On October 03 2011 16:01 Ganseng wrote: I really think that HT's feedback is the thing that breaks the match up. It counters basically everything except for bio - thors, ravens, banshees, BCs. You need these thors to anchor the tank forces, but with feedback thors are just a loke. same goes for ravens and battlecruisers, skyterran is a joke against templars. So... Just make mmmvg and rely on good EMPs. Not that it was boring (very intense!), it's just monotonous to have a single option in the MU.
I don't get it, whats stopping you from getting a few ghosts in the late game to support your mech army? Its not like you can only go either pure mech or MMMVG. The snipe before feedback battle that currently exists between ghosts and high templars still applies just the same, only difference is that this time the templar is trying to feedback something else.
you don't have the resources for mech and ghosts. And you are too immobile to stay on equal bases. Show me a couple of games where top tier protoss loses to something other than mmmvg in late game, I'll appreciate it very much.
And i dont think blizz are too stubborn to go back on themselves, if they realise that warp in really doesnt work then they'll remove it.
Keep dreaming. Warp Gate has been in the game for as long as the public has known of its existence. Mid-2007. Blizzard has been testing it for that long; if they had any reservations about it, they had plenty of time to resolve them.
They're not going to rip out Warp-in. The absolute most that they might do is delay it to mid-game or something. But even that is unlikely. It'd be like taking larva away from the Zerg. Not Spawn Larva; I mean larva-based production.
Man, warp-gate is getting some hate lately. Am I the only one that thinks it's a cool mechanic? In general Protoss armies aren't very mobile on big-map scale (e.g. Tal'darim Altar), and warp-gate gives them a way to have an implied presence across the map, without having to split their army unreasonably heavily. It also gives them a chance to compete with Zerg's fast army rebuild rate. Why the hate?
On October 03 2011 18:05 ChristianS wrote: Man, warp-gate is getting some hate lately. Am I the only one that thinks it's a cool mechanic? In general Protoss armies aren't very mobile on big-map scale (e.g. Tal'darim Altar), and warp-gate gives them a way to have an implied presence across the map, without having to split their army unreasonably heavily. It also gives them a chance to compete with Zerg's fast army rebuild rate. Why the hate?
I definately think it's a cool mechanic but that doesn't mean it "works" in all situations.
Lets look at why it isnt viable again it comes down to 5 things i think:
1 - tank, it doesnt actually do that much dmg but i do play mech in TvP if you get your mech to 3-3 mech IS viable. but only when you get the upgrades to max so +5 starting dmg to the tank would make a big difference so its like it already had +1 attack upgrade.
2 - helion isnt what you need but it can be ok, we need mines back to help for vision and map control + holding flanks although helions can destroy zealots if they line up but vultures were a far more apropriate unit and i feel if helions had mines they would be overpowered or have to cost too much and you couldnt make enough to defend your tanks in a battle
3 - Thor is a very very poor mech anti air option since its huge cost in supply and mineral/gas you cant just start going thor for anti air because its super bad vs anything untill you have a few of them and you cant use them to help fend off carriers because it eats up so much supply your mech army is awful.
4 - the immortal requires ghosts to take down you can experiment with walking vikings to dealwith it since they have a high fire to eat up harden shields rate but its not great and even when you get the shields down tanks will probably not kill it but 1 immortal _will_ probably kill a tank at least and soak up tonnes of dps + insta kill a tank
5 - mass collosus entirely destorys mech so much its depressing even being the smallest part out of position the colossus is so mobile it can pick off tanks which are all spread out.
I am considering the raven might be a good idea in tvp vs protoss instead or aswell as ghosts to use hunter seeker might be a viable option to help move out across the map as well as turrerts to take down the harden shields of immortals but i dunno seems really hard and even then
the main problem is tanks do so little dmg and you cant fend off flanks that well so you cant pressure the protoss at all. And you have to pressure them because otherwise they could just go carriar like they would in bw its the same here or just mass expand.
I actually believe that the warp prisim will be overpowered in the future _IF_ mech is viable because if you just keep warping in units with warp prisms you can hit _ALOT_ of stupid timmings with a 3 gate robo to get 2 warp prisms and into a 4 gate you would be suprised how well that does vs a siege expand even if you know its coming since they can drop immortals on your tank if they decided to randomly make 1 and just pump and drop zealots on you it just hits a funny timming and you need to kill the warp prism off early but its super hard to do
Everyone who hates warp gate mechanics i think the main problem is even day 9 said this on STOG a good while ago is that there is no reason to ever use gateways at all the upgrade to warp gate is essentially free but just takes a long time, and it nearly comes across to most protoss i think that you _need_ warpgates to make units it makes the protoss macro stupidly easy imo.
If warp gates research required robotics support facilty and cost 200-200 or had a cost on changing a gate way into a warp gate then it would be different because it would be a 100x more interesting mechanic if you had 6 gate ways with only 2 warp gates yo ucan use the 2 warp gates to warp in somewhere else to defend or harase with support of the warp prism.
