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Hello dear teamliquid! I've been struggling in TvP lately and went from rank 8 in masters with a high mmr and 850 points to 490 points and rank 40 because of TvP. I'm a very macro oriented player and the late-game in TvP seems to absurd.
In this game I managed to kill his nexus with 2 rax pressure and I had a huge advantage. He quickly reclaimed it and I was on 3bases versus 2. Then he just started to turtle, and began to get 3/3/3 with a mass zealot/archon army.
The game went on and some of my drops did HUGE damage, one killed 6gateways and cybernetics etc.
From there on, the game was mine and he just went all-in, and guess what? HE WON
He had simply a pure only zealot/archon army, and I landed 12 perfect EMPs since he had no observer and I was cloaked, and every single unit he had was at 0 energy but still his archons does such an enormous amount of damage that just simply killed my whole army before I managed to kill the 10hp archons.
I can't understand that I lost, the replay is here
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/17230
Some things I could've done differently : Dropped alot since he couldn't handle it, I had a very good unit comp so that was no problem, but I really want to know what you can do in a battle like that, it seems impossible to win over it!
I had 2 medivacs full of units in his base that wasn't at the last fight ,even tho it wouldn't have mattered when his reinforcements came.
I can not understand how he could hold push after push after push. WE both did some bad engagements but at the end it was in my favor since my macro and income was superior.
Thankful for all answers!! //Oliver!
;EDIT :: Excuse my writing and somekind of bad behaviour! I was just kinda mad!! 
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i feel like at the end, you had to many scvs(you had enough oribitals to stay on like 60 scvs + mules) and the 2 medivacs full of units made a huge difference, his army was way bigger/ stronger then yours, he had more zealots then you did marines, on top of all the archons immortals. Also, i think you made too many maurders and a little bit too many ghosts, you need a high marine count to deal with the zealots, as maruder dps isn't enough. Also, at teh end you stoped kiting your units and just gave up, even tho you had enough to do some damage to his army, and possibly even hold it off
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I AM A DIAMOND PLAYER THIS ADVICE MAY OR MAY NOT BE SOUND
IMO, late game battles between Bio armies and deathballs favour the protoss, they tend to perform better in big groups. Aside from the points you mentioned, (afk drops etc.) I feel that sort of microing during battles would do a lot in reducing overall damage to your army. Instead of balling up, you could spread your units into a concave (watch drewbie do this sometimes on his stream) before or during the fight. If you lack the APM like me or get caught pants down with NO ALTERNATIVE but to fight, (chargelots already coming at you, colossi already shot a few times) I think you should just split the ball into two and kite back slowly while moving small groups (1-5 units) forward to eat the damage from both colossi and archons. This way, less overall damage is done unless he has epic APM and micros all his shots in the middle of the ball. These same groups of rauders/rines can be used to instagib the archons with 10 hp.
Prevention is also the best cure, while doing drops, scan places to find colossi/high templar that are out of position. Colossi have weird pathing patterns and templar are slow, these two units tend to get caught out of position when the main army goes to respond to your drops. Maybe have a group of ~6 marauders on standby to just snipe these gas heavy units? As long as he stays on 3 bases or less he won't have enough gas to replace these very quickly and so you will have less problems during the main fight itself. Don't be afraid to trade marauders for colossi/templar as they take very long and a lot of resources to replace while marauders are easily remade using your ~8 barracks (3 base).
Hope this helped, but again I AM A DIAMOND (top8) PLAYER, ADVICE MAY OR MAY NOT BE CORRECT.
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Well, if you shoot the Archons with EMP so they have 10 HP, how about taking 1 marauder and shift queueing the marauders, you hvae enough range for it. YOu can do whatever damage you want, if you don't kill them, they still deal damage
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I'm not that high ranked, but (mid masters EU) and I feel exactly the same way but opposite (I'm toss). In a lategame situation where Terran replaces SCVs with mules and get enough ghosts, zeal / archon just doesnt cut it and you need to techswitch quite often (get like three roboes and swap between the two depending on how many vikings are out). The Terran army just gets so fucking big in comparission and the ability to drop is naturally accessed through medivacs which should be abused to hell.
Overall I think that Marauders are pretty bad vs a zeal/archon comp. The more marines you have the more DPS you will put out, and if you sprinkle a couple of marauders in for slow and engage the protoss army away from your own base (or at your base where zealots will charge your buildings...) you will rape zeal/archon.
Also -> medivacs baby, without colossi and storm, marine and medivacs rule in my experience.
When I watch the replay I see two things that stand out: You never replace your SVCs with orbitals/mules and you made too many marauders. A marine concave in that last fight (and your ghosts was out of combat after the EMPs, which is huge vs the zealots) and that would've melted. Replace like 8 marauders with 16 marines, and 40 SCVs for 40 marines in that fight and it would'´ve been extremly onesided in terrans favor.
