Lately, there have been plenty of people who have started to use tanks once again, most recently perhaps Mvp in his match today (2/5-12) versus Naniwa in two games (the only two games that went to that stage). Another player who have, in recent times, utilized tanks is Guminho. There have also been, albeit less relevantly, a fair amount of success with mech against toss lately (Illusion beating Oz 2-1 comes to mind, although I guess lastshadow should be mentioned aswell)
I can see a certain amount of potential in it. It allows you to be very greedy and still have a fair amount of defense. It also gives you a timing potential and you are not instantly screwed vs colossus if your viking count is low.
There is also the possibility that you could have a more marine-heavy army, rather than a marauder heavy, since the great range of tanks would allow you to focusfire colossus and templars down early. This would result in A LOT higher DPS potential.
However, it cuts into the main advantage that the terran army always have had versus toss; mobility. I am very hesitent to bring tanks into my play because I feel that they have a fairly early expiration date and other than early pushing power, they contradict one of the main strengths of pure bio.
Tanks have never been "submerged" and for that matter can neither be back in fashion or re-emerge. They are used in one of the main styles of TvP and appear occasionally, although not frequently enough throughout the gsl,
You also have to be more specific with the term "mech". Are you coining that term because of siege tanks being added into a mainly bio army? Or is he getting hellions and thors as well.
Having a marine-heavy army and relying on siege tanks will never let you get anywhere aggressive wise. You need mauraders to be able to pick off templar and be able to withstand colsi dps. Colsi will SHIT all over a marine/tank army.
The usage of siege tanks is primarily used as a defensive opening to stop any early-mid game aggression and to be able to take a third base safely to be able to hit a three base timing attack.
MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
(Incoming brood war reference) In brood war, tanks did a lot more damage, and chargelots didn't exist. Dragoons were retarded at walking, and no blink of course. I think collosus/blink stalker is too mobile against a tank based army. Trying to defend your 3rd and 4th? Protoss just cliffwalks and blinks your main and kills all your factories and supply depots, gg. Also chargelots are extremely good against tanks. Other less common strats are good against tanks too, phoenix play, mothership (vortex the ball of tanks, win)
I would love to see tanks, but I don't think its very good
On May 03 2012 01:34 decaf wrote: MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
As a protoss player, tanks scare the crap out of me. They are so much one way damage and can take the wind out of any zealot push. I think they are under rated in the match up and suffer from the idea that the terran has to either go Mech or Bio, but cannot split the middle. I am not sure they can make it all the way to the end game, but they are scary as hell in the early and mid game.
Tanks are great when tech is low... Once things like charge, blink, upgrades come into play, their effectiveness is drastically decreased. Also, bio rallies on kiting vs protoss. So you either kite and leave you tanks exposed or you don't kite and get killed by zealots and your own tank fire.
Yep, I agree that this is a trend - and MKP has showcased this several times as well. The advantage of tanks is that it helps safeguard against sentry all-ins. After that, it's useful for attacts for it helps control space.
Tanks are not re-emerging. They are only used in the sense that if a player goes for a cloak banshee build or a greedy build, they build 3-4 tanks to be able to hold off 5-8 warpgate all-ins that you normally would not be able to hold with only marine/marauder in bunkers.
It's a slightly new trend yes, but notice most games you'll see the Terran stop at 3-4 tanks and build no more.
The utility of tanks in TvP was demonstrated quite well in Mvp vs Nani. In Game 1, Mvp used the tanks to get a secure expansion (pros appear to be fond of this on cloud kingdom, probably because of how the main overlooks the natural) and to help with his push and they were useful against the colossus tech-based Protoss army.
The Protoss didn't have his upgrades since he went for a timing push that failed, so his tech was behind and Mvp's tanks helped a ton in aiding his MMM force in winning because they not only stopped Naniwa's attack, they aided greatly in the counterattack. Basically if the Protoss just turtles and techs, the tanks are a wasted investment. Not game ending, but they won't be very useful.
However, in the game on Antiga, Mvp did a similar build that revolved around a 2 base Marine/Tank/Banshee/Raven push that gets a 3rd and transitions to pure bio. The idea is to set up a contain and force the Protoss to eventually attack into bunkers and siege tanks, which usually isn't a good idea. However Nani had his tech this time (charge/blink) and the chargelots rolled over the attack.
That's the weakness of biomech going past the midgame: chargelots do not get handled well enough by marines, tanks, or marauders (the chargelots go in and don't die quickly, so the tank splash hits your fragile bio units in addition to all the other damage they take). You'll notice that every build pro players do that's not specifically a mech build will have them switch a barracks onto the tech lab the factory used after a while, because there's no use adding tanks after a certain point.
This is why mech can work; Blue Flame Hellions, contrary to the belief of many posters on this forum, in numbers of 6 or greater will WRECK chargelots. If you have 10-20 in front of your army, chargelots are simply a non-issue. But mech TvP is a whole different discussion and there are other threads for it.
The other two races rely on T2/T3 splash/AOE in the late game. Aside from EMP, apparently Ts don't think they need to. Tanks can be amazing. You can put maxed tanks versus any other ground unit in the unit tester and the tanks win every time, sometimes without suffering any losses.
I think a thor wall (because of their hp) might be more effective than a BFH wall in front of tanks. Also, banshees are a very nice addition, because they allow you nibble away on the P without fear of them chasing you, because you're covered by tank's siege range. Bunkers and turrets are also good for frontline tanking and serving as maze for the zealots.
I have been messing around with tanks a bit in TvP lately. But also I think banshees are complimentary to the tanks. I'm not cloaked banshees, not rushing banshees, not a 1/1/1 off one base, but a fast expo into 2 or 3 rax into factory and 1 or 2 starports.
Imo, the advantages to adding tanks and banshees are as such:
1) Protosses are good at using force fields to defend early-mid game pushes (e.g. If you go heavy MM (3+ rax after expo) early on and fail to do damage due to sentries, you can be far behind in economy/tech). They can also use forcefields to prevent you from repairing your own bunkers. Having a couple of siege tanks guarantees you to at least be able to trade with the toss. 2) Tanks do pretty good damage vs. Stalkers and Zealots too. Banshees are surprisingly good against stalkers. 3) If doing a early-mid game push, tanks and banshees can punish many different types of build. If they go fast colossus, the banshee can easily repel it and prevent it from doing much damage. 4) Even if they get a few immortals out, you will have more marines in your composition compared to normal tvp plus the banshees to deal with the immortals. 5) On some maps where the Protoss's natural is next to a cliff edge, tanks can severely punish that and deny mining. 6) The factory is often not used in tvp apart from scouting. It's only a small point but making tanks makes the factory a more useful building (and more efficient spending)
I haven't really had the confidence to try it on the ladder yet though, I've only been trying it in custom games. But it seems to work well!
On May 03 2012 01:33 Br3ezy wrote: Tanks have never been "submerged" and for that matter can neither be back in fashion or re-emerge.
I'm sorry, I should have said: Tanks as a part of a macro game. Tanks are used in 1/1/1 builds and similar, but you can't really disagree that tanks are not commonplace in your average PvT macro game.
On May 03 2012 01:34 decaf wrote: MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
As a protoss player, tanks scare the crap out of me. They are so much one way damage and can take the wind out of any zealot push. I think they are under rated in the match up and suffer from the idea that the terran has to either go Mech or Bio, but cannot split the middle. I am not sure they can make it all the way to the end game, but they are scary as hell in the early and mid game.
Nice, I like how you offer your perspective, now here is mine as a T.
True are all the things you said, but Tanks mean slower upgrades, slower Medivacs, more passivity. But I have been doing a couple of Tank Openings on the ladder just because of 2 things Toss love doing right now: Super Greedy Nexus First builds and gateway agression around the 9ish minute mark. Tanks are pretty good in both scenarios so yeah early game no more than 4 or 5 can be good but after that just dedicate your gas too the essential things (upgrades etc). Would be really cool if Thors with the 250MM cannon could counter Colossus (like they said so on the game guide on B.net) that way you can get vehicle weapons and use mech units for support much like in TvZ. But alas these are the feeble dreams of an old BW veteran D:
On May 03 2012 01:33 Br3ezy wrote: Tanks have never been "submerged" and for that matter can neither be back in fashion or re-emerge.
I'm sorry, I should have said: Tanks as a part of a macro game. Tanks are used in 1/1/1 builds and similar, but you can't really disagree that tanks are not commonplace in your average PvT macro game.
Tanks are and have been used in macro games as well, which does not include going pure mech. It's been around, but just not looked at as much because in Bo3s they only do this once while doing bio builds twice and so you would think of it as a weird startegy but really it is one of the major styles in tvp
On May 03 2012 01:34 decaf wrote: MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
As a protoss player, tanks scare the crap out of me. They are so much one way damage and can take the wind out of any zealot push. I think they are under rated in the match up and suffer from the idea that the terran has to either go Mech or Bio, but cannot split the middle. I am not sure they can make it all the way to the end game, but they are scary as hell in the early and mid game.
Nice, I like how you offer your perspective, now here is mine as a T.
True are all the things you said, but Tanks mean slower upgrades, slower Medivacs, more passivity. But I have been doing a couple of Tank Openings on the ladder just because of 2 things Toss love doing right now: Super Greedy Nexus First builds and gateway agression around the 9ish minute mark. Tanks are pretty good in both scenarios so yeah early game no more than 4 or 5 can be good but after that just dedicate your gas too the essential things (upgrades etc). Would be really cool if Thors with the 250MM cannon could counter Colossus (like they said so on the game guide on B.net) that way you can get vehicle weapons and use mech units for support much like in TvZ. But alas these are the feeble dreams of an old BW veteran D:
For me tanks mean faster upgrades, as the OP said, tanks allow you to be greedy early on because as you say that 9 min gateway aggression is just stopped dead. With tanks I can get my 4 gases really quick, I can delay stim/combat sheild, so I am actually ahead on upgrades compared to a standard bio build. I'm talking 2/2 at 13-14 minutes.
