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Well lemme give you a possible comp.
Marine Medivac (Standard)
Thor
Viking
Raven
(maybe) some Marauders
Ghosts
(maybe) Banshees but probably not viable since Raven/Viking/Thor/ghost eats upall the gas
And here is the explination:
Thor is just a great unit.If his Corrupter/BL stacks during an a-move they will never do that again.
Viking simple AA-Unit (with upgrades really nice)
Raven (pdd + seeker missle)
Rauders for the Infestors not sure about that yet
Ghost - i rarely see Zergs spamming out the Overseers in their deathball. Yes Snipe is nerfed but what if you EMP all festors? You raven/Viking mix willhave the most awesome party in their lifetime.
You guys phrased some nice points that this Unit-Mix is viable but extremely hard to execute properly. No doubt about that i completly agree with you. BUT this shit is contering the BL/Festor thing pretty nice. If we want to have similiar armys which are also similiar easy to execute we don't need 3 races do we?
T has a super easy early/mid army ,so an a-move army in the Late would be ridicilous.
Z has a hardtime in early/mid - If you don't hit good fungals you will die to random MMM-Pushes
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PS: i should write more on TL :D Bnet i would get flamed so hard for any ofmy posts and here are some really nice discussions going on :D TL 4 NewBlizz
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That Terran comp could take on the Zerg if played perfectly. Keyword: perfectly, like inhuman MKP style. Stim, split your bio, put your marauders in the front to tank, snipe overseers, emp/snipe infestors/queens, focus down brood lords with your vikings, focus fire corrupters whenever possible with the thors, split your vikings, lay down pdd/seeker missle the Zerg air, snipe brood lords with left over energy. I can't even get past the "split your bio" part (then again, I'm not that good).
How do you address the idea that Zerg will always go into the lategame with an advantage? (Queen buff = mass droning = eco advantage) Not only is brood lord/infestor/queen deadly (I mean, look at the micro the Terran needs to combat this), Zergs are getting smarter about timings which means faster Hives, making use of their eco advantage. There isn't enough time to pump out Thors (long build time), Ravens (we need Starport time for medivacs, medivacs are absolutely crucial. Once brood lords are out, you need to devote a reactored starport for vikings. Squeezing out a raven, let alone a decent amount of them, takes lots of time.) Ghosts, bio, etc. Zerg Hive hits us before we can get to our ideal, lategame micro-like-you're-not-human composition.
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On June 20 2012 06:48 Charon1979 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2012 05:27 Snowbear wrote:
I saw david kim also suggesting that terrans should use a raven in the mid game. There is 1 thing he and the others who give this advice, forget: a raven is 200 gas. Every terran knows that gas is a problem in the midgame. You need to push out before broodlords are out, and by getting a simple raven, you delay:
- medivacs
- tanks
- upgrades
- extra factories
Terrans need a ton of gas early-mid game:
- stim
- combat shield
- tanks
- siegetech
- factory
- startport
- medivacs
- bio upgrades
- tank +1 upgrade
- armory
- reactors
By cutting into these, your push before hive will be weaker + a raven isn't really helping in fights vs ling bling infestor. Interesting... I see even high level Terran players floating 800 gas at the 12 minute mark. Do they all have macro issues or is it more like "Marine, marine, marine, marine, a few tanks, upgrades for marines, marines marines,... is not that gasheavy as you want to pretend here? Its not like one single raven (you dont have to suicide it) will delay your tech more than banshee + cloak when you only use one. And its not half of a coinflip to make good use of the raven. Also the raven saves up "anti-creep scans" making more room for mules and thus MINERAL income
That's weird. When I go for a 3 CC build into double grades into tanks into medivacs, I am so gas starved. When I take my 5th and 6th gas it gets better, but I still have a low gas count. Maybe this is because I add 2 extra factories around 13:00 + I make a ton of medivacs + I add 2-3 starports around 14-15:00?
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Since you talked about the raven, just want to point out that we've seen some nice play with it recently, I think we've seen MVP does it this week against Line, and also theSTC against Nestea last week. Basically it was just the classic build with banshee after hellion but instead of going for clock you go for a raven, that way banshee can actually kill Queen thanks to the PDD. The funny part is that, even though he had a raven, he still died hallf of his army to burrow banneling. ^^
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Well im playing with this Comp if the game lasts long enough. Most of the times the Z's just die to my MMM pushes because my splits are (probably better) than some high master ones and im just a Dia-Cunt with shitloads of theoryknowledge.