Just my two cent
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a) I don't think you expanded aggressively enough.
You couldn't capitalise on the enagements you won because you couldn't build an army fast enough.
b) 20 supply is pretty huge.
I still don't think you'd have won that engagement because you need a higher ghost count in battles like that,
Honestly i've started going up to like 15+ ghosts against late game P just because even if you don't need to emp, you can cloak and spam snipe to help clear up zealots.
The front zealots weren't EMP'd at all and you have 18 supply in ghosts which weren't doing anything after the emps.
c) Too many minerals floating at the end. That's a lot of possible reinforcements you don't have.
EDIT:
I'm really not a fan of kiting at this point in the game. If the medivacs die you're going to get cleaned up even easier. That's why I think high ghost count is so important because it doesn't require you to kite as much. Snipe will be taking the place of any kiting you might've done.
You also need to take a decent engagement i.e. not in a wide open area so more zealots can hit you, (forcing you to kite).
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There's one thing I don't understand, and I lack the possibility to watch the replay at the moment. How come you can't kill the archons if you landed "perfect EMP's"? Shouldn't they have zero shields and 10 hp left? Please enlighten me, there must be something I'm missing! 
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Vatican City State334 Posts
You destoyed a cyber core, some gateways and a mined out nexus at well over 20 minutes into the game, that's not really huge damage at that point. If Protoss does zealot/archon with triple forge like that he has no observers to scout drops, could have stretched his defense more. He didn't even build a robo until close to the end, so one or two cloaked banshees could have killed his economy and denied his third for ages. He definitely wasnt all in either.
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I was watching thorzain's stream and I noticed he uses snipe very effectively. His army consists of mostly marauder ghost, and thats like 12 ghosts. After EMP he immediately snipes all the zealots. With that many ghosts, the zealots go down really quickly
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On January 17 2012 00:02 SirDawid wrote:There's one thing I don't understand, and I lack the possibility to watch the replay at the moment. How come you can't kill the archons if you landed "perfect EMP's"? Shouldn't they have zero shields and 10 hp left? Please enlighten me, there must be something I'm missing!
Just making sure you are aware that an EMP doesn't remove all of a target's shields, just 100. An Archon has 350 shields so you'd need 4 EMPs on a single Archon to achieve that scenario.
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Snipe the archons after EMP? Build more marines if he don't have sufficient AOE!
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On January 17 2012 00:23 Back wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2012 00:02 SirDawid wrote:There's one thing I don't understand, and I lack the possibility to watch the replay at the moment. How come you can't kill the archons if you landed "perfect EMP's"? Shouldn't they have zero shields and 10 hp left? Please enlighten me, there must be something I'm missing! Just making sure you are aware that an EMP doesn't remove all of a target's shields, just 100. An Archon has 350 shields so you'd need 4 EMPs on a single Archon to achieve that scenario.
Posted by OP:
On January 16 2012 23:10 Duggibobo wrote:
He had simply a pure only zealot/archon army, and I landed 12 perfect EMPs since he had no observer and I was cloaked, and every single unit he had was at 0 energy but still his archons does such an enormous amount of damage that just simply killed my whole army before I managed to kill the 10hp archons.
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Hi
I had kind of the same problem. I lost every TvP i played and now I´m ok at TvP just because I start upgrades freaking early.If you start upgrades, when he is on 1/0/1 or something like that I think you´re almost always dead just because it makes bio based armies much weaker, compared to the protoss army.
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In this game I managed to kill his nexus with 2 rax pressure and I had a huge advantage. He quickly reclaimed it and I was on 3bases versus 2. Then he just started to turtle, and began to get 3/3/3 with a mass zealot/archon army.
At first, your 2 rax agression haven't moved you much ahead. You killed nexus, thats nice, however no other big damages and you invested quite lot into it, so he was not that much behind. Your 3rd got up mining around 40 seconds before his. I would not call this 3 base vs 2 base. You had more SCVs than he had probes, you wanna use your mules to have ~ 10 SCVs less. When you engaged 21:00, you did not reinforced while fight, having like 1/4 army waiting home, while he reinforced with warp in... This game would be imba if he was unable to defend.
Final fight... both are maxed, but you have 10 SCVs more. His army value is way higher as toss units are not cost effective, but supply effective. And those "2 medivacs that would not change it" are full of units, worth 19 supply. Finaly, you let one marauder out of fight. Thats like being 31 supply down!! Using Bio in PvT, you cant go like "Mules... meh I have SCVs, I can scan" but... "Mules, well I need them in order to have less SCVs to have compareable army costs(Terrans units cheaper)." Then your army is 31 supply down (134 supply vs 103, thats pretty big deal supplywise OMG!!) + Few your ghost rejected to attack after EMPs, which decreased damage value, having it even more in his favour.
