax pressure into expand and get a quick 0/2 with constant BF harass and move out with about 20 SCVs, 6-8 thors, and like 10-20 hellions (forgot how many of these). Approx ~160-170 food worth. At this time I am taking my third but it isnt really necessary. Essentially I have 3 factory with tech labs constantly making thors and 1 making reactor hellions from about 90 food till I move out after expanding. I could make a more detailed writeup if wanted, but this is just a brief summary. I just do not like waiting till 200/200 because it does give the Zerg some time to make NP tech or BL or Ultras. These three can make this build problematic, but if I move out before these hit its extremely easy taking into account that I have map control. | ||
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kathode
United States265 Posts
On June 10 2011 14:29 Genome852 wrote: Basically, the idea of getting armor upgrades only is bad, considering how much damage attack upgrades give to thors (3x2 per upgrade which is huge), and that NP actually doesn't take into account unit upgrades on the controlled unit which breaks the OP's reasoning for not getting weapon upgrades. This is almost certainly a bug, as NP overwrites the controlled unit's upgrades with your own if possible. The build has a big weakness in the late-late game since the immobility of thors, and how far mining bases will be from your production facilities will seriously hamper your ability to defend them (esp. considering how fast ultras are). It is still a nicely written guide though. It is better to get armor upgrades. I have done a lot of work in the unit tester maps with this build especially in the scenario of thor v roach. The only upgrade that is considerable for the thor's attack is the +3 upgrade in killing the roach quicker, pending it does not have any armor upgrades. Instead of needing three(x2) shots to kill a roach it goes to two (x2) with the third attack upgrade. However, getting each armor upgrade makes the thors last at least two more roach attacks. The main thing when using thors is NOT to die, rather than kill the opponent ASAP. Thors take too long to remax and SCVs make the thors invincible as long as there is BF support with some decent micro to prevent BLings from blowing up all hellions and SCVs. Thors should absorb a lot of the Bling blasts since they won't die easily to them and can be repaired relatively quickly. And late-game, yes it does have weaknesses due to mobility. However, so does traditional marine tank medivac TvZ. Tanks are so clunky and immobile that it becomes difficult to defend various mining bases. I think that it is easier to maneuver this army than a marine tank army. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10343 Posts
Bio in the OP's composition is a waste because there are not in high enough numbers with upgrades / medivacs to really add any synergy. Also, you should know that armour upgrades are effective against low damage dealers like zerglings. Thors and Roaches are high damage dealers. It's more of a waste not to use those 2 rax. The way you are thinking about the game is bad. Just because the bio is insignificant to the main mech tech does not mean it is a waste. And yes there is synergy; Marines have instant attack so even a few helps greatly by making sure your mech doesn't over kill (especially Thors vs Roaches or Mutas) Just because armor on a Thor helps against Zerglings more than Roaches does not mean it does not help. You should also know that attack upgrades are effective on low damage dealing units. So either way, it will be the same. | ||
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juw
76 Posts
You suggested on using blue flame hellions to snipe infestors a few posts back which tells me you do not know about the match up in general. I agree that bio can be great with a mech army but we are just talking about this build in particular. | ||
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Genome852
United States979 Posts
On June 10 2011 15:05 kathode wrote: + Show Spoiler + On June 10 2011 14:29 Genome852 wrote: Basically, the idea of getting armor upgrades only is bad, considering how much damage attack upgrades give to thors (3x2 per upgrade which is huge), and that NP actually doesn't take into account unit upgrades on the controlled unit which breaks the OP's reasoning for not getting weapon upgrades. This is almost certainly a bug, as NP overwrites the controlled unit's upgrades with your own if possible. The build has a big weakness in the late-late game since the immobility of thors, and how far mining bases will be from your production facilities will seriously hamper your ability to defend them (esp. considering how fast ultras are). It is still a nicely written guide though. It is better to get armor upgrades. I have done a lot of work in the unit tester maps with this build especially in the scenario of thor v roach. The only upgrade that is considerable for the thor's attack is the +3 upgrade in killing the roach quicker, pending it does not have any armor upgrades. Instead of needing three(x2) shots to kill a roach it goes to two (x2) with the third attack upgrade. However, getting each armor upgrade makes the thors last at least two more roach attacks. The main thing when using thors is NOT to die, rather than kill the opponent ASAP. Thors take too long to remax and SCVs make the thors invincible as long as there is BF support with some decent micro to prevent BLings from blowing up all hellions and SCVs. Thors should absorb a lot of the Bling blasts since they won't die easily to them and can be repaired relatively quickly. And late-game, yes it does have weaknesses due to mobility. However, so does traditional marine tank medivac TvZ. Tanks are so clunky and immobile that it becomes difficult to defend various mining bases. I think that it is easier to maneuver this army than a marine tank army. I didn't say avoid getting armor upgrades... I said getting ONLY armor upgrades and completely ignoring weapon upgrades is bad, especially when you're up against upgraded ultralisks. | ||
