Hello! This guide will be for all Terran players that want to learn how to utilize the raven to play late game macro games in TvZ. As well as for Terrans that want to learn how to fight against the broodlord/corruptor/infestor deathball.
Let me give a little bit of background on why ravens are the next logical step in dealing with TvZ lategame...
One year ago or so I was massing many ravens/vikings with mech, but for one reason or another I stopped as I explored other strategies, as patches hit, etc. Well, in the past 2-4 weeks I have consciously focused on re-exploring and innovating raven usage in the late game against Zerg, not just out of luxury, but out of necessity.
Terrans were having a lot of difficulty dealing with broodlord/infestors for a while, until we developed ghost usage in lategame (our innovation just recently nerfed).
Zerg’s answer in the current metagame has been to simply mass more broodlords, more corruptors, and more infestors meaning even pre-patch, mass ghosts no longer were becoming cost efficient in killing lategame Zerg deathballs.
There is a common misconception that mass ghosts obliterated everything Zerg has...when it simply was not the case as Zergs “figured it out.” Money fungals on ghost clumps or simply morphing more broodlords among other things has made it so massing ghosts, even pre-patch 1.4.3...massing only ghost was becoming more and more of a bad investment.
Zerg have now established a foothold in lategame TvZ with broodlord/corruptor/infestor play, and with snipe being taken out of the equation as a possible counter, Zergs are currently very happy collecting their freewins when the game gets to this lategame stage...
But now it is again Terran’s turn to take over the lategame, to use our creativity, innovations, and intelligence to fight against the Zerg lategame past the 15 minute mark...and there is just one obvious unit to turn to - the raven.
The raven, in conjunction with ghost EMP on infestors, and a pure ground army will allow you to fight on even footing versus broodlord/corruptor/infestor deathballs very late into the game.
The Raven The beauty and strength of the raven is that the raven is an energy and time reliant unit, meaning the longer the game goes on, and the more ravens you accumulate, the more powerful your lategame army strength becomes. The reason energy units like the raven and infestor are so powerful is because you can expend their energy and as long as you take care of these units and allow them time to regain more energy, they become useful in killing things once again without costing you extra resources other than the time necessary to rebuild energy.
The other reason that accumulating ravens in the lategame is good is because of the AOE hunter seeker missile and point defense drone. Zergs that power the brood/infestor/corruptor ball rely on fungals to lockdown vikings (and previously ghosts) so that you will 100% lose those vikings/ghosts, and then they simply overmake corruptors meaning you have lost air control, and then soon after you will die to uncontested broodlords + any other unit.
The hunter seeker missile, in conjunction with EMP on infestors...means suddenly you do not need to over make vikings or even 40 ghosts to be able to make a dent into the Zerg air deathball. EMPs make it so you cannot get chain fungaled, and the hunter seeker missile allows massive splash onto clumped broods/corruptors, meaning that you now no longer need to guestimate/overmake vikings in order to survive the initial Zerg max on this composition.
Finally, the reason the raven is so powerful in lategame TvZ is because it allows you to create a pure ground to ground army. What I mean by this is since you have the AOE from HSM and cost efficiency from point defense drone, you do not need as many vikings as you normally would need!
This solves the problem of lategame situations where you would be thinking, “well, ok, now i land all my vikings and they die cause they suck on the ground?”
The raven makes it so resources that would have previously and traditionally been spent into vikings now go towards more siege tanks/thors, more marauders/marines, or more ravens. Suddenly your ground army is much stronger against an ultra tech switch, and you always have air superiority with good PDD/HSM usage + vikings.
The last point is probably the most important point of why ravens are so powerful. Unlike simply “making more vikings” you now have a unit that can add to your army strength before and after Zerg tech switches, and allow you to create a more powerful ground army since you have less supply in vikings and more in units that are...good against ground units.
Dealing with Tech Switches Ravens are ideal for dealing with tech switches. As long as you are keeping ravens alive, and regaining energy, it means that whenever you are playing late game and have killed 1 max army of the Zerg, you still have the potential to kill their tech switch. One of the main problems Terran players have to deal with is that our unit production does not work like Protoss/Zerg. If we lose our 1 big army in late game, we often times are in a position to lose the game from P/Z remaxes.
What ravens allow you to do that building only vikings doesn’t is have a cost efficient unit that can allow you to kill a Zerg’s first max, and still be useful during their second max, and then their eventual tech switch back into broodlords/corruptors.
Let’s say your opponent opens with brood/corruptor/infestor as their first max army. Killing their first max...if they stay on the same brood/infestor/corruptor composition, you will outnumber them in the air at that point with seeker+pdd+vikings, and you are in an advantageous position.
If they tech switch into mass ultra/ling/infestor, you still will have ravens re-accumulating energy, so that after you have pumped pure tank/hellion, or marine/marauder/tank, (depending on if u went bio or mech), the Zerg is either forced to stay on pure ground units which the ravens can still help contribute to your army by using autoturrets to tank damage or more HSMs, or the Zerg is forced to attempt going back into broodlord/corruptor, in which case once again, you have the ravens and hunter seeker+pdd meaning you do not suddenly have to have 20 vikings in order to stay in the game because each raven is worth almost 2-5 vikings.
Patch 1.4.3 - do I build ghosts now? I mentioned this earlier, but even pre-patch Zergs had begun to figure out that simply adding more and more corruptors/broods/infestor to their deathball, along with queens for transfuse was beginning to deal with ghosts quite well.
It was extremely difficult to expend 100% of ghosts snipe energy 100% of the time, whereas from the Zerg’s point of view they really just need to spread infestors and hit key fungals because they knew if you were only using snipe your ghost would have to be in the same area to get off snipes quickly.
Patch 1.4.3 ghosts were nerfed regardless of how the game developed...but that does not mean they are useless now or that you should not build them.
They are very necessary to EMP infestors as much as possible, as well as nuke harrass. The only difference is that you will not need 30 ghosts in your army, nor should you even want that many ghosts. 5-10 ghosts is an ideal number to keep around to EMP infestors, and post patch you will mostly be using ghosts to EMP infestors, rather than use snipe on anything.
EMP is what will allow you to give your ravens/vikings more survivability aka not get chain fungalled.
Production set up for ravens/vikings When you are in good shape economically and the game is going long or to defensive situations, you will want to end up with 2 tech-labbed starports, and 1 reactored starport for viking/medivac production.
Double tech-labbed starports allows you to build 2 ravens at a time, which is the most you can usually support off of 3-4 bases along with everything else.
Whether you went mech or marine/tank/med doesn’t matter. 2 tech lab ports, 1 reactor port is what I have found is ideal for beginning the transition to ravens.
At what point do I want to begin getting ravens? This one is a tricky question because it requires you to read the specific game and situation. But there are general rules and ideas behind when you should begin raven production.
1. If your opponent is fast teching to a hive with a spire building, you will want to throw up the two extra starports with tech labs, or if you have a reactored starport switch it to a tech lab and begin raven production and build a new one on the reactor. Scanning hive tech and putting the starports up to begin raven production early can mean the difference between having the HSMs to deal with broods, or simply dying from not having enough ravens/energy for HSMS.
2. Get ravens off of 3-4 base economies. This is just a general rule, as ravens are 200 gas each, and you do not want to build ravens at the cost of fighting units. Ravens are supplemental to your main production of mech or marine/tank.
3. The earlier, the better. The difficulty with balancing raven production is learning when to not make them too soon, or not make them too late. In general, the earlier you have ravens, the more energy they will have accumulated for spells, and the more of them you will have. This goes in line with the idea of the longer the game goes, if you are making ravens then you are getting much more value added into your army strength. What ravens allow you to build Getting enough ravens/vikings means you will end up with air control and what this allows you as a Terran to do is make pure ground to ground units, such as the marauder and tank in late game.
This is one of the key concepts of raven usage in the late game. Even though your opponent has a scary broodlord army that would normally negate your 20 siege tanks, as long as you have accumulated enough ravens, you are rewarded with the ability to make a very strong ground to ground army that will be able to handle the Zerg player’s mass ground tech switch.
Normally you would be worried that “oh, i need to build 5 bajillion vikings and then those suck against the ultra switch...” but now you can end up defeating the broodlord/corruptor/infestor first max and have pure tank/hellion or marine/marauder/medivac to deal with their ultra tech switch.
The ravens function using auto turret to help tank damage, and of course staying alive to deal with a tech switch from the Zerg back into mass broodlord/corruptor.
Another nice thing if you are going mech, having ravens means you do not need thors because raven/viking can deal with muta quite easily on it’s own. Tank/hellion is much more supply efficient on the ground than thors are.
How to Micro/Target with ravens Since most players will be new to using ravens, it’s important to learn and have the knowledge of what is best to target, and how to micro ravens/vikings.
Usually, against broodlord/corruptor/infestor you will control group ravens/vikings together to allow much easier control, but that one thing to avoid is simply 1Aing to the Zerg because your vikings will attack things, but your ravens will simply fly to their deaths.
How you hunter seeker missile your opponent’s army is always dependent upon the ratio of corruptor/infestor/broodlord that they have created, as well as how spread apart their units are at the time.
If your opponent has a higher broodlord count than they do corruptors, it is more beneficial to use the hunter seeker missile from each raven on different sections of broodlords to get the most possible splash damage, allowing vikings to clean up.
If your opponent has a higher corruptor count than broods, you will want to eliminate the corruptors first, which means using the hunter seeker missile on corruptor clumps OR using mass point defense drones and only a few seeker missiles. If they are flying into your ravens you will want to go with more PDDs and only a few hunter seekers to deal with the corruptors, if they are sitting still while engaging then you have more opportunity to use more HSMs and less PDD. It’s important to know the difference so that they don’t run straight to your flock of ravens and you die from your own HSMs.
If the opponent has a higher infestor count/queen count underneath their brood/corruptor, you will not want to even attempt HSMs/viking attacks until you have EMP’d as much energy away from the infestors as possible. This leads into...
Microing ground army + ravens + ghosts The most dangerous thing to your ravens/vikings is being chain fungaled. Chain fungal is when one infestor fungals your units and then there are follow-up fungals that guarantee your units deaths. This is usually what ends up killing players that only make pure vikings in the first place, as they end up losing all of their anti-air and the game shortly after. It obviously applies to ravens as well, and you should never commit ravens to HSMing until you see that broods/corruptors are coming in close enough that you can run away after you launch the missiles.
To ensure safety of your ravens, you micro by by simultaenously advancing forward with ravens/vikings and cloaked ghosts (or even non cloaked ghosts). What will end up occuring is a dance much like the ghost / templar dance in TvP.
You will move your ravens forward to HSM broods/corruptors and your opponent will be forced to respond by moving their infestors in range to fungal your ravens. This is when you also are moving your ghosts forward to carpet EMP bomb all of the infestors, meaning even if a fungal does somehow get off on your ravens, there is no more energy to chain fungal, meaning you keep your units alive, while he loses most of his.