Well:
Lemme head over to your points:
The MMM Army is your midgame Army. So you have 3 Units of our comp early on. With the Ghosts Academy you unlock already the 4th one. Since you rarely need billions of marauders you can mix them in pretty "early"too.
Mixing in 1 raven shouldn't be the problem then because my MMM Build gives me 4Medivacs in 10:30.
When we talk about this lategame army were Z is using BL/festor only and a few meatshield Lings itslike 16Minutes+ and since we play MMM in midgame there is no 12-13Minute Hive rush possible.
This is enough time to build up a reasonable Army of this micro-like-you're-not-human-comp.
The execution is really difficult but just because we aren't practising it. Since BL's are slow they can't retreat from your pdd o i would start of like that:
1)EMP on the infestors (-> no Bio split needed)
2) Close the gap with your army
->PDD
3) ShiftQue your Vikings
Due to stim your Bio will be in the front to soak up some DMG.
You listed some points which fallout after succesfull emps
Why do you wanna split Bio/Vikings if infestors are EMP'd and you have PDD/PDD's in your army.
As soon as you emp'd and pdd'd you are nearly done.
We just need to get used to this order and Unitcomp.
WHining that our current comp doesn't work well is no option to become good. If this Army is beating the most scary thing Z can do,it's worth to work on it. If we start to use such an intense Army Z will need to change as well.
Like mix in Ultras, use Neural, Ling flanks bla bla and suddenly they have also a super micro intensive army
Thats how the game develops:
Players get new challenges and response to them which will cause new challenges for the opponent.
Its to narrow-minded to say "Yea its tohard to execute"- Conters are always harder to execute.
Just look back how sc2 began and how it is played now
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Are you saying that every stage of the game must be balanced (early game, midgame, lategame)? If so, then I point to TvP as an example of how that isn't necessarily true. Terran seems to have an advantage in the super ridiculous lategame (throw away all SCVs in favor of MULEs), Protoss have an advantage in the lategame (storm + Archons + Collosi), and Terran have an advantage in the early to midgame. The advantage can shift throughout the game, but TvZ is nothing like that at all.
Of course every stage of the game should be balanced.
What blizzard said about TvP is different for a few reasons:
1. It's not that lategame TvP is imbalanced (according to blizz) per se, it's that Terran must do some sort of damage in the early and midgame to come out 'even' with toss in lategame. That doesnt mean you have to attack or all-in either, you can do damage many ways, like threatening drops and forcing Toss not to move out or expand, doing an opening that Toss thinks is another and so reacts sub-optimally (111 vs 2 rax for example), being super greedy when toss thinks you aren't, forcing weird tech, and the period of army and map domination terran has from 10-15 minutes that is nearly impossible for toss to react perfectly against.
2. i never said i think tvp is balanced
3. just because another match-up is imbalanced doesnt mean every match-up should be imbalanced.
4. if lategame tvp is broken, fine. but if they made it so toss build time of like stalkers was crazy high, that wouldn't be a good idea would it? im going to speak out of my ass here, but early and midgame tvp is balanced right (lets pretend it is)? So it would not be a good idea to break early pvt just for the sake of lategame tvp.
5. advantage is not the same as balance. its an advantage when one race has map control or army domination in certain periods of the game - for example, in early game, toss has advantage over zerg, even with ffe, while zerg has it after ffe but before toss takes third, and then toss has it after securing third, et cetera. i wouldnt say toss is imbalanced, thats why they cant secure their third against fast third zerg, i would say zerg has the advantage generally, thats why toss cant take a third.
In TvZ, terran has the advantage after securing third base, but zerg has it when terran is taking third and before securing it. The problem pre-queen buff, was that terran had an advantage both before taking third, and after it, when doing something like reactor hellion fast third.
A race should not have an 'advantage' when it expands - it should be momentarily vulnerable. With reactor hellion fast third, terran could dictate what zerg did while expanding, which made no sense at all. Now, terran must either press an advantage against zerg expanding, OR expand (to third) and not have the advantage. Not both at the same time.
But please. I never said I think TvP is balanced, nor that I know a clue about TvP. If it's broken go start a thread about it elsewhere, we're talking about TvZ here. We're fixing one match-up at a time with our QQ here.