I think the warp prism will eventually need the warp field as an upgrade from the robotics facility if mech is to be viable as well it would make it more feel like a shuttle instead of a way of proxing units into a base and people getting carried away.
People who like using bio in TvP clearly dont understand anything what Terran or starcraft is about.
As a protoss-player, I agree that TvP is a completely stupid match-up. On the one hand, terran has complete mapcontrol throughout most of the game while protoss techs up to have something that beats MMM. On the other hand, once I have my tech-units, it's all about ghost vs HTs (which favours terrans) while I use the 300 supply effect of warpgates to profit with chargelots (which makes battles winnable for toss).
The main problem I see is, that too many units can be warped in. Why did amulet get nerfed? Right, because of templar WARP IN, not because amulet would be too strong. Why does DT-tech take forever? Right because of DT WARP IN, not because DTs would be so uber strong in themselves. Basicly the whole templar tech-tree sucks compared to BW because you can get the templars asap. Just imagine what the colossus would look like if you could warp in colossi....
Imo the best way to re-configure this would be to just not allow warp ins near pylons at all. Make it so you can only warp in near your own nexi AND near warp prisms! Would make mid/late-game prism play amazing to watch (kill the prism = kill the push) and would make prisms less of a gimmicky unit. Furthermore it would completely remove all stupid proxy pylon attacks that are the main reason why warpgate units in general are so weak.
Then we could start buffing some terran-units that need tech again.
But I fucking hate spamming the D key, I hate warp gates and stupid hard-hard counter units lik immortals - and I hate not being able to use tanks as the backbone of my army. It just doesn't feel right.
I love it when people call the Immortal a "hard-hard counter unit". As though SC1 didn't have the quintessential hard-counter unit.
Why don't Terrans go Bio in SC1 TvP? On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Marines have lots of DPS. Dragoons only do half-damage to them. And so forth. Go ahead and try. Build up a nice force of M&M, then walk up to a Protoss and attack their natural. As you approach, a glowing orb of destruction will jump out of the fog of war, and all your units will die.
Reavers. Reavers are the primary reason SC1 Terrans cannot go M&M. The best you can do is go for some kind of Marine all-in before Robo-tech gets out. Because if even one Reaver hits the field, it's game over. They hard-counter everything that comes out of the Barracks. Quickly, easily, and far more cost-effectively than Immortals kill Siege Tanks. One Reaver can kill virtually unlimited numbers of Marines, even without a Shuttle. Two Immortals will eventually be brought down by STs.
The only reason Immortals get crap is because they dare to be designed to kill Siege Tanks, unlike Reavers who make those boring Marines obsolete. And Immortals have the gall to "cheat": they use a special ability to do it. Unlike Reavers who just do metric-assloads of AoE damage.
I love it when people talk about BW as if they know anything about it.
Now try that with tanks vs immortals. Hurrrr durrrr.
On October 03 2011 10:41 Zealot Lord wrote: This is very well written - but I personally don't agree with some of the things. This: "unless we see a terran winning GSL/MLG/DH with mech in TvP" particularly bothers me, high level Korean terrans have been owning protoss players in GSL (aside from 1/1/1) with MMM+V/G for a while now, when you can consistently win with something, why would pro players, who play for money, bother to change with what works for no reason? Its so effective to the point that protoss players in code S are almost extinct. TvP in Korea at top levels has a win rate average of over 55+% the past five months - maybe someone like Huk/Jinro can shed some light on this, but I seriously doubt any of the top terrans in the OGS house would spend much of their time trying out new stuff as opposed to continually fine tuning their bio-centric play during practice.
It doesn't necessarily mean other unit compositions are unfeasible, I hate to bring up the points QQ'ers do, but there is some truth in that there isn't the incentive to innovate when you already dominate the matchup. I'm pretty sure that if marauders weren't so bloody good against protoss, you would have seen more players try to incorporate other units faster already.
Would it be any good? I don't know - point is, it takes time for metagame to develop, for instance blue flame hellions were sick good from release, however pretty much nobody used them in the first few seasons. They turned out to be so good that they had to be nerfed in the last patch, but it took almost a year for people to realize that. I definitely remember there used to be threads on TL complaining that bio was too good in TvT that the good ol' BW tank usage is all but gone in SC2, which clearly isn't the case anymore despite any significant patch changes regarding those units.
There is a ton of possibilities that haven't even been explored yet, to say that the game has already been completely figured out and that in TvP, bio is the only effective way you can play just can't be right. There are a lot of things which are heavily underused in TvP on GSL levels (such as sensor towers for one) which can definitely play a role in the usage of mech to help combat the loss in mobility in the matchup imo. But it won't happen anytime soon as long as Korean protoss players continue to struggle against existing terran builds.
i agree with you and i didn't really think about that before, but you're right there's no need to develop any new strategies since MMMGV works very well for the koreans. you know i was really happy when jinro used mech vs MC. i thought other koreans would build up on it. unfortunately that didn't happen. there's just no need to search for anything else besides MMMVG now.