It does mean passivity, but I don't find you can do much against most protoss until they take a third anyway.
Tank builds are blind counter to gate aggression, and sometimes OK vs slightly early 3rds.
It doesn't look too viable to get a 3rd with tanks, since you let the P catch up and crush you in infrastructure with expo/tech/upgrades. Better to two base, as MVP demonstrated.
It's similar to when P does 2 base and turtles to a really late 3rd at 14m+. If there is no opportunity to end the game, then you will 2 base and then take a late 3rd at/after the reset that removes your tanks.
Since then we have seen more players make use of tanks not just defensively but also for quick 2 base pushes like MKP. This is definitely a new trend. The point of this is that you can be safe from frontal attacks with a lot of sentries early on so it is sort of a blind counter against some of the Protoss 2 base all ins and it allows you to be aggressive against quick thirds. The problem is that the early gas you have to use delays either starport, techlab bio upgrades or engineering bay upgrades which would normally all be completed entering the mid game. Against expansion into 3 gate robo double forge builds you will end up way behind because the observer scout will allow Protoss to react perfectly. So it definitely is a gamble to go for this build from my perspective.
On May 03 2012 01:34 decaf wrote: MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
As a protoss player, tanks scare the crap out of me. They are so much one way damage and can take the wind out of any zealot push. I think they are under rated in the match up and suffer from the idea that the terran has to either go Mech or Bio, but cannot split the middle. I am not sure they can make it all the way to the end game, but they are scary as hell in the early and mid game.
Nice, I like how you offer your perspective, now here is mine as a T.
True are all the things you said, but Tanks mean slower upgrades, slower Medivacs, more passivity. But I have been doing a couple of Tank Openings on the ladder just because of 2 things Toss love doing right now: Super Greedy Nexus First builds and gateway agression around the 9ish minute mark. Tanks are pretty good in both scenarios so yeah early game no more than 4 or 5 can be good but after that just dedicate your gas too the essential things (upgrades etc). Would be really cool if Thors with the 250MM cannon could counter Colossus (like they said so on the game guide on B.net) that way you can get vehicle weapons and use mech units for support much like in TvZ. But alas these are the feeble dreams of an old BW veteran D:
For me tanks mean faster upgrades, as the OP said, tanks allow you to be greedy early on because as you say that 9 min gateway aggression is just stopped dead. With tanks I can get my 4 gases really quick, I can delay stim/combat sheild, so I am actually ahead on upgrades compared to a standard bio build. I'm talking 2/2 at 13-14 minutes.
It does mean passivity, but I don't find you can do much against most protoss until they take a third anyway.
I use a similar build from time to time but it's also a gamble. Some protoss players go for quick blink from 2 bases and you have no way of defending something like that because of no stimpack and tanks being so immobile. And 1 base all ins will also kill you easily.
While it is clearly awesome vs stuff like the Parting build that Day9 looked at:
(Can I link this without embedding the video?)
You are hardly behind vs other protoss builds, as you say you can punish a quick third. What is so scary about 3 gate robo double forge, what makes you behind?
On May 03 2012 03:23 Baum wrote: I use a similar build from time to time but it's also a gamble. Some protoss players go for quick blink from 2 bases and you have no way of defending something like that because of no stimpack and tanks being so immobile. And 1 base all ins will also kill you easily.
On most maps you can position your tanks to cover blink stalkers. Depends how many different points of entrance there are, I certainly remember a game on Tal'darim where a terran player used tanks very effectively against a determined blink stalker attack.
And obviously you still scout with this, so I'm not sure how you are any more vulnerable to 1 base attacks than with standard.
Because you have no way of catching up in upgrades which will result in you having a very hard time to deal with any 2-2 or even 3-3 timings which will probably even involve both Collosus and templars because Protoss has the ability to freely tech.
On May 03 2012 03:23 Baum wrote: I use a similar build from time to time but it's also a gamble. Some protoss players go for quick blink from 2 bases and you have no way of defending something like that because of no stimpack and tanks being so immobile. And 1 base all ins will also kill you easily.
On most maps you can position your tanks to cover blink stalkers. Depends how many different points of entrance there are, I certainly remember a game on Tal'darim where a terran player used tanks very effectively against a determined blink stalker attack.
That was MMA against Feast and honestly Feast botched that game because he let MMA mine from a hidden expansion. Also MMA used a 13 gas into quick factory build because he knew feast likes to do one base gateway all ins but this is even a bigger gamble than the gasless expands into tank builds we are talking about in this thread. If you try to gasless expand into 2 rax factory against one base blink you are just dead.
You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
I played around with the idea of opening with some tank build and following up with double upgrades, a third cc inbase and then like 7 rax.
I found out however that it was troublesome to manage these things moderatly early. I didn't get to start upgrades until 8 min which from experience is way behind what a standard FE into 3 rax.
The benefit of such an opening, I felt, was lost if the tanks ended up serving no purpose.. ohwell..
Good memory on that MMA vs Feast game. I don't think this thread is purely about gasless FE, the OP didn't say that. In any case MMA hardly rushed for tanks, you can get tanks just as fast with a double gas after expo. You react to your opponent and get whichever units you need at the time you need them.
I fail to see how the tanks become nullified/useless vs a robo build? You don't have to go overboard with tank production anyway, 3 is usually a good number.
On May 03 2012 04:02 Willzzz wrote: Good memory on that MMA vs Feast game. I don't think this thread is purely about gasless FE, the OP didn't say that. In any case MMA hardly rushed for tanks, you can get tanks just as fast with a double gas after expo. You react to your opponent and get whichever units you need at the time you need them.
I fail to see how the tanks become nullified/useless vs a robo build? You don't have to go overboard with tank production anyway, 3 is usually a good number.
Actually, I feel that a reactor hellion expand opener would be more suitable. Proceed then by 2 hellions, maybe 4 on certain maps before swapping over factory to a TL and start tank production.
The reason for this is that 2 early hellions have the potential to deal a world of trouble for a protoss and does, at the very least, get a good scout to see what the protoss is up to, which makes it possible to tailor your followup in the appropriate fashion.
On May 03 2012 01:47 vthree wrote: Tanks are great when tech is low... Once things like charge, blink, upgrades come into play, their effectiveness is drastically decreased. Also, bio rallies on kiting vs protoss. So you either kite and leave you tanks exposed or you don't kite and get killed by zealots and your own tank fire.
I totally agree with this. They're great before upgrades come in or when they're low, but pretty useless later in the game because of how fast the battles end and their low rate of fire. That's not to say they're useless though, timing attacks are legitimate part of the game.
I also want to point out MVP's decision making when he went tanks. Where he chose to engage and how he positioned the tanks was so smart, something most people don't do.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
Exactly.
Tanks are extremely reactionary, the Toss expo always goes down before you even get gas (or even a second rax, for the most part). Doble Forge Robo is on 2 base until about 13-14 minutes, at the earliest for the most part. You're free to take your third, because Toss invests so much on tech rather than units, and pressure is possible, because Tanks will destroy Sentries just fine if you target fire. In addition, tanks punish poor positioning as well as make you safe against pretty much any Gateway all in variation. It's like saying getting Sentries early (more than 1) is bad, because eventually you'll want a limited amount of FFs so your Chargelots don't end up with only half the Terran army late game. They have their uses early, and in limited capacity as the game goes on.
Yeah I went through a phase of opening hellion in TvP, got a lot of really quick wins, but if they don't do anything I feel behind. It's not like in TvZ where they are much more useful at map control and fighting. Hellions make you feel safe vs zerg, they don't make me feel safe vs protoss.
A few tanks early game is not that uncommon. What is more important in that game is that Cloud Kingdom is a great map for tank strategies. You could see that MVP used almost perfect engagements where he shelled Nani's units when they where clumped up in chokes. Both outside MVP's natural and later outside Nani's third and natural. The cost will be your nice 10-11 min drops.
On May 03 2012 04:01 vBr wrote: I played around with the idea of opening with some tank build and following up with double upgrades, a third cc inbase and then like 7 rax.
I found out however that it was troublesome to manage these things moderatly early. I didn't get to start upgrades until 8 min which from experience is way behind what a standard FE into 3 rax.
The benefit of such an opening, I felt, was lost if the tanks ended up serving no purpose.. ohwell..
A standard FE into 3 rax will definitely have later upgrades and normally you can't afford to go double upgrades unless you delay the starport tech. The tanks allow you to delay the techlab upgrades which are absolutely key if you go 3 rax after CC. Sure if the Protoss plays greedy as well you will be even in upgrades and you don't have the possibility to pressure the Protoss third but you can still enter the late game in a good position because normally you will have to do damage against a 3 base Protoss with quick upgrades or you will have no way of winning but because you are even in upgrades and have access to six geysirs quickly you can get a good number of ghosts and vikings pretty easily without being vulnerable to upgrade timings.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
Exactly.
Tanks are extremely reactionary, the Toss expo always goes down before you even get gas (or even a second rax, for the most part). Doble Forge Robo is on 2 base until about 13-14 minutes, at the earliest for the most part. You're free to take your third, because Toss invests so much on tech rather than units, and pressure is possible, because Tanks will destroy Sentries just fine if you target fire. In addition, tanks punish poor positioning as well as make you safe against pretty much any Gateway all in variation. It's like saying getting Sentries early (more than 1) is bad, because eventually you'll want a limited amount of FFs so your Chargelots don't end up with only half the Terran army late game. They have their uses early, and in limited capacity as the game goes on.
