Hi, I'm Micromancer, a top 25, occasionally top 8 in my division masters player on the NA server, any discussion, suggestions or criticisms are welcome. http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/2188016/Micromancer
At the highest levels of play the matchup seems very balanced at the moment, however there is a sense even at high masters that the late game favours the protoss. The general consensus seems to be that as a terran player you either need to do damage in the mid game with drops, or you have to play the lategame perfectly. It can be done, but even one slip up or moment of distraction and you can loose your fragile bio army to the mass splash damage that high tier protoss can field.
The problems with the standard play in the matchup are as follows:
Terran must play reactionary to the protoss unit composition.
Tech switches from collosus to storm/archon, will result in a loss very quickly if it goes unscouted and is not met with the appropriate number of vikings or ghosts respectively. On the same note, if terran over reacts and produces too many of one or the other, it can also result in a loss.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
All of the protoss units normally used in a PvT match share the same upgrades, which are cheaper, and can be produced quicker than the terran's. Gateway units, archons and collosus are all benefited by the forge upgrades, and not only that but the high tier collosus and archon splash scales much better with the upgrades than the tier 1 marine marauder that you rely on for most of your damage as terran.
At the same time, because the upgrades for terren mech are produced separately, it makes transitions to higher tier mech units later in the game very ineffective, as you will have needed bio upgrades earlier on in the game, as well as viking upgrades later in the game to deal with collosus. The cost of adding mech upgrades is prohibitive unless you are meching from the start, which is not what I am talking about here. Adding in 0 0 thors or tanks into your mix, is next to useless against 3 3, possibly 3 3 3 protoss units.
Both of these factors, contribute to forcing a terran unit composition that feels very fragile, and prone to being destroyed very quickly with single slip up.
This problem has been bugging me for a long time, and i have given it alot of thought, I know I am not the first person to suggest this, but I do believe that I can make a very good argument for why it is effective. I believe that late game transitions into battle cruisers should become standard play for most terrans. Here is how this addresses the problems listed above.
It forces protoss to be very careful about their unit composition, much as terran has traditionally been forced to react.
A traditional lategame protoss army, is composed of mostly charglots, around 8 stalkers, some sentries, and then a fluctuating amount of tech units, any combination of templar, collosus and archons. The zealots act as the tanking units, the tech is relied upon to deal most of the damage with splash and the stalkers are really only there to kill vikings, as they can't absorb as much damage as the zealots and don't do significant damage to MMM. The battle cruisers force anti air units in much higher numbers, the tech units that are normally relied on to do the heavy damage, either can not shoot up (collosus) or do minimal damage (storm, feedback (I found it is important to use yamato often, on your own buildings if necessary, to keep energy low)). These tech units still must be present however to deal with your bio force. So what the protoss is forced to manage is his stalker/zealot ratio. Not enough stalkers, the battle cruisers are left over to kill everything, not enough zealots and the bio force eats through the soft stalkers in a very cost efficient way.
Terran is often getting air attack upgrades anyways for his vikings, this transitions well into battle cruisers, as you will not be using 0 0 against 3 3.
On the protoss side of things, I think this is the same reason why void rays don't seem to be a viable counter, as i have never seen a protoss getting air upgrades in a PvT, 0 0 void rays will die extremely quickly to upgraded bio, and will not even fair that well against upgraded BCs.
It also changes how the battles play out micro wise as far as unit aggro and movement goes. Increasing the amount of micro a protoss needs to use to engage properly.
I noticed that because the stalkers give priority to the battle cruisers, even a small number of vikings can, uncontested, take down any collosus present, the battle cruisers may not kill all the stalkers but they are hardy and act as great tanks. The protoss army will either have a much smaller amount of zealots than usual, due to filling up supply with stalkers, or they will just die to battle cruisers. As a result I find that in an engagement, as the bio kites back, they eat through the small zealot count relatively quickly, The stalkers get left behind as they fight the Bcs, however the collosus, trying to reach the infantry, get pulled out in front of the stalkers. This makes them vulnerable to the bio as soon as they get through the relatively small amount of tanking zealots. In the end once the tech units are delt with, stalkers just are not cost efficient at all against bio.
Here is a replay, it is not a polished build order, I completely wing it, it was my first time playing the map, the begining is a boring macro fest, mistakes are made on both sides, however There are a lot of late game maxed engagements, where you can see how the armies trade, and observe the different unit aggro and pathing that occurs as a result of the composition. I just started incorporating this lategame transition and I believe it can be used much better than in this game, however from what I have seen so far, it makes the late game seem much more survivable for terran.
more and better replays to come as I play around and become more comfortable with this transition
***Edit, i just realized i forgot to add the [D] tag to the title, Is there a way for me to change it? if not can a mod add it? Sorry and thanks.
This protoss played very sloppy and made many big mistakes(not scouting your 3rd, losing 4th for nothing, not scoutings bcs(which didnt do that much other than forcing some stalkers), not having enough zealots, late upgrades, no pushes - push @4th doesnt count it was free cc to pick off). I feel like you only get away with it because of unscouted third and bad play by him. I would like to show you how would it end vs competent protoss but im EU and you're NA. Also 1 replay sample doesnt look like enough.
I'm also a high master terran in the top 25 of my division, and I have to say I agree with the majority of your comments. As of now, TvP is very much like a fencing fight ontop of extremely fragile glass. Both terran and protoss armies must be handled with absolute care, as one wrong engagement or being out of position can simply cost you the game despite any early/midgame advantages that occur in the beginning.
That being said, I know that the use of BCs is a rather controversial topic. On the one hand, protoss really doesn't have too many options to deal with late game tech switches (assuming air units are also upgraded as well). The main and biggest problem is surviving to the point where you have enough BCs to effectively act as tanks for your army, while keeping up in both macro, micro, and controlling the bio ball to maximum effect. Also, feedback may be a problem as well, and during the lategame a protoss can effectively warp in units like high templars to deal with the air switch.
I think most people would recognize viable options to be either thors, banshees, or battlecruisers. Thors are tanky and nice, but as you said, upgrades can be a problem, as is the fact that they're still ground units and would die to zealots. Banshees do great damage, but can be quite fragile. My only real complaint about battle cruisers is the 90 second build time compared to 60 seconds for either of the above. And they all have energy to be feedbacked by ht, but I suppose getting feedbacked is better than getting stormed, it's not like strike cannon or yamato are really that used anyway. I've been wondering about this question as well, although I think either way, it's a good idea to stop building rax at like 10-12 tops, and go for either 4x starport (with 1-2 reactored for medivacs still) or 3x factory.
I personally having been using thors, mostly to tank for my bio. I know they're vulnerable to ground units, but I feel like if I used air, I'd end up in the situation where I have like 3 slow bcs chasing a horde of zealots that wreck my main because they chewed through the marines earlier and the bcs couldn't kill fast enough. Thors also beat colossus and archons 1v1, which is nice. I'd actually use cannon more if it weren't for the channeling and range issue, but i guess when it comes to sniping expansions, it can be useful.
I'm so tornnn on what transition to make; I guess thors would be a good transition against double forge styles where you don't really need vikings in the midgame, and bcs would be a good transition against the more old school colossus style.
You fellas should really check out Avillo's tutorial for what he calls "The future of late game TvP"
Yes its long, but i REALLY enjoyed this, this is how you need to get BC's. Basically play normal style TvP, and if you cant finish the Protoss off in the mid game, you basically turtle like a mad man, lots of Planetaries, ghosts, and dropping while turtling and getting up several Tech lab Starports, and trading your garbage bio units and refilling with literally Ghosts and BC's. EMP templar's and motherships, or carriers or w/e they have, and Yamato all the expansions. Anyways ive played that style about 5 games vs toss, and won everytime. But, you better be ready for some seriously long games. like 45mins-1hr games, setting up sensor towers, missile turret rings. and just making sure toss isnt going to annoy you with WP drops. End game were talking like 12+ BCs and 30 ghosts while sacking some SCV's to max out even further. I stopped playing this style because its so taxing, like playing normal til the 20-30 min mark, then turtling up like mad, and getting up expos everywhere you can. Its not easy, but that army Composition is insane, emps basically destroy almost 1/2 the hit points off the Protoss army, and BCs with upgrades are really good. So guys go watch that and enjoy. Also thanks to Avilo for that video, he doesnt get enough credit for that. GG GL
EDIT: Yoshi just reminded of Nukes, forgot to mention, to help you stay alive so you can transition into the mass Ghost/BCs, you nukes, mainly if the toss starts attacking into your planetary wall (which is essential, planetaries are supply efficient! and can help you stay alive!), you then nuke their army, forcing them to run away, while staying behind the safety of your planetary wall. So make alot of Ghost academies, so you can have like 5 nukes ready, not to mention harassing with nukes is also preety damn important, 1 cloacked ghost in a drop ship, landing at a protoss' 4/5/6th base and nuking it, will make them work, look everywhere for the nuke and/or lose probes.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
I feel this point is pretty unecessary, simply because Terran is designed differently. Is not a Protoss army also mainly Tier 1? Most of the army is gateway units. If the game turns into like 4 mining base vs 4 mining base, yes maybe 50% or even more of the Protoss army (however you divide it up, cost or food or whatever) will be high tech like archons colossi immortals, but same with terran; they make more medivacs, more vikings, more ghosts.
Anyway, bio and mech are supposed to work separately by themselves; bio is lower tier, mech is higher tier.
As for BC transition, I think maybe it needs to be explored more? I know Slayers Ryung likes to add in BCs late game and also do nukes. I don't think I've seen many other players of Code S calibur doing that though... but if Ryung uses it, it must mean he does well with them in practice too right?
SpecialistSC (he's GM in NA) uses late game BCs with his Mech. It works very well. After turtling like a mad man with Planitaries in his tank line and maxing out with 3 3 upgrades, he starts kiting the toss into his tank line.
This protoss played very sloppy and made many big mistakes(not scouting your 3rd, losing 4th for nothing, not scoutings bcs(which didnt do that much other than forcing some stalkers), not having enough zealots, late upgrades, no pushes - push @4th doesnt count it was free cc to pick off). I feel like you only get away with it because of unscouted third and bad play by him. I would like to show you how would it end vs competent protoss but im EU and you're NA. Also 1 replay sample doesnt look like enough.
As i said in the OP, i realize its a sloppy game by both sides, neither of us had played the map before, and i hadn't even tried my opening before. It just happens to be the game with the most near max army engagements. It is not representative of either of our usual style of play or skill. Hershey and I practice together and we were both trying things and play styles that we were not comfortable with.
When you watch the replay, keep in mind it is not meant to showcase a build, sound strategy or good play. I simply wanted to be able to show how the composition engages, so people could get the feel for how the different units move, and the overall feel of the style. If you want to contest my argument, I would prefer that you speak to the points I bring up in the OP as opposed to picking apart a game that I have stated is sloppy.
I agree that one replay is not enough and will be adding more as i find appropriate ones. I find that many of my games in the matchup where it reaches the late game, are in truth decided in the mid game and the battle cruisers are irrelivent, they are simply a safe way to max out and end it. I am also just getting the hang of the transition itself, as when i first started experimenting with it i died a lot during the transition to battle cruisers. I have only recently been pulling it off successfully and should be able to post some good games soon.
I've been experimenting with it. Its worked once. Usually I feel like I have so much food invested in building bcs (18 useless supply) that I die to any big toss attacks.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
I feel this point is pretty unecessary, simply because Terran is designed differently. Is not a Protoss army also mainly Tier 1? Most of the army is gateway units. If the game turns into like 4 mining base vs 4 mining base, yes maybe 50% or even more of the Protoss army (however you divide it up, cost or food or whatever) will be high tech like archons colossi immortals, but same with terran; they make more medivacs, more vikings, more ghosts.
I agree that it is the way the game is designed and i am not trying to complain about it, I am making an argument for why I think BCs is a valid transition. The difference I feel between how the terran tech units you mention operate as opposed to how the protoss units operate is that in the protoss army the tech units are the damage dealers where as in the terran army the tech units fill a mainly support role. As a protoss maxes he can start sacking zealots and replace the supply with archons, collosus and high templar. This will make his composition stronger, and the archons even tank better than zealots. As a Terran maxes, he can't start sacking marines and marauders and replace them with vikings and ghosts, this will actually lower your damage output. You need a very large marine marauder core to actually deal damage, which is what i am talking about when i say Terran is limeted to a mostly tier one composition.
I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I'm not any good, etc., yet why wouldn't you go bio-mech with 0/0 (eventually 0/3) Mech serving as a pure tank? Even 3-4 Thors would delay chargelots by a lot, and if you don't turtle for too long, it's impossible to land money feedbacks. Besides, that means less storms. And, you know, Ghosts..
Sincerely, wondering toss
Oh, you pretty much answered, I understand now^^
On April 06 2012 17:34 Micromancer wrote:
The problem besides upgrades with thors is that if the protoss units position properly chargelots will prevent the thors from ever getting close enough to hit the collosus. The thors will auto target the zealots, which is not a very good use of their attacks. Unless you can find a way to work mech upgrades into your build they don't even tank that well. I've found that as your bio kites back the thors just die very quickly as they are left in front. I wouldn't worry about the zealots running amuk under the battle cruisers, zealots themselves do very little damage to a kiting bio force, with no ranged units to take potshots as the bio retreats with good stutter step you can kite indefinatly and take very few losses.
I guess a simpler way of saying it is that i feel the counter to thors is chargelots which should already be in the protoss composition in large numbers, where as the battle cruisers force more stalkers which are weaker against the rest of your units.
