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All,
I'm a masters Terran, that is, at the time of writing this, but am likely to get demoted pretty soon, with one of the main reasons being my abysmal TvP.
I've played I think about 10 TvPs today and lost them all, all of them, most of which are at the diamond level due to the fact that I've been losing 1/3 of my games (and more since today have been about 50% P) automatically.
I've tried all openings, concussive expand, gasless expand, and 111. I don't really see a ton of value in the 111 anymore and feel that it is basically figured out, with zealots, immortals, phoenixes, what have you.
As far as the more macro centered openings I really don't see a huge variation in them and feel they generally result in the same thing, we're both going to macro up, get our unit composition, I'm going to try to counter whatever it is you go, and then we're going to battle hardcore, after which I come out the loser and that's game.
I'm going to make a bold statement here and say that my macro in these games is pretty good. Often you see me up in supply, harvesters, etc. Very few supply blocks if any, constant scv production, low spending. Also focusing on upgrades and having 22 by the 20 mins mark and often 33 on the way, which I think is pretty reasonable and better than a lot of other people I've watched who are significantly higher. I fill my army with ghosts, medivacs, and vikings like every good terran should.
I have two hypothesizes as to why I am losing these games, given all of the above.
1. I am absolutely terrible at engaging. I have a hard time managing the army, because separate hotkeys for ghosts, vikings, and MM are too difficult for me, and emp takes priority over stim and that usually results in me fumbling around to get my stim off. I can't dodge storms, and have a hard time hitting HTs with my ghosts since they keep them in the back and I don't get cloak for awhile...
2. I have poor decision making, I'm not sure how to punish the P, even if I come out ahead, which is rare. Furthermore, I don't really have a great sense of timings, usually I look to 2/2 finishing, or just max 200, or maybe I scout some tech like storm or what not and I try to beat it.
I would like people to comment on what they see, particularly things like proper unit composition, timings, and decision making...
TvP Bio (gasless expand)
Game 4
Game 3
Game 2
Game 1
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On October 11 2011 10:38 dschneid wrote:
bump?
Have some patience, it takes more than an hour to even watch all of this and formulate a response. I'll take a look later myself tomorrow too.
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Yeah me too. I'm very bad at engagements and my ghosts always get feedback. I also suck at microing out of storm and aiming emps. I really suck at a microing against chargelots.
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Ok I watched your game on Shakuras
Im at about a 10% win rate TvP as well, but from what I saw in Shakuras there are some major points you need to work on
- T is supposed to be the aggressor, you never attacked. The only thing you did was try to get some collsi snipes. But all that did was make him switch out of collsi because he had all the time in the world to switch since you werent attacking. You cant just expect to get to 200/200 vs toss and then just roll him, Toss has the advantage late game, espcially when you have down no dmg to him.
-If your going to control the middle of the map at least pre concave ur units to really lock the position down.
- You did 0 drops that game, thats kind of the point of TvP is to split his army up and weaken him. Not dropping will pretty much lose you every TvP.
-Your upg timings are off, you should be looking at 3-3 by 20 min not 2-2
You should take your third faster.
Those are some main things I would work on, but ill tell you, being the aggressor is going to make it hard, I agree you had really good macro that game, but anybody can have good macro if they never attack. TvP gets extremely hard once u are being aggresive because it is very hard to stutter step/drop and macro at the same time.
I have to agree tho with the whole build order thing, the MU is really lame right now it always ends up being ball vs ball and then someone destroys the other and GG. Theres barely any strategy to it.
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I found myself in a similar boat a couple months back. I would FE in literally every matchup and I think my terran macro is pretty good. I've got two ideas for you,
one would be working on your vision, and knowing where your opponents army is when you're moving out. The engagement must happen on your terms for it to be successful because to scramble, land emps stim and spread at an instant is ridiculously hard to do.