On October 03 2011 14:36 antz0r wrote: Well from a lore point of view, why would you always expect one weapon or technology class to work equally well against 3 separate races? Tanks dominate T and Z when used right, but the toss are aliens from a higher race and all that.
I don't mind the differences in tactics required for Tv T/P/Z. But I would love to see some HOTS change to collossi. 4 collossi is like 8 tanks dps with a much higher movement rate and no penalties whatsoever compared to trying to move 8 tanks.
To make tanks worthwhile in TvP, maybe a health decrease to the zealot, or a firing delay to the collossi or movement speed decrease to collossi, or tanks become massive once sieged, or faster unsiege or faster siege, or reduced self-splash damage, decreased gas cost to factory etc.
There's lots of possibilities to try and even things out. But currently there is no corresponding scarefactor to protoss when we sacrifice mobility by going tanks because there are simply too many toss counters to tanks and even thors in TvP.
I think we can start to see tank play in TvP only if it can be done without breaking TvZ/T. Given the trend towards larger maps, mmmvgr is always going to be more manouverable and keep us in the game longer vs chargelots/blink/phoenix/collossi.
you know, i think just tweaking the numbers just wouldn't work. it's the unit design that keeps mech almost unusable in tvp - blink, cliff walking collosus, warpgates. it's like jinro and many other said, you can't send couple hellions to harass an expo while you contain your opponents army. he will just warp stuff in. you have to commit with mass army on the other side of the map, which is just too risky. same with drops and everything (talking about mid-late game when P has enough gates).
on the other hand in TvT and TvZ when you control ground and your opponent can't leave, just send some units to harass some far away expo of your opponent. i makes tvz so awesome because you send few marines to each Z expo while you use your main force to siege Z main and contain his army, using map terrain to your advantage and microing marines vs fungal/blings.
this is what bothers me most about tvp and positional play. insta warpin. to protect anything you want becase you just sucked with positional play.
On October 03 2011 12:41 Zelniq wrote: This guy gets it. Tanks, and other units that control space (like lurkers/tanks did in bw) are what made starcraft such a good game. They make various RTS principles important, such as map design/layout, controlling areas on the map, the 'dance' between strongly held areas and mobile forces circumventing said areas, which in turn spreads the defender more thin as the number of bases increases, promoting more smaller engagements around the map rather than just a giant blob wars.
I do hope for example that colossus become very immobile units in HotS so they can start fulfilling the same role as the tank/lurker did, rather than the opposite of that which is what it is now, with unit-walking and cliff-walking, which is the main reason why games involving colossi tend to come down to huge army vs army battles.
I actually made a very long post about the fundamentally wrong design of colossus's mobility half year ago and got closed by some mod who thinks I'm a average QQer crying for the death-ball. The content is pretty much the same as u said here.
Being a unit with cliff-walking and long range AOE, colossus is already an ideal unit for defense. But the problem is it's mobility in the normal walk and overlap with ground unit. With blink stalkers, this totally makes positioning a joke in SC2. With the power of warp-in, basically it makes protoss army more like zerg army. And Blizzard have to nerf the protoss units coz they are so mobile...
Also the idea of AOE unit created from BW always follows a role of defense and positioning. Like tank, lurker, reaver, templer. If you want it more moblie, fine, get a shuttle and use your micro. Otherwise, these AOE allow u to have great defense power. But if you want to use these power for offense, these units could be easily caught off guard and be punished. So we have the defense advantage in macro game.
Colossus is just such a bad design. I always joke that considering you make a tank being able to move in the seiged mode, at the speed of your bio ball and it overlaps with it, it will be more entertaining to watch...
im sorry your thread was shut down, but i agree. AoE in BW was powerful but relatively slow and hard to use because you had to have good control (HT, collosus, moving shot EMP)
On October 03 2011 10:09 NicolBolas wrote: What is wrong with having one matchup without those Goddamned Siege Tanks in it?
There are quite a few people in this thread who share this sentiment. But the fact of the matter is that the siege tank has been the backbone of the terran army since the starcraft 1 was released. Tanks are what terran has always been all about. Quite frankly, if you don't like the siege tank as a unit then you really are not a terran player at heart and should think about playing a different race.
Yes, and there were matchups in SC1 where STs were once unlikely to appear. TvZ, namely. The matchup I enjoyed most, precisely because it wasn't a tank-fest. It wasn't a fight between slow units and slow units. It was a free-wheeling melee between M&M running around shutting down Zerg expos, and the Zerg trying desperately to hold on to some territory. A game of harass vs. harass, eventually culminating in one side being resource starved and killed.
Nowadays in SC1, STs have managed to infest TvZ to a much greater degree, and I don't care for it much anymore. SK-Terran for life!
I don't hate Siege Tanks per-se. But there is no reason that they should be viable in every matchup. I don't want to see Mech in every game involving Terrans. I want there to be matchups where Air or Bio is viable. And in order for that to happen, Mech cannot be viable in that match.