Yey maaaaybe you could add them exactly that moment when toss is maxed and remaxes on higher tier units? I just feel thors should be treated as Collosus - unsupported they are so bad...
think most people would recognize viable options to be either thors, banshees, or battlecruisers. Thors are tanky and nice, but as you said, upgrades can be a problem, as is the fact that they're still ground units and would die to zealots. Banshees do great damage, but can be quite fragile. My only real complaint about battle cruisers is the 90 second build time compared to 60 seconds for either of the above. And they all have energy to be feedbacked by ht, but I suppose getting feedbacked is better than getting stormed, it's not like strike cannon or yamato are really that used anyway. I've been wondering about this question as well, although I think either way, it's a good idea to stop building rax at like 10-12 tops, and go for either 4x starport (with 1-2 reactored for medivacs still) or 3x factory.
I personally having been using thors, mostly to tank for my bio. I know they're vulnerable to ground units, but I feel like if I used air, I'd end up in the situation where I have like 3 slow bcs chasing a horde of zealots that wreck my main because they chewed through the marines earlier and the bcs couldn't kill fast enough. Thors also beat colossus and archons 1v1, which is nice. I'd actually use cannon more if it weren't for the channeling and range issue, but i guess when it comes to sniping expansions, it can be useful.
I'm so tornnn on what transition to make; I guess thors would be a good transition against double forge styles where you don't really need vikings in the midgame, and bcs would be a good transition against the more old school colossus style.
The problem besides upgrades with thors is that if the protoss units position properly chargelots will prevent the thors from ever getting close enough to hit the collosus. The thors will auto target the zealots, which is not a very good use of their attacks. Unless you can find a way to work mech upgrades into your build they don't even tank that well. I've found that as your bio kites back the thors just die very quickly as they are left in front. I wouldn't worry about the zealots running amuk under the battle cruisers, zealots themselves do very little damage to a kiting bio force, with no ranged units to take potshots as the bio retreats with good stutter step you can kite indefinatly and take very few losses.
I guess a simpler way of saying it is that i feel the counter to thors is chargelots which should already be in the protoss composition in large numbers, where as the battle cruisers force more stalkers which are weaker against the rest of your units.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
I feel this point is pretty unecessary, simply because Terran is designed differently. Is not a Protoss army also mainly Tier 1? Most of the army is gateway units. If the game turns into like 4 mining base vs 4 mining base, yes maybe 50% or even more of the Protoss army (however you divide it up, cost or food or whatever) will be high tech like archons colossi immortals, but same with terran; they make more medivacs, more vikings, more ghosts.
I agree that it is the way the game is designed and i am not trying to complain about it, I am making an argument for why I think BCs is a valid transition. The difference I feel between how the terran tech units you mention operate as opposed to how the protoss units operate is that in the protoss army the tech units are the damage dealers where as in the terran army the tech units fill a mainly support role. As a protoss maxes he can start sacking zealots and replace the supply with archons, collosus and high templar. This will make his composition stronger, and the archons even tank better than zealots. As a Terran maxes, he can't start sacking marines and marauders and replace them with vikings and ghosts, this will actually lower your damage output. You need a very large marine marauder core to actually deal damage, which is what i am talking about when i say Terran is limeted to a mostly tier one composition.
Oh I see >.< Maybe I should have read more carefully, now that you explain it, it should have been quite obvious what you meant haha.
I'm not any good, etc., yet why wouldn't you go bio-mech with 0/3 (eventually 0/3) Mech serving as a pure tank? Even 3-4 Thors would delay chargelots by a lot, and if you don't turtle for too long, it's impossible to land money feedbacks. Besides, that means less storms. And, you know, Ghosts..
Sincerely, wondering toss
It is very popular for toss these days to go double forge upgrades, as terran you have to respond with a double infantry upgrades or things get out of hand fast. Now the problem is that even if you mix mech into your army you still need vikings to deal with collosus. Upgraded collosus take a long time to kill with unupgraded vikings so often terran will try to squeeze in air attack upgrades as well. I feel it puts too much strain on your economy to also add in mech upgrades as you will then be trying to produce off of 2 ebays and 2 or 3 armories. You just won't have enough money to do all that and produce a sizable army. Thats why i feel that BCs are a better transition, because they share upgrades with the vikings that you will want to have anyways.
On April 06 2012 17:11 FirstGear wrote: I've been experimenting with it. Its worked once. Usually I feel like I have so much food invested in building bcs (18 useless supply) that I die to any big toss attacks.
I found what helps me survive the transition is not trying to add the BCs into my army with my first max. Max out on a normal composition and then replace what you loose with BCs as you trade. As long as you can trade relatively well you should be able to by enough time to get your BCs out. You may have to surrender some map control as you do this but as long as you fall back on a defensive position you should be able to survive.
I'm not any good, etc., yet why wouldn't you go bio-mech with 0/3 (eventually 0/3) Mech serving as a pure tank? Even 3-4 Thors would delay chargelots by a lot, and if you don't turtle for too long, it's impossible to land money feedbacks. Besides, that means less storms. And, you know, Ghosts..
Sincerely, wondering toss
It is very popular for toss these days to go double forge upgrades, as terran you have to respond with a double infantry upgrades or things get out of hand fast. Now the problem is that even if you mix mech into your army you still need vikings to deal with collosus. Upgraded collosus take a long time to kill with unupgraded vikings so often terran will try to squeeze in air attack upgrades as well. I feel it puts too much strain on your economy to also add in mech upgrades as you will then be trying to produce off of 2 ebays and 2 or 3 armories. You just won't have enough money to do all that and produce a sizable army. Thats why i feel that BCs are a better transition, because they share upgrades with the vikings that you will want to have anyways.
Thank you! I saw your reply to some other post regarding Thors, I see the point. I actually like how 'natural' it feels for a Terran to mix BCs in... Gotta get owned on ladder in a new way soon :DD
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
As you get into the lategame you actually want to add more marines in as opposed to marauders. The marauders just do not have enough dps to deal with large numbers of zealots and archons. They will actually just never make it through the buffer units. Its that fact that leads towards the problem i was talking about at the start of the OP, where the matchup feels like you have to play almost perfect to stand a chance late game. If you go marauder heavy you just cannot kill the protoss army, so you are forced to go marine heavy, which is not forgiving at all. You have to dodge or emp every storm, and kill any collosus very quickly or your army just melts.
On the other hand though, if you go battle cruisers late game, your opponent is forced to make more stalkers than zealots, This allows you to got more marauder heavy, though you still need some marines. Because of the lower number of zealots you can still kill them off, and once its just stalkers the marauders have decent dps. So not only do the BCs tank more damage but your bio force is more durable and a little more forgiving of mistakes.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
On April 06 2012 17:28 FYRE wrote: As a zerg, i LOLed at terran needing to play reactionary as a problem. =)
The difference is that the zerg race is designed to be flexible enough to be played reactionary, where as the terran race is not. Because all of zergs units are created from the same larva they have the ability to do large composition changes very fast. As zerg you can for example get your spire up as your lair finishes, when you scout collosus you can just produce like 8 corruptors. As terran if you all of a sudden realize protoss has made a collosus switch and you need some more vikings you have to make extra starports, build reactors for them or take reactors from your other buildings which limits your production, and then you still can only build vikings 2 at a time per starport.
So yes where as playing reactionary as a zerg seems obvious trying to play terran like a zerg just does not work.
Thanks for this thread, but just so you know, you're saying nothing new. BC's have always been the only viable option to consistently win engagements in lategame TvP. It's also beneficial getting ghosts/nukes in the mid-game, and distracting the toss with nuke-harass, and also using Nukes+mass PF's to keep them from pushing you while you BC up. Once you reached the limit of 200/200, you can always throw some marines or SCV's away for more BC's. After you got 8 BC's, you can just push with them at one front, and with your Bio on another - especially if you got 2 nukes, use them to threaten large clasters of his building while you push his 2nd main with BC's (if he has all his buildings in one base, spreading the remaining non-bc army through all his expansions, plus getting a few ghosts to his main and covering the nuke drops with BC's will work wonders).
On April 06 2012 18:29 MaxSteel wrote: Thanks for this thread, but just so you know, you're saying nothing new. BC's have always been the only viable option to consistently win engagements in lategame TvP. It's also beneficial getting ghosts/nukes in the mid-game, and distracting the toss with nuke-harass, and also using Nukes+mass PF's to keep them from pushing you while you BC up. Once you reached the limit of 200/200, you can always throw some marines or SCV's away for more BC's. After you got 8 BC's, you can just push with them at one front, and with your Bio on another - especially if you got 2 nukes, use them to threaten large clasters of his building while you push his 2nd main with BC's (if he has all his buildings in one base, spreading the remaining non-bc army through all his expansions, plus getting a few ghosts to his main and covering the nuke drops with BC's will work wonders).
I say right in the OP that im not the first person to suggest or try this. I wanted to make this thread to try to explain why they are a good option. And hopefully to generate some discussion on better ways to transition into them, how to use them better etc. I haven't tried nukes or defensive PFs in conjunction with the BCs so I'll give that a shot. If you have any replays of that style I'd love it if you posted them in this thread.
That goes for anyone else who has experience using battlecruisers in TvP, i feel like I have a good grasp on why they are a good idea, but I am relatively new to the execution of the theory. If you have ideas or replays on the subject please post them.
I also disagree that they are the only consistent way of winning lategame TvP, i believe they give you a more resistent army that is a little more forgiving than your standard composition. However I also believe that if your good enough you can use the mobility advantage of a standard bio army with ghosts and vikings to control the engagements and consistently win. I think it is harder but no less rewarding. I mean there are pros with ridiculous TvP win rates who have never made a BC in the matchup. So i don't see the point in arguing that a normal composition doesn't work. What i have been trying to get across is that for those of us who are less than perfect this composition has its own advantages which we can more realistically use properly.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
Just to expand on Sianos's theorycrafting, what about mass marauders/ghosts/blue-flame hellions? That should solve the zealot problem a bit better, right? Hellions are cheap (& a decent mineral sink if you're not making marines), have decent HP (enough to survive a storm at least), can be built quickly (especially out of reactored factories), can kite fairly well with your stimmed marauders cause of their speed, & even un-upgraded are fairly good simply because of the splash damage.
(I'm only platinum, so please forgive me if my theorycrafting is way off base...)
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Thats how i used to play, but Marauders only do 10 damage to zealots, 20 to armored units, so it takes what, 15 marauder shots to kill a zealot or something? assuming even upgrades of course. it just takes WAYYY to long to kill mass zealot with marauders, hence why i preety much something like 60-70% marines and 30-40% marauder mix, rauders will tank more and die less to storms, but zealots alone will kill you without the marines, its crazyness i say. Maybe im wrong, but the games ive played have felt alot better since ive been making more reactors rather than tech labs, dps is needed to kill zealots. im frankly thinking about just going mass marines the whole time, and just getting out earlier/more ghosts/vikings, but i assume storms and colossus will pwn that preety good, but marauders to me are useless unless hitting stalkers and colossus. god i need to go to bed and stop rambling rofls!
Just to expand on Sianos's theorycrafting, what about mass marauders/ghosts/blue-flame hellions? That should solve the zealot problem a bit better, right? Hellions are cheap (& a decent mineral sink if you're not making marines), have decent HP (enough to survive a storm at least), can be built quickly (especially out of reactored factories), can kite fairly well with your stimmed marauders cause of their speed, & even un-upgraded are fairly good simply because of the splash damage.
(I'm only platinum, so please forgive me if my theorycrafting is way off base...)
In my experience blue flame hellions vs zealots are one of those weird things that sounds good on paper, but in reality it just doesn't quite work out very well. They are actually less HP than their same supply and cost in marines, and you would need to get separate upgrades for them to scale with the rest of your army. But the worst part is that they have to be in the front of your army due to their short range, then even though they are fast they get stuck in front the rest of the army when you try to kite backwards so their speed actually ends up not mattering at all and they just die quickly. Especially because the medivacs cant heal them. So if it was pure hellion vs pure zealot it would be a ezpz, but when you stick it with the rest of your army it just doesn't gel well.
Ive seen Thorzain play Marauder Ghost.. Or was it Ghost Marauder? XD He plays so Ghost heavy, and they dont suck against Zlots like Marauders do, they are expensive to lose though.
I also thought about this and I was hoping that korean TvP would evolve into late BCs.
However, the current way that koreans are handling TvP is to engage right at 200/200 (or slightly earlier at maybe 180/200) and start trading constantly. The reasoning is that a 200/200 vs 200/200 fight where both players have a bank is protoss favoured because of the WG mechanic.
In most TvP games, the terran would have the initiative in the midgame and they are able to use this.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
At the point when you will be able to transition into banshees, you probably won't be looking to deny expansions because the map will have already been fairly well split. And late game it is not hard or expensive to replace workers unless you are loosing huge portions at a time. Its also fairly easy for a protoss to just start throwing down cannons once they are maxed which pretty much kills off banshee harass. Even picking off observers can be very hard, if a good protoss scouts the banshee transition they will most likely not have 2 obs with their army but closer to five. You need to scan and then target fire each one separately as your vikings will auto target collosus instead. And you have to keep scanning and looking for them in case they have a few trailing behind their army. Banshees are so fragile that if you make a mistake and miss an observer they will die very quickly. Also good protoss will start putting cannons down in the middle of the map, so that even if the observers die they can fall back to detection.
I feel that banshees rely too much on the cloak ability and too little on their actual effectiveness. I'm not saying it cant or won't work, but it seems to me that in most cases for them to do real damage requires the opponent making a mistake, not having enough observers, not having cannons, not scouting the transition. I've never really been comfortable with builds like that because as you get better and better and as the game evolves and people get better and better in general they will become less and less effective.