If you stim single marines and run them out to towers and to your opponents army you can get your army across the map safer knowing your opponent is back. Suiciding marines in will also let you know whether you can take a moment and arrange your units for a concave + ghosts infront vikings together etc because you can see your opponents army and if he is coming at you. Additionally, scanning your own army / keeping it near a turret before you move out is key that he won't get the jump on you.
On another note, I think 2 rax reactor->tech lab
quick 2nd gas / stim / fact / tanks
is just such a solid opener. Shuts down voidrays hard, if there's no expo by the 6:30 mark scan at 6:45 or w/e. Prioritize siege over tanks after 1 tank and consider a starport. If there army isnt infront of your base by 7 minutes its probs dts which is fine because we can get a raven, have a massive marine count + tanks.
The 630 scout is essential. If you lose ur first scout send out another one immediately and hide it.
You will have to work out what kind of timing you want to try depending on when they take their expand ( pulling 8-10 scvs at times can take out their expo and leave u ahead) but in general a slow tank push with bunkers, is killer. You get those 5-6 tanks + bunkers up and it can be ridiculously hard to deal with. You dont want to do a big stim->engage you just build a force they arent gonna break. Clyde used this last season in GSL but I dont recall vs who. The korean variant usually opts for 3 rax but I dont know the exact way they make it work, and I kinda prefer the flexibility of having earlier gas.
It will feel weird the first couple times you play this build but your relative army will feel so OP in many situations, which is the opposite of what
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I agree with most of this but have a few questions/comments
1. To your point about being the aggressor, what are appropriate timings for attack?
2. I definitely think my drop play needs improvement, you will see in other games if you watched those replays I do some drops and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The thing is, I feel that in general these tend to be a wash, sometimes u lose all your units, sometimes you snipe some nice tech, it all depends on how prepared the toss is. Furthermore, even when you do do a "successful drop" you probably kill a few probes, etc, but I never feel like anyone attributes their win to the drop that happened at 10 min etc. This is not only from my own play but from watching many many streams of pros.
3. UPG timing is ok, not great, there are some games there where I am on 3-3 by 20 mins and some not so much, in general though I feel I keep up with the Toss reasonably well on upgrades.
4. One last point on macro, you do say that anyone can have really good macro if they aren't being the aggressor, however, in the games when I am not "aggressing" (and the toss is not being "aggressed", so to speak, I generally out macro him, so I don't think it's as cut and dry as, well duh)
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I am a #2 diamond T who regularly beats Masters P and my only 2 wins v GMs were P. I favor 2 rax pressure, reactor and TL. Asap combat shields followed by eng bay at 6:00 for detection/obs popping. And I poke their base around 6:45 to see what theyre up to, if theyved expanded you can usually destroy it. By 9:15 I have stim and +1 weapons and engage again. I buy CC at 7:00 into reactored starport.
I believe 2 rax aggressive style is best v protoss. Competing against psi storm can be a pain.
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What is your name and char code? I'm a high diamond P. I wouldn't mind playing some practice games with you to help you out. PvT is my strongest match up.
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On October 11 2011 11:37 dschneid wrote:
I agree with most of this but have a few questions/comments
1. To your point about being the aggressor, what are appropriate timings for attack?
2. I definitely think my drop play needs improvement, you will see in other games if you watched those replays I do some drops and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The thing is, I feel that in general these tend to be a wash, sometimes u lose all your units, sometimes you snipe some nice tech, it all depends on how prepared the toss is. Furthermore, even when you do do a "successful drop" you probably kill a few probes, etc, but I never feel like anyone attributes their win to the drop that happened at 10 min etc. This is not only from my own play but from watching many many streams of pros.
3. UPG timing is ok, not great, there are some games there where I am on 3-3 by 20 mins and some not so much, in general though I feel I keep up with the Toss reasonably well on upgrades.
