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This is a discussion thread: I want to brainstorm with other people to try to figure out how to get to the endgame safely and what the endgame of terran consists of.
As a lot of people know, the queen buffs force terrans into builds like 3OC, limiting their early aggression further and promote macro games in general.
Combine this with maps like Metropolis and we Terrans feel a bit screwed since the general consensus is that the terran lategame is weaker than the zergs and protoss, and that terrans need to do damage early to keep up with zergs and protosses.
But I want to consider if there's any way to make terran more viable in the lategame. Maybe it's time for terrans to become the super turtly aim-at-starving-you-out race that use their defensive capabilities to just grab half the map while being more cost efficient and slowly transitioning to a mixture of the gas and time heavy units that we can't get on medium/smaller maps that end faster. Maybe it's time for protosses and zergs to cry about our lategame for a change.
The main inspiration for this post is watching games like MVP vs Squirtle on Metropolis in the GSL finals, and also Bomber vs Ostojiy in the red bull battlegrounds.
http://blip.tv/day9tv/bomber-t-vs-ostojiy-z-g1-red-bull-battlegrounds-austin-group-c-day-1-6173789
We have a couple of issues first and foremost, that need to be answered.
Does terran even have a viable lategame composition in the non-mirror matchups? Is it possible to reach the stage in the game where you can get those units without dying, and what's the most efficient way to get there, also what unit composition is the shit in the lategame?
There are a couple of ideas regarding the terran lategame that have been readily accepted for a while, and maybe it's time to start making build orders and game plans around them.
One of these ideas is the mass orbital combined with SCV sacrifice to get a massive (up to 50-60 food more) standing army compared to the opponents.
Another idea is to use planetary fortresses as choke points and defensive areas to split the map in half and buy you enough time to transition into your late game tech armies while getting their upgrades.
If we examine the unit compositions being used in both matchups it's MMMVG vs Protoss and MMTankviking vs Protoss right now.
What units are possible to use in the lategame to replace the standard midgame armies that terrans use in both matchup who will also give additional benefits once you reach the point where you have done the transition?
The units we have availible that I can see having some lategame potential with this turtle-style are: Battlecruisers, Ravens, Reapers.
For Protoss I think replacing vikings with battlecruisers is a key idea. Your MMVG should transition into Marauder medivac battlecruiser ghosts. The battlecruisers can fill in the same purpose as vikings by dealing with colossi, especially if they can get yamato shots off, while also being useful vs the ground army of Protoss. It'll force a more stalker/HT heavy composition which marauders are good against, and which ghosts also excel against.
Reapers are also a unit that has some potential in lategame TvP, since they're basically more buff marines that can demolish bases a lot faster, do cliff harasses without using medivacs and trade a lot better against protoss ground.
Against zerg: Battlecruisers and Ravens could work well against everything the zerg has, considering Yamatos, PDDs and HSMs can deal with both corruptors and Infestors, while marine/marauders can keep the ground covered.
Saccing SCVs while using mules also allow for the terran to have a massive advantage in army supply while also enabling the terran to switch back into MASS marine/marauder that they opened up with if the protoss/zerg uses to specialized units to deal with the BC/Raven combinations, and as we all know. If the bio count gets to high and Z/P doesn't have the required "counter" unit, they simply die.
The key problems so far with these units have been the gas cost and time investment to tech to them, get their upgrades, and mass them up to the point where you're comfortable. The split map scenario with PFs and turtling on 4-5 base while getting all the upgrades and infrastructure to support a terran army that can trade well enough with zerg and protoss to starve them out and eventually crush them by superior army count is aimed at circumventing these problems.
These are some ideas that I've seen tossed around and in use by pros to some extent on the larger maps, especially Metropolis. Do you think it's viable? How do you think we can reach this stage of the game build order, strategy and unit composition-wise, and what compositions would work out well against either race in your opinion if not the ones I've listed.
PS: This kind of gameplay will result in long as hell games lasting 30+ ingame minutes at the very least. That is potentially a very big downside if you want to get more games out and don't have the patience for Goody style games.
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The general strategy I feel should be something like this:
You start up with the standard opening of 1 rax FE/3OC/Hellion opening etc and try to deal as much damage as you can, and once the zerg/protoss stabilize and get their super tech out you fall back into turtling, ready with the PFs and vikings/ghosts so you can delay their doom push up and successfully turtle on half map until you can transition to the lategame units that will allow you to take the fight to the opponents straight up instead of getting demolished by them.
The questions to me are the timings, what builds work better and worse with this kind of gameplan and strategy. If your eventual goal is air style terran with BCs, maybe pure bio play is better than the mech oriented marine tank in TvZ for instance.
Some other questions are when you should start making the PFs, when you should mass up on Orbitals and when you should start saccing SCVs. Should you be going for BCs or Ravens first? Which would help you further turtle up until you have swapped your army out for a lategame one and sacced SCVs?
Note: All of this depends on whether terran has a viable lategame or not, regardless of how hard it is to get there. If we can establish that they do have a lategame army that can compete with Protoss/Zerg and people start experimenting with getting there I think it'll eventually get easier and faster to reach to that point, so the discussion should be on the units for now, with strategy being less of a focus until the unit compositions in the endgame are established and agreed upon.
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On June 20 2012 22:58 Dalavita wrote:
Note: All of this depends on whether terran has a viable lategame or not, regardless of how hard it is to get there. If we can establish that they do have a lategame army that can compete with Protoss/Zerg and people start experimenting with getting there I think it'll eventually get easier and faster to reach to that point, so the discussion should be on the units for now, with strategy being less of a focus until the unit compositions in the endgame are established and agreed upon.
I don't think you can question the fact that 200/200 Battlecruiser/Raven with upgrades just does not die, ever (unless you get Archon Toileted... MVP). Particularly in TvP, I don't see any reason why you can't just build 3-5 extra Starports once you get 4 bases and start adding in Battlecruisers or Ravens slowly, because there's no way even all the Ghosts you're building are going to be eating up 4 bases of gas.
So, maybe it goes like:
Standard 1-rax FE into bio pressure. When you add the second Starport for the inevitable Colossi, instead of immediately building Vikings out of it or getting a Reactor, get a Tech Lab (which is quick to build), and research HSM and Corvid Reactor while pushing/trading. Then, as soon as those upgrades are finishing, drop 3 more TL Starports, a Fusion Core, and a second Armory. Use your bio/Ghost force to keep the Protoss expansion count as low AS POSSIBLE (obviously don't go all out if you can't engage effectively - the goal is to slow him down, not insta-kill him). Build up a few Ravens, and then switch into Battlecruiser/Marine/Ghost. With Raven support to spot Observers, you can make maximum use of EMP, and then if you split the BC ball appropriately, you just waltz over the Protoss player.
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I don't really see what you want to accomplish here. Re-invent the MU's?
I'm 0 in TvZ, so no comment on that.
But about TvP i really think that almost every terran should know how he wants the game, usually what i face (from P's PoV)
1. Some early marine-bunker pressure
2. Stim/concus/medivac timing.
2.5 Scout and react if any 2 base allin from P is coming.
3. Heavy drop/multi-pronged attack play.
4. Deny third of P as long as possible.
And lategame you want:
1. MMMVG
2. Good positioning
3. EMP's
Lot's of orbitals, and sacking ~30 scv's.
And ALOT of production, so you can remax fast.
Terran is strongest Early-Midgame, you should use it. I don't see why terran should be "surviving until the lategame", that's the P's position on the MU, maybe in TvZ it's like that.
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The real problem with "latgame terran" is that Marines and Marauders are so horribly inefficient in terms of supply (yet amazingly efficient resource-wise). If you go to other more supply efficient units, such as tanks, thors or battlecruisers - they have very little mobility - so you're going to need a lot of static D, otherwise units with any kind of mobility are just going to run around your big army, harass your worker lines, and kill off all your buildings.
I think everyone knows what the terran supply efficient units are, so its not a question of unit comp at all. The question is how to get a ton of these units, be safe against rushes, keep up economy-wise and have enough static defense? And once you have that, how do you attack in a way that doesn't have grave difficulty dealing with counter attacks? Even omitting counter attacks, once you have more than 3 bases, how do you defend on maps where there are multiple attack paths (i.e. most maps).
The issue isn't composition. It's positioning and tactics. Protoss and Zerg have mobile supply efficient units like blink stalkers, infestors, queens, pheonixes, etc. to answer these questions. The best things terran have which are supply efficient and mobile are ravens and.... vikings?
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On June 20 2012 23:26 Jazzman88 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2012 22:58 Dalavita wrote:
Note: All of this depends on whether terran has a viable lategame or not, regardless of how hard it is to get there. If we can establish that they do have a lategame army that can compete with Protoss/Zerg and people start experimenting with getting there I think it'll eventually get easier and faster to reach to that point, so the discussion should be on the units for now, with strategy being less of a focus until the unit compositions in the endgame are established and agreed upon. I don't think you can question the fact that 200/200 Battlecruiser/Raven with upgrades just does not die, ever (unless you get Archon Toileted... MVP). Particularly in TvP, I don't see any reason why you can't just build 3-5 extra Starports once you get 4 bases and start adding in Battlecruisers or Ravens slowly, because there's no way even all the Ghosts you're building are going to be eating up 4 bases of gas. So, maybe it goes like: Standard 1-rax FE into bio pressure. When you add the second Starport for the inevitable Colossi, instead of immediately building Vikings out of it or getting a Reactor, get a Tech Lab (which is quick to build), and research HSM and Corvid Reactor while pushing/trading. Then, as soon as those upgrades are finishing, drop 3 more TL Starports, a Fusion Core, and a second Armory. Use your bio/Ghost force to keep the Protoss expansion count as low AS POSSIBLE (obviously don't go all out if you can't engage effectively - the goal is to slow him down, not insta-kill him). Build up a few Ravens, and then switch into Battlecruiser/Marine/Ghost. With Raven support to spot Observers, you can make maximum use of EMP, and then if you split the BC ball appropriately, you just waltz over the Protoss player.
As a protoss player, I have to admit that Battlecruisers are scary. The best answer we have for them is stalkers and void rays - which are two units I don't really want to make in TvP. Stalkers because they melt to tanks and marauders, Void Rays because they melt to vikings and marines. Tank/BC with a few vikings is definitely a force to be reckoned with in TvP. Like I mentioned above, though, the issue is that once the game goes late, you don't really have to deal with it - you can just go around it or attack at weak spots, because it's so incredibly immobile.
Edit: Also, feedback is a pain.
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Obviously our main problem with a lategame transition is our upgrades.
3/3 Bio is the most important, but we can definitely say that getting 3/3 Mech is not important.
If we can find a way to use our upgrades optimally (if it's even an issue in TvZ in the first place), I can see BC/Raven/Viking as a viable lategame composition.
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On June 20 2012 23:26 Jazzman88 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2012 22:58 Dalavita wrote:
Note: All of this depends on whether terran has a viable lategame or not, regardless of how hard it is to get there. If we can establish that they do have a lategame army that can compete with Protoss/Zerg and people start experimenting with getting there I think it'll eventually get easier and faster to reach to that point, so the discussion should be on the units for now, with strategy being less of a focus until the unit compositions in the endgame are established and agreed upon. I don't think you can question the fact that 200/200 Battlecruiser/Raven with upgrades just does not die, ever (unless you get Archon Toileted... MVP). Particularly in TvP, I don't see any reason why you can't just build 3-5 extra Starports once you get 4 bases and start adding in Battlecruisers or Ravens slowly, because there's no way even all the Ghosts you're building are going to be eating up 4 bases of gas. So, maybe it goes like: Standard 1-rax FE into bio pressure. When you add the second Starport for the inevitable Colossi, instead of immediately building Vikings out of it or getting a Reactor, get a Tech Lab (which is quick to build), and research HSM and Corvid Reactor while pushing/trading. Then, as soon as those upgrades are finishing, drop 3 more TL Starports, a Fusion Core, and a second Armory. Use your bio/Ghost force to keep the Protoss expansion count as low AS POSSIBLE (obviously don't go all out if you can't engage effectively - the goal is to slow him down, not insta-kill him). Build up a few Ravens, and then switch into Battlecruiser/Marine/Ghost. With Raven support to spot Observers, you can make maximum use of EMP, and then if you split the BC ball appropriately, you just waltz over the Protoss player.
I don't know if you could support 3 TL starports, a fusion core and a second armory all at the same time. It sounds too gas intensive for the stage of the game you'd be at, i.e not the maxed out part with an army sitting on 3-4 bases piling resources. If you're making a tech switch I think that's when you should start doing it, when you're maxed out and neither player can attack into each other. I do agree with a tech lab starport over two reactor ones tho, just so you can start getting the raven upgrades a little bit faster.
The nice thing about TvP is that you usually get the air weapon upgrades anyway, which makes transitioning into BCs a lot more fluid. I can see getting the second armory around the point when you research +2 air weapon upgrades and going for the armor upgrade as well. This'll further help your vikings out against stalkers. If you know for sure the opponent is going colossus tech double armory could even be a viable alternative to get the BCs out faster while turtling, at that point I'd go for the BC transition at +2 air armor/weapons.
Do you not think PFs are crucial during the tech switching by the way? If not using PFs to delay the opponent I think a key aspect would be dropping him constantly just to slow him down making sure he doesn't push you while you transition. The main issue with this play is like stated earlier the weakness you have while switching everything over.
On June 20 2012 23:34 Rimak wrote:
I don't really see what you want to accomplish here. Re-invent the MU's?
I'm not trying to reinvent the MUs per say, but I'm trying to figure out a more lategame oriented TvX that actually skips the early/midgame timings in favor of turtling to the terran super units that can face off against P/Z head on without having to circumvent them all the time. It's like TvP now. Protoss focuses on lategame where their advantage lies so Terrans have these big midgame attacks. If terrans aimed for the lategame BC/Raven/Marauder/Ghost composition they'd be more defensive as well, so in a sense it would reinvent the MUs.
On June 20 2012 23:54 Treehead wrote:
The real problem with "latgame terran" is that Marines and Marauders are so horribly inefficient in terms of supply (yet amazingly efficient resource-wise). If you go to other more supply efficient units, such as tanks, thors or battlecruisers - they have very little mobility - so you're going to need a lot of static D, otherwise units with any kind of mobility are just going to run around your big army, harass your worker lines, and kill off all your buildings.
I think everyone knows what the terran supply efficient units are, so its not a question of unit comp at all. The question is how to get a ton of these units, be safe against rushes, keep up economy-wise and have enough static defense? And once you have that, how do you attack in a way that doesn't have grave difficulty dealing with counter attacks? Even omitting counter attacks, once you have more than 3 bases, how do you defend on maps where there are multiple attack paths (i.e. most maps).
The issue isn't composition. It's positioning and tactics. Protoss and Zerg have mobile supply efficient units like blink stalkers, infestors, queens, pheonixes, etc. to answer these questions. The best things terran have which are supply efficient and mobile are ravens and.... vikings?
I'd say Ravens and BCs are supply efficient and mobile due to being air mainly. Maybe banshees could be taken into consideration, but I don't like the gas intensiveness of a unit that you're going to transition out of (although banshees could have some lategame potential because of their stupidly high DPS while benefitting from the air upgrades)
Maybe putting PFs at key locations is terrans way of defending against the mobile Z/P armies while they get their good units. Upgrades like building armor and turret range become crucial for this task. Tanks are way to immobile to be considered in the lategame composition in my opinion, but maybe they can be mixed in somehow.
