|
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!! 
|
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
|
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.
|
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
|
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
|
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).
|
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! 
|
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.
|
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
|
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.
|
Snipe the archons after EMP? Build more marines if he don't have sufficient AOE!
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
On January 17 2012 01:35 Z-BosoN wrote:
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.
Terran had 74 SCVS... Toss had 10 probes less... He had 19 supply of units (2 7/8 medvacs) siting idly near terran base. And 1 marauder sitting at rally point. He was maxed. = 200-95 = 105 supply.
did you read the rest of my post, mr. math man? Or even though i mentioned the two medivacs, you want me to make it crystal clear that I am treating scvs and those medivacs as separate problems and I just pressed control R to compare army sizes?
Sorry, but usualy, when we talk about 2 armies fighting, we only count those units, that are used in that fight, not ones dancing around. However, because of replay tools, where we have "Army size", I misunderstood you. My bad.
Edit: reaction
|
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.
Very clever. But if you land "12 PERFECT EMPS" then its more likely than not that most archons have been hit around 3 times.
|
Perhaps your asking yourself the wrong questions and looking for the wrong answers. Instead of asking how to deal with 3-3-3 late game toss, try asking how do I slow down the upgrades for him. Or maybe how do I add in more production/bases. Maybe the solution is not in the late game. Perhaps you need to do something in the mid game.
|
On January 16 2012 23:45 leecx wrote:
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.
these is the best advice, for using bio vs toss in the late game.
|
On January 17 2012 01:43 FreeTossCZComentary wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2012 01:35 Z-BosoN wrote:
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. Terran had 74 SCVS... Toss had 10 probes less... He had 19 supply of units (2 7/8 medvacs) siting idly near terran base. And 1 marauder sitting at rally point. He was maxed. = 200-95 = 105 supply. So please use math...
did you read the rest of my post, mr. math man? Or even though i mentioned the two medivacs, you want me to make it crystal clear that I am treating scvs and those medivacs as separate problems and I just pressed control R to compare army sizes?
|
I do this strategy, and I've only lost once or twice.
1) there are a few timing pushes where protoss is vulnerable.
2) Mass kiting marauders are a pain to deal with.
3) Drops can be very good.
Lastly, getting a few cloaked banshees can be devastating.
|
Watched replay. You're not NEARLY as ahead as you say you are. Your natural CC is sitting in your main at the 10 minute mark, dropping down dem mules and burning up your main. You lost a ton of shit when he broke the bunkers at his nat ( which you lost all of the units and didn't salvage the bunkers ) You're never more than slightly economically ahead. You never have more scv than probe, and mules give you SMALL lead. You are behind in scvs until like the 14 minute mark.
If you had macroed better and sent reinforcements at the 18 minute mark, you would have outright won. If you had EMP during that fight, you also would have outright won.
In the battle where you raged (round 20 minutes) you lost all of your medivacs and ghosts and you had no chance to win the fight because yet again you didn't reinforce.
Last fight you have like 19 marauders, 30 marines, and 11 ghosts (this is tanking into account your 2 afk medivacs) and he has 37 zealots, 7 stalkers, 4 immortals, and 6 archons. He just has way more stuff than you do. Your ghost micro was not very good. You weren't focus firing his no-shield archons from the back. You only have 8 rax and 1 port and he has 8 gates and 2 robos and this is AFTER you kill 5 gateways. And sorry but as a "high masters player" you need to see this kind of thing in your analysis before freaking out about balance on the strategy thread.
Hope this helps.
|
On January 17 2012 01:50 TBone- wrote:
Perhaps your asking yourself the wrong questions and looking for the wrong answers. Instead of asking how to deal with 3-3-3 late game toss, try asking how do I slow down the upgrades for him. Or maybe how do I add in more production/bases. Maybe the solution is not in the late game. Perhaps you need to do something in the mid game.
This guy is also correct. You slowed down some things for him but his overall upgrade jaunt kept rolling, and as the game went on you just traded armies and he was being equally if not more efficient.
|
After watching the replay and reading previous comments, it's pretty easy to state the thread-topic is kinda misleading since there are tons of other factors taking their toll on the engagement. I do agree that zealot-archon is hard though, can't stand it myself...
I don't have much experience of it though, since my TvP's mostly end at "3-base-ghost"-ish scenarios. If I don't go 2 marauder, 2 marine, 4 scv's and end the game early that is 
In any case, I wish you good luck in your future TvP!
|
Why did you trash talk so much in the game?
|
Okay let me get you some facts (masters player).
1. You killed his nexus. what you shoulda done after that was maybe leave 1 marine in each bunker and retreat, bunker up the front of your natural straight away. that guy was left with 5 gates and yourr bunkers were just coming up when he wobbled all the way to your base, and i honestly i thought he was gonna bust you so easily. Hell, if that guy wasnt so bad he woulda bust you. any other masters toss you woulda gotten busted.
2. Your followup to getting such a lead like that shoulda been okay im gonna do a timing attack with medivacs because if this guy does try and restart his nexus, theres no fucking way hes going to have enough to handle a double drop in his main and an attack at this natural and be cost effecient.
And that was your response, but lets take a look at how that panned out.
