EPT[D] TvZ Mech late-game options - Page 2
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E.H Eager
United States227 Posts
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CatNzHat
United States1599 Posts
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secretary bird
447 Posts
Personally I dont think they are that good against anything else. I really doubt they can be cost effective against lings,blings,roaches for instance, the reason that ultras are somewhat ineffective against them is because rarely do you see someone attacking from 2-3 sides with 12 ultras+ lings, if he can actually get an engagement like that ghosts wont save you and in a chokepoint ultras will suck against anything else too. However vikings will be useless after the Broodlords are dead if he doesnt make more so not that good is still better than useless. | ||
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statikg
Canada930 Posts
Broodlord/corrutuptor/infestor (usually heavy lings or roaches included) crushes your mech unless you have vikings. Having to scout in time and invest into vikings is not guaranteed nor cheap. Then when you have a ton of vikings, here comes the ultra switch and you lose, or a huge group gets fungaled and you lose. Meanwhile with ghosts, you CAN snipe BLs when you unseige your tanks, or if you have cloak which you should always try to get as its amazing. You can also emp infestors and snipe any mutas that try any magic box. Ghosts are also better against mutas then vikings, when you have thors. Ghosts also allow for your army to be more tank heavy without the weakness to ultras from vikings! You typically need to keep up a very balanced thor/tank count because of a fear of giant muta/roach switches, but with ghosts you don't have to worry about the muta switch as much because of how awesome they are vs mutas so you can let your count swing toward more tanks a bit. That protects you from the two weaknesses of mass banelings (Like 100+ can actually kill all your thors no problem if they are not spread) and mass roach with some broodlords which is also very strong against mech. Having more tanks makes your life MUCH easier in both these situations and they are also helpful vs infestors and ultra/ling. So basically ghost helps counter many units itself, and unlocks the potential of more tanks which counters most of the rest. ps. also if your awesome nuke harassment | ||
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BEARDiaguz
Australia2362 Posts
Mech has a basic shell of about 8 thors and 12 tanks and some hellions and upgrades. This is the standard thick core that you then add some other stuff to. With this core you basically shit all over the Zerg ground army, particularly if they try and engage you around a vicious terrain or building setup. From here we can branch out into 2 ways. You cannot really go for both strongly enough as it's not particularly feasible but you can use elements of both. They are Sky Mech and Ghost mech (the third option is pure Mech which would be something like a 2 or 3 base upgrade tank/thor timing attack. It's fairly all in but it's viable enough, particularly if some early hellion play did too much drone damage, but it's boring and it's been done and we won't mention it anymore!). Sky Terran has this mech core supplemented by vikings, shees, drops and ravens and this is what MVP showcased vs Nestea recently. I believe GumiHo was doing the same thing against nestea but I have not seen those vods and cannot comment. This style is stronger with drop and viking harass picking away at drones and overlords and frustrating the zerg, hopefully keeping him from just racing to hive tech. Vikings can battle corrupters in good numbers and if you have PDD it gets pretty gross. Ghost Terran has the mech core supplemented by a ton of ghosts! Demuslim will, at about the 13 minute mark or so, slap down his 2-5th raxes and a ghost academy and churn the bastards out (Demuslims mech is characterised, I think, by a complete lack of a starport. All this saved gas makes the ghost transition crisp and powerful). This is strong because ghosts fucking murder everything with cloak + snipe. Once you hit a critical mass of ghosts with high energy amounts you can casually walk towards the zerg and just pew pew everything he has. If something gets in the way you move your mech units up a bit and siege and handle it. My own experience with this style gets stymied by my terrible control and large amounts of banelings (wtf banelings vs mech!) just rolling up and killing all my ghosts. But with snipe and emp and cloak and thousands of energy, ghosts can just make an awful mess of pretty much all zerg units. Plus you have nukes! I think mech play has a few characteristics: 1) Retention. You have to keep almost every Thor and Tank alive until major engagements. The amount of gas required to pull off this strategy is really huge and you cannot afford to throw units away or lose them carelessly. 2) Momentum. Hellions give you a lot of action in the early and midgame and can result in a lot of drone and creep spread kills. This is good. If you get lucky and simply kill enough drones that he spends too much time trying to build his economy so once you have a modest deathball up you can just rape-roll him. 3) Greed. Get greedy! Command Centres everywhere! Keep him off balance with your hellions and take tons of bases. | ||
