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I agree to some extent with the OP, marine marauder can work really well vs zerg, and saying it doesnt work on high level is pure BS as we´ve seen it been done in GSL and won games. The real danger is high eco banebusts early on, marauders only do so much vs bane busts, and once your door is down, lings will stream in and do too much dmg. You can stop small busts with marauders on hold position in front of your ramp, but if its a high eco bust with more banes and loads of nonstop lings it can be incredible difficult to stop without taking heavy losses and getting behind. Good scouting and bunkers obviously helps, but a couple of tanks really makes a difference here.
Personally whenever I do bio vs zerg, I often get 2 tanks just for defensive purposes. You will have the factory anyways since you need it for starport and techlab can be switched afterwards - all you really invested is siege tech and 2 tanks. It also makes you feel alot safer about being active with you bio force or doing drops, knowing you´ve got a couple of tanks back at home to deny any small-medium sized counters. The marine marauder transitions more easily into ghosts (and viking) vs infestor broodlord and most zergs will never go ultras if they see you already have marauders on the field.
Anyways, keep playing bio vs zerg if you feel more comfortable doing so, I´ve seen MKP, Polt and Jinro do it at times and I can´t remember them losing doing so, even if it may be slightly inferior to marine tank play. One thing though, you should keep the zerg on 2 mining bases at best as possible - if the zerg gets to 4 bases (minimum 3 fully mining), he can throw banes at you unmicroed in a constant stream and just overwhelm you. If it gets to this point you will have to get more tanks if he goes mass bane.
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United States2186 Posts
The only reason you get tanks early game TvZ is to hold against allins. However this is a coinflip because if he just 3-4 base 80 drone you have little offensive capability. See heavenslight vs select from lonestar as an example of this problem. Tanks have no offensive capability early on and marine upgrades are much more important.
Basically Terrans want to get marine/hellion/medivac/upgrades early game to have some kind of offensive threat while getting tanks from a full 3 base econ. Your early movements won't have tanks but you'll have enough to hold the bases and when you move out at 160-200 depending on the situation you'll have somewhere between 6-10 tanks. Marines scale very poorly the larger the army sizes are simply due to your inability to micro everything at the level it needs to be while tanks obviously become better and better. Terrans absolutely MUST crush the Zerg maxed lair army cost effectively or they will never get the lead they need to be ahead of the Zerg when hive tech comes.
Demuslims game against Nestea on taldarim from Winter Arena or MMA's games from IEM vs zenio are a good example of how to pressure early with non-tank armies and transition into tank-backed armies with a full 3 base econ.
Tanks in TvP are awful outside of specific timing attacks on 1 or 2 base. These builds coinflip certain things and are useful in a series but not as a reliable build.
Tanks are absolutely necessary TvT except when you are going pure bio/medivac/viking vs mech.
All the nonsense about marauders or hsm (lol) replacing tanks is not backed by any successful play and should be left in the trash bin.
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On March 28 2012 16:57 yoona2012 wrote: I agree to some extent with the OP, marine marauder can work really well vs zerg, and saying it doesnt work on high level is pure BS as we´ve seen it been done in GSL and won games. The real danger is high eco banebusts early on, marauders only do so much vs bane busts, and once your door is down, lings will stream in and do too much dmg. You can stop small busts with marauders on hold position in front of your ramp, but if its a high eco bust with more banes and loads of nonstop lings it can be incredible difficult to stop without taking heavy losses and getting behind. Good scouting and bunkers obviously helps, but a couple of tanks really makes a difference here.
Personally whenever I do bio vs zerg, I often get 2 tanks just for defensive purposes. You will have the factory anyways since you need it for starport and techlab can be switched afterwards - all you really invested is siege tech and 2 tanks. It also makes you feel alot safer about being active with you bio force or doing drops, knowing you´ve got a couple of tanks back at home to deny any small-medium sized counters. The marine marauder transitions more easily into ghosts (and viking) vs infestor broodlord and most zergs will never go ultras if they see you already have marauders on the field.