This is the main way to advance through the Zerg deathball and if you are going to learn this style, it’s important you learn how to control ghosts, and ravens, and vikings all at the same time. If he moves the broods back, you move the ravens back, while he moves the infestors forward you mvoe the ghosts forward, then he moves the infestors back and moves the broods forward and you move the ravens forward again while he brings back the infestors while you bring the ghosts to EMP...that is how the dance will end up happening until you destroy all of their stuff
EMP is the key to allowing your ravens survivability, just remember that. If you run out of EMPs, your ground army of marine/marauder/tank or pure mech also functions in the same manner, as you will actually move your army into broodlord range like I just described with the ghosts, and then move the ravens forward in the same way. It’s just that you risk much more when you move your army under broods, than you do when you move forward with a few cloaked ghosts instead.
How to prioritize HSM/Autoturrets/PDD and Order of Upgrades Using a lot of ravens means you have to manage their energy. This means you don’t want to use up energy on autoturrets and then find out you have not enough energy for HSM and PDD, but you also do not want to just sit at your base with 200 energy ravens because you could be actively spending that energy.
HSM - Saving energy for HSM is usually your number 1 priority, especially against broodlords. You should really not be using other spells until you are sure you have seeker missiles saved up.
PDD - Energy for PDD’s is your second priority. You should try not to overdo it with PDDs, because a few clutch HSMs can kill corruptors/muta instead...but saving energy for PDD is oftentimes more useful than spamming auto turrets.
Auto turrets - These are your last priority. Auto turrets have a few different uses. You can use them after you have cleared armies to harrass actual bases without committing your ground army. You also can use them to throw in front of mech units or bio to help tank damage from ultras/banelings/roaches. You also can throw down defensive “auto turret rings,” much like missile turret rings if your ravens are beginning to sit idle with 200 energy so that way you are at least using the energy on something.
Also, in terms of upgrade research, you want to get the corvid reactor (raven energy upgrade) first, and HSM second, and durable materials you can delay as long as you need if you are tight on gas. It's not a necessary upgrade, but is very helpful.
You will have two tech lab starports when you transition to ravens, so researching corvid reactor and HSM at the same time is very common.
How to use your ravens during the ultra tech switch If you do control ravens/ghosts/mech or bio very well, you should be able to deal with the broodlord/corruptor/infestor deathball and what follows will be Zerg remaxing, often times on ultras.
In the case that your opponent is remaxing on ultras/lings, ravens can help throw out auto turrets to tank damage while your bio or mech kills ultra/lings, or as long as you are careful with your unit movement, you can also HSM ultras to dish out 100 or so damage quickly. How to use your ravens during a mass roach tech switch This tech switch is more common from Zerg if you opened and stayed with mech. Whenever a Zerg does go from air to mass 200/200 roach, you will want to use ravens to HSM roache clumps as much as possible, and in situations where roaches are advancing on tanks/thors/hellions you can also throw out auto turrets to mess with the roach AI allowing your army 1-2 extra volleys which can mean the difference between losing 2 tanks or losing 10. How to use your ravens during a mass muta tech switch A mass muta tech switch is probably the rarest one you’ll see nowadays, but in case it does happen, you honestly will not have trouble at all if you have enough vikings with your ravens.
The ravens here you will mostly use for point defense drone making your vikings invincible, and if there is a fight where Zerg commits to standing still, you HSM once and that’s it - the rest of the energy is PDD and auto turrets while vikings clean up.
How many vikings do I make? As mentioned earlier in this guide, the beautiful thing about accumulating ravens is you don’t need as many vikings, which means in late game your supply is actually becoming more cost efficient to deal with the ultralisk/pure ground tech switches from Zerg.
Normally, vikings would be utterly useless on the ground during a tech switch, but since you have the ravens, you are protected from the air tech switches, while taking supply that would have been in more vikings and putting that into units that can deal with ultralisks, like tanks, marauders, marines, basically anything on the ground.
You will need usually around 10-15 vikings or so, but that is usually it! When you first start to learn the raven transition you’ll be surprised at how much stronger and how much better you can survive through Zerg tech switches when they are at max.
So, the magic number is usually in the range of 10-15 vikings, with all of the rest of your resources either going into more ravens, or a pure ground to ground army.
Why have Terrans not been utilizing ravens like this before? There are many reasons why Terran players have not been using ravens in lategame TvZ.
1. Ghosts were a better and “easier” option that overshadowed ravens. With pre-patch snipe, ghost accumulation was one of the first ways Terrans innovated and found to deal with broodlords/infestors. It’s more logical to simply make ghosts from mass barracks production then it is for a lot of players to say to themselves “throw down two tech lab starports.” It is actually quite taxing on multi-task/apm/unit production to dedicate a starport to a tech lab rather than a reactor that allows medivac or double viking production.
2. HSM cost 125 energy, and it takes a long time to make ravens pay off. The thing about ravens as I have mentioned in this guide are that the longer the game goes with ravens in them, the stronger your army can potentially get. But if you are in situations where there is constant pressure or no time available to get the infrastructure for tech-labbed starports + the raven upgrades + the raven energy...then it can be considered a huge risk to start raven production.
The main thing that will and has scared Terrans away from using ravens is how much gas the raven upgrades cost + getting the necessary starports and the time it takes to even get one seeker missile, which is not guaranteed to pay off against most Zerg compositions.
Because of the “gamble” aspect of HSM, it was “not worth it” to build ravens. Lings, ultra, etc can outrun the seeker. But now...
3. Zergs improved and innovated the Zerg deathball This goes with the above reasoning. HSM used to be a gamble against lings/ultras/roaches/any ground Zerg unit. There was no use for it. But Zergs have figured out the mass broodlord/corruptor/infestor style of play now which was not used before. This Zerg deathball style is a new style of play that has only cropped up really in the past 6-7 months, and is now very, very common and almost the standard way to play Zerg.
Since it was not as common before, there was no need or point to HSM.
4. It is apm intensive. Managing ravens + an army + ghost emps on infestors + macro...to be honest, it’s very apm intensive, requires a lot of multi-task, and one mistake can mean losing all of your ravens which are almost impossible to replace. I’m writing this guide so Terrans start using and learning about ravens in late game TvZ...but the honest truth is it will be very difficult for Terrans below masters to handle using HSM + EMP + macro + everything else in the game at once without getting fungaled, or losing all their units to broods, etc. It takes a lot of fine micro and unit control to get down.
Those were just some reasons why people weren’t using them imo. This guide (and replays) will hopefully have convinced you otherwise, and show just how powerful ravens are.
Why you should be using ravens lategame TvZ 1. They are very pleasurable to use. Launching an HSM and watching things blow up cost effectively...mmm so good
2. Cost efficiency into late game. The more ravens you get, the more HSM/pdd/autoturrets you get, which means instead of throwing away bio or hellions or whatever to do damage, you are using energy which can be regained over time! When resources get low on the map, or it’s a very close game, not needing actual minerals/gas to be cost effective can make a huge difference.
3. They are a necessity nowadays. Yes, a necessity. Or they’ll eventually become one. Making vikings alone against brood/corruptor/infestor is not cost effective. Making vikings + ghosts only after 1.4.3 will also not be cost effective because of the snipe nerf.
That leaves you with - you die to Zerg late game, or you learn that ravens are good. I would rather live when TvZ goes past the 15 minute mark, and ravens are just the way to do that!
Why should you not use ravens lategame TvZ? Because David Kim will nerf them. Everytime we Terrans develop something it is nerfed...-_- so I say this half joking, and half serious.
End of Avilo’s TvZ Lategame Raven Transition Guide So, that is it! Ravens are godly if used and micro’d very well! I was originally going to put together screenshots of ravens shooting HSMS, PDD’s, etc...but then I realized it was mostly screenshots of Zerg units blowing up. -/_-
As a lot of the guide above is theory/mindset/mechanics, so here is a replay pack of me doing my raven late game transitions. Most games I go mech, but there are bio games in there as well with the exact same transition! A few games are also pre-patch, but are still 100% relevant because any time i use ghosts with this strategy it is solely for EMP!
i so agree. I think ravens are realy good. The more people use them the more peple are going to find out that ravens can be used. It might be a while before it becomes common but thanks for the guide :D
So much respect for your hard work avilo. While we all know that you make very vocal criticisms of the game, stuff like this shows that you do truly care a lot.
Haha.....the only guide that I have read word by word
Hey Avilo, great guide, so I am sorry if this is obvious, but you....obviously research all the upgrades for Raven right? The durable material, the HSM (of course), and Corvid reactor, correct?
Very nice, if someone as popular and good as Avilo starts a new trend such as Raven, the crowd is sure to follow :D
And lastly....make a guide on TvP Mech!!! Haha I say this half joking and half serious.
Overall, great guide, glad to see you go mech, cause I love mech too. Now watching the replay pack.
On February 25 2012 12:18 DontLoseSightOfIt wrote: Haha.....the only guide that I have read word by word
Hey Avilo, great guide, so I am sorry if this is obvious, but you....obviously research all the upgrades for Raven right? The durable material, the HSM (of course), and Corvid reactor, correct?
Very nice, if someone as popular and good as Avilo starts a new trend such as Raven, the crowd is sure to follow :D
And lastly....make a guide on TvP Mech!!! Haha I say this half joking and half serious.
Overall, great guide, glad to see you go mech, cause I love mech too. Now watching the replay pack.
Unfortunately even avilo doesn't think that mech is viable tvp :[
demuslim sometimes uses quite a similar style, but i think he got away from it because its not that great (and it has to be great for those costs) against ultra/ling/infestor styles i believe.
not sure about this though^^ anyway, rly nice to see some raven builds out there, i think its heavily underused in some TvZ lategame situations, but it might get more popular now that ghosts got nerfed.
@ mech vs P
not only avilo doesnt think mech isnt viable, even goody doesnt play mech vs P anymore. Although i still think on a map like shakuras, it can be great - but it has to be played by someone with lots of mech experience.
first, thanks for the long detailed write up on ravens! I guess I'll find out from the replays, but what order do you get the raven upgrades? I'm guessing corvid reactor and HSM upgrade are the first two you get from the double tech lab starports, but do you at some point get durable materials, or the two e-bay building upgrades (hi sec auto tracking and building armour)? Also, do you get ship plating for ravens or ship weapons for the vikings?
On February 25 2012 12:18 DontLoseSightOfIt wrote: Haha.....the only guide that I have read word by word
Hey Avilo, great guide, so I am sorry if this is obvious, but you....obviously research all the upgrades for Raven right? The durable material, the HSM (of course), and Corvid reactor, correct?
Very nice, if someone as popular and good as Avilo starts a new trend such as Raven, the crowd is sure to follow :D
And lastly....make a guide on TvP Mech!!! Haha I say this half joking and half serious.
Overall, great guide, glad to see you go mech, cause I love mech too. Now watching the replay pack.
On February 25 2012 12:58 carbonaceous wrote: Hey avilo!
first, thanks for the long detailed write up on ravens! I guess I'll find out from the replays, but what order do you get the raven upgrades? I'm guessing corvid reactor and HSM upgrade are the first two you get from the double tech lab starports, but do you at some point get durable materials, or the two e-bay building upgrades (hi sec auto tracking and building armour)? Also, do you get ship plating for ravens or ship weapons for the vikings?