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Antisocialmunky
United States5912 Posts
On October 13 2011 19:23 Everlong wrote: Yes, I'm aware of TLO's air play. It looks awesome. :-) Only problem is I often see him running into some really good Zergs that can read his play and react acordingly and there he loses control of the game and gets overrun. Those scenarios I mentioned are "safe" even if Zerg completly knows what you are doing.. I think SC2 will eventually end up like this, where you most likely know, what is happening and so safe macro play will be the way to go. Is there a reason why he doesn't go Ghost/Thor/Hellion? It takes less tech and seems more flexible. Air play in TvZ always sounds good but its extremely tough to pull off. | ||
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Quotidian
Norway1937 Posts
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RoboBob
United States798 Posts
1. I'm not a fan of adding Vikings. The Zerg always has the option of tech switching out of air completely, which makes the Vikings worthless. I've seen TLO use Vikings to seize air control and then use Banshees to wreck face. But whenever I try it the Z simply makes a gazillion Roaches Mondragon style and the Banshees can't kill fast enough. Maybe if I had TLO's micro I could make it work, but I don't. 2. I'm not a fan of early Ghosts, but they can be okay in the really really late game. Ghosts are super micro intensive, and I can't micro them properly like the pros. Of course they are great vs Infestors and Broodlords, but everything else beats the crap out of them. Snipe isn't all its cracked up to be. There is a big cooldown after each Snipe action so you cannot unload all your energy quickly unless you want to be super risky with your action queuing. If the Zerg turtles for a few minutes and then just a-moves a 200/200 army at you with the proper flank, your Ghosts will all die with over 3/4 of their energy left. The more gas you have in ghosts, the less gas there is in your mech backbone. And you can't repair them like everything else, you won't have Medivacs. 3. Bringing SCVs with your push is super important. Because it takes so long to remax with a non-Rax army, unit retention is obviously important. You gotta keep both Tanks and Thors in your army at all times so you can handle the Zerg tech switching between full air and full ground. The thing is that if half your gas is tied up in Tanks and the Zerg goes 100% gas into Mutas, the mass magic box Muta will overwhelm the Thors. Thats the main reason you gotta bring the SCVs, repair is the only way to deal with that. Its also important to build turrets as you push, because burrow antics are a huge pain to deal with. Ravens don't have enough sight range to spot it ahead of time unless you send it ahead of your army, which is just begging for the Raven to get sniped. 4. Hellion harass isn't all its made out to be. When most Zergs see I'm going mech, they get super paranoid and build a ton of spines and queens everywhere so its a waste of time to even try a runby. I've seen pro Zergs try to skimp on Hellion defense, but not the low master Zergs I play. So for the most part I'm content with the knowledge my Hellions are causing indirect economic damage, and I save them for counterattack defense. | ||
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dmg7
101 Posts
what do people think of viking/raven/thor to deal with broodlords, idea being you slap down the PDDs to negate alot of damage muta/corruptors can do, and then you focus fire the broodlords with your vikings (if you have enough you will kill most if not all broodlords before the PDDs have worn off and all your vikings are killed) you also have thors to micro back too. | ||
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RoboBob
United States798 Posts