You do the stupidest thing you couldve done, you ran in with the 5 marauders at his natural when you knew he had units at the bottom. He left units at the top but you had enough units with the double drop that if you engaged all the units at top of his ramp with all of your units, you wouldve killed all of them, and those werel ike 5 sentrys 3 stalkers couple zealots. very very good trade for you. Instead, you lose all of them because 6 units were shooting at a gateway. That gave him time to get a warp in and then your like OMG WTF TOSS IMBA when in reality you did stupid shit. The idea of that little poke with medivacs and attack at the front is to be cost effecient. Before that warp in he did, theres a timing and thats why its important that you get there asap when medivacs come out. his warpin wouldve been late. 8zealots 5 sentrys like 2 stalkers is alot less scary when 5 of those zealots arent being warped in for 10 seconds. Take a look at this replay and just watch that part and look at how stupid you look from his side. hes like okay i ffed the ram he should know i left some units on the bottom, but your like no im gonna be really stupid and run in anyway. You let him back the game. That was the most in cost effecient drop ive ever see when it coulda just flat out won you the game. stupid moves.
3.This guys composition which you scouted you saw okay hes going for twilight and you saw lots of zealots and sentrys when you did do the medivac poke. What you should know by that, is that drops are really abusive to this. you can drop your units for example in the back of the mineral line, and a double drop worthof units tehre will almost always pay for itself.
4. Okay, after this poke (14mins) you ahve another army macrod, this guy doesnt have any AoE, and you have a big enough bioball imo to be able to spread him so thin taht if you do it right hes going to lose. Now lets look at where you army is. Your in your natural durping like an idiot. After your medivacs first popped ever sicne that ever happened, youshoulda been rallying to the center because there is absolutely no reason not too and all reason to. This guys being a fucking idiot. Hes taking a third while on zealot sentry, and hes not spreading himslef out well. This is what you shoulda done. Multiprong. do a double drop the top of the map on this map and unload at his fourth. Make it a double drop cause double drops only cost effecient drops to warp ins past like 10-12 mins.do the drop, stim in and snipe his third. This should trigger reaction from the tosss to take his main army to the third. While this is happening, set a second double drop at his main, but time it so that he has to run from his third to his main. Keep the drop attacking kill his pylons and shit tomake him stress out alittle bit, and if he just forfeits it then the drop in the main you can always just run out. You always have that option because he has no AA. You wouldve been in a beautiful position to just get ghosts out emp and just take the game. thats what your response shoulda been if you didnt suck at TvP. Instead, hes getting a third and hes back into this game when you couldve mobility raped this guy. You lost the game right there in my opinion also. you didnt even take the towers.
Believe me, theres no reason NOT to take map control against toss, you can always stim run away and you see it a mile away so if you have good reacton time you dont even have to stim.
4.Your armory is late against a double forging twlilight player. upgrades should be on your mind always. upgrades in tvp are on of the most unforgiving in any matchup (top 3 imo).
5. Now you missed this guys attack completely that was coming cause you didnt have map control. You shouldnt take your third there anyway. You want your third to be as far away from the toss as possible so that drop backstabs keep him in his place, so at least he feels all in if hedoes move out. its like zergling runbys. If you saw that coming, Your best case scenario to do since you took that third there wouldve been to flank from behind with half your units and attack in the front with the other half, and take advantage of that choke. When in doubt of winning engagemnts as toss, do flanks and make monster concaves cause your cost effeciency goes wayyy up.
Despite all this, this guy was so stupid that he let you keep your third. He could killed it but hes stupid honestly.
6.it is 17 mins this guy had 0/0 to your 1/1 even though he had like a triple forge up way way long ago. (so sad some masters players are so bad i swear to god) and no AoE. Honestly, this guys just set himself up to lose the game. Your bio ball you shoulda just split and picked him apart. You cant just play a macro game against a toss player because then it is imba. Thats why poeple lose cause they dont take advantage of the fact that if you split your army then you can be extremely cost effecient as terran.
Like i said earlier, multiprong wouldve ended this idiots life. drop at the third snipe snipe drop at the the main. Now instead lets look at what you did. You did a ltitle poke to see what he had, i actully really liked that decision. Now, you scanned and saw his army was bigger then yours and you did such a stupid idea. You engaged him. Now with perfect control you mightve been able to pull like a freakin thorzain and kill everything with better upgrades but nope. That was such a stupid decision i can not say enough. His only dps is zealots and stalkers against a goddam bioball. with good ffs he was able to chip your army out, good for him. What you shoulda reacted on the scan was to fucking instantly load up all your untis into those 6 medivacs and split them 3 to he top 3 to the bottom. Let me say this: its alot harder to stop a drop by splitting your army correctly then it is to drop. Drops are fucking intensive too, amnd what does that say.
6.19 minutes into the game and you have 6 barracks and ghost academy 1 starport. let me tell you what my main wouldve looked like. 2 starports in case of the very good 2 robo colossus switch 12 barracks and 4 bases. You wanna stay 1 base ahead of the toss. i like to make my third a planetary on shakuras and a fast 4th to be an orbital because he has to run through the planetary and planetarys really imba. You did bad.
7.20-21 mins or w.e. you see his army again and your like okay im gonna go fight this kid head on again and lose. This guy smashed your army once the way you get back into the game is drops. Thats what your eaction shoulda been, you also didnt have cloak which is a big mistake because cloak lets you get free perfect emps instead of letting them die. You aslo ran your army into his army. Now theese are some big inidicators of not to fight zealot archon balls. Your not maxed out and his zealot ball alone looks bigger then your bioball when maraudrs are 1.5x more wide and marines about even in size. true you killed his zealots but toss have this little thing called warpins. so. :/.