The simple fact is that Mech is all-consuming. If Mech is viable in a match, it will almost always be the strongest strategy. It may require more work, but you get more out of it, so all Terran play eventually gravitates to it. Once you master the mechanics and micro of positional play, it owns all. Ensuring that there is at least one matchup where Mech is non-viable is a good thing.
Just watch. Mech is already the only way to play TvT. TvZ is already moving heavily towards playstyles that lead to Mech. In another year, assuming HotS changes nothing about this, Bio in TvZ will be relegated to support at best, nonexistent at worst.
On October 03 2011 12:00 XXXSmOke wrote: So many people are missing the whole point of this thread.
The key word is uninteresting MMMVG vs Collsi/Gateway has almost zero strategy to it and is extrmeley uninteresting.
OP was suggesting tanks as a way to make the MU interesting but since he used the "BW" word alot of people gave him shit.
Now while im with the OP and many other Terrans that would love to see the tank and a "BW" Style TvP. It doesnt mean that has to be the fix. As I said earlier, the MU could turn into Thor/Hellion/Raven/BC still be tankless and be 1000 times more interesting than it currently is.
Even if I subscribed to your premise that the current TvP is uninteresting, how would Thor/Hellion/Raven/BC be better? Thors are basically giant Marauders that can shoot up. Hellions aren't particularly interesting in and of themselves. Ravens have some nice spells, but so do Ghosts. And BCs are just flying Marines with loads of Hp. Slow, flying Marines.
The principle difference in that composition is that it's slow. Oh good, because that's what a free-wheeling game needs: to be slow.
The current TvP state of play involves a lot of the Terran harassing the Protoss with drops and so forth. While it does eventually come down to two armies running into one another, there is a lot of harassment intended to slow the Protoss down. How well the harass is executed and how well it is dealt with is often what determines who wins or not.
I'm not saying that every matchup needs to be that way. But some diversity would be nice. I don't want every Terran match to be "how do I get around his Goddamn Siege Tanks?" And if there's one good thing that Marauders do, it is that they give Terrans a real alternative to using STs everywhere.
But I fucking hate spamming the D key, I hate warp gates and stupid hard-hard counter units lik immortals - and I hate not being able to use tanks as the backbone of my army. It just doesn't feel right.
I love it when people call the Immortal a "hard-hard counter unit". As though SC1 didn't have the quintessential hard-counter unit.
Why don't Terrans go Bio in SC1 TvP? On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Marines have lots of DPS. Dragoons only do half-damage to them. And so forth. Go ahead and try. Build up a nice force of M&M, then walk up to a Protoss and attack their natural. As you approach, a glowing orb of destruction will jump out of the fog of war, and all your units will die.
Reavers. Reavers are the primary reason SC1 Terrans cannot go M&M. The best you can do is go for some kind of Marine all-in before Robo-tech gets out. Because if even one Reaver hits the field, it's game over. They hard-counter everything that comes out of the Barracks. Quickly, easily, and far more cost-effectively than Immortals kill Siege Tanks. One Reaver can kill virtually unlimited numbers of Marines, even without a Shuttle. Two Immortals will eventually be brought down by STs.
The only reason Immortals get crap is because they dare to be designed to kill Siege Tanks, unlike Reavers who make those boring Marines obsolete. And Immortals have the gall to "cheat": they use a special ability to do it. Unlike Reavers who just do metric-assloads of AoE damage.
i agree with you about the SK terran. it was fun. it added variety to the matchup as you could do tank or mech based builds too. i think we might see eventually some marine ghost medivac raven builds in sc2 too. i loved BW tvz and i was my favorite matchup, mainly due to lurker / defilers / tank / vessels interaction.
On October 03 2011 07:26 Dezire wrote: Oke i disagree with this one so hard.
First half of you're story is based on your poor opinion on marauders, and that youre facorite BW units cant be used (tank) which makes this 'complaining' about the matchup not based on facts but on your own opinion.
about ur warpgates, you might have a point there, heck i'd like as a protoss myself if i could make units as 'easy' as a terran can so i can focus more on the battle instead of having to look awway to warp in and keep my macro up.
but the micropart? you cannot be serious. first you are saying that its so awesome to micro against banes and fungles in tvz. but seriously you could do the same ammount of micro against storms as puma did amazingly here @ 26:05 or lifting up your units in ur medivacs to avoid FF's as select showcased in a match i cant remember on tal d'arim altar. or MKP in a match i can't remember either on crevasse where he one shotted units with marauders so they go slowed and couldnt get away.
about the micro in a general battle, well just read what thorzain said, seems pretty intense to me tbh.
and again the unitcomposition is biased by your opinion of not liking MM but using the argument "its basicly mmm viking ghost all the time" doesn't make much sens to me either as each matchup has a standard composition, that you dont like this one isnt the games fault.
well there's micro and i acknowledged that later on in the thread. you know i like going bio early on because it's safe and it can do alot of damage, pin P back to his base because of fear of the drops. early bio battles are pretty cool. but give me an option to transition out of it. add variety to that matchup so that you can do both bio or biomech builds.