Anyways, keep playing bio vs zerg if you feel more comfortable doing so, I´ve seen MKP, Polt and Jinro do it at times and I can´t remember them losing doing so, even if it may be slightly inferior to marine tank play. One thing though, you should keep the zerg on 2 mining bases at best as possible - if the zerg gets to 4 bases (minimum 3 fully mining), he can throw banes at you unmicroed in a constant stream and just overwhelm you. If it gets to this point you will have to get more tanks if he goes mass bane.
If bling busts are such a problem, why not make hellions with your reactor'd factory (that you would have replaced with a starport on the reactor) early on? Hellion marauder is pretty strong, and you can do a good early game push with it. Could also get blue flame as part of your tech path.
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If you go hardcore bio with marauders, the zerg should go muta/ling and roll you. A simple flank is all it requires for your "marauder wall" strategy to no longer be relevant.
The thing is that nobody likes to go muta/ling anymore, because the old 2base lair timing doesn't really work anymore. But I think against no-tank mass bio, 3base muta is the ticket to victory and if you don't have any tanks, you (should) lose to big ling/baneling flanks.
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Because you shouldn't. Marauders are prudddddy good.
Seriously speaking, siege tanks are a necessarily component in TvZ. They're very effective in zoning out areas and if the enemy attacks, they're going to be committing themselves into an onslaught of tank fire. Its possible to play tankless TvZ but you're going to need to have the necessary micro to prevent the AOE damage of banelings/fungals.
And its not like Terran are ever gas strarved. I've seen many Terrans bank excess of 1-2k gas simply because they're just making more and more marines (surprise surprise, only minerals). There's not a whole lot of gas dump unless they push for heavy tank productions. Though I'm not entirely familiar if this is true or not, been a while since I played.
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I don't understand how this topic could be this long when the answer is simple: If you don't see any point in making tanks, don't. You'll quickly notice if it works out.
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As a zerg player i find that tanks are absolutely essential for defense. Otherwise if i win an engagement whats to stop me barelling down on your base with lings infest and bane? even i cant out right kill you by getting on top of your production ill most likely be able to bottle you up and force you to engage down a ramp into infest. Pure bio is very good but imo it makes the matchup much like a ZvZ and much more volatile. Also i see no need to rush for any subsantial number of broods when engaging pure bio unless its simply for a killing blow; otherwise i find their lack of mobility a liability.
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United States8476 Posts
Troll -_-. If you split too much against zerg, lings kill you. If you don't, fungals kill you.
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On March 28 2012 16:59 Ver wrote:
All the nonsense about marauders or hsm (lol) replacing tanks is not backed by any successful play and should be left in the trash bin.
Yes, I had my tongue firmly in my cheek there. Suggesting that hsm could be a viable substitute for tank splash would be a little bit like suggesting homeopathy is an effective method for curing anything.
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On March 28 2012 16:59 Ver wrote: The only reason you get tanks early game TvZ is to hold against allins. However this is a coinflip because if he just 3-4 base 80 drone you have little offensive capability. See heavenslight vs select from lonestar as an example of this problem. Tanks have no offensive capability early on and marine upgrades are much more important.
l will just speak from TVZ since I am zerg. I think the main reason is to be safe against the ~11min speed roach/ling bane bust that alot of zergs do and you often see get used to finish off a game. A few tanks in good positions can make you completely safe.
In addition to this the positional advantage and ability to bait out segments of a zerg army before he has everything ready can be devastating when used well, of course this has a flip side of being engaged before you are seiged but good players can usually handle this. As such I think tanks are another map-dependant thing where depending on positioning they really can prove to be absolutely superior to marauders.
Finally as a zerg I am more scared of tanks than marauders and if you don't have a reasonable tank count against me I am a lot less frightened of an engagement, and can risk more all-ins and general attacking play whilst tanks force zergs into a defensive more economic posture since attacking into tanks is basically suicide.
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On March 28 2012 16:59 Ver wrote: The only reason you get tanks early game TvZ is to hold against allins. However this is a coinflip because if he just 3-4 base 80 drone you have little offensive capability. See heavenslight vs select from lonestar as an example of this problem. Tanks have no offensive capability early on and marine upgrades are much more important.