4. One last point on macro, you do say that anyone can have really good macro if they aren't being the aggressor, however, in the games when I am not "aggressing" (and the toss is not being "aggressed", so to speak, I generally out macro him, so I don't think it's as cut and dry as, well duh)
First attack with a FE should be around 9-12 min mark its basically a timing with 2 medivacs a handful of MM +1 attack stim/CC/conc thats when T is extremely strong is in the midgame. Unless Toss is doing a 1 base, at this point your army is really mobile, really powerful, and can be in 2 places at once. Its a very strong attack I usually try and do an octo drop while pushing at the front. Even if he has stalks to def il just run my medivac to the cliff and jus wait there, Protoss Hate this so much cuz they are forced to leave half their army in base in case of drop. This is a perfect time to take an aggresive third while hes stuck.
Dropping is very hard, its the reason imo alot of T's have trouble in the MU, you are so dependant on drops doing damage, yet to do a double drop while controlling main army and mmacroing is very very tricky. Bio takes so much skill to pull off like the koreans who make it seem so OP. But yea you gota drop, no matter what.
Your UPG timing should always be great, UP's are so important in this MU if he gets +2 armor before you get +2 attack his army is so cost-effcieent its obnoxius.
Well the guy I watched was pretty Terrible.... He was down 20 workers without being harassed... Generally P should be ahead 10 works to compensate for mules. Whats ssad is that you can out macro Protoss players all day, yet if your drops dont go or you dont position right, youll still lose by alot.
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Tried playing games with him, he's cocky and unwilling to listen to what I say. Series was 1-1. Although I'm a high diamond, I beat plenty of masters, I just don't ladder to much. If he would open his ears, he could win the match up. But instead he's cocky and incoherent. GG's though... Take advice from players of all leagues.. one day it could just help.
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thanks for coming back and posting a ridiculous comment attempting to ruin the thread.
This is just gonna be a he said/she said but I don't believe this is true at all and I'm not really sure why you came to this thread to further whatever it was you had going on, at the end of the day you came in with the attitude that you were right while I was wrong didn't know anything, probably because I was the one who posted in TL asking for help and you were "doing me a favor"
We played two sets and they went well, 1-1 split, I was asking for some advice as well as giving some of mine, not condescending and nothing to do with league (did I ever mention you were Diamond and frankly I start this thread by saying I'm basically diamond myself...)
I do appreciate that you played a few games with me and tried to help, but I think you could be a bit more open minded in stead of just saying "NOPE", "NOPE" to ever question or comment I have or going on and on about the only reason you lost the first game was cause you were caught off guard or something...
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Furthermore one should be able to ascertain from my previous posts that I am completely willing to listen to the advice of others and generally follow up with some questions.
If anyone else with a good head on their shoulders would like to comment on the above replays or play a few and talk about them i'd be more than happy, thanks.
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Alright, I'll weigh in a bit. Masters Terran, only real problem I have with Protoss is early Immortal timings. I can go late-game against them no problem, and that seems to be what you're struggling with.
If you go MMMVG (and to be honest I could never get any other composition to work), the important idea is to always drop, preferably simultaneously, but never, ever lose your drops. Drops in TvP and TvZ are very, very different, and the reason is very simple: Protoss doesn't have Mutalisks, and cannot pick off a Medivac that's not near solid ground. A successful drop is defined differently in TvP because your Medivac is not on a one-way trip, unlike TvZ. Also, because Protoss army builds linearly like yourself instead of Zerg (which builds in bursts), you can't afford to lose drops- because that means your army is growing slower than his.
If you force him to pull his Probes, your drop is successful. If you kill off his warp in cycle before his main Stalker army arrives, your drop is successful. You want to take advantage of Protoss's lack of speed by keeping at least 2 Medivacs hidden around to drop his main and his third as often as you can. You want to scan inbetween your two drops to see how well he splits his army to deal with your drops. The one time he messes up in the splitting, you can sacrifice that drop to snipe as much as you can.
