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Hey, NebuLa here. I'm diamond ranked but I hardly ladder so I may be a bit better/worse.
I play both Zerg and Protoss to a diamond level, but with both I can't seem to handle blue flame hellion drops. It just seems that you can't do anything about the initial blow they deal other than blindly put up cannons or leave units in your mineral line.
Here is a link to a game I just played as Protoss against a masters Terran, and he totally out played me to the max while focusing on crippling me with blue flame harass: http://bit.ly/kCpEs4
I opened 2 gate robo and he went 1-1-1, and I got my expansion up before him. This was nullified however as his blue lame hellions took me totally by surprise and they killed basically all of my probes in my main, even though I pulled them when I saw the threat. I couldn't scout him very well as he had a raven on the prowl .After the initial blow the hellions dealt, I defended the harass without too many more losses, but the initial kills were enough. He then proceeded to take the map and get alot more bases up on me while I tried to recover and rebuild.
So what I am asking is, how to I know a player is going blue flame hellions if I haven't had a chance to see he is making hellions before they are in my mineral line? It just seems that it's a viable investment for Terran throughout the game, so it could come at any time through a tech lab factory which could also be tanks.
Thanks in advance, NebuLa.
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blue flame helions are imba imo. i see pros lose a billion probes to them as well. nothing you can do as protoss apart from spotting and stoping the drop. if they are in your base, you better have a great simcity and warp gates on cool down else goodbye probes.
User was temp banned from the Strategy Forum for this post.
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If you scout well and see hellions you can prepare for it but im assuming you talking about 1 base blue flame rush. If they rush to helions and medivacs (as zerg) just target the medivac with ur queen and try to kill the hellions. after it is over you need to put up a couple spine crawlers and mass drones only. I've lost 20+ drones to early hellions and still won since rushing to blueflame takes so much away from the economy. going only drones with inject on 2 base takes around 75 seconds (i think its 1 second 1 energy) to get over 20. its a huge risk but ur only chance
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Spotting the drop is key but it can be iffy actually killing the medivac. splitting workers and avoiding tight corners is absolutely essential. I find placing stalkers preemptively to be a mixed bag because the medivac can almost always unload before two stalkers will kill it, but if you see a starport and expect drops then you should place a stalker or two wherever you have blindspots. Map vision wont always let you spot the drop because some people are good at using map edges and avoiding your spotters, so really you need to see the starport and tech lab factory. make use of your early observer and make sure you have full vision around your base. Sorry I only have general advice, I have a lot of trouble with this too.
Edit- see my sig for more info xD
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Well, I can't speak for protoss, but for zerg, I don't think they're too too much of an issue if you're handling things intelligently. I will almost always open up with some roach pressure on scouting a fast gas (one or two) as zerg. I feel that no matter what, you're going to come out at least in decent shape. If he's opening 1 gas reactor hellions, you're going to do significant damage with your roaches and keep the hellions at home. If he's going blue flame, all the better for your roach pressure. He's forced to defend with his hellions while you're free to simcity your base to prepare, get a few roaches to stick by your base for hellion defense (if you chose to suicide your initial roaches, or if you're going for roach/ling bling). If he's doing any other gas opener, you end up fine (IMO). Roaches will come out after reapers, but can get a fair bit of pressure in and force early game marauders, which will weaken/slow his initial push. If he opens up banshee, he's forced to use those banshees to defend while you can just comfortably get an evo and spores up. If he's going for some type of 1 base tank push (LOL), he won't have seige in time for your roaches and you can back away and have some good power units for that tank push. If he's doing some type of big one base marine marauder play, for whatever godaweful reason he might be doing that, your roaches are free to back up and once again be good meaty units for your push. All these options let you safely drone on two base and prepare for whatever the terran is doing while keeping him on his side of the map.
As to early drops, one queen on the medivac (both if possible) while using your roaches/lings/whatever, to fend off hellions will shut it down pretty fast. If you're getting caught by surprise by these dropships, you're not doing well enough with your overlord spread in the early game, and that issue can be solved with a little bit of map analysis.
*As a note, I know you don't need roaches versus hellions, and we've probably all seen IdrA pull some miracle pin with 4 zerglings to stop a hellion runby, but that requires a lot of control, and to play passively, I just prefer oppening up with something that puts pressure on him to reveal his tech, defend with it, and allow you time to adjust. It takes quite a bit out of the "coin flip" feeling I got a lot when I first started playing zerg.
Gl
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First, don't pull workers when the hellions attack them; they'll just line up for the hellions. Leave them mining, then warp in a Stalker or two to kill the Hellions. Second, you have ample time to scout the drop with an Observer. I've had P players watch me leave my base before, and those are the ones who easily fend off the BFH drop.
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Read This and this.
Scouting for clues, poking at the front,control the xell naga towers (will allow you to keep units in base).
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As Protoss, you really have to see it before it comes. Stalkers need something like 8 hits to kill a hellion so hellions will actually get a few worker kills before it dies. I think the best solution is to scout it ahead of time and position your units to intercept.