If we can agree that terran does in fact have potential lategame units. When should we start getting their upgrades, since getting bio upgrades is fairly crucial in all matchups, and do we need PFs, and if so, when?
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On June 21 2012 02:10 Dalavita wrote:
If we can agree that terran does in fact have potential lategame units. When should we start getting their upgrades, since getting bio upgrades is fairly crucial in all matchups, and do we need PFs, and if so, when?
Since the thread I posted this in got locked, I'll post it here.
+ Show Spoiler +I'll say the same thing I said in the plethora of other threads.
If 4/6 Queens become standard (most likely 6), I don't think going for a macro build will really help. We may have to go for a pressure-based opener into expansion to really punish the greediness of Zergs.
And as I said in the other thread, in order to get a lategame composition (BC/Raven/Viking/Ghost), then we'll have to optimize the timing of our upgrades to transition correctly.
Bio needs 3/3
Mech needs 2/0 (+1 for Siege Tanks vs Lings and +2 for Thor vs Muta)
After +2 Mech Weapons, we can probably put down another armory and go for Ship Weapons/Armor, and that'll make BC/Viking strong enough to take on BL/Infestor. Ravens would be used solely for PDD, and Ghosts to EMP Infestors.
Just a theorycraft idea.
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United States4883 Posts
I think the most difficult aspects are 1) terran has SOOOOOOOOOOOOO many upgrades...it's a real killer to sink that much gas into 3/3 bio then switch to 3/3 air and/or 3/3 mech. I honestly think this is the number 1 reason why it's impossible for terran to tech switch as often as zerg or protoss. The other problem is that a lot of gas and minerals are sunk in production facilities, thereby rendering a mass tech switch just completely unviable.
And 2) Mech is undoubtedly good...REALLY GOOD. But terrans have yet to find an "ultimate composition" for mech because all of the mech units are very specialized. The best example I can give about how flexible the definition of "mech army" is, is in TvZ, where the zerg player is CONSTANTLY doing tech switches in order to bait out more thors or more tanks or more hellions and just screw with the mech composition. That being said, it's hard to say HOW the terran should transition because that lategame mixture just hasn't been explored enough. I like that terrans are understanding the importance of lategame BCs and Ravens, but the real question is to what extent do we use them and can we afford them if we start transitioning to mech?
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The only really viable TvZ lategame ever was mass ghost and it was nerfed to the ground (just like everything else). There is no viable "standard" type lategame composition for terran and if you come up with anything that isn't standard it's going to get instanerfed to hell. Also, no matter what you come up with the answer to that is infestors because they counter both tightly packed small units(fungal) and big single units(neural parasite). They also counter air and cloak and they happen to be the standard ZvT for a reason.
User was warned for this post
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United States4883 Posts
On June 21 2012 18:40 Entteri wrote:
The only really viable TvZ lategame ever was mass ghost and it was nerfed to the ground (just like everything else). There is no viable "standard" type lategame composition for terran and if you come up with anything that isn't standard it's going to get instanerfed to hell. Also, no matter what you come up with the answer to that is infestors because they counter both tightly packed small units(fungal) and big single units(neural parasite). They also counter air and cloak and they happen to be the standard ZvT for a reason.
Okay Mr. Negativity. But I do agree with you on the ghosts: the game was broken the moment Blizz nerfed snipe. Still, making ghosts is pressing the easy button...this development is making terrans think about mech and really think about tech switches as well as becoming either a TON more aggressive in the early game or a TON more passive.
And I can, with total confidence, say that infestors are actually AWFUL against tanks  .
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Lets not devolve the thread into balance whining please. Try to keep it constructive.
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Even after the snipe nerf ghosts are still far better then ravens against BLs if you use the mouse wheel. And they dont need extra production and have other uses. They also do not take 3 years to be useful. I can kill 10 Broodlords with 12 ghosts with mouse wheel snipe without losing a single ghost at times. So i guess you need some ghost against zerg^^.
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Well, I have been trying to develop a strategy against zerg since the patch.
My first progress was a successful strat which involves a 1Rax FE, into x2+1 gas, and a timing a bit before the 10th minute with a combination of Stim + marine + marauder/Hellion/Tank + medivec, designed to take out his 3rd. It hits just a bit before his infestor pit or spine finish, so it usually catches him in a very very vulnerable state, and I manage to pick off his 3rd and get back to base. If not, I at least manage to kill many drones, and force him to spend the remaining larvae on Zerglings/Roaches.
While I attack, I build a CC in my base, which floats to my 3rd and becomes a PF at around the 10:40 mark. I got 6 gas, and a ton of minerals. Building a double armory.
From here, I used to do a mech build, adding factories and building tanks/Thors, but quite simple, it doesn't work vs Infestor+Brood+Mass Queen. So, I had to change my strategy.
What I'm writing atm is a very new strat that I've been trying for the last few days, but so far, my games using it have been won.
Keep dual air upgrades with the armories! Super important.
After your attack is done, switch one starport to the Rax Tech lab, use the factory/rax to build 3 mroe tech labs (or 2, if you had one on the factory), and build 3 more starports and a fusion core at the same time. Also, build an additional CC, you're going to need that if he does a huge bane bust on your PF (so you wont lose mining time, and he'll end up wasting around x2 of the PF's worth).
Switch the factory to a reactor, keep pumping hellions. They are used for map control, but in essence, they're a mineral sac.
Once the 4 Starports are ready, build 4 BC's. They, with turret support, should be enough to help you repel any muta agrresion, and by far any ground aggression. Keep building them until you got around 12 (research yomato somewhre in the middle). If your minerals go over 1400, add CC's. You'll eventually have to reinforce your 3rd with a 2nd PF, and when you float to the 4th, you should float 2 CC's there at once as well. But don't waste all the minerals on that, you still need minerals for BC's, and turret rings are not free as well.
At 12 BCs, start doing 2bc/2raven, and at that poitnt, you'll most likely need to sac some marines. You also should already have your 4th saturated, with x2 PF+turret ring.
DO NOT move out before you got at least 1 reven per 2 BC's, and HSM. I learned the hard way that when the zerg mixes all his muta/curpotor/queen/hydra with zerglings and overlords, you simply can't aim Yamato's at that bunch, you'll mostly hit zerglings. Not to mention that w/o PPD, hydras+Curruptors are too efficient vs Bare BC, even if they are 2/2 or 3/3.
Once you got dozens of CCs floating all over the place, turret rings all around, 4/5 Double PF bases, 4/5 Tech-lab starports, air 3/3, and a huge fleet of around 16 BC 8 Ravens, you can move out. PPD+Yamato counters corruptors so bad they cry, and PPD+HSM does the same to hydras, and PPD alone can help you clear 40 spore crawlers at the cost of just around 400 raven energy, with 0 losses. Just fly to his main, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and so on, until you've cleared the map. Remember, once you just clear his main tech structures, you already set him behind.
In case he thinks he's smart and tries to go for a base trade... remember those dual PF+Turret rings? Even if he does manage to break your expansions, you can just lift all your buildings and watch how his Ultra/Broodlords float around your base killing supply depots, while you take out the rest of his base. Believe me, you're gonna clear his buildings way faster than he can clear your 3~6 floating CCs+ the rest of the buildings, with his little curruptor force (assuming he had a large ground army, else he just wouldn't break through your expansions).
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France9034 Posts
On June 21 2012 18:46 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2012 18:40 Entteri wrote:
The only really viable TvZ lategame ever was mass ghost and it was nerfed to the ground (just like everything else). There is no viable "standard" type lategame composition for terran and if you come up with anything that isn't standard it's going to get instanerfed to hell. Also, no matter what you come up with the answer to that is infestors because they counter both tightly packed small units(fungal) and big single units(neural parasite). They also counter air and cloak and they happen to be the standard ZvT for a reason. Okay Mr. Negativity. But I do agree with you on the ghosts: the game was broken the moment Blizz nerfed snipe. Still, making ghosts is pressing the easy button...this development is making terrans think about mech and really think about tech switches as well as becoming either a TON more aggressive in the early game or a TON more passive. And I can, with total confidence, say that infestors are actually AWFUL against tanks .
First, making Terrans think about tech switch is a huge problem. I'm not really happy to say that Terran is the race that has the most terrible tech switches in terms of time and gas (i put protoss behind, because they don't have to switch in terms of upgrades too), because it makes this race rely on the "one wonder composition", with just the addition of viking to it when needed (and ghosts in PvT). Actually, the only match-up where Terrans can go for a variety of builds is TvT... ZvT is very often about MarineTankViking, TvP is very often about MMMGhost/Vikings/both, Mech being quite not viable in TvP because of Mech killing unit called "Immortal", and in ZvT, it dies to infestor broodlords, since it's quite weak until it hit a very huge army count, and by then the zerg just expo'ed everywhere and ran to Hive tech.
I admit i've seen some exception, but which were executed by extremely talented players, and relying on the fact that it wasn't scouted (which is a lot more harder, if not impossible, with the huge creepspread and the Overlord buff for Z, and the Obs building time reduction for P)
And i don't know if you've ever seen a good ZvT with tanks and infestors, but infestors are just a wonderful tool to deal with tanks. They can pop out targets to divert the tanks while the whole army is charging, while being burrowed, thus making the zerg army arriving to tanks almost without taking any shot, which is as the tanks were unsieged when the zerg engaged. And nobody can disagree with the fact that a Terran being caught unsieged is quite often in a disastrous position.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing (it forces T to be vigilant, it costs a few APM from the Zerg), but please don't say infestors are awful against tanks.
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France9034 Posts
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Builds like those is what I had in mind for TvZ @Maxsteel. I do agree that Raven/BC has the potential and the main question is how to get there with +3/+3 upgrades.
I'm wondering with your build. Do you start saccing SCVs at any point to get even more BC/Ravens out? Do you place PFs down everywhere for static defense outside the ones you mentioned?
I have a lot of coursework to do or I'd get cracking on spamming out games where I aimed for that, sadly.
Edit: I think what gives me the most "hope" about trying to aim for a composition like this is that it feels like terran has something to aim for and isn't actually fighting against the clock, so it feels like if I can do earlygame damage and turtle up I can get the strongest army head up eventually.
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I think that reaper is an actual option in lategame TvP. My coach from a long time ago taught me that once I'd hit max in TvZ, I should add some 3-4 rax with tech labs for ghosts. Now, if the same is done but with reapers instead, and we just drop away some supply and add in ~10 reapers, I think that Blizzard will find another thing to nerf with Terrans
I would like to add, that I am backing this statement up with a game ThorZain played against some Protoss I can't recall where ThorZain added in reapers in his army and just crushed the Protoss, can't remember where/what game it was 
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United States4883 Posts
On June 21 2012 19:54 Ragnarork wrote:
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing (it forces T to be vigilant, it costs a few APM from the Zerg), but please don't say infestors are awful against tanks.
You perhaps took that statement a little too seriously lol. I can't really explain without talking about "unit counters"...but seeing as how I don't believe in "unit counters", I'll just say that tanks are still one of the most viable options against infestors over thors or marauder hit squads in a direct engagement.
First, making Terrans think about tech switch is a huge problem. I'm not really happy to say that Terran is the race that has the most terrible tech switches in terms of time and gas (i put protoss behind, because they don't have to switch in terms of upgrades too), because it makes this race rely on the "one wonder composition", with just the addition of viking to it when needed (and ghosts in PvT).
I agree that terran has difficulty in tech switches, particularly with the amount of gas terran has to pour into additional buildings/add-ons/upgrades. But the ghost nerf has caused terrans to be more creative in their lategame army composition. And probably the best thing that's come out of it is that no one has figured out exactly 1 way to beat Blord/infestor, which makes the game strategy unique and interesting. So...as much as I totally believe the snipe nerf broke the game, I think this is probably for the best, especially in preparation for HotS.
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On June 21 2012 19:57 Dalavita wrote:
Builds like those is what I had in mind for TvZ @Maxsteel. I do agree that Raven/BC has the potential and the main question is how to get there with +3/+3 upgrades.
I'm wondering with your build. Do you start saccing SCVs at any point to get even more BC/Ravens out? Do you place PFs down everywhere for static defense outside the ones you mentioned?
I have a lot of coursework to do or I'd get cracking on spamming out games where I aimed for that, sadly.
Edit: I think what gives me the most "hope" about trying to aim for a composition like this is that it feels like terran has something to aim for and isn't actually fighting against the clock, so it feels like if I can do earlygame damage and turtle up I can get the strongest army head up eventually.
I feel already kinda bad for giving away my strat.. but of well, I'll elaborate farther, for the sake of Terrans.
I'm not gonna mention any specific builds, since there are dozens of different 10min timings you can do from FE against zerg. Lets just say I get to the 11th minute having 3 bases with full gas (2 OC, 1 PF), the leftover of my timing units (if any survived, else just the defense I produced during the attack, usually a few marines + tanks), 2 ready tech labs, 2 rax that are making 2 more tech labs, 1 starport, 3 just-completed ones, a just-completed fusion core, and 2 just-completed armories. And that extra CC starting to build. Of course, if I see the zerg is not taking his 3rd and rather trying to bust me, I'll jsut quickly make banshees out of that 1 starport, marines out of the rax, and tanks.. but with my PF, that usually holds. If I see a muta nest, I need to make turrets.
At around the 11th minute, I start 1/1 air, and 2 BC's. In around 30 sec, I add another 2 BC's. All that time ,the factory is on the reactor, so I'm pumping 2 marines and 2 hellions at a time.
At around the 14th minute, my minerals start to skyrocket, and if he has mutas I'm making turrent rings + 1 CC, otherwice only a ring at the outer expansion + 2 CCs.
After the initial 4 BC's are out, he can't break you. your tanks+marines+BC should have good enough position to defend your main door, your PF+BC (they are mobile enough to move between 3rd and natural wall-off) should be able to defend you 3rd.
Not to forget, your hellion should be riding around the map, killing lonely ling scouts, expansions, and so on. You can also send x4 squads of marines to kill overlords.
At 8 BC, you should be pretty confident to land a dual CC on the 4th, and morth them into PF's while maknig a turret ring. Don't forget the gas! That's the main reason you even need that new base.
At 12 BC, start making 2 BC 2 Raven (which will be 4 BC + 6 Raven in 3 minutes).
Your 3/3 should be about to finish, your army should be strong enough, proceed to floating more CC's to different bases, Sac all your marines/medivecs if any are left, set <Current number of workers - 50> SCV's on autorepair and follow on your BC's. Make more BC's, while your main fleet flies into his main and kills everything.
Micro tip:
Bind you BC's on one key. Bind the ravens on another. Set ravens to follow BC's. When you need to move the army, jsut move the BC's. When you need to cast PPD (or sometimes, HSM, but usually PPD is better), press the Raven key, cast, switch to the BC key, Yamato, ???, profit.
For me, if the greedy zerg turtles and waits his usual auto-win, I already won the game.
Edit:
It's very important to note that while Terran do well with this composition vs Toss, the way to get there is different.
If you try this, toss are just gonna laugh at your PF and go streight for your main, and those 4 BCs and few marine/tanks are gonna do nothing versus a huge force of even simple HT/Blinker/Zealot army.
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France9034 Posts
On June 21 2012 20:11 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2012 19:54 Ragnarork wrote:
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing (it forces T to be vigilant, it costs a few APM from the Zerg), but please don't say infestors are awful against tanks.