This also makes it very hard for Protoss to move against you, and MMMVG generally should keep one base ahead of a deathball Protoss, and should do its absolute best to keep Protoss on 2 base for as long as possible. If he keeps Stalkers at his bases, use two Medivacs, he'll have to use his main army to deal with that.
Your final composition should be mainly Marauders, ~6-8 Medivacs (not counting the 2 floating), Ghosts, and Vikings.
Engagement should begin with most of the Ghosts out front firing EMPs, the Vikings near a ledge to fire at Colossi and kite back against Stalker retaliation, and Marauders Stimming and trying to get the Chargelots to charge ahead to be kited while the Colossi are out of range. A few Ghosts should always be way in the back to EMP any HTs he was holding back until your Ghosts have died. Straight up Marauder-Medivac can eat Chargelots with little casualties if they're separated from the rest of the army. And then, it's an A-Move forward if the Colossi and HTs are cleaned up.
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Preamble:
I'm a masters terran myself, 1400+ pts. TvP is my best matchup by a decent margin at the moment. I've got pretty good mechanics compared to the rest of my play, so I tend to rely on just having more stuff than my opponents, and out macroing/microing/multitasking them. I feel that if you can force the game into a low-tech vs low-tech situation, the mule advantage + bio beating gateway units before charge gives terran a fighting chance.
I would like to suggest that you try 1 rax CC into 4 rax as a way to help you get a better feel for the matchup.
It's super safe, you won't be losing to cheese, and you will also eliminate all the greedy nexus into fast tech builds as they'll just die to your first attack.
The reason I suggest this build is not just because it's freaking kickass, but because it force you to engage with protoss more often, it will give you a better feel the matchup, and you'll be able to say, "oh, that's a lot of sentries and an immortal, I should get ghosts to deal with the probably immortal bust coming my way."
You will have to use 3 hotkeys if you want to have any semblance of decent army control in TvP, I have bio + medivacs on 1, ghosts on 2 (or vikings if I don't have any ghosts), and vikings on 3 (or dropship harass if I'm not using it).
The simple concept with army control in TvP is to EMP everything before you engage, as if you start shooting first, your EMP's won't do much since the shields will be gone already. You pretty much can't ever afford to eat a storm, so #1 priority is eliminating all HT energy, either via snipe if they're in the front of the toss army, or via EMP if they're towards the back.
Here are a few replays of the build I'm referring to, you can message me on b-net @CatInTheHat.476 if you have any questions that you feel don't belong in this thread.
Shakuras vs Akt (double robo 2 base immortal bust into colo)
http://drop.sc/42770
Shattered vs RGNFuture (1gate nexus into 3 gate warp prism, I was half asleep in this game)
http://drop.sc/42519
Antiga vs Glekio (standard macro colo into HT with double upgrades, passive game)
http://drop.sc/41061
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My PvT is about as abysmal as your TvP and I'm around your level (masters)... Practice partners gogo :D
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I'm a 1500 point master terran, try the 3-rax stim/conc stiming, its a great all-in vs Toss in the metagame because it hard counters 1 gate expand (if you execute it well) and has a 50-50 chance against a 3 gate expand. It has a slightly better chance against 4 gates (depends on micro) and immortal busts. The BO I do is different from the "normal" 3 rax stim, and its very tight. If you scout 2 gas, then save 2 scans before you do your push, and if they really are going DT's, go for a base race. If you scout an expo, then mule away.
Here are some replays:
http://drop.sc/43014
http://drop.sc/43013
http://drop.sc/43018
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i have the exact same problem as you do. i would try to avoid huge macro games if possible. i dont mean to cheese or all in every game but atleast try to keep the protoss honest. ive found that if i let the protoss 1gate fe then im in a world of hurt in the midgame even if i fast expanded myself. double robo collosus all ins are too good. have an all in ready to punish greedy builds such as the nexus first. thor all ins are particularly good
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This is a little lazy cause i haven't watched ur reps yet, but coming from a toss player, its pretty important for you to drop vs. toss, or at least delay the third when playing bio because toss can just double forge and get both templar and colossus tech and A-move into you with 3-3 when you are at 2-2 at best with double engineering bays. At that point, even godly micro will only get you an even army trade; and if somehow he has colossus leftover; its gg when he remaxes.