8.24.00 MY GODBLOODY MARY! LOOK WHAT YOU DO! IT TAKES YOU 24 MINS TO DECIDE TO SPLIT YOUR ARMY AGAINST ZEALOT ARCHON. look at the damage this has done. Okay he did no warpins or anything and you couldve done m,ore damage to his main. imo you shouldve ran away when you saw his whole army go to his third because then you coulda been more of a pain.
9. Okay deciding fight last fight. its true that you have perfect emps but you dont do the right kind of attack. Against zealot archon mixes you actully wanna do concave splitting. That means you make the biggest concave you can in your life and just try to dodge storms / archon damage, pretty much running back the units getting hit so that the medivacs that should be in high count can heal them. Then when the zealot archon starts hitting those other units they werent hitting you run back. Thats how you smash a zealot archon mix. If you just do a ball like you did which is freakin retarded then you ARE going to get smashed. since you just did a ball despite perfect emps yea the AOE is going to cleave you
apart when you ball up like that. That just amkes it an even fight.
Read all of this. You can tell this is this guys bad matchup because he sucks at drops. notice he sent his whole army in to deal with a double drop at his fourth. This tells me he doesnt deserve to be in masters cause of his pvt needs so much work. Now, lets look at you. Your a trash masters player. You talk crap your fed up with the matchup cause you dont take the time to do the right reactions, nore do you have good engagements. You dont have good reactions in this matchup for sure. Your lucky this guy wasnt the smart type that went for a 2 colossi timing push or 2base colossi into 3base into that ultimate archon templar deathball. You woulda got rolled so hard. This guy was bad and you still lost. That should tell you so much. read all of this text wall i just made you these are literally all the reason why you shoulda lost. These also contain good info on what you coulda done to won. i hate your BM it makes me sick to my stomach. You remind me of nazis your so BM when you coulkd be asking them what you coulda done better instead of being a goddam nazi. For gods sake read this post and take all this to heart. Your tvp needs a complete makeover because its so bad.
|
I literally just gave you a goddam coaching lesson right here. look at all that goddam text. thats all the crap you did wrong. you lost that game in so many ways. -.-.
|
I am an 800 point masters terran and my tips for beating zealot archon is to just never attack. Keep up in upgrades as best you can and make a ton of bunkers, pfs, missile turrets, and sensor towers. Take yourside of the maps and then drop everywhere while either tech to an insanely ghost heavy composition or transition to battlecruisers. Zealot archon is terrible against static defense so if they engage you with it, they will lose.
|
Didn't watch the replay but after reading OP and Picklebreads response here (awesome advice btw) I think the biggest and most simple thing I can say against zealot archon is simply massing a shitton of ghosts and landing emps.
If they are very colossus light its not that bad to even have 20 or more ghosts.
In late game though P > T in my opinion. T needs to get something done in mid game or get a few drops off to keep up going into late game vs good P. If P has right unit comp maxed army vs maxed army I feel P is in better shape in big fight. T can avoid this though if you play it right.
|
Hello, seems like I am your brother. Been a high master/mid masters Terran since the day 1 masters league got introduced in sc2 and currently droped out of masters league first time ever since latest patch. After latest patch my TvP have gone from 50-50 win to like 20-80. I am currently testing everything in the Terran arsenal but have not found anything I feel comfortable with. When I watch your replay I can see some misstakes, but honestly, the Protoss is far worse. But this is the problem with TvP, if you make 1 misstake, the protoss can do 3. Pretty much the only goal for the toss is to reach a 200-200 upgraded deathball because almost nothing can stop it.
It doesnt matter how much you harras or how much dmg you do, if it is not a killing blow or realy close to it, the time will pass and sooner or later he will reach the deathball and turn the game into his favour almost no matter what ahead you are. This matchup is designed for 20 Korean Terrans in the world, the rest (800 thousand Terrans?) should stick with scv allins or some kind of cheese. Blizzard has clearly fuked up. You deserved a win if the game was balanced. GL in the future!
|
And btw the toss went TRIPLE forge after his 1 gate expand got wrecked. If you can't exploit that 'opening' in terms of bio timings then you should better not be whining about balance and level up your game.
Toss spends way too much on the third forge with shields which has limited lategame usage anyway due to ghosts and makes himself even more vulnerable to early and midgame bio timings (depending on what he will cut for that costs).
|
i hate your BM it makes me sick to my stomach. You remind me of nazis your so BM when you coulkd be asking them what you coulda done better instead of being a goddam nazi. For gods sake read this post and take all this to heart. Your tvp needs a complete makeover because its so bad
You should get a warning for saying that, he was obviously frustrated.
And btw, put some spaces in your massive wall of text.
Oh and this is way to right:
Hello, seems like I am your brother. Been a high master/mid masters Terran since the day 1 masters league got introduced in sc2 and currently droped out of masters league first time ever since latest patch. After latest patch my TvP have gone from 50-50 win to like 20-80. I am currently testing everything in the Terran arsenal but have not found anything I feel comfortable with. When I watch your replay I can see some misstakes, but honestly, the Protoss is far worse. But this is the problem with TvP, if you make 1 misstake, the protoss can do 3. Pretty much the only goal for the toss is to reach a 200-200 upgraded deathball because almost nothing can stop it.
It doesnt matter how much you harras or how much dmg you do, if it is not a killing blow or realy close to it, the time will pass and sooner or later he will reach the deathball and turn the game into his favour almost no matter what ahead you are. This matchup is designed for 20 Korean Terrans in the world, the rest (800 thousand Terrans?) should stick with scv allins or some kind of cheese. Blizzard has clearly fuked up. You deserved a win if the game was balanced. GL in the future!
|
On January 17 2012 02:36 Picklebread wrote:
I literally just gave you a goddam coaching lesson right here. look at all that goddam text. thats all the crap you did wrong. you lost that game in so many ways. -.-.