Zerg has the advantage in the lategame right now, I don't think anyone can deny that. Until someone revolutionizes lategame TvZ again (c'mon Mvp, do some strategy such as mass nukes and show us how it is done!), Terran's lategame options are distinctly weaker than Zerg's. If so, then Terran has to have an advantage in the early/midgame, no?
i dont disagree. but it would not be a good idea to, say, bring back rax before depot, to fix lategame ZvT. I am not here denying that lategame TvZ may have problems. I am simply saying early game TvZ had problems, and the patch fixed that.
Secondly, is there really a problem? And I don't think it's as plain as you say it is. Yes, I do think ZvT lategame has flaws. But, it's not like terran can't ever win lategame. There is a HUGE, granted, HUGE problem when zerg has 5 bases vs terran's 3-4. But once terrans is secured on 4 bases, or taking his 5th, he should be past the BL army with a ton of vikings and siege tanks or thors (maybe and/or ghosts too).
We see the metagame evolving right now a lot, so I also think it's too early to make a judgement call. When terran has a straight, standard build order, and is losing after a month of it, then maybe we can say something. But right now terrans are doing all sorts of builds as they figure things out, so who knows. Cant exactly say queen buff was too much when terran keep doing the build that was nerfed, reactor hellion (even 1 rax fe reactor hellion).
We are seeing a lot of terrans go into that really, really strong 3 base push when playing a 1 rax FE into fast third vs zerg fast third w/queen, and it's still uncomfortable for zerg, like it was pre-patch. I'm not saying that after that stage zerg just dominates with imbalance with bl/infestor, but that means bl/infestor is the problem, not queens.
Even when Terrans were able to deny the Zerg's 3rd while taking a quick third (Bomber's quick 3rd OC comes to mind), Terrans RARELY outmacroed the Zerg. I agree that the Queen buff helped Zergs deal with Terran pressure such as excessive 2rax bunker play, but the ramifications are just too great.
Queen buff isn't about 2 rax, and most zergs dont get a queen to deal with 2 rax... you need a spine + 8-12 lings, before which you need drone micro.
Can you post the rep or something of what you are talking about though? im not exactly sure what you mean. How did bomber deny the third of the zergs?
Queen buff was made to address one build - reactor hellion into fast third while denying zerg's third. That was a big problem. That was a stupid build - terran having an advantage while expanding. You are supposed to be weak while expanding, or disadvantaged, as in passive, not active.
If a Terran and Zerg play the game you described, Zerg can easily defend his 3rd (unless it's a 2-base all-in from the Terran, in which case the Zerg can probably crush it and win anyway). The Terran takes his 3rd and the Zerg takes his 4th, and suddenly Infestor/Blords come knocking at the Terran's door. Perhaps the Terran manages to fend it off... then he dies to the instant Ultralisk remax.
As artosis said casting in the GSL recently, yes, if a zerg knows a 2 base all-in is coming (or any race for that matter, except maybe toss but that is questionable since they generally expand the slowest, but same point), and he took his third, he should hold it. It's only when he doesnt know its coming, or gets outplayed, that he should lose.
Thats why a lot of zergs a couple months ago complained about immortal/sentry - even when they knew it was coming, you couldn't beat it. But, now, the metagame has shifted and zergs can beat it if they know it's coming. Thus, it was balanced all along, but it took 3 fucking months before zergs figured it out. In fact, toss still mostly do immortal/sentry all-in and win with it (quite frankly I dont ever see toss lose with it, except once, with a huge mistake by the toss after he already killed the third by esssentially losing his army for free by being overaggressive and just beign dumb).
The queen buff was also to help zergs against this. Zergs just died to 2 base all-ins when goingf fast third, even when they knew it was coming, so the queen buff helps with that. The bigger problem was moreso scouting, which was the point of the overlord buff, since scouting terran with that slow overlord was impossible and so random.
Zerg is SUPPOSED to hold his third against all-ins he knows it's coming. That was the whole problem - zergs didnt know it was coming because of UP overlord, but even if they did, they died, or if they held it, it didnt matter, terran just took his third the same time zerg did and just ended up even when he should be very behind for failing with his all-in.
That would be like saying toss should be able to deny a 1 rax FE even with a 1 gate FE, or that terran who expand SHOULD die to 4 gate if they know it's coming and react properly, or that terran who expand should die to a 2 base toss all-in.