Ah, yes, I didn't originally mention about the upgrades. Just updated the guide with a lil snippet about researching the upgrades. Corvid reactor (raven energy) and HSM are the important ones. Durable materials is a luxury one, you can get it if you have the resources for it and it'll help for auto turrets. The ebay upgrades Terrans will get late game regardless of their strategy and aren't of mega importance.
Usually you get raven energy before HSM, ideally both at the same time if possible, but you can get HSM after your first 2-3 ravens because by then you'll have the energy to use the HSM.
interesting guide got a bit of extras out of this, ravens should be a standard addition if you get vikings, because they make the vikings way more effective and save you supply (bcs do to but they are a larger investment). They add some micro though. And i don't doubt, that with seeker missile use versus infestors, we will also see fungal neural seeker combination. The zerg would have to bring a raven out of position first though. So did you encounter any neural use against ravens so far ? I sadly did not and really afraid of that happening. Because seeker missile and a fungaled raven could...
Currently playing around with banshees after my first ravens, with 4-5 you can one shot infestors and with cloak you can manage to get over the infestor group, if they have no detection around, just need to divert their attention for a moment. Its risky but if you get enough infestors their air army is really exposed, if they rely to heavily on the infestor. And if you sneak up from behind you are sure to atleast trade cost effective. (5 banshees are 15 supply though)
I think tvz will get alot more interesting in the future, atleast if blizzard stops nerfing things to soon. As there is alot the zerg can do to buff up their deathball as well. (they won't though if blizzard is faster)
There is no doubt that Ravens are supply efficient for HSM.
But while you admit that the transition is tricky, you don't address how you do this transition. If you start upgrading+accumulating in anticipation of Hive, he can just do Ultra/infestor and you will have spent 1k+ gas for nothing. So somehow you have to be able to securely sprawl 4+gas first.
So, do you just survive the first wave of X with thor + viking? How do you survive the first 200 conflict vs BL when you can't prepare in advance? Is this even possible on any map given the resource requirements?
Let me throw in some math to clarify the efficiency of Ravens.
PDD is best against high damage units. They are the best against vikings, when a single PDD blocks 560 damage. So Raven is better than a BC in TvT. Unfortunately, corruptors are low damage, high HP units, so a PDD only blocks 280 damage.
So for 200 gas and 1m45s (1m build time + 45s energy accum) you only block 280 damage, without dealing damage. I think it's clear that PDD is not particularly efficient use of resources. It takes a whopping THREE minutes to get another PDD. Now, if the Z does let you accumulate enough for 2 PDDs on a Raven, then the Raven will represent essentially 4 food. In either case, not anything to write home about.
Now let's talk about HSM. HSM is actually passably decent and the only redeeming spell in this matchup, despite ridiculous cost+time. So while it takes 2.5m to get a HSM, for the FOOD, it does a good amount of damage, more than you would expect a viking to do. Imagine a HSM doing about 200 damage through AOE, a viking would have to get off 10 shots or survive 20s to do so. HSM is all frontloaded damage, that allows you to clean up with thors. Some number of Ravens with HSM will make it so that manythor+fewviking can deal with any air threat.
And like you said, it frees up the rest of the ground army + simcity to deal with infestor/ultra.
To me, the question is, can you play this style with bio initially, and transition into more mech heavy+ravens, with constant mineral dump into marine drops.
Or is it only feasible with pure mech builds. Maybe someone that watched the MLG Winter games today can clarify if the Terran players that meched did pure mech from the start.
Nice write up, I just switched to terran and have been messing around with ravens/ghosts a lot. Looking forward to checking out the replays.
Have you found if there is ever a reason to have less marauder/tank and mix in banshee/battlecruiser or is the infrastructure (and build times) required for that too hard to get to until the game has probably been decided?
Why not go 3 tech port raven and put your medivac reactor on something else?
You don't really need the DPS of vikings if you can land your HSM's and it saves you on supply too. Also I found that against mutas, you should be pretty safe especially if you have +2 building armor and can throw down a PDD or you can even throw down auto turrets and a PDD in a pinch. Combo this with a strong straight push and you can easily catch zerg off guard and kill their whole ground army.
In the middle of the map, you can also PDD on top of your tanks to counter muta 1 shots on your tanks against a mid game zerg army rolling in. If the zerg can't alpha your tanks, you can sometimes target fire every single baneling which means you win with your surviving marines.
Also, if the map has tight lanes then you can do my old mid-game turret crawl against lings, blings, and whatever.
But I digress, those are the mid-game raven tricks. Late game, if you can horde enough ravens, its GG. They are the hardest caster to kill and if you have more than 10, then you can pretty much non-stop auto turret the whole map. Write your name for fun.
I appreciate your guide. It was very thorough and explained one way that Terrans can deal with Zerg late game. There is one thing which you briefly touched on but the implications of which you left untouched - the high APM and micro intensive aspect. What this means, then, is that only Masters and above can do it successfully. I am a diamond Terran, so though I have good macro and good micro, I am afraid that I will be unable to make this a viable strategy for me. What do you recommend to us Terrans who are Diamond and below? How can we beat our diamond zerg friends who do this exact same strategy? I am having immense trouble defeating them.
On February 25 2012 12:11 tjd2191 wrote: So much respect for your hard work avilo. While we all know that you make very vocal criticisms of the game, stuff like this shows that you do truly care a lot.
This.
Great guide, I guess Terrans will just have to use over 9000 APM in big battles in TvP and TvZ.
Oh well, not like we aren't used to being owned in late-game.
Also, VoD's not working for me on chrome for some reason.
You simply just can not defeat ultra/ling with about 50 supply in ravens and vikings, which you need to prevent the zerg from getting back air control. Autoturrets vs 3/3 ultras? Come on.
Good post.... I think you've covered all the bases but didn't talk about neural....it may seem noobish on my part since i'm bronze but isn't neural a good weapon against HSM's...what if the zerg player's infestors neural parasite your raven and uses the HSM on your raven/viking clump to seriously weaken your anti-air?You are already making less vikings than usual but if even 1/2 HSM lands on your air fleet than it would hurt badly.........Or do you rely on ghosts to emp all the infestors which is a bit risky considering the fact that they are very fat+emp's small radius now+infestors don't clump much=infestors survive your emp carpet......
And thanks for your efforts to help the struggling terrans.....keep the youtube videos of tvx discussion coming
It is definitely going to be interesting to see how Terrans adjust to the ghost nerf, although I just don't see the HSM as a viable option. You have to start the mass Raven production early, so it is easily scoutable. Zergs will just not make slow units. HSM will only be able to catch slow units, as it's possible to select the targeted unit and run that unit away from the pack. If Zergs do this, then Raven users will have to count on luck or use the turrets and PDD.
I could easily see Zergs using the Nydus worm to abuse the Ravens lack of mobility. Of course, Zergs should be using the nydus worm more anyway to, as already mentioned, abuse slow moving units or just to get from one expansion to another with slower units.
While i don't doubt that this will be able to kill zerg lategame it seems to be as fragile as marauder hellion where, if you lose one group of units, the other group is almost useless
I think I just got thrown into a parallel universe. A non-whiny post by Avilo AND a long ass post ADVOCATING that one use ravens. This is not the TL I know.
Good post though, I've always wanted to see more ppl use ravens, maybe this will get their attention.
On February 25 2012 21:54 TheQforce wrote: While i don't doubt that this will be able to kill zerg lategame it seems to be as fragile as marauder hellion where, if you lose one group of units, the other group is almost useless
Well both Zerg, Protoss, and Terran already have these issues already with their aoe units.
Watched some games from the replay pack though and I am not that impressed. Every game the zerg does no have any solid aggression that denies your third or delaying. Has not looked at all games but a good chunk and it was pretty much the same you take three bases tech to your mech army,then start taking the map while the zerg sits passive, then lose since mech is super cost effective. Any good zerg would know to put pressure on against mech and start to deny fourth bases and so on.
However this style might have validity to it but as your strat plans out now it will lose to better zerg, you won't have the luxury to go tank/thor/hellion/viking/ghost/raven against all zerg and if the zerg early on start trading, you can't start replacing with that composition since you will get gas limited. Something need to go imo, probably ghost if you go mech since mech don't suffer that badly from fungals if you not catch siege tanks unsieged. And siege tanks can target down the infestor if they get to close. You really need your composition for the midgame clear. Will you go thor/hellion then later on add tanks or tank hellion with turret support, and so on. I am purely thinking of the economy aspects of the build, with constant production and clean transition you can not afford everything you get. If you go bio I can see that you might wanna mix in ghosts, but I am not sold on that idea if you go raven/viking to combat b-lords. Ghost has a to specific roll in your composition imo too emp infestor, the nukes is cool but not game winning and basically is a slower hsm.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process. EDIT: Starting to like the late game raven more and more
As the post above, I think it doenst fit to both Bio-Mech and pure Mech play. Pure Mech is too gas intensive to allow the addition of mass Raven. On the other hand, playing standard Bio Mech in the midgame and later transition more into pure Bio with some Mech units, Ghosts, Vikings and all the excess gas in Ravens looks feasible. Bio allows for has additional advantages, it allows to handle Ultra transitions easily via Marauders and enables mass drop play, which is very strong against Hive Zerg. In the very lategame Ravens replace Siege Tanks (ground) and Thors (light air) as splash damage unit, which can handle both types at same time and provides and answer to armored air units.
If going Mech its seems stronger to delay / push before Hive and going mass Thor with follow-Hellions (Broodlord) / buffer Hellions / (Ultra) and a fixed number of Siege Tanks and Vikings.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Watched some games from the replay pack though and I am not that impressed. Every game the zerg does no have any solid aggression that denies your third or delaying. Has not looked at all games but a good chunk and it was pretty much the same you take three bases tech to your mech army,then start taking the map while the zerg sits passive, then lose since mech is super cost effective. Any good zerg would know to put pressure on against mech and start to deny fourth bases and so on.
However this style might have validity to it but as your strat plans out now it will lose to better zerg, you won't have the luxury to go tank/thor/hellion/viking/ghost/raven against all zerg and if the zerg early on start trading, you can't start replacing with that composition since you will get gas limited. Something need to go imo, probably ghost if you go mech since mech don't suffer that badly from fungals if you not catch siege tanks unsieged. And siege tanks can target down the infestor if they get to close. You really need your composition for the midgame clear. Will you go thor/hellion then later on add tanks or tank hellion with turret support, and so on. I am purely thinking of the economy aspects of the build, with constant production and clean transition you can not afford everything you get. If you go bio I can see that you might wanna mix in ghosts, but I am not sold on that idea if you go raven/viking to combat b-lords. Ghost has a to specific roll in your composition imo too emp infestor, the nukes is cool but not game winning and basically is a slower hsm.
you know avilo was top ten gm league last time i checked, how much better should the zergs be? And even if some korean uberhuman could waste this playstyle, why care about it, you'll never get to that level anyways.
As for my own experience, i've been using this for some time now (I'm a regular on Avilo'S stream, so I saw this style in action some time before) and i've had pretty good results with a mech into ravens. You just have to scout and react accordingly and you're pretty much safe. Even though in my opinion, avilo'S cc first into banshees is a bit too greedy and unsafe, I prefer a normal reactor helion expand with a blueflame or siege follow up
For a strategy to be viable, it must work at the top level of play. The NA Grandmaster league is not the top level. GSL Code S is the top level. Sure, Mech might work vs Protoss at the Silver league, we wouldn't consider it viable though. I'm not impressed with the Zerg competition either, maybe go on the Korean ladder and practice it. The strategy itself shows promise & it would be fortunate if it worked out.
