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On July 24 2011 08:31 mols0n wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2011 08:24 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I've always been going mech, so thank you, for sharing replays as a Masters level player winning 90% or so %.
I used to do Thorzain's build, but i found his push hard to do at the same timing after the Thor nerf because I would have trouble strike cannoning his immortals (not enough MP on all the Thors), and so I tried to get Ghosts in time for the same push, but then I found it was pretty hard to balance your army with all that gas, and having problems adapting with the Thor nerf, so thank you for sharing replays ^_^
Now I've just been doing a 1 reactor hellion expand into mass hellions and transitioning into tanks and then thors xD, but I hope I can get back to the Thorzain Thor/Hellion style xD
Also, yeah EMPing your Thors is amazingly fun. Many times my opponents still Feedback, but usually only does like 50 dmg to a Thor, when a Storm would be much better xD.
Edit:
You say that against Immortals, you should add a third Rax. I really don't think this is necessary, even for your push you say 8 thors and 6 ghosts... can't you just make that 2 ghosts? Really you don't need that many EMPs. I mean, you're not going to be pumping 3 ghosts the rest of the game are you? Or are you? I actually do. I think they are a good unit, especially if the opponent has a nice concave you need more than 2 emps.. also emp only drains 100 shields, some units like colossus have more shields. Also if you miss an EMP or your ghosts get feedbacked, killed you always have spare EMP's. Also you can EMP the warp in units too Maybe its a little overkill but I find like 6-8 ghosts optimal. Its hilarious if he goes archons cuz they all end up with 10 hp  Yeah ghosts can be kind of gas heavy, but the patch helps a lot. Also you will be getting your 3rd pretty quickly so after that you should be fine
Oh yeah I forgot. My opponents probably aren't good enough yet to micro well enough to spread out xD
But I mean, at that point, at the time of the 14 minute ish push (thorzain's at least) if they rushed for HT, then all you need to do is EMP your thors before battle, and if he went colossi instead you should have vikings to deal with them and the only thing left is the immortals, which die really fast to thors after you EMP them. But again I guess if they split/spread their Immortals you need more EMPs.
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On July 24 2011 08:48 Bippzy wrote:
If your opponent is going for collosus, do you make 1-2 medivacs to drop your hellions and do terrible terrible damage? this build looks very nice.
Also, what do you do if you scout him going double forge mass gateway units(which in my mind is the ultimate counter to mech)?
No but that might not be a bad idea. As for mass gateway check the game on Tal'darim, I believe he goes mass gateway
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Looks good, even though I don't mind going mass bio TvP anyway. Are there any real reasons to switch over to mech play other than just because you want to keep your gameplay varied, if you're not struggling with TvP?
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On July 24 2011 09:37 Raimu wrote:
Looks good, even though I don't mind going mass bio TvP anyway. Are there any real reasons to switch over to mech play other than just because you want to keep your gameplay varied, if you're not struggling with TvP?
Nope, why change something if it works? I mean learning a new build that works always has its benefits, especially in games where it isn't bo1. I know how to play bio has well but I find this more robust, but obviously in lets say a bo5 I am not going to use this build 5 times in a row.
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Love the return of thor based build, will give try!
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On July 24 2011 01:50 mols0n wrote:
I thought I'd share this build with you that I've been using at the Masters level to get like a 90%+ win rate vs Protoss. [...] I have a 90%+ win rate vs Protoss or a reason
Is this a hard statistic? One taken by tabulating all your ladder games vs Protoss and actually taking all wins divided by all games played?
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Yes, how do you deal with immobility? Say opponent goes blink stalker heavy and harasses all your bases?
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Hi
I have watched all replays and can't wait to test it out on my own =) I have a few specfic questions in my mind. many thx.
1) Comparing to warden 111 terran death ball build, this build has a lot of thors instead of tanks. Wondering what is the reason behind choosing thors over tanks in this build?
2) I observe that the starport is a bit later than a normal 111 build. How should we defend against a 3gate+ starport build without vikings comnig out soon? I have seen players struggling with this.