Alot of protoss players whine about having weak gateway units, no KA etc etc. This is all due to the warpgate mechanic. Warp gates allows an instant wave of reinforcements at any moments of the game unlike the 2 other races where you have to defend with what you have and rally in the units that are being produced (or produce if not being built/caught off guard).
Not only the instant reinforcement, but coupled with the fact that warpgates basically ignore map/rush distance, there are certain points in the game where the P can suddenly get rid of any defender's advantage that you may have had. The defenders advantage I am talking about is the ability for the other races to build up its forces while the P army is closing in (since positional advantage along with higher ground isn't as effective as it was in BW or even WC3).
Now due to this mechanic, the P simply cannot have strong gateway units as it would be just too deadly. It is another reason the KA amulet was removed because of the on demand storm warpins. You bet the KA would be back if warp gates were removed and stalkers wont be so laughable compared to dragoons. I also think that the warp mechanic gets out of control as the game goes by since even if the T won the 200/200 fight barely, it would take time to remax while the P has his units out already. The T has his core composition broken, while the P has it up and running again.
Plus what is the difference between a zerg spamming a thousand lings compared to a P spamming a thousand zealots after the engagement? SC2 has way too many gimmicks and should try to improve from its origins.
I always get the feeling that DB and the co watched way too many "boxer best moments" and things like that which made the game WAY too gimmicky ala reapers.
I fully agree with the OP. Ever since release TvZ has been my favorite matchup, it just feels so right all the way from the first minutes of the game to the very longest most epic games. I'd say almost everything is viable also. Bio - Bio Mech - Mech. Ghost/Ravens/Thors/ BC's. You name it, they can all be used to crush the Zerg.
TvT is also a great matchup, by far the mirror i enjoy most and the reason i play terran. If starcraft can be compared to chess in anyway I'd say TvT is the pinnacle of the view. Tanks find a great use here for holding strategical positions along with turrets/bunkers. At the same time pure bio can be used to launch massive drops/ counter attacks.
At my level atleast i feel every unit in the Terran's arsenal works here aswell. Bio - Bio Mech - Mech - Sky terran (Yes it was nerfed when BFH where nerfed but it's still viable).
Now TvP, that's another story.
I admit i haven't much love for Protoss even though I've been a random player. Not because i didn't enjoy playing P, but mostly because i never have enjoyed playing against them. Void Rays, DT's and the old Deathballs. All these things are combined the targets of almost all my rage/banter this past year of SC2.
In short, i have never enjoyed TvP. Not because i can't win, but because i can only win one way when the game goes into mid-late game. MMM-G-V. Sure tanks/banshees work if your going for a 1-1-1 build where you try to kill your opponent early, but not for much else.
As I play Zerg I do not actually have this problem myself. But when watching games (I see way to many VODs a day) it is clear that TvP is the boring matchup. At least for me, for as the op says it boils down to 1-2 emps/storms and "who has the most". No mirco, barely any macro. Compared to the other matchups that is.
so, as I have a ton of thoughts on this topic and on this thread, I made a looooooong post. It's just my personal opinion and maybe I'm a little biased against Mech play, because I play Zerg and I'm really annoyed by other races that rant about not being able to do whatever they want, while running into build order/composition losses with "standard" play all the time.
on Marauders, "A boring unit": Marauders have Concussive Shells & Stim. They only work well vs armored units, but really aren't good vs Protoss most basic unit, the zealot. I really don't see how Marauders are boring unit. You stim, you scoot and shoot, you drop. True they are not high tech units, that make you go "just hold out 1more min and then I will have my first BC!", but really there are way more boring units in the game. (example? Marine! "Hey I require no tech, I cost close to nothing and counter every unit in the game that doesn't have splash! Btw, I can shoot air and come out of reactors "; another one? Ultralisk! "I'm high tech, cost a lot, need a lot of babysitting to not get me stuck behind my zergfriends and don't do shit if there are no infestors around. But hey, I can burrow now ")
on Marauders overlaps with Siege Tanks: I have never seen a Terran player go Marauder to splash banelings or to use as artillery. If Marauders would overlap with the Siege Tank, noone would need this thread, because then MMM would have its own "Tank".
on Warpgates: I like them. It falls under the concept that each race is unique in nearly every way. Zerg has larva, Terran has rally and Protoss has WarpGate. True all 3races have rally points for units (high tech P), but that's rather a question of balancing (giving protoss ridicoulously weak lategame units, that warp in?) and general design (Protoss is the "in-between"-race from a point of tech. They tech slower than terrans, but already get a nearly complete army out of 1structure) If it wasn't for Warpgate rushes, Protoss would not even build Gateways anymore!
on Mech buffs: serioulsy? As if MechUnits weren't hard enough to be dealt with in 2/3 matchups. Don't get me wrong. I would like to see mech or biomech in TvP and blizzard clearly didn't plan on Mech becoming so underused in that matchup. But I don't see how buffing existing mech units wouldn't change TvT and TvZ. In my eyes (apart from redesigning the whole game), the only option to make Mech instantly work on its own in TvP, would be a new factory unit, specifically designed for that purpose.
