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I've been playing with pure bio for a while, mid master terran over in KR, and it's dangerous. You basically have to play it like you're playing vs a protoss that starts with zealot charge (if you understand what that means). Basically you have to rely on you being smarter than your opponent and hitting key timings that are very sketchy. Especially with the queen buff, the amount of creep in your way gives zerg so much time to prepare for these bio assaults.
It is quite a viable strategy however, but it's the most effective if you go 14cc since you will be on 2 base for longer than you would if you had tanks to help defend.
Early pressure you want to stick with frontal assaults to drill the zerg down, but right before the mid game hits you want to start dropping chaotically or you will soon be out macro'd to a three base zerg.
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Such a well written guide, I've been playing this style recently with mixed sucess - it's extremely unforgiving that if you mess up an engagement or didn't micro well enough you can die so easily, but if you do micro well enough it seems so powerful.
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On June 17 2012 07:42 Strykerz wrote: I've been playing with pure bio for a while, mid master terran over in KR, and it's dangerous. You basically have to play it like you're playing vs a protoss that starts with zealot charge (if you understand what that means). Basically you have to rely on you being smarter than your opponent and hitting key timings that are very sketchy. Especially with the queen buff, the amount of creep in your way gives zerg so much time to prepare for these bio assaults.
It is quite a viable strategy however, but it's the most effective if you go 14cc since you will be on 2 base for longer than you would if you had tanks to help defend.
Early pressure you want to stick with frontal assaults to drill the zerg down, but right before the mid game hits you want to start dropping chaotically or you will soon be out macro'd to a three base zerg. I agree, typically I try to get a PF at my 3rd while I do a medivac timing, otherwise it's very hard to secure bases with bio and counter attacks are always a huge issue.
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United States4883 Posts
I maintain the idea that Pure Bio is still an aggressive variant on Bio-Mech (marine/tank and marine/thor). That being said, we've seen pros skew more towards the bio side of things ever since the Stephano double ups style started happening: delaying tanks, getting early medivacs, getting double ups, taking faster 3rds, etc. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THE TANK IS USELESS, IT MEANS THE PREVIOUS TANK TIMINGS ARE OUTDATED.
I think this guide is an excellent way to open and certainly covers all the specifics of opening in an MMM style, but the explanation of the "lategame" is flat and weak. I'm convinced that Pure Bio covers only early- to mid-game or a late-game in which is zerg is really battered down.
Generally speaking if you let a Zerg get 20 corruptors, 15 Broodlords 10 Infestor + Lings and Blings you haven’t been active enough.
I agree...you should have essentially won the midgame with Bio if you're doing it correctly. But WHAT IF you get into a situation like this? WHAT IF the zerg somehow makes it to the late game effectively using good trades, counterattacks, etc? Pure Bio has no answer other than "you should have beat them in the midgame" and that's weak. That's why I 100% believe that tanks/thors are the necessary additions LATER in the game. And that's why I call Pure Bio a subgroup of Bio-Mech.
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IdrA, mediocre NA zerg and great authority on ZvT. Of course, the last Terran he beat was Domorin (2-1), before going 0-4 to MorroW, 0-2 to STX, 0-2 to SeleCT, 0-2 to Dream, 0-2 to Thorzain, and (you guessed it) 0-2 to DeMusliM.
1. You're appealing to authority. 2. IdrA is hardly even such an authority. 3. This was a random comment from his stream where he does little but talk bs anyway, as I'm sure he's aware.
As for the topic, I agree (mostly) with the poster above me. I don't see why it's so important that you go completely bio throughout. Surely there are many situations where a transition to mmm/tank is preferable. Why go bio anyway, just to prove that it's viable? Frankly, I would love to see more strategies that diverge depending on your opponent's moves. I can see that "advertising" it as pure bio has a certain charm, but I do truly believe this can be improved by considering if, when and how tank transitions should be done. Also, the late-game as described by you is not in any way viable: unless zerg is already far behind or completely botches his fungals, MMM should never beat infestor brood lord. MMM Raven Viking just might, but fungals will still be a problem, of course.
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United States4883 Posts
I like Klyberess .
There is a late-game bio-focused followup I've been curious about where you start using nukes and add a handful of BC's, if you want to try that sometime. The BC's act like gigantic point defense drones for the corruptors and make the vikings more useful while the nukes replace drops.
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I agree that my way going about the lategame is by no means optimal and implies, as mentioned several times, that zerg is already behind. That has by all means a very high chance of beeing the case cause you force almost always lings and force the zerg to make constantly the difficult decision to either spend his gas on teching, upgrading, infestors or banelings and one miss-judgment can easily mean defeat in the next minute.
I have not entered a lategame scenario where i got stuck with Bio and overrunned by t3 afterwards, i almost always lost due to really, really bad engagements and miss micro. That's also mentioned above as it is very unforgiving to play bio for you as terran but like i wrote here it's the same for zerg, so the player with less mistakes will most likely win.
So back to the lategame: As i have not come into this situation often i would really like to see a discussion about this and i will GLADLY add some options into the guide when going lategame versus zerg. I think about it like this:
Lategame vs Z: a) Raven Transition b) Thor / Viking c) Mech (-> is this even viable cause you are at 0/0 most likely?)
So if you have experiences with these transitions, use them often yourself and could provide some insight on how you do them what is important and what's difficult and how you prevent getting overrunned while techswitching away from bio etc. PLEASE share them with us, i'll be glad to add them and looking forward to a constructive discussion about that =)
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Disclaimer: The majority of my post is theory,(except for the part about Thors) you are free to ignore it.