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iam low master terran and my TvP is also very very bad... i like the macro style so i play almost everytime 1 ras fe... the problem is that my Micro in late game is bad (emps, storm dodging, stimming etc.)
My opening and my disadvantage stays in contrast, because i marco hard to fight in big armys, but iam bad at fighting with big armys... so i loose almost every game... think about what your focus is... you have to become a situation where you good at...so play to get this situation...
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A couple comments from the 3 games I saw.
If I go a gasless FE, I try to wall off before the probe gets in. You cannot hold a protoss 1 base immortal all in if executed properly. The one game, you were obviously fast expanding and didn't scout the protoss all in. You did have your scv at his natural so you probably had some idea it was coming, but you didn't know what type of all in it was. I think you are a little bit too greedy.
You need to group your ghosts separately than your main bio/medivac army. The one engage I saw with the 2/3 ghosts, medivac, and bio was not good. You didn't use all of your emps. There are tons of micro trainers and unit testers out there you can practice on.
I also don't like the timing in your attack. I think you waste too much time teching to ghosts for your first attack rather than just punishing the weak early game protoss army. As someone said earlier, the low tech vs low tech fights are easier to handle. I generally try to hit a 10 min timing push with a large bio + 2 medivac force with stim/shields/conc shells off a fast expand. It generally will hit right as the protoss are teching to charge or colossus. If for some reason they have fast colossus, you just pull back and already have a starport. If they have a bunch of chargelots and sentries, you can punish them by constantly dropping without much threat of losing your medivacs since they wont have many stalkers.
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High masters, TvP is by far my best matchup, won most Ps in EU at one point or another. Watching now. Until then, about your points -
On October 11 2011 09:45 dschneid wrote:
1. I am absolutely terrible at engaging. I have a hard time managing the army, because separate hotkeys for ghosts, vikings, and MM are too difficult for me, and emp takes priority over stim and that usually results in me fumbling around to get my stim off. I can't dodge storms, and have a hard time hitting HTs with my ghosts since they keep them in the back and I don't get cloak for awhile...
2. I have poor decision making, I'm not sure how to punish the P, even if I come out ahead, which is rare. Furthermore, I don't really have a great sense of timings, usually I look to 2/2 finishing, or just max 200, or maybe I scout some tech like storm or what not and I try to beat it.
1. Either practice -alot- with different control groups (even vs AI, just prac with moving around, EMP-ing, etc). or just use a single control group (even though that kinda sucks with vikings) and get used to tab-ing. In any case, practice with the control in environments that are comfy to you.
I assume you don't play too much, so you probably end up in that situation about 3-4 times / day - you're obviously gonna be nervous. Just practice - spreading in a concave, emp-ing, tab-stimming, moving bits of army around - 10-20 times until you're happy with how it goes.
About dodging Storms - it's kind of a thing about seeing a templar moving towards one side of your army, grabbing that chunk and pulling it back. Also, make sure to try and scan the observers above the place you're engaging.
2. 2/2, punishing greedy expanding, just before a tech switch etc - are all really strong moments to push. Key is to not go berserk mode - if you wanna push, see that you can't (ie, he has better concave, good ht spread etc), just pull back and continue macro-ing.
LE:
You said you're fine with your macro, so about the engagements:
G1 (shakuras): In order of badness -> No concave, 15 vikings (?! - at least preland them), no EMPs, 2-1 vs 2-2.
Also, 75 SCVs with the style you play is a big no-no. The only way you can pull off 75 SCVs in TvP is if you play a "constantly trade" style with mass expos and mass barracks (style which isn't particularly strong on shakuras but w/e). Something similar to zerg muta/ling, if you want.