You perhaps took that statement a little too seriously lol. I can't really explain without talking about "unit counters"...but seeing as how I don't believe in "unit counters", I'll just say that tanks are still one of the most viable options against infestors over thors or marauder hit squads in a direct engagement. Show nested quote +
First, making Terrans think about tech switch is a huge problem. I'm not really happy to say that Terran is the race that has the most terrible tech switches in terms of time and gas (i put protoss behind, because they don't have to switch in terms of upgrades too), because it makes this race rely on the "one wonder composition", with just the addition of viking to it when needed (and ghosts in PvT).
I agree that terran has difficulty in tech switches, particularly with the amount of gas terran has to pour into additional buildings/add-ons/upgrades. But the ghost nerf has caused terrans to be more creative in their lategame army composition. And probably the best thing that's come out of it is that no one has figured out exactly 1 way to beat Blord/infestor, which makes the game strategy unique and interesting. So...as much as I totally believe the snipe nerf broke the game, I think this is probably for the best, especially in preparation for HotS.
Well, about infestors, i would rather go with a few marauders to try to make the zerg waste fungals, if not losing a few infestors.
And though I promote creativity and constant evolution of the match-ups, i don't see where the snipe's nerf has caused creativity. Lategame terran versus Z is just as before the ghost were used in large groups, marine tank viking, with possibly a few thors (if the zerg relied on mutas, which isn't something really we see a lot these days). They just prey so that they don't get their vikings fungaled to death (spread + hit & run, still the fungal has a long enough range to be a very effective way to deal with it).
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Ravens and Battlecruisers seem like a popular topic, so, some simple, useful numbers.
Each geyser provides slightly more than 100 gas per minute, if you populate it with three probes. Each Starport + Tech Lab spends 100gas/minute if you produce banshees, or 200 gas/minute if you produce Ravens or Battlecruisers. On three bases, you can run three starports of BCs/Ravens, but very little else. Probably not a strong plan. On four, you can easily run those starports and still afford some upgrades/ghosts/marauders (though not a huge number).
Also... nukes. They're cheap, eat no food, and allow you to bully the opponent's army around, or freak him out any time you feel like by nuking some empty spot on the map.
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United States4883 Posts
On June 21 2012 20:31 Ragnarork wrote:
And though I promote creativity and constant evolution of the match-ups, i don't see where the snipe's nerf has caused creativity. Lategame terran versus Z is just as before the ghost were used in large groups, marine tank viking, with possibly a few thors (if the zerg relied on mutas, which isn't something really we see a lot these days). They just prey so that they don't get their vikings fungaled to death (spread + hit & run, still the fungal has a long enough range to be a very effective way to deal with it).
I'm not sure if I fully agree with that statement either. We've been seeing a lot more use of the raven recently in lategame encounters, as well as a general shift towards a lategame mech switch. Players like Bomber and LastShadow are really starting to ramp up lategame Raven production with HSM, and players like Polt have switched to almost entirely mechy compositions of thor/tank/viking/marauder to deal with Blords. Neither of these solutions would have arisen if the easy button hadn't been taken away from terran.
That being said, I think terran SHOULD start using a lot of mech tech in late game and transition to either ravens or BC after 4 bases. Ravens and BCs are like the Blords of terran...our job now is to just find the missing transition from heavy bio aggression into 4-5 base passive play much like zerg discovered the infestor/ultra/nydus stepping stones into Blords.
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My ideal Lategamearmy versus Protoss is mass BC with 3/3 mixed with a couple of Ghost.
(note: I´m just a EU Platinumplayer, but I´m pretty sucessfull with this build, so it should work for the majority of the people out there)
This is the basic idea of my build:
I start with a Thor-expand. This makes a solid defense togehter with bunkers and marines because forcefields can´t prevent you from repairing and you can start your ship weapons upgrades really early. (I only get like 3-4 Thors through out the hole game, as I feel like they loose their momentum in Mid-/Lategame TvP.)
On two base: I have 2 barracks, 1 factory, 3 starport and get 1 raven, ~10 banshees and 3 vikings. As soon as I got cloak for the banshees and +2 shipweapons I start to harrass (3 vikings kill an observer with 1 shot) and establish my 3rd base.
On three base: I switch to Battlecruiser out of 4 starports and get some ghosts as soon as I have spare gas (yes, I emp my own BC´s). I get lots of baracks to spend my minerals on Marines and tons of bunkers an turrets with buildingarmour and -range upgrade and try to get a 4th base while harrassing with banshees. And of course I keep upgrading my air units.
If the Protoss attacks into my Bunker/BC/Thor defense I pretty much always win the fight. If he turtles just like I do, I get additional orbitals and planetaries and sacrifice workers and marines for more Battlecruiser and Ghost. If he gets voidrays I add some more vikings.
And yes, those games usually take like 25min+ but the lategamefight is so great, it´s worth it 
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I was suppose the late game terran would be mech?
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What units are possible to use in the lategame to replace the standard midgame armies that terrans use in both matchup who will also give additional benefits once you reach the point where you have done the transition?
The units we have availible that I can see having some lategame potential with this turtle-style are: Battlecruisers, Ravens, Reapers.
Actually I saw a stream (high master P) that faced a terran going late game reapers. Turns out that with good enough control they are very effective to take out HTs, especially with the speed upgrade, as well as providing new angles of attack for expo harassment. Nothing except blink stalker can chase them down, and even they fail at a cliff wall...
The early-mid game was fairly standard (gateway+immo=>collossi=>HTs) and the T did not have to turtle at all during the switch to reapers. Perhaps he just let them "trickle" in, its hard to tell since the stream was from the P perspective. I'm guessing you'll have to invest in a few more rax because of the extremely long build time (why cant the speed upgrade also reduce the build time?).
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Thorzain has gone lategame reapers vs P a couiple of times. I've mainly seen it on Shakuras Plateau which is weird because it was a long ass TvP on that map that made me consider using reapers to begin with. Maybe it's because that map is easily split in half which gives you time to crank out reapers instead of marines, and also all the cliffs.
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I think basicly lategame, just bio with adding helions against a lot of lings, vikings ofc for BL. Kind of the same as TvP lategame really. Maybe we should make helions there as well. xD
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Hey maxsteel, i'm with you on this one. I do BC/RAVEN, and one thing I like to do is cut all bio upgrades & barracks add ons. I spend that gas on the PFs & Tanks you need for defense, it saves a lot of gas for the BC/RAVEN upgrades & units so you can get them out faster. I still make a lot of barracks for walls when I can or need to & upgrade bio later on incase my main army dies, marines still pwn. Also, something to note, putting a fast 3rd PF down where your fourth base would be & surround with buildings, it seems to be a good tactic. You won't have to fight for this position later on & you can take the third base rather easy (on the right maps ,of course).
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Yeah, 4 bases of gas is what's necessary to support this kind of BC/Raven switch in the lategame, similar to infestor/broodlord. I think what we all SHOULD start doing is getting 1 Raven at least in the midgame to ride with our army (after all, in both TvP and TvZ we want a second Starport at some point, so why not make it a tech lab one?). In TvZ it will help us clear creep without scans as well as prevent Burrowed Infestor shenanigans, and in TvP it means we don't have to scan to snipe down Observers.
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I just seen the code s group H (i think?) Where Ryung 2-0'd Leenock by delaying his tanks and using a bio bf hellion mid game composition where it kinda deny creep while still baiting units out of the zerg. It is risky and you might lose it any moment, and i know leenoc did not opt for fast infestors so i dont know how that would work out but theres still the possibility to deal early game damage and deny creep, to deny the lategame to zerg, while you get a simple composition and outmicro zerg.
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On June 21 2012 22:59 Silencioseu wrote:
I just seen the code s group H (i think?) Where Ryung 2-0'd Leenock by delaying his tanks and using a bio bf hellion mid game composition where it kinda deny creep while still baiting units out of the zerg. It is risky and you might lose it any moment, and i know leenoc did not opt for fast infestors so i dont know how that would work out but theres still the possibility to deal early game damage and deny creep, to deny the lategame to zerg, while you get a simple composition and outmicro zerg.
Yeah. Bio-Hellion pushes are probably the most effective in terms of denying creep spread and still getting a good economy and tech.
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Late game (20min+) sky terran is quite nice vs protoss. I expand hard in the midgame up to 5-6 bases, relying on PFs and a roaming banshee raven force to secure. And then transition into BC + Raven end game composition sacking SCVs for mules.
22 BCs and 14 Ravens are pretty damn hard to take out.
Good against:
Standard P deathball style
Archon-Zealot
Protoss Air
Tough to play vs:
Aggressive P, who use blink stalker mobility.
Mass expanded P, who can constantly remax as you kill their gateway units.
The hardest thing to deal with is the re-maxing issue and gas constraints on remaxing yourself.
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On June 21 2012 23:09 HeroMystic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 21 2012 22:59 Silencioseu wrote:
I just seen the code s group H (i think?) Where Ryung 2-0'd Leenock by delaying his tanks and using a bio bf hellion mid game composition where it kinda deny creep while still baiting units out of the zerg. It is risky and you might lose it any moment, and i know leenoc did not opt for fast infestors so i dont know how that would work out but theres still the possibility to deal early game damage and deny creep, to deny the lategame to zerg, while you get a simple composition and outmicro zerg. Yeah. Bio-Hellion pushes are probably the most effective in terms of denying creep spread and still getting a good economy and tech.
Exactly. Though i wouldn't be surprised if it also got nerfed .
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On June 21 2012 23:11 rebotfc wrote:
Late game (20min+) sky terran is quite nice vs protoss. I expand hard in the midgame up to 5-6 bases, relying on PFs and a roaming banshee raven force to secure. And then transition into BC + Raven end game composition sacking SCVs for mules.
22 BCs and 14 Ravens are pretty damn hard to take out.
Good against:
Standard P deathball style
Archon-Zealot
Protoss Air
Tough to play vs:
Aggressive P, who use blink stalker mobility.
Mass expanded P, who can constantly remax as you kill their gateway units.
The hardest thing to deal with is the re-maxing issue and gas constraints on remaxing yourself.
I don't like sky terrans because i don't know why but Blizzard randomly gave all air units energy bars so they can get fedback(feedbacked or fedbacked?) especially BC's because it has to be really late into the game so you can spend it's energy. Though i've seen it work many times, so it can be viable, i think.
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TvZ for super late game like on Daybreak,Shakuras ( and a map where 4th base is possible to take ) you can use this:
Open with your bio till the mid game and if you can't win and you can't brake his spine,bl,infestor wall. You can transition into mech because you will have 3/0 upgrades for your tanks. Drop 2nd armory after 2/0 and you will have 2 factories just from your marine,tank,medivac play. If you invested in addons insted of more raxes you can transition even faster. You will need 5facts and 2starports for raven,viking support if he went BL's you would have 2ports anyway. Start to mix hellions in the midgame with blue flame and cuting marines then add thors and viking for BL switch. If he is going ultras just focus on tanks. BCs i think are not viable option because require to much time to be build... so mech is the only option for late game transition because you will have the upgrades from your armory.
Maybe i don't explain it correctly but for me alot of BW vods helped me to be able to transition correctly. In BW is common to open some MnM in the midgame with tanks,vessel support and only 1/1 and then transition into mech when Z starts to get defiler,ultras. I think it will work even better in SC2.The hellion which ignores zergling upgrades and just melts everything. Zerg needs to have roaches to be effective in fights or have sick flanks which can be denied with scout and better positioning. If he choses to go roaches he won't have attack upgrades for them also tanks with other support destroy ultra,ling,infestor much faster than BW.
About TvP I can't help you because I mech there. I can tell you this BC with emp,raven,mech support melts whatever comp protoss has in head to head fight. The reason that i can't help you guys is because i don't see any windows of time where you can be able to switch into BCs or mech if you open bio. Your forces will be much more weaker with no upgrades because in TvP you upgrade only air and bio. Also you need to be really skilled player so you can split the map and be able to switch from bio to something else because that requires alot of time.
Your only reasonble transition is going BCs like MVP did because you will have the upgrades from vikings. So from this i can tell you your ULTIMATE composition should be ghost,raven,bc. Ghosts to counter casters an P in general, Raven with seeker to counter mass air like carriers,voidrays and BC's to deal dmg. The thing is this mix of units still die to the same things as MMMVG and you require the same set of skills - HIT YOUR EMP. What i'm trying to say is if you open bio stay with bio and get ghost viking and get good fights because if you try to transition you will die and if you get to your desired transition you can still die to the same things so just don't risk it.
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We know that banshees trade well against Stalkers, medivacs are nice to support bio, and vikings kill colossi (a big part of our problem). So why not air? Keep the mobile bio force, keep going with the marines, marauders, and a few ghosts, but sprinkle in banshees and battlecruisers to taste. You don't need 10 battlecruisers. It's nice, but 3-4 battlecruisers fighting above your bio will make it beast. Battlecruisers have decent DPS, but big tank.
The only thing to truly worry about if you're friendly battlecruisers are HT. If that's the case, you can have them waste their feedback on it, which is time and energy they're not storming your bio with, or you can EMP your BCs. That's not such a good idea, as Yamato wipes the floor with a lot of protoss units.
Instead, I think the better option, is proper control of your ghosts to protect the BCs. Snipe or EMP the HTs before they can hit you.
You can theorycraft more, but I've always thought Terrans rely on their early game far too much. I think there's a lot of unexplored sky options that are viable.
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On June 21 2012 23:57 Felnarion wrote:
We know that banshees trade well against Stalkers, medivacs are nice to support bio, and vikings kill colossi (a big part of our problem). So why not air? Keep the mobile bio force, keep going with the marines, marauders, and a few ghosts, but sprinkle in banshees and battlecruisers to taste. You don't need 10 battlecruisers. It's nice, but 3-4 battlecruisers fighting above your bio will make it beast. Battlecruisers have decent DPS, but big tank.
The only thing to truly worry about if you're friendly battlecruisers are HT. If that's the case, you can have them waste their feedback on it, which is time and energy they're not storming your bio with, or you can EMP your BCs. That's not such a good idea, as Yamato wipes the floor with a lot of protoss units.
Instead, I think the better option, is proper control of your ghosts to protect the BCs. Snipe or EMP the HTs before they can hit you.
You can theorycraft more, but I've always thought Terrans rely on their early game far too much. I think there's a lot of unexplored sky options that are viable.
I actually have been doing a bio/sky mixture that i copied from Debo if you've heard of him and he has a nice long guide with in depth on how to do it. Hmmm i tried to look for it but couldn't find it i dont think it got removed here's his youtube channel if you want to look for it http://www.youtube.com/user/DeboSc2
I think here's the part where he shows it for first time, and does it again in some later parts + Show Spoiler +
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the problem is just that u would never be costefficent in the end, even if u fight costefficent, it just takes you way too much money u have to invest into infrastructure. While a toss for example will just have 15-25 gates in the superlategame and maybe 2 robos you will need to have like 20 barracks 3 factorys and at least 5 starports. And even then, the protoss could reinforce just that much quicker then u ever will be able to. As well you need to invest way more money into different upgrades like first of all go up to 3/3 bio and the go up to 3/1 airupgrades at least plus mech upgrades if u plan to add thors or siegetanks or helions. Plus u need to invest a lot of money into orbital command centers and pfs, plus a lot of upgrades like battlecruiser upgrades siegetanks blueflame....whatever u are goin for and u need a shitload of missleturrets sensortowers and so on.