As a general rule you should ask yourself, if my opponent responds perfectly, is this still a good move? You might have a great double pronged drop planned, but if he has his forces split perfectly to deal with it can you use your army to keep him pinned in his base and take an expand instead? In this case, if he has enough observers and cannons to neutralize cloak, do you think you can still make enough use out of the banshees for them to be worth the high cost and long build time? Maybe the answer is yes, maybe you can use them alot better than me, but if the answer is no i suggest that you practice something else, because one day you will start to meet people that will just shut it down and unless you want to accept that you just will not win these games you will need to try and figure something else out anyways.
On April 06 2012 16:17 Micromancer wrote: Hi, I'm Micromancer, a top 25, occasionally top 8 in my division masters player on the NA server, any discussion, suggestions or criticisms are welcome. http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/2188016/Micromancer
At the highest levels of play the matchup seems very balanced at the moment, however there is a sense even at high masters that the late game favours the protoss. The general consensus seems to be that as a terran player you either need to do damage in the mid game with drops, or you have to play the lategame perfectly. It can be done, but even one slip up or moment of distraction and you can loose your fragile bio army to the mass splash damage that high tier protoss can field.
The problems with the standard play in the matchup are as follows:
Terran must play reactionary to the protoss unit composition.
Tech switches from collosus to storm/archon, will result in a loss very quickly if it goes unscouted and is not met with the appropriate number of vikings or ghosts respectively. On the same note, if terran over reacts and produces too many of one or the other, it can also result in a loss.
Upgrades allow smooth transitions for protoss well limiting terran to a mainly tier 1 composition.
All of the protoss units normally used in a PvT match share the same upgrades, which are cheaper, and can be produced quicker than the terran's. Gateway units, archons and collosus are all benefited by the forge upgrades, and not only that but the high tier collosus and archon splash scales much better with the upgrades than the tier 1 marine marauder that you rely on for most of your damage as terran.
At the same time, because the upgrades for terren mech are produced separately, it makes transitions to higher tier mech units later in the game very ineffective, as you will have needed bio upgrades earlier on in the game, as well as viking upgrades later in the game to deal with collosus. The cost of adding mech upgrades is prohibitive unless you are meching from the start, which is not what I am talking about here. Adding in 0 0 thors or tanks into your mix, is next to useless against 3 3, possibly 3 3 3 protoss units.
Both of these factors, contribute to forcing a terran unit composition that feels very fragile, and prone to being destroyed very quickly with single slip up.
This problem has been bugging me for a long time, and i have given it alot of thought, I know I am not the first person to suggest this, but I do believe that I can make a very good argument for why it is effective. I believe that late game transitions into battle cruisers should become standard play for most terrans. Here is how this addresses the problems listed above.
It forces protoss to be very careful about their unit composition, much as terran has traditionally been forced to react.
A traditional lategame protoss army, is composed of mostly charglots, around 8 stalkers, some sentries, and then a fluctuating amount of tech units, any combination of templar, collosus and archons. The zealots act as the tanking units, the tech is relied upon to deal most of the damage with splash and the stalkers are really only there to kill vikings, as they can't absorb as much damage as the zealots and don't do significant damage to MMM. The battle cruisers force anti air units in much higher numbers, the tech units that are normally relied on to do the heavy damage, either can not shoot up (collosus) or do minimal damage (storm, feedback (I found it is important to use yamato often, on your own buildings if necessary, to keep energy low)). These tech units still must be present however to deal with your bio force. So what the protoss is forced to manage is his stalker/zealot ratio. Not enough stalkers, the battle cruisers are left over to kill everything, not enough zealots and the bio force eats through the soft stalkers in a very cost efficient way.
Terran is often getting air attack upgrades anyways for his vikings, this transitions well into battle cruisers, as you will not be using 0 0 against 3 3.
On the protoss side of things, I think this is the same reason why void rays don't seem to be a viable counter, as i have never seen a protoss getting air upgrades in a PvT, 0 0 void rays will die extremely quickly to upgraded bio, and will not even fair that well against upgraded BCs.
It also changes how the battles play out micro wise as far as unit aggro and movement goes. Increasing the amount of micro a protoss needs to use to engage properly.
I noticed that because the stalkers give priority to the battle cruisers, even a small number of vikings can, uncontested, take down any collosus present, the battle cruisers may not kill all the stalkers but they are hardy and act as great tanks. The protoss army will either have a much smaller amount of zealots than usual, due to filling up supply with stalkers, or they will just die to battle cruisers. As a result I find that in an engagement, as the bio kites back, they eat through the small zealot count relatively quickly, The stalkers get left behind as they fight the Bcs, however the collosus, trying to reach the infantry, get pulled out in front of the stalkers. This makes them vulnerable to the bio as soon as they get through the relatively small amount of tanking zealots. In the end once the tech units are delt with, stalkers just are not cost efficient at all against bio.
Here is a replay, it is not a polished build order, I completely wing it, it was my first time playing the map, the begining is a boring macro fest, mistakes are made on both sides, however There are a lot of late game maxed engagements, where you can see how the armies trade, and observe the different unit aggro and pathing that occurs as a result of the composition. I just started incorporating this lategame transition and I believe it can be used much better than in this game, however from what I have seen so far, it makes the late game seem much more survivable for terran.
more and better replays to come as I play around and become more comfortable with this transition
***Edit, i just realized i forgot to add the [D] tag to the title, Is there a way for me to change it? if not can a mod add it? Sorry and thanks.
Transitioning into Battlecruisers is good and all but only thing really hinders it's effectiveness and its the warp-in mechanic. You might say its all fine suggesting that the zealot count will be lower but what stops the protoss from massing a huge amount of gateways and warping in a couple of HTs and a mass amount of zealots and/or stalkers. HTs can then feedback the gathered energy during the fight even if feedbacked, and the warped in zealots become a second wave against the depleted terran army. This build also becomes significantly weaker if the toss goes for a heavy archon/zealot/HT mix instead of collosus as the absence of Collosus means that there will be more bio killing non-air targetable units. Another limiting factor is the build time needed as most terran players will have reactored starports (probably not more than 2) that churn out the medivacs and vikings rather than banshees, ravens or BCs and the need for the fusion core and yamato cannon upgrade as well. BCs also do a ridiculously small amount of air to ground damage since their nerfing patch and move slower than hydras off creep.
For anyone seriously considering battlecruisers, just make Banshees instead. If what you meant in all that nonsense is you don't have any units that are changin depending on your opponent's composition, mass Bio will just roll a Protoss army without AoE, I seriously cannot find a unit composition that does this better than Marine Marauder Viking, even without Ghost. Hence Battle Hellions and Warhounds in HoTS.
On April 06 2012 18:03 Sianos wrote: What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
As you get into the lategame you actually want to add more marines in as opposed to marauders. The marauders just do not have enough dps to deal with large numbers of zealots and archons. They will actually just never make it through the buffer units. Its that fact that leads towards the problem i was talking about at the start of the OP, where the matchup feels like you have to play almost perfect to stand a chance late game. If you go marauder heavy you just cannot kill the protoss army, so you are forced to go marine heavy, which is not forgiving at all. You have to dodge or emp every storm, and kill any collosus very quickly or your army just melts.
On the other hand though, if you go battle cruisers late game, your opponent is forced to make more stalkers than zealots, This allows you to got more marauder heavy, though you still need some marines. Because of the lower number of zealots you can still kill them off, and once its just stalkers the marauders have decent dps. So not only do the BCs tank more damage but your bio force is more durable and a little more forgiving of mistakes.
Ghost heavy marine/marauder is the best way to play a non-tempo based bio-based macro TvP. Thorzain uses a mild version of this concept, but Happy and Major really take it to the extreme. If you've tried maraurder/ghost late game and failed with it, perhaps you were too marauder heavy and ghost/marine light. Of course, there are many problems with non tempo based TvP, but I'm just suggesting this as an alternative to BCs and a viable way to play a more turtlish macro TvP. Look for any of Happy's games for an example of this. Here's one:
I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
When i said it relies on the element of suprise i meant by the fact that toss player arent used to play vs it, and they might react wrong.
BCs are an A move unit, by meaning, that once u get into the battle there isnt falling back, and theres isnt a matter of "flanking" or some kind of multi-prone attack with it, kinda simmilar of the way zerg playing when they reach broodlords, as they are both damn slow units.
Vikings has much better DPS vs colosus by meaning of money cost, they are much faster and has 9 range.
Currect if i m wrong, but BCs cost 400-300, thats really not cheap, so u'll have to cut atleast ghosts number in your compostion, or maybe even lose the biggest advantage of terran lategame, which is massing OCs.
Bottom line, -Less mobbilty. -cant repreduce easy. These are the biggest issues in Tvp Lategame, less mobilty gives u less abilty to have a good concave, and the other isuue is that after the "big battle" you'll probbaly die to the toss next warps, w/o the abilty to fall back.
On April 09 2012 02:41 dohgg wrote: I am sorry my friend, but i m really tired of all this guys, that think they found a new "thing" (ravens, BCs, thors or banshees) as a soultion to lategame, just because they managed to crush some toss guy by suprise with a new combination, no matter what his league and skill is.
A solution to lategame tvp is something that suppose to become standard, a suprise tactic is by far a not solution and not a tactic - Yeah, you can say that BCs a quite good vs robotic tech and zealots, and thats probably the reason u managed to win these games. But what kind of a decent toss will make colosus or zealots vs BCs, all he need is mass blink + archons with feedback and storm available (and he'll have the reasource cuz he forced him to cut robotic tech).
On a decent fight it can go into your way, if u got a decent ratio of maraduer but who will say u'll manage to get ino a decent fight, since he has the mobilty option, and he choose how to engage, blink stalkers can just abuse how slow your army is, and attack from diffrent angles to snipe BCs or snipe production in your base, while u'll have to stim and stim to defend when i m not sure u'll have nuff medivacs cuz of the gas heavy requiremnt in BCs.
So basically the toss will have the edge in production time and in mobilty.
Lategame TvP, is and will always be, a mmm+ghost+vikings vs colos+zealots+archons+storms - it might be a bit easier life for the toss to manage but thats how the game works right now. if u're looking for an A move compostion then i m sorry u should switch a race.
I don't know if you fully read the OP but I dont feel like BCs relies on an element of suprise, or makes your compasition an A move and win. Even if like you say a good protoss will cut out robotic units upon scouting the transition i would say that that alone is worth it. The hardest thing to deal with lategame is the templar/collosus switchs that a protoss can do. You aren't cutting vikings our ghosts out of your army, but replacing some of your viking count with BCs. I think they do make an engagement harder for protoss. Even with the composition you are talking about they still have alot of HP as long as you keep thier energy low, either by using yamato before battles or EMping them. A blink archon templar army is VERY vulnerable to EMP without the colossus to back them up so as long as you don't overcommit on the BCs i feel that being able to force your opponents composition is a strength that you can take advantage of as T. Like honestly the A move composition comment kind of bothers me, like even with 3 or 4 BCs added in I don't see how it changes how you need to micro the rest of your army, well it does change how the protoss needs to control theirs.
Also blink archon templar isn't actuallly supper mobile, because it relies on the templar for the splash to deal with your bio, and templar are very slow, as toss you can't get too seperated by them because without them the terren bio can just eat up the rest of the army BCs or no.
When i said it relies on the element of suprise i meant by the fact that toss player arent used to play vs it, and they might react wrong.
BCs are an A move unit, by meaning, that once u get into the battle there isnt falling back, and theres isnt a matter of "flanking" or some kind of multi-prone attack with it, kinda simmilar of the way zerg playing when they reach broodlords, as they are both damn slow units.
Vikings has much better DPS vs colosus by meaning of money cost, they are much faster and has 9 range.
Currect if i m wrong, but BCs cost 400-300, thats really not cheap, so u'll have to cut atleast ghosts number in your compostion, or maybe even lose the biggest advantage of terran lategame, which is massing OCs.
Bottom line, -Less mobbilty. -cant repreduce easy. These are the biggest issues in Tvp Lategame, less mobilty gives u less abilty to have a good concave, and the other isuue is that after the "big battle" you'll probbaly die to the toss next warps, w/o the abilty to fall back.
Its not ment to be a fast transition, its after the extra orbitals go up when you have a bank that you do the transition. The cost well expensive won't affect your ghost count hugely because you will allready be maxed and are just trying to fill out your composition with better units, not necessarily more cost efficient units.
They also absolutely do not affect your concave, they are air units, the concave of the ground fight is not affected at all.. And well vikings do have better DPS against collosus, but as soon as the collosus are dead they are next to useless were as at least the BCs still have some damage output. I have also found that because of their target priority and inability to kite, they usually do not last past the engagement, however they do absorb soo much damage that the surviving part of your army will be larger than it would otherwise. And it can be free to retreat or push forward as the situation dictates.
Once you have some extra OCs up and start to sack SCVs this is the best time to add the battle cruisers to fill out the extra supply that becomes freed up. As you will not have to fight with an army deficit during the long build time. I'm not saying it is a particularly easy transition but i feel its defiantly a valid option.
The one thing you can't do well also going BC is the lategame style of mass ghost and mass nuke. Which i think is probably the other late game transition that T can do that has a fighting chance late game. But both styles have different strengths.
Its also important to remember that you aren't even necessarily surrendering all of the mobility and terran multi prong harrass that you are used to. As long as you don't over commit to your BCs, you still have a very larg bio force, especially if you have sacked SCVs. There is nothing preventing you from hitting another location or setting up a flank with smaller parts of your bio force as you main core moves accross the map. It does have a different feel to it but Just because you have 18 supply in BCs it does not all of a sudden mean your bio force is a lot weaker or less mobile than it normally is, you just have a solid tanking unit that it is possible to fall back to.
I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
On April 06 2012 17:28 FYRE wrote: As a zerg, i LOLed at terran needing to play reactionary as a problem. =)
it is a problem because we cant just get as many of any unit we need to react to the opponents army composition in one production cycle. And the fact that ur comment has no usefulness to the topic and didnt get banned or warned just proves my theory that TL hates terran players.