Basically Terrans want to get marine/hellion/medivac/upgrades early game to have some kind of offensive threat while getting tanks from a full 3 base econ. Your early movements won't have tanks but you'll have enough to hold the bases and when you move out at 160-200 depending on the situation you'll have somewhere between 6-10 tanks. Marines scale very poorly the larger the army sizes are simply due to your inability to micro everything at the level it needs to be while tanks obviously become better and better. Terrans absolutely MUST crush the Zerg maxed lair army cost effectively or they will never get the lead they need to be ahead of the Zerg when hive tech comes.
Demuslims game against Nestea on taldarim from Winter Arena or MMA's games from IEM vs zenio are a good example of how to pressure early with non-tank armies and transition into tank-backed armies with a full 3 base econ.
Tanks in TvP are awful outside of specific timing attacks on 1 or 2 base. These builds coinflip certain things and are useful in a series but not as a reliable build.
Tanks are absolutely necessary TvT except when you are going pure bio/medivac/viking vs mech.
All the nonsense about marauders or hsm (lol) replacing tanks is not backed by any successful play and should be left in the trash bin.
Exactly. I'm masters and if a Terran doesn't have tanks for their early defense I just do a delayed bane bust and win ( I learnt this off Idra ages ago). I do see the advantages of maurauders vers Infestor play, especially the massively increased drop effectiveness, but I think you should still have defensive tanks.
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On March 28 2012 17:31 will.pity wrote:
Finally as a zerg I am more scared of tanks than marauders and if you don't have a reasonable tank count against me I am a lot less frightened of an engagement, and can risk more all-ins and general attacking play whilst tanks force zergs into a defensive more economic posture since attacking into tanks is basically suicide.
SO glad you responded with this, because this is exactly why I feel I should NOT build tanks. If I force zerg into an economic mindset, I'm forcing zerg to play in the manner where I feel they are strongest. I don't think anyone would argue that zerg, at it's best, is the more macro-centric race. But if I can show them a weakness, namely that I have no tanks and they actually take that bait then zerg is playing to my greatest strength by attacking into my cunningly constructed defensive mazes and charging head long into my prepared kill zones. Tanks help you defend, but they are by no means necessary. 1 awkwardly placed barracks constricting ling movement and soaking up roach fire does more for your defenses than a couple of tanks shooting from the high ground.
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If you are going to replace tanks with marauders you'll have to micro way better then the zerg to have equal or better outcome. I'm a diamond zerg and in these lower leagues people (me included) can't micro so if a terran plays without tanks I'll just rape him with fungals, but if a terran plays with tanks I'll lose half of my infestors from time to time for nothing.
I don't know how it is at pro level but it feels like if you're going to split like mad to avoid fungals lings will do massive damage and if you miss-micro you'll take huge amount of damage.
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you have gotta be kidding dude. all those beautiful posts from high level players explaining exactly what function tanks have in the metagame and you completely ignore them. i think you just have a peculiar fondness for bio. thats fine if it fits your style and wins you games, but when i watch pros play tvz i see tanks in the midgame. even MKP with his love for marines used a tank push to beat DRG in one of their MLG grand final games.
i will say one thing though, as good as tanks are, it is easy to die to the inevitable broods as a result of overmaking them. but a good solid number like 7 can keep you airtight as you expand or push in the midgame.
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What kind of games are you playing where the zerg has brood lords at the time where you've just gotten 6 siege tanks?
Tanks are good, they force engagements, they're excellent at sniping infestors, they oneshot lings after a single upgrade and they let you turtle more efficiently.
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If marineking beats drg using MMM (mlg finals final match), doesnt mean you can
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TvZ: for Ling Bling Muta TvT: for Pure Marine TvP: to 1/1/1
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On March 28 2012 15:20 Unwardil wrote:I can split them away from my army and counter attack far flung expansions with marauder drops, something that just doesn't work with tanks because of that pesky siege-up time. Tanks do higher single target DPS when unsieged.
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United Kingdom35817 Posts
On March 28 2012 22:37 Sorkoas wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 15:20 Unwardil wrote:I can split them away from my army and counter attack far flung expansions with marauder drops, something that just doesn't work with tanks because of that pesky siege-up time. Tanks do higher single target DPS when unsieged.
Thank you for that total irrelevance.
Has anyone mentioned the final game of MLG yet? Of course, only if you have MKP control and macro :D
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tank is for bannelings. Tank also works on roaches and hydra(god forbid a zerg going for hydra in tvz). tank works on infestors too.
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