Main mistakes - when you have 4 OCs, there is no reason to have 74 SCVs, you are fine with 50~55 + Muling. When you are coming for death push, bring all the army, dont leave 20 supply somewhere on map idle, yes, maybe you could have afforded to have 4/5 of your army dancing in your main while rest(1/5) killed 200/200 protoss army A-moving pre-patches, no longer aviable. Once ghosts EMPed, try to have them increase your DPS. Also, EMPing ranged units, leaving 1/2 of tanking units (Zealot) unemped was so sad to watch, because those ranged (Immortal, Archon, Stalker) regenerated some shields before you even dealt with those zealots.
I am not sure about this last one, but I think due to you scanning, you should have at least realised that there are lot of immortals and have marine-heavier composition.
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The points I could make out here:
1.) Too many SCVs. Your army looked tiny in comparison to his in the end.
2.) Focus Fire the archons after the EMPs! (with the ghosts maybe)
3.) More barracks when maxed!
4.) More marines, less marauders. (against such a zealot heavy comp)
5.) Don't fight in the open. Against zealots it's best to stand between buildings.
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you should not rely on early upgrade / expand play unless you have incredibly good scouting and can read your enemy well - every time I've gone for this style of play against GM / high masters players I lose to the most basic timing pushes imaginable. You just cant get out enough terran units to deal with the protoss tech / basic timings... All the toss has to do is sufficiently scout me going double ebay early on and it's too hard for me to defend their attacks. If you do, you usually lose way too much to defend the follow up or transition into longer play. If anyone can correct me here or provide a counter to this argument I am all ears, I really have given up on this matchup completely. Most of the time I roll against toss on ladder right now I leave immediately. :-(
After watching the reply I have to agree with FreeTossCZComentary.. you should start killing off those SCV's and begin making ghosts the core of your army. They are just so good and do so much damage whilst marines get comlpletely melted by tier 1 / storm / colossi protoss units. Marauders are great but useless if they are being smashed in the face by mass zealots and you have no ghosts to snipe them off.
You macro better than I do, so I'm pretty sure your unit composition and control is the problem here, though.
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TvP is badly designed in general.
I think they were expecting the Thor to play a major role in making mech viable in TvP, but the energy bar makes them too easily countered.
Axe 500mm cannon.
buff siege tank damage
bring mech back.
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On January 17 2012 01:03 Jermstuddog wrote:
TvP is badly designed in general.
I think they were expecting the Thor to play a major role in making mech viable in TvP, but the energy bar makes them too easily countered.
Axe 500mm cannon.
buff siege tank damage
bring mech back.
This is the problem, but don't forget to buff Carriers. The utter lack of Mech and Stargate units in TvP is depressing.
In response to the OP (beyond the obvious EMP solution to Archons) from my point of view as a Protoss player, you had too many Marauders and not enough Marine. Marauder heavy armies are good vs Colossus/Stalker/Sentry, but not nearly as effective vs Zealot/Archon/HT. In fact I'd say that Zealot/Archon/HT counters Marauder heavy armies. Marines give you a lot more DPS, which really helps vs the Zealots and Archons.
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Watch Ryung's TvP matches in the up/down this season (against Tassadar and Killer). When Ryung hit a max army, he teched to BC/bio. The BCs were good at soaking and dealing damage. I feel that this is relatively unexplored area.
Anyways, your main issue were 74 SCVs + having those dropships away.
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Wow, so much bad advice imo
too much SCVs? That would make sense if he had 6+ orbitals and toss started suiciding probes as well. The last fight was 132 vs 126 army supply, so it aint that.
Also, how is it that you shouldn't upgrade early? Vs toss you don't stand a chance without good upgrades, unless you get 6 gated or 1 base roboed, which wasn't the case.
There were, of course, some mistakes that you made that would have otherwise given you better fights and ending the game much earlier, such as the first drop not doing that well (you had a 800 mineral advantage before that and a 200 mineral disavantage after, in the units lost), having a MASSIVE supply block at 121 which could have made you win the attack you sent soon afterwards, and of course, the two medivacs, which DO make a difference (thats like 18 army supply).
But I agree that it wouldn't have been enough versus that army. I really don't know what to do vs this composition really, been frustrated as hell with this kinda crap.
The only times I beat these is when i have a fuckton of ghosts and land perfect emps, which is not a guaranteed way to win a fight vs. a toss who knows how to pick fights.
But yea, it's a-click vs. micro the shit out of your army, this MU is stupid as hell.
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EPT