On April 06 2012 17:28 FYRE wrote: As a zerg, i LOLed at terran needing to play reactionary as a problem. =)
it is a problem because we cant just get as many of any unit we need to react to the opponents army composition in one production cycle. And the fact that ur comment has no usefulness to the topic and didnt get banned or warned just proves my theory that TL hates terran players.
Dont feed the trolls
Also, for whomever was talking about the BC upgrades. You often hit 3-0 on vikings and stop. Instead of that just keep going and get armour.
Reapers( same upgrade as bio, additional dmg to zealot, put on follow the last bio unit because reapers move faster than bio and reapers has low hp, longer build time than marauder, adding 2-5 reapers should be nice against the mass zealot build).
As for late game BC, Bs moves so slow. BC can't really do damage at all. Bc is bearly a tanking unit. If Bc works for some terran out there, great for them. As for now BC is not even in the pro scene. Sure some GM and high master NA are doing this BC, but the koreans aren't. And koreans are just better than most foreigners at the moment. I can see the arguement of same tech as viking but still. BC is like the carrier( good unit ? yes . Usable? Not really)
What about transitioning into mass Marrauders/Ghost in Lategame? Sure Marrauder don´t do that much damage then Marines, but they stay alive longer, which makes microing more easy and give you a bit more room for mistakes. Do you guys have any experience with mass Marrauders in lategame at Diamond or Masters League?
Mass marauders are shit against chargelots storm and immortals. The marines are in there for dps against chargelots.
On April 09 2012 09:27 generatepassword wrote: Getting off chart discuss about zealots.
Reapers( same upgrade as bio, additional dmg to zealot, put on follow the last bio unit because reapers move faster than bio and reapers has low hp, longer build time than marauder, adding 2-5 reapers should be nice against the mass zealot build).
As for late game BC, Bs moves so slow. BC can't really do damage at all. Bc is bearly a tanking unit. If Bc works for some terran out there, great for them. As for now BC is not even in the pro scene. Sure some GM and high master NA are doing this BC, but the koreans aren't. And koreans are just better than most foreigners at the moment. I can see the arguement of same tech as viking but still. BC is like the carrier( good unit ? yes . Usable? Not really)
Your logic of "koreans arent doing it, we shouldnt" is silly. Have you thought that top Koreans dont use BCs because they are better, and can control bio with 400apm, so can fight P lategame?
Also, the game evolves. Koreans adapt too, maybe they will start using BCs at some point.
Even most GMs have issues with lategame P with conventional MMMGV. BC is not like that carrier. It will have upgrades, and doesn't get hard countered easily. (A large amount of T units counter the carrier)
Something that not too many players do is if you have a late game in tvp and HT's are a problem with your mech army, just EMP your own thors and BC's to get rid of their energy and so you stand a better chance of not getting feedback so much.
Ive actually lost to battlecruiser transitions before in PvT. Stalkers aren't the answer. Against well upgraded BC's Protoss needs MASS void ray, possibly a mothership for vortex and a few hts for feedbacks. Also if the BC's are transitioned into properly (having 3-3 upgrades) against 0-0 Protoss VR's, then its GG Terran wins.
As a side note, Terrans need to start sacking a lot of SCVs like they do TvT. There's no reason not to when your economy can be easily supported by mass mules. Just throwing that out there for you Terrans who can't win lategame TvP.
On April 09 2012 09:27 generatepassword wrote: Getting off chart discuss about zealots.
Reapers( same upgrade as bio, additional dmg to zealot, put on follow the last bio unit because reapers move faster than bio and reapers has low hp, longer build time than marauder, adding 2-5 reapers should be nice against the mass zealot build).
As for late game BC, Bs moves so slow. BC can't really do damage at all. Bc is bearly a tanking unit. If Bc works for some terran out there, great for them. As for now BC is not even in the pro scene. Sure some GM and high master NA are doing this BC, but the koreans aren't. And koreans are just better than most foreigners at the moment. I can see the arguement of same tech as viking but still. BC is like the carrier( good unit ? yes . Usable? Not really)
Your logic of "koreans arent doing it, we shouldnt" is silly. Have you thought that top Koreans dont use BCs because they are better, and can control bio with 400apm, so can fight P lategame?
Also, the game evolves. Koreans adapt too, maybe they will start using BCs at some point.
Even most GMs have issues with lategame P with conventional MMMGV. BC is not like that carrier. It will have upgrades, and doesn't get hard countered easily. (A large amount of T units counter the carrier)
[QUOTE]On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts[/QUOTE
Hey there, so for your first point, and its one that alot of people have been talking about. Is because you can't retreat battle cruisers they will just die to the next round of warp ins, but you don't quite understand how these engagements actually tend to go. The battle cruisers themselves almost always die during the engagement, but they tank so much damage that chances are there is alot of bio left over. If the terren wins the battle it does not leave a few wounded battle cruisers left over, it leaves a decently sized mobile bio force that can take map control, try to pick of expands and otherwise pin the protoss back untill it is forced to retreat, the next round of battle cruisers will hopefully be ready by then.
Think of it kind of like zealots in early pvt warpgate timings. The protoss will attack the bunkers untill the tanking zealots die, then pull back untill the next round of zealots gets warped in, then re-engage. Only it takes place over a larger time scale, the terran will push in using to battle cruisers to absorb a lot of damage well the bio force kites back doing damage to the protoss. Once the battle cruisers die, depending on if the terran came out ahead, they can use the surviving force to either push or fall back to the next production cycle of battle cruisers.
To the part about nuke pushes, I keep wanting that strategy to be good. And in theory it seems like it should. But I have never been able to actually pull it off. Eventually, no matter how far back you push the protoss, they will decide to engage at some point. Late game protoss armies have soo much splash damage, as a terran you really need to kite very will otherwise your army just melts to storms and collosus. If you kite, your nuking ghosts, will be left out in front and die almost instantly. If you don't kite and just stand there and take all of the splash damage that storm and collosus put out, as well as allowing the charge lots to hit, often your army will die so quickly the protoss will have cleaned everything up including the ghosts. There might be some way of staggering out your nukes so that your nuking the protoss army and over top your army at the same time, so that if the protoss attacks into you, you can fall back to the second nuke. But that is so risky and hard to pull off, and then your also wasting 2 nukes every time that the protoss doesn't engage. I still want to mess around with it, and try to get it to work, but so far i have had no success.
On April 09 2012 09:27 generatepassword wrote: Getting off chart discuss about zealots.
Reapers( same upgrade as bio, additional dmg to zealot, put on follow the last bio unit because reapers move faster than bio and reapers has low hp, longer build time than marauder, adding 2-5 reapers should be nice against the mass zealot build).
As for late game BC, Bs moves so slow. BC can't really do damage at all. Bc is bearly a tanking unit. If Bc works for some terran out there, great for them. As for now BC is not even in the pro scene. Sure some GM and high master NA are doing this BC, but the koreans aren't. And koreans are just better than most foreigners at the moment. I can see the arguement of same tech as viking but still. BC is like the carrier( good unit ? yes . Usable? Not really)
Ryung gets them on daybreak, which is pretty good map for protoss late game it seems. BCs I mean. He's probably done it other times as well but i can't remember.
On April 09 2012 09:27 generatepassword wrote: Getting off chart discuss about zealots.
Reapers( same upgrade as bio, additional dmg to zealot, put on follow the last bio unit because reapers move faster than bio and reapers has low hp, longer build time than marauder, adding 2-5 reapers should be nice against the mass zealot build).
As for late game BC, Bs moves so slow. BC can't really do damage at all. Bc is bearly a tanking unit. If Bc works for some terran out there, great for them. As for now BC is not even in the pro scene. Sure some GM and high master NA are doing this BC, but the koreans aren't. And koreans are just better than most foreigners at the moment. I can see the arguement of same tech as viking but still. BC is like the carrier( good unit ? yes . Usable? Not really)
I like the sound of adding some reapers in, thats a good idea, ill have to try that out. But you missed my point on BCs, I don't think it is the best strategy at the pro level. But if you take for granted that most of us will never, ever be that good. We won't necessarily be able to pull off what they can do, because what they do requires more skill than we have. Kind of like in brood war, youd see some pros go 2 port wraith in tvz. If you tried it though you would fail horribly, because it is such a technical build to pull off. I am arguing that BCs might be a better answer at the masters level, because of the durability they offer your army, they help to absorb for less than perfect play.
I dont think theres anything wrong with adding 3 or 4 Bc's in the mix on like, 4 base. I still prefer Reapers with Nitro packs harrassing though. (<3 Thorzains style - Such a fan)
Nukes, Reapers or Bc's. TvP is hard, but I honestly dont think its close to broken.
This has been discussed to death. The solution to masters+ level tvp is to finish the game before 20 minutes - don't let "lategame" happen. . Watch any of the top kr terrans and you'll see that their play is centered around granting them the maximum number of windows and opportunities to abuse early game protoss.
Marine/Marauder/Medivac with few SCV's, starting macro orbitals and more barracks with extra minerals when maxed, and at least 6 ghosts and 3 vikings in your composition at all times in late-game has been very effective for me personally as a low master terran.
I personally am not a fan of BC's, because they do low DPS, lose a lot of HP to feedback, and 6 marines with good micro are better for the supply unless you get a HUGE amount of BC's. (like 10+)
All they have to do is nerf both EMP and Storm slightly (I said slightly). They are both too powerful in this match-up. You have huge max army battles coming down to who gets 2 lucky casts.
And yes from a Terran perspective if you don't damage a Protoss via drops or harass or whatever, you are dead, might as well just leave if they are high master level. A Protoss with a full tech tree and maxed army with 3-4 saturated bases won't ever lose to a Terran if they are a Masters level player after 25 minutes into game.
I completely agree with OP. BCs are great late game units to bring into PvT. Stalkers take 50 hits to kill a BC on equal upgrades and force a composition of Stalker/Archon/HT, something that Ghost/Bio/BC/Banshee does very, very well against.
One thing that I think is important is not to transition into BCs too quickly. The scariest thing about this type of transition is the 2-3 Collosus mid-game push, which usually pops just as you get your second round of air production if you're quick. Pumping out two rounds of Vikings and following up with Banshees for harass and Robo-assassination is pretty much essential. Getting into a mid-game engage or doing a lot of harass/drops is essential to reducing the amount of Bio and increasing the air fleet.
I've been tinkering with this for a long time. I've been working on a build order that goes like this:
1 Rax gasless FE Add 2 more Rax get 2 gas Ebay 2 tech labs, 1 reactor 3rd gas 3rd CC Factory 4th gas 3 starports when you can, expo and get 5ht and 6th gas Get another Ebay and 2 Armory when you can
Basically, I try to get 6 gas as soon as possible while still building up Bio for an early Robo push. Starports should be finishing up right around 100 supply, get out 3 Medivacs then either pump Vikings or drop 3 tech labs.
The only difference between this build and a standard build is more gas and a quick 3rd. On 6 gas you can support 3 ports of banshees along with upgrades. Securing a 4ht just for gas will permit you to drop 2 more ports and have enough production to carry into late game. It's important to keep up in upgrades--especially air armor. BCs rock with 6 armor, but die quickly without those upgrades.
Here's a replay of my build. I'm sure my play is lacking in a lot of ways, but bear with me. I think my build is very solid. http://drop.sc/154139
On April 09 2012 14:04 Fission wrote: This has been discussed to death. The solution to masters+ level tvp is to finish the game before 20 minutes - don't let "lategame" happen. . Watch any of the top kr terrans and you'll see that their play is centered around granting them the maximum number of windows and opportunities to abuse early game protoss.
Dude this isnt on topic or helpful. Is it known that lategame TvP is really really P favoured and the smart thing to do is to win before that? Yes, obviously.
However, this is about what to do if it does get to lategame for whatever reason. Saying, meh, if game gets to lategame ive lost is silly. Yes if you play MMMGV lategame, odds are you will autolose to the vastly superior maxed P army, hence this thread.
Heres a question. When it gets to 3 base 20 min, and both maxed. Do you just gg? If not and your losing most *which i assume you are), maybe try something new lategame like BCs.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
There is an untrue statement in the OP. He states too many ghost is bad. You can never have too many ghosts late game (well 10-15 is good amount). Depending on your APM you can ~halve the protosses life in mere seconds. Against Archon/Storm Ghosts are the most imba thing in the world. However Ghosts aren't just limited to 'hardcountering' Archon/Storm. EMP Carpet Bombing can be used very effectively; More effectively than Storm because you CANNOT dodge it. The damage is instant. As is Victory.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I have played again PURE AIR in Masters, and I can say that style can be fairly effective, though early templar+ storm is pretty good against it.
But in this case, BC is slow, just play as you would against a Zerg who goes BL. Run around, warp in and force him to separate his bio ball from his BC's. You suggest heavy heavy turtling, but that's not particularly effective I'd imagine. One of the basic rules of TvP is Don't let the Protoss do what he wants. You turtle, he gets to do exactly that.
On April 09 2012 15:47 ticklishmusic wrote: I have played again PURE AIR in Masters, and I can say that style can be fairly effective, though early templar+ storm is pretty good against it.
But in this case, BC is slow, just play as you would against a Zerg who goes BL. Run around, warp in and force him to separate his bio ball from his BC's. You suggest heavy heavy turtling, but that's not particularly effective I'd imagine. One of the basic rules of TvP is Don't let the Protoss do what he wants. You turtle, he gets to do exactly that.