In the end, even if the protoss is fighting less cost efficent then you, you will still find yourself mined out on ur site of the map before the protoss does.
so against protoss it will defenitely not work, against zerg i can imagine it will work eventually, but if u let the zerg alone for too long, he will reach that point where he has 5 bases + almost unlimited larva and money way before you will reach that point, so he will just threw one deathball after another on you and you will simply not be able to reinforce quick enough even if you trade really cost efficent.
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Hmm, regarding TvP, why don't we try to use this combo : Marauder Hellion Banshee Viking. I mean, hellions counter zeallots, marauders counter stalkers, and for any other anti air there is vikings. The true damage dealers are the Banshees and the Marauders. If the P makes a lot of zealots then make more hellions, and if more stalkers - marauders.Collosi won't be a huge problem, since there will be vikings dealing with them, and they are gonna snipe observers. Which is why a raven can also be useful. Only storm and hts look troublesome. So, what do you think. I have tried it, but since i am only silver I can't be even 10% sure if it will work in the higher leagues. One problem i find though is that it is quite gas heavy and you have to upragre at least two type of upgrades ( at least bio and air )
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On June 22 2012 02:35 Chef0 wrote:
Hmm, regarding TvP, why don't we try to use this combo : Marauder Hellion Banshee Viking. I mean, hellions counter zeallots, marauders counter stalkers, and for any other anti air there is vikings. The true damage dealers are the Banshees and the Marauders. If the P makes a lot of zealots then make more hellions, and if more stalkers - marauders.Collosi won't be a huge problem, since there will be vikings dealing with them, and they are gonna snipe observers. Which is why a raven can also be useful. Only storm and hts look troublesome. So, what do you think. I have tried it, but since i am only silver I can't be even 10% sure if it will work in the higher leagues. One problem i find though is that it is quite gas heavy and you have to upragre at least two type of upgrades ( at least bio and air )
Hellions don't counter zealots & both marauders & hellions don't have the crazy dps of marines that terran needs because they have no aoe except tank EMP & nuke.
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As a Protoss, I like this idea. The idea of brainstorming around and breaking things that were standard but no longer work. Breaking stereotypes that were previously held but now don't apply, this thread is pushing the boundaries of the game, and that is certainly a good thing. Its all about breaking the "rules" that were put in place and not bitching about it, its getting shit done. I personally think that most of these issues will be solved in HoTS and Blizz is just getting ready for it by implementing these nerfs, but thats not to say they won't re-implement the Snipe Buff and keep the "seige-Queen." Either way this is a brilliant initiative.
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Lol toss and zerg cry about late game??
Fyi, terran have massive advantage in early/mid game than toss. So how will the game be balanced if terran have advantage early-end game. Its terrans job to be aggressive and do damage to be even foot in late game.
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Does terran even have a viable lategame composition in the non-mirror matchups? Is it possible to reach the stage in the game where you can get those units without dying, and what's the most efficient way to get there, also what unit composition is the shit in the lategame? My idea on this is Thors and Ravens as the main units, with some support units to kill off all of the Broodlings, Zerglings, and Banelings, as well as aggro the Zerg's Air units, such as one or two BC's with armour upgrades.
Infestors and Banelings would put wrench in this unfortunately, so at least 3-5 Siege Tanks would have to be incorporated, and positioned very well.
Getting there would be hard, since the Zerg can often just march across the map just as you're getting your perfect composition up and just kill you outright. Especially since it's almost impossible to tell if he's going for Ultralisk tech or Broodlord tech.
As for TvP, I find that Reaper/Marauder/Ghost/Viking/Medivac is very very strong as it is extremely gas-heavy, which all Terrans float in the late-game, and deals with everything the Protoss can throw at you.
When remaxing, I think that Ghost/Marauder would be a good idea for the first couple production rounds, as Reapers take way too long to build.
I think I have a replay of something like this, I'm going to check.
Edit: Here it is: http://drop.sc/202024
Not the best example, but it's all I've got.
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IMBAAAAAA!!!!1
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I think the future of late game TvX will be nukes. When botg players are maxed and neither player c
an simply engage the other i see nukes coming into play a lot more. They are relatively inexpensive, they cost no supply, and landing 1 good one can win the game. I can see this used more in TvP as ghosts will be necessary to have in the late game anyways
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On June 20 2012 23:26 Jazzman88 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2012 22:58 Dalavita wrote:
Note: All of this depends on whether terran has a viable lategame or not, regardless of how hard it is to get there. If we can establish that they do have a lategame army that can compete with Protoss/Zerg and people start experimenting with getting there I think it'll eventually get easier and faster to reach to that point, so the discussion should be on the units for now, with strategy being less of a focus until the unit compositions in the endgame are established and agreed upon. I don't think you can question the fact that 200/200 Battlecruiser/Raven with upgrades just does not die, ever (unless you get Archon Toileted... MVP). Particularly in TvP, I don't see any reason why you can't just build 3-5 extra Starports once you get 4 bases and start adding in Battlecruisers or Ravens slowly, because there's no way even all the Ghosts you're building are going to be eating up 4 bases of gas. So, maybe it goes like: Standard 1-rax FE into bio pressure. When you add the second Starport for the inevitable Colossi, instead of immediately building Vikings out of it or getting a Reactor, get a Tech Lab (which is quick to build), and research HSM and Corvid Reactor while pushing/trading. Then, as soon as those upgrades are finishing, drop 3 more TL Starports, a Fusion Core, and a second Armory. Use your bio/Ghost force to keep the Protoss expansion count as low AS POSSIBLE (obviously don't go all out if you can't engage effectively - the goal is to slow him down, not insta-kill him). Build up a few Ravens, and then switch into Battlecruiser/Marine/Ghost. With Raven support to spot Observers, you can make maximum use of EMP, and then if you split the BC ball appropriately, you just waltz over the Protoss player.
First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions.
I can tell you the simple truth that while toss is teching to stop your mmm composition and you are making ravens and battlecruisers, toss is also making the counter to your battlecruiser raven composition. HT counter both raven and battlecruiser essentially making ravens expensive flying scouts and halving the health of battlecruisers. Then stalkers will just walk over you. Hell, even zealots will just pass by you, kill your main while you float in the air helplessly. Or he can just storm all over your bcs and they will die anyway. I know you theorize that you also have ghosts in your army, but he can literally just a move the zealots into them and they will destroy your ghosts for a sec, while battlecruisers are pew pewing on top of the zealots, cause battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming.
I have played many times with air vs toss and find that the composition that toss makes to counter mmm is the same he makes to counter bcs - High Templars and zealot/archon/stalker.
Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that.
Please, think about what you are suggesting and try it a bit before writing it in TL. Don't make ridiculous claims. The reason battlecruiser raven hasn't won A SINGLE pro game besides in TvT is that it is outright bad in other matchups. Why do we have to force weird compositions that don't work? It's like me claiming that mass reaper gives you advantage in late game TvZ or TvP. Make a game or two with your suggested composition, make some replays, then come back to TL. For now all I see are words I don't believe in.
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Masters NA Terran here, if anyone cares.
I really think ghosts are still viable in TvZ, but maybe not in the way they used to be. I'm trying to incorporate ghosts more and more into my compositions, and while they nerfed snipe damage and EMP radius, ghosts are still incredibly effective against infestors.
Very rarely does a Zerg bring an overseer to a fight against terran - meaning your cloaked ghosts can do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. It takes two (2) snipes from a ghost to KILL an infestor - meaning that's 100 mins, 150 gas, and fungals unspent - all lost due to two snipes. Without infestor support, cracklings and ultralisks are a lot less scary against bio units.
Ghost academies are also pretty cheap - dropping a few extra means you can also research up some nukes. Now I don't experiment with this a whole lot myself, but I really should. I played master Zerg back in season 5. Hearing that little nuclear launch detected sound makes me go into a freaking panic. If you can drop 1-2 nukes at a time, whether it be by cloaking your ghosts and moving to an expo, or dropping them from a medivac and cloaking them, the Zerg will be disoriented trying to find that little red dot. Even dropping one on his army might be a good call, because he'll be scrambling between bases trying to find which one is being nuked.
It requires a little more APM, and I can't stay I've found time to do it in many of my TvZ, but I think it requires much more APM from the zerg to figure out where the nuke is and move his shit in time to avoid it. I think this is also a good time to cloak up and snipe a bunch of his infestors with his army while he is looking for the nukes, or drop a bunch of marines somewhere. Terran has so many options still to split that Zerg army. And winning a TvZ that way is always so much fun, because you know you really deserved it.
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On June 22 2012 05:07 dGHaiL wrote:
Masters NA Terran here, if anyone cares.
I really think ghosts are still viable in TvZ, but maybe not in the way they used to be. I'm trying to incorporate ghosts more and more into my compositions, and while they nerfed snipe damage and EMP radius, ghosts are still incredibly effective against infestors.
Very rarely does a Zerg bring an overseer to a fight against terran - meaning your cloaked ghosts can do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. It takes two (2) snipes from a ghost to KILL an infestor - meaning that's 100 mins, 150 gas, and fungals unspent - all lost due to two snipes. Without infestor support, cracklings and ultralisks are a lot less scary against bio units.
Ghost academies are also pretty cheap - dropping a few extra means you can also research up some nukes. Now I don't experiment with this a whole lot myself, but I really should. I played master Zerg back in season 5. Hearing that little nuclear launch detected sound makes me go into a freaking panic. If you can drop 1-2 nukes at a time, whether it be by cloaking your ghosts and moving to an expo, or dropping them from a medivac and cloaking them, the Zerg will be disoriented trying to find that little red dot. Even dropping one on his army might be a good call, because he'll be scrambling between bases trying to find which one is being nuked.
It requires a little more APM, and I can't stay I've found time to do it in many of my TvZ, but I think it requires much more APM from the zerg to figure out where the nuke is and move his shit in time to avoid it. I think this is also a good time to cloak up and snipe a bunch of his infestors with his army while he is looking for the nukes, or drop a bunch of marines somewhere. Terran has so many options still to split that Zerg army. And winning a TvZ that way is always so much fun, because you know you really deserved it.
What's your main composition when you use Ghosts?
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First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's.
The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas.
Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units.
Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's.
battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly.
 Battlecruiser
As you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's.
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On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas.
NO.
NO. You don't get to tell me stuff that you don't have proof of. Nobody has ever done it in a pro game. There is a reason for the fact nobody has done it in a pro game. I know the reason. You pretend you don't know the reason. Go on ladder immediately, make this, come back with replay. You have a deadline of 3 hours. If you can't, I call your words complete and utter bullshit.
Man, I am so tired of people that throw random ideas and thinking they are right just BECAUSE they think so. By the way, I personally can beat mass void ray with almost any combination I can think of as terran, especially with the most standard, that is MMMGV.
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On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:
Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's.
And one neural takes a battlecruiser out, then the bc yamatos another bc. Also, one neural takes your ghost and he emps all over the other ghosts. See, everybody is big on words.
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On June 22 2012 05:11 HeroMystic wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 22 2012 05:07 dGHaiL wrote:
Masters NA Terran here, if anyone cares.
I really think ghosts are still viable in TvZ, but maybe not in the way they used to be. I'm trying to incorporate ghosts more and more into my compositions, and while they nerfed snipe damage and EMP radius, ghosts are still incredibly effective against infestors.
Very rarely does a Zerg bring an overseer to a fight against terran - meaning your cloaked ghosts can do a lot of damage in a small amount of time. It takes two (2) snipes from a ghost to KILL an infestor - meaning that's 100 mins, 150 gas, and fungals unspent - all lost due to two snipes. Without infestor support, cracklings and ultralisks are a lot less scary against bio units.
Ghost academies are also pretty cheap - dropping a few extra means you can also research up some nukes. Now I don't experiment with this a whole lot myself, but I really should. I played master Zerg back in season 5. Hearing that little nuclear launch detected sound makes me go into a freaking panic. If you can drop 1-2 nukes at a time, whether it be by cloaking your ghosts and moving to an expo, or dropping them from a medivac and cloaking them, the Zerg will be disoriented trying to find that little red dot. Even dropping one on his army might be a good call, because he'll be scrambling between bases trying to find which one is being nuked.
It requires a little more APM, and I can't stay I've found time to do it in many of my TvZ, but I think it requires much more APM from the zerg to figure out where the nuke is and move his shit in time to avoid it. I think this is also a good time to cloak up and snipe a bunch of his infestors with his army while he is looking for the nukes, or drop a bunch of marines somewhere. Terran has so many options still to split that Zerg army. And winning a TvZ that way is always so much fun, because you know you really deserved it. What's your main composition when you use Ghosts?
Reactored Marine Marauder Medivac with a handful (up to 10 or so) tanks. I've found one of the best things I've done for my TvZ is dropping that extra factory when I get the chance. Pumping two tanks at once is incredibly powerful and will help you fend off the Ultralisk/ling/bane/infestor if you have a bunch. Three reactored barracks is enough for most late-game situations (unless you have a HUGE bank, then add more) But I find 4-6 tech labbed barracks are really useful for pumping marauders or ghosts late game. Recently, Zergs have been going more ultralisk heavy, so I drop tech lab barracks after I have 2 reactored rax and then proceed from there.
If I were really smart, I'd drop another starport with a tech lab for a raven to perch over my tank line, just so no infestors can sneak up and drop IT on me. I should really try to do that as I add in the starports lategame anyhow just in case the zerg decides to do a brood switch. The Raven also has the added benefit of not getting destroyed by ultra/ling/bling if you happen to lose your foothold at that position like a turret does. Obviously + attack for mech is really helpful, and I'll drop extra macro CC's and turn them into OC's really late game and start saccing some SCVs. I've never switched to BC/Raven at any point in time. It's just too slow and immobile versus zerg. I don't like it.
But yeah, 8-10 ghosts can be excellent for sniping infestors, and even overseers if they happen to build a few, which I rarely see.
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On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Show nested quote +Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's.
Don't know if you saw the GSL finals, but there was this one game, where MVP had 20+ BC, without ravens I'll admit, and got owned hard by a portion of Squirtles (1/3 was on an island far away) army, and it didn't look like ravens would save him.
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lol seriously wickedskies, YOU HAVE NO PROOF IT DOESN'T WORK EITHER...you sit around here telling ppl BC/RAVEN doesn't work because pros don't use it....PROS NEVER TRIED IT....it doesn't matter if we make a replay of it working anyway because you will just say," herp derp, it's not MVP VS DRG WHO DID IT, THEREFORE NOT VIABLE EVER".....when pros start doing it, then you can talk....& don't you dare say, "what you don't think pros have been trying this for 2 years? of course they have! herp derp" YOU HAVE NO PROOF THEY HAVE BEEN.....god you are a little snob, these guys are just trying to improve the style of play and instead of being nice on why it won't work you insult everyone as if you are MVP, YOU'RE NOT...at your level high masters on EU, MKP CAN MAKE IT WORK VS THEM PLAYERS & you know it...Dragon has made it work on grandmaster korea.... If bc/raven vs zerg becomes normal we expect a formal apology from you.
Also, I agree it would be more difficult vs a protoss than a zerg to make something like this work
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On June 22 2012 05:24 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:
Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. And one neural takes a battlecruiser out, then the bc yamatos another bc. Also, one neural takes your ghost and he emps all over the other ghosts. See, everybody is big on words.
How often do you see a neural on a ghost? That would be one sick neural to EMP the rest of the ghosts - if you haven't sniped the infestors by the time they get close enough to neural a ghost, or they haven't exploded from tank fire, you're already in trouble.