I am not sure what your point is here. If you go for a tank push against the standard 2 base 3 gate robo double forge build you won't do any damage at all and are way behind. If you play the defensive version with a quick third and upgrades the game will be even because Protoss will scout you with an obs and get a quicker third as normal.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
Exactly.
Tanks are extremely reactionary, the Toss expo always goes down before you even get gas (or even a second rax, for the most part). Doble Forge Robo is on 2 base until about 13-14 minutes, at the earliest for the most part. You're free to take your third, because Toss invests so much on tech rather than units, and pressure is possible, because Tanks will destroy Sentries just fine if you target fire. In addition, tanks punish poor positioning as well as make you safe against pretty much any Gateway all in variation. It's like saying getting Sentries early (more than 1) is bad, because eventually you'll want a limited amount of FFs so your Chargelots don't end up with only half the Terran army late game. They have their uses early, and in limited capacity as the game goes on.
...What? You basically just said a bunch of things that we've already established are true about tanks, but then failed to elaborate on them or draw a conclusion. You can't take a 3rd against double forge 3 gate robo openers if you've opened with tanks, because you won't be able to hold it against any kind of pressure. Tanks are great for defending 2 base pressure, but at your 3rd base it'll get a bit dicey trying to defend.
Sentries are not like tanks. Sentries are useful for Protoss all game long. Tanks significantly decrease in utility as the game goes on, and they take up more supply. You're behind against a 2 base teching protoss, there's no doubt about that. This build is strong vs protoss who take a quick 3rd or who try to be aggressive, and Naniwa was the latter. In game 3 of Nani vs Mvp, he stayed on 2 bases and teched, which is why he won.
There is no reemergence of tanks. They are just as bad as they have always been. They work in very specific situations on certain maps as part of a 2 base push. As seen by the game on Antiga between MVP and NaNi, the tank push is very iffy and relies a lot on your opponent being unprepared. Like someone mentioned earlier, tanks are good in the timing window before the Protoss starts opening up their tech paths but they are still horrid for any long term TvP plan.
On May 03 2012 04:21 Baum wrote: I am not sure what your point is here. If you go for a tank push against the standard 2 base 3 gate robo double forge build you won't do any damage at all and are way behind. If you play the defensive version with a quick third and upgrades the game will be even because Protoss will scout you with an obs and get a quicker third as normal.
So against the popular early gateway pressure builds this build is super strong, against standard the game is even. What's not to love?
On May 03 2012 04:21 Baum wrote: I am not sure what your point is here. If you go for a tank push against the standard 2 base 3 gate robo double forge build you won't do any damage at all and are way behind. If you play the defensive version with a quick third and upgrades the game will be even because Protoss will scout you with an obs and get a quicker third as normal.
So against the popular early gateway pressure builds this build is super strong, against standard the game is even. What's not to love?
It's not super strong... Yea, tanks are great defensively but any smart Toss will reconsider a gateway push once they spot tanks. If Toss sees tanks it's a clear path to victory.
On May 03 2012 04:35 SupLilSon wrote: There is no reemergence of tanks. They are just as bad as they have always been. They work in very specific situations on certain maps as part of a 2 base push. As seen by the game on Antiga between MVP and NaNi, the tank push is very iffy and relies a lot on your opponent being unprepared. Like someone mentioned earlier, tanks are good in the timing window before the Protoss starts opening up their tech paths but they are still horrid for any long term TvP plan.
You're looking at the game in too simplistic of a way. It doesn't rely on your opponent being unprepared; it's a matter of being safe against 2 possible protoss mid game choices, while only slightly behind against the others. If you overextend as Mvp did, you can lose. If Nani had taken a 3rd that game, Mvp would've rolled over him.
On May 03 2012 04:21 Baum wrote: I am not sure what your point is here. If you go for a tank push against the standard 2 base 3 gate robo double forge build you won't do any damage at all and are way behind. If you play the defensive version with a quick third and upgrades the game will be even because Protoss will scout you with an obs and get a quicker third as normal.
So against the popular early gateway pressure builds this build is super strong, against standard the game is even. What's not to love?
easy guide: early tanks > 2 base aggression > quick 3 base < 2 base tech < 1 base allins
On May 03 2012 04:35 SupLilSon wrote: There is no reemergence of tanks. They are just as bad as they have always been. They work in very specific situations on certain maps as part of a 2 base push. As seen by the game on Antiga between MVP and NaNi, the tank push is very iffy and relies a lot on your opponent being unprepared. Like someone mentioned earlier, tanks are good in the timing window before the Protoss starts opening up their tech paths but they are still horrid for any long term TvP plan.
I don't think that game fully works as a barometer of the strength of his build. One has to remember that Naniwa dealt a serious blow to MVPs economy and I imagine that MVP hoped Naniwa had taken a greedy third when he moved out.
On May 03 2012 04:35 SupLilSon wrote: There is no reemergence of tanks. They are just as bad as they have always been. They work in very specific situations on certain maps as part of a 2 base push. As seen by the game on Antiga between MVP and NaNi, the tank push is very iffy and relies a lot on your opponent being unprepared. Like someone mentioned earlier, tanks are good in the timing window before the Protoss starts opening up their tech paths but they are still horrid for any long term TvP plan.
You're looking at the game in too simplistic of a way. It doesn't rely on your opponent being unprepared; it's a matter of being safe against 2 possible protoss mid game choices, while only slightly behind against the others. If you overextend as Mvp did, you can lose. If Nani had taken a 3rd that game, Mvp would've rolled over him.
I honestly think MVP would have lost that game even if he hadn't overextended. Tank/marine is just not a good comp vs. Protoss. By the time MVP pushed, NaNi already had both charge and blink and was probably leading in upgrades. Tank/Marine just isn't a good comp vs. Protoss. MVP went ahead with his attack because he knew it was his only choice. NaNi harassed really well with the blink stalkers and mVP would have been very far behind if he didn't try to pressure.
And realistically, we are only seeing tanks reemerge because Terran options vs Protoss have been limited to early - mid game timings, before tanks lose all value in TvP.
On May 03 2012 04:37 SupLilSon wrote: It's not super strong... Yea, tanks are great defensively but any smart Toss will reconsider a gateway push once they spot tanks. If Toss sees tanks it's a clear path to victory.
Neither Naniwa nor Parting reconsidered their pushes against tanks, they were already commited to their choices they made earlier in the games. You could reconsider, but I think you'll still be in a tough spot.
On May 03 2012 04:39 crocodile wrote: easy guide: early tanks > 2 base aggression > quick 3 base < 2 base tech < 1 base allins
Standard is weak to an all-in if you don't scout it, what's new?
I have no idea why you think a tank opening is weak to 2 base tech which is basically standard toss. Why is it weak?
I use tanks in every single TvP I play. Early game, tanks rape face before high immortal counts, blink, high collsai counts, or charge.
Open gasless FE, go into cloakbanshee, then go to infantry/banshee/tank, push, take third behind push, drop more rax and double ebay and go about your standard play. Cloak banshees even the econ a vast majority of the time, and tanks make you safe from any kind of gateway/immortal pressure with bunkers.
TvP is my worst matchup, by far. Somehow I've raised my TvP to around 60-65% percent, and even taken a game on my smurf on ladder off a top 50 GM using a tank build.
You don't always have to play strictly to the late game, you can play for a strong 2 base push, with a fall back to standard play. It's VERY rare my push doesn't kill a fast third protoss completely, or trade armies and let me have my third up before theirs.
I win so much lately because every protoss and their mother sees a gasless FE, and plays SO FUCKING greedy that a 11-12 minute timing with 3-4 tanks, 4-6 banshees, and marine marauder stim cs shells and 2 medics just eats through their army.
It's very gimmicky, but if you scout correctly, and deny as much scouting as possible, you can do some insane damage that is almost impossible to lose from. Very very strong against parting style of fast third gateway armies, as many have said.
Tanks are extremely good versus gateway units without upgrades, but fair poorly versus chargelots, blink stalkers, immortals, and colossi. Thus, currently they're only used in 2 situations:
As part of a 2 base push that requires a specific response from protoss.
To defend against gateway pushes when the terran is doing something greedy, such as fast 2 base cloaked banshee, abnormally fast medivac drop, fast 3cc, or fast double eng bays. Usually tanks are employed when 2 of those greedy things are used.
On May 03 2012 04:37 SupLilSon wrote: It's not super strong... Yea, tanks are great defensively but any smart Toss will reconsider a gateway push once they spot tanks. If Toss sees tanks it's a clear path to victory.
Neither Naniwa nor Parting reconsidered their pushes against tanks, they were already commited to their choices they made earlier in the games. You could reconsider, but I think you'll still be in a tough spot.
On May 03 2012 04:39 crocodile wrote: easy guide: early tanks > 2 base aggression > quick 3 base < 2 base tech < 1 base allins
Standard is weak to an all-in if you don't scout it, what's new?
I have no idea why you think a tank opening is weak to 2 base tech which is basically standard toss. Why is it weak?
It has been explained multiple times in this thread.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
Also to elaborate: 1-2 Marines at a time while only getting 2nd rax after expanding is not enough to hold off 4 gateways worth of protoss units early on no matter how many bunkers you have.