on broodwar, "terranish feeling": in broodwar bio was nearly unplayable, due to only being able to select 12units, and poor pathing. But it was part of the game. SK Terran anyone? So I don't get why playing without tanks is considered unterranish... Also I wouldn't say that Brood War balancing was that good... it's rather that noone will ever see how bad it was, due to the game being so old/userunfriendly, that controlling units properly was often times more important, than making the right decisions. (not saying that this isn't a good/interesting concept... still I prefer my army moving in one formation with a few clicks, rather than a never ending trail, running all over the map and getting stuck in every corner, if I don't spam 200 APM on moving)
on Mech metagame: SC2+beta are now like 1.5years old. Broodwar is 10years old. TvP in Broodwar is said to be the hardest matchup (from a terrans perspective), but all in all, high level Terrans do pretty well in it. Maybe Mech/Biomech just hasn't been figuered out in SC2. Truely, pure Mech doesn't seem to have a bright future right now. But I really don't see, why there shouldn't be some kind of Marine/Ghost/Tank or Marauder/Hellion/Viking mix at some point of the game. Theoretically speaking, pure Mech doesn't seem to stand much of a chance against chargelots, immortals, blink stalkers, phoenix, void rays and carriers. Practically we have seen Jinro and Thorzain murder MC with Mech (on older patches, but who can say if strike canons are completly useless, if noone ever tries to develop this style). I'm not saying it's going to happen. But before Bisu entered the stage, noone thought Protoss can beat Zerg at all. Therefore I don't see, why existing units that are clearly not underpowered, should undergo drastical changes. Again, maybe Mech needs another unit. Maybe Mech wasn't supposed to work on its own in broodwar (as blizzard really didn't make starcraft to start an e-sports revolution in Korea, but rather to show, that they can make an entertaining game with 3races - that earns them a lot of money)
on "too many 'hardcounters'": I don't feel like Mech isn't playable because Protoss got too many new (=non broodwar) abilities that were specifically designed to counter Mech play. Surely the Immortal does well against tanks. But it straight up sucks against Marines. Tanklines do splash damage, thus doing way better in immortal vs tank fights, than few tanks vs few immortals. Ghosts, Marines, blocking Hellions, Air support, Strike Canons... you name it... All of those things are good to help tanks vs immortals. The same goes for Chargelots. Marines and Hellions both do well against them. Charge is a pretty stupid ability. It is pretty easy to trigger charge on a unit the protoss doesn't want it to trigger. And suddenly a bunch of Zealots stand in nomans land fighting hellions instead of closing in on tanks. Blink... sounds pretty nice to have Stalkers blinking on top of tanks, causing them to splash themselves and sniping them? Well stalkers cost ~75% of tanks and get decimated pretty brutally by nearly any terran unit... that's why they usually don't blink in any terran army... True, they can be massed way more easily than tanks, but maybe that's the tricky thing with going Mech? Like in broodwar, getting a critical amount of Mech out might be already the goal for such a TvP style... Phoenix, another unit that isn't really costefficient straight up countering Mech, and doesn't farwell against Thors, Vikings, Marines and Turrets. Colossi? Tanks, Vikings and Strike Canons...
on the "lost" 4th Mech unit: The Viking is maybe the best example how metagames can change. If you watch any streams/tournaments, in TvT you will see a lot of people going for an extreme mass of vkings right now. Why? Because Vikings on the ground are pretty good! Vikings in the air are pretty good! Vikings that control the map are pretty good! Vikings that harass bases are pretty good! TvT is maybe the most figuered matchup in the game, due to it being played the most on high level. Therefore we see metagame developments that people really haven't thought about until now. Maybe such things might completly change TvP, once it becomes a stable matchup. But right now we rather see Protoss' struggling to compete with the current Terran playstyle and 1-1-1 timings (a Biomech rush, that people considered bad for a long time, until the openings were so figuered out, that terrans realized, how much potential it had... maybe there are similar 2base timings? 3base timings/standard play?)
on "protoss being to mobile": I don't see this as a problem that might not get solved by metagame... Mutas can pin a superior terran army in its base, why shouldn't hellion drops/banshees/... be able to do the same? Small amounts of Stalkers/Zealots (for example warped in by warp prisms, proxy pylons) can be killed with hellions. Bigger attacks at unprotected positions might require counterattacks... Again, I'm not saying that this is how this might ever turn out. But I really don't see a lot of players on high level even trying to force making it work. Just imagine if IMMVP came out and barely beat "popular foreign Protoss" with Mech, due to being just 5times better generally. More People might just get inspired by this.
on Marines: I want to add here, that SC2 Marines are so insanely strong for their cost, that every other unit that doesn't overlap with it, just had to suffer by gamedesign to a certain degree in my eyes. This might result to Mech vs Protoss only being viable (if ever becoming viable) in combination with Marines.