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On June 22 2012 05:20 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. NO. NO. You don't get to tell me stuff that you don't have proof of. Nobody has ever done it in a pro game. There is a reason for the fact nobody has done it in a pro game. I know the reason. You pretend you don't know the reason. Go on ladder immediately, make this, come back with replay. You have a deadline of 3 hours. If you can't, I call your words complete and utter bullshit. Man, I am so tired of people that throw random ideas and thinking they are right just BECAUSE they think so. By the way, I personally can beat mass void ray with almost any combination I can think of as terran, especially with the most standard, that is MMMGV. Have you played Phantom mode? It's a fun custom game. I get maxed out on BC/Raven all the time and own faces.
In all seriousness, the reason you haven't seen anything like this is because it's near impossible to tech to without dying in the process. Of course no one's ever done it in a pro game except for Mvp in the GSL finals against Squirtle when it was a split map situation.
Edit: There's a reason BC's are used in TvT split map situations: You have Siege Tanks, and you have time to tech to them and get enough of them that they can't be killed by Marines or Thors.
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On June 22 2012 05:27 SomeONEx wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. Don't know if you saw the GSL finals, but there was this one game, where MVP had 20+ BC, without ravens I'll admit, and got owned hard by a portion of Squirtles (1/3 was on an island far away) army, and it didn't look like ravens would save him.
I forgot archon toilets.
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On June 22 2012 05:28 dGHaiL wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:24 sieksdekciw wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:
Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. And one neural takes a battlecruiser out, then the bc yamatos another bc. Also, one neural takes your ghost and he emps all over the other ghosts. See, everybody is big on words. How often do you see a neural on a ghost? That would be one sick neural to EMP the rest of the ghosts - if you haven't sniped the infestors by the time they get close enough to neural a ghost, or they haven't exploded from tank fire, you're already in trouble.
Hey, American. how often do you see BC's vs toss? This would be one sick game.
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On June 22 2012 05:20 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. NO. NO. You don't get to tell me stuff that you don't have proof of. Nobody has ever done it in a pro game. There is a reason for the fact nobody has done it in a pro game. I know the reason. You pretend you don't know the reason. Go on ladder immediately, make this, come back with replay. You have a deadline of 3 hours. If you can't, I call your words complete and utter bullshit. Man, I am so tired of people that throw random ideas and thinking they are right just BECAUSE they think so. By the way, I personally can beat mass void ray with almost any combination I can think of as terran, especially with the most standard, that is MMMGV.
MVP did Ghost/BC vs Squirtle. If he didn't get Vortex'd he would've won.
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On June 22 2012 05:29 Fencer710 wrote:
In all seriousness, the reason you haven't seen anything like this is because it's near impossible to tech to without dying in the process. Of course no one's ever done it in a pro game except for Mvp in the GSL finals when it was a split map situation.
He did it in a TvT. Toss HT zealot composition is superior than BC Raven Ghost.
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On June 22 2012 05:32 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:29 Fencer710 wrote:
In all seriousness, the reason you haven't seen anything like this is because it's near impossible to tech to without dying in the process. Of course no one's ever done it in a pro game except for Mvp in the GSL finals when it was a split map situation. He did it in a TvT. Toss HT zealot composition is superior than BC Raven Ghost.
Err, I meant the recent GSL finals against Squirtle. Edited.~
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On June 22 2012 05:28 joeschmo wrote:
lol seriously wickedskies, YOU HAVE NO PROOF IT DOESN'T WORK EITHER...you sit around here telling ppl BC/RAVEN doesn't work because pros don't use it....PROS NEVER TRIED IT....it doesn't matter if we make a replay of it working anyway because you will just say," herp derp, it's not MVP VS DRG WHO DID IT, THEREFORE NOT VIABLE EVER".....when pros start doing it, then you can talk....& don't you dare say, "what you don't think pros have been trying this for 2 years? of course they have! herp derp" YOU HAVE NO PROOF THEY HAVE BEEN.....god you are a little snob, these guys are just trying to improve the style of play and instead of being nice on why it won't work you insult everyone as if you are MVP, YOU'RE NOT...at your level high masters on EU, MKP CAN MAKE IT WORK VS THEM PLAYERS & you know it...Dragon has made it work on grandmaster korea.... If bc/raven vs zerg becomes normal we expect a formal apology from you.
Also, I agree it would be more difficult vs a protoss than a zerg to make something like this work
Herp derp. Go to ladder. Make said strat, make a replay, share replay, come back. You have 3 hours. You will have an apology once I get my replay. Surely this build, being so great and the future of TvX, should be relatively easy to execute vs people you get matched against on ladder. After all, they should be roughly equal to skill to you.
For your information, MKP can make any build work vs mechanically weaker players than him. I can beat a gold player using only reapers. Do I go around saying 'Maaan, reapers are the future of TvX'?
The future of TvX would be in such a strat that would allow wins to be achieved where the skill requirement would be roughly equal for both players. Play on ladder with your account and win with raven bc vs toss or zerg, then share the replay. If you can't, maybe it is time to accept that the future of TvX is actually in buffing terran.
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United States15275 Posts
On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Show nested quote +Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. Show nested quote +battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's.
This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there.
It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight.
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On June 22 2012 05:30 sieksdekciw wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On June 22 2012 05:28 dGHaiL wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:24 sieksdekciw wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:
Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. And one neural takes a battlecruiser out, then the bc yamatos another bc. Also, one neural takes your ghost and he emps all over the other ghosts. See, everybody is big on words. How often do you see a neural on a ghost? That would be one sick neural to EMP the rest of the ghosts - if you haven't sniped the infestors by the time they get close enough to neural a ghost, or they haven't exploded from tank fire, you're already in trouble. Hey, American. how often do you see BC's vs toss? This would be one sick game.
I'm not sure I understand your tone. If it's sarcasm, then I almost never see BC's versus protoss.
I wasn't arguing against that strategy, I was providing my own method to the TvZ matchup. At master's level, I haven't reached a level where imbalance should really effect the outcome of my games. I'm not playing anywhere near the level of some of the pro players. If pros are saying a matchup is imbalanced, I believe them. But in the meantime, I'll continue to provide methods which work for me. (And are enjoyable, too).
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Guys, I don't think the answer is "BCs" I think the answer is putting them in the composition, not just making that your build and massing BCs, that's not practical.
Terran's have starports, for vikings, medivacs, banshees. If you open banshee, or even 1-1-1 banshee expand, you have a tech lab starport right there. You can switch off it for a bit to get up a medivac count, but then move back to it and add in some BCs. I'm not talking sky-terran, I'm talking Overwatch for your Bio force. Still be active on the map doing drops, still be hitting where you can, but the purpose is to get your BCs/Banshees as "support" units in your late game clash with the protoss army. The DPS from BCs is quite large, and they're not susceptible to zealots, colossus, force fields, etc, which is what the rest of your army is afraid of. Yamato's can take out colossus or immortals, or really anything scary. Worst case, HT feedback them at full energy and you still have a tanky unit, and banshee DPS support.
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On June 22 2012 05:40 dGHaiL wrote:
But in the meantime, I'll continue to provide methods which work for me. (And are enjoyable, too).
But why did you not say so. Please, feel free to provide a replay and educate us. Maybe you will be the one evolving TvX.
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On June 22 2012 05:40 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's. This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there. It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight.
No, I've actually played this composition in Phantom mode. I'll share replays if you like, though I don't have many and they're really long.
I agree with you that they synergize badly. This makes them even harder to get. Edit: Without dying to a straight up attack.
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On June 22 2012 05:42 Felnarion wrote:
Guys, I don't think the answer is "BCs" I think the answer is putting them in the composition, not just making that your build and massing BCs, that's not practical.
Terran's have starports, for vikings, medivacs, banshees. If you open banshee, or even 1-1-1 banshee expand, you have a tech lab starport right there. You can switch off it for a bit to get up a medivac count, but then move back to it and add in some BCs. I'm not talking sky-terran, I'm talking Overwatch for your Bio force. Still be active on the map doing drops, still be hitting where you can, but the purpose is to get your BCs/Banshees as "support" units in your late game clash with the protoss army. The DPS from BCs is quite large, and they're not susceptible to zealots, colossus, force fields, etc, which is what the rest of your army is afraid of. Yamato's can take out colossus or immortals, or really anything scary. Worst case, HT feedback them at full energy and you still have a tanky unit, and banshee DPS support.
This is really iffy... They could work, if it's really late-game TvP and you've been upgrading ship weapons and armor from your armory, and you have a lot of spare gas, even after getting a lot of Reapers, Ghosts, Medivacs, Marauders, and Vikings as your primary composition.
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United States15275 Posts
On June 22 2012 05:45 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:40 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's. This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there. It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight. No, I've actually played this composition in Phantom mode. I'll share replays if you like, though I don't have many and they're really long. I agree with you that they synergize badly. This makes them even harder to get. Edit: Without dying to a straight up attack.
Do you have ladder replays?
The lack of synergy with late-game terran makes these claims pretty hilarious. If we need 20+ battlecruisers to actually make battlecruisers effective that doesn't say much about the strength of BCs.
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On June 22 2012 05:56 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:45 Fencer710 wrote:On June 22 2012 05:40 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's. This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there. It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight. No, I've actually played this composition in Phantom mode. I'll share replays if you like, though I don't have many and they're really long. I agree with you that they synergize badly. This makes them even harder to get. Edit: Without dying to a straight up attack. Do you have ladder replays?
No. I might have done one or two games with mass BC a long time ago, but those replays are long gone.
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On June 22 2012 05:58 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:56 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:45 Fencer710 wrote:On June 22 2012 05:40 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's. This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there. It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight. No, I've actually played this composition in Phantom mode. I'll share replays if you like, though I don't have many and they're really long. I agree with you that they synergize badly. This makes them even harder to get. Edit: Without dying to a straight up attack. Do you have ladder replays? No. I might have done one or two games with mass BC a long time ago, but those replays are long gone.
... You realize that phantom mode isn't the actual game? in any case, I don't think that raven BC can be used in tvt (we've seen it needs vikings and thors and etc.) But in the other two match ups, you have to be so passive, you might just die while trying to get this composition without at least one of the following: tanks, planetaries, or massive numbers of bunkers (which isn't that good against zerg)
Also, the problem with ravens being part of the ultimate composition due to the fact that they have aoe with hunterseeker missile, all you're making the enemy do is micro their army so it isn't as clumped up.
I have tried to play mech in tvz (will provide replays if necessary) and did go up to battle cruisers and banshees, but have not tried to get ravens. The thing is, the style that I played relied heavily on the opponent attacking into me with their "ultimate composition" purely because I needed the planetaries to "crush" their army.
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No late game army in SC1 was completely useless piecemeal.
The process to get to late game T, for instance, was built on the same army that the late game T used. When you transitioned to mech, mines and tanks were useful. When you transitioned to carriers, your first carriers were useful.
BC's and ravens are not that solution. The units suck, and they don't work unless you have a ton of them.
However, ghosts STILL need to be relooked at. Mass ghosts CAN be viable.
Against Z, however, scrollwheel trick would be needed (alternatively make snipe 50energy50dmg/100psionic).
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Ravens are actually really really bad, since no one has done the math for them.
A raven is 100/200 and 2 food.
At 100 ENERGY it produces PDD that represents 280 damage blocked against vikings/corruptors. You just spent 300 res, 60+45s for an unit that does NO damage, and represents 1-2vikings/corruptors in HP.
At 125 ENERGY (60s+90s) it produces an AOE that does 1/2 the target unit's HP (corruptor/BL).
This unit is BAD. It sucks, and is not efficient against time or cost. That is NOT what you want in an endgame army, especially one that you transition to. If you had 20 of them, of course you would blast through enemy air, but you could do that with 20 templars, or 20 infestors, except they would blast through everything.
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Let's look at ghost though.
200/100 2 food.
3/3 TvP, ghost do 14.6 DPS vs zeals, 6 vs stalkers. Compare against 2 marines doing 17.4.
But this is actually REALLY REALLY good, because 30 ghosts means EVERYTHING is EMPed. Archons are worthless, zealots are easy enough, and stalkers lose 1/2 HP automatically.
Mass Ghost IS viable, but the problem isn't the unit, it's the game - getting a 4th, 5th base is not easy in a lot of cases/maps. Accumulating ghost without letting P outbank you dramatically is also not easy. If it takes you 4-5m to get 30 ghosts, what good is that when P has 3k banked and a 60 food warpin during the fight? But there is some potential.
***
TvZ
At creation, 4 food of ghost represents 150 burst damage against Z. At max, 400.
At creation, 6 food of ghost represents 225 burst damage against Z. At max, 600.
Same deal. Except less pronounced. If you COULD somehow do a few hundred snipes quickly enough, mass ghost CAN still burn through ultra/BL. Mass ghost makes it so time is on YOUR side. The more energy, the more efficient the ghost is trading against Hive. This is of course ignoring the utility the ghosts have against infestors, which is also a huge deal.
Compare the utility and damage of the Ghost against Raven or BC, and I think it will be clear which unit has the most potential.
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IMO in surpreme late game TvP terran is favored, Naniwa agrees, for a few reasons:
-On a map like Metro/ Daybreak, how does a protoss kill a turtling terran who has 20 vikings, 15 ghosts,maxed 3/3 bio, and defensive planetaries? you often times can not attack cost efficiently into that.
-Meanwhile, the terran is saccing all of his SCVs on minerals and going mass orbital. He then replaces that supply with even more scary units (more ghosts to make storms/archons irrelavent, so many vikings to negate any amount of colossus, and due to the non-supply of mules; enough bio to handle any protoss gateway composition ie mass chargelot).. at this point the terran can 100% of the time win with the massive army-supply lead he has (with proper army control)
So if you keep that in mind, you can then alter your mid-game playstyle to try and get to that point. Most terrans think throughout the whole mid-midlategame 'MUST KILL THE TOSS NOW!" and they get crushed by an equal army-supply protoss army... instead you could just defend w/ planetaries and set up archs with your army to survive until you can start saccing 90% of your SCVs and win later
tldr, change your mindset to "aggresive" mid game, to "passive-aggressive (never fully attacking, instead double dropping, constantly adding bases, defensive planetaries, and missile turret rings)
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On June 22 2012 05:58 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:56 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:45 Fencer710 wrote:On June 22 2012 05:40 CosmicSpiral wrote:On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. Don't make suggestions you haven't tried playing out. Suggesting raven bc is good vs toss is same as suggesting it is good vs zerg. Zerg can beat it with bl infestor, AND can beat it with ultra infestor ling since battlecruisers just don't have the mobility or the damage burst to kill ultras before ultras devastate your far away base. It's just as simple as that. It's almost impossible for the Protoss to FB fast enough to kill all of your Ravens/BC's before they cast HSM/Yamato on the Protoss' heavy/clumped units. Two Yamato Cannon blasts kill an Ultralisk, plus they can be delayed by Auto Turrets and PF's. battlecruisers don't have enough damage output to kill zealots fast enough, nor stop their movemement. Remember, battlecruisers don't have the damage output of broodlords nor their blocking ability. So, whatever is BELOW the battlecruisers will die. And then the storms are coming. They do not, but that does not take away from their own ability to fight. BC's still do a lot of DPS when they're all shooting at once, which kills Zealots very quickly. BattlecruiserAs you can see it does about 35 DPS against Ground, just think when 20+ of these are shooting at once how fast Zealots will melt. Auto Turrets can provide cover for any ground units underneath the BC's. This theorycrafting sounds pretty pointless to me. Fully upgraded carrier/colossus/high templar/archon can theoretically destroy any other late-game composition, but it's absurd to believe that there will ever be a reliable way to get there. It's not just that late-game terran comps are hard to get, it has very bad synergy compared to the other racial armies. Too many units in the terran race do the exact same thing in a straight-up fight. No, I've actually played this composition in Phantom mode. I'll share replays if you like, though I don't have many and they're really long. I agree with you that they synergize badly. This makes them even harder to get. Edit: Without dying to a straight up attack. Do you have ladder replays? No. I might have done one or two games with mass BC a long time ago, but those replays are long gone.