On May 03 2012 04:35 SupLilSon wrote: There is no reemergence of tanks. They are just as bad as they have always been. They work in very specific situations on certain maps as part of a 2 base push. As seen by the game on Antiga between MVP and NaNi, the tank push is very iffy and relies a lot on your opponent being unprepared. Like someone mentioned earlier, tanks are good in the timing window before the Protoss starts opening up their tech paths but they are still horrid for any long term TvP plan.
You're looking at the game in too simplistic of a way. It doesn't rely on your opponent being unprepared; it's a matter of being safe against 2 possible protoss mid game choices, while only slightly behind against the others. If you overextend as Mvp did, you can lose. If Nani had taken a 3rd that game, Mvp would've rolled over him.
I honestly think MVP would have lost that game even if he hadn't overextended. Tank/marine is just not a good comp vs. Protoss. By the time MVP pushed, NaNi already had both charge and blink and was probably leading in upgrades. Tank/Marine just isn't a good comp vs. Protoss. MVP went ahead with his attack because he knew it was his only choice. NaNi harassed really well with the blink stalkers and mVP would have been very far behind if he didn't try to pressure.
And realistically, we are only seeing tanks reemerge because Terran options vs Protoss have been limited to early - mid game timings, before tanks lose all value in TvP.
This is why I think you're looking at the game too simplistically.
First of all, if Mvp's doing something, it's because he's practiced it and he knows it works. He's fucking Mvp. He knows what he's doing, and to assume you know better than him is silly.
Second of all, he's not using Marine/Tank as his unit composition. He's not making Marine/Tank all game long and hoping it works. That build is a 2 base Marine/Tank/Banshee contain followed by a 3rd base and a transition back into standard bio play. Much more complex than 'going Marine/Tank.'
Third of all, the first three sentences in your post do not support the conclusion that follows. Naniwa's harassment and upgrade lead would have translated to a victory against a bio player as well. It does not in any way reflect on the strength of Marine/Tank as a composition, my point a paragraph above notwithstanding.
On May 03 2012 05:02 crocodile wrote: Also to elaborate: 1-2 Marines at a time while only getting 2nd rax after expanding is not enough to hold off 4 gateways worth of protoss units early on no matter how many bunkers you have.
Standard is only 3 rax, surely a factory is as good as having a third rax?
If what you say is true why aren't these code S protoss players 4 gating for a free win? I mean I guess the major thing is that you can't scout it, because gas goes down way after the probe has left.
On May 03 2012 04:37 SupLilSon wrote: It's not super strong... Yea, tanks are great defensively but any smart Toss will reconsider a gateway push once they spot tanks. If Toss sees tanks it's a clear path to victory.
Neither Naniwa nor Parting reconsidered their pushes against tanks, they were already commited to their choices they made earlier in the games. You could reconsider, but I think you'll still be in a tough spot.
On May 03 2012 04:39 crocodile wrote: easy guide: early tanks > 2 base aggression > quick 3 base < 2 base tech < 1 base allins
Standard is weak to an all-in if you don't scout it, what's new?
I have no idea why you think a tank opening is weak to 2 base tech which is basically standard toss. Why is it weak?
It has been explained multiple times in this thread.
On May 03 2012 03:48 crocodile wrote: You're vulnerable to 1 base attacks because you only have 1-2 barracks producing units while you tech.
3 Gate Robo double forge will put you behind because Protoss will have the tech and upgrades to nullify the tanks that you've invested in and you will be on even economies, so you've essentially spend a bunch of money on useless tech and delayed your upgrades/medivacs while the Protoss has been spending money on things that are good against you regardless of whether you opened with 1 rax FE into tanks or your completely standard 1 rax FE into 3 rax stim medivac timing.
Also to elaborate: 1-2 Marines at a time while only getting 2nd rax after expanding is not enough to hold off 4 gateways worth of protoss units early on no matter how many bunkers you have.
....that's wrong. I hold 3-4 gate pressure just fine with 2 bunkers and SCVs surrounding on repair.
From there I know I need to cut the fast banshee, and get 2 tanks and siege out then banshee. Simple.
What I didn't understand in G3 was why MVP didn't mass up on 2 base to 14m+ like he did in G1.
Maybe he thought he was ahead because of holding the stalkers+killing a bunch? Maybe he thought he was behind? Maybe he was afraid that storm would be completed before 14m (since P went up citadel instead of support bay), and completely nullify the push?
On May 03 2012 04:49 iAmJeffReY wrote: I use tanks in every single TvP I play. Early game, tanks rape face before high immortal counts, blink, high collsai counts, or charge.
Open gasless FE, go into cloakbanshee, then go to infantry/banshee/tank, push, take third behind push, drop more rax and double ebay and go about your standard play. Cloak banshees even the econ a vast majority of the time, and tanks make you safe from any kind of gateway/immortal pressure with bunkers.
TvP is my worst matchup, by far. Somehow I've raised my TvP to around 60-65% percent, and even taken a game on my smurf on ladder off a top 50 GM using a tank build.
You don't always have to play strictly to the late game, you can play for a strong 2 base push, with a fall back to standard play. It's VERY rare my push doesn't kill a fast third protoss completely, or trade armies and let me have my third up before theirs.
I win so much lately because every protoss and their mother sees a gasless FE, and plays SO FUCKING greedy that a 11-12 minute timing with 3-4 tanks, 4-6 banshees, and marine marauder stim cs shells and 2 medics just eats through their army.
It's very gimmicky, but if you scout correctly, and deny as much scouting as possible, you can do some insane damage that is almost impossible to lose from. Very very strong against parting style of fast third gateway armies, as many have said.
Heh just saw Beastyqt do basically the same build to that same GM player. It seems a very solid build.
On May 03 2012 01:36 Viperbird wrote: (Incoming brood war reference) In brood war, tanks did a lot more damage, and chargelots didn't exist. Dragoons were retarded at walking, and no blink of course. I think collosus/blink stalker is too mobile against a tank based army. Trying to defend your 3rd and 4th? Protoss just cliffwalks and blinks your main and kills all your factories and supply depots, gg. Also chargelots are extremely good against tanks. Other less common strats are good against tanks too, phoenix play, mothership (vortex the ball of tanks, win)
I would love to see tanks, but I don't think its very good
(Incoming brood war reference) In brood war, tanks did a lot more damage to light targets, and zealots only had a massive speed upgrade, not charge. Dragoons were retarded at walking and spread out automatically to avoid splash, and no blink of course. I think speedlot/goon/reaver is too mobile against a tank based army. Trying to defend your 3rd and 4th? Protoss just drops and recalls into your main and kills all your factories and supply depots, gg. Also stasis is extremely good against tanks. Other less common strats are good against tanks too, carrier play, bombing (drop a single unit on the ball of tanks, win)
I would love to see tanks, but I don't think its very good
It's a good way to secure your fast expand while teching imo, it stops 2 base gateway all-ins very well at the very least. It also opens up a 2 base timing for Terran, (with medicacs, naked marines or with combat shield and/or stim, or even banshees) before both blink and charge are done, and before templars. However it sacrifices bio upgrades speed. You get your stim much slower with this kind of build, and you most likely won't go for a double ebay straight away.
Eventually of course, you have to stop making siege tanks (no more than 4-5 I'd say), it's just an opening into at best a timing attack, not a stable midgame plan. Of course, lategame siege tanks are an even less used composition (like, never).
Tanks seem to be a more map specific unit in TvP. They need the right terrain to be used effectively, otherwise you would probably be better off with just pure bio. At lower levels, I think a defensive or contain style might be better/ more viable than the amount of micro needed for pure bio though.
On May 03 2012 04:49 iAmJeffReY wrote: I use tanks in every single TvP I play. Early game, tanks rape face before high immortal counts, blink, high collsai counts, or charge.
Open gasless FE, go into cloakbanshee, then go to infantry/banshee/tank, push, take third behind push, drop more rax and double ebay and go about your standard play. Cloak banshees even the econ a vast majority of the time, and tanks make you safe from any kind of gateway/immortal pressure with bunkers.
TvP is my worst matchup, by far. Somehow I've raised my TvP to around 60-65% percent, and even taken a game on my smurf on ladder off a top 50 GM using a tank build.
You don't always have to play strictly to the late game, you can play for a strong 2 base push, with a fall back to standard play. It's VERY rare my push doesn't kill a fast third protoss completely, or trade armies and let me have my third up before theirs.
I win so much lately because every protoss and their mother sees a gasless FE, and plays SO FUCKING greedy that a 11-12 minute timing with 3-4 tanks, 4-6 banshees, and marine marauder stim cs shells and 2 medics just eats through their army.
It's very gimmicky, but if you scout correctly, and deny as much scouting as possible, you can do some insane damage that is almost impossible to lose from. Very very strong against parting style of fast third gateway armies, as many have said.
Heh just saw Beastyqt do basically the same build to that same GM player. It seems a very solid build.
Aw wtf I thought I was original! God damnit. I get win after win of gateway 3/4 gate pressure protoss on certain maps where you can defend natural with double bunker. Like, cloud, daybreak, korhal, antiga, metropolis, and shakuras.
It's a great transition, if I could learn to get to standard play...but I either get crushed and lose there (greedy third, only 3 rax 1 fac 2 port, no way to reproduce fast) or straight up win with it.