With how you play it, when you get to maxed, you -HAVE- to build "macro OCs" and go free at least 20 SCV supply for more army. It's the only way to keep up with Protoss' insta-reinforcements via gateways.
G2 (abyssal caverns): You're 1-1 vs 1-3, but still, you should never lose that. You hade units by the xn tower, and out of the 4-5 available EMPs, you hit, well, zero. I assume you're extremely nervous when you engage, I think that's one of the main things that is pulling you back. Just relax, scan so you know where the HTs are, and take it easy from there.
G3 (abyss 2): You should never really lose that. A) pull your SCVs faster and surround bunker with'em. B) When he walked up the ramp that was lolgg for him. Close depot and win. It was just mismicro on your part.
G4 (antiga): Again, mismicro. Just stim and emp as soon as he comes down that ramp, and you win by a longshot. Good concave there. Also, land the vikies as soon as you get rid of the collossi.
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Yeah. Bottomline. Work on the engagements. Against AI, against friends, just on ladder, your control is really kinda iffy. Take a breath, get comfy with it, play relaxed and you should do fine.
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On October 11 2011 20:48 n0ise wrote:
I assume you don't play too much, so you probably end up in that situation about 3-4 times / day - you're obviously gonna be nervous. Just practice - spreading in a concave, emp-ing, tab-stimming, moving bits of army around - 10-20 times until you're happy with how it goes.
About dodging Storms - it's kind of a thing about seeing a templar moving towards one side of your army, grabbing that chunk and pulling it back. Also, make sure to try and scan the observers above the place you're engaging.
Yeah. Bottomline. Work on the engagements. Against AI, against friends, just on ladder, your control is really kinda iffy. Take a breath, get comfy with it, play relaxed and you should do fine.
This! You don't need to do mega drop damage to beat toss, thats a myth. What you need to do is know how to micro the battle.
First -> scan like crazy, you need to get your ghosts into position where you can blanket emp the toss army and you do this with cloak or just by getting the better postion. Then as soon as you blanket emp him, stim and engage, try to have a big concave if possible but its not always that easy. Obviously most important targets are hts, but getting the archons down to 0hps is pretty key as well if he has a few in his army. Try to snipe collosus with viking before engaging, this is not that hard once you have like 10vikings but its not essential since if u emp the shit outa the collosus then they should fall quickly to vikings.
The next trick is in the unit micro, and this is SUPER important.
You don't want to be performing the "standard stutterstep" where you just move your whole bio ball back shoot back shoot. This is what causes you to die a horrible death in TvP. Instead you want to be moving back small groups of infantry making your concave bigger and bigger preferably out of the most damaging areas (storms, where the collosus are firing). Its kind of similar to splitting vs banelings mixed with stutter step I call it spread stutter step as you basically just do one stutter step for each small group trying to make as big a concave as possible. If you don't do this you will be storm/collosus food and just die horribly in the late game, but with it, emps and at least even upgrades, your army can go toe to toe with protoss. With some practice you will just be doing this rapidly during battle and when a storm goes down you will naturally choose that as the group that needs to move back next.
As for timing, I like to go a bit after I take my 3rd around 160food cuz typcially he cant have a strong army of collosus and HT by then he can only have a few of each or a bunch of one.
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my tvp is also weak... I think most of it boils down to unit control. I had a hard time with both sides of the matchup (when i used to random) and i still have a rough time late game against protoss. I fail miserably at confronting a deathball of protoss... so I try to be aggresive and trade units with the protoss all game long until they get out collosi to keep the unit counts lower (which makes the control easier)
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Thanks all for the advice, I've got a new BO to try as well as a few key points.
I think the main takeaways are:
1. Make really sure I'm doing well with upgrades, I think I do a decent job but could be better
2. Try to implement some more dropping, particularly being annoying with the third to keep them somewhat gas starved. I tried this recently in a game and noticed it went really well, but then macroing behind this was tough and I forgot to really get my upgrades...ultimately losing, but the drop play was nice lol
3. Work on more favorable engagements (this is the really tough one).
It will probably be a lot of work and I'll likely get demoted in the process but I guess that's the way it is.