On February 26 2012 00:09 joeschmo wrote: For a strategy to be viable, it must work at the top level of play. The NA Grandmaster league is not the top level. GSL Code S is the top level. Sure, Mech might work vs Protoss at the Silver league, we wouldn't consider it viable though. I'm not impressed with the Zerg competition either, maybe go on the Korean ladder and practice it. The strategy itself shows promise & it would be fortunate if it worked out.
It does work at top level of play. I've beaten very good players with this, darkforce, mondragon, lz, machine, to name a few and lots more.
What are people's obsession with a korean having to do something first for it to be viable? Myself and other Terrans were using blueflame hellions in TvT months b4 koreans started to abuse it at MLG, and then suddenly everyone jumps on board and says it's viable.
This transition works, and you will see more people start doing it because it's...good. I usually am ahead of the learning curve on new metagame things, so i guess it's your perogative if you want to read my guide and watch a few replays and be a bit ahead on the learning curve, or wait a few months for every korean to start doing it before you believe it.
It was the same with mech TvT. Everyone kept saying it sucked...and then it was like...oh wait.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
Seriously? You name every all in people have done for ages after your self.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
LOL says the person that copies all the Korean all-ins, adds in a new name, and then presents it as his own. Pot calling the kettle black.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
Seriously? You name every all in people have done for ages after your self.
Time to read this book. Back in an hour ~~~
Lol tangs post is so hilarious, made me laugh. Good explanation avilo, what about continuing with this line of thought into the transition to BCs? Once you have ravens and 10-15vikings then it seems to me that there is basically nothing zerg can do to fight the bcs. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I have been trying this kind of air dominance vs zerg and its been working pretty well for me. Keep one factory constantly producing hellions to deal with any ling bling run bys and mineral dump.
They are the best against vikings, when a single PDD blocks 560 damage. Unfortunately, corruptors are low damage, high HP units, so a PDD only blocks 280 damage.
Is this right? Vikings do 14 damage per missile, and a PDD will block 20 of them, so that's 560. But a corruptor does 14 damage per shot too, so that's also 560. (The fact that the viking fires missiles two at the time doesn't matter.)
Nice guide Avilo . Realy good explanation and good replays. I will use your bo against zerg for now because your ravens did great job on avilo stream . For now call the raven "ravilo" :D.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Watched some games from the replay pack though and I am not that impressed. Every game the zerg does no have any solid aggression that denies your third or delaying. Has not looked at all games but a good chunk and it was pretty much the same you take three bases tech to your mech army,then start taking the map while the zerg sits passive, then lose since mech is super cost effective. Any good zerg would know to put pressure on against mech and start to deny fourth bases and so on.
I wouldn't by any means say Ghosts were a bad investment... but money fungals really could just demolish a group of like 6-7 ghosts at a time which could lose you the game. But if you were in a position lategame split map with evenish economies, Ghosts were badass.
Personally, I've never gotten ghosts, and ALWAYS gotten Ravens since.... Season 2? So underrated. Get about 4 starports with tech labs, put out a single round of banshees first with cloak and send them to harass expos (corrupters are slow, they rarely have detection, also really good vs infestors), then crank out ravens. PDD amazing vs Corrupters, Seeker awesome at dealing dmg vs clumped units... only difference than avilos strat is I try to tech into BC's. They NEED corrupters vs BC, PDD amazing vs corrupter, Yamato AWESOME vs corrupters, seeker awesome vs clumped corrupters....
I recommend trying it, once you have that solid economy. BC's imo blow without raven support, but BC/Raven is the strongest combo in the game if you can get it.
avilo, I never much liked you, and never before respected you as a player, but dammit you are SOOOOO ahead of the curve on this one. Ravens are incredible in large numbers, especially when controlled correctly. I'm also very grateful for your bit on how to properly control Ravens. I've teching to Ravens in late game TvZ for a while now and I've always felt awkward trying to micro them. Thank you very much for that bit of the guide.
That being said, insofar as cost efficiency goes, I don't think Marauders and Tanks are good units to supplement the Raven. Ravens are the most gas-intensive units in the Terran Arsenal relatively speaking, and Marauders/Tanks will eat up that precious gas a Terran needs to support and sustain multiple Starports constantly making Ravens. In my experience, it's better to supplement Ravens with masses upon masses of Hellions. My midgame TvZ is a 5 fact mech play, and when it's time to transition to Ravens once Zerg gets to Hive, I build three ports, move them to my factories tech labs, and build reactors on my factories. This gives me 40 food per minute in Hellions, and at this point my economy is so big (also I have bad macro cuz I'm a diamond scrub) that I can afford to throw away hellions, trading them for drones, bases, spines, and moderate amounts of roaches (Hellions are sooooooo good when they're in big numbers). I can focus all my gas on Raven production and Hellions are my mineral dump. With this there is sort of role-reversal from TvZ midgame. Hellions are so fast they can counter attack in multiple locations safely, picking apart the Zerg and forcing him into a defensive posture. While this is happening, the Raven count slowly builds up. When the Zerg finally says "fuck it" and moves out, I'll have 15-20 Ravens to absolutely destroy their army.
Finally, I think you overlook a little bit the strength of the Auto-Turret. While it certainly doesn't have the "boom" factor of a Seeker Missile, in some situations 5 auto turrets will deal more damage than 2 seeker missiles. It lasts a ridiculously long time, and has a higher dps than a Marine, which, as we all know, is a pretty good unit.
Thank you for this guide, and for giving my new favorite unit some exposure.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
LOL says the person that copies all the Korean all-ins, adds in a new name, and then presents it as his own. Pot calling the kettle black.
Sweet transition Avilo! So flexible, I love it! Like someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, teching to BCs seems like a really good idea too, but I wonder how to get there exactly? Have you ever tried transitioning into BCs? Obviously you need to stop raven production, so what is the ideal number of ravens to have? If you have like, 16, would you be able to spend the energy say, 8 of them on a single engagement with a maxed Broodlord+corrupter+fester Zerg, while still having quite a bit of energy for the remax? Or is it simply the more the merrier with ravens?
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
LOL says the person that copies all the Korean all-ins, adds in a new name, and then presents it as his own. Pot calling the kettle black.
rofl glad I'm not the only one who saw that . I never understood why naming it after yourself anyway xD.
I will say ravens pretty good been facing ravens on the kr server past week or so before the patch and as I expected they are actually pretty good ^^.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Watched some games from the replay pack though and I am not that impressed. Every game the zerg does no have any solid aggression that denies your third or delaying. Has not looked at all games but a good chunk and it was pretty much the same you take three bases tech to your mech army,then start taking the map while the zerg sits passive, then lose since mech is super cost effective. Any good zerg would know to put pressure on against mech and start to deny fourth bases and so on.
However this style might have validity to it but as your strat plans out now it will lose to better zerg, you won't have the luxury to go tank/thor/hellion/viking/ghost/raven against all zerg and if the zerg early on start trading, you can't start replacing with that composition since you will get gas limited. Something need to go imo, probably ghost if you go mech since mech don't suffer that badly from fungals if you not catch siege tanks unsieged. And siege tanks can target down the infestor if they get to close. You really need your composition for the midgame clear. Will you go thor/hellion then later on add tanks or tank hellion with turret support, and so on. I am purely thinking of the economy aspects of the build, with constant production and clean transition you can not afford everything you get. If you go bio I can see that you might wanna mix in ghosts, but I am not sold on that idea if you go raven/viking to combat b-lords. Ghost has a to specific roll in your composition imo too emp infestor, the nukes is cool but not game winning and basically is a slower hsm.
you know avilo was top ten gm league last time i checked, how much better should the zergs be? And even if some korean uberhuman could waste this playstyle, why care about it, you'll never get to that level anyways.
As for my own experience, i've been using this for some time now (I'm a regular on Avilo'S stream, so I saw this style in action some time before) and i've had pretty good results with a mech into ravens. You just have to scout and react accordingly and you're pretty much safe. Even though in my opinion, avilo'S cc first into banshees is a bit too greedy and unsafe, I prefer a normal reactor helion expand with a blueflame or siege follow up
I am not impressed by the strat because from the games I've seen the zergys played into avilos hand. In every game Avilo got 3 bases for free no contest, except for one game where the zerg kept all-ining with deminishing success. And playing against mech you need to deny expos and spread him thin by putting pressure on, you can't let the terran split the map up and take six bases since his army is going to be much more cost efficient than the zergs. The last sentence is the key point all zerg were practically saying "I am going to play cost efficiently against an army that is more cost effective than mine." So of course they lost. You really have to swarm against mech and crush his army convincingly, since mech has a really big problem when it comes to replenish units. And you don't have to be an uberhuman to do so. You just have to switch mindset from playing against bio to playing against mech.
On February 25 2012 16:40 KJSharp wrote: Dear Avilo,
I appreciate your guide. It was very thorough and explained one way that Terrans can deal with Zerg late game. There is one thing which you briefly touched on but the implications of which you left untouched - the high APM and micro intensive aspect. What this means, then, is that only Masters and above can do it successfully. I am a diamond Terran, so though I have good macro and good micro, I am afraid that I will be unable to make this a viable strategy for me. What do you recommend to us Terrans who are Diamond and below? How can we beat our diamond zerg friends who do this exact same strategy? I am having immense trouble defeating them.
From a zerg pov Its easily countered by mass muta and just expand, basically everywhere - Its like playing mech but you can expand even more. I still just don't see it viable @.@ - Ravens as an opener feels so off, its lovely late game but against competent zergs it should be shut down insanely hard.
You just can't pressure multiple hatcheries from zergs of what I have seen
I used ur strat today on entombed valley, went CC first into 2port banshee into mech, just like you. Well i won the game but it took freaking 59 minutes xD i dont know if its worth it ;O Overall the game was pretty fun and feeled very easy even i didnt used ghost that much. I think entombed valley is overall bad for the strat because map splits are pretty hard to pull of.
He best thing, what i didnt expected at all, was that his chainfungles on my raven werent so strong. Most of the time he managed to get of 3, but then he had to splitmicro them, because he got in range of HSM. Then i just called down 10 mules and repaired.
On February 26 2012 05:48 Facultyadjutant wrote: From a zerg pov Its easily countered by mass muta and just expand, basically everywhere - Its like playing mech but you can expand even more. I still just don't see it viable @.@ - Ravens as an opener feels so off, its lovely late game but against competent zergs it should be shut down insanely hard.
You just can't pressure multiple hatcheries from zergs of what I have seen
well, you don't start out with ravens, you go mech or bio/mech and transition into ravens. Those games of him going cc first into raven is just screwing around and trying new things
On February 26 2012 05:48 Facultyadjutant wrote: From a zerg pov Its easily countered by mass muta and just expand, basically everywhere - Its like playing mech but you can expand even more. I still just don't see it viable @.@ - Ravens as an opener feels so off, its lovely late game but against competent zergs it should be shut down insanely hard.