There's nothing better than defending a gate pressure, barely, to have 2 banshees in their mineral line. They see them cross the map, and warp in stalkers thinkin hey, I'm fine now...and you cloak hahaha
lots of terran have been doing this to me at diamond lvl. pretty muc hpure marine/tank. ive noticed that if i can survive his big pushes (especiall yif he allins me lol) i generally win lategame, but maybe its just me. the big problem is if he can cross the map safely, and siege up near my natural, and just steamrol into my base.
if the terran tries to turtle, i can generally win with zealot drop harass, set up shop near his base, and blink into his main if he unsieges to repel me, i win. if he doesnt, my stalkers slowly chew through his production and scvs
They aren't meant for the long run. They're meant specifically for a timing to A) kill the 3rd base of the protoss while you take your own, B) kill the protoss if he's too greedy, or C) set up a big contain while you get up your 3rd
So it's not anymore significant than a 1-1-1 with tanks, it's just a really good build that can put you really far ahead in the long run. MKP does it a lot too.
I think just a low amount of tanks (3 to 4) is really good for greedy plays. It let's you tech quicker while still being safe, other builds tend to be weak against mass gate attacks or fast colossi attacks (because you either tech too fast or too slow). Tanks are great for making you safe vs anything while playing very greedy if the map allows for some decent tank usage (natural a bit closed). Because you still have the option of fast drops or a 3-1-1 build you can pressure a quick third of toss quite well still which should be the norm against seeing tanks. Lategame they aren't too good but a few tanks along with some smart walling and/or a planetary makes you quite safe against attacks, letting you drop at ease.
I think it's only logical tanks start seeing some use as you have the factory anyway and siege tech is relatively cheap.
On May 03 2012 01:34 decaf wrote: MKP used quite a few tank builds in the past, too.
I'm still not convinced that tank usage is solid play in TvP simply due to the fact that they have so low damage and nothing to really tank the damage. I think tank builds can be great for early pushes and contains but they don't stand a chance later on. Maybe with HotS and the battle hellion we will see a lot more tank usage, right now I'm just not convinced tank play offers a second playstyle. But we'll see.
As a protoss player, tanks scare the crap out of me. They are so much one way damage and can take the wind out of any zealot push. I think they are under rated in the match up and suffer from the idea that the terran has to either go Mech or Bio, but cannot split the middle. I am not sure they can make it all the way to the end game, but they are scary as hell in the early and mid game.
The reason you don't really see bio/mech is because the upgrades only apply to one or the other.
We don't have a building that upgrades both our factory units, and our barracks units.. so it's either one or the other.
Unupgraded mech doesn't fair well at all vs 3/3 protoss chargelot/stalker/colossus/immortal/prettymuchanyunitprotossmakes
Marine Tank has always been viable. In my opinion it is the best late game unit composition within reason that Terran can get against Protoss for a few reasons. Marines in high numbers melt gateway unit compositions and the effectiveness of the marines scales with the Terran players ability to micro. Tanks are good at just that, tanking, they're great to fall back pon as your medivacs heal your marines and they also deal with collosus quite well and support marines high dps cabilitys very well.
Marine/Ghost/Tank is way under used yet its better than standard MMMVG, once you get to the late game you can start sacking SCV's and replacing them with ghosts and Marine/Medivac/Tank/Ghost melts any Toss unit composition that I can think of as long as you have good marine control.
Both of the Mvp games today @ gsl were 2base all-ins. You cannot take a third base with tanks. Sure Mvp was taking a third base in one of the games because he had killed naniwa's third and was unsure if he can end the game there (he did).
You can definitly take a third CC with tanks......you dont need many tanks for them to be very effective. Actually I think that the sweet spot is around 4-6 tanks backed by marines/ a few ghosts for emps and medivacs.
Tanks deal more damage unsieged than sieged if splash damage doesn't come into play. Unsieged, tanks deal more damage than unstinted marauders at longer range than marauders.
I like doing early tank pushes (no siege) and adding 1-2 tank into my late-game army just to up the dps potential by a tiny bit at no risk.
The real question (concerning mech) is when will Blizzard allow ground upgrades to improve assault mode Vikings to allow non-hellion mech support.
On May 03 2012 07:59 Sovern wrote: Marine Tank has always been viable. In my opinion it is the best late game unit composition within reason that Terran can get against Protoss for a few reasons. Marines in high numbers melt gateway unit compositions and the effectiveness of the marines scales with the Terran players ability to micro. Tanks are good at just that, tanking, they're great to fall back pon as your medivacs heal your marines and they also deal with collosus quite well and support marines high dps cabilitys very well.
Marine/Ghost/Tank is way under used yet its better than standard MMMVG, once you get to the late game you can start sacking SCV's and replacing them with ghosts and Marine/Medivac/Tank/Ghost melts any Toss unit composition that I can think of as long as you have good marine control.
Tanks get exponentially worse the longer the game goes on and they are just dead supply. Honestly if you win games with this composition I can't imagine your opponent being any good. Against any amount of chargelots there is no reason to build any tanks at all. I mean sure if you have a really defensive position and the Protoss runs into you and gets emped really badly you can evaporate a Protoss army but you can do that as well without tanks and if the Protoss is smart he will never engage like that and force you out of position with warp prism harass and blink while out-expanding you.
On May 03 2012 01:51 Azzur wrote: Yep, I agree that this is a trend - and MKP has showcased this several times as well. The advantage of tanks is that it helps safeguard against sentry all-ins. After that, it's useful for attacts for it helps control space.
If you get tanks, you die to blinkstalker all-in's and immortal pushes due to lack of MM.
It's okay in the mid game before the Protoss has much tech, but terrible after that.
You do not just 'die' to blink stalker allins and immortal pushes. Please demonstrate some game knowledge like specific timings and reasoning to support your claim.
On May 03 2012 07:59 Sovern wrote: Marine Tank has always been viable. In my opinion it is the best late game unit composition within reason that Terran can get against Protoss for a few reasons. Marines in high numbers melt gateway unit compositions and the effectiveness of the marines scales with the Terran players ability to micro. Tanks are good at just that, tanking, they're great to fall back pon as your medivacs heal your marines and they also deal with collosus quite well and support marines high dps cabilitys very well.
Marine/Ghost/Tank is way under used yet its better than standard MMMVG, once you get to the late game you can start sacking SCV's and replacing them with ghosts and Marine/Medivac/Tank/Ghost melts any Toss unit composition that I can think of as long as you have good marine control.
Tanks get exponentially worse the longer the game goes on and they are just dead supply. Honestly if you win games with this composition I can't imagine your opponent being any good. Against any amount of chargelots there is no reason to build any tanks at all. I mean sure if you have a really defensive position and the Protoss runs into you and gets emped really badly you can evaporate a Protoss army but you can do that as well without tanks and if the Protoss is smart he will never engage like that and force you out of position with warp prism harass and blink while out-expanding you.
I dont just mass tanks with marines, the sweet spot is around 3-5 tanks. They're good for buying your marines time to heal up while simontaniusly allowing your tanks to deal splash damage to whatever units are at the toss's front. With my build if they mass chargelot I pretty much autpo win because mass marine/ghost/with 3-5 tanks melts chargelots like they're hot butter. I cant stand playing marine/marauder/ghost, one fuck up like not making enough vikings or getting stormed because you have no ghosts at the time can cost you the game where as if you have a few strong defensive units like tanks and even bunkers to set up a defensive position on the map the toss is the one with the burden of having to be careful to not fuck up and engage improperly just because if he pushes at the wrong time and you have 50+ marines left hes in a lot of trouble.
I think that more terrans should try out playing defensively with marines in bunkers/planetarys spread out, a long with siege tanks and ghosts. It seems like it has a ton of potential and it switches the meta game around to the point where the toss should be the one worried about the late game if the terran can just cut off the map and deny expansions with planetarys, bunkers, and siege tanks, and maybe ghosts for nukes and kep emps.
On May 03 2012 13:11 sinisterrtheory wrote: Nerf chargelots or make hellions just as good as they used to be. Mech isn't viable anymore.
The protoss early and midgame army core (unless you are all in, and you terrans really seem to love that) is almost entirely zealots. Want to nerf them? It would hit protoss harder than nerfing marines would hit terran in the current metagame.
The re-emerging of tanks is the response to Protoss players who cut a lot of corners when they identify 1 rax FE. If you think about it, tanks are most commonly used these days after a 1 rax FE where Terran goes quick double gas as soon as they've put down that expansion. The reason why this is happening is because the past two months or so, a lot of Protoss players have abused the fact that 1 rax FE generally means theres no need for detection and you also have a timing window to deal damage with a 3, 5 or 6 gate, after taking your own expansion. This has resulted in Protoss players skipping robo entirely to get faster 1-1 and 2-2 upgrades of a double forge, or take the parting build where you double expand as protoss and then go 8 warpgate aggression which is really tough to ever come out ahead against if you are doing a 1 rax FE bio.
In order to punish this, terrans started doing the double gas after FE because it enables them to get cloaked banshees while slowly building up a tank count that can be used for
1) Defense against 2 base warpgate aggression such as the 6 gate or the PartinG build. 2) If you deal damage with your cloaked banshees you have a timing window to hit with a "delayed" 1-1-1 push to deny or kill a protoss third.
TL;DR: What Terrans are trying to say is "stop being so greedy and stop cutting corners" or we wouldn't see tanks used very much at all (except as a key opponent in the 1-1-1 of course).
The later the game goes, the more they become dead supply. If you get past the midgame you are better off sacking them and replace them with another ghost or a couple of vikings.
Hey just a question, anyone remember MKP vs Parting on Metropolis? Maybe it's been answered elsewhere, but I'm wondering why MKP didn't get siege mode even after he fended off Parting's pressure? He kept pressuring with marine tank medivac and just attacked unsieged and picked up tanks when they got low on HP.
On May 03 2012 14:03 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Hey just a question, anyone remember MKP vs Parting on Metropolis? Maybe it's been answered elsewhere, but I'm wondering why MKP didn't get siege mode even after he fended off Parting's pressure? He kept pressuring with marine tank medivac and just attacked unsieged and picked up tanks when they got low on HP.