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On October 11 2011 11:37 dschneid wrote:
I agree with most of this but have a few questions/comments
2. I definitely think my drop play needs improvement, you will see in other games if you watched those replays I do some drops and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The thing is, I feel that in general these tend to be a wash, sometimes u lose all your units, sometimes you snipe some nice tech, it all depends on how prepared the toss is. Furthermore, even when you do do a "successful drop" you probably kill a few probes, etc, but I never feel like anyone attributes their win to the drop that happened at 10 min etc. This is not only from my own play but from watching many many streams of pros.
Aren't you supposed to lose nothing with drop play unless he has blink?? Imho if you see the stalkers you can get out there in time. You're right that sniping a pylon or a couple probes doesn't seem like a big deal, but firstly it buys you time to get up the right tech(wether it be ghosts or vikings). Plus it creates an economical advantage for you.
Obviously it's not the same, but imagine getting supply depots and scv's sniped all game long.
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
On October 12 2011 02:44 dschneid wrote:
2. Try to implement some more dropping, particularly being annoying with the third to keep them somewhat gas starved. I tried this recently in a game and noticed it went really well, but then macroing behind this was tough and I forgot to really get my upgrades...ultimately losing, but the drop play was nice lol.
Bear in mind that drop play can be a success without actually killing pylons or denying bases-- as long as he knows you have dropships in his airspace, he can't move out, and feels a lot of pressure. You can assert map control and cover for your third base using a couple of dropships if you don't lose them and the units inside them, and punish him if he tries to move his units out of his base.
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sure, I guess the point I was making was that even though you're not SUPPOSED to, let's face it, we all do at one time or another, I see it all the time on pro streams.
Also, I felt like in my match ups the battles were so overwhelmingly one sided that I found it hard to believe it was the result of lack of/poor dropping that made the difference, there are even some replays there where i have no drop play and snipe a robo bay and still lose, but I'm willing to make a better effort at drop play given the strong support I've seen from it in this thread...
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On October 12 2011 03:04 dschneid wrote:
sure, I guess the point I was making was that even though you're not SUPPOSED to, let's face it, we all do at one time or another, I see it all the time on pro streams.
Also, I felt like in my match ups the battles were so overwhelmingly one sided that I found it hard to believe it was the result of lack of/poor dropping that made the difference, there are even some replays there where i have no drop play and snipe a robo bay and still lose, but I'm willing to make a better effort at drop play given the strong support I've seen from it in this thread...
The thing is that continuous dropping hurts a Protoss. He can't freely take expansions, can't move out with his full army, and most importantly has to keep running Probes, putting 3 back on each gas, etc. This causes a lot of macro mistakes and thrown off timings. If he's trying to micro against a drop/run Probes, he might, say, miss a chrono on his Forge, or forget to warp-in for ~10 seconds, or gets supply blocked and can't get another Colossus out for 30 seconds. This ultimately makes it easier for you to out-macro him.
Protoss has a second wave advantage with Warpgates similar to Zerg's larva stockpile in the late-game, so be sure to make way too many Barracks once you're maxed and on 3+ bases, so you can have a reinforcement wave just as strong (even though it finishes ~30 seconds later).
Big engagements are won by splitting the Protoss up similar to how Zerg needs to fight Terran. You're faster but weaker in this match-up, you can't bulldoze Protoss lategame.
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
Oh yeah there's nothing quite as fun as getting like 10+ probe kills or sniping a tech structure with a drop <3 and that's a huge success-- I'm just saying that you can be successful without it.
The drop doesn't really change a one-sided fight into an even fight or a victory, either-- if you were gonna be crushed by a deathball, you were going to be crushed by a deathball. The purpose of a drop is usually something like "I want to be able to take my third, and I want his army to cower in his base for a couple of minutes" rather than "this is going to reduce his army's food count in a meaningfully direct fashion" because a drop is just a 10-food harassing unit.