You just can't pressure multiple hatcheries from zergs of what I have seen
My guide is not a "raven build" nor a "raven opener" it's just describing raven usage in lategame tvz whether you opened bio or mech or what not and how to use them against infestor/brood/corruptor and tech switches.
There is no such thing as a "raven build" in terms of opening with mass ravens...and that indeed would be a horrible build. Ravens are a unit you add later on in the game aka transition to. You do not start off the game with ravens being your entire army. Yes, there are some literal builds that center around getting a raven early, like in TvP/TvT, that's not what this guide is about.
Is this really possible?I mean in standart TvZ,when Marines,Tanks and Medivacs are usuall stuff.Is really possible to get all this research? Think about it: ghost Moebius: 100 100.Ghost Cloak 150 150. Corvid REactor 150 150.Seaker Missile another 150 150.And all about same time?When must T make Ghost Academy?After,meanwhile or before Starport+Lab? Arent this too many resources?
On February 26 2012 07:17 Dvriel wrote: Is this really possible?I mean in standart TvZ,when Marines,Tanks and Medivacs are usuall stuff.Is really possible to get all this research? Think about it: ghost Moebius: 100 100.Ghost Cloak 150 150. Corvid REactor 150 150.Seaker Missile another 150 150.And all about same time?When must T make Ghost Academy?After,meanwhile or before Starport+Lab? Arent this too many resources?
Its incredibly gas intensive, so chances are you won't see this unless a game drags out for like 30+ mins and terran has a good foothold on eco.
On February 26 2012 07:17 Dvriel wrote: Is this really possible?I mean in standart TvZ,when Marines,Tanks and Medivacs are usuall stuff.Is really possible to get all this research? Think about it: ghost Moebius: 100 100.Ghost Cloak 150 150. Corvid REactor 150 150.Seaker Missile another 150 150.And all about same time?When must T make Ghost Academy?After,meanwhile or before Starport+Lab? Arent this too many resources?
This is late-game stuff when you're pretty much near maxed and around 4-5 bases with over like a million floating resources
On February 26 2012 05:48 Facultyadjutant wrote: From a zerg pov Its easily countered by mass muta and just expand, basically everywhere - Its like playing mech but you can expand even more. I still just don't see it viable @.@ - Ravens as an opener feels so off, its lovely late game but against competent zergs it should be shut down insanely hard.
You just can't pressure multiple hatcheries from zergs of what I have seen
My guide is not a "raven build" nor a "raven opener" it's just describing raven usage in lategame tvz whether you opened bio or mech or what not and how to use them against infestor/brood/corruptor and tech switches.
There is no such thing as a "raven build" in terms of opening with mass ravens...and that indeed would be a horrible build. Ravens are a unit you add later on in the game aka transition to. You do not start off the game with ravens being your entire army. Yes, there are some literal builds that center around getting a raven early, like in TvP/TvT, that's not what this guide is about.
Oh my mistake, I was so caught up in what you were doing on ladder where you opened 2 starport w/ techlab
For efforts in furthering ravens lategame tvz I applaud and couldn't agree more in its strength
avilo thank you for this information and since i can only use ghosts to emp the infestors and/or queens and since i i suck at mirco with vikings this helped me a lot
I was just curious about one small point: do you prefer, or have you considered building 2 starports early instead of reactor+port? It could make transitions easier.
Otherwise, I've began experimenting with Raven's in TvZ, as I too enjoy using them. For he who said that much supply of raven/viking can't handle the ultra/ling switch, I would think you'd at least have some map control planetary fortresses in your build, and even though uncontested ultra/ling shreds those, it gives way more value to your siege tanks placed behind. In between those mentioned tech switches, extra raven energy can sometimes be used for auto-turret harassment, plus those are also useful pathing blockers which can help vs the ling/ultra switch.
Would be interessing to get MajOr opinion on this, and his experience. Because he's playing Turtle mech into ravens quite a lot on the Korean ladder these days.
For those sayingRavens will be nerfed, if it does happen again, I will switch to Z or P seriously lol.
Yayyyy still happy to see Ravens being used. I always knew that Ravens are a good unit, it seems to me that people just NEED to see a pro/top level player introduce the build first for them to finally use it.
On February 25 2012 23:11 Elldar wrote: Except the balance whining it was a good thread.
Agreed, I like the concept but I also wouldn't call it "Avilo's" late-game raven transition, I'm certain there have been others with much the same thought-process.
Tang! That's hypocratic
Yeah ravens kick ass if you can get them. I would argue that three ravens vs most any composition are useful. And, a gon of them is a ton of damage and protection. Its hard to lose ravens easily cuz of pdd and hsm
Purely for fighting BL/Infestor, this makes sense. As was said you still want around 10 ghosts to deal with infestors in general, but you obviously also have to prepare for the common Ultra/Bane/Infestor transition. HSM would be pretty key for hitting baneling or infestor clumps, so you should avoid using up all of your energy as it won't recharge in time otherwise.
On February 26 2012 05:48 Facultyadjutant wrote: From a zerg pov Its easily countered by mass muta and just expand, basically everywhere - Its like playing mech but you can expand even more. I still just don't see it viable @.@ - Ravens as an opener feels so off, its lovely late game but against competent zergs it should be shut down insanely hard.
You just can't pressure multiple hatcheries from zergs of what I have seen
My guide is not a "raven build" nor a "raven opener" it's just describing raven usage in lategame tvz whether you opened bio or mech or what not and how to use them against infestor/brood/corruptor and tech switches.
There is no such thing as a "raven build" in terms of opening with mass ravens...and that indeed would be a horrible build. Ravens are a unit you add later on in the game aka transition to. You do not start off the game with ravens being your entire army. Yes, there are some literal builds that center around getting a raven early, like in TvP/TvT, that's not what this guide is about.
Oh my mistake, I was so caught up in what you were doing on ladder where you opened 2 starport w/ techlab
For efforts in furthering ravens lategame tvz I applaud and couldn't agree more in its strength
If you read the actual title or ANY of the contents of the OP, you would have known this from the start.
On February 25 2012 14:53 architecture wrote: Let me throw in some math to clarify the efficiency of Ravens.
PDD is best against high damage units. They are the best against vikings, when a single PDD blocks 560 damage. So Raven is better than a BC in TvT. Unfortunately, corruptors are low damage, high HP units, so a PDD only blocks 280 damage.
So for 200 gas and 1m45s (1m build time + 45s energy accum) you only block 280 damage, without dealing damage. I think it's clear that PDD is not particularly efficient use of resources. It takes a whopping THREE minutes to get another PDD. Now, if the Z does let you accumulate enough for 2 PDDs on a Raven, then the Raven will represent essentially 4 food. In either case, not anything to write home about.
Now let's talk about HSM. HSM is actually passably decent and the only redeeming spell in this matchup, despite ridiculous cost+time. So while it takes 2.5m to get a HSM, for the FOOD, it does a good amount of damage, more than you would expect a viking to do. Imagine a HSM doing about 200 damage through AOE, a viking would have to get off 10 shots or survive 20s to do so. HSM is all frontloaded damage, that allows you to clean up with thors. Some number of Ravens with HSM will make it so that manythor+fewviking can deal with any air threat.
And like you said, it frees up the rest of the ground army + simcity to deal with infestor/ultra.
PDD is better vs Corrupters than Vikings. Vikings fire 2 x 12dmg, Corrupter is 1 x 20dmg. So A PDD would absord 240 Viking damage but 20 x 20 = 400 Corrupter damage.
Edit: Corrupter damage is 14 +6 to massive. So a PDD would absorb 280dmg. Vikings are 10 +4 to armored x 2. So a PDD would absorb 280 damage, the same as Corrupters. So PDD has the same effeciency vs both.
On February 25 2012 20:05 maracuja wrote: You simply just can not defeat ultra/ling with about 50 supply in ravens and vikings, which you need to prevent the zerg from getting back air control. Autoturrets vs 3/3 ultras? Come on.
Isn't the point of the ravens that you won't need 50 supply of Vikings and Ravens?
Ravens are useful there is no doubt... but securing that many bases for the gas is unlikely to happen against a decent zerg. This strategy is very viable when the maps are split and the Z becomes immobile. I just go for a 3 base timing before they get BL with marine tank thor.
On February 26 2012 00:09 joeschmo wrote: For a strategy to be viable, it must work at the top level of play. The NA Grandmaster league is not the top level. GSL Code S is the top level. Sure, Mech might work vs Protoss at the Silver league, we wouldn't consider it viable though. I'm not impressed with the Zerg competition either, maybe go on the Korean ladder and practice it. The strategy itself shows promise & it would be fortunate if it worked out.
MorroW raped the crap out of Leenock with HSM on Metropolis
O look, terran finds another unit that they considered horrible but turns out to be viable all along after being forced to adapt. Always knew that ravens had a place in the terran death ball. Don't know whether to enjoy the "I told you so" or to quit sc2 for good at the new influx of raven play bs that I can't scout and but still have to deal with.
On February 28 2012 01:13 ddrddrddrddr wrote: O look, terran finds another unit that they considered horrible but turns out to be viable all along after being forced to adapt. Always knew that ravens had a place in the terran death ball. Don't know whether to enjoy the "I told you so" or to quit sc2 for good at the new influx of raven play bs that I can't scout and but still have to deal with.
You really think you would be able to scout a Raven transition? Of all possible ways to whine about Raven play (which is silly in itself) saying that it un scoutable is unbelievably stupid.
On February 28 2012 01:13 ddrddrddrddr wrote: O look, terran finds another unit that they considered horrible but turns out to be viable all along after being forced to adapt. Always knew that ravens had a place in the terran death ball. Don't know whether to enjoy the "I told you so" or to quit sc2 for good at the new influx of raven play bs that I can't scout and but still have to deal with.
Haha I also thought that was funny. Unfortunately though I think its just going to even further steepen the terran "mastery curve".
On February 27 2012 05:34 StimFesT wrote: Ravens shine vs players that go for infestors. HSM 1-shots an infestor and detection is good against burrowed infestors.
Yes, assuming he does not use the 9 range fungal against the 6 range HSM.
i watched your stream a few times the last days and recognized that you go for fast banshees and directly into raven and not directly into mech.
Why don't you do a "normal" mech opener and after this into mech and then add the raven? I don't like the raven so early and go for the mech army first..do you think that the raven play isn't possible then?
This is Awesome Avilo. I started monobattles to start mastering shift clicking HSMs and PDDs with the Raven. I think the excess gas that tends to build up in TvZ can now be utilized.
why playing the most fun MU in sc2 in such a camping way "I m gonna mass my deathball" style?
How do u counter hive? You dont let them get hive! or even when they get it.. you already far ahead..if you're not.. then maybe the zerg deserve the win?
On February 28 2012 07:55 dohgg wrote: why playing the most fun MU in sc2 in such a camping way "I m gonna mass my deathball" style?
How do u counter hive? You dont let them get hive! or even when they get it.. you already far ahead..if you're not.. then maybe the zerg deserve the win?