Well, that's the beauty of a Bio/Air build. We have a unit comp that can deal with a 4+ base Protoss. We don't have to be crazily aggressive in the early and mid game just stand a chance. BCs, Banshees, and Vikings deal very well with Protoss tech and can deal with Chargelots. I'm not saying don't harass/engage a Protoss before 15 minutes, but this comp means that Protoss at least has to work in the late game.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
Well, there's some arguing going about turtling, etc... What if you put it in a different way: play standard allinish TvP, but eventually replace Vikings with BCs mid-lategame the same way you do that with cutting some marines and marauders in favor of Ghosts. Simply put, MMMVG --> MMMBcG. And there's even a decent window to pump BCs more or less safe: when you see yet-another-tech-switch from HT to Collosus.
You may also want to build defensive PFs to safely retreat and repair after an engagement.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
At the point when you will be able to transition into banshees, you probably won't be looking to deny expansions because the map will have already been fairly well split. And late game it is not hard or expensive to replace workers unless you are loosing huge portions at a time. Its also fairly easy for a protoss to just start throwing down cannons once they are maxed which pretty much kills off banshee harass. Even picking off observers can be very hard, if a good protoss scouts the banshee transition they will most likely not have 2 obs with their army but closer to five. You need to scan and then target fire each one separately as your vikings will auto target collosus instead. And you have to keep scanning and looking for them in case they have a few trailing behind their army. Banshees are so fragile that if you make a mistake and miss an observer they will die very quickly. Also good protoss will start putting cannons down in the middle of the map, so that even if the observers die they can fall back to detection.
I feel that banshees rely too much on the cloak ability and too little on their actual effectiveness. I'm not saying it cant or won't work, but it seems to me that in most cases for them to do real damage requires the opponent making a mistake, not having enough observers, not having cannons, not scouting the transition. I've never really been comfortable with builds like that because as you get better and better and as the game evolves and people get better and better in general they will become less and less effective.
As a general rule you should ask yourself, if my opponent responds perfectly, is this still a good move? You might have a great double pronged drop planned, but if he has his forces split perfectly to deal with it can you use your army to keep him pinned in his base and take an expand instead? In this case, if he has enough observers and cannons to neutralize cloak, do you think you can still make enough use out of the banshees for them to be worth the high cost and long build time? Maybe the answer is yes, maybe you can use them alot better than me, but if the answer is no i suggest that you practice something else, because one day you will start to meet people that will just shut it down and unless you want to accept that you just will not win these games you will need to try and figure something else out anyways.
You're just theory craft, and I actually do the strat. You're trying to give me advice, I just find it amusing, since I already have a very large number of experience using it. My banshee play has worked against top semipros, including a few Koreans (namely in TvZ in a longass macro game vs TSLHyun, but they serve the same purpose).
I'd say I'm using them far better than you, yes. There is never a point in any matchup where denying expansions isn't important.
The entire point is to create chaos, so your opponent won't react perfectly. That's MMA's complete style of play, if you haven't noticed, and he's a GSL champion.
Yes I tried what avilo said in his video and it really worked well. Once you get 20 BCs it is hard to lose with that, the problem is that you have to make mass PFs everywhere and play a camper game for 40 minutes. If you do that every game it gets really annoying, also it is not possible on all maps. On Shakuras it works perfectly but how to you do that on TalDarim Altar?
All they have to do is nerf both EMP and Storm slightly (I said slightly). They are both too powerful in this match-up. You have huge max army battles coming down to who gets 2 lucky casts.
They already nerfed emp once. It does come down to lucky casts but in reality it's usually just the terran missing 1 or 2 hts and getting the shit stormed out of him. And if the hts get emped they can just morph into archons. I think that the way to solve TvP is by incorporating these new units along with abusing toss deathball immobility
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
On April 09 2012 15:47 ticklishmusic wrote: I have played again PURE AIR in Masters, and I can say that style can be fairly effective, though early templar+ storm is pretty good against it.
But in this case, BC is slow, just play as you would against a Zerg who goes BL. Run around, warp in and force him to separate his bio ball from his BC's. You suggest heavy heavy turtling, but that's not particularly effective I'd imagine. One of the basic rules of TvP is Don't let the Protoss do what he wants. You turtle, he gets to do exactly that.
Well, that's the beauty of a Bio/Air build. We have a unit comp that can deal with a 4+ base Protoss. We don't have to be crazily aggressive in the early and mid game just stand a chance. BCs, Banshees, and Vikings deal very well with Protoss tech and can deal with Chargelots. I'm not saying don't harass/engage a Protoss before 15 minutes, but this comp means that Protoss at least has to work in the late game.
No it can't. In theory, you have units that essentially counter any Protoss composition. However, its just like saying having that maxxing out on archons is a "perfect counter" is mass lings. In theory, yes, but the resource restriction means its impossible. Anyways, vikings are pretty useless except against colossi and should only be produced reactionarily. Banshees have good DPS, but archon splash and storm don't discriminate.
Bio is a pretty expensive style, and forces you to more or less reproduce your army constantly and macro really really hard. Of course, masters players don't do it as well as pros, so they generally trade less effectively, again, another "TvP sucks at non-pro level" issue. Given bio usually leaves a gas surplus into the lategame, so that's fine. But terran will be fairly mineral starved because of the constant production of marines, as well as the changes/ nerfs to the mule mechanic.
So, you would sacrifice some bio production (at some point in time) to get out BC's. BC's take time. What would effectively happen is when Protoss attacks your third or fourth, you have a smaller bio force to deal with it as a lot of resources have gone into BC tech and production, and your BC's are probably stuck halfway across the map. So, you will probably lose that base. You could build PFs, turrets and turtle, but that further restricts the size of your actual army. In any case, you will starve.
tl;dr Terran fights/defends Protoss with mobility and cheaper units, BC not mobile or cheap.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
Well, you definitely are the one sounding stupid. Making claims with zero evidence? Your fault, not his. And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi. And to suggest doing so would make your winrate go up 40% is even more retarded.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
i cant help but disagree for so many reasons. Although you make some decent arguments i feel like your ignoring why battlecruisers are bad ON SO MANY LEVELS! Lets just ignore high cost, slow build time, slow movement speed, and susceptibility to feedback for a moment.
Lets ask the questoin How do protoss deal with battlecruisers? Answer- by warping in stalkers or just compeletly ignoring them cuz your probably not gonna have many out anyway. (also archons and hightemps but just ignore that too for a moment). Here lies in the problem. Anything tech switch that requires a response from gateways is not a worthy techswitch. Imagine a battle where the toss cleans up your ground army with some zealots and a collosus or two left over. You have two battlecruisers left from the battle: hooray right? Nope. Toss goes "oh theres some battle cruisers over there". Im gonna warp in 15 stalkers and take them out. Poof bye bye battlecruisers. Forcing protoss to make stalkers is not a tech switch for them.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
Do you not see how it reduces the range of your army when the marines have shorter range than marauders, and the marauders are in front? Less marines end up firing, generally. It makes your army more susceptible because most pros target fire marines with colossi instead of A-moving. If the marines are all bunched up, they'll all get smashed.
I sort of do the same thing, I pull a large portion of my marines back and try to also form flanks and concaves. However, to suggest doing so has upped your winrate by 40% is laughable. It has an absolutely marginal beneficial effect.
On April 10 2012 06:41 RedMosquito wrote: i cant help but disagree for so many reasons. Although you make some decent arguments i feel like your ignoring why battlecruisers are bad ON SO MANY LEVELS! Lets just ignore high cost, slow build time, slow movement speed, and susceptibility to feedback for a moment.
Lets ask the questoin How do protoss deal with battlecruisers? Answer- by warping in stalkers or just compeletly ignoring them cuz your probably not gonna have many out anyway. (also archons and hightemps but just ignore that too for a moment). Here lies in the problem. Anything tech switch that requires a response from gateways is not a worthy techswitch. Imagine a battle where the toss cleans up your ground army with some zealots and a collosus or two left over. You have two battlecruisers left from the battle: hooray right? Nope. Toss goes "oh theres some battle cruisers over there". Im gonna warp in 15 stalkers and take them out. Poof bye bye battlecruisers. Forcing protoss to make stalkers is not a tech switch for them.
BC's counter stalkers for cost. Also, stalkers are garbage as a main unit in the army composition for protoss, MMM shreds it. Not a valid argument.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
Do you not see how it reduces the range of your army when the marines have shorter range than marauders, and the marauders are in front? Less marines end up firing, generally. It makes your army more susceptible because most pros target fire marines with colossi instead of A-moving. If the marines are all bunched up, they'll all get smashed.
I sort of do the same thing, I pull a large portion of my marines back and try to also form flanks and concaves. However, to suggest doing so has upped your winrate by 40% is laughable. It has an absolutely marginal beneficial effect.
I think youre forgetting that zealots are melee units and that archons have range 3. All of your marines will be firing unless you pull them back wayyy farther than you need to. Colo can't get too close because then you can target them with your marauders. I also don't see why you insist on debating my personal tvp improvement. It is what it is, its not like I'm going to try to stop you thinking what you want.
Tried BC's in this one game, pretty fun! But the map had a lot to do with it, I can't imagine BC's working on bigger maps with more wide open spaces, like say TD Altar for example.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
So instead of linking these as asked, you just ignore the request. If you could provide a shred of evidence to back this up people would stop calling you an idiot (see replies to your posts).
Please link these VODs. As yes, apparently I cant find them, call me stupid if you must, i don't really mind. Flaming and BMing someone isnt going to help anything. Please try to be less rude.
May I ask what league you are? Im just curious as to what type of opponents you are facing. Please dont take this as an insult, im just curious.
Again, all im asking for is a simple link to these VODs, they sound helpful. Btw on the note of "Every good terran knows about lastshadow". This doesnt really make sense. Im sure there are top master players who dont really follow SC that heavily. And as far as i know, he hasn't even done a huge amount in SC2 (I know next to nothing about BW)
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
Do you not see how it reduces the range of your army when the marines have shorter range than marauders, and the marauders are in front? Less marines end up firing, generally. It makes your army more susceptible because most pros target fire marines with colossi instead of A-moving. If the marines are all bunched up, they'll all get smashed.
I sort of do the same thing, I pull a large portion of my marines back and try to also form flanks and concaves. However, to suggest doing so has upped your winrate by 40% is laughable. It has an absolutely marginal beneficial effect.
I think youre forgetting that zealots are melee units and that archons have range 3. All of your marines will be firing unless you pull them back wayyy farther than you need to. Colo can't get too close because then you can target them with your marauders. I also don't see why you insist on debating my personal tvp improvement. It is what it is, its not like I'm going to try to stop you thinking what you want.
Because you're probably full of it? I'm not forgetting anything. I insist on debating because you're making silly claims and backing absolutely nothing up than your ridiculous farfetched claims. Lastshadow is ok, he's nothing special. I'm not saying he's bad, but he's no pro.
who the fuck is lastshadow? I only know ForGG now Regarding BCs - I agree with the fact that BCs gives up way too much of the map control and mobility. To me TvP is easiest when I can force the protoss to turtle hard, giving me the chance to expand and choose my own battleground. Giving that up just doesnt seem the way to go...
Hm i mean instead of thinking of new ways to play tvp, why not just look at how terrans are winning now? for the most part every build and unit composition you think of theres a pro somewhere thinking the same. MKP kinda shows you how to beat toss anyways. scout with ur factory and keep on preasure . TvP ina way is just like TvZ. you have to keep preasure to slow down tosses tech. Zerg's strength is based off of its economy while toss's strength is based off of his tech. and make sure ur always moving ur army around the map to keep the toss scared.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
Do you not see how it reduces the range of your army when the marines have shorter range than marauders, and the marauders are in front? Less marines end up firing, generally. It makes your army more susceptible because most pros target fire marines with colossi instead of A-moving. If the marines are all bunched up, they'll all get smashed.
I sort of do the same thing, I pull a large portion of my marines back and try to also form flanks and concaves. However, to suggest doing so has upped your winrate by 40% is laughable. It has an absolutely marginal beneficial effect.
On April 10 2012 06:41 RedMosquito wrote: i cant help but disagree for so many reasons. Although you make some decent arguments i feel like your ignoring why battlecruisers are bad ON SO MANY LEVELS! Lets just ignore high cost, slow build time, slow movement speed, and susceptibility to feedback for a moment.
Lets ask the questoin How do protoss deal with battlecruisers? Answer- by warping in stalkers or just compeletly ignoring them cuz your probably not gonna have many out anyway. (also archons and hightemps but just ignore that too for a moment). Here lies in the problem. Anything tech switch that requires a response from gateways is not a worthy techswitch. Imagine a battle where the toss cleans up your ground army with some zealots and a collosus or two left over. You have two battlecruisers left from the battle: hooray right? Nope. Toss goes "oh theres some battle cruisers over there". Im gonna warp in 15 stalkers and take them out. Poof bye bye battlecruisers. Forcing protoss to make stalkers is not a tech switch for them.
BC's counter stalkers for cost. Also, stalkers are garbage as a main unit in the army composition for protoss, MMM shreds it. Not a valid argument.
Perhaps you didn't read what i said close enough as you clearly didn't address any of the points i made. "MMM shreds stalkers" is not a valid response.
Perhaps i can make another argument for you and maybe you can understand this one better. If your going MMM against protoss then you have to kite and maneuver around quickly. Mobility is one of the major strengths of an MMM army and arguably one of the most important. Do you think BC's can keep up? Hell no! Basically your going to be forced to engage somewhere where you dont want to be cuz you cant maneuver your bc's around with your bio ball. Encorporating BC's with your MMM makes MMM immobile which defeats the purpose of going MMM.
I have had a ton of success when adding in BC's to replace Vikings in the late game. Though I have had trouble with the transition, but it takes a really smart player to figure out when to transition and how to do it safely in a bunch of scenarios. Hopefully we can figure all that out in this thread.