Rather, a drop is more about affecting macro play and map control.
To think about how drop play works, think about mutalisks in ZvT-- zerg will use mutalisks to try to keep your marines in your base and force either units to stay at home or for you to make turrets instead of additional marines, thereby letting him secure his bases. The mutalisks focus not on dealing damage (though that's a goal) but primarily on not dying so they can be a part of the zerg army later. Bio drops in TvP should act the same way. You're trying to assert map control and trap him in his base for a bit. Losing a couple marines etc is fine, but ideally your drops stay as alive as possible so they can rejoin your army for fighting later. If nothing else, keeping the medivac alive is important since that way you don't have to cut a viking to rebuild it later.
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Go 3 rax. 1 techlab, research stim asap. Marauders/marines/5-6 scvs to melee. Kills pretty much most FE builds. If they're on 1 base you're also a bit more safe. That's 60-70% win rate right there.
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Blazinghand
United States25558 Posts
On October 12 2011 05:20 vnlegend wrote:
Go 3 rax. 1 techlab, research stim asap. Marauders/marines/5-6 scvs to melee. Kills pretty much most FE builds. If they're on 1 base you're also a bit more safe. That's 60-70% win rate right there.
I believe you're suggesting a 3 rax stim all-in off of 1 base, although if those latter 2 rax lack addons, this could still get an expansion in a reasonable time. If you're suggesting a 3 rax stim allin, I must disagree-- it is eminently holdable by a protoss with good FF micro, especially given the stim time nerf. If you're trying to do a pressure build like this, I'd suggest a reactor on the 2nd rax rather than a 3rd rax, since that will let you bank up to expand but give you similar production capacity as well as a still fairly powerful poke with marines and marauders.
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On October 12 2011 05:31 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2011 05:20 vnlegend wrote:
Go 3 rax. 1 techlab, research stim asap. Marauders/marines/5-6 scvs to melee. Kills pretty much most FE builds. If they're on 1 base you're also a bit more safe. That's 60-70% win rate right there. I believe you're suggesting a 3 rax stim all-in off of 1 base, although if those latter 2 rax lack addons, this could still get an expansion in a reasonable time. If you're suggesting a 3 rax stim allin, I must disagree-- it is eminently holdable by a protoss with good FF micro, especially given the stim time nerf. If you're trying to do a pressure build like this, I'd suggest a reactor on the 2nd rax rather than a 3rd rax, since that will let you bank up to expand but give you similar production capacity as well as a still fairly powerful poke with marines and marauders.
No, the 3-rax stim/conc timing is still extremely powerful. I suggested it earlier in the thread, and even posted some replays. The reason it works is because protoss are expecting a maruder expand after they see the first barracks with tech lab, and often get to greedy. I have about a 60% winrate with the 3-rax stim, and I'm a 1500 pt master. The key is to stim up and get right up close to the sentries and stalkers if they have no zealots, and if they do have zealots, make sure not to kite too close to the sentries so you can't get forcefielded out. If you micro well enough, no amount of good force fields can kill it, if they are too greedy. Its also good against the 4-gate and 3-gate robo, and has a 50-50 chance against void ray all-ins and DTs.
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I was going to make a thread just like this myself, except I'm Diamond. The weird thing is I don't think I really have problems with the things you say you do, that is I feel pretty good controlling my army and all of that. But still, TvP is giving me hell (TvZ is too). There just doesn't seem to be a way to get an advantage and even if you do it doesn't matter. I've played games where I was 2-3 expo, 20-30 harvesters, and 70 total food ahead and have still lost. I've tried dropping, and have ahd some success with the drops, but the outcome is the same. Two big armies go up against each other, we trade or I lose, and even though I have a much bigger econ and twice as much production, I just can't come back. It's driving me nuts.
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EPT