Very nice... I actually have a really hard time to read text that isnt atleast attempted to be formated. Could you edit it abit and create more than one paragraph? <3
Whoever said there were bad advice in this thread is a dumb. If you are more than 25 mins into a TvP and have not attempted made more orbitals and not oversaturate (which was done already, as 75 SCVs is suboptimal...) you're doing it wrong. He had all the info he needed and with that he should've tailored his expansion timings and composition better. Also engaging without a third of your army and leave the ghost behind to not fight the army after EMP just makes this game a joke to even comment about.
Meh!
|
On January 17 2012 03:04 Kyuki wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2012 02:36 Picklebread wrote:
I literally just gave you a goddam coaching lesson right here. look at all that goddam text. thats all the crap you did wrong. you lost that game in so many ways. -.-. Very nice... I actually have a really hard time to read text that isnt atleast attempted to be formated. Could you edit it abit and create more than one paragraph? <3 Whoever said there were bad advice in this thread is a dumb. If you are more than 25 mins into a TvP and have not attempted made more orbitals and not oversaturate (which was done already, as 75 SCVs is suboptimal...) you're doing it wrong. He had all the info he needed and with that he should've tailored his expansion timings and composition better. Also engaging without a third of your army and leave the ghost behind to not fight the army after EMP just makes this game a joke to even comment about. Meh!
Yea sorry. I was typing that up really fast so i forgot to space it out.
|
Well we all know that heavy ghost play is the counter to zealot-archon, but other factors such as army positioning, upgrades, and army size definitely come into play (especially in the late game). Because the toss had less probes than you, he had a larger army. And because the toss had a larger army, you're doubly screwed. With max upgrades, a zealot-archon ball that's bigger than your army is simply going to beat you.
|
On January 16 2012 23:55 Kyuki wrote:
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
dude, that probably was the single most helpful thing someone ever told me about TvP. seriously. so thank you.
that's literally the first time someone gave me a good protoss opinion on the matchup. now i feel like i understand.
thanks again.
|
Everything Picklebread said seemed right on mark.. I just want to reiterate how important it is to do multidrops. It's incredibly INCREDIBLY efficient against protoss because of how weak the ball is when separated. And if your apm allows, a drop at the main, third/fourth, with a well timed attack into his natural will almost certainly do large amounts of damage if microed correctly. Also, you raged real bad. I'd say you have to accept your mistakes and try to learn from the player who beat you rather than get mad and insult the living protoss out of him.
|
On January 17 2012 00:27 pAzand wrote:
Snipe the archons after EMP? Build more marines if he don't have sufficient AOE!
Archons are only labelled as Psionic. You can't snipe them. if you could, then that would make TvP imbalanced for T.
|
picklebread droppin some knowledge bombs in here
I hope the op takes note
|
On January 17 2012 03:39 -orb- wrote:
picklebread droppin some knowledge bombs in here
I hope the op takes note
me too :D
|
If he is so low on senties kiting is very important. Also if you realize he goes archon, zealot, you can go for blue flame hellions since you have an idle factory anyway and they just cost minerals which goes well with ghosts. If they are low on senties and stalkers you can often just run hellions around the map and kill probe lines in 5 seconds
I am sure now that you have all this helpful advice from the thread you can stop using the make-the-opponent-so-ashamed-for-my-comments-he-has-to-play-with-one-hand-because-the-other-is-busy-facepalming strategy and your game will soon improve.
|
Well, if you know your opponents on two base and you're on three, you should just turtle up, bunker down and wait until he commits an army, especially vs protoss. One of two things will happen, he'll max, suicide in and win the game or he'll lose his army and not be able to rebuild and you'll win, OR he'll max, realize he can't break you, and try and get a really late third. If he does this, you can attack him and start whittling his army down because of your superior economy, expand again, etc. at this point the game is yours. Of course all the while you're bunkered down you can be dropping and harassing, and getting massive upgrades like you wouldn't be able to do if you were trying to beat him in a straight up fight. The important thing is: you can't beat an opponent who's on two base while you're on three in a straight up fight. It might happen from time to time, but in principal it just shouldn't work.
|
@noisyninja: tvp is not balanced according to code S since septembre 2010, just saying.
|
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.
I know that thors don't seem like a good idea in tvp because of the energy, but hear this out:
Lately I've been really suffering vs protoss (masters NA/EU so take this with a grain of salt) - I've been winning over 70% vs zerg, over 60% versus terran and only 27% vs protoss. I've been mixing in thors with my bio army and it has been giving me good results. As I am starting my 2/2 bio upgrades and landing my third CC to mine I've been starting 1 factory thor production, and eventually added on a second factory. I get ghosts out before thors.
My army mix has been thor/marauder/marine/ghost, and battles where I was getting creamed by storm and chargelots I am getting better outcomes - the thors can take so much punishment and do really well against stalkers. Even if they feedback a full energy thor, it still will have a couple hundred hitpoints. I feel much more robust lategame and am not fearing it like I was before. I first tried this on a whim after remember that game Fenix played with FUnited in the GSTL.