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Sevenofnines
United States167 Posts
-If he's making Roaches or Ultras, make some Marauders -If he's making Infestors (or Broodlords?), make some Ghosts -If he's making Mutas, make some Marines. -If you aren't sure, make Marines. One question I have is whether Bio upgrades come into play? Marines do some pretty sick DPS so it's probably worth a +1 or +2 for the 200 food death push. | ||
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rebotfc
United Kingdom144 Posts
If you're rushing for a 200:200 push at 15 mins you have limited time to get the number of thors you want and upgrades. | ||
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
I have a legitimate question. What do you do about quick composition changes? Say I meet your push half way across the map and let you eat 30 blings and 70 lings then remax roach infestor or more ling/blings depending on the survivors? Like so many Terran builds, if it crosses the map and gets to Zergs natural, Zergs in deep shit. But what if the Zerg player attacks when you leave your base, then again in the middle of the map? I'm a platinum Zerg (And I think its important to disclose that since a lot of flames for and against builds come from people who wouldn't tell you what league they were in) | ||
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Synystyr
United States1446 Posts
On June 10 2011 06:19 Genome852 wrote: Are hellions really that effective at killing large numbers of banelings? Banelings are not considered light units - it takes around 10 seconds of ingame DPS time for a hellion to kill a baneling (though you will be doing AoE damage) - and hellions are considered light so they take the bonus damage from banes. Then again infantry isn't the main portion of your army... and banelings against thors aren't that effective. Just curious. Also, if your initial 200/200 attack fails, do you eventually get weapon upgrades? Or do you keep it at 0? What about 250mm strike cannons? They don't do much more DPS than the thor normal attack (actually, they do less if you have weapon upgrades), but with 0 weapon upgrades they would probably be decent against ultras. And starports... are they just completely avoided even late-late game? With the amount of scans you have I could see ravens being less useful. Hellions can kite banelings infinitely, which makes them very useful against them. However you aren't really aiming to kill the banelings but rather force them to be used on your thors. The bio portion of the army isn't that important. I usually don't get either upgrade. Weapons upgrade can be gotten, but I prioritize it very very low as I don't find it very useful against low health Zerg units. Starports can be gotten lategame if you want to do drops or a tech switch, but for this build itself I don't use them. Just a personal thing. On June 10 2011 06:49 Antisocialmunky wrote: Can you throw the extra gas from no weapon upgrades into a tech-port for cloak banshee? Mech-wise, the only thing stronger than straight Thor/Hellion is Thor/Hellion/Banshee since you can't go straight roach->infestor to counter. Muta are just laughable with mass Thor builds so you'll be able to harass quite well with those banshees. Probably don't want to touch strike cannon against anyone who will Strike Cannon your non-NPed Thors. It's definitely possible and not something I've thought of trying. I might have to cut a Factory out for that but it's definitely worth testing! That'll really help against Roach Infestor a lot. On June 10 2011 07:00 NeonFox wrote: This is a bad build, don't use it terrans! At least I tried, god I hate ZvT when facing mech play. Would some sort of 3/3 baneling, zergling work? Without siege tanks the banelings can get up close and clear all the hellions, leaving space for the zerglings to take down the thor. Maybe using infestors to lock all that into place. Hahaha good effort xD. If your hellions get taken down by fungals, then mass ling works pretty well. I just don't think it would be the most cost effective method of taking down this composition and relies too much on hellions being caught off guard. On June 10 2011 07:04 naventus wrote: How do you beat mass muta? Not trolling right....? Armored mass thors with stimmed marine support does a perfect job... On June 10 2011 08:59 pikaaarrr :3 wrote: I just tried this against a zerg player. He ended up getting like 10+ infestors and repeatedly fungaled my army as I tried to go across the map, and then finished me with mass ultra. I should have gotten more maurader support, but I felt that I had lost the game as soon as he hit that critical infestor mass. My hellions kept dying to fungal before the engagement even happened  (Suggestions? Hmmm....it seems that