3) It seems that after the initial engagement, most of the hellions would be dead with thors being your main army. How should we handle If they wrap in mass chargelots? I lost a few times on this when i go for mass thors/tanks + hellions. They're just not really good against mass zealots without the hellions.
Cheers! Another great build on TVP =)
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To be honest the replays look more like you out macroing your opponent, none of the replays have your opponent going mass chargelot archon + storms with some stalkers mixed in with mass upgrades. If they had of they would have either had 5 bases by the time you pushed out or killed you in the early game. That's not to say the push isn't strong, but colossi in large enough numbers (8+ crush a thor heavy composition if they focus fire properly) however terrans have been making vikings to counter colossi for a long time now. You would really be better off going largely gateway heavy with an immortal or two, going air is horrible because anyone who has done a 4v4 or mono battle knows that air units get rolled by thors the second they clump up, and to mix in colossi and air means they will also have vikings, so overall not a very smart idea. You want to abuse the fact that thors are large, have huge surface area, attack very slowly and will eat into your unit count just as colossi eat into gateway unit count. In fact they act the same way in this style, the thors deal the damage the helions are there to distract you and be meat shields.
So after watching all the replays there was only 1 battle that wasn't in a choke and horribly favoured you (4 of the replays you were up by 30 or more food in army value) and trying to force your units through a choke is retarded especially when some of them were gateway heavy. The one battle between you and MoNs was close, but he has 34 BLINK stalkers and 20 chargelots. not once does he use blink and the zealots aren't even attacking till most of his units are dead because they are stuck behind his stalkers, when there is finally a hole they go 1 by 1 into battle to their deaths, he also doesn't have a 3rd, he only has 6 gateways and doesn't reinforce during the battle despite his 0 micro and his base being right behind your units allowing for a flank. According to the replay the protoss apparently doesn't have any hot keys for his army either... Even so the battle is fairly close (he probably would have won or left you with 1 thor if the chargelots weren't stuck behind his non microed blink stalkers) and considering its like watching a gm player fight diamond levels in these replays i hardly think these showcase the true strength of the strategy. Showing replays where your army is 30 food larger and your on more bases then your opponent and sometimes your upgrades are even better hardly shows the strat at its fullest.
Overall i am glad to see thors being used again, but i haven't seen any evidence to point to its legitimacy in a game where the opponent isn't behind and doesn't fail to micro even once in the battle while half his units are trapped out of range.
Edit
The reason archons and ht's storms are good is because the splash and storms eat through the supporting units for the thors, and if he tries to kite back the thors wont be dpsing or will be left to eat storms and then be exposed in the front. If he doesn't emp the thors you can also feedback them. once the helions are dead you should be able to swarm him down with your 16+ gateways of zealots and stalkers with 1 or 2 more warp ins if necessary.
Edit2
I just recreated the battle between you and mons in a unit tester, same unit count, same upgrades and mons came out ahead (i didnt blink micro just let the zealots lead) at the end of the battle he would have had 10 stalkers on average ( tried it 3 times), i also had a few stalkers in the back not shooting at the start cuz the map was a little tight. Even giving terran the benefit of the doubt with stim, at worst its basically an even trade, except his is gateway units and your is factory units with a long build time. Again that was with 0 micro, with even some blink micro the battle would have been even more in the protoss's favour.
Not bashing the OP just proving that the opponents in the replays were bad when it came to reacting and engaging. Also the obvious counter to this is indeed a gateway heavy army (i personally would have opted for more archons and some storms / feedback instead of all these stalkers) so for any protoss wondering how you counter this, mass up zealots and stalkers etc and a move for a win (don't forget to reinforce and use blink if you teched into it lol)
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This build seems scary. A core army of hellion / thor / ghost is very powerful against protoss. It basically collectively crushes zealots, sentries, and stalkers. Phoenixes are awful against thors. I can see void rays having some utility if they spread and focus thors but only as part of a push to try to break terran because vikings crush void rays. Immortals are key but they are renedered useless by EMP. Toss needs HT (and has to control them very well and prevent EMPs). Colossus support is always very helpful but I'm not sure they're always practical given the necessity and high gas cost of HT/immo.