Again, I am a lowly masters player on NA/EU. However, this is what has been helping me out in the matchup as of late.
|
On January 17 2012 04:03 Horseballs wrote:Show nested quote +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. I know that thors don't seem like a good idea in tvp because of the energy, but hear this out: Lately I've been really suffering vs protoss (masters NA/EU so take this with a grain of salt) - I've been winning over 70% vs zerg, over 60% versus terran and only 27% vs protoss. I've been mixing in thors with my bio army and it has been giving me good results. As I am starting my 2/2 bio upgrades and landing my third CC to mine I've been starting 1 factory thor production, and eventually added on a second factory. I get ghosts out before thors. My army mix has been thor/marauder/marine/ghost, and battles where I was getting creamed by storm and chargelots I am getting better outcomes - the thors can take so much punishment and do really well against stalkers. Even if they feedback a full energy thor, it still will have a couple hundred hitpoints. I feel much more robust lategame and am not fearing it like I was before. I first tried this on a whim after remember that game Fenix played with FUnited in the GSTL. Again, I am a lowly masters player on NA/EU. However, this is what has been helping me out in the matchup as of late.
Ive experimented with thors, and they are actully really good.
The unit comp you wanna go for is marine thor (you can sprinkle in marauders w.e.)1 raven with 2 pdds and i like to go up to 3 starports and just mass out cloak banshees. Its an extremely good unit composition, i reccomend trying it.
|
Picklebreads a little harsh but everything he says is correct strategy wise. Plenty of T have figured this MU out and perform quite well according to the principles laid out. Most people have no ability to evaluate their own mistakes and admit to them. Easier to say somethings imbalanced, etc. Pretty much the exact mindset you see in 90% of fishy poker players. It's a god damn epidemic.
|
8 rax on 5 base? come on now
|
|
|
On January 17 2012 04:32 Foks wrote:
Picklebreads a little harsh but everything he says is correct strategy wise. Plenty of T have figured this MU out and perform quite well according to the principles laid out. Most people have no ability to evaluate their own mistakes and admit to them. Easier to say somethings imbalanced, etc. Pretty much the exact mindset you see in 90% of fishy poker players. It's a god damn epidemic.
Ya i was harsh. Just ticked me off he decided to bm his opponent. :/. He has trouble with a matchup he could ask for tips lol.
|
LOL epic stuff Picklebread <333 I know exactly what you mean.
|
Ghosts are the key,
get like 7ghosts in a maxed army,
cloak them and go emp every last protoss unit then 1a. ez
|
On January 17 2012 06:33 GodOfProtoss wrote:
Ghosts are the key,
get like 7ghosts in a maxed army,
cloak them and go emp every last protoss unit then 1a. ez
He had 11 ghosts, or 9 I am not sure now, and he EMPed. I know you are protoss player, but your mind is so terranish. I am protoss player as well but whenever I see some other protoss saying bullsheet like this, I am pretty fure because as there is no way to take upper hand early game in PvT, PvT lategame is very eazy, and whenever I got 4 th base, I simply just go EZ mode, and I dislike it, to be honest. It seems stupid that P>T late game while T>P early game in matter of forgiveness of play...
|
As a high diamond toss, id like to say that alhtough you lost the match, you lost it to yourself and not to him. If you maintained you macro and made more rax and uped to 3/3 and had brilliant EMPS, there shudnt be a way you can lose. I think that you just didnt have enough units. Terran is a race of mid speed army reporoduction and mid damage/survivablilty (IMO) so you need to take advantage that you can reproduce an army quicker. You did no army trading in the midgame which made the late game harder for you. Terrans need to trade armies bcus they are cheaper then Protoss armies and Terrans need to expand crazy or mass orbitals for income to afford 15+ rax and just out produce the protoss by all means. Might sound retarted, but 15+ rax can beat a protss without ghost/ vikings if you get good engagments and macro well
|
He had 11 ghosts, or 9 I am not sure now, and he EMPed. I know you are protoss player, but your mind is so terranish. I am protoss player as well but whenever I see some other protoss saying bullsheet like this, I am pretty fure because as there is no way to take upper hand early game in PvT, PvT lategame is very eazy, and whenever I got 4 th base, I simply just go EZ mode, and I dislike it, to be honest. It seems stupid that P>T late game while T>P early game in matter of forgiveness of play..
Thank you.
|
On January 17 2012 06:33 GodOfProtoss wrote:
Ghosts are the key,
get like 7ghosts in a maxed army,
cloak them and go emp every last protoss unit then 1a. ez
good number if its like straight chargelot archon very very heavy archon i like like 15. gotta hit them emps ya know :/
|
Picklebread, giving good advice does not give you the right to insult the OP. Next time might I suggest constructive criticism instead of your entire last hypocritical paragraph. I mean, you are criticizing the OP for BM and then you unload a ton of BM yourself.
Now on to actually helping the OP. If you get lucky enough to kill his nexus in tvp, leave 1 marine in his natural, salvage the bunkers and leave. You have gotten a huge advantage, there is no need to get greedy staying in his natural as it can cost you the game. Next, major engagements, landing the EMPs on the archons is not enough. After landing them you must focus down the archons. They will die almost instantly.
I have some other things I can add but for the most part it has already been said. However if you want additional help in the matchup send me a PM and ill do my best to help you.
|
Your attacks, apart from the first one, seemed to have no real purpose. Why did you drop his main? To kill stuff. But what else? You ran around and killed stuff and broke stuff. But you didn't expand behind the attacks, try to draw his army to one place so you could attack another, split his army or anything. You annoyed him and slowed his deathball's progress but not nearly enough.