There should be a viable way for Terran to win the game if zerg gets to hive tech. It'd be bad game design if a certain race couldn't beat a certain race past a certain mark of devlopment. Of course TvZ lategame is going to favor zerg without the ghosts but in the end Terran should still have a fighting chance with Ravens imo.
Good writeup Avilo. As far as upgrades go, what do you think of going marine tank with double armory and getting the ship weapons/armor in the background along with your tank upgrades if you're already planning to go Ravens?
On February 27 2012 19:00 Everlong wrote: More replays post patch would be nice, hopefully something similar is possible in TvP, yet the hopes are low..
Here is another example game from today, this one I went biomech vs infestor/roach and as the game went on I timed the raven transition parallel to Zerg's broodlord/corruptor transition.
Just a good example that it does not matter if you went bio or mech, transitioning to ravens works with both styles really well. And mass ravens is not good TvP because of feedback. BCS are much better if you are going for air.
On February 27 2012 05:34 StimFesT wrote: Ravens shine vs players that go for infestors. HSM 1-shots an infestor and detection is good against burrowed infestors.
Yes, assuming he does not use the 9 range fungal against the 6 range HSM.
Like I wrote in the guide, it takes practice to start utilizing ravens well, because you usually are going to have to have some ghosts at that point in the game as well to EMP infestors as much as possible, or snipe infestor with other units or simultaneous movement forward with mech/bio so you are not chain fungaled.
On February 27 2012 05:34 StimFesT wrote: Ravens shine vs players that go for infestors. HSM 1-shots an infestor and detection is good against burrowed infestors.
Eh, you 99% of the time should not be attempting to HSM infestors, if you do you're going to end up getting ravens chain fungaled and lose them all. EMP is for infestors, HSM/PDD is for brood/corruptors. Only HSM infestors if you see 99% of them have no energy remaining or something.
Also people saying autoturrets are bad against ultras...the point is you can throw auto turrets out in front of your mech, or mass marauder/marine and it can give your army an extra 1-2 seconds to get volleys off on their ultras/roaches...and you do the math of what an extra volley from 15+ tanks is or mass marauder/marines...that slight extra time you get that the roaches/ultras are hitting those means you kill so much more. So ravens are still useful in those scenarios.
my question is how to you organize your army hotkeys once ravens are introduced?
mine so far is: 1) MMM 2) tanks 3) ghosts
where do viking/raven come in. unfortunately for what I am used to I have hokeys 4-7 on buildings. Its a shame too because now terrans have to control 4+ different spells during a fight (stim, emp/snipe, seige, and now auto turret/hsm/pdd) when zergs only have to control 1 (fungal) with the rest being army control which terran has to do in spreading out and arranging.
all i am wondering is are you on 4 separate army hotkeys or is there some other logical ordering that I am missing?
Eh, you 99% of the time should not be attempting to HSM infestors, if you do you're going to end up getting ravens chain fungaled and lose them all. EMP is for infestors, HSM/PDD is for brood/corruptors. Only HSM infestors if you see 99% of them have no energy remaining or something.
This problem is solved by micro. Your ravens should be parked outside of infestor range, and then either some spread out units should move in, or turrets need to be laid down in the direction of the infestors at the same time as you target a few of the infestors with SM. Your ravens will fan out and become unmanageable by fungal.
You should certainly not do this if he has only like 4 infestors, or if there's a good chance your crap is going to get stomped on by whatever army.
You should also not do this at some place where the turrets will not kill anything or control any relevant space once he backs off.
Other than that, Ravens are actually quite nice against infestors with micro.
Also people saying autoturrets are bad against ultras...the point is you can throw auto turrets out in front of your mech, or mass marauder/marine and it can give your army an extra 1-2 seconds to get volleys off on their ultras/roaches...and you do the math of what an extra volley from 15+ tanks is or mass marauder/marines...that slight extra time you get that the roaches/ultras are hitting those means you kill so much more. So ravens are still useful in those scenarios.
As a zerg who had this done on me, I 100% emphasize this point. If you place them well they mess up the ultralisk AI (which as everybody knows is already top notch) and you have to kill them before going on or only the lings filter through and the ultralisks try to derp around. Now killing autoturrets when on ultra ling bane takes 1 second, but 1 second more for 10+ tanks to shoot on your army is huge.
Edit : If you're lucky/the zerg messes up you can get some banelings to detonate as well.
Also people saying autoturrets are bad against ultras...the point is you can throw auto turrets out in front of your mech, or mass marauder/marine and it can give your army an extra 1-2 seconds to get volleys off on their ultras/roaches...and you do the math of what an extra volley from 15+ tanks is or mass marauder/marines...that slight extra time you get that the roaches/ultras are hitting those means you kill so much more. So ravens are still useful in those scenarios.
As a zerg who had this done on me, I 100% emphasize this point. If you place them well they mess up the ultralisk AI (which as everybody knows is already top notch) and you have to kill them before going on or only the lings filter through and the ultralisks try to derp around. Now killing autoturrets when on ultra ling bane takes 1 second, but 1 second more for 10+ tanks to shoot on your army is huge.
Edit : If you're lucky/the zerg messes up you can get some banelings to detonate as well.
Well turret fields can basically hard counter ling/bling by attriting raven energy for min/gas (IE, trading potential PDD and HSM for Minerals and Gas). I went over this in my marine/raven thing 2 years ago. The only thing turrets are crap against are BLs, Infested Terran Spam, and Roaches (burst damage). They aren't bad vs ultra if you have a source of DPS while they are stuck in the turrets though HSM might be more useful against giant clumps of them. If the zerg move orders through and you are good with turret placement, you can super clump their units and they become tank food nom nom nom.
On February 29 2012 00:50 Antisocialmunky wrote: The only thing turrets are crap against are BLs, Infested Terran Spam, and Roaches (burst damage).
You're totally right about roaches and BL's, but auto turrets trade pretty decently with ITs for energy. The range combined with the hatch time means the auto turrets either get a huge head start killing the eggs, or the ITs have to slowly shamble into range, and get eaten up.
You'll usually even see 0 ranged attack upgrades vs the upgraded building armor, so the turrets do really well for cost.
Good God though, turrets are terrible against roaches.
Hopefully we see ravens used more in high level games. They have never worked very well for me (energy for seeker seems to take a year generate)... probably because I seem to always mismicro them into a fungal and end up losing all of them for no reason.
But yeah, I think if you manage to keep them alive for a very long time they'd pay off really well. Turrets behind minerals are especially annoying for zergs to deal with especially with drops at the same time.
On February 28 2012 07:55 dohgg wrote: why playing the most fun MU in sc2 in such a camping way "I m gonna mass my deathball" style?
How do u counter hive? You dont let them get hive! or even when they get it.. you already far ahead..if you're not.. then maybe the zerg deserve the win?
So the zerg deserves to win the second they get hive? That doesn't make much sense to me.
Then again I think every race should be equally powerful in early/mid/late game as opposed to the way it is now.
On February 28 2012 11:15 drybones wrote: my question is how to you organize your army hotkeys once ravens are introduced?
mine so far is: 1) MMM 2) tanks 3) ghosts
where do viking/raven come in. unfortunately for what I am used to I have hokeys 4-7 on buildings. Its a shame too because now terrans have to control 4+ different spells during a fight (stim, emp/snipe, seige, and now auto turret/hsm/pdd) when zergs only have to control 1 (fungal) with the rest being army control which terran has to do in spreading out and arranging.
all i am wondering is are you on 4 separate army hotkeys or is there some other logical ordering that I am missing?
This is a good question.
Traditionally, I got accustomed to putting my OC on both 3 and 7, so that later in the game, I could use: 1- for MMM 2- for ghosts 3- for ravens
However, had I gone mech, I would put tanks/mech, on 1 and maintain the other hotkeys.
Note* It's important to have OC on another hotkey, obviously for mules, but also for scanning terran army position, scans for Dts when ravens are out of position.
Eh, you 99% of the time should not be attempting to HSM infestors, if you do you're going to end up getting ravens chain fungaled and lose them all. EMP is for infestors, HSM/PDD is for brood/corruptors. Only HSM infestors if you see 99% of them have no energy remaining or something.
This problem is solved by micro. Your ravens should be parked outside of infestor range, and then either some spread out units should move in, or turrets need to be laid down in the direction of the infestors at the same time as you target a few of the infestors with SM. Your ravens will fan out and become unmanageable by fungal.
You should certainly not do this if he has only like 4 infestors, or if there's a good chance your crap is going to get stomped on by whatever army.
You should also not do this at some place where the turrets will not kill anything or control any relevant space once he backs off.
Other than that, Ravens are actually quite nice against infestors with micro.
I disagree here, and would have to agree with Avilo.
Fungal actually has a pretty large range, given the large AoE. If you are planning to go mech and ravens against a competent zerg player (GM), you're probably going to be limited to 3 bases and only 6 gas. This means that each Raven is hugely important.
In my experience (1219 pt Terran last season), it's very easy for Zerg to fungal stray ravens even if you have seiged tanks behind them. Like I said, you'd be surprised how long that range is.
Also people saying autoturrets are bad against ultras...the point is you can throw auto turrets out in front of your mech, or mass marauder/marine and it can give your army an extra 1-2 seconds to get volleys off on their ultras/roaches...and you do the math of what an extra volley from 15+ tanks is or mass marauder/marines...that slight extra time you get that the roaches/ultras are hitting those means you kill so much more. So ravens are still useful in those scenarios.
As a zerg who had this done on me, I 100% emphasize this point. If you place them well they mess up the ultralisk AI (which as everybody knows is already top notch) and you have to kill them before going on or only the lings filter through and the ultralisks try to derp around. Now killing autoturrets when on ultra ling bane takes 1 second, but 1 second more for 10+ tanks to shoot on your army is huge.
Edit : If you're lucky/the zerg messes up you can get some banelings to detonate as well.
Well turret fields can basically hard counter ling/bling by attriting raven energy for min/gas (IE, trading potential PDD and HSM for Minerals and Gas). I went over this in my marine/raven thing 2 years ago. The only thing turrets are crap against are BLs, Infested Terran Spam, and Roaches (burst damage). They aren't bad vs ultra if you have a source of DPS while they are stuck in the turrets though HSM might be more useful against giant clumps of them. If the zerg move orders through and you are good with turret placement, you can super clump their units and they become tank food nom nom nom.
When I try to think of a Zerg army comp. to counter:
Tank/hellion/viking/raven/ghost
It's really hard to come up with a good composition. I do believe that Bio could be utilized in place of Tank/hellion, but I believe that army composition is A LOT weaker. I've realized this season more than any that mass lings (refer to Stephano's or Nerchio's games) are ridiculously strong and can be used all game. At one point Stephano had 162 lings against Polt and he ended up winning that game.
The point is that Bio, in my experience, doesn't cut it anymore. The other interesting question that we have as Terran is: Do you spread your bio or not spread your bio? If you spread your bio, lings have more surface area and tear through marines. If you do not spread bio, you're prone to banes and Fungal's AoE. If anyone has tried spreading marines against ling/bane/infestor, you may wonder if it's actually better not to spread at all. Lings are very strong, and especially when they get adrenal glands and 2/2 or 3/3.
