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I'm fairly certain that blue flame hellions aren't practically as good as marines in TvP vs chargelots (Perhaps battle mode version will  ).
What I do is get a lot of marines as well as ghost/medivac, and it comes down to EMP, as does late game TvP. But the problem is in super late game when the protoss gets Collosi in their composition which completely obliterate marines (alongside storm/archon damage).
Because of that I think that late game TvP requires Terran to have much more control of his army than the protoss to come out even remotely ahead (And even then he can't just attack move to end it in most cases because a warpin cycle should be enough to defend vs low health terran units ^_^). Basically the problem is that lower league players don't have that great bio control as top tier terran players which makes it very hard for them to come out ahead in 3/3 head on engagements (They actually get obliterated if they don't micro at all, obviously).
I think that it's possible to deal with chargelots with marine/ghost/medivac and a few vikings and marauders to tank but you have to know how to micro properly which most people don't. ^_^
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Yeah I few people here have it right. I think a lot of terrans tend to get carried away in marauder making. The marines have insane dps, cost half supply so you can have double as many as marauders, and also that will allow for bigger arcs and ultimately less zealot surface area. Only downside is how vulnerable marines are too splash. But still a high marine count is needed vs tons of zealots
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My thoughts on tvp late game.. (as in maxed both sides 3-3)
The problem with super late game tvp isnt just chargelots, its that terran has no good gas dump in tvp whereas protoss has ht/archon and collosus. That and mass chrono boosted WGs reinforcing way faster than terran can, and a near non existent defenders advantage compared to TvT and TvZ for T.
All of the terran units are already super mineral heavy so hellions don't really help. If protoss is only making chargelots obviously just mmm should beat that.
Maybe terrans should actually start taking scvs off gas after 3-3 is done or something, haven't really seen this at pro level yet but I don't see why not.
Even korean pro terran float tons of gas in late game tvp because ravens will just get feedbacked and have short range, siege tanks suck in tvp, thors are slow compared to hydras off creep and bcs without upgrades suck, they will also all have terrible upgrades compared to protoss if you were going bio. Mass Medivacs become more useless as the game goes on as Protoss attack damage actually scales throughout the game via archons and collosus gaining +2 / +3 damage per attack upgrade when they already do splash damage.
This creates a situation where terran will often be spending all his minerals but cannot seem to trade cost effectively / keep up with protoss after engagements because protoss can spend all his gas on ht/archon and collosus which are both great high dps splash gas dumps. The counter to HT/archon and collosus are Ghosts and vikings so terran builds them but unfortunately their mineral to gas ratios are 2:1, so back to the same problem not enough mins or not enough uses for gas.
A stock pile of gas for protoss can be used to instantly warp in mass ht into archon after a major battle(if you were going mass collosus before this is pretty much the most ridiculous instant tech switch in the game considering you only need a single templar archives to do this and terran has to have been building viking to counter, which will be relatively useless vs the archons). A stock pile of gas for terran is pretty much useless. Nukes have been attempted to be used in pro games but often just simply don't do enough damage to justify the cost considering how often the ghost dies and the nuke won't even go off making it a 300 mineral 200 gas loss.
I'm not saying the MU is imbalanced as a whole but rather explaining why terran should not typically win in lategame 200/200 situations where both sides are stock piling money because it's like terran can only effectively spend one resource compared to protoss having two available to him. The way to avoid this situation is playing well during your timings when bio is still really strong and protoss is still teching up / expanding and has not built up a bank. Using stim timing/ medivac timing / upgrade timings to do as much damage as you can before protoss has 3+ base up and running . Basically making the most of the period where your gas income is actually incredibly useful.
Unfortunately this creates a situation where games are likely determined long before they are over to any keen observer who notices the terran has not done significant damage during his timings due to either making a mistake or protoss just playing well. This often leads to a slow death for the terran where the protoss just turtles and the terran finds it impossible to engage but knows he has to as every second of gas and chrono boost/WG stock piling means less chance for him to win as the chronoboosted reinforcing warp ins will be too strong. It also makes the MU very boring imo.
It also makes the MU reliant on map balance.
If the third is hard to defend and drops are easily done (shakuras) then the macro game will favor T. If the third is easy to defend and the map has long rush distance and/or is hard to drop (cloud kingdom,entombed valley)the macro game favors P..
I also don't know why people have to insist that super lategame tvp is winnable even if protoss doesn't make a huge error. It's like insisting there's a way terran can win vs a zerg in late game that he let drone to 80 drones max hive army and full larvae stock before putting any pressure on if he just plays right. The difference between pressure in TvZ and TvP is tvp pressure almost completely revolves around protoss missing a forcefield which is map based and frustrating for both sides. Hopefully the MU improves in HOTS.
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I feel people get marauders out of psychology. If you think about it, marauders are bigger and are basically mortars. If you asked me whether I would want a guy with a bazooka or three guys with rifles, I would actually pause and think about it.