It was very obvious that siege mode wouldn't have helped MKP at all in this situation. Tanks have a relatively high dps unsieged and it s possible to kite with them because of this MKP was able to trade way better than expected. He used the tanks to buffer some hits from the zealots and then kite backwards with different parts of his army. If MKP would have gotten Siege mode the Zealots would have charged forward and he would have had to move back his marines to not take too much damage from friendly fire and then his tanks would have been exposed while not being able to pull them back. Since tanks in such low numbers don't have nearly enough burst damage using them unsieged gives you better dps and microability and you only lose a bit of splash which is more of a detriment in this situation anyway because of friendly fire.
On May 03 2012 13:54 dignitas.merz wrote: The re-emerging of tanks is the response to Protoss players who cut a lot of corners when they identify 1 rax FE. If you think about it, tanks are most commonly used these days after a 1 rax FE where Terran goes quick double gas as soon as they've put down that expansion. The reason why this is happening is because the past two months or so, a lot of Protoss players have abused the fact that 1 rax FE generally means theres no need for detection and you also have a timing window to deal damage with a 3, 5 or 6 gate, after taking your own expansion. This has resulted in Protoss players skipping robo entirely to get faster 1-1 and 2-2 upgrades of a double forge, or take the parting build where you double expand as protoss and then go 8 warpgate aggression which is really tough to ever come out ahead against if you are doing a 1 rax FE bio.
In order to punish this, terrans started doing the double gas after FE because it enables them to get cloaked banshees while slowly building up a tank count that can be used for
1) Defense against 2 base warpgate aggression such as the 6 gate or the PartinG build. 2) If you deal damage with your cloaked banshees you have a timing window to hit with a "delayed" 1-1-1 push to deny or kill a protoss third.
TL;DR: What Terrans are trying to say is "stop being so greedy and stop cutting corners" or we wouldn't see tanks used very much at all (except as a key opponent in the 1-1-1 of course).
The later the game goes, the more they become dead supply. If you get past the midgame you are better off sacking them and replace them with another ghost or a couple of vikings.
It's not really punishing P for their greed really but rather letting T be greedy without having to worry as much about what type of aggression P could be planning. The tanks are not really great for punishing a greedy protoss, they are simply good against mass sentries and fast colossi. The cloaked banshees are just one option and not really that popular.
This Build is really good If your opponent Has been agressive on 2 base to defend. I think the Magic number is 3 or 4. MMA Uses this a lot in IEM and Also MKP. :D
I'd like to see more people explore this defensive style of terran. The terran metagame has been largely built around aggression and mobility, so I think a lot of terrans will struggle with not attacking whilst using a mech army. Most mech attacks I've seen in higher level games have either been with less than 4 tanks and/or never on more than 2 bases.
You can read the guide and make your own opinions about it, however a few pros have played with the concept of a terran deathball for some time. Famously Gumiho did a beautiful mech TvZ vs Nestea in WCG 2011 groups, but a terran deathball is something I think people should explore further. The image that thors, tanks, banshees, battlecruisers, ravens and hellions are all bad, or one-trick ponies, in TvP is probably quite false. People do run scared of HT feedbacks, but if your army is mostly energy units scattered both in front and behind tanks and the HT reach them all then I'd be shocked.
Anyway, check out the guide. I do want to see more mech mixed into TvP play. Perhaps it still will require a buff, and perhaps battle hellions in HotS is all that's required, but I'd like to see it.
I think it should be noted that Supernova has been using tanks in TvP since he was in Code A for the first time. In fact, in his latest match against HerO, he was using his classic three siege tank push. Very effective, and it can make for an amazing contain (especially if you can get the upgrades to deal with armor upgrades on zealots which are currently so popular).
On May 03 2012 23:32 Nuclease wrote: I think it should be noted that Supernova has been using tanks in TvP since he was in Code A for the first time. In fact, in his latest match against HerO, he was using his classic three siege tank push. Very effective, and it can make for an amazing contain (especially if you can get the upgrades to deal with armor upgrades on zealots which are currently so popular).
The problem is Chargelots are still ridiculously strong versus Tanks and Bio. Supernova had 3 bunkers up, a bunch of tanks in good position, medivacs and this was AFTER he successfully held the 4 gate of Hero.
Nonetheless, Hero with a few sentries, a few HT and A LOT of Chargelots just walked down the ramp, into the defensive position, and decimated it. I mean the trade wasn't even cost efficient for the Terran. The Protoss simply garnered a huge supply lead and finished the game.
And this was with 3 bunkers, seiged tanks, SCVs and a good mmm force. If tanks do come into style, it's clear what unit composition counters them.
On May 03 2012 13:54 dignitas.merz wrote: The re-emerging of tanks is the response to Protoss players who cut a lot of corners when they identify 1 rax FE. If you think about it, tanks are most commonly used these days after a 1 rax FE where Terran goes quick double gas as soon as they've put down that expansion. The reason why this is happening is because the past two months or so, a lot of Protoss players have abused the fact that 1 rax FE generally means theres no need for detection and you also have a timing window to deal damage with a 3, 5 or 6 gate, after taking your own expansion. This has resulted in Protoss players skipping robo entirely to get faster 1-1 and 2-2 upgrades of a double forge, or take the parting build where you double expand as protoss and then go 8 warpgate aggression which is really tough to ever come out ahead against if you are doing a 1 rax FE bio.
In order to punish this, terrans started doing the double gas after FE because it enables them to get cloaked banshees while slowly building up a tank count that can be used for
1) Defense against 2 base warpgate aggression such as the 6 gate or the PartinG build. 2) If you deal damage with your cloaked banshees you have a timing window to hit with a "delayed" 1-1-1 push to deny or kill a protoss third.
TL;DR: What Terrans are trying to say is "stop being so greedy and stop cutting corners" or we wouldn't see tanks used very much at all (except as a key opponent in the 1-1-1 of course).
The later the game goes, the more they become dead supply. If you get past the midgame you are better off sacking them and replace them with another ghost or a couple of vikings.
It's not really punishing P for their greed really but rather letting T be greedy without having to worry as much about what type of aggression P could be planning. The tanks are not really great for punishing a greedy protoss, they are simply good against mass sentries and fast colossi. The cloaked banshees are just one option and not really that popular.
If this were true we would see T's take a 3rd or run double ebay behind the tanks. However, neither of these are true, if you look at how people play tank openings. You simply can't afford it because of how expensive tanks are.
The difference between TvZ and TvP is that P's hive starts at 11-12m, so there's practically no room to power up without letting your opponent get really ahead.
On May 03 2012 13:54 dignitas.merz wrote: The re-emerging of tanks is the response to Protoss players who cut a lot of corners when they identify 1 rax FE. If you think about it, tanks are most commonly used these days after a 1 rax FE where Terran goes quick double gas as soon as they've put down that expansion. The reason why this is happening is because the past two months or so, a lot of Protoss players have abused the fact that 1 rax FE generally means theres no need for detection and you also have a timing window to deal damage with a 3, 5 or 6 gate, after taking your own expansion. This has resulted in Protoss players skipping robo entirely to get faster 1-1 and 2-2 upgrades of a double forge, or take the parting build where you double expand as protoss and then go 8 warpgate aggression which is really tough to ever come out ahead against if you are doing a 1 rax FE bio.
In order to punish this, terrans started doing the double gas after FE because it enables them to get cloaked banshees while slowly building up a tank count that can be used for
1) Defense against 2 base warpgate aggression such as the 6 gate or the PartinG build. 2) If you deal damage with your cloaked banshees you have a timing window to hit with a "delayed" 1-1-1 push to deny or kill a protoss third.
TL;DR: What Terrans are trying to say is "stop being so greedy and stop cutting corners" or we wouldn't see tanks used very much at all (except as a key opponent in the 1-1-1 of course).
The later the game goes, the more they become dead supply. If you get past the midgame you are better off sacking them and replace them with another ghost or a couple of vikings.
Thank you Merz. People are too narrow minded to look past just the game they see. You see tanks in 1 GSL match and people are crying "ZOMG TANK PRO NOW!". No. Stop and think. Nothing has changed since 3 months ago regarding the tank and TvP, except the metagame.
On May 04 2012 02:48 architecture wrote: If this were true we would see T's take a 3rd or run double ebay behind the tanks. However, neither of these are true, if you look at how people play tank openings. You simply can't afford it because of how expensive tanks are.
This is the classic use of tanks in TvP imo. MKP uses tanks to stay safe early on, then get a third while containing Parting. Note that just because MKP wins outright with his contain, doesn't mean he was depending on that. Even if Parting had busted out of that contain MKP would still have been in a great position.
Tanks are just super strong in choke points, you don't even need many to have a significant effect. Having three tanks does not gimp the rest of your army, but in certain situations they are worth far more than their cost.
On May 03 2012 13:54 dignitas.merz wrote: The re-emerging of tanks is the response to Protoss players who cut a lot of corners when they identify 1 rax FE. If you think about it, tanks are most commonly used these days after a 1 rax FE where Terran goes quick double gas as soon as they've put down that expansion. The reason why this is happening is because the past two months or so, a lot of Protoss players have abused the fact that 1 rax FE generally means theres no need for detection and you also have a timing window to deal damage with a 3, 5 or 6 gate, after taking your own expansion. This has resulted in Protoss players skipping robo entirely to get faster 1-1 and 2-2 upgrades of a double forge, or take the parting build where you double expand as protoss and then go 8 warpgate aggression which is really tough to ever come out ahead against if you are doing a 1 rax FE bio.