Here are the huge benefits I've seen from going BC:
Forcing Stalkers. They are absolutely the worst unit Protoss has against Terran in the mid-late game, they cost 50 gas, they take up one warp-in instead of the dreaded Chargelot or HT. Basically, every Stalker warp-in is a tiny little victory.
Once you have +1 Air weapons, the 6 supply BC does more DPS than 3 Vikings (6 supply), Costs 50 less mineral (a bit more gas but that doesn't really matter late game), has 175 more Health, and 3 more armor!
3 base armor: You don't need to upgrade Air Armor for your BC's to be effective, they will still negate the upgrades of the +3 Stalkers.
The problems I've run into are the small range of BC's combined with slow movement. The Protoss can pull back virtually forever without the BC ever being able to participate in the engagements. Of course your Bio can pick the Protoss off as the run away, but they can stop to attack every few seconds to fend the Bio off. It's an interesting dance. The worst situation is when you end up having to retreat/your bio army is destroyed and you have to retreat with your Battlecruisers. It's not like with Medivacs where you might lose a few, you will lose all of your Battlecruisers if they are naked and retreating. I haven't found a good way to solve this problem, besides retreating with BC's before the battle is over, which is obviously not desirable.
On a side note, I hope they stick with the HotS change to the BC's. A spell for a temporary speed boost to the BC. That will fix all of these problems! Blizz knows what is up.
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
lololololol I don't give a shit if you think I'm a tool or not. If youre not smart enough to find his vlogs, then youre definitely not smart enough to figure out lategame tvp. Every good terran knows about lastshadow. My lategame winrate went from 20% to 60% the second I started pulling marines back. Lategame tvp isn't hard, this myth has been perpetuated by pissed off terrans on tl more than any pro players.
And pulling marines back does not do much. It reduces the range of your army significantly, while also making your units far more susceptible to colossi.
Plz explain in detail why this happens, I don't get it.
Do you not see how it reduces the range of your army when the marines have shorter range than marauders, and the marauders are in front? Less marines end up firing, generally. It makes your army more susceptible because most pros target fire marines with colossi instead of A-moving. If the marines are all bunched up, they'll all get smashed.
I sort of do the same thing, I pull a large portion of my marines back and try to also form flanks and concaves. However, to suggest doing so has upped your winrate by 40% is laughable. It has an absolutely marginal beneficial effect.
On April 10 2012 06:41 RedMosquito wrote: i cant help but disagree for so many reasons. Although you make some decent arguments i feel like your ignoring why battlecruisers are bad ON SO MANY LEVELS! Lets just ignore high cost, slow build time, slow movement speed, and susceptibility to feedback for a moment.
Lets ask the questoin How do protoss deal with battlecruisers? Answer- by warping in stalkers or just compeletly ignoring them cuz your probably not gonna have many out anyway. (also archons and hightemps but just ignore that too for a moment). Here lies in the problem. Anything tech switch that requires a response from gateways is not a worthy techswitch. Imagine a battle where the toss cleans up your ground army with some zealots and a collosus or two left over. You have two battlecruisers left from the battle: hooray right? Nope. Toss goes "oh theres some battle cruisers over there". Im gonna warp in 15 stalkers and take them out. Poof bye bye battlecruisers. Forcing protoss to make stalkers is not a tech switch for them.
BC's counter stalkers for cost. Also, stalkers are garbage as a main unit in the army composition for protoss, MMM shreds it. Not a valid argument.
Perhaps you didn't read what i said close enough as you clearly didn't address any of the points i made. "MMM shreds stalkers" is not a valid response.
Perhaps i can make another argument for you and maybe you can understand this one better. If your going MMM against protoss then you have to kite and maneuver around quickly. Mobility is one of the major strengths of an MMM army and arguably one of the most important. Do you think BC's can keep up? Hell no! Basically your going to be forced to engage somewhere where you dont want to be cuz you cant maneuver your bc's around with your bio ball. Encorporating BC's with your MMM makes MMM immobile which defeats the purpose of going MMM.
Mobility has little value in a straight up battle, which is the entire point of this entire thread. Taking on a Protoss deathball. Which BC's allow you to do. And yes, BC's can keep up, easily. You know why? They can fly, and are only marginally slower than MMM.
The purpose of going MMM isn't even mobility, so your statement is void anyways.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
It is important to note though that BCs with no armor upgrades still have 3 armor, so even without the armor upgrades it still does decent.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
It is important to note though that BCs with no armor upgrades still have 3 armor, so even without the armor upgrades it still does decent.
Well if you're going to get BC's, there's little reason not to throw down a second armory and get the armory. The difference from 3 to 6 is double dmg reduced...
On April 09 2012 15:08 iTzSnypah wrote: There is an untrue statement in the OP. He states too many ghost is bad. You can never have too many ghosts late game (well 10-15 is good amount). Depending on your APM you can ~halve the protosses life in mere seconds. Against Archon/Storm Ghosts are the most imba thing in the world. However Ghosts aren't just limited to 'hardcountering' Archon/Storm. EMP Carpet Bombing can be used very effectively; More effectively than Storm because you CANNOT dodge it. The damage is instant. As is Victory.
I think at that part of the OP, im not meaning the part of the game, where you have a bank and can sack units to get more ghosts. There is a phase at the beginning of the lategame as you approach your first max, where if you you have to choose where to spend the gas. At this stage of the game if you build too many ghosts, it means you will have less medivacs and vikings, which can cost you the game. I agree that once you have a bank, and can choose an ideal composition, that you should add a lot more ghosts, but earlier on, overproducing them can get you in trouble.
On April 09 2012 15:47 ticklishmusic wrote: I have played again PURE AIR in Masters, and I can say that style can be fairly effective, though early templar+ storm is pretty good against it.
But in this case, BC is slow, just play as you would against a Zerg who goes BL. Run around, warp in and force him to separate his bio ball from his BC's. You suggest heavy heavy turtling, but that's not particularly effective I'd imagine. One of the basic rules of TvP is Don't let the Protoss do what he wants. You turtle, he gets to do exactly that.
I think that, you have a good point, however there are some things I'd like to add. First off is the part on not letting the protoss turtle. That is a very good rule to go by through the mid and early late game. However if for, whatever reason the game does go on longer. Once you are in a split map senario and both players are maxed with a bank, it becomes very hard to be agressive. You need to pick your engagements very carefully, and at this stage, adding in some slower tanking units may be a benifit to you as opposed to trying to do the transition too early, and get in to trouble against a protoss who plays like you describe.
The other point I'd like to bring up, is that while there are similarities to a zerg going broodlord, the situations are also quite different. The broodlord in a zerg army is going to be the main damage dealer, as opposed to BCs in a terran compasition, where its still the terran bio doing most of the damage, however the BCs act as a huge damage soak. So where as in PvZ where you can run around the broodlords and only have to deal with relativly low damage, roach, infestor, ling. In PvT you have still have to deal with a fairly mobile high damage bio force. Also what is your splash damage going to be? Are you going to have collosus? which are mobile but are going to do very poor against the BCs if you ever actually engage? Or are you going to use storm? templars are very slow units so if you want to rely on that you loose any mobility advantage that you were hoping to gain. So your left between choosing a weaker composition overall in exchange for a mobility advantage you have to hope you can exploit, or going for the more effective composition but having to play the slower positional game that is what the BC player is hoping for.
I'm not saying either way can't be done, or is better, but you have to admit neither seems quite as favorable as being able to just switch back and forth from collosus, to Templar, untill the Terran makes a mistake and has too few ghosts or too few vikings. What I like about the transition is that it seems to force the protoss to commit to a tech rout, as opposed to being able to switch back and forth. They seem to end up in either a mostly blink and collosus army, or a zealot, templar archon with some stalker army. Neither of which are week, but at least you know what your dealing with. BCs do very well against protoss who try to go for a bit of everything, Players who tend to try to go zealot, stalker, archon, templar, collosus, seem to end up with not quite enough anti air. As all the gas units your trying to field make stalkers hard to squeeze in.
On April 06 2012 17:26 FabledIntegral wrote: I go 5 port banshee into BC lategame. I used to go directly into BC, but I found it to be a lot, lot, lot weaker. I still regularly get BC's lategame in that MU. It only works if you're banking a lot, I've had 12 BC's on TDA get wiped out (with 2-2) in nearly an instant when they got caught out of position and around 20ish stalkers blinked under to focus fire, while a few HT got feedbacks and 5-6 voids moved in. Think there might have been an archon or so as well.
BC's are insanely good however if you can manage to get clutch EMPs off on the high templar. Then when they work together with bio, enemy is ripped apart.
Regardless, as said, getting banshees first as a transition have been significantly more effective for me, as Toss usually only has a few observers. The banshees are critical in sniping expansions and preventing new ones from coming up. They also can snipe the archives, and harass mineral lines.
I messed around a bunch with banshee transitions a few seasons ago, I ended up moving away from them because I found them too flimsy, Their dps is higher but they die very, very quick to storms. I also found that as i got better and better, and of course the opponents i was playing on the ladder got better and better that they were just too good at keeping observers alive and backups ready. The wins i was getting seemed to be more because my opponent made a mistake as opposed to me playing well.
I would also argue in your example of loosing the BCs that in the same situation having banshees instead would not have fared any better. It would guess it was more of an economy or positioning loss as opposed to a composition one.
They don't die quick to storms whatsoever... unless they're all clumped up? It's not like it's hard to split banshees, the entire purpose of banshees is to split them up and not have more than like 5 at a time. Harass everywhere, deny all expansions, etc. Then you scan his main army, take out his two observers with vikings or whatnot even if it sacrifices them, and send your next rally of 5 banshees to target his colo. Only decent if you have at least +2 air attack.
At the point when you will be able to transition into banshees, you probably won't be looking to deny expansions because the map will have already been fairly well split. And late game it is not hard or expensive to replace workers unless you are loosing huge portions at a time. Its also fairly easy for a protoss to just start throwing down cannons once they are maxed which pretty much kills off banshee harass. Even picking off observers can be very hard, if a good protoss scouts the banshee transition they will most likely not have 2 obs with their army but closer to five. You need to scan and then target fire each one separately as your vikings will auto target collosus instead. And you have to keep scanning and looking for them in case they have a few trailing behind their army. Banshees are so fragile that if you make a mistake and miss an observer they will die very quickly. Also good protoss will start putting cannons down in the middle of the map, so that even if the observers die they can fall back to detection.
I feel that banshees rely too much on the cloak ability and too little on their actual effectiveness. I'm not saying it cant or won't work, but it seems to me that in most cases for them to do real damage requires the opponent making a mistake, not having enough observers, not having cannons, not scouting the transition. I've never really been comfortable with builds like that because as you get better and better and as the game evolves and people get better and better in general they will become less and less effective.
As a general rule you should ask yourself, if my opponent responds perfectly, is this still a good move? You might have a great double pronged drop planned, but if he has his forces split perfectly to deal with it can you use your army to keep him pinned in his base and take an expand instead? In this case, if he has enough observers and cannons to neutralize cloak, do you think you can still make enough use out of the banshees for them to be worth the high cost and long build time? Maybe the answer is yes, maybe you can use them alot better than me, but if the answer is no i suggest that you practice something else, because one day you will start to meet people that will just shut it down and unless you want to accept that you just will not win these games you will need to try and figure something else out anyways.
You're just theory craft, and I actually do the strat. You're trying to give me advice, I just find it amusing, since I already have a very large number of experience using it. My banshee play has worked against top semipros, including a few Koreans (namely in TvZ in a longass macro game vs TSLHyun, but they serve the same purpose).
I'd say I'm using them far better than you, yes. There is never a point in any matchup where denying expansions isn't important.
The entire point is to create chaos, so your opponent won't react perfectly. That's MMA's complete style of play, if you haven't noticed, and he's a GSL champion.
Ha cool, I really have no way to tell how good you are unless you tell me, so I really wasn't trying to be condescending, but the vast majority of people on TL aren't close to your level, so i assume they aren't unless I'm told otherwise.
I have a question for you though, it sounds like to pull off your banshee strategy well requires an insane amount of multitasking. You are trying to create chaos and be everywhere at once with high damage units that you also need detection present to kill. How viable do you feel this is for someone without your level of skill and multitasking? Is it a really technical build or is it one you feel anyone can use with some practice? With the title of the thread, im trying to really talk about the BC strategy at the masters level, from low to kind of high, I wasn't really intending it for the super high end, approaching pro /semi-pro class of player. Once your that good, i actually feel that even the standard MMMGV play becomes quite viable again, along with a host of other more technical options.
A really extreme example of what i mean is, when the beta came out, terran mostly just made marauders across the board in most matchups, because they are a pretty durable, high damage unit that is easy to use. Nowadays its really a horrible composition, but players back then simply were not good enough to use a finicky composition like MMMVG effectively.
In short, do you feel that a player like me 900 points NA masters, with 80 average APM and peaking to around 140 APM, could pull off your build consistently and successfully? Or would you think the multitasking required is too high?
If you think yes, I could learn to pull it off, I would love it if you went more into detail about your strategy so other people reading this thread can learn it.
If no, do you have input as to how BCs might be viable/not viable at the skill levels that I am talking about here.
What BC's do is force more Stalkers. A lot more Stalkers. Is the Protoss going to cut Zealots to make room? No (well, hopefully), they are his only wall between your bio and his pricey units. He still needs all those Zealots. Is the Protoss going to cut Colossus? Not a lot, he can still use his Robo just the same, just less gas from making Stalkers. The Protoss is forced to cut HT out of a lot of his warp-ins.
On April 09 2012 08:10 aintthatfunny wrote: Watch lastshadow's VODs. TvP lategame is fine, yes it's hard for terran but not impossible. You talk about one mistake costing you the game, this can easily happen to protoss as well, especially in the early/mid game. Get used to it and play better.
just my 2 cents
The point is that a maxes P army almost always beats a maxed T army unless the P makes a mistake (like having no obs and having cloaked ghosts emp everywhere)
BC can help make a maxed T army actually hold its own.