With that said, I don't think Terran bio has much utility in the late game. I think that simple unit composition (ling/bane/infestor) would destroy (marine/marauder/viking/ghost/raven). Even adding roach bane would appear to hard counter that unit composition.
So I think Terran has to go Tank/hellion/viking/raven/ghost.
Zerg's unit composition here becomes more difficult. HSM works brilliantly against mass muta. And if the zerg attempted to poke in and avoid HSM, the muta would be subject to a lot of viking fire. Wouldn't seem to be a good option.
BL/Corrupter/Infestor/Ling would appear to work alright, but is not cost efficient against this army type, which indeed was created to counter this composition. I suppose if Zerg was away ahead on gas and bases, they could keep trying to deny Terran expansions via Roach/ling drops and trade their army for Terran's army albeit at a less than favorable exchange rate.
I don't think pure Roach, lings or banes are an option because mass Tank/Hellion obliterate these units.
So that leaves us with the Ultralisk, which as we know is a Very Good unit. I wouldn't be surprised if in response to this positioning war, Zergs will choose to mass Ultra/Ling/Bane/Infestor..
This way Ultras could move in and tank all of the seige fire. Ling/Bane could follow behind, banes being manually detonated to destroy hellions and lings surrounding everything else. Ling/Bane/UItra ignore HSM pretty well. PDD would also not be valuable. Dropping auto turrets would be effective to get those extra pot shots out on the UItras, but is it enough if the Zerg masses these units and lowers the drone count to grant a high army value?
Even dropping Infested Terrans before sending the Ultras to absorb seige fire is a good idea.
Would also be interesting if Zerg tried to use neural parasite on ravens to HSM each other in the midst of this attack.
I was thinking that, depending on the map, this strategy might combine quite well with a very macro-focused early game. On a map like Antiga or Entombed Valley where you can quite easily secure three bases, a 1rax FE followed by a second fast CC for the third, and using marines, tanks, and turrets to turtle hard on 6 geysers could allow you to get mass raven running fairly quickly.
For early game aggression, skip the possibility of 2rax or reactor hellions and go directly for marine drops after your third CC is building in-base. This essentially forces spire to shut down the drops, or at least that is the most obvious and common response to dropships all up in the zerg's grill. While the spire is going down, take more bases and turtle up with marines, turrets, and tanks. The objective is to play defensively and secure as many geysers as possible. I think getting 5 bases should be feasible in this period of drop play pinning the zerg in their base, and the zerg going for the muta flock. Command centers built in-base should make this easy to do, and difficult to scout for the zerg.
As for tech, the reactor starport is top priority for gas, followed by stim. Most likely the best supporting upgrade method is to have a double engineering bay as well, to power out 1/1 for marines to make your drops deadlier, and then research hi-sec and building armor in parallel to help turrets repel the mutalisks, and also to help the ravens once they are out. After these are done the engineering bays cede their gas priority to raven production, but marines as the mineral sink definitely could use those infantry upgrades later.
This would be the time to start the transition into mass ravens, making 2 tech lab starports (in addition to the one reactor port you should already have), and doing the critical researches- corvid reactor and seeker missile. I am seeing a Terran player with 5-6 bases, hardly mining minerals but with all the geysers taken. Planetary fortresses everywhere except main and natural, with enough turrets at the expos to make mutalisks futile, and marines at home. Mass ravens out of tons of starports ensue.
Eh, you 99% of the time should not be attempting to HSM infestors, if you do you're going to end up getting ravens chain fungaled and lose them all. EMP is for infestors, HSM/PDD is for brood/corruptors. Only HSM infestors if you see 99% of them have no energy remaining or something.
This problem is solved by micro. Your ravens should be parked outside of infestor range, and then either some spread out units should move in, or turrets need to be laid down in the direction of the infestors at the same time as you target a few of the infestors with SM. Your ravens will fan out and become unmanageable by fungal.
You should certainly not do this if he has only like 4 infestors, or if there's a good chance your crap is going to get stomped on by whatever army.
You should also not do this at some place where the turrets will not kill anything or control any relevant space once he backs off.
Other than that, Ravens are actually quite nice against infestors with micro.
I disagree here, and would have to agree with Avilo.
Fungal actually has a pretty large range, given the large AoE. If you are planning to go mech and ravens against a competent zerg player (GM), you're probably going to be limited to 3 bases and only 6 gas. This means that each Raven is hugely important.
In my experience (1219 pt Terran last season), it's very easy for Zerg to fungal stray ravens even if you have seiged tanks behind them. Like I said, you'd be surprised how long that range is.
Yeah, its actually pretty difficult to use raven vs infestors. HSM doesn't really have the range and ravens are too slow to dodge. The ideal way to counter infestors would be to get map control and keep their numbers down but marine-tank builds doesn't give your map control so its an interesting problem. The only time you can really hurt them is if zerg is attacking. My solution was auto turret crawl and creep tumor clearing. You keep a field of auto turrets in front of your tanks with the marines in the back so they can't be fungaled.
One thing that can help quite a bit is removing creep since that essentially adds 1/2 seconds to casting time for infestors since they have to run into range.
Very cool tutorial, and while admittedly I haven't had the time to watch all the videos yet I do have a few questions and observations:
1. Why skip out on certain upgrades? Vikings seem to be a core part of the end game composition yet in the few videos I've watched you didn't upgrade attack even once. Also no upgrades to high-sec auto tracking which increases the radius of turrets, pdd, auto-turrets, and pf's. You also did not get building armor (I mean, why not?) or the durable materials upgrade which increases the duration of auto-turrets and pdd's by one minute as well as increasing the duration that seeker missiles chase the target.
2. Seeker missiles seem to be somewhat inefficient against unclumped units, especially broodlords since they're a very large unit. Do you really think it's worth the energy when you could throw down more pdd's to protect your vikings? It seems more like a deterrent to keep corrupters from rushing forward to attack your vikings which would clump them up.
3. Would this work with bio as well or do medivacs suck up too much gas for it to be effective?
On February 29 2012 10:54 Antisocialmunky wrote: Yeah, its actually pretty difficult to use raven vs infestors. HSM doesn't really have the range and ravens are too slow to dodge. The ideal way to counter infestors would be to get map control and keep their numbers down but marine-tank builds doesn't give your map control so its an interesting problem. The only time you can really hurt them is if zerg is attacking. My solution was auto turret crawl and creep tumor clearing. You keep a field of auto turrets in front of your tanks with the marines in the back so they can't be fungaled.
One thing that can help quite a bit is removing creep since that essentially adds 1/2 seconds to casting time for infestors since they have to run into range.
I find that if he's gone for heavy infestor play you can use the auto turret crawl to force Infestors away from whatever you're trying to kill, so you don't even have to throw your ravens at his infestors. And then you've got a field of auto-turrets and a bunch of impotent infestors on the other side. You just have to get your army somewhere that the auto-turret field placement will cause him problems. I wouldn't want to casually walk up and try to SM his infestors.
Cast range+ upgraded auto turret range is longer than fungal range, and fungals are pretty bad against individual ravens without something to target down the fungaled ravens, which you should be able to deter with tanks, vikings, and marines, or other ravens.
I guess it depends on how much you're willing to trade for a raven if the zerg is determined.
On February 29 2012 06:10 ledarsi wrote: I was thinking that, depending on the map, this strategy might combine quite well with a very macro-focused early game. On a map like Antiga or Entombed Valley where you can quite easily secure three bases, a 1rax FE followed by a second fast CC for the third, and using marines, tanks, and turrets to turtle hard on 6 geysers could allow you to get mass raven running fairly quickly.
For early game aggression, skip the possibility of 2rax or reactor hellions and go directly for marine drops after your third CC is building in-base. This essentially forces spire to shut down the drops, or at least that is the most obvious and common response to dropships all up in the zerg's grill. While the spire is going down, take more bases and turtle up with marines, turrets, and tanks. The objective is to play defensively and secure as many geysers as possible. I think getting 5 bases should be feasible in this period of drop play pinning the zerg in their base, and the zerg going for the muta flock. Command centers built in-base should make this easy to do, and difficult to scout for the zerg.
As for tech, the reactor starport is top priority for gas, followed by stim. Most likely the best supporting upgrade method is to have a double engineering bay as well, to power out 1/1 for marines to make your drops deadlier, and then research hi-sec and building armor in parallel to help turrets repel the mutalisks, and also to help the ravens once they are out. After these are done the engineering bays cede their gas priority to raven production, but marines as the mineral sink definitely could use those infantry upgrades later.
This would be the time to start the transition into mass ravens, making 2 tech lab starports (in addition to the one reactor port you should already have), and doing the critical researches- corvid reactor and seeker missile. I am seeing a Terran player with 5-6 bases, hardly mining minerals but with all the geysers taken. Planetary fortresses everywhere except main and natural, with enough turrets at the expos to make mutalisks futile, and marines at home. Mass ravens out of tons of starports ensue.
This could be really awesome.
In that case, I'd better bring out the 1-1 16 Marine Drop again in this matchup. It's a pretty good build, though you don't have map control and are vulnerable to a roach/baneling all-in.
If we can beat the roach/baneling all-in with this build, we may possibly have the new standard for TvZ.
Roach/Bling all-ins are countered by siege mode and sim city for openings that surrender map control for a fast expansion. As long as you can survive the ling follow up after forcing zerg to spend units on busting down your wall, you'll be fine.
Thanks for the thread, have been utilizing raves for a long time know in TvZ, unfortunately this will probably be nerfed in the next patch now that it has become more popular. ;-)
I personally don't really have an opinion on super lategame ravens because I've never seen anyone do it with success, but I'm always sad when I see a terran open with a delayed cloaked banshee build (maybe even 2 starports) with tech labs, and not following it up with at least 1 or 2 ravens and just leaving the tech lab on the starport. In theory you don't need 10 medivacs in TvZ as long as you are not going for a super heavy drop style, and some ravens make your midgame push really strong. The scans you save because of it alone equal so many marines if you use the energy for MULEs, its crazy.
Also I think the auto turret should be changed, it needs a higher casting range and/or no building placement requirement, so the raven has another good spell when PDD is useless (against ling infestor etc) without relying on a 125 energy spell like HSM for which you rarely have enough energy. As it is now autoturret is just wasted energy in a lot of circumstances and because of the stupid building requirement you waste a lot of APM on actions that would be better used for splitting your marines, because you want to place the autoturret but the lings run everywhere and block it. It NEVER works in a fight, its bullshit. The Auto Turret spell makes no sense at all, it can't move, has barely higher dps than infested terrans (which can move and are less expensive energy wise, 9.3 DPS for 25 energy against 10 DPS for 50 energy) and its only strength is that it can tank a lot of damage, but how should it take damage when you can never place it in a fight and have to wait for the opponent to attack into it (which they never do). All it is used for is to abuse imbalanced maps because you can block ramps with it, but nowadays there aren't any bad maps anymore where you can hit expansions with siege tanks from the high ground or something like that and even if there are just building 2 or 3 bunkers is usually the better option.
On February 28 2012 01:13 ddrddrddrddr wrote: O look, terran finds another unit that they considered horrible but turns out to be viable all along after being forced to adapt. Always knew that ravens had a place in the terran death ball. Don't know whether to enjoy the "I told you so" or to quit sc2 for good at the new influx of raven play bs that I can't scout and but still have to deal with.