TvP revolves around the third base. You let him take it too easy. You almost killed him, and then after he broke your bunkers, you let him get a free third. Third base for toss in in TvP lets toss open up all tech paths and allows for production of HT, archons, etc. while having a decent amount of units.
If you let toss reach 3/3/3 200/200 deathball, you better have maxxed and have good macro behind it, otherwise you're simply going to lose. If you're willing to engage as you did, you need to be able to weaken that army a lot and make sure he can't aggress or be sure of being able to defend against his new army soon.
1. Harassment and economic damage. You make it so that he has trouble remacroing that deathball.
2. Macro like crazy. have money in the bank and lots of rax around so you can get a new army.
In a straight up engagement, terran bio ball loses to zealot archon. There's several reasons in favor of toss.
1. Warp-ins. Toss will be able to reinforce faster than terran. Since zealot archon is gateway only, I can pull about 30 supply of zealot archon out of my ass in a battle from a proxy pylon. You on the other hand need to wait for a few seconds for marines and marauders to come out.
2. Force multiplier: a bigger cluster of toss units scales better than a bigger cluster of terran units. In short, toss units, while resource heavy, are supply efficient.
3. Map/ zone control. Zealots charge and establish the "line of battle" (although they can be kited). Storms need to be dodged, and essentially block off areas of the battlefield for several crucial seconds. FF do this as well.
4. Counters. Zealot archon is pretty much a counter to bio. Zealots can tank a lot of damage from marauders, and slice the crap out of bio units. Archons do ~30 damage to all bio units. That's a lot of damage- marines die pretty much instantly to that, marauders die in a few hits but do pretty much no damage to the zealots. Ghosts do help with sniping HT and EMPing, but yeah.
Here is what to do in the battle, which seems to have been covered pretty well.
1. Split units. Toss's DPS is greatest on clumped units (you know, AoE). So, splitting helps with that.
2. Kill expensive units. The archons and sentries and other gas heavy units are a priority.
3. Save your own expensive units. Medivacs and ghosts. Keep them alive.
Your early pressure was decent. However, the follow up was not so good. If you're putting on early pressure, you need to decide whether you're going to expand behind it or kill him. You sat there for awhile and let him recover. Your next push, by virtue of not having enough macro behind it b/c you didn't expand behind your first attack soon enough, was too weak (and poorly micro'd) to do anything.
Toss basically got to macro however he liked. Your drops did damage, but not nearly enough-- you need to do something that directly affects his macro-- the main base was mined out, and gateways don't matter really. You did maybe 2K minerals worth of damage with that drop and that was it. On the other hand, you could have done much more damage with a drop at a mining expo. Kill the nexus: 400 points. Each probe is 50 points. Then, 100 seconds of lost mining time. If a probe makes a trip round every 7 seconds, then that's a few thousand minerals potentially lost.
Going for the main base, in my opinion, is an all-in kind of thing to do. The goal is to make sure that since you're behind on macro, you destroy his production facilities so his eco advantage can't be utilized.
I'm just rambling. Hopefully something useful in there.
|
if u want to win TvP go for 3rax marine medivac with stim combat shield and +1attack on 1base timing. its seriously way better than these shit 1-1-1 builds ive been seeing lately. Also regarding the post, TvP is so easy for the protoss lategame. U killing 6gateways and a cybercore, he's like i dont need no cyber core for zealots HERP DERP. If anyone wants more info on the build i described above vs protoss then PM me. the build has given me 90% winrate TvP.
User was temp banned for this post.
|
if u want to win TvP go for 3rax marine medivac with stim combat shield and +1attack on 1base timing. its seriously way better than these shit 1-1-1 builds ive been seeing lately.
BO or replay, please.
|
Reading through all this.. I'm a little sad that many people are so mean to the OP while giving advices
|
On January 16 2012 23:10 Duggibobo wrote:
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.
You were a little ahead, until you lost your whole army for free. You did NOT have a huge advantage because you killed nothing except your opponents nexus.
The game went on and some of my drops did HUGE damage, one killed 6gateways and cybernetics etc.
Almost irrelevant because you didn't kill anything he was using. You got a supply lead but didn't push your advantage further. If his army arrives and your gameplan is to drop him to death, drop somewhere else!
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.
At the final confrontation he had a larger, more expensive army that was positioned much better and controlled better (which could just be a limitation at your level, Toss control is less demanding with that comp, mechanically). EMPs were a long way short of perfect (but not bad). You were missing 19 supply of units in that battle that weren't even there, moreover only half of your army even fought at a time because your units were so badly positioned. You would have EASILY won that fight if you had been positioned better and had all of your army there.
It's also worth pointing out that although it didn't cost you the game, it would have made life easier for you if you'd had more marines and less SCVs/marauders (vs his colossi-less comp). I wouldn't go past 60 SCVs in TvP unless you are playing a super-aggressive style. Some people will say you had too many ghosts, but I like your ghost numbers, ghosts in large numbers completely nullify the archons & HT, leaving just kitelots to deal with .
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.
Drops are awesome, but are best used vs fast Colossi builds, IMO. In the late game drop for a REASON (eg: to secure an extra base, your 4th could have gone up WAY earlier).
Also those two medivacs not in the fight meant he was like 20 supply up on you in the battle (army supply) when Terran should ALWAYS be ahead in army supply late-game due to needing less workers for the same money (mules rock dude).
This plus poor (as in absolutely atrocious) positioning cost you the game.
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.