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On July 24 2011 19:22 Sightbain wrote:
To be honest the replays look more like you out macroing your opponent, none of the replays have your opponent going mass chargelot archon + storms with some stalkers mixed in with mass upgrades. If they had of they would have either had 5 bases by the time you pushed out or killed you in the early game. That's not to say the push isn't strong, but colossi in large enough numbers (8+ crush a thor heavy composition if they focus fire properly) however terrans have been making vikings to counter colossi for a long time now. You would really be better off going largely gateway heavy with an immortal or two, going air is horrible because anyone who has done a 4v4 or mono battle knows that air units get rolled by thors the second they clump up, and to mix in colossi and air means they will also have vikings, so overall not a very smart idea. You want to abuse the fact that thors are large, have huge surface area, attack very slowly and will eat into your unit count just as colossi eat into gateway unit count. In fact they act the same way in this style, the thors deal the damage the helions are there to distract you and be meat shields.
So after watching all the replays there was only 1 battle that wasn't in a choke and horribly favoured you (4 of the replays you were up by 30 or more food in army value) and trying to force your units through a choke is retarded especially when some of them were gateway heavy. The one battle between you and MoNs was close, but he has 34 BLINK stalkers and 20 chargelots. not once does he use blink and the zealots aren't even attacking till most of his units are dead because they are stuck behind his stalkers, when there is finally a hole they go 1 by 1 into battle to their deaths, he also doesn't have a 3rd, he only has 6 gateways and doesn't reinforce during the battle despite his 0 micro and his base being right behind your units allowing for a flank. According to the replay the protoss apparently doesn't have any hot keys for his army either... Even so the battle is fairly close (he probably would have won or left you with 1 thor if the chargelots weren't stuck behind his non microed blink stalkers) and considering its like watching a gm player fight diamond levels in these replays i hardly think these showcase the true strength of the strategy. Showing replays where your army is 30 food larger and your on more bases then your opponent and sometimes your upgrades are even better hardly shows the strat at its fullest.
Overall i am glad to see thors being used again, but i haven't seen any evidence to point to its legitimacy in a game where the opponent isn't behind and doesn't fail to micro even once in the battle while half his units are trapped out of range.
Edit
The reason archons and ht's storms are good is because the splash and storms eat through the supporting units for the thors, and if he tries to kite back the thors wont be dpsing or will be left to eat storms and then be exposed in the front. If he doesn't emp the thors you can also feedback them. once the helions are dead you should be able to swarm him down with your 16+ gateways of zealots and stalkers with 1 or 2 more warp ins if necessary.
Edit2
I just recreated the battle between you and mons in a unit tester, same unit count, same upgrades and mons came out ahead (i didnt blink micro just let the zealots lead) at the end of the battle he would have had 10 stalkers on average ( tried it 3 times), i also had a few stalkers in the back not shooting at the start cuz the map was a little tight. Even giving terran the benefit of the doubt with stim, at worst its basically an even trade, except his is gateway units and your is factory units with a long build time. Again that was with 0 micro, with even some blink micro the battle would have been even more in the protoss's favour.
Not bashing the OP just proving that the opponents in the replays were bad when it came to reacting and engaging. Also the obvious counter to this is indeed a gateway heavy army (i personally would have opted for more archons and some storms / feedback instead of all these stalkers) so for any protoss wondering how you counter this, mass up zealots and stalkers etc and a move for a win (don't forget to reinforce and use blink if you teched into it lol)
You're right, in the game vs mons that was very close, but I didn't have enough ghosts, like 4-5 EMPs would have eaten that army.
High templar, Archon might be viable, but I've been able to deal with it with like 6-8 ghosts. just EMP the ht's and Archons( especially the archons and they have like 10 hp). Also you need to be very good at EMPing your own thors. If he has massing up HT's you kite the hellions back (keep them behind your thors so they can actually move back), also blue flame rips thru HT's
Also I stated in the OP that this was vs Masters level players, so if they're bad nothing I can do. I am hoping some better Terran player can test it in GM or even higher and see if it works there!