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There was a thread a while back about a splitting method to split workers when hellions came in. You can also make a wall of gateway on the far side to constrict hellions movement, it's an easy way, free way to help agaisnt blue flame. General sim city helps a lot agaisnt hellion although they can come back to bite you if the terran drops you a lot (until you have TC upgrades) .
I can't find the thread but you needed yo select all your workers, hit s to make them stop and hence making them inactive. Then you just hold F1 (it selects an inactive worker) and spam the minimap with move command, making each worker move individually to a random (well you did chose it) location within your base.
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Fast blue flame drop is extremely greedy and can be punished if protoss does any light pressure at the terrans ramp (3gate , 2gate). Sure the terran will have a bunker but some of these blue flame builds only involve making a few marines so you can easily bust through and win the game. If the terran has more than that then the blue flame is going to be delayed a bit. That should give you enough time to prepare for it properly.
In general the best way to defend against hellion drops is to sim city your base with your buildings.
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Do you have only a single replay where this has happened to you?
It is hard to judge a player's style from a single replay to see if its bad habits or just mismicro based on a single game.
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On June 28 2011 01:17 SpiZe wrote:
There was a thread a while back about a splitting method to split workers when hellions came in. You can also make a wall of gateway on the far side to constrict hellions movement, it's an easy way, free way to help agaisnt blue flame. General sim city helps a lot agaisnt hellion although they can come back to bite you if the terran drops you a lot (until you have TC upgrades) .
I can't find the thread but you needed yo select all your workers, hit s to make them stop and hence making them inactive. Then you just hold F1 (it selects an inactive worker) and spam the minimap with move command, making each worker move individually to a random (well you did chose it) location within your base.
TC upgrades? what?
edit: just realised, twilight council
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The thing is, people tend to underestimate the cost for your opponent as well. A hellion/medivac drop costs 650/250, so unless they kill at least 6-10 drones, it really wasn't worth it for them to make the drop, assuming they have more than 30 workers, lol . I know we've all seen people take out 40 workers in a single drop, and of course that is the danger of the drops. But I also know I've seen plenty of blue-flame drops that have died in seconds, killing 2 workers. If you counter the drop with roaches, and pull your workers in time, then you just wiped 1000 resources off the face of the earth with barely any effort at all. That could have been 3 or 4 more siege tanks they could have had.
Blue flame drop is simply a pretty risky strategy that has potentially huge returns. If they fail a drop pretty early in the game, you could probably just go f'ing kill them.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Best counter vs helions is spreading workers everywhere on the screen:
1) Stop all workers
2) Select anything other
3) Hold F1
4) Right-click spam on the screen
5) ???
6) PROFIT!!!
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It's very hard to stop the drop completely (as in, 100% prevent it from happening). But the key thing to understand is the Terran player automatically puts himself behind by rushing for a BFH drop. He needs to do damage or else he is behind. Focus more on taking minimal damage (split and run your probes and avoid sharp corners as these tend to line probes up) and don't be afraid to set up some static defenses if you scout the techlab factory and/or the starport. You're going to need them eventually to defend MMM drops as the game progresses so they are hardly a waste of resources if your opponent decides not to drop you with the hellions.
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As a zerg after a certain time has passed - maybe 6th minute for 1 base and 9th minute for 2 base terran I try to keep at least 2-4 banes and 6-10 lings on the defence. That is if I have map control and dont see him moving out to push.
A bit tell that he is gonna drop you is if he gets a viking and starts clearing the sky towards your bases. Also if you dont see any agression before 5:30 (just guessing that timing, not certain) - like any mix of marine-hellion-marauder-reaper trying to bust your front.
The tip that Existor gave is quite useful. I recomend you learn it 
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On June 28 2011 03:09 Existor wrote:
Best counter vs helions is spreading workers everywhere on the screen:
1) Stop all workers
2) Select anything other
3) Hold F1
4) Right-click spam on the screen
5) ???
6) PROFIT!!!
This! It's kind of slow though because the workers don't stop instantly. If you have roaches/stalkers nearby though it's totally worth it, the hellions won´t be killing drones/probes any quicker than you can kill the hellions.
I play Zerg though and it might be different with Protoss as your base is full of gateways.
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Blueflame is OK. It's the blueflame hellions that get me.
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I've read through all the responses and I have to say thank you all for helping me out on this. However in response to all the people that say scout better, in that game he had a raven out to prevent me from scouting, and his blueflame hellions were delayed so I didn't know about them until my probes were dead.
Even so, I guess it isn't very common for a Terran to do that build so I'll focus on persistent scouting and splitting my workers correctly if shit does hit the fan. Thanks again guys =]
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If my army isn't in a position ready to deal with it there are generally 2 ways to deal with it, and neither are good T.T
1. Do nothing. Moving could potentially line up for a devastating shot.
2. A-move the closest 4-6 workers and run with the rest. With luck some of the original 4-6 will survive and continue blocking the hellions from chasing.
I do think that blindly setting up a simcity to prevent hellions from going in the way furthest from the nat is the best way to deal with it, as it allows your army on 2 bases to defend both the choke and main mineral line fairly easily.
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EPT