Ghosts would have been perfect to deal with this threat. I'll have to work some Ghosts into this build and let you guys know about that. It's probably the absolute best way to take care of Infestors. On June 10 2011 13:27 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Question: Which should you want the Zerg to do more; Fungal, or NP? For example, if you try to snipe his Infestors with your Hellions (or rather, charge in with them), and he Fungals them, is that worth not getting NP'd as much? So which is better for you, if he NPs less or Fungals less? (what if he fungals your Thors instead of NP?) I'd rather deal with Fungals on my Thors than NP. Fungals on my Hellions is worse than NP on my Thors though. All of it can be taken care of with mass repair, but fungal on the hellions hurts the most. I can at least snipe Infestors to stop the NP. The more NP, the better for this build IMO. On June 10 2011 13:57 edc.initiative wrote: This is an extremely detailed guide on a very interesting build. Good job. Also, did you get your name from the guitarist of A7X? Thanks! Haha yes, yes I did  He's such a badass and the name sounds awesome xD. | ||
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Synystyr
United States1446 Posts
On June 10 2011 13:45 juw wrote: If you read my post, you will know that the whole point of using armour upgrades to soft counter NP DOES NOT WORK. How exactly is this composition absolutely sick? It is hellion thor with marine marauders, which I will argue is very inefficient. Do people here just WOW at any guide that has pretty formatting? What the heck is up with the aggression? If you don't like the build, so be it, but don't start bashing on other people for wanting to try something new. No one here is claiming this to be the best thing out there =S. I don't follow why NP erasing upgrades matters at all. I have 0 weapon upgrades so the Thors will always be doing minimal damage. When they shoot MY units, they encounter the 3 armor. Because I still have control over my own units, obviously I keep my armor upgrades and therefore mitigate the damage. 0/3 still works...I don't see why it has any downside at all. It's a bug and it needs to be fixed, so I will play with this in mind and not abuse anything. On June 10 2011 15:32 Sevenofnines wrote: This build looks very interesting. Whereas normal TvZ revolves around a Bio core with Fact/Port units as support, this one flips it with a Factory core using Bio to support. If I understand this correctly, your Barracks make the specific infantry needed to deal with whatever the Zerg is making in response to your Thor/Helion: -If he's making Roaches or Ultras, make some Marauders -If he's making Infestors (or Broodlords?), make some Ghosts -If he's making Mutas, make some Marines. -If you aren't sure, make Marines. One question I have is whether Bio upgrades come into play? Marines do some pretty sick DPS so it's probably worth a +1 or +2 for the 200 food death push. If you have the spare gas, a Bio weapon upgrade is perfectly reasonable. Just make sure all the other priorities are taken care of. Your bio is only there for support so don't go overboard on the upgrades On June 10 2011 19:48 Probe1 wrote: 3/3 mutas or no, I'm not flying into a mess of thors and marines. I have a legitimate question. What do you do about quick composition changes? Say I meet your push half way across the map and let you eat 30 blings and 70 lings then remax roach infestor or more ling/blings depending on the survivors? Like so many Terran builds, if it crosses the map and gets to Zergs natural, Zergs in deep shit. But what if the Zerg player attacks when you leave your base, then again in the middle of the map? I'm a platinum Zerg (And I think its important to disclose that since a lot of flames for and against builds come from people who wouldn't tell you what league they were in) This is what Zerg has to do against this composition. It's not an army that goes down in one wave of units. You need to remax smartly with a composition that will best deal with the deathball that remains. Using lings and banes to kill off the bio and a few Thors will make a Roach remax incredibly powerful. | ||
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Synystyr
United States1446 Posts
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rebotfc
United Kingdom144 Posts
If infestors NP after the nuke then the nuke kills them and reduces NP time. If infestors walk your thors into the nuke zone, you can cancel your nuke and the thors will have done less damage as they will have been walking not shooting. If roaches/ hydras etc, it will disrupt their attack preventing a full concave surround.. | ||
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Antisocialmunky
United States5912 Posts