Btw if you read the guide or had any experience with playing terran, you'd realize you still need to use ghosts in combination with ravens (EMP Infestors = necessary). Just another control group to add, no biggie. It wasn't like terran late game armies were already difficult enough to control.
I have found that this strat works to some degree against BroodLords. But the problem is that Ravens are close to useless when he switches to 15 Ultras and take out expansions after expansion while you scramble to catch up with your army. On shakuras where you can split map and make PF it works though. But since most of the ladder maps are open it is very hard to stop the Zerg late game army and Ravens do not really protect you against the tech switch.
My win ratio against Zerg late game was about 30% and with the Ghost nerf it dropped to 10%. Ravens counter BrooLords but are about as useful against Ultras as Vikings are.
On March 03 2012 09:24 MockHamill wrote: I have found that this strat works to some degree against BroodLords. But the problem is that Ravens are close to useless when he switches to 15 Ultras and take out expansions after expansion while you scramble to catch up with your army. On shakuras where you can split map and make PF it works though. But since most of the ladder maps are open it is very hard to stop the Zerg late game army and Ravens do not really protect you against the tech switch.
My win ratio against Zerg late game was about 30% and with the Ghost nerf it dropped to 10%. Ravens counter BrooLords but are about as useful against Ultras as Vikings are.
Yeah, Ultras still really hard to deal with, especially after they lose all their ultras they dump all their minerals into a billion lings, which easily cleans up MMM like a joke :/ TvZ late game is a nightmare...
I just played a match with a Diamond Zerg on Bel Shir. I tried out this strat while I realized that the Zerg was teching to Broods. I attacked sooner or later, I sent a couple of Seeker Missles to the Brood Lords and they just melt away like flies. But the main weakness of this strategy is when the Zerg goes something else other than Broods late game, especially Ultras and Roaches. That's why you should scout well to see what tech path(s) the opponent are going for when attempting this build I guess.
But should pro Terrans start doing this on major tourneys such as MLG, GSL,etc. I can kinda envision this happening:
Patch 1.4.4.=
TERRAN
Raven Seeker Missles now deal 50 damage vs Massive. Damage against other types of units stays the same.
...and the list goes on.
But nevertheless, Ravens are a really good support unit in TvZ. Especially their Seeker Missles which takes out units like flies. Thanks for sharing this guide with us!
'terrans had innovated' the word your looking for is abused but its a good guide, i do hope more terrans start using ravens, it has always seemed logical to me
My win ratio against Zerg late game was about 30% and with the Ghost nerf it dropped to 10%. Ravens counter BrooLords but are about as useful against Ultras as Vikings are.
Well it's a good thing marauders make ultras look like stuffed animals.
I hate to say this kind of thing, but look at polt at ASUS ROG. All marauders once he saw the hive switch, regardless of BL or ultras coming.
My win ratio against Zerg late game was about 30% and with the Ghost nerf it dropped to 10%. Ravens counter BrooLords but are about as useful against Ultras as Vikings are.
Well it's a good thing marauders make ultras look like stuffed animals.
I hate to say this kind of thing, but look at polt at ASUS ROG. All marauders once he saw the hive switch, regardless of BL or ultras coming.
like antiga vs stephano, where polt played pretty much a perfect game and lost because he didnt blindly make marauders...
that's when he realized, "wow this matchup is dumb, guess i gotta blindly make marauders in every game".
I was completely wrong. Mech+Raven is awesome! Suddenly Zerg lategame is manageable without Koran level APM. I do not make any tanks, just Thor/Hellion/Raven/Banshee. The key is producing enough Ravens so that you can basically seeker missile everything. If he goes Ultras I use my Ravens for turreting all his mineral lines instead since Ultras do not care much about Raven. I hardly produce vikings anymore, just 5 or so to clean up BroodLords after they have been seeker missiled.
I have found one huge problem which is transitioning into the ideal mech/Raven composition. Thor/Hellion/Raven deals with every single late game Zerg composition and it not as vunerable to mass BroodLord or mass Ultra armies compared to if you use mass Tanks instead of Thors.
So in a perfect world I want to mass up Thor/Hellion/Raven and A-move with my 150 pop army while seeker missiling everything. In reality, most Zerg counter you mid game by going mass Roaches. Roaches rape Thor based armies for cost in mid game but loses due to pop inefficiency late game.
So how do you get to the late game intact? I see 2 major paths:
1) Massing Tank/Hellion mid game and only getting Thors for anti-muta while gradually transitioning into more Thors and less tanks late game. Problem is that if you misjudge the number of Mutas and have too few Thors you lose the game. 2) Marine/Tank mid game and gradually replacing the marines with Thors. Here you are safer against mass muta but have a weaker late game army due to having mass marines that you need to kill off before late game. You are also forced to upgrade 2 unit lines instead of 1.
However I am not sure which of those 2 are the best way to get from mid game to late game.
An interesting build. Obviously requires a high skill level to execute well.
Kudo's to Avilo for trying to find a viable late game TvZ play style. Seems that many Terran's have given up on late game TvZ and rely on some form of all-in' now.
Awesome guide. SC2 terran starport tech is really good late game. Once BCs hit a critical mass with ghost/raven support and good control they are near unstoppable. Any transitions that push the late game towards this is a welcome change from marine+tank/marauder spam till end of match.
Edit: Ravens also don't need to wait for air weapon/armor upgardes to be effective. So they are also a viable option to switch into air late game.
On February 27 2012 05:09 RaiD.RaynoR wrote: Ravens are useful there is no doubt... but securing that many bases for the gas is unlikely to happen against a decent zerg. This strategy is very viable when the maps are split and the Z becomes immobile. I just go for a 3 base timing before they get BL with marine tank thor.
This is kind of complimentary to the standard marine tank play. I could see a style where you go for the standrad triple OC into 2/2 marine tank timing. If the zerg messed up you can punish but if the zerg is good then, instead of forcing cost ineffective engagements against turtling blord infestor, terran can take more bases and start massing ravens. You can sit behind tanks, planetaries and sensor towers while freeing up supply with multi pronged marine drops and sacrificing scvs. Basically, force the zerg to attack into a turtling terran or deal with Raven ball.
@ Avilo (or any other high level terran players). What are your thoughts on saving gas for ravens by delaying ghosts and instead using a control group of tanks for sniping infestors? I have seen last shadow do this when he mechs in TVZ and goes mass raven in late game. During the transition phase, instead of spending gas on ghosts, terran uses the superior siege tank range to snipe infestors in an engagement. It works really well if you siege an expo or, in general, force zerg into an engagement (turtling while taking more bases).
One could add ghosts later when terran has 5 base or more gas but during the transition period would starting out turtling with raven tank and then adding ghosts later work out?
On May 30 2012 06:46 babyToSS wrote: @ Avilo (or any other high level terran players). What are your thoughts on saving gas for ravens by delaying ghosts and instead using a control group of tanks for sniping infestors? I have seen last shadow do this when he mechs in TVZ and goes mass raven in late game. During the transition phase, instead of spending gas on ghosts, terran uses the superior siege tank range to snipe infestors in an engagement. It works really well if you siege an expo or, in general, force zerg into an engagement (turtling while taking more bases).
One could add ghosts later when terran has 5 base or more gas but during the transition period would starting out turtling with raven tank and then adding ghosts later work out?
Babytoss- saving gas for Ravens isn't really possible unless you secure 4 bases, and even then you're in hardcore turtle mode. If you get caught with your pants down and lose your thors/tanks (if you're meching) just once without an advantageous army trade, you can't do anything. The Raven transition is amazing, and I've been doing it in every TvZ, but you have to keep a defensive position until then. I usually take a fifth base pretty fast to guarantee a fluid raven transition.
Sniping the infestors with tanks works fine- that's what I do all the time. I don't ever make more than 2 ghosts in a TvZ because of the gas investment required, and the delay to the raven tech. I only use them for strategic nukes, if that.
I am only giving you advice from my games, but I play this style, with GREAT success, in every single TvZ on every map.
The only thing I can think of...is if this mass queen transfuse late game style stays popular, then you need ghosts for EMP. Your tanks can't possibly snipe the queens and infestors when they are hiding behind a broodlord/broodling/ultralisk wall. -.-
On May 30 2012 06:46 babyToSS wrote: @ Avilo (or any other high level terran players). What are your thoughts on saving gas for ravens by delaying ghosts and instead using a control group of tanks for sniping infestors? I have seen last shadow do this when he mechs in TVZ and goes mass raven in late game. During the transition phase, instead of spending gas on ghosts, terran uses the superior siege tank range to snipe infestors in an engagement. It works really well if you siege an expo or, in general, force zerg into an engagement (turtling while taking more bases).
One could add ghosts later when terran has 5 base or more gas but during the transition period would starting out turtling with raven tank and then adding ghosts later work out?
Babytoss- saving gas for Ravens isn't really possible unless you secure 4 bases, and even then you're in hardcore turtle mode. If you get caught with your pants down and lose your thors/tanks (if you're meching) just once without an advantageous army trade, you can't do anything. The Raven transition is amazing, and I've been doing it in every TvZ, but you have to keep a defensive position until then. I usually take a fifth base pretty fast to guarantee a fluid raven transition.
Sniping the infestors with tanks works fine- that's what I do all the time. I don't ever make more than 2 ghosts in a TvZ because of the gas investment required, and the delay to the raven tech. I only use them for strategic nukes, if that.
I am only giving you advice from my games, but I play this style, with GREAT success, in every single TvZ on every map.
The only thing I can think of...is if this mass queen transfuse late game style stays popular, then you need ghosts for EMP. Your tanks can't possibly snipe the queens and infestors when they are hiding behind a broodlord/broodling/ultralisk wall. -.-
Thanks for the advice! I just started using this style and find it to be really strong too. For turtling in mid-game if the zerg is committing to aggression then I find getting sensor towers helps an incredible amount. You can sim city and be prepared for aggression with good positioning if you see it coming with sensor towers. In case of all-ins/very heavy aggression, I also don't mind throwing down a planetary as staic defense, even if I have to cut hellions for this.
For the queen transfuse thing, I haven't faced it but I would assume that (i) with enough ravens, burst is too high for transfuse to matter, (ii) with ghosts, the battle is so long that you can drop a nuke on zerg's army and he will have to back off and take free damage or risk fighting with a nuke coming down in 20 secs. Maybe you could try the nuke thing when you face this next.
Tbh most zergs I face just go blind infestor ling turtle into Blord curropter infestor. Outside of mass roach drops and mid game roach all-ins, I haven't had much experience against anyone reacting well to this style.
Awesome guide man. I watch your stream quite a bit. I bet there is still a way to ease into ravens for a platinum level player, by perhaps just mixing them in a bit in mid to late game, while doing your usual strategy. For me the most difficult thing is still control groups, and grouping things in as they get produced. They should've never put in F2 into the game. Messed a LOT of average players up.
EPT![[image loading]](http://beststarcraft2tactics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Starcraft-2-Terran-Support-Unit-Raven.jpg)
. I never understood why naming it after yourself anyway xD.