It is definitely map dependant, but on a map like Metropolis u can split the map with defensive planetaries. Protoss can't cost efficiently attack into defensive ghosts with nukes, vikings and planetaries and u slowly work up a battlecruiser count while sacrificing ur bio slowly with multidrops and do some nuke harass. You end up having mass orbitals and sacrifice most of ur scvs making ur BC ghost bio army really strong. I've seen Jinro do this transition really well in a couple of games, and of course the MVP Squirtle final showed how u can effectively get into that position in the late game, MVP played a great game but made a few mistakes, the vortex was a big one but also i think it's better to have a mix of bio, ghosts and BCs rather than pure BC and ghosts. Of course, this would need more exposure and more games to be absolutely sure what is the best composition.
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On June 22 2012 05:20 sieksdekciw wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 05:16 Fencer710 wrote:First of all, I SEVERELY question the fact that 200/200 raven bc doesn't die. What is more, I am sure that it does die to any late game zerg/toss composition you can think of. What is even more, I have seen it happen on multiple occasions. It actually doesn't die to anything. About 12 Ravens and 20+ BC's kills literally every single composition in the book, besides Marines+Ghosts or Vikings+Ghosts with amazing EMP's. The problem is getting there. It's like massing Voidrays. To get to that critical mass, you have to sacrifice almost all of your SCV's and use mostly MULEs for economy, PLUS you need over 9,000 gas. NO. NO. You don't get to tell me stuff that you don't have proof of. Nobody has ever done it in a pro game. There is a reason for the fact nobody has done it in a pro game. I know the reason. You pretend you don't know the reason. Go on ladder immediately, make this, come back with replay. You have a deadline of 3 hours. If you can't, I call your words complete and utter bullshit. Man, I am so tired of people that throw random ideas and thinking they are right just BECAUSE they think so. By the way, I personally can beat mass void ray with almost any combination I can think of as terran, especially with the most standard, that is MMMGV.
I can't stand those kind of posts. Seriously, you are the epitome of the "mettagame" parrots that try to copycat what every pro do, and than fail and go cry about a race being imbalanced.
I really didn't wanna give away my exact strats, but proving a retard like you wrong is worth it.
Here are my first 2 replays, first 2 games I ever tried going BC/Raven actually. Well sorry, to be exact, in both games i tried going in with only BC's first (which doesn't work), but I did add ravens in the end.
Replay one: http://drop.sc/202118
First time I ever tried my strat. After the drop, I was always adding factories, but not this time. This time I got 4 tech starports instead of factories.
You can say the zerg didn't execute it that well, having lots of banked minerals at some point, but same can be said against me, cause if I didn't forget 4 marines in the bunker earlier, and dropped better (didn't lsoe a medivec with 2 marines), his hatch wouldn't survive with 15% HP.
Anyway, you see me going for early BC's and doing my first attack with pure BC's. They don't work too well vs curruptors, and if he'd go full Neural Parasite infestor I'd die, but then again, it way my first time trying it, I didn't realize how important ravens are. You can see that when I add ravens in the 2nd wave of BC's, he just can't stop me. This is also not where I had double PF's, I only thought of it after the game.
Replay two: http://drop.sc/202120
2nd time trying this strat in a non-practice game. This is the opposite of my first game, as I actually take out his hive with my first drop (lol).
Anyway, I do double PF + turret rings this time, and generally play the strat better. I do, however, get overconfident with my BC's, and go in without ravens. While this actually could work if I went for a place far from the zerglings/queens, I learned that you can't go pure BC's like that. If you gather other units near the curruptors, you can't really target the curruptors with yamato, and queens just add the nail to the coffin.
Anyhow, he didn't kill me, let me remax BC+Raven.. and now, you can see how that strat is actually efficient in TvZ. He had the best possible composition, Hydra+Curruptor, and I still beat it, with dozens of PPD's and Yomatos.
Watch this replay, and go learn some new strats. Maby it'll help you speak less bullshit.
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On June 22 2012 07:45 xOny wrote:
IMO in surpreme late game TvP terran is favored, Naniwa agrees, for a few reasons:
-On a map like Metro/ Daybreak, how does a protoss kill a turtling terran who has 20 vikings, 15 ghosts,maxed 3/3 bio, and defensive planetaries? you often times can not attack cost efficiently into that.
-Meanwhile, the terran is saccing all of his SCVs on minerals and going mass orbital. He then replaces that supply with even more scary units (more ghosts to make storms/archons irrelavent, so many vikings to negate any amount of colossus, and due to the non-supply of mules; enough bio to handle any protoss gateway composition ie mass chargelot).. at this point the terran can 100% of the time win with the massive army-supply lead he has (with proper army control)
So if you keep that in mind, you can then alter your mid-game playstyle to try and get to that point. Most terrans think throughout the whole mid-midlategame 'MUST KILL THE TOSS NOW!" and they get crushed by an equal army-supply protoss army... instead you could just defend w/ planetaries and set up archs with your army to survive until you can start saccing 90% of your SCVs and win later
tldr, change your mindset to "aggresive" mid game, to "passive-aggressive (never fully attacking, instead double dropping, constantly adding bases, defensive planetaries, and missile turret rings)
But that's the problem, if the protoss attacks when they have 3/3, storm, collosi, and archons and are maxed before we have the defensive planetaries and are saccing scvs, we have problems, because the protoss should be able to get 3/3 before we do. The micro of our end game army in this instance very hard which is a main reason that people are complaining and looking for a new composition. The situation you say is not just supreme late game, it's a situation that is almost impossible to reach and comes once in like 30 or 40 games.
And also, by the time we have this super max out, is it more efficient than a mech army is? There are more ideas to explore for compositions, and looking for that "ideal" composition is something that we need to aim for.
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I like the amount of discussion in the thread, and I'm pretty surprised by it. I'll make sure to read everything and bounce some ideas back and forth.
One thing I've noticed is that everyone has a different idea on what the endgame composition for terrans against both matchups should be. Me personally believe in marauder BC ghost, and possibly ravens in TvP. Other people have stated different things.
Why don't we try to play a couple of games where we aim for the lategame with a plan on when and how to tech switch, when to time our upgrades and how to open up the game to get into the best position and link replays so others can comment on what we can improve, to see if we can actually get something solid going.
Try to keep away from balance whining/unconstructive posts please.
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On June 22 2012 08:00 ironpiggy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 07:45 xOny wrote:
IMO in surpreme late game TvP terran is favored, Naniwa agrees, for a few reasons:
-On a map like Metro/ Daybreak, how does a protoss kill a turtling terran who has 20 vikings, 15 ghosts,maxed 3/3 bio, and defensive planetaries? you often times can not attack cost efficiently into that.
-Meanwhile, the terran is saccing all of his SCVs on minerals and going mass orbital. He then replaces that supply with even more scary units (more ghosts to make storms/archons irrelavent, so many vikings to negate any amount of colossus, and due to the non-supply of mules; enough bio to handle any protoss gateway composition ie mass chargelot).. at this point the terran can 100% of the time win with the massive army-supply lead he has (with proper army control)
So if you keep that in mind, you can then alter your mid-game playstyle to try and get to that point. Most terrans think throughout the whole mid-midlategame 'MUST KILL THE TOSS NOW!" and they get crushed by an equal army-supply protoss army... instead you could just defend w/ planetaries and set up archs with your army to survive until you can start saccing 90% of your SCVs and win later
tldr, change your mindset to "aggresive" mid game, to "passive-aggressive (never fully attacking, instead double dropping, constantly adding bases, defensive planetaries, and missile turret rings) But that's the problem, if the protoss attacks when they have 3/3, storm, collosi, and archons and are maxed before we have the defensive planetaries and are saccing scvs, we have problems, because the protoss should be able to get 3/3 before we do. The micro of our end game army in this instance very hard which is a main reason that people are complaining and looking for a new composition. The situation you say is not just supreme late game, it's a situation that is almost impossible to reach and comes once in like 30 or 40 games. And also, by the time we have this super max out, is it more efficient than a mech army is? There are more ideas to explore for compositions, and looking for that "ideal" composition is something that we need to aim for.
Can you provide replays of you trying to play completely/absolutely defensively on a map like Daybreak/Metro and dying to a 3/3 timing attack? Odds are you made some pretty big mistakes, as there is no reason that you should die to a timing from Protoss if you prepare correctly for it, just like a zerg has to make 40 spines to defend a 3 base max timing when they're getting their broods out.
Saying you can not get to a split map situation vs protoss, is ridiculous and can only be explained by severe lack of game knowledge/ experience of high level play.
The micro of our end game army in this instance very hard which is a main reason that people are complaining and looking for a new composition
oh.. you're one of those "it's too hard" people.. well I'm sure a zerg would prefer to 1 control group a-move his roaches around too, but good ones know the best way to play is to get to mass brood/infestor/corrupter, albeit harder to control. IMO a strategy should never be neglected because it's "too hard"...
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For the sake of argument, let's say that late game Terran is actually powerful, and not just seemingly strong. The main problem then becomes the transition.
The first way to transition is outside of the ultra late game, where PFs are everywhere and MULES replace scvs. That is, to slowly transition out of bio play, where you begin mixing in more and more BCs with starports, maybe not even swapping tech labs, just keeping the production of most of the barracks, until you have a large enough number of battlecruisers/ravens with starports. I think the main problem with this transition is that it is too resource heavy. Whenever I tried to play this, I couldn't support the army I needed with the upgrades I needed without playing really risky. I would have to cut production of units so I could get more starports up. It's not even so much a gas related problem either, which is still hard to balance without ultra late game bank, it's a mineral problem. I couldn't support an optimal army(vikings for colo, ghosts for high temp, or tanks and vikings for zerg with the normal marines/marine-marauder) to deal with their composition, while getting upgrades and even more production buildings. Zerg have a similar problem when they bank gas for a ton of brood lords outside of the ultra late game, they cut their production of gas units for awhile to bank some gas. I and most zergs will then use the extra minerals on spine crawlers, to hold for brood lords. However, this isn't an option for terran, because you are never banking minerals as terran, and of course, all the static defenses require minerals, and the best one even uses gas(PF). In summary, a slow transition involves a long period of sub-optimal army without strong static defense, with low chance of surviving multiple attacks. A transition outside of the ultra late-game will simply never happen.
Now then, we've established that a transition must be made in the ultra-late game, where there are PFs and MULES and whatnot; an obvious reference is game five of MVP vs Squirtle. When we reach this maxed out stage, you obviously don't want to be making even more barracks units, and this means that for a while, because of how long BCs take to come out in large enough numbers, you won't be producing at maximum capacity while freeing up supply by killing scvs. With the way protoss and zerg remax so quickly, especially at this ultra late game stage, you would have to hope that they don't attack you multiple times, or after the initial fight with your maxed out army, you would be trading horribly badly with low amounts of units stalling for time. However, if they don't attack you, for whatever reason, it might work as we saw in MVP vs Squirtle. If this style becomes the norm, people are just going to realize what's going on, and always continuously remax with the bank they have, and continuously in waves of maxed out units, attack. Not that protoss doesn't do so anyway. In fact, this really boils down to how quickly zerg and protoss remax compared to terran armies.
Once again, this is only considering the Terran late game being strong enough to not need to remax. In other words, it literally doesn't die to anything when it is fully realized without needing to be remade, because if you have to remax on BC's, assuming you actually could, you will surely die before they come out in time.
In the end, I don't think BC transitions are a very good idea. Not even unit composition wise, but just the transition alone is bad enough. Some style of mass ghosts would be much safer, and I even think strong composition wise. It has synergy with units already out, and the production for it is nearly all there, maybe more tech labs.
Edit: This is all from my experience as a mid-masters random player. I prefer macro games, perhaps because I played zerg primarily until masters, and even as Terran I play to the late game. I have come to a good amount of ultra-late games, and found that BC transitions are very risky. I've only played mass ghost with some ravens a few times, and already find it much much more safe.
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Endgame armies shouldn't be thought of as static unit compositions where you make X% of this unit, Y% of that unit, and Z% of a couple others. It's about trying to get the edge by countering your opponent's composition as best as possible and setting up good engagements through positioning, baiting tactics, and multipronged tactics. Even the most ultimate armies can be destroyed in one way or another.
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I have a big issue with the suggestions of going for the endgame to transition into a superior lategame army.
Nevermind that it basically means you're going for a 40+ min game, but its also extremely map dependent. You have to be able to effectively split the map and defend key points. Not only does this mean that Terran has to survive during the massive transition but it is impossible on maps that you can't effectively defend.
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On June 22 2012 08:24 -Exalt- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 08:00 ironpiggy wrote:On June 22 2012 07:45 xOny wrote:
IMO in surpreme late game TvP terran is favored, Naniwa agrees, for a few reasons:
-On a map like Metro/ Daybreak, how does a protoss kill a turtling terran who has 20 vikings, 15 ghosts,maxed 3/3 bio, and defensive planetaries? you often times can not attack cost efficiently into that.
-Meanwhile, the terran is saccing all of his SCVs on minerals and going mass orbital. He then replaces that supply with even more scary units (more ghosts to make storms/archons irrelavent, so many vikings to negate any amount of colossus, and due to the non-supply of mules; enough bio to handle any protoss gateway composition ie mass chargelot).. at this point the terran can 100% of the time win with the massive army-supply lead he has (with proper army control)
So if you keep that in mind, you can then alter your mid-game playstyle to try and get to that point. Most terrans think throughout the whole mid-midlategame 'MUST KILL THE TOSS NOW!" and they get crushed by an equal army-supply protoss army... instead you could just defend w/ planetaries and set up archs with your army to survive until you can start saccing 90% of your SCVs and win later
tldr, change your mindset to "aggresive" mid game, to "passive-aggressive (never fully attacking, instead double dropping, constantly adding bases, defensive planetaries, and missile turret rings) But that's the problem, if the protoss attacks when they have 3/3, storm, collosi, and archons and are maxed before we have the defensive planetaries and are saccing scvs, we have problems, because the protoss should be able to get 3/3 before we do. The micro of our end game army in this instance very hard which is a main reason that people are complaining and looking for a new composition. The situation you say is not just supreme late game, it's a situation that is almost impossible to reach and comes once in like 30 or 40 games. And also, by the time we have this super max out, is it more efficient than a mech army is? There are more ideas to explore for compositions, and looking for that "ideal" composition is something that we need to aim for. Can you provide replays of you trying to play completely/absolutely defensively on a map like Daybreak/Metro and dying to a 3/3 timing attack? Odds are you made some pretty big mistakes, as there is no reason that you should die to a timing from Protoss if you prepare correctly for it, just like a zerg has to make 40 spines to defend a 3 base max timing when they're getting their broods out. Saying you can not get to a split map situation vs protoss, is ridiculous and can only be explained by severe lack of game knowledge/ experience of high level play. Show nested quote +The micro of our end game army in this instance very hard which is a main reason that people are complaining and looking for a new composition oh.. you're one of those "it's too hard" people.. well I'm sure a zerg would prefer to 1 control group a-move his roaches around too, but good ones know the best way to play is to get to mass brood/infestor/corrupter, albeit harder to control. IMO a strategy should never be neglected because it's "too hard"...
whoa whoa whoa. I'm not one of those "it's too hard" people. I'm one of those "there should be a different way to do this." Also, I was explaining a general reason as to why people are looking for a new end game composition, because it seemed like xOny was saying that the current extreme end game is the most viable one.