Your income and macro were at about the same level, sometimes you were ahead, and others you were behind. This had no real bearing on the game though, IMO.
Lots of other stuff to improve upon (as do we all), but that's the key reasons you lost. You were positioned very badly. You want your army to have a larger surface area that can shoot at his zealots. All of his zealots were attacking and only half of your army was. This is bad. Also, medivacs full of units  (this is just something that happens sometimes, I wouldn't worry about it).
The other, main, thing you need to take away is a more realistic view of what is going on in the game. You seem to think you are a long way ahead when you are at times actually behind. If you do an aggressive opening it costs you a LOT of economy, so you need to do a LOT of damage. Killing a Nexus qualifies, if you retreat afterwards. If you donate your army afterwards, it does not .
|
Like a lot of people said I would recomend sniping the archons after.
|
The other, main, thing you need to take away is a more realistic view of what is going on in the game. You seem to think you are a long way ahead when you are at times actually behind. If you do an aggressive opening it costs you a LOT of economy, so you need to do a LOT of damage. Killing a Nexus qualifies, if you retreat afterwards. If you donate your army afterwards, it does not .
This quote sums up most of my thoughts on the replay compared to the OP. You were fairly close to even on supply, upgrades, income, and bases for nearly the whole game, this is why he was able to hold push after push. Second, he was not all in with his final push since he still had two mining bases operational at that point in time. Your scv production was also sporadic, but for the most decent.
Even with all that you still should've won this game handily with the correct unit composition and with those two medivacs full of units in the final engagement. If you watch a lot of pro games, a terran maxed army will have somewhere between 14-16 ghosts in their army for situations like that. This is because ghosts not only have emp and snipe, but they also do surprising good dps against zealots. Not only did you only have 9 ghosts in your army, but they somehow got behind the whole engagement and were taking potshots at immortals. Second, you had 25 or so marauders in your composition against an army that had no storm, and very few armored units in it. In my opinion this is 10-15 too many, all of which could be ghosts and marines. The one thing I did like your composition though was the number of medivacs, that was just about right, and that you got air upgrades in case of a colossus transition.
In my experience with 3/3 on both sides and a compostion like that I just detailed against the one he had, the fight should go easily in your favor assuming a decent position for both sides and you not taking any massive storms.
That's just my two cents though, you can take it or leave it.
|
Well in late game TvP, which is the worst MU imo, bio isn't very supply efficient which makes sense since it's a lot cheaper than mech and what not.
Anyway, the last battle seemed pretty even supply wise but you probably needed a better army composition. (ghosts)
You should probably also check out sc's matches today in the GSL as he uses his multitasking abilities to abuse the mobility of bio.
|
On January 17 2012 01:07 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Do not buff carriers.
=========
The feedback you've received thus far is correct: Units in 2 medivacs, not enough marines, less than stellar kiting, no pre concave. Oh, and people forget that with great marine numbers comes great micro responsibility. 1 un dodged storm over a pack of marines and your done.
The only advice I'm gonna put in here is to target forges as the primary target in drops. If you snipe them against zealot/archon, its freakin huge.
|
Thanks everyone, but how do I really know if I am far ahead or not? I feel that my game-sense or something is really lacking since If I kill 1 hatchery (for example a zergs 3d I think im way ahead etc) .. I have a really hard time really knowing whats going on.
I feel like I just want to do a push that simply outright kills my opponent, not just having fights that are about even all the time.. Any1 feeling the same way? I get so greedy and In most of my games I simply just attack with 100 supply for 20 minutes until he finally just wins
|
A lot of the posts here have covered the mistakes in your replay pretty effectively.
Poor unit positioning plays a pretty big role. You need to remember that when you're both maxed on food and upgrades, how you engage will win or lose you the game. Your engagement was, to the best of my terran understanding, about as poor as it gets.
If you have the ability to dodge storms and/or pre-emp HTs, you will want more marines in your composition. Marines are fantastic support to marauders against chargelots because of their high DPS. The reason they aren't a mainstay in TvP like other terran matchups is because marines are effectively nullified by colossus. If your opponent isn't making colossus, adding more marines is a good choice.
Sniping gateways and a cybercore once a toss is on a saturated two+ base isn't as damaging as you'd expect. In PvT, the most important tech structures are your archives or robo bay, and then beyond that your forges. Chargelot/archon relies on fast upgrades to allow zealots to tank tons of damage. Sniping forges is often a good play. Also as covered previously, dropping a base that isn't mining is one of the weaker drops you can do. A protoss will simply remake the gateways, stay at home in the comfort of safe choke points, then move out once the tech is rebuilt. When you snipe gateways you want to be attacking simultaneously or immediately thereafter, so that the protoss doesn't have the ability to warp in defensive gateway units.