You clearly haven't watched lastshadow's vods. maxed P should never beat a maxed T army, unless youre fucking up.
Please link/pm these.
Without truly insane micro or P fucking up or a positional adv i really dont see this happening. Yes maybe he can do it, however for those of us with below 200apm its not really possible.
Also the fact that people have to find individual examples of lategame Terrans doing well, kinda implies that the standard is lategame T losing.
I'm not going to google it for you.
For micro: The real trick is to control click all your marine and pull them back through the marauders so they don't evaporate. You build maruders to tank, not to do damage. Marines deal insane dps, and that's what really kills the protoss army.Second, you always need to scan the army while engageing, spot the templar, and make sure they dont get any storms off. This is your only concern while engaging. You dont have to split bio or target colossi or anything like that. Just pull marines back and emp/snipe ht. Its ridiculous how much this swings the battle in your favor.
And composition: Medivac count should be really low when your maxed, something like around 2 total. In general, favor marines over marauders, match the colo count with appropriate vikings.
btw this will fix almost anyones lategame tvp woes, I used to think toss lategame was stupidly OP untill I started pulling marines back. now its ez to the max.
final edit: you don't need insane apm for this either, its actually really easy.
First off "I'm not going to google it for you." Making yourself sound like a tool wont do you any favours. In the tie to type that you could have linked it.
Wow, thanks for the really off topic not very helpful post. Yes, we all know how to in theory micro. "Match colo count with appropriate vikings." Groundbreaking.
I can say in theory how to micro most situations, doesnt mean i have the apm and awareness to do it, and not many people below GM do either.
"now its ez to the max. ". Ah so the fact that the majority of Pros cant win lategame maxed TvP fights is irrelevant. Im not saying its not doable, it obviously is with good enough micro. But saying its easy is flat out stupid.
OT: Im not sure about the nerf to emp and storm. EMP already got mega-nerfed. You cant really make the area smaller, so you would have to make the effect less. The issue seems to be if terran doesnt get PERFECT emps, and therefore gets stormed by 1-2 HT, he loses drastically. But if he does he can roll with good micro. The emphasis is too far on the terran to micro well. I think the issue lies with the a-movability of chargelots. Some micro should be forced, like manually casting charge or something
Also, OP, do you prefer to Yamato asap, or emp your own BCs?
EDIT: Having looked for these VODs, what i find seems to be a combination of him getting flamed by mods for self promotion, getting punched by Desrow or discussion of replay fixing. Doesnt really seem to be a credible character.
Just to answer the Yamato or self emp question. I think that Yamato is the better option, as then you will only need to use the BCs energy up, not a ghost's as well every time you need to do it. However I also don't feel that its such a big deal to use a ghost that you need to get Yamato asap. Depending on when you do the transition, if its the difference between getting yamato and getting an additional BC, go for the BC, if you have a bank and some money to spare, get Yamato.
Just watch marineking vs protoss, mostly marauders, marines aren't that good. It's not because someone who claims to be good makes some theory that this theory is true.
On April 10 2012 06:41 RedMosquito wrote: i cant help but disagree for so many reasons. Although you make some decent arguments i feel like your ignoring why battlecruisers are bad ON SO MANY LEVELS! Lets just ignore high cost, slow build time, slow movement speed, and susceptibility to feedback for a moment.
Lets ask the questoin How do protoss deal with battlecruisers? Answer- by warping in stalkers or just compeletly ignoring them cuz your probably not gonna have many out anyway. (also archons and hightemps but just ignore that too for a moment). Here lies in the problem. Anything tech switch that requires a response from gateways is not a worthy techswitch. Imagine a battle where the toss cleans up your ground army with some zealots and a collosus or two left over. You have two battlecruisers left from the battle: hooray right? Nope. Toss goes "oh theres some battle cruisers over there". Im gonna warp in 15 stalkers and take them out. Poof bye bye battlecruisers. Forcing protoss to make stalkers is not a tech switch for them.
Ok, again people seem to be under the miss conception that you are relying on the BCs as the damage dealer, they are nothing but a damage soak, There is still the same Bio ghost force underneath, the main difference is that you are going to be largely replacing your viking supply and a small portion of your bio with BCs. Yes protoss can respond by warping in a bunch of stalkers, however that's not ideally what protoss wants to be doing at this stage of the game. They want to spend all their gas on tech units like templar, collosus and archons, while filling out their supply on zealots. So yes they can warp in alot of stalkers to kill the BC but it means less templar, zealots, and archons for the rest of your army to deal with. Also the stalkers they warp in to deal with the BCs don't fare well against your bio.
Its not there are some BCs over there, i will just warp in some stalkers, poof by by terran. Its hey look there are 4 BCs over a huge army of bio with ghost support. Can i warp I squeeze out enough stalkers to deal with them in addition to producing enough tech units to deal with the Bio and enough zealots to buffer for everything.
The point alot of people seem to be missing, which is really one of my main points, is: Yes battle cruisers can be countered, but how does countering them affect the relationship the protoss army has with the rest of the terran army. Its not about standalone BCs. People are talking about hordes of zealots running amuk as BCs pathetically try to dps them down. They are not accounting for the other, what like 120, supply of army that terran should have at this point.
Also i don't know how many times I have had to say this in this thread, but at the end of an engagement it is not the BCs that are left over, they are a damage soak, they will soak up damage, and die, as the rest of your army kites back, but in doing so they soak up soo much damage the a larger portion of your bio is left over. It is not a few vulnerable BCs that remain to be sniped off after an engagement but a very high dps very mobile bio force. Think of them more like bunkers, they take awhile to build, but they allow the rest of your army to survive, if you get attacked they are one of the first things to go down but they stop the rest of your army from taking damage. Only BCs are infinitely more mobile than bunkers....
to address your points 1 by 1 this is why I feel they are still effective.
-high cost, late game when you have a bank, you are not necessarily going for the most cost efficient army, just the strongest one. also they are 6 supply 400-300. compared to: 6 supply of ghosts 600-300: 6 Supply of marauders: 300-75: 6 supply of vikings 450-225. They are kind of in the middle if you consider cost per supply.
-slow build time, this is a problem, but not insurmountable, if you have a defensive line to fall back to you can make the transition, With good timing after a favorable, trade, or as you start to sack SCVs you can also pull it off without affecting your army supply hugely.
-Slow movement speed,. Well the main part of your army does need to stay around your BC core, you still have a very large supply of MMM which is just as mobile as ever. Think about it like lategame TvZ, where most of your army plays a positional game based around your seige line as you drop and harass along the flanks with marine medivac. Is it less mobile than pure bio? yes, is it worse? not exactly. It allows you to play a slower positional game when you didn't really have that option before, well still utilizing the drop and harass potential you have always had.
-Feedback, this is the simplest one, dont have energy on them. I like to keep a floating building with the BCs to yamato whenever they build up enough energy, rocks, mules, even marines if you want can also work. If you need to, just EMP them yourself if the engagement is starting and your energy is high. Honestly, feedback is no big deal if you are prepared and cautions.
On April 10 2012 14:08 CarelessPride wrote: Hm i mean instead of thinking of new ways to play tvp, why not just look at how terrans are winning now? for the most part every build and unit composition you think of theres a pro somewhere thinking the same. MKP kinda shows you how to beat toss anyways. scout with ur factory and keep on preasure . TvP ina way is just like TvZ. you have to keep preasure to slow down tosses tech. Zerg's strength is based off of its economy while toss's strength is based off of his tech. and make sure ur always moving ur army around the map to keep the toss scared.
The problem i have with that, is yes marine king can destroy toss, i can watch him do it, i can enjoy him doing it, I cannot copy him, because i am not him. MMMVG is a very fragile composition that has to be used just right, the pro's can do it very well, but those of us who are less than perfect often get screwed up when we try to do what they do. When i am at my best i can go toe to toe with a protoss using a standard composition. I cannot always be playing my best, and when I am not, I loose countless games where I am in a very good position, with simply one slip up of control.
Tried BC's in this one game, pretty fun! But the map had a lot to do with it, I can't imagine BC's working on bigger maps with more wide open spaces, like say TD Altar for example.
I agree, TD alter would be a horrible map for this. On the other hand, shak plateau seems perfect. I mean, how much mobility can you really use there anyways. Its like, do I attack through the middle now? or do i wait a bit then attack through the middle?
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
It is important to note though that BCs with no armor upgrades still have 3 armor, so even without the armor upgrades it still does decent.
Well if you're going to get BC's, there's little reason not to throw down a second armory and get the armory. The difference from 3 to 6 is double dmg reduced...
I completely agree that you want the armor upgrades, but I don't think the timing requires a double armory. You probably don't want to be trying to squeeze out double infantry and double air upgrades at the same time as that is just sooo expensive. You will have been working on your air attack anyways form a single armory, for your vikings and it should hit 3 not too long after your infantry hits 33. This is about the stage when you will be starting to get your BCs out, and because of their starting armor they will not die super quickly anyways even with 0 on their armor upgrades. It should be fine to start the armor upgrades at this point from the same armory that you just finished their attack upgrades with.
If you can find some way to squeeze in a double armory so that when you transition to BCs they will come out with 3, 3, I mean sure thats awesome. But you will need a huge economy to do that, and it will impact your army size throughout the game.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
It is important to note though that BCs with no armor upgrades still have 3 armor, so even without the armor upgrades it still does decent.
Well if you're going to get BC's, there's little reason not to throw down a second armory and get the armory. The difference from 3 to 6 is double dmg reduced...
I completely agree that you want the armor upgrades, but I don't think the timing requires a double armory. You probably don't want to be trying to squeeze out double infantry and double air upgrades at the same time as that is just sooo expensive. You will have been working on your air attack anyways form a single armory, for your vikings and it should hit 3 not too long after your infantry hits 33. This is about the stage when you will be starting to get your BCs out, and because of their starting armor they will not die super quickly anyways even with 0 on their armor upgrades. It should be fine to start the armor upgrades at this point from the same armory that you just finished their attack upgrades with.
If you can find some way to squeeze in a double armory so that when you transition to BCs they will come out with 3, 3, I mean sure thats awesome. But you will need a huge economy to do that, and it will impact your army size throughout the game.
You would have 3-3 infantry upgrades done at least 5 minutes before you'd even think of transitioning to BC's. At least. Air upgrades will already be at 1-0 or 2-0 depending on your style, at this point you drop down an armory and get dual air ups.
On April 09 2012 07:19 Durp wrote: I've never had a problem with battlecruiser play, since warpgate allows me to trade my entire gateway force for the bio force, then rewarp in a round of stalkers to mop up the battlecruisers. A battlecruiser or two left over doesn't really do anything, since BC play transitions well into a pure gateway army for the protoss, as HT/stalker can be used to deal with BCs, and warpgate mechanics with blink micro can allow the toss to clean up the remaining BCs before a sizeable reinforcement terran army can catch up to the battle. Your BCs don't have upgrades, and by this point, a protoss should be able to warp in enough stalkers to oneshot a (presumably) wounded BC.Then a simple blink retreat home to your remade army follows. In short, does BC play ever win when you trade armies? Or do you have to win the first battle to win this?
Also I imagine warp prism play would be exceptionally difficult to deal with, since the meat of your army is exceptionally slow, and you do not have fast and convenient reactored starports for viking production needed to control the areas around your base. (not to mention how minimal an investment this would be for protoss)
Since this OP was intended as a discussion, I'd love to know what terrans think the viability of a 'nuke-push' is. In late game TvP, you have tons of gas banking anyways, so the gas investment into nukes is not too devastating for you. Also, between the range of snipe and vikings, it would be very hard to blink in to kill a cloaked ghost when there are 5-6 ghosts and a bio force behind him. I've always found fighting terrans has relied on position, especially in the late game. Due to the power of the colossus and storm, it's usually the protoss who decides the location of the battle (when they pop their guardian shield and attack) since a waste of sentry energy is much less devastating than an overzealous stim. I'd love to know if this has been tried, or is viable. As a protoss, it seems pretty scary for me. Losing your obs to a scan+vikings when trying to spot ghosts can end a game for a P, and babysitting an observer can allow an aggressive ghost push pretty much right to the toss base(you can establish a pretty good concave behind your nuking ghost). Also in the lategame nuking two places at once vs Protoss is pretty rough.
Would love to hear thoughts
Just a quick note on this. The BCs will have upgrades, as you have to upgrade vikings. Its one of the reasons for BCs over Mech units.
I meant armor upgrades to effect the amount of stalker hits. I don't think I've ever seen air armor upgraded in a TvP
It is important to note though that BCs with no armor upgrades still have 3 armor, so even without the armor upgrades it still does decent.
Well if you're going to get BC's, there's little reason not to throw down a second armory and get the armory. The difference from 3 to 6 is double dmg reduced...
I completely agree that you want the armor upgrades, but I don't think the timing requires a double armory. You probably don't want to be trying to squeeze out double infantry and double air upgrades at the same time as that is just sooo expensive. You will have been working on your air attack anyways form a single armory, for your vikings and it should hit 3 not too long after your infantry hits 33. This is about the stage when you will be starting to get your BCs out, and because of their starting armor they will not die super quickly anyways even with 0 on their armor upgrades. It should be fine to start the armor upgrades at this point from the same armory that you just finished their attack upgrades with.
If you can find some way to squeeze in a double armory so that when you transition to BCs they will come out with 3, 3, I mean sure thats awesome. But you will need a huge economy to do that, and it will impact your army size throughout the game.
You would have 3-3 infantry upgrades done at least 5 minutes before you'd even think of transitioning to BC's. At least. Air upgrades will already be at 1-0 or 2-0 depending on your style, at this point you drop down an armory and get dual air ups.