On October 14 2011 00:33 cunningstunt wrote: Just as a thought, and i've seen it done and had relative success with it... what do people think of viking/raven/thor to deal with broodlords, idea being you slap down the PDDs to negate alot of damage muta/corruptors can do, and then you focus fire the broodlords with your vikings (if you have enough you will kill most if not all broodlords before the PDDs have worn off and all your vikings are killed) you also have thors to micro back too. Yes, that certainly kills the Zerg air. But then the Zerg remaxes cheaply on speedling/roach, and they simply overwhelm you because you have a ton of gas tied up in flying paperweights and not a high enough tank count. You can't have a ton of tanks and vikings and thors and ravens all at the same time. If the Zerg is passive enough to let you make that composition then you probably won the game 5-10 minutes ago, its just that neither of you has realized it yet. Personally I've found the best way to deal with BLs is with heavy Thor. Yes they take forever to kill the BLs, but they're also useful vs a full ground tech switch, unlike Vikings and Ghosts. You only need a couple BFH to instantly roast broodlings as they spawn, and if you surround the lead Thor with autorepairing SCVs its even easier. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10372 Posts
On October 13 2011 23:18 iaguz wrote: My own observations studying mech play from folks like MVP, Beastyqt and DeMusliM. Mech has a basic shell of about 8 thors and 12 tanks and some hellions and upgrades. This is the standard thick core that you then add some other stuff to. With this core you basically shit all over the Zerg ground army, particularly if they try and engage you around a vicious terrain or building setup. From here we can branch out into 2 ways. You cannot really go for both strongly enough as it's not particularly feasible but you can use elements of both. They are Sky Mech and Ghost mech (the third option is pure Mech which would be something like a 2 or 3 base upgrade tank/thor timing attack. It's fairly all in but it's viable enough, particularly if some early hellion play did too much drone damage, but it's boring and it's been done and we won't mention it anymore!). Sky Terran has this mech core supplemented by vikings, shees, drops and ravens and this is what MVP showcased vs Nestea recently. I believe GumiHo was doing the same thing against nestea but I have not seen those vods and cannot comment. This style is stronger with drop and viking harass picking away at drones and overlords and frustrating the zerg, hopefully keeping him from just racing to hive tech. Vikings can battle corrupters in good numbers and if you have PDD it gets pretty gross. Ghost Terran has the mech core supplemented by a ton of ghosts! Demuslim will, at about the 13 minute mark or so, slap down his 2-5th raxes and a ghost academy and churn the bastards out (Demuslims mech is characterised, I think, by a complete lack of a starport. All this saved gas makes the ghost transition crisp and powerful). This is strong because ghosts fucking murder everything with cloak + snipe. Once you hit a critical mass of ghosts with high energy amounts you can casually walk towards the zerg and just pew pew everything he has. If something gets in the way you move your mech units up a bit and siege and handle it. My own experience with this style gets stymied by my terrible control and large amounts of banelings (wtf banelings vs mech!) just rolling up and killing all my ghosts. But with snipe and emp and cloak and thousands of energy, ghosts can just make an awful mess of pretty much all zerg units. Plus you have nukes! I think mech play has a few characteristics: 1) Retention. You have to keep almost every Thor and Tank alive until major engagements. The amount of gas required to pull off this strategy is really huge and you cannot afford to throw units away or lose them carelessly. 2) Momentum. Hellions give you a lot of action in the early and midgame and can result in a lot of drone and creep spread kills. This is good. If you get lucky and simply kill enough drones that he spends too much time trying to build his economy so once you have a modest deathball up you can just rape-roll him. 3) Greed. Get greedy! Command Centres everywhere! Keep him off balance with your hellions and take tons of bases. Yup what this dude said 100% haha I love the mech air style, though for MVP and Gumiho I really think you should refer to that as mech air, not sky terran nor even sky mech or air mech. Just to be picky, cus if you say "sky" or "air" before "mech" I think that should only be reserved for when the air units have a larger role than the mech units, but for Gumiho and MVP, usually their mech armies are still the bulk of it (especially since their air units aren't 3/3 yet). Also for those who didn't see, bratok vs Nestea game 2 shakuras temple at blizzcon, he went mech but then went air mech (replacing most of his mech army with ravens, leaving just a few tanks) lategame and won. It was pretty cool. I really wonder how Zergs should respond to mech or air or a combination late game, especially if it's a split map. It just seems so so so strong, and Terran's resources are much more efficient. Maybe though, this is intentional, just like TvZ or PvZ in BW; Zerg can take an economic lead and play reactively, but at the same time, he will be using resources less efficiently. Or maybe I'm just completely wrong and there are many ways for zerg to deal with mech/air or combinations? | ||