On October 01 2011 06:16 Thorzain wrote: I feel that TvP IS really micro intensive. EMP everything, move your units out of storms, focus fire individual colossi with vikings and kite zealots if he's zealot heavy. And while you're kiting zealots you have to move back your ghosts so that they dont all get killed in the blink of an eye. All these things at the same time. It's freaking hard if you ask me!
The OP made sense to me when I read it initially, but what Thorzain said makes more sense. Apparently if you're not microing in TVP battles, you're doing it wrong?
But I fucking hate spamming the D key, I hate warp gates and stupid hard-hard counter units lik immortals - and I hate not being able to use tanks as the backbone of my army. It just doesn't feel right.
I love it when people call the Immortal a "hard-hard counter unit". As though SC1 didn't have the quintessential hard-counter unit.
Why don't Terrans go Bio in SC1 TvP? On the face of it, it seems like a good idea. Marines have lots of DPS. Dragoons only do half-damage to them. And so forth. Go ahead and try. Build up a nice force of M&M, then walk up to a Protoss and attack their natural. As you approach, a glowing orb of destruction will jump out of the fog of war, and all your units will die.
Reavers. Reavers are the primary reason SC1 Terrans cannot go M&M. The best you can do is go for some kind of Marine all-in before Robo-tech gets out. Because if even one Reaver hits the field, it's game over. They hard-counter everything that comes out of the Barracks. Quickly, easily, and far more cost-effectively than Immortals kill Siege Tanks. One Reaver can kill virtually unlimited numbers of Marines, even without a Shuttle. Two Immortals will eventually be brought down by STs.
The only reason Immortals get crap is because they dare to be designed to kill Siege Tanks, unlike Reavers who make those boring Marines obsolete. And Immortals have the gall to "cheat": they use a special ability to do it. Unlike Reavers who just do metric-assloads of AoE damage.
I love it when people talk about BW as if they know anything about it.
On October 01 2011 06:51 homeless_guy wrote: Fairly objective post (I play T too). One thing I think you didn't consider, especially in Part 1, is that Blizz wanted to make the game different enough from BW that there was a reason to play it, besides new graphics. IMO, the real shame is the marauder is basically a glorified marine, and it has been untouched, while interesting units e.g. reapers and tanks were nerfed.
agreed, as a matter of fact, how many units have been known to not have been changed?
as in, what units have have the exact same stats as they did the very first time any knowledge was released to the public?
as far as I know, these are the units that not been changed:
all races: workers
terran: marine (except for stim research) maruader (except for stim research) hellion (except for BF research) banshee ****************I think viking have had some change, but else this spot would say viking
zerg: overlords (except for speed research (cost 50/50 in early beta)) zergling baneling ****************queen have had changes to their air attack right? hydralisk
On October 01 2011 06:51 homeless_guy wrote: Fairly objective post (I play T too). One thing I think you didn't consider, especially in Part 1, is that Blizz wanted to make the game different enough from BW that there was a reason to play it, besides new graphics. IMO, the real shame is the marauder is basically a glorified marine, and it has been untouched, while interesting units e.g. reapers and tanks were nerfed.
agreed, as a matter of fact, how many units have been known to not have been changed?
as in, what units have have the exact same stats as they did the very first time any knowledge was released to the public?
as far as I know, these are the units that not been changed:
all races: workers
terran: marine (except for stim research) maruader (except for stim research) hellion (except for BF research) banshee ****************I think viking have had some change, but else this spot would say viking
zerg: overlords (except for speed research (cost 50/50 in early beta)) zergling baneling ****************queen have had changes to their air attack right? hydralisk
I'm entirely confused about why this thread is spotlighted for game analysis. The OP's post has exactly one source, which is Dustin Browder's interview where he talks about the design of the game and how it is balanced and so on and so forth. Its a good insight, that the PvT and PvZ matchups were balanced around the power of Colossus and all matchups suffered as a result. But I don't believe that new ground was covered here that deserved a spotlight. I'll go into detail on the OP, and then go on a huge rant on to the replies that have followed and as to why you should reconsider hitting the post button sometimes if you're not that great of a player. It will be glorious.
PredY - Summarizing PredY greatly dislikes the (lack of) unit diversity that is present in TvP, because he likes Tanks for their strategic play and hates Marauders because playing them is a bit like bashing your head against the wall (bashing your army into the Toss's base). The standard composition, MMM + Ghosts or Vikings, he feels, is forced when playing vs. P because its the best composition possible, even in endgame situations, because charge Zealots hard counter tanks and are available at all times, while a well-controlled Marauder-Ghost-Medivac-whatever ball can beat Charge Zeals extremely cost-effectively, and do bonus damage against everything else that P has. So MMM with subtle variations is VERY strong vs. P, because it can handle every composition thrown at it. Checklist?