And I didn't say a thing about tvz, so I don't understand why you're mentioning it at all. Nor did I say you "can not get to a split map situation vs protoss", I said it's almost impossible to reach, either because of dying or because you kill the protoss by then. And if you've played ladder, you know that an extreme late game scenario like that is incredibly hard to come by.
And I'm just saying that if you try to get to super end game with bio, you have chances of just dying after one engagement. If you go mech, most protosses are too afraid to engage it, because no one really knows whether or not who will win the engagement right now.
You seriously misinterpreted a lot of what I said.
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On June 22 2012 09:30 HeroMystic wrote:
I have a big issue with the suggestions of going for the endgame to transition into a superior lategame army.
Nevermind that it basically means you're going for a 40+ min game, but its also extremely map dependent. You have to be able to effectively split the map and defend key points. Not only does this mean that Terran has to survive during the massive transition but it is impossible on maps that you can't effectively defend.
I agree to an extent. It's pretty stupid to try to go for a 40+ minute game every time as your core strategy. The game is always going to start with an opening, go into a midgame transition, and eventually an endgame and a supreme late game--at least, until someone missteps or rolls the dice and the game ends. But there are games when it's half-map half-map and neither player breaks each other, both players get to 3-3 (or 3-3-3) with multiple tech trees finished and a ton of production established, and it's important to be prepared for that stage of the game when it happens. Is it as important as the opening? Hell no; every game has a beginning but not all of them have an uber late-game. There's way too much variance for that. But for those few games where it's 45 minutes in and you can build whatever 3-3 armies you want from the entire tech tree, it's worth thinking about. Those games do happen, and they happen in major tournaments at crucial moments. Food for thought.
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I have a build I have been thinking about for awhile but I have not tried it out yet. But I will give it a go tomorrow on the ladder.
Get gas at 16 then fast expand.
Get 3 barrack 1 factory and 1 starport on your 2 bases.
Build 2 vikings that you split up to take out any overlords on the map, keep putting your gas into vikings and bio upgrades. Go for a timing attack with all your scvs and the bio force you built up during the viking harass. The zerg cant remake units and you win.
6 queen opening which are standard these days do deal well with the vikings, however if they use those to defend they are not spreading creep and taking map control, and vikings are still faster and have good air-air range so you should be able to kill loads of overlords, then land them to buff versus banelings with your big all-in push. The reactor starport will also be nice to get medivacs out in time for the 11-12 minute push.
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United States4883 Posts
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I've come up with a reasonable theory, I believe. The biggest problem facing terrans is THE STEPPING STONES BETWEEN HEAVY BIO TO LATE GAME UNITS.
1) For all intents and purposes, we know we want to end up with a lot of BC or a lot of Ravens. I say OR because it's certainly impossible to find all the gas to put down the production structures + upgrades and still get a sizeable amount of both BC and Ravens. Our lategame composition is going to be a lot of SOMETHING + RAVENS/BCs.
2) The question is what our base army is going to be. Unquestionably, terran is going heavy bio in both matchups (for the most part). We have plenty of ideas for switching towards a biomech in both matchups, adding in thors/hellions to our MMMG armies as we start to reach 16:00. Bio generally leaves us with an excess of gas; Bomber put this directly into Ravens, players like Polt put it into mech. Biomech IS an option of transition.
3) Some players have been experimenting with pure mech as well. Because we stick with this composition of heavy meching, we can more easily transition into lategame mech with our endgame air transition. Therefore, I can see our two main army masses being MMM OR THOR/HELLION depending on how mobile we want to be or how fast we want to transition to our lategame tech. (edit: vikings and ghosts are added into both these mixtures as needed, of course)
So that gives us our ideal engame army: MMM OR THOR/HELLION supported by BCs OR RAVENS. We can have bio+ravens, Bomber-style or bio+BC Mvp-style. Or we can stick to pure mech with the endgame air support. The question now is how to comfortably transition into the gas-heavy air units needed to support our lategame composition. Like zerg, this is an endgame composition of our highest tiered units; we need several bases and tons of gas. Like zerg, WE NEED A SERIES OF TIERS.
Zerg tiers, from lowest to highest, give a general idea of the proper tech path, and look like this:
Tier 1: zergling/baneling
Tier 1.5: roaches
Tier 2: mutas, infestors, hydras
Tier 2.5: ultras, corruptors
Tier 3: Brood Lords
Right now the terran tiers look something like this:
Tier 1: marine/marauder, hellions
Tier 2: marine/marauder, tanks, thors
Tier 2.5: ????
Tier 3: MECH
Tier 4: BC/Ravens
As the blank suggests, I think terran is missing a tier. The biggest problem is that once terran gets to a strong MMM/G composition, perhaps with some tanks or thors, there's not really a good way to step out of the multi-pronged aggressive playstyle and into a comfortable passive style. I don't think this problem presents itself as much with mech because we're playing passive all game long and generally spend this time finally pushing our advantage. But to those who are at a struggle to pass into the endgame army, there's just not enough time or money or safety to sit comfortably on 4-5 bases.
I PROPOSE THE NUKE IS THE MISSING TIER. Using nukes and large drops (2-3 medivacs), we can buy a ton of time to get up the infrastructure needed to transition into the endgame army. During this time, we can set up defense (imagine stations of a planetary fortress in a choke with 2 tanks and a missile turret) and start getting the proper production facilities and upgrades.
Assuming the viability of a "super-terran" endgame army, we can say that using nukes to transition into mech or straight into Raven/BC is a reasonable choice. Even if zerg and protoss can fall back to a quick army remax, the terran composition should ALSO be able to remax rather quickly with MMM/G or Thor/hellion...the ravens and BC are just the final addition to the mix. Thoughts?
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I think using Nukes and drops as a "missing tier" is faulty logic because it also relies on the opponent being worse than you are. Competent Zergs already know how to deal with drops and they will clean up the Nukes with Spores/Overseers.
I believe Nukes are a lategame option because of how spread out the Zerg will be. Running 5 bases with Infestor/Brood Lord while getting dropped in 2 locations and nuked in a 3rd location is hard to stop. Getting nuked at your third and a drop at your main when you're on 3/4 bases isn't as difficult to handle.
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United States4883 Posts
On June 22 2012 10:30 Entirety wrote:
I think using Nukes and drops as a "missing tier" is faulty logic because it also relies on the opponent being worse than you are. Competent Zergs already know how to deal with drops and they will clean up the Nukes with Spores/Overseers.
I believe Nukes are a lategame option because of how spread out the Zerg will be. Running 5 bases with Infestor/Brood Lord while getting dropped in 2 locations and nuked in a 3rd location is hard to stop. Getting nuked at your third and a drop at your main when you're on 3/4 bases isn't as difficult to handle.
I'm talking about when zerg is on 4-5 bases with hivetech. This commonly happens around 16:00-18:00 in a game, especially on maps like Metropolis (where we saw MMA nuke and drop the hell out of Stephano until he died). Assuming the zerg doesn't die, we can safely trade bits of bio for air at little cost.
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On June 22 2012 09:50 ineversmile wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 09:30 HeroMystic wrote:
I have a big issue with the suggestions of going for the endgame to transition into a superior lategame army.
Nevermind that it basically means you're going for a 40+ min game, but its also extremely map dependent. You have to be able to effectively split the map and defend key points. Not only does this mean that Terran has to survive during the massive transition but it is impossible on maps that you can't effectively defend. I agree to an extent. It's pretty stupid to try to go for a 40+ minute game every time as your core strategy. The game is always going to start with an opening, go into a midgame transition, and eventually an endgame and a supreme late game--at least, until someone missteps or rolls the dice and the game ends. But there are games when it's half-map half-map and neither player breaks each other, both players get to 3-3 (or 3-3-3) with multiple tech trees finished and a ton of production established, and it's important to be prepared for that stage of the game when it happens. Is it as important as the opening? Hell no; every game has a beginning but not all of them have an uber late-game. There's way too much variance for that. But for those few games where it's 45 minutes in and you can build whatever 3-3 armies you want from the entire tech tree, it's worth thinking about. Those games do happen, and they happen in major tournaments at crucial moments. Food for thought.
I agree, but this is also an entirely separate scenario to the regular lategame. No one cares if Terran is superior at the endgame in this thread. It's not the point, let alone for it being such a rarity, and saying "Go for the endgame" as a standard strategy is just silly.
That said, I want to address the BC/Raven transition.
...If it requires a lot of them to be good, it's a bad unit.
So that goes for BCs and Ravens. Ravens are not nessecarily a bad unit, but as an offensive unit? Pretty terrible. Defensively? Excellent. For a defensive unit though, you don't need a lot of them. Maybe 2-4 to support your Vikings.
I really like what Architecture said in his series of posts, saying that your first round of units need to be useful right from the start. If you have to get a massive number of them (like BCs), I wouldn't bother trying.
It's better (and cheaper) to transition into Viking/Raven/Banshee as a lategame composition. Maybe have 1-2 BCs to act as Yamato snipers vs BLs or Infestors. However, I'm far more interested in transitioning into mass ghosts while continuing to be aggressive. Treating your Ghosts like MMM and spreading them out while EMPing/Sniping Infestors sound like a valid though perhaps difficult strategy.
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On June 22 2012 11:39 HeroMystic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 09:50 ineversmile wrote:On June 22 2012 09:30 HeroMystic wrote:
I have a big issue with the suggestions of going for the endgame to transition into a superior lategame army.
Nevermind that it basically means you're going for a 40+ min game, but its also extremely map dependent. You have to be able to effectively split the map and defend key points. Not only does this mean that Terran has to survive during the massive transition but it is impossible on maps that you can't effectively defend. I agree to an extent. It's pretty stupid to try to go for a 40+ minute game every time as your core strategy. The game is always going to start with an opening, go into a midgame transition, and eventually an endgame and a supreme late game--at least, until someone missteps or rolls the dice and the game ends. But there are games when it's half-map half-map and neither player breaks each other, both players get to 3-3 (or 3-3-3) with multiple tech trees finished and a ton of production established, and it's important to be prepared for that stage of the game when it happens. Is it as important as the opening? Hell no; every game has a beginning but not all of them have an uber late-game. There's way too much variance for that. But for those few games where it's 45 minutes in and you can build whatever 3-3 armies you want from the entire tech tree, it's worth thinking about. Those games do happen, and they happen in major tournaments at crucial moments. Food for thought. I agree, but this is also an entirely separate scenario to the regular lategame. No one cares if Terran is superior at the endgame in this thread. It's not the point, let alone for it being such a rarity, and saying "Go for the endgame" as a standard strategy is just silly. That said, I want to address the BC/Raven transition. ...If it requires a lot of them to be good, it's a bad unit. So that goes for BCs and Ravens. Ravens are not nessecarily a bad unit, but as an offensive unit? Pretty terrible. Defensively? Excellent. For a defensive unit though, you don't need a lot of them. Maybe 2-4 to support your Vikings. I really like what Architecture said in his series of posts, saying that your first round of units need to be useful right from the start. If you have to get a massive number of them (like BCs), I wouldn't bother trying. It's better (and cheaper) to transition into Viking/Raven/Banshee as a lategame composition. Maybe have 1-2 BCs to act as Yamato snipers vs BLs or Infestors. However, I'm far more interested in transitioning into mass ghosts while continuing to be aggressive. Treating your Ghosts like MMM and spreading them out while EMPing/Sniping Infestors sound like a valid though perhaps difficult strategy.
I don't like too much air in TvZ because the Zerg can make a lot of Corruptor/Infestor, then morph some Broodlords to kill all the stuff you have on the ground. A couple of air units to cover for the Ravens is good, as well as to force more Corruptors, but I don't like more than that as chain fungals>air.(typically, besides BC's)
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On June 22 2012 11:56 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 22 2012 11:39 HeroMystic wrote:On June 22 2012 09:50 ineversmile wrote:On June 22 2012 09:30 HeroMystic wrote:
I have a big issue with the suggestions of going for the endgame to transition into a superior lategame army.
Nevermind that it basically means you're going for a 40+ min game, but its also extremely map dependent. You have to be able to effectively split the map and defend key points. Not only does this mean that Terran has to survive during the massive transition but it is impossible on maps that you can't effectively defend. I agree to an extent. It's pretty stupid to try to go for a 40+ minute game every time as your core strategy. The game is always going to start with an opening, go into a midgame transition, and eventually an endgame and a supreme late game--at least, until someone missteps or rolls the dice and the game ends. But there are games when it's half-map half-map and neither player breaks each other, both players get to 3-3 (or 3-3-3) with multiple tech trees finished and a ton of production established, and it's important to be prepared for that stage of the game when it happens. Is it as important as the opening? Hell no; every game has a beginning but not all of them have an uber late-game. There's way too much variance for that. But for those few games where it's 45 minutes in and you can build whatever 3-3 armies you want from the entire tech tree, it's worth thinking about. Those games do happen, and they happen in major tournaments at crucial moments. Food for thought. I agree, but this is also an entirely separate scenario to the regular lategame. No one cares if Terran is superior at the endgame in this thread. It's not the point, let alone for it being such a rarity, and saying "Go for the endgame" as a standard strategy is just silly. That said, I want to address the BC/Raven transition. ...If it requires a lot of them to be good, it's a bad unit. So that goes for BCs and Ravens. Ravens are not nessecarily a bad unit, but as an offensive unit? Pretty terrible. Defensively? Excellent. For a defensive unit though, you don't need a lot of them. Maybe 2-4 to support your Vikings. I really like what Architecture said in his series of posts, saying that your first round of units need to be useful right from the start. If you have to get a massive number of them (like BCs), I wouldn't bother trying. It's better (and cheaper) to transition into Viking/Raven/Banshee as a lategame composition. Maybe have 1-2 BCs to act as Yamato snipers vs BLs or Infestors. However, I'm far more interested in transitioning into mass ghosts while continuing to be aggressive. Treating your Ghosts like MMM and spreading them out while EMPing/Sniping Infestors sound like a valid though perhaps difficult strategy. I don't like too much air in TvZ because the Zerg can make a lot of Corruptor/Infestor, then morph some Broodlords to kill all the stuff you have on the ground. A couple of air units to cover for the Ravens is good, as well as to force more Corruptors, but I don't like more than that as chain fungals>air.(typically, besides BC's)
There's really no reason why you shouldn't treat your air units like bio and spread them out. Hell, you already have to do the same thing with just Raven/Viking. Banshees can even be used to snipe infestors from flanked positions.
There's a lot you can do with Banshees. Far more than what you can with a Battlecrusier (unfortunately). It's also very useless to NP a Banshee, while the BC can Yamato a Raven or be a 550 HP tank.
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There is no terran "lategame", stop kidding yourselves.
User was warned for this post
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I am a master protoss who has no idea about TvZ, but I feel mech should REALLY be explored more. I cringe every time terrans say they don't have a viable endgame mix. Mech itself is already pretty strong (hellions and tanks destroy zealots and thors anything else) and with ghosts added I just don't see any counter to that even.