Maurauders just need to be in the front of the army to absorb damage, so you only might need ten. They ar pretty resilient against zealots, but their actual attack does not counter them. Hellions have less hp than marauders, and actually do not do that much more damage. A good bio army will have row of marauders in the front and tons of marines. I have actually seen pros mix in five or six reapers which do plus damage to zealots (Reapers have 9 DPS, but marine with stim still better at 10DPS). They definitely are a viable option if you are creating mostly marines and they have the plus of not needing a stim to do a lot of damage (vs light)
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I think one thing that should be considered is that most of us terran players have this mindset of having to be aggressive all game long to prevent Protoss from being able to get the perfect army composition they are aiming for. While I think this is a good way to approach the mid game trying to delay the third and fourth of Protoss or keeping the army count low while expanding. However when the game goes into late game and you don't have accumulated a big advantage that allows you to kill them maybe it's actually best to just play really passively and throw down PFs, turrets and sensor towers so that Protoss has to attack into you. This helps you to mitigate the problem of having a slower rate of reinforcement and waisting your mineral bank in army trades and maybe in such positions it's even possible to make ravens work as a defensive unit so that you can actually make use of the gas on your side of the map.
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It's not practical to tech switch into hellions because your upgrades are already focused on bio. I like to include colossi in my first max, using archons/templar and zealots to defend initially while getting upgrades. 3/3 colossus archon zealot army would absolutely destroy 0/0 hellions and 3/3 marauders in basically every situation I can think of, especially considering how incredibly fast hellions die to colossi.
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Nibbler brings up a good point, and I think terrans will eventually need to incorporate BCs to use up their gas. While it's true that unupgraded BCs vs 3/3 stalkers is going to suck, I think terrans should be upgrading air attack throughout the game since that does help vikings vs colossi, and even air armor helps a little with protecting your vikings and medivacs. Certainly you'll be short on minerals, but saving a few hundred minerals to get a head start on air ups should be easy and also uses up some stockpiled gas. So when you finally decide to get BCs, you might be at, say, 2/1 or so, which helps with catching up in upgrades. Another good thing about going BCs is that this forces more stalkers from the toss and less chargelots (also ideally you will want to scout if the toss happens to add void rays), and in a best case scenario you will get off your yamatos on colossi and archons. Also assuming you make scvs constantly, you will eventually get a surplus of scvs to bring for repair.
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Well my thought was, you can tell if a Protoss is going for a heavy Chargelot based build around the time 1-1 is about to finish or just finished and can begin to transition from there and then begin to upgrade mech units.
I said late game TvP as the title as I hear a lot of Terrans complain about it but they're still going Marauder heavy, my point of this thread was to discuss the possibility of tech switching before that late game where 3-3 Zealots are on the field and you're still on MMMG
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Depending on how light the toss is on stalkers, it becomes eerily similar to a mech-v-bio tvt, where your best option becomes a basetrade using medivac mobility. Works better if you're light on vikings because vikings can't hold 8 supply of MM and fly around.
Also worth noting is how easy it is to exploit the tendency to have a ball of chargelot/archon/colossus with a mass-drop style. Especially on maps where there are bases that you can bounce between with one on high ground and one on low ground (shakuras and TDA come to mind).
I know personally i'm going to rewatch friendsday wednesday with qxc because he likes drops and he's a pro-yay learning!:D
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On January 27 2012 13:55 IMPrime wrote:
Nibbler brings up a good point, and I think terrans will eventually need to incorporate BCs to use up their gas. While it's true that unupgraded BCs vs 3/3 stalkers is going to suck, I think terrans should be upgrading air attack throughout the game since that does help vikings vs colossi, and even air armor helps a little with protecting your vikings and medivacs. Certainly you'll be short on minerals, but saving a few hundred minerals to get a head start on air ups should be easy and also uses up some stockpiled gas. So when you finally decide to get BCs, you might be at, say, 2/1 or so, which helps with catching up in upgrades. Another good thing about going BCs is that this forces more stalkers from the toss and less chargelots (also ideally you will want to scout if the toss happens to add void rays), and in a best case scenario you will get off your yamatos on colossi and archons. Also assuming you make scvs constantly, you will eventually get a surplus of scvs to bring for repair.
You're gonna need to keep track of bc energy or you might lose a bunch of life from feedback
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It should be pretty blindly obvious why a terran can't just tech switch. They're so much infrastructure and buildings you will need to rebuild and rearrange. Terran while having many options is very limited when they choose one.
Nibbler brings up a good point, and I think terrans will eventually need to incorporate BCs to use up their gas. While it's true that unupgraded BCs vs 3/3 stalkers is going to suck, I think terrans should be upgrading air attack throughout the game since that does help vikings vs colossi, and even air armor helps a little with protecting your vikings and medivacs. Certainly you'll be short on minerals, but saving a few hundred minerals to get a head start on air ups should be easy and also uses up some stockpiled gas. So when you finally decide to get BCs, you might be at, say, 2/1 or so, which helps with catching up in upgrades. Another good thing about going BCs is that this forces more stalkers from the toss and less chargelots (also ideally you will want to scout if the toss happens to add void rays), and in a best case scenario you will get off your yamatos on colossi and archons. Also assuming you make scvs constantly, you will eventually get a surplus of scvs to bring for repair.