Yeah, i could get on board with that, makes sense. Just a side note as well, once 3 3 is done for your infantry, don't forget the building armor upgrade from your e-bay. Its cheap and is soo helpful, especially if you have any planetaries kicking around, you might also want to consider hi sec auto tracking if you have a bunch of pfs. Helps alot on some maps where there is just a bit of room behind the minerals where an opponent could stick some units to prevent mining.
Is there a solid answer why do you choose BC instead of Thors?
Both have energy which can be feedbacked(?) or emp'ed but Thor can tank the most problematic chargelots while BC can't. I think having 3-4 thor in front of your army when zealots arrive both limits the surface area of zealots and reduce the storm area. Considering all T. units are ranged, damage is not reduced at all and give you some reaction time to land some EMP's or snipes.
As mentioned by someone when ground army is cleared by storms an collosi, there is nothing BC's can do to stop the next warp-ins.
On April 10 2012 18:00 Laserist wrote: Is there a solid answer why do you choose BC instead of Thors?
Both have energy which can be feedbacked(?) or emp'ed but Thor can tank the most problematic chargelots while BC can't. I think having 3-4 thor in front of your army when zealots arrive both limits the surface area of zealots and reduce the storm area. Considering all T. units are ranged, damage is not reduced at all and give you some reaction time to land some EMP's or snipes.
As mentioned by someone when ground army is cleared by storms an collosi, there is nothing BC's can do to stop the next warp-ins.
BC's are significantly better, due to their mobility, high DPS, and the fact they CAN'T be attacked by chargelots (or colossi, mind you). Both are fairly resistant to storms, so it leaves the only actual unit that kills the BC to be archons or stalkers. Forcing stalkers is awesome. Thors don't force stalkers. Archons are only mediocre vs BC's, and can be Yamatoed too. BC's may also force void rays since stalker/archon blows vs it. Just have to avoid feedback, or if you don't want to deal with it just EMP your own. BCs are strong and can go sniping base to base. Thors can't, at all.... Thors are absolutely awful from personal experience, I tried to make them work a while ago and never could, even pumping out from 3 facts and getting armor ups.
Sorry, but i feel this is just a useless discussion.
If the game has been going evenly and both players are not playing passive or macroing bad (should stay low gas / minerals) the transition to BCs will cost you the game. 1 Battlecruiser costs almost as much as 2 !!! command centers. The first battlecruiser (if you want to keep a starport with reactor) Costs you 850/600 recources without upgrades.
If your behind, Battlecruisers will lose you the game.
The only way bcs wont cost you the game is if your significantly ahead, even then i feel its a risk.
If you really want some lategame air thing do something like lategame banshees - especially if you opened with cloak they just seem so much better. They have cloak (wich can really annoy if you dont have a lot of observers), theyr faster and they dont need armor upgrades to work.
Thors are terrible, sure you can debate wether they tank the damage well or not but even if they helped against a standard protoss composition, what do you do if your opponent scouts it and makes 3 immortals? + the points people made above
The point is not that bc's tank/ deal damage, it's the simple fact that they are slow. It doesnt matter what their role is if they arent at the fight. I see a bc, I won't care. I see many bc, I go to the other side of the map and trash an expansion. You will have to defend with a bc-less bio force that is smaller than a normal bio composition. You'll have 5bc on the other side as opposed to maybe 20 more bio units engaging me. At that point I'll pretty much murder you unless you actually have mkp bio micro. I'll have about 140 supply of 3/3 toss murderball with potential for about 40 supply more warp in. You'll be engaging with 100 supply of bio that i will kill in literally 4 seconds. I'll just continue to avoid your bc's until you try to push. In that case, lll try to defend a d we'll see what happens- still storms don't discriminate, bc don't dodge, and I kind I like my chances with a base race. Otherwise, I'll just starve you to death.
On April 10 2012 18:24 weikor wrote: Sorry, but i feel this is just a useless discussion.
If the game has been going evenly and both players are not playing passive or macroing bad (should stay low gas / minerals) the transition to BCs will cost you the game. 1 Battlecruiser costs almost as much as 2 !!! command centers. The first battlecruiser (if you want to keep a starport with reactor) Costs you 850/600 recources without upgrades.
If your behind, Battlecruisers will lose you the game.
The only way bcs wont cost you the game is if your significantly ahead, even then i feel its a risk.
If you really want some lategame air thing do something like lategame banshees - especially if you opened with cloak they just seem so much better. They have cloak (wich can really annoy if you dont have a lot of observers), theyr faster and they dont need armor upgrades to work.
Thors are terrible, sure you can debate wether they tank the damage well or not but even if they helped against a standard protoss composition, what do you do if your opponent scouts it and makes 3 immortals? + the points people made above
The game plays passive all the time, even at the highest level. In every matchup the game can become passive. That's a silly notion, really.
On April 10 2012 22:35 ticklishmusic wrote: The point is not that bc's tank/ deal damage, it's the simple fact that they are slow. It doesnt matter what their role is if they arent at the fight. I see a bc, I won't care. I see many bc, I go to the other side of the map and trash an expansion. You will have to defend with a bc-less bio force that is smaller than a normal bio composition. You'll have 5bc on the other side as opposed to maybe 20 more bio units engaging me. At that point I'll pretty much murder you unless you actually have mkp bio micro. I'll have about 140 supply of 3/3 toss murderball with potential for about 40 supply more warp in. You'll be engaging with 100 supply of bio that i will kill in literally 4 seconds. I'll just continue to avoid your bc's until you try to push. In that case, lll try to defend a d we'll see what happens- still storms don't discriminate, bc don't dodge, and I kind I like my chances with a base race. Otherwise, I'll just starve you to death.
How is that any different than a Terran MMM player saying he'll run around your deathball infinitely and drop you to death if you move out? You make it sound like it's impossible to defend. BC's aren't that slow, they're flying and received a speed buff a few patches ago. They can keep up easily.
That's also like saying you can just go around a BL army. Guess what, if you ignore the BL army, you're going to die. You can use little splinter tactics to take out expansions and such and do dmg then eventually engage the BL army, but you have to engage it regardless.
Since im pretty sure whoever that guy was isnt actually going to post lastshodows VODs can anyone point me in the right direction? Sounds pretty interesting (not as interesting as seeing him punched by desrow mind you ).
Another way to play lategame TvP is too just not let them sit comfy on 4bases and use drops and nukes to get them out of position, ofc BC's are just too cool to not get them ^_^
On April 11 2012 00:54 Squigly wrote: Since im pretty sure whoever that guy was isnt actually going to post lastshodows VODs can anyone point me in the right direction? Sounds pretty interesting (not as interesting as seeing him punched by desrow mind you ).
P.S. But, seriously, google next time :D 'last shadow sc2' --> 3rd or 4th link is liquipedia (http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/LastShadow) here're all necessary links
On April 10 2012 22:35 ticklishmusic wrote: The point is not that bc's tank/ deal damage, it's the simple fact that they are slow. It doesnt matter what their role is if they arent at the fight. I see a bc, I won't care. I see many bc, I go to the other side of the map and trash an expansion. You will have to defend with a bc-less bio force that is smaller than a normal bio composition. You'll have 5bc on the other side as opposed to maybe 20 more bio units engaging me. At that point I'll pretty much murder you unless you actually have mkp bio micro. I'll have about 140 supply of 3/3 toss murderball with potential for about 40 supply more warp in. You'll be engaging with 100 supply of bio that i will kill in literally 4 seconds. I'll just continue to avoid your bc's until you try to push. In that case, lll try to defend a d we'll see what happens- still storms don't discriminate, bc don't dodge, and I kind I like my chances with a base race. Otherwise, I'll just starve you to death.
I dunno what you're talking about, but this is just incorrect if you execute a proper transition to BCs.
I'm not gonna write specific build orders, since it is mainly a thing of mid-game transition, but in genereal, it's like this: 1) Play bio-centered macro-style, until around 120 supply. 1.5) Get bio upgrades to no higher than 2/2! perferably even 2/1. 2) From that point, start building a PF wall, trying to devide the map, and turtle on 3/4 expansions*. At the same time, start double Air upgrades, and build starports up to 5/6 (in super-lategame, they can be doubled). One reactored, rest tech-labbed. 3) While your bio force defends your half of the map, and a few ghost/nuke drops keep the toss occupied on their side of the map and prevent getting more expansions than you, 4) Start building 4 BCs/1 Raven bunches. 5) Once you have 12 BC+3Ravens, push into his main (perferably through the unwalkable side of the map, if there is any).
Yomato counters Archons/Void Rays, and if you see earlier that he has too many templars, you need to: a) Get 2 dropships full of ghosts with your BC army b) Expand all the yamato cannon before templars can feedback you, perferably on the templars themselves, to save the ravens. If he has lots of 3/3 stalkers, well, that's what the Ravens are there for - drop 2/3 PPDs above the bunch of building you want to kill, and his stalker army wont be able to do much to you.
*If a toss pushes into a PF wall, you should easily make it a very cost inefficient trade, if you don't forget your vikings and a few repairing SCVs.
I was trying to incorporate BCs in lategame but as someone said before i usually died while making them (90 sec buildtime T_T). Then i switched and started playing mass air which works very well ~70%winrate (~25master). However I sometimes lose because i transition into mass BCs; even having 16-20 3/3 BC I can die to a stalker warping. Thta's why I try to stay more on the banshee viking-obs-killing method. Looks again like the proper way to pull out BCs is to turtle like several ppl already had said.
Latelty I was wondering if one can play mmm + tanks vs toss or banshees instead of vikings. There was a guide somewhere around here on terran deathball but it was impossibly hard to play requiring even more micro then mmm+g+v. So the solution could be just mmm + g + banshee + a few vikings.
Nice guide! I find that many Terrans overlook the necessity of paying attention to unit compositions in the lategame! Z is not the only race that must be reactionary at times. I just watched HerO's stream and he lost an incredibly well fought PvT mostly because of composition switches. Hero countered a MMM army with Colloss, which died to vikings, after the trade the Terran anticipated HT's coming out, and was able to barely eek out a win with some clutch EMP's and good positioning. This was despite HerO's insane harassment level of over 9000 harassment
On April 20 2012 21:46 tdt.Baki wrote: There was a guide somewhere around here on terran deathball but it was impossibly hard to play requiring even more micro then mmm+g+v.
You might mean the Hammer 1/1/1 expand? The thread got locked, and as I see now, deleted.
Here are the some links though:
You can definitely play it in practice, and most likely slightly improve the build.
On April 20 2012 21:46 tdt.Baki wrote: There was a guide somewhere around here on terran deathball but it was impossibly hard to play requiring even more micro then mmm+g+v.
You might mean the Hammer 1/1/1 expand? The thread got locked, and as I see now, deleted.
This style (I watched avilo's video and I'm more based on that than the OP) is the exact analog to Zerg's roach/infestor transition into broodlords, which works very well and is the de facto strategy for late game ZvP right now.
You pretty much have all the same concepts in place:
1. Macro play until mid game with massive amount of low tier units
Zerg: classic roach hydra or just roaches Terran: classic MMM viking
2. Start trading low tier supply for tier 3 stuff
For that you'll need to hold the shitstorm of mass warp-ins. So you'll need to have:
2a. Static defense
Zerg: spines Terran: PFs, turrets
2b. Tier 2 tech to help with AoE and to actually be cost-effective
Zerg: Infestors Terran: Ghosts with nukes
3. Get the actual tier 3 tech
Zerg: Broodlords Terran: BCs
For those pointing out that BCs are slow, you lose map presence, etc, these are not goals in this style in the first place. I read a few people also imagine there would be too few BCs, which clearly shows he didn't understand the strategy at all.
4. Avoid mothership
This one is exactly the same goal as Zerg and Terran. You cannot afford to get caught in a vortex.
5. Work your way to win the game
This again is exactly the same overall mindset for both races.
5a. Opponent aware of his role and having a good composition of their own and good positioning: choose your best ground for fights, snipe bases, force good trades for you with multitasking (terran drops, zerg run-by's, etc).
5b. Straight steamroll your opponent with a good timing.
Tier 3 tech for both races allow for that, being both good siege units and high dps'ers. They are slow, so map presence isn't quite their strong points, but yes, they can be used for timing attacks with element of surprise or you can work your way into favorable positions if that's not the case, which then it will boil down to who is the best player and makes better decisions.
Of course they being very distinct races, there are counter-balancing points.
Terran has an immense defensive arsenal that is much stronger than Zerg's, which leads to a much more passive play (in my mind it reads: boring games, but nukes can obviously be entertaining), and reminds me actually of TvT, where you have to be extremely patient.
Zerg on the other hand is much more dynamic (also thinking of nydus, ling speed, burrow mechanics). They also have the strongest tech switch of the game I think, so they should exploit that.
While this strategy looks awesome to me as a player, as a spectator I really hate the trend towards passiveness.
In Avilo's video, he says he ideally would trade all of his army to BCs + ghosts, which I don't think is the ideal actually.
For a player with much better mechanics (now I'm talking S-class Terran level), he would aim to have less and less static defense to get away with while transitioning to BCs and that pretty much resembles what Zergs need to do with their own units, the decisions they have to make about composition, positioning, trading, etc. So it would require the Terran player to be that dynamic too, which is awesome to watch too (imagine Terrans relying solely on nukes for defending the mass warp-in, for example, placing them perfectly each time. Or rather counter-pressuring with multiples nukes to make Protoss retreat, while expanding behind it and massing more and more BCs, which is feasible for a S-class player).
This I think enriches a hell of a lot the TvP matchup.
This depends much on maps though, so it will be a floating balance that players will have to think of all the time.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-260134.jpg)
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