Zealot - useless without excellent FFs or charge. Marauder-Ghost Stalker - only cost-effective vs vikings in the air. Marauder-anything Sentry - Does no damage and is countered by EMP, but early and seeing a lot of use makes it a good unit. Immortal - Deals bonus damage to Marauders! But gets bonus damage dealt to it by Marauders... countered by marines, doubly so because each Immortal made is not a colossus. Also countered by Ghosts. Phoenix/Void Ray/Carrier - Vikings, Marines, and Terran may choose to add Thors... overall just good for harassment. High Templar - Terran adds Ghosts. You get to play the Ghost vs. HT mini-game to see if you can land storms or not. Too many ghosts and you need Colossus. If anyone makes a major mistake the game ends. Colossus - Terran adds Vikings, both players take more bases and add Ghosts and HTs or Pheonix and continue to upgrade their ground army.
Therefore you can take on anything with with Bio vs. Protoss. There's no rock paper scissors but for the openings, and Bio FORCES High Templar or Colossus (and is still effective vs it). Also right now, P has no really valid timings against T that don't involve tier 3 tech, because they all got nerfed, so P can no longer do any kind of contain to force medivacs or tanks to bust.
There are some good arguments against this; Mech can hit pre-chargelot timings, 1/1/1 into contain, Goody argument, but basically what Predy wants is for positional, traditional tank-based PvT from broodwar. But that's just what Predy wants. At least 66% of the Starcraft II population doesn't care (P and Z players). And lot of T players like playing Bio. So why spotlight this thread?
On October 01 2011 05:49 PredY wrote: I talked about TvZ and TvT. Do you know what those matchups have in common? Tanks. Tanks made BW so awesome. Tanks make TvZ and TvT in SC2 very fun to play/watch. You can control ground, abuse the terrain, siege. They take a lot of skill to play with but the reward is high, but not in TvP. It's quite sad but almost every protoss unit counters them. Do you remember when tanks did 60 damage? Good times. They were actually quite useful back then. Right now, i wanna cry every time i have 20 of them slaughtered in 10 seconds.
Wait, what? Tanks are what make the game good and tactical? You want to go mech vs. P ... just because its more fun? Then do it. Make it fun. Find ways to keep them tanks alive.
So what is the reason TvP is all bio? Marauders and warpgates. It's unfortunate that TvP got screwed because tanks were "too strong" in TvZ and were nerfed. Marauders are much more cost effective vs protoss. Hell i hate them, marauders. Such a boring unit. Even more than collosus. You make marine marauder then switch to marine marauder and in late game transition into marine marauder, errrr wait a minute...there's just no option like in other matchups. Warpgates is in my oppinion the worst game mechanic they could put into the game, but that has been discussed to death. I really DO HOPE they will change it in HoTS, but i don't expect so.
If you take away my warpgates you have to give me Blink Dragoons. Try to get tanks rolling then, bud! I'm sorry you got caught between my army and my base but you KNOW that I can do that and you STILL get bodied by it then you need to re-evaluate your strategy.
Another issue i have with TvP is there's minimum micro in fights, all you do is make concave before the fight them stim and run in. Cast some emps. Then you watch if you have enough or not. Theres no micro against banelings or infestors like in TvZ. Micro will never save your ass like in TvZ. Good position will never save your ass like in TvT, because you have no tanks, and warpgates are pretty good eh! Nothings angers me more than cutting off protoss expo from his main army and have 20 zealots warped in to my back, same with drops.
While TvZ and ZvZ are more micro intensive, TvP is not short on Micro by any stretch, and you can always improve your spreading, stutter stepping and multitasking with drops. Over-microing can be bad, which I'm fine with. If you want more "skill" units to be added to HoTS, that's fine and I'm all for it, but the micro in TvP is present and still developing.
How about you having wrong unit composition? He has collosus and you have no vikings? You lose. He has storms and you have no EMPs? You lose. Remember when in BW you had no tanks but you could still kill lurkers with godly micro? Or when you have too many vultures against a lot of dragoons but not enough tanks, you would go in and surround with mines and then 10 goons turned to blue goo? I want THAT!
What kind of paragraph is this? Did you think about using a scan? This isn't even true because you can hit marauder-medivac timings before 2 colossus or Templar have storm and do massive damage while getting the right tech online, or drop to delay pushes to get your tech online, or just go raw marauder and split the army with drops and try to snipe them. In order to make Vikings you have to SWAP A BUILDING. Ghost academy is a tier 1.5 building that costs 100gas and builds fairly quick. And you should have EMPs anyway. I'm sorry you can't counter my tier 3 AoE 150-200 gas units with just marines and marauders. I'm sorry Protoss doesn't have shots that you can dodge 100% of the time if your micro is amazing.
So tl;dr, Predy's post reads much more like a "Please bring back tanks to TvP" rant than a history, a balance discussion or anything else. I'm all for new strategies that raise the skill cap and input new units and builds into the scene, I think everyone is. But that doesn't make posts on the subject spotlight worthy. His replies, however, are quite good (about how Marauders decrease the skill cap, etc). But I think what he'll find is that we're not quite as deep into Starcraft II as he thinks we are.
EPT
"; another one? Ultralisk! "I'm high tech, cost a lot, need a lot of babysitting to not get me stuck behind my zergfriends and don't do shit if there are no infestors around. But hey, I can burrow now 