On June 10 2011 13:53 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: @juw Are you trolling? There is "friendly fire" because the NP'd Thors will attack non-NP'd Thors. Armor still helps even if they mass roach. How do those even relate? Armor upgrades DOES WORK. It's very efficient. Biomech in general is very very great especially on certain maps, and the flexibility it gives you is amazing. This build is mostly mech and so is a Mech build, but if you go with a more Bio composition like MMA did against Losira in the last set in MLG Columbus, you can have a lot of success too not just Bio or Mech. But the Marauders and Marines really help against Roaches and Mutas because Mech tends to overkill and you will need to use your first 2 Rax anyways; the Bio isn't a waste because of that. What exactly are the bio-mech builds that you're talking about? Is it something that's not marine/tank? Cuz I'm only aware of marine/marauder/tank, marine/tank + something. @Synystyr. Yeah, banshees are nice for the fact that you force Infestor Energy and gas to be spent on Seers mid game. There's been some theorycrafting with this but it feels like a wash since your army count suffers and Zerg has a higher max. That being said, forcing an AA response from Zerg can be very useful in the mid-game. I'm also curious if you're tried baiting fungal with the expendable bio part of your army? Not sure how well that works so I'm curious if you've looked into it. | ||
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Bonesy
United States101 Posts
I have been doing a pure mech build vs zerg for a long time and even though our builds are totally different, the armor upgrade thing is very interesting. I have always gone to +2 attack as soon as possible simply because I thought two-shotting mutas was great but not getting rocked by bouncing attacks seems better now that I read your post. My win rate vs z is higher for me than other matchups. Some of the ways I lose is when z transitions to roaches and I get overwhelmed or misjudge the amount of tanks I need or siege at the wrong time. Maybe with the armor upgrades first, I would lose less of the "big" battles. I have one question though. Many z will go hardcore roaches when they see a mech build and without tanks added in, i can't handle it. I noticed in your reps that you don't build any tanks. Can you go just heavy thor with scvs and hold off a dedicated roach attack with no tanks? As far as infestors go, I doubt I have the apm to use ghosts effectively vs them. If I see them, I just build more tanks and focus fire them if they NP my units. 1100 M terran | ||
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mjheagle
United States13 Posts
I also have been doing pure mech for a while to fairly good success. I vary a bit from your build, however. - I find a tech lab starport to be useful for some banshee harass and more importantly, a raven before pushing out. Ever since I lost to roach burrow -> surround, I have been incorporating a single raven. - I prefer opening reactor hellions, get the mech rolling right away. - I get tanks to handle roaches and infestors, similarly to bonesy. Usually 5 ish is sufficient. - I like getting double upgrades. Attack upgrades are great with tanks vs roaches. And make hellions not quite as atrocious vs roaches either. - I dont wait until 200/200 to push - I usually dont bring scvs with my attack (i probably should) Just my preferences though, I'll have to try out your style and see how it goes. lowly dia terran here though, my tvp's holding me back.  | ||
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Exley
United States239 Posts
On some maps like Shattered Temple or Terminus Re double-expanding is unstoppable and should be expected; however, on most maps double-expanding is risky and can put you in a bad position if scouted. If the zerg sees it you won't be able to land the third expansion, although this won't put you too far behind since you can still build scv/mules if you decide to make it an orbital. What matters most is that the zerg is 100% safe from aggression till at least 10 minutes into the game, meaning he can get mutas out on 2 base or get a sick 3 base economy without having to build more than a few lings. Furthermore, thor/hellion is not a composition off of which you can expand- you really need siege tech to be able to take and defend a third at standard timing with any consistency. Muta/ling/bling excels against thor/hellion/marine. The lack of siege tanks means banelings and ling counters are much harder to deal with. The lack of medevacs means you have no drop potential and the presence of mutas means your hellion harass is likely to do little damage. The low marine count means a baneling landmine or even just a good shot with a few banelings means your thors and hellions are now vulnerable to mutas, which will be out in greater number to your thors. Roach/hydra/ling/bling is another composition that will fare well against thor/hellion/marine. Yes, the mech upgrades are great but since you don't have any way of being aggressive or any form of harassment the zerg is free to get a 3 base economy running and just start churning units out. stopping a 3 base pure-ground composition on 2 base without tanks isn't feasible since thors are really a liability in that situation. This is one of the only situations where I'll ever recommend using hydras against terran. It's a very well-written OP and I'm definitely going to have lings scouting the map constantly as the game opens from now on. TL;DR This build depends on the zerg not scouting the high-risk-high-reward hidden third Standard muta/ling/bling fares well Roach/hydra/ling/bling crushes this composition | ||
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Bonesy
United States101 Posts
I will say this though. I prefer ling/bling/muta to roach play. I find that bf hellions can kite ling/bling easy enough to mitigate real damage. I also have cloaked banshees in the mix for harassment and to pick off blings if I'm allowed to. | ||
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