Terran simply cannot hope to outmacro Zerg because Zerg has been overdroning heavily due to his new protection, the Queen. Whatever pressures the Terran may throw at the Zerg, the Zerg will repel them and drone heavily. This translates into an economic advantage, a macro advantage, and later, an army advantage. There is a reason why Terrans opt to pressure and disrupt the Zerg's macro - they need to do so in order to keep up. Most Terran build orders had this general plan:
You aren't supposed to out-macro the opponent. You are supposed to be even on macro if you both play the standard game. That's the whole point. Terran is not supposed to outmacro Zerg when doing a 2 base aggression build that if it fails he can just take an equally timed third, or Terran outmacro zerg when Terran does a build that denies Zerg from taking a third (terran can all-in a zerg on 2 base, but they shouldn't out-macro them at the same time).
Pressure is supposed to be held if you know it's coming... that was the problem. Maybe you should play a macro game, instead of trying to do timing attacks that now leave you behind due to the new, good, balancing changes. Play a macro game, and outplay the opponent.
Yes, maybe lategame ZvT is imbalanced, that should be fixed on it's own. In the meantime, play a macro game and just lose 5% more than normal. whatever. These arent imbalances so huge you can't handle it below GM level.
Fast expand
- Put on light/decent amounts of pressure, forcing the Zerg to make lings or blings to deal with it
- The Zerg used some of his larva on units, and the worker count is more or less equal
- A slugfest occurs with mech/marine tank/bio vs. the Zerg composition
Now, take away step 2 of the game plan. That's why Terrans are trying to find new, innovative ways to pressure (hellion/marauder, hellion/banshee, ghost rush to kill queens?), new ways to all-in (Zergs aren't dumb, they know how to counter all-ins and they will learn), or new ways to outmacro the Zerg, or at least macro on par with the Zerg (ridiculously greedy 4OC builds are suggested, but even then, I'm skeptical about Terran's ability to macro with the Zerg without pressure)
Honestly, I think the best option left for Terrans is pure bio with crazy multitasking. Straight up assaults vs. muta and insane amounts of drops + pre-splitting vs. infestor/blings/lings/t3
Yes, and we see lots of effective pressure, like 1 rax fe reactor hellion starport - you take a third and dont deny zergs third, but can do a lot of damage if zerg doesnt react. Even if it's a passive game, terran is still equal with the zerg as he pushes before zerg can have hive tech out. broodlords will never be out before terrans 3 base 150+ suppyl push, even if he rushes hive. And dont tell me ultras are op, that would be a joke.
It seems like most pros say muta is not really viable at high level play exactly because of fast third play (going 20+ mutas vs standard fast third play that was popular pre-patch even, like the imba reactor hellion fast third is just autolose vs the 3 base push since ling/bane/muta will get owned by it). Terran has the 'advantage' if zerg techs to hive, although he is risking behind severely unprepared if zerg holds the drop/bio pressure if terran decides to do that. nothing is stopping terran from going viking/ghost/thor right away if he sees infestor opening.
I'm not saying TvZ lategame is without it's problems. But early game TvZ was OP, and it's now fixed. Hopefully, blizz will fix any issues, if there are any, in lategame TvZ, but it is still way, way too early to tell. Even Vr/Colossus was OP for a long time, and after it was 'balanced' with the infestor buff, we started to see zergs just beat such play by going mutas, making the infestor buff unnecessary (turned out infestor buff was necessary to make zergs beat robo-macro play, but no one did that back then).
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Sure, let's micro like we're not human. We may have Zerg on the back foot...
...and then Zergs learn to split their Infestors and burrow them. Then they throw in Banelings so we're forced to split our bio, even after EMPs.
Honestly, mixing in one Raven IS a problem. You need to pump out Medivacs as soon as possible then switch to Viking production to combat the Brood Lords. Once you have your 4-6 Medivacs, you have to play super safe with them because they are crucial - you need the Starport time. After that, your Starport should be solely dedicated to Vikings.
You mention that we have a midgame MMM army... but that requires LOTS and LOTS of Medivacs to be cost-effective. MKP and Flash taught us that. The key to MMM is to constantly produce MMM and trade with the Zerg, but retain the Medivacs until you have 10-14. That's the point when MMM starts to overpower the Zerg.
Your Starport will be quite busy with constant Medivac production and then oh-crap-Brood-Lord-panic-Vikings. To squeeze a Raven in there, I seriously think you need two Starports. Two Starports are really costly to maintain, especially since you need CONSTANT MMM production in order to trade with the Zerg.
Basically, I think that a "midgame MMM force" is just not possible. Either go full bio (meaning bio all game long, don't even let your Zerg opponent get to Hive by forcing trades everywhere and retaining Medivacs) or prepare for the lategame (do not use MMM or be aggressive with it, double Starports for Vikings/Brood Lords/Ravens, add in Tanks to be safe and extra Factories to start Thor production, build up Ghosts, etc.)