In order to punish this, terrans started doing the double gas after FE because it enables them to get cloaked banshees while slowly building up a tank count that can be used for
1) Defense against 2 base warpgate aggression such as the 6 gate or the PartinG build. 2) If you deal damage with your cloaked banshees you have a timing window to hit with a "delayed" 1-1-1 push to deny or kill a protoss third.
TL;DR: What Terrans are trying to say is "stop being so greedy and stop cutting corners" or we wouldn't see tanks used very much at all (except as a key opponent in the 1-1-1 of course).
The later the game goes, the more they become dead supply. If you get past the midgame you are better off sacking them and replace them with another ghost or a couple of vikings.
Thank you Merz. People are too narrow minded to look past just the game they see. You see tanks in 1 GSL match and people are crying "ZOMG TANK PRO NOW!". No. Stop and think. Nothing has changed since 3 months ago regarding the tank and TvP, except the metagame.
Merz is exactlly right here. I enjoyed reading that.
Merz is right but SupLilSon is choosing to interpret his words in a very biased way.
To say that nothing has changed except the metagame is just stating the obvious, what else do you expect to change? With the meta game in it's current state being able to use tanks effectively is a powerful tool in TvP. But hey if other people want to ignore tanks that's fine by me, I know how useful they can be and I will continue to use them as part of my arsenal.
On May 04 2012 02:48 architecture wrote: If this were true we would see T's take a 3rd or run double ebay behind the tanks. However, neither of these are true, if you look at how people play tank openings. You simply can't afford it because of how expensive tanks are.
This is the classic use of tanks in TvP imo. MKP uses tanks to stay safe early on, then get a third while containing Parting. Note that just because MKP wins outright with his contain, doesn't mean he was depending on that. Even if Parting had busted out of that contain MKP would still have been in a great position.
Tanks are just super strong in choke points, you don't even need many to have a significant effect. Having three tanks does not gimp the rest of your army, but in certain situations they are worth far more than their cost.
On May 03 2012 01:33 Br3ezy wrote: Tanks have never been "submerged" and for that matter can neither be back in fashion or re-emerge. They are used in one of the main styles of TvP and appear occasionally, although not frequently enough throughout the gsl,
You also have to be more specific with the term "mech". Are you coining that term because of siege tanks being added into a mainly bio army? Or is he getting hellions and thors as well.
Having a marine-heavy army and relying on siege tanks will never let you get anywhere aggressive wise. You need mauraders to be able to pick off templar and be able to withstand colsi dps. Colsi will SHIT all over a marine/tank army.
The usage of siege tanks is primarily used as a defensive opening to stop any early-mid game aggression and to be able to take a third base safely to be able to hit a three base timing attack.
Do you have troll blood or are you just annoying? For the sake of you, let me say the poster meant to say "The re-emerging of tanks in STANDARD TvP", although i really shouldnt have to because 111 is NOT a "Main TvP Style", its an All In. Tanks are certainly not a part of standard TvP, and havent been for quite some time except as you say for an occasional defensive opening (which ironically is probably pretty much exactly the kinds of games the OP is asking about). And im pretty sure when he mentioned Mech he meant Mech, i dont know how much clearer you want him to be but when he is talking about BioMech and then mentions that ALSO people have been using Mech to some degree of success it kind of gives you the impression he isnt just talking about Marines with Tanks. Also, if you actually wanted to know if he was talking about true mech you could have just checked out the games he referenced, its obvious you watch frequently and probably have whatever pass is required. Then you could have maybe given some insight into his question instead of just blathering out a load of regurgitated crap.
Also, the word Submerge has nothing to do with the word Emerge. I know they sound similar buddy, but the Antonym for Emerge is "Dissapear".
There are plenty of good posts in this thread answering the question however, and thats great. I know some pro's were experimenting with getting 4 - 5 tanks early (doubling as early-midgame defence) for later use in controlling space around their Bio Ball. This was theoretically supposed to give them more room to micro effectively. Generally tanks are reduced to supporting roles in small numbers in TvP due to the large number of units/abilities protoss have that can mess with a siege tank formation. A large number of siege tanks is just waiting to fall prey to Chargelots, Phoenix, Blink Stalkers, Immortals, Mothership or even Zealots.. My favourite is Phoenix.. Nothing quite like having your tanks floating in mid air doing sweet eff all.
also alot of people have found out what a few know for some time now, unsieged tanks are pretty good in some situations. But getting tanks early against the toss makes you pretty save like many have said. And since tanks are mostly a gas unit, you can go super greedy on the eco. My current early game is full of reapers (in case of canon expand free wins on some maps) and siege tanks and orbitals.
For like a month I'm using tanks in TvP again (I'm just Silver, so don't rate this too high), because I had so many problems with Protoss deathballs, and I gotta say it works better than expected. First some numbers. Only gas-wise you can build 3 tanks instead of 5 vikings (because gas is mostly the limiting factor, atleast for me). You usually get the suggestion to have 7 vikings per Colossus. You could build about 4 tanks for the same gas.
Why would you? - Tanks don't get useless, when all Colossi are down and tanks do a load more damage because of the splash. - You can actually use them to snipe Colossi, too, due to the superior range. - You have to micro Vikings to make them effective, so you can also micro the tanks instead by focus-fireing on something farther away to keep them from firing at the Zealots that stand right next to your bio (my micro is bad, so i don't do it, but still do fine)
Counters are Chargelots and Immos, right? Position the tanks at cliffs, rocks or whatever to make the Chargelots run a longer way to get to them -> more tankshots will get off. Also have a load of Marines stand in front of the tanks and the Chargelots will never get to the tanks. Focusfire something else (Stalkers, Colossi, etc.) and you don't have too much of a problem with that friendly fire. Even if, you probably have some Medivacs to heal that. Immos just die to Marines very quickly. Even Blinkstalkers will have a problem, if you guard the tanks with marines. You can partly bait the Protoss to run into tankrange. They are so self-confident with their deathball now that they run everything in and then are baffled where everything went (note: this is heavily due to low league). Oh yeah, my favorite point... tanks are immobile? ...they're actually as fast as bio (unstimmed, but you don't use stim for normal army movement, do you?). Usually you need to drop the Protoss all over the place to split his army, because if he can keep everything together, he can roll right over a MMMVG ball. Don't drop and let him try that into a bunch of sieged tanks.
I think tanks aren't actually that bad in TvP, if you position them right, micro them a little and guard them decently. (Higher leagues adding Ghosts shouldn't be a problem aswell.)
This is an interesting topic. Based on what I’ve read here, heard from other people’s experiences, and seen on pro streams, tanks are very strong early on. By “strong” I mean they not only melt Protoss gateway armies but also help set up for a solid late game with strong upgrades and a fourth expansion.
The two big concerns, however, seem to be 1) the immobility of tanks compared to gateway armies (for example, someone mentioned blink stalker harass) and 2) a transition out of tank centric play (I refrain from using the term “mech” because there are several styles I’ve seen that combine tanks with marines). I believe lastshadow has found the answer to both of these problems.
Now, before I launch into my analysis of tanks in TvP, I’d like to add the caveat that almost all my knowledge on this topic comes from watching lastshadow’s stream. Despite the many preconceived notions people have about him, I believe him to be an excellent player and reference point for this kind of discussion. He has used tanks against countless top level Koreans (and won). Now, I personally still open MMM in TvP and I’m actually only a Diamond leaguer on the NA server so I’m not trying to claim I’ve found the answer to everything.
Anyways, based on what I’ve seen lastshadow do, he answers problem #1 with early aggression. I’ve seen him do various forms of hellion and banshee harass, but since this is a thread about tanks I’ll stick with the topic at hand.
Basically what he does is plop a large number of tanks and marines in bunkers right outside the Protoss base. He also pulls a few SCVs for repair, but it’s important to note this is not an “all in” because there is a clear macro trend in his play. He then starts to “turtle push” his way forward until the Protoss is either forced to engage or just strait up looses due to indecision. This move effectively negates the problem of Protoss mobility since the Terran army is right in the Protoss’s face, leaving little to no room for clever maneuvering.
The potential for harass is also essentially nill because if the Protoss decides to devote a large portion of army to harass (like blink stalker), lastshadow just un-sieges and A-moves. Granted, something like warp-prisms is viable, but the obvious answer here is to just keep a few marines at home to deal with it.
Lastshadow actually wins the large majority of his games with this push. If, however, the Protoss holds, the next problem is transitioning. While tanks are good, it’s true that they really have no place in the late game. For this reason, I’m only going to touch on the transition since we’re mainly talking about tanks here.
So, in answer to problem #2, lastshadow seems to transition into Thor based play with ghosts in the reserve (I think there are also hellions in the mix, but those are more for late game worker harass).
But wait! I thought High Templar laugh at Thors…
Well, yes and no. High Templar are very good against four or five Thors, but when your army becomes Thor based (and by that I mean numbers with double digits) it’s actually okay.
I’ve seen lastshadow totally whiff all his EMPs and proceed to get Feed Backed into oblivion, and yet he still manages to totally crush the Protoss army in a head on engagement. I'm not exactly sure why this is, actually. My only explanation is that while Feed Back does do significant damage to a Thor, it doesn’t kill the mechanized warrior. In addition, after using up all its energy, the High Templar just becomes “dead weight” (supply that isn’t doing damage in the engagement and is actually hindering the production of units that need to be present for the “killing blow”).
It’s probably also important to note that, at this point in the game; lastshadow has sacrificed the majority of his SCVs and is instead using MULES for mineral income. This gives his army a larger supply count since the Protoss still has to devote a large amount of space to Probes.