To the above post, I use something somewhat similar to Bio; Marine/Marauder/Thor/Hellion/Medivac, and it's quite similar to Bio in large engagements, but the composition has the power and sturdiness of the Thor and the AoE of the Hellion to support the high DPS of Marine/Marauder, giving it staying power in the late-game while still being able to be mobile as you do not need extremely good positioning using Siege Tanks in order to have a chance against Zerglings, Ultralisks, and Infestors. You can combine this with Ravens, --and maybe a few Vikings or BC's to take Corruptor fire-- in the late-game against Broodlord/Corruptor/Infestor.
Unfortunately I don't have much experience against Broodlords and I promptly get owned by them in all instances due to late Ravens, but against Ultralisks I find Thors to be extremely good, and in other games where I used to go Bio Mech I went for Thor/Marine against Broodlord/Infestor, and with a really good concave you can definitely beat that with Marine/Marauder/Thor so long as you focus down the Broodlords with your Thors and a-move everything else to kill things that end with "ling".
As for transitioning, I'd say around the time you take your 7th and 8th gasses add 2-3 factories and start double/triple Thor production as well as double armory for upgrades, since you badly need to catch up to the Zerg. In the mean time you can use drops to keep him pinned as long as possible, or just throw up 2-3 bunkers.
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I heard aLive played bio TvZ in GSTL with success, so I'm intrigued. However I'm not sure how this style could ever deal with infestors well enough, since without tank focus fire killing infestors becomes super super hard. I feel Infestors get just way too cost effective even against good splitting. (fungal and pull the infestors back once zerglings/ultras die = only energy lost)
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Hi, im a high masters terran, ive been messing around with bio as well for a long time, i feel that one thing you are missing, which i feel is essential to that style of play is ghosts. Especially once hive tech is out the main problem isn't really the broodlords or the ultralisks themselves, its how they combo with infestors, if you try to stim marines in to kill broods and the zerg plops down some fungles to keep you back, your army will just melt. Targeting the infestors with marauders is more of an opportunistic thing i have found, if they are out of position you can snipe a few but you can't really rely on that to work all of the time. Now if you can emp those infestors then stim in, you are good to go. Also having the barracks infrastructure up makes it fairly easy to transition into a mass nuke late game if you are interested in that kind of thing.
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On June 18 2012 07:22 Micromancer wrote: Hi, im a high masters terran, ive been messing around with bio as well for a long time, i feel that one thing you are missing, which i feel is essential to that style of play is ghosts. Especially once hive tech is out the main problem isn't really the broodlords or the ultralisks themselves, its how they combo with infestors, if you try to stim marines in to kill broods and the zerg plops down some fungles to keep you back, your army will just melt. Targeting the infestors with marauders is more of an opportunistic thing i have found, if they are out of position you can snipe a few but you can't really rely on that to work all of the time. Now if you can emp those infestors then stim in, you are good to go. Also having the barracks infrastructure up makes it fairly easy to transition into a mass nuke late game if you are interested in that kind of thing.
İ share your problem and im random so essentially imget 1/3 the experience as you do. İ simply have to involve tanks vikings thors and nukes lategame. Dont stress about it. İf it gets to the lategame just have fun and do crazy tech switches.
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On June 18 2012 13:49 PurpleBebop wrote: Like the guide. I do bio as well. However, I don't see a spot in your build for bunkers, though, I have not watched the replays yet.
You are right as i do not use Bunkers early game. It depends on what i scout to put them down. Normally you will be save against any pressuring amount of Zerglings cause you produce a high amount of marines from the start so you do not need a bunker.
You do need at least 2-4 Bukers against any kind of allin which depends on what you scout and how agressive he attacks your three marines with zerglings.
But that's reactionary ![](/mirror/smilies/wink.gif)
Also you can pull 1-2 SCVS to buffer some dmg and pull them back before they die which is in most cases unnecesary.
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I know I am just a diamond player, but lately Ive been just rolling zergs in the lategame just by focusing on good marine splits, engagements and of course having 10 to 12 medivacs. I have even taken of a few games of of master players.
Does this actually work in high masters is it viable to just kill everything with spreads and good medivac numbers
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If you go E-bay and start +1 before laying down techlab, you can hit a timing where both combat shield and +1 hit at roughly the same time. In the OP's build combat shield hits when +1 is like halfway through, on the other hand he moves out earlier.
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On June 18 2012 21:18 Vivax wrote: If you go E-bay and start +1 before laying down techlab, you can hit a timing where both combat shield and +1 hit at roughly the same time. In the OP's build combat shield hits when +1 is like halfway through, on the other hand he moves out earlier.
Yeah i know that and i decided to push out without the +1 just because there are a lot less zerglings than if you push with +1 and i think that there also could be banelings?
It's mainly to force zerglings as early as possible but both pushes can work out nicely, any other thoughts on that ?=)
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switched from Zerg ( platinium ) to terran ( falled in silver ) 2 months ago I'm playing 14 CC into full bio ( in TvP and TvZ ) I'm back in platinium with terran now ! Bio is good the health
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How do you react to Zerg going double hatch before pool?
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On June 18 2012 23:29 Qibla wrote: How do you react to Zerg going double hatch before pool?
Not seen till now, maybe someone else can get you some insight. Sorry.
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Z's perspective
Finnaly a build that i like to play against. Not because it's easy to beat, just because it is enjoyable and it does not incluse a 15 min turtle like marine tanks or mech play. Keep it up with the good guides
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