Check out Lyyna's mech thread, it even has me raging at him in there!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003
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United States4883 Posts
On June 22 2012 11:39 HeroMystic wrote:
It's better (and cheaper) to transition into Viking/Raven/Banshee as a lategame composition. Maybe have 1-2 BCs to act as Yamato snipers vs BLs or Infestors. However, I'm far more interested in transitioning into mass ghosts while continuing to be aggressive. Treating your Ghosts like MMM and spreading them out while EMPing/Sniping Infestors sound like a valid though perhaps difficult strategy.
I've actually experimented with a maruder/ghost/viking lategame style. And I've tried to split ghosts like marines, but they just don't do it very well. Ghosts are AWFUL at splitting quickly. But the marauder/ghost/viking is actually a really cool, mobile lategame composition. I never really looked at possible transitions, but I suppose I could have started nuking everywhere while adding on some BC's or Ravens.
Might be something people can look into. I basically had like 20 rax with tech labs at the end so I could produce marines if I needed to.
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On June 21 2012 20:10 SomeONEx wrote:I think that reaper is an actual option in lategame TvP. My coach from a long time ago taught me that once I'd hit max in TvZ, I should add some 3-4 rax with tech labs for ghosts. Now, if the same is done but with reapers instead, and we just drop away some supply and add in ~10 reapers, I think that Blizzard will find another thing to nerf with Terrans I would like to add, that I am backing this statement up with a game ThorZain played against some Protoss I can't recall where ThorZain added in reapers in his army and just crushed the Protoss, can't remember where/what game it was
Thorzain vs Crank in Slayers vs mouz of EG Masters Cup VII
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i think that camping until you have 12 thor(1 shoot broodlords)/12 tank, then go out, this can work imho
this against zerg of course
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On June 22 2012 18:39 Garmer wrote:
i think that camping until you have 12 thor(1 shoot broodlords)/12 tank, then go out, this can work imho
this against zerg of course
No, it can't. I have tried it, and 3/3 mech simply doesn't work vs Infestor-Broodlord.
If your tanks are sieged, the broodlords are going to devastate your thors using the friendly fire mechanic (which is retarded, by the way- IMO, after all the ridiculous nerf's, and banes/Collosi doing no friendly damage, the friendly splash should be removed.. but that's a different discussion).
If your tanks are unsieged, or you got too many Thors, he just NP's each of the Thors (he should have at least 1 Infestor per Thor at that point in time), make the Thors kill all the tanks, then each other, and you're dead.
An alternative is simply having ~10 queens, mass infestors, and mass broodlords.. You'll never get a good concave to actually shoot at a single BL with 12 Thors, and the queens will just heal the BL's, making them unkillable. If you got sieged tanks ,they destroy your own army.
Edit:
Of course, if you got no tanks but mainly hellions, he Nueral's all the Thors, fungle and kill any hellions that try to intercept the Infestors, and you die. Quite simple.
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it's possible to kite a bit with thor(9.5 range BL vs 10) and queen can't heal if tank are sieged, obviously when BL start shooting you should focus fire other things with your tanks(like infestor, queen ecc...) or just press repeatedly the stop fire button, this will make them like neutral units(will require tons of micro of course), or you can just siege the tanks only when you see infestor/queen coming...
the problem is that, if you lose you can't reinforce, cuz this composition is so slow to make
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A bunch of theorycrafting about 2 completely different match-ups...I think this thread isn't going to work unless it's segmented into TvP late game and TvZ late game. There's just no way that it's going to be productive if we're talking about beating Broodlord/Infestor in one post and then about Colossi and HTs in the other.
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Good idea. I'll make sure to do just that soon.
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On June 22 2012 09:54 ShaneFeit wrote:
I have a build I have been thinking about for awhile but I have not tried it out yet. But I will give it a go tomorrow on the ladder.
Get gas at 16 then fast expand.
Get 3 barrack 1 factory and 1 starport on your 2 bases.
Build 2 vikings that you split up to take out any overlords on the map, keep putting your gas into vikings and bio upgrades. Go for a timing attack with all your scvs and the bio force you built up during the viking harass. The zerg cant remake units and you win.
6 queen opening which are standard these days do deal well with the vikings, however if they use those to defend they are not spreading creep and taking map control, and vikings are still faster and have good air-air range so you should be able to kill loads of overlords, then land them to buff versus banelings with your big all-in push. The reactor starport will also be nice to get medivacs out in time for the 11-12 minute push.
So I gave this a try on the ladder and it failed pretty badly. By the time you get enough vikings out the zerg just gets a spire and mutas wipe out the vikings. However you are able to get quite a few overlord kills with the viking before that point. I think maybe just building 4 vikings to lure the Zerg for spire tech could probably be good if you are going for 3OC, since that is considerably easier to play vs than infestors.
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I'm just going to post my experiences. I am a pure macro Terran, and my average game is about 25-30 minutes. I prefer high tech, strategic late game battles that involve alot of in battle/micro.
In PvT I tend to go Mech every game. Mass tanks/hellions, a few thors for tanking, a few ghosts for EMP. Heavy turtle, with planetary fortresses on all important choke points. Its very successful. Late late game, I throw down 4+ starports for banshees. Mech+banshees w/ micro is extremely good vs any typical toss composition, especially if youre good at sniping observers and just dancing with your banshees in battle. I open double rax/double cc and just turtle. I think Banshees are superior to BCs due to mobility, DPS, and cloak, as well as how fast you can produce them.
My experience is that mass tanks/hellions > Colossi/HT based armys. Unsieged 3/3 tanks also have very high dps - I've beaten heavy Immortal compositions using massive 3/3 hellion/unsieged tank armies, even without EMP. If its a larger map, throwing in banshees reeeeally hurts the toss, especially if you micro them like mutas.
As many said, getting there is the hard part, but not as hard as you think. I just turtle heavily, playing like a zerg, with planetary fortresses everywhere thanks to the macro CC.
TvZ - Very very veery hard to outmacro the Zerg, but if you can get to late game, I find the only way I can slowly push back a Zerg on 4+ bases is with upgraded mech w/marauders and vikings upgraded to counter the constant Ultra/Broodlord switch. There are alot of intricacies that appear when you use mech as heavily as I do, such as countering Roach/Infestor, how to deal with the constant tech switches, etc. Marauders are really mean if you can back them up with a solid mech army. Broodlord/Infestor/corrupter w/mass sunkens is no joke, but neither is Planetary fortress/mass SCV's.
As for getting there, you'll have to really just defend and scout heavily at the same time. Prepare for ultrabusts early-late game, or if you see him going quick broodlords. 3/3 mech, hellions especially, tend to melt broodlings and tank early broodlords well. Indeed, the main problem is not countering Zerg, but countering what they counter you with. If the game lasts long enough that ihave 3/3 bio and mech, I can easily hold my own.
If you mech, and have alot of macro cc's for mules, bring 10+ scvs with your army always. It makes 3/3 mech compositions extremely potent vs anything. Also, always micro your tanks.
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I would watch Avilo play if you want to go to the late game, I think he has the best Late Late Game Terran I've seen.
I've seen him win games in where he literally doesnt touch a zerg or protoss all game long and wins with deathball vs deathball. good shit
twitch.tv/avilo
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On June 24 2012 06:09 GaMeOfFeAr wrote:
I'm just going to post my experiences. I am a pure macro Terran, and my average game is about 25-30 minutes. I prefer high tech, strategic late game battles that involve alot of in battle/micro.
In PvT I tend to go Mech every game. Mass tanks/hellions, a few thors for tanking, a few ghosts for EMP. Heavy turtle, with planetary fortresses on all important choke points. Its very successful. Late late game, I throw down 4+ starports for banshees. Mech+banshees w/ micro is extremely good vs any typical toss composition, especially if youre good at sniping observers and just dancing with your banshees in battle. I open double rax/double cc and just turtle. I think Banshees are superior to BCs due to mobility, DPS, and cloak, as well as how fast you can produce them.
My experience is that mass tanks/hellions > Colossi/HT based armys. Unsieged 3/3 tanks also have very high dps - I've beaten heavy Immortal compositions using massive 3/3 hellion/unsieged tank armies, even without EMP. If its a larger map, throwing in banshees reeeeally hurts the toss, especially if you micro them like mutas.
As many said, getting there is the hard part, but not as hard as you think. I just turtle heavily, playing like a zerg, with planetary fortresses everywhere thanks to the macro CC.
TvZ - Very very veery hard to outmacro the Zerg, but if you can get to late game, I find the only way I can slowly push back a Zerg on 4+ bases is with upgraded mech w/marauders and vikings upgraded to counter the constant Ultra/Broodlord switch. There are alot of intricacies that appear when you use mech as heavily as I do, such as countering Roach/Infestor, how to deal with the constant tech switches, etc. Marauders are really mean if you can back them up with a solid mech army. Broodlord/Infestor/corrupter w/mass sunkens is no joke, but neither is Planetary fortress/mass SCV's.
As for getting there, you'll have to really just defend and scout heavily at the same time. Prepare for ultrabusts early-late game, or if you see him going quick broodlords. 3/3 mech, hellions especially, tend to melt broodlings and tank early broodlords well. Indeed, the main problem is not countering Zerg, but countering what they counter you with. If the game lasts long enough that ihave 3/3 bio and mech, I can easily hold my own.
If you mech, and have alot of macro cc's for mules, bring 10+ scvs with your army always. It makes 3/3 mech compositions extremely potent vs anything. Also, always micro your tanks.
Is master league? I don't want to discount anybody's opinion as to what works for them but I'm trying to stay in diamond myself and I just want to make sure these strategies are valid for higher leagues.
If so, thank you very much for this post. I'm really lost as to what comp to look for late game vs Z/P and this might help a lot.
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theres two ways to talk about lategame
1) build wise. how do you GET to lategame? its extremely hard to get 3/3 air and mech when you also need to get 3/3 bio early. maybe someone will figure out good mech builds that are viable.
build wise only the best terrans can really find out the best way to enter the lategame. build wise its hard to argue what works, only the best know, and until something works so well it becomes mainstream its theorycraft thats pointless
2) unit wise. This is where I think theorycraft is not pointless. its not hard to look at units in the tester and see what wins and what loses so I will
i used to always think ultras combined with fungal/broodlords was just stupidly too good. i used to think the only counter to ultras was kiting MMM since ultras are too strong but fungal stops that and broodlord range stops ghost emp. i used to think a zergs perfect endgame army should pretty much always win against any perfect terran army because terran air is weak, and ultras cost for cost obliterate all ground units with fungal/broodlord support
but then i went into the unit tester and discovered that where i thought battlecruisers were too weak because corrupters decimated them in any battle of over 30 food (even with good yamatos) I realized that battlecruisers actually are a good counter to ultralisks. create any perfect zerg army with ultras in it and add in 1 bc per ultra and the bc's instantly cut the ultra numbers in half due to yamato. so food for food every bc in your army is a strong counter to the enemy ultralisk
thats just 1 thing ive noticed, unit wise, which is theorycraft but its still thats not really pointless.. what this theorycraft tellsyou is that if there could somehow be found a viable build to allow viable bc's to be gotten against ultras, then bc's would work on paper (however whether or not a viable method/build exists, who knows)
so now that i realized ultras are not as stupidly overpowered as i once thought and are countered pretty hard by BC's (and not banshees actually because ultras still rip everything apart too fast only yamato stops them banshees dont work too well) i no longer think theres a perfect zerg army thats unbeatable. but still thats just theorycraft on paper, when it comes to build wise who the hell really knows what the solution is for terran lategame
also on paper in theorycraft the only counter to broodlord/corrupter/infestor heavy armies is mass vikings with maybe 6 ravens with PDD and some thor hellion. the trick is you need to really use the 9range vikings to avoid INFESTED TERRANS as well as you can. thats what really stacks things in zergs favor is fungal combined with infested terrans is such strong anti air try to keep the vikings in an area so your ground army protects them from IT then keep hellions behind the thors to hopefully roast broodlings
in the unit tester if you got 140food of pure broodlord/corrupter/infestor/queen in any combination, there should be a 140food combination of viking/thor/hellion/raven that smashes it badly because once vikings are in large numbers and stack up they obliterate all air before fungal can kill them
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Heavy Raven play seems to be the only way to keep up with the zerg late game deathball. As for the late game Protoss ...I have no idea. I would assume its going to be a mix of these units:
1.Ghosts
2. Ravens
3. Loads of tanks.
and probably vikings too.
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The only problem with going Ravens in TvZ is usually they get fungaled to death. I would think you would also need to add in ghosts to EMP the infestors..
Too gas intensive..
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On June 24 2012 13:10 VPVanek wrote:
The only problem with going Ravens in TvZ is usually they get fungaled to death. I would think you would also need to add in ghosts to EMP the infestors..
Too gas intensive..
Actually no, you can afford that composition on 5+ bases. 10 geysers is a lot.
Edit: Also you should be able to take a 5th base before the Zerg gets pure Queen/Infestor/Broodlord/Corruptor without any Zerglings, Banelings, Roaches, etc, and until then you don't need this gas-heavy of a composition.
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On June 24 2012 12:47 heaven- wrote:
Heavy Raven play seems to be the only way to keep up with the zerg late game deathball. As for the late game Protoss ...I have no idea. I would assume its going to be a mix of these units:
1.Ghosts
2. Ravens
3. Loads of tanks.
and probably vikings too.
....what
Please explain this. I just don't see this combo doing anything in TvP.
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I think in TvZ, we definitly need to play more pure Bio (well executed - lots of bases and rax.. stuff like that).. With that, Zerg isn't really able to get Broodlords, because our army would be to mobile compared to his and he would lose.
With a hug amout of bases on our own, which is possible due to PFs and sniping Zergs bases, which is supereasy due to 3-3 Marauder, our reinforcement is so much better. We just need to trade efficiently.
Zerg will go Roach, Ling, Bling, Infestor, Ultra.. A mixture of these units (mostly likely not all of them)
BL - Corr is too slow.. and we could, if necessary, produce a crap ton of Vikings
Hydras are crap in general..
Mutas are waste, because they die in main engagements and Harassment isn't really possible, due to the fast ups and massive income (which allows) to build a lot of turrets.. And our Bio is as mobile as their mutas are.
So we have: "Roach, Ling, Bling, Infestor, Ultra" - with decent micro it is possible to beat this.. Marauders are good against everything except for Ling.. therefore we have marines..
And in general.. Splitted Marines are awesome..
I think this pure Bio is very viable.. Sure, it is a bit difficult, because if your whole army gets fungled and you don't have enough reinforcement (like 12') the game is mostly over..
So pre-splitting is very important, even let the army patrol is better than just hold position
With constant aggression, it way more difficult for Zerg to get into Late Game, and if they are, it's as i wrote above.
But i have no idea in TvP (Protoss is just Op :D)
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On June 24 2012 14:36 iAmJeffReY wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 12:47 heaven- wrote:
Heavy Raven play seems to be the only way to keep up with the zerg late game deathball. As for the late game Protoss ...I have no idea. I would assume its going to be a mix of these units:
1.Ghosts
2. Ravens
3. Loads of tanks.
and probably vikings too. ....what Please explain this. I just don't see this combo doing anything in TvP.
I'm pretty curious too. I'm thinking that you would build rings of auto-turrets around the zealots, trapping them inside, and then shooting them with tanks, and landed vikings. Maybe even nuking them too. Picture for illustrative purposes only, do not attempt this at home.
_____
| zzz | - [=_] pewpew tanks
| zzzz | - [=_]
| z | - - [=_]
|zzzz | -- [=_]
+ Show Spoiler +This is almost as good as HSM'ing your