There is so many ways to lose because of a BC transition. Voidrays, Feedback, 3/3 blink stalkers will flat out shut that down. Not to mention your pooling necessary money into upgrades for a group of units that you are may or may not be using, which will be pretty detrimental to your production in the mid game. The mid game is pretty important for TvP, you need to set your self up in a good position so you wont get rolled over by late game Protoss.
I don't know, maybe in the future there will be some cute timing for a sudden BC transition, but unless you already have the starport+techlab ready to go it will be clumsy at best. I saw Jinro do a delayed 1/1/1 kind of push of 2 bases, it wasn't all in by any means, but it had your typical tank/raven/marine that you would expect from the all in. Perhaps something like that then push towards BC when your on 3 bases?
It just seems really odd, and gives Protoss a huge window of opportunity to take advantage from.
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Not sure why we don't see more late-game reapers. They cost more than marines but:
- Their damage scales quite well with attack upgrades.
- They don't require stim to be fast moving so they drain less medivac energy.
- They are small so they have high DPS density.
- Frikking cliff jumping.
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On January 27 2012 14:04 Kracen wrote:
Well my thought was, you can tell if a Protoss is going for a heavy Chargelot based build around the time 1-1 is about to finish or just finished and can begin to transition from there and then begin to upgrade mech units.
I said late game TvP as the title as I hear a lot of Terrans complain about it but they're still going Marauder heavy, my point of this thread was to discuss the possibility of tech switching before that late game where 3-3 Zealots are on the field and you're still on MMMG
There is no transitioning off of bio, just as there is transition off of gateway. How does that even make sense?
Even the most basic math would show you how ineffective mech is against P. Mech is only good against things that it can 1-2 shot (Z units and marines).
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On January 27 2012 11:58 BroodKingEXE wrote:
I have actually seen pros mix in five or six reapers which do plus damage to zealots (Reapers have 9 DPS, but marine with stim still better at 10DPS). They definitely are a viable option if you are creating mostly marines and they have the plus of not needing a stim to do a lot of damage (vs light)
Just want to clarify the reaper dps thing
Reaper dps: 7.3 standard dps, vs light unit it gets +9.1 = 16.4 dps vs light unit
Marine dps without stim 7 with stim 10.5
So reapers kill "light" units (zealots) faster then marines with or without stim.
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Marine dps is subtracted by default 1 armor on zeals.
Reaper dps is doubly subtracted by each point of armor on zeals.
Reapers are still good DPS for 1 food, but they take 45s to make. To put that into perspective, you can make only 2 reapers in 1:30s, but you can make 6 marines.
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BC's are trash, unless you can get max of them (130/6 = 20+ BC) in one go. Having 2-4 BC floating around doesn't do anything, since they can't kill zeal for shit.
BC is a unit that, like the carrier, heavily needs to be changed. It is worthless in all 3 matchups:
1. TvZ, corruptors shit on it
2. TvT, raven is better use of gas, 1 PDD absorbs as much fire as a BC for only 2 food
3. TvP, all protoss units have base armor, doesn't kill anything.
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When im 180/200 i have lots of techlab rax so i just make a buncha reapers and 33 reapers are sexy vs chargelots xD
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United Kingdom30 Posts
I think as most people have already pointed out -- the investment into a big tech switch like this is huge both resources wise as well as time.
Great in theory, needs to be expanded on, and perhaps a little more depth on the practical side.
Im not sure myself either - but is their a way of viably and gently transitioning to more mech based against P?
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What Nibbler89 said is the head of the problem.
Terran late game has nothing to spend their gas on that is useful against Protoss.
The resource change for Ghosts from 150/150 to 200/100 was a huge nerf and should be reverted,in fact I think they should change it back to 100/200 or 100/175 until HoTs.
The only possible counter I see against chargelots with Archons,is to go mass marines with very few maurauders for the slow effect,some medivacs and a crap ton of ghosts.And if the opponent is going heavy collosus then switch the gas spending to more vikings.You spam EMP on everything,thus making Archons die in 2shots and micro like a god to prevent storms,then marines kill everything with ease.
But even if you win the fight you can't push the protoss back because he is always 1cycle of units(2cycles when defending) ahead of a terran player due to the warp tech mechanism and the instant replenishment of the army.
It's an uphill battle for Terran,that has to win over and over battles meanwhile it only takes protoss to win or come even in one battle to win the entire game.
I find it poor design when a race autolosses if the game goes on beyong the 15min mark.
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I used to regularly include hellions against zealot archon pre BFH nerf. Since then, they're pretty useless (even with equal upgrades) against even mass zealot.
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EPT