If you intend to idle full medvacs in the late game, it is imperative that you constantly poke the medivac back into the toss base as soon as the Protoss deathball leaves the natural to attack you. At a maxed supply, you should always have the scans to find the Protoss army. If the protoss turns around with his army, do the damage you can and leave. If he continues to attack, snipe all the pylons powering the gateways, which prevents gateway reinforcement and has potential to supply block the toss (in the lategame 200v200 phase, it'll take a while for the protoss to get those gates powered again- more than enough time for you to prepare your defensive concave)
|
Take a look at some pro replays OP. Have you ever noticed how in macro games they usually take small victories and then back off? Maybe a pylon here, a tech structure there, etc. They do this because its so difficult to kill the opponent in one push, he will have a defender's advantage through terrain, structures and/or additional units. By taking these small leads and continuing to expand/add on production yourself you are making it more and more likely that you will win the game.
|
archons are pretty darn good, but they get killed by 3 marine shots if they get mass emp'ed... pretty much the most costeffecient way to deal with them with bio i think. If your ghost count get really high archons should not be a problem at all, its like not having vikings to deal with collusi, but having ENOUGH that is the important factor, same with ghosts and archons if you can think of it like that.
|
you lost too much to zelots, you need to make use of your snipes inorder to get rid of the zelots asap, the fact that he can max with that kinda expensive army means you fell behind in macro. Like stated above work on taking expansions faster.
another thing is its really not worth it to drop while you're maxed else he can just push and win.
|
why not transition out of bio if the opponent is behind and pretty much commited to stay on their unit composition. I mean ghosts are nice and everything, but to win a fight against an army that only is able to meatgrind bio, you surely need some micro. Archons do the splash if you spread against them you open up to zealot damage.
PFs bunkers would have allowed you to hold a position against this forever to actually use your eco advantage, (atleast with +2 armor). Another thing is blue flame hellions, kills mass zealot pretty easily, and takes almost no damage from archons, so used right the perfect tank. And with emps the splash would even kill the archons.
But i guess the biggest mistake was indeed to many marauders, as their damage is horrible against zealots and archons. And they tank as good as ghosts. Who deal way more damage. Though can't run away, but if your ahead there is no reason to run away.
|
why not transition out of bio if the opponent is behind and pretty much commited to stay on their unit composition
Transition into what? Sky? Mech?? hahahaha now THAT would be a way to throw away a won game.
|
Shout out to Picklebread for that post. Post of the year so far? Ha 
It was *very* helpful to a Terran currently having some problems with his TvP, so thank you.
|
Early on you killed his nexus, then played the next 5 minutes totally incorrectly. Left units in bunkers to die. Then overbunkered at home. Engaged at wrong times. He made mistakes too, but you didn't capitalize on your nexus snipe.
He hit you as you were killing buildings... so all the lost buildings didn't matter because his army was so much bigger than
yours on the field. He had nearly as many zealots as you had marines and marauders combined in that battle... how could he not win with that many zealots plus support units and the way you controlled your smaller army?
You let the medivacs trail behind and die to archon splash.
You had 6 archons one volley from death and didn't focus fire on them.
You didn't use your ghosts very well after the EMP. They were essentially focusing on an immortal, doing no damage.
Macro problems.
You only had 8 rax and 3000+ minerals in the bank.
Too many SCVs.
|
On January 18 2012 00:48 soapyy. wrote:
Like a lot of people said I would recomend sniping the archons after.
Snipe only works on biolocial units. Or did you just mean focus fire?
|
Some very interesting points in this thread in general. Thanks to everyone I just bumped up my winrate vs toss
|
On January 17 2012 00:27 pAzand wrote:
Snipe the archons after EMP? Build more marines if he don't have sufficient AOE!
You can't snipe Archons as they are not biological units.
|
Surprising to see this many T's needing help against P having just watched pretty much all of the IPL Team Arena. The TvP winrate is like 95% in there.
Usually what I'm seeing is big midgame pressure before toss can get too many archons or more than one colossus, heavy bio comps with ghosts or drop/doomdrop seems to be too much if they end the game before the 3rd is fully saturated.
Engaging a 3/3 zealot archon ball at the 20minute mark with bio seems really ouchy if you don't spread the map out or just pressure enough to essentially end the game at 12-15min.
|
On January 18 2012 22:37 Blasterion wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2012 00:27 pAzand wrote:
Snipe the archons after EMP? Build more marines if he don't have sufficient AOE! You can't snipe Archons as they are not biological units.
That's not what he means by "snipe," it obviously means to target fire
|
You shouldn't of engaged him, he had a great spread at the end. One thing as a zerg player I've come to realize is that you just don't engage protoss at 200/200. Wait for them to engage you and while your waiting drop constantly and harass with nydus/ovie drops. Same applies for terran, drop CONSTANTLY! You should of denied his 3rd/4th base and had units everywhere. Your main goal fighting a protoss is just to make them as mad as you can!
|
This is an idea, been discussed before, just wanted to bring a little thought to this thread. What is everyones thoughts on seeing zealot/archon and keep your bio ball smaller and add in some BF hellions. That would really cut down the zealot #s fast, only problem is your hellions have no upgrades, (other that BF)
|
Northern Ireland26222 Posts
On January 19 2012 04:59 wheelchairs wrote:
This is an idea, been discussed before, just wanted to bring a little thought to this thread. What is everyones thoughts on seeing zealot/archon and keep your bio ball smaller and add in some BF hellions. That would really cut down the zealot #s fast, only problem is your hellions have no upgrades, (other that BF)
It's usually mentioned as a theoretical response. I think there is potential here but the difficulty is gauging the timings, the additional production and the upgrades that your hellions require can leave you vunerable in that transitional phase. It's also something that the Protoss can see coming if their observer use is good, and they can change composition accordingly.
If you open hellions and get a good number of them it's worth experimenting with them, but on the flipside competent Protoss players will probably just not use Chargelot/Archon builds.
In addition it makes the main problem for Terrans in PvT even more pronounced, rebuilding an army after a big confrontation. The inability to do this even with a lot of barracks when going bio is a problem that will be further exacerbated if you're going down a 3rd tech path and using your factories to produce for your composition, leaving you open to those terrifying Protoss mass warpins and counters in the lategame
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