Either way, be ready to micro your heart out in order to let your units be cost-effective against the superior Zerg army with better economy.
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Well if they split infestors scan + snipe 
This is an endless discussion, and having a high skill gap is good.Otherwhise it would be senseless to play competitive if everything would be so easy to be mastered within a week 
MMM is cheap and you can easily power 2starports of 3 base
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On June 20 2012 07:39 Rockafella wrote:
1 Rax FE into fast Starport (using the factory's techlab to make 1 Raven and then start double Medivac from making a reactor on the aforementioned fact?) Surely a raven could be used for a small bit of harass with the auto turret getting 1 or 2 worker kills at least, (ala fast cloak banshee) plus helping with the creep-spread for the rest of the game.
The rest I don't have much of a solution about, TvZ seems pretty hard at the moment!
I agree that the Raven is comparable to the Banshee in terms of gas/time investment. However, Ive found that its worse than the cloakshee in almost every aspect.
The Banshee will, in ideal circumstances:
1. Snipe a queen at the main. The extra queens are usually by the natural and if youre lucky you can chase the main queen down.
2. Force a spore or two to be made, thus "killing" 1-2 drones right there.
3. Get a few drone kills.
4. Ideally (map dependant) you can deny/delay the 3rd with your 2nd banshee should you choose to make one.
In comparison, the Raven wont be able to do 1 and 2, perhaps 3 but definitely not 4. Maybe it can delay mining a bit longer since the autoturrets will take longer to kill than to chase away the banshee.
But, I might be completely off here or not doing it right.
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1raven 2 banshee is insane
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On June 20 2012 18:15 frezMki wrote:
1raven 2 banshee is insane
You mean, 2 banshees 1 raven.
....
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On June 20 2012 18:15 frezMki wrote:
1raven 2 banshee is insane
against what?
comes too late to deny 6 min 3rd base. if u make raven first u can't harrass 3rd with banshees early enough. if u make banshee first pdd (which works vs queens) is not rdy.
u basically left with trying to deny creep. try that vs 4 queens - queens win ofc. support with hellions can work if there is no roach. what if zerg gets fast spire? bam! banshee ands raven instantly useless.
it's better too get cloak and hope for a few dronekills. i tried it. trust me.
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Ehm..broski
pdd denies queens+spores ^^ since the additional queens aren't in the bases you get free queens + free drones and dont even must HOPE
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So stupid that it is even effective. But just for a shortperiod of time
Smart Z'swill spread around the Bunker or just wait for a few lings. With 2-3 queens to spread creep this "strategy" isn't really viable in a long term game. Maybe it makes some early agressions / all-ins stronger.
Like MarauderHelion-Allin
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I tend to go Marine/Medivac with Raven support (High Platinum/ low Diamond). I'd say I win about 70-80% of my TvZ (but usually due to outmacroing my opponent). The problem I see with Ravens, is that for their heavy gas price and infastructur investment they are simply a bit too weak in various aspects.
- too slow to keep up with pure Bio: so I can't utilize the mobility of Bio to its fullest.
- very high energy coast for Seeker Missile: which is the main spell to deal with mass banelings/ infestors.
- only range 6 on Seeker Missile: so a good Infestor player can just fungal (range 9) the Ravens and I never get of a Seeker Missile
For the early game I used to do some Marine pressure into early expand but with the Queens range buff it gets a lot harder. I have experimented with simply letting the Zerg build drones while I get the fastest 16 Marine drop with Stim, Combat Shield and +1/+1 to do damage. If the Zerg was greedy he loses a lot (or outright) and if he build enough defenses I am usually about even.
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Can any of you tell me some replays/vod of that "modern mech" style in tvz? I missed most of the recent tournaments, because of Diablo 3 :/ So im really not up to date, but the style sounds very interesting.
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On June 20 2012 14:32 Entirety wrote:
I point to TvP as an example of how that isn't necessarily true ... Terran have an advantage in the early to midgame.
Uh, no... no no no. Maybe that was true in 2010 when people did 2 rax openings and 3 rax all ins and protoss had no idea how to react. Protoss has the big advantage in the early game... both players can expand at around the same time and terran is forced to bunker up and try to not take eco damage vs the protoss's first units while being scared of an all in, while protoss has FULL map control until midgame.... and even then, they keep map control if they dont rush tech or they do heavy gateways/all in.
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EPT