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I've played around with this composition for the last day since reading this thread. I can only say that I have utterly facerolled every protoss I've played since trying it. Marines in bunkers defend me well enough until I have a few thor out, and with mass repair I'm safe from most aggression. From there it's really easy to keep building thor, take a third, and then tailor my composition around his while keeping thors with constant armor upgrades as the core of my army. In every game I used a lot of scans (the high gas cost of the units means that you'll be much more tight on gas than minerals and can afford to use the scans instead of MULEs) and built whatever I needed to demolish his army. The only thing that came relatively close to winning was mass collosi, but having made a ton of vikings I came out on top. It's relatively easy to turtle on 3 base on most maps until you have a maxed army. And while sure, your opponent can mass gateways and remax quickly, with enough ghosts and good EMP you hardly lose anything to an all-gateway army. The games where my opponent counterattacked with a few zealots actually didn't matter too much, because by the time that anything gets to mineral lines it means I'm not turtling and I'm at 200/200 with some money banked. Losing SCVs helped because I could turn the supply into more thor. And Thors destroy bases way faster than gateway units, and you can always lift in a base trade situation and be happy that your maxed army is so ridiculously strong that you'll hardly lose anything.
tl;dr:
Thor/Ghost is great for wrecking Protoss. Use scans to tailor your composition to theirs. Win soundly.
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this build looks scary :S
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I wish they didnt give thors energy back or this would be ridiclousy good. I tried the build today and it seems like alot of Protosses dont know how to handle this, the problem is though, is that when the Toss does know how to handle the build either blink stalk/collsi or HT/Immortal mech builds like this get trashed.
I think its a cool build that is definately worthy of a bo3/bo5 to throw your oppenant off. I wish this type of play could become standard as its a ton of fun actully being able to have an army that can go head to head with a toss deathball. But now that they switched energy back its going to hurt alot. Yes you can emp your own thors( I dont know why it took so long for people to realize this) but without strike cannon immortals w good gateway support are going to shit all over this. Also blink/collsi will ruin you because youll never leave your base without an entire army magically walking in and then walking out.
One thing that I did add to this build when I tried it was doing BFH hellion drops to keep him in check while I built up my 2 base push. Also +2 armor upgrades are really good with this composition, definately makes a world of differance in your push.
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Marinekushes build is good because it deals with the possibily of dts with the raven which also helps with pdd when you push. I've only lost like 2 TvPs since I started using it. I might use the opening instead because 2 marauders might be better against 4 gates but idk. Thors just don't die. There is always at least 2 alive after the first engagement and if you have plus 2 armor you can rape the zealot spam that usually follows. This is the 3rd TvP mech build recently. I have had alot more success with marinekushes vs wardens as tanks are so much worse that thors and chargelots + blink stalkers rape tanks.
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On July 26 2011 11:06 benthekid wrote:
Marinekushes build is good because it deals with the possibily of dts with the raven which also helps with pdd when you push. I've only lost like 2 TvPs since I started using it. I might use the opening instead because 2 marauders might be better against 4 gates but idk. Thors just don't die. There is always at least 2 alive after the first engagement and if you have plus 2 armor you can rape the zealot spam that usually follows. This is the 3rd TvP mech build recently. I have had alot more success with marinekushes vs wardens as tanks are so much worse that thors and chargelots + blink stalkers rape tanks.
Yeah DT's are a problem. You need rely on scouting a lot because the raven is kind of delayed in this build. Try keeping your scv alive, send it up his ramp @ like 5 min when you check for an expo and check his sentry count/unit count. If its low, its either void rays or DT's
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Hey played this build all day today as Med-High Masters. I absolutely love this build. Out of the 10-15 TvPs I played today and won every single one of them. There was never a point where I felt weak or susceptible to any damage at any time. HTs werent a problem at all as long as my hellions had decent positioning. Never faced any DTs so cant comment on that but I really dont see how this build could be stopped (maybe mass immortal but good EMPs will clean them up). Anyway thanks for this build!
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I tried the build and won pretty straightforward whereas I hadn't won a TvP in something like 6 games.
I have a question though: why choosing the vehicle armor upgrade over the attack upgrade?
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EPT