While I didn’t answer all the questions people seem to have about tank centric play in TvP, I hope this analysis provided some useful insight.
As a former brood war player: Tanks were always used in TvP, this made Terran a rather inmobile race, but with great defence and a fearsome pushing ability when they leapfrogged their tanks with proper back-up (read vulture).
On May 15 2012 04:43 Gene(S)is wrote: As a former brood war player: Tanks were always used in TvP, this made Terran a rather inmobile race, but with great defence and a fearsome pushing ability when they leapfrogged their tanks with proper back-up (read vulture).
Why couldn't tanks be standard once again in TvP?
The games are too different. The lack of mines alone makes mech insanely much weaker.
Anyone have any ideas/have been experimenting with midgame pushes with no-seige tanks? The dps and range isn't too bad, I guess the problem is that tanks are so gas intensive. Most builds these days are super fine tuned to allow for tech upgrades and medis, with a decent force, but to include tanks seems kind of hard to manage resource wise.
Despite what a lot of people think, mech is viable in TvP. Banshees keep a Protoss pinned back rather easily, and they also force Stalkers over Chargelots. BFH, also despite popular belief, absolutely MURDER Zealots, charge or not. The only reason that they would not kill Zealots is if you're not positioning them correctly. If you have tanks in the back, Thors in the front and Hellions in the middle, then the Zealots struggle getting past the Thors. The Tanks do massive AoE damage to everything (Esp. vs Colossus, where they hit the colossus and everything underneath with a direct hit). Thors are just generally amazing tanks. While you 1-a your mech army, control your Ghosts to snipe HT/Carpet bomb everything with EMP. Raven's PDD makes stalkers 100% useless.
Really, the main issue with mech is being able to build up a maxed army quickly enough so that the Protoss doesn't ninja and wear you down before you can push. 1-1-1 is probably the best choice. It gets cloaked banshees out fast enough to keep a protoss pinned back. Meanwhile, you can expo and build up tanks/Hellions.
On May 15 2012 07:52 ForwardUntoDawn wrote: Despite what a lot of people think, mech is viable in TvP. Banshees keep a Protoss pinned back rather easily, and they also force Stalkers over Chargelots. BFH, also despite popular belief, absolutely MURDER Zealots, charge or not. The only reason that they would not kill Zealots is if you're not positioning them correctly. If you have tanks in the back, Thors in the front and Hellions in the middle, then the Zealots struggle getting past the Thors. The Tanks do massive AoE damage to everything (Esp. vs Colossus, where they hit the colossus and everything underneath with a direct hit). Thors are just generally amazing tanks. While you 1-a your mech army, control your Ghosts to snipe HT/Carpet bomb everything with EMP. Raven's PDD makes stalkers 100% useless.
Really, the main issue with mech is being able to build up a maxed army quickly enough so that the Protoss doesn't ninja and wear you down before you can push. 1-1-1 is probably the best choice. It gets cloaked banshees out fast enough to keep a protoss pinned back. Meanwhile, you can expo and build up tanks/Hellions.
Thing is that, even with a maxed out mech army, you aren't guaranteed to win a fight and you cannot afford to lose a fight. If you ever lose a fight, you lost the game. I mech occasionally (highmaster) with mixed results. I think it's a decent build to whip out but you win a lot because of protoss inexperience dealing with it. A good protoss who utilizes that your army is basically immovable will crush you. Warp prism on one location, blinkstalkers into the main and dts/the main army hitting an undefended base and you will crumble and fall. There is no way to prevent blink ins into your main on most maps, which is a BIG deal. Your army ONLY beats the toss army if its gathered in its full force and you get to emp properly.
I never understood why terran players don't add a few tanks as cover fire for ghosts in late game TvP. They're not going to stop an incoming army of chargelot/immortal/colossus but tank/viking can give a nice buffer zone for ghosts to fire emp/snipe
On May 15 2012 03:31 KLooLESS wrote: The two big concerns, however, seem to be 1) the immobility of tanks compared to gateway armies (for example, someone mentioned blink stalker harass) and 2) a transition out of tank centric play (I refrain from using the term “mech” because there are several styles I’ve seen that combine tanks with marines).
I don't think you need to transition out of tanks, because they're not bad even in lategame as long as you keep positioning them well and guarding them with marines (mainly against chargelots). Lategame you can add Ghosts that as already was mentioned have a nice buffer zone from the tanks.
The main problem I think is that tanks needs their own upgrades with the bioball's one. Besides most of gas goes either to medivacs, upgrades then vikings/ghost depending of P tech route. However the fact siege is only 100/100 allows for early to midgame use, like MVP showed today in GSL final, then you're free to get rid of tanks.
On May 15 2012 07:35 phiinix wrote: Anyone have any ideas/have been experimenting with midgame pushes with no-seige tanks? The dps and range isn't too bad, I guess the problem is that tanks are so gas intensive. Most builds these days are super fine tuned to allow for tech upgrades and medis, with a decent force, but to include tanks seems kind of hard to manage resource wise.
The main problem is, as you mention, their cost. Out of siege they are a less gas effective marauder, and their lack of stim makes it hard to stutterstep without losing them.
I was watching DeMuslium's stream once and a question was asked that included the fact that Raven's Seeker missile rips away Immortal Shields and would that help Mech. He said with that information it probably could, so I decided to experiment with Hellion/Tank/Raven with Banshee support as a main composition and had some mild success. The syngery between Raven and Tank is actually super good for various reasons, but first I'll talk about Tank Mode vs Siege Mode. I'll state this is a Platnium player's thoughts, but I think my input can stir some experimentation in the community if viable.
I'll start on when to use Siege Mode: -When Protoss upgrades are very minimal and unit numbers are low. Siege Mode's splash is much more viable, and combined with bunkers make a powerful defense. This is mostly in the early game. -When holding an advantageous position, due to defender's advantage. An Advantageous position is something like sieging at the natural and holding heavy contains. These usually aren't killing blow tactics and more so to give a heavy advantage in the macro game. -On the high ground. Similar to an advantageous position, but emphasized because Siege mode will always be godly on the high ground because Chargelots are useless on the low ground.
If you thought about my points, you'd notice that you can generalize that Siege mode should only be used when you have an advantageous defensive position. This is because when you're going aggressive, you will rarely be able to have a strong defender's advantage due to Chargelots. The job of Siege Mode is to threaten them to melt away their army. Chargelots don't care about this because they're fast, massable, and have high HP/Shields.
When to use Tank Mode: -vs Immortals. Clearly, Shield mode is outright useless against Immortals. The DPS from Tank mode far outweighs the benefits of Siege mode, even when taking Stalkers into account. -vs Chargelots. The reasons why have been hammered into the ground in countless threads including this one. Siege Mode's damage is so minimal vs Chargelots that it's actually disadvantageous to your units. Tank Mode also allows you to kite pretty decently. -When you need to be mobile: Since Siege mode plants you to the ground, it's obvious you need Tank Mode to be mobile, but I don't think players realize just how great of an advantage staying in Tank Mode in your base is to this. Warp Prism harass is one of the main contributors to defeating mech compositions, despite Tank Mode having the same speed as unstimmed MM. You really only need about 25% of your tanks sieged at all times for defense. The rest of your tanks need to be mobile so they can get into position. Lyyna and Lastshadow makes this quite clear whenever I watch their play, even in Mech TvZ. -When you're in wide areas: It may sound weird, but mobility is really important when you don't have the benefit of forcing your opponent to attack in one area. You need to be able to minimize an Protoss' arc by kiting back to force their units to clump together. Chargelots are also far more dangerous vs Siege mode in wide areas (obv.).
With that established I'll move on to the Raven/Tank syngery.
There are several reasons why this syngery is great vs Protoss. I'll start with the firstly stated.
-Seeker Missle are powerful vs Immortals and even Chargelots. They deal 100 damage to the main target, 50 to close units, then 25 to surrounding units. The splash doesn't sound much, but it's actually better than Siege Mode's damage as it's only 35 vs Chargelots and a measly 10 vs Immortals' shields. The problem with Seeker Missile is of course the energy cost. It's 125 per missle, which means you need 1 Raven per Seeker Missile for this to be viable. This is why Tank Mode is largely perferred as the Ravens won't be able to melt away everything in one go. Essentially, Ravens takes the role of Siege Mode while Tanks take the role of MM. -Raven's Auto Turret grouped with Siege Mode. Combined with advantageous positioning, Auto Turret + Siege Mode creates a powerful defensive position. Auto Turrets are Armored structures, which means they benefit from E-bay's building armor upgrade. Coupled with their 150 HP, This makes them extremely good vs Chargelots as meatshields vs Tanks, and using a row of them would force Chargelots to waste their charge, allowing Siege mode to deal higher effective damage. It should be noted Auto-Turrets also make perfect wall offs. -Siege Mode + Seeker Missle = MASSIVE burst damage. Self-Explanatory.
Last but surely not least is the tech path and upgrades. Ravens are the hardest unit to fully upgrade in the game. Durable Materials(+Duration), Corvid Reactor(+Start Energy), Hi Sec Auto-Tracking(+1 Range), Building Armor(+2 Armor), and most importantly Seeker Missle. Getting Tanks (or mech in general) allows the E-Bay to be free to get those upgrades.
I've practice with this composition and I can easily say this shits all over Immortal/Stalker/Chargelot and upgraded Gateway units in head-on confrontations. Ironically, I've yet to deal with the usual Protoss Deathball.
Of course, a build like this is gas intensive and getting upgrades will require figuring out the priorities.
EDIT: Ironically, today on the NASL Thorzain just showed off the synergy with Tanks and Ravens.
EPT