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DrLOAC
United States53 Posts
On November 13 2011 08:17 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yup what this dude said 100% haha I love the mech air style, though for MVP and Gumiho I really think you should refer to that as mech air, not sky terran nor even sky mech or air mech. Just to be picky, cus if you say "sky" or "air" before "mech" I think that should only be reserved for when the air units have a larger role than the mech units, but for Gumiho and MVP, usually their mech armies are still the bulk of it (especially since their air units aren't 3/3 yet). Also for those who didn't see, bratok vs Nestea game 2 shakuras temple at blizzcon, he went mech but then went air mech (replacing most of his mech army with ravens, leaving just a few tanks) lategame and won. It was pretty cool. I really wonder how Zergs should respond to mech or air or a combination late game, especially if it's a split map. It just seems so so so strong, and Terran's resources are much more efficient. Maybe though, this is intentional, just like TvZ or PvZ in BW; Zerg can take an economic lead and play reactively, but at the same time, he will be using resources less efficiently. Or maybe I'm just completely wrong and there are many ways for zerg to deal with mech/air or combinations? I saw that game. The flock of ravens with all upgrades was epic. | ||
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Honeybadger
United States821 Posts
(obvious hyperbole is obvious. Except for the sucking with ghosts part. I really do.) as for my 2 cents, I've been a meching tvz player since beta (I have a rushed 3/3 thor/hellion timing push that hits just before hive tech and usually crushes my opponent, though it's fragile in the midgame and if my micro fails, infestors can ruin me) I have to say this: you gotta go full-on flash with this strategy. Ravens are useful against the brood lord problem, as they aren't fast enough to escape HSM and are always bunched up. Turrets everywhere. EVERYWHERE. not just strategic turrets, you need walls of them. And upgrades. building armor, turret range. All of your expos need to be planetaries (your natural, even.) but you're so mineral efficient, you can just mass orbital for minerals and remax on hellions or marines to wreck his economy when you lose units. upgrades are crucial. Lane control is important (on metal, I literally block off one lane with two planetaries and a fistful of turrets. Forcing him to engage me on my terms is key.) And being cost-effective is the most important thing of all. Do not lose units needlessly. Hellions are a possible exception, as harass runs give lots of map control, and their speed lets them have a presence, even with mutas out. They're very mineral efficient, as you don't need a million billion marines with the mass thor/turret | ||
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CluEleSs_UK
United Kingdom583 Posts
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dj.ricecakes
United States252 Posts
1- Against magic box mutas thor/viking/ghost will be more than enough. 2- If your vikings get raped then youll have to click your hellions to your thors so when the BLs attack they roast the tiny attackers b4 they do damage while your thors tank. If you have ghosts out at this point you can cloak and snipe the BLs. 3- Ultra/ling dies to standard thor/hellion trust me. Just get your upgrades and Thor Cannon. | ||
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GhostBusters
United States198 Posts
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PiGStarcraft
Australia999 Posts
Great point about walling off btw, often if I manage to break the Terran (I'm zerg) it's because he failed to wall off certain areas of the map. | ||
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
-they don't need weapon or armor upgrades. -they don't need over 9000 apm to control (hello sniper round). auto-turrets can be good to slow down enemy's advance (although they deal virtually no damage to upgraded units), pdds are great to deter mutas, and seeker missiles should be banned by geneva convention as wmd. people tend to underestimate the power of the seeker missile in tvz/tvt. it's probably due to enormous cost that people expect even a single missile to deal major damage. it won't. but two missiles are much better. and once you launch 3 or more, it's starting to be terrible, terrible damage. i wouldn't recommend to build many tanks lategame - just a few to deal with roaches and neural parasite. just mass mass thors, some ravens (the more the better!), some tanks, planetaries and turrets for mineral dump, and scvs and hellions. come on zergie try to kill it :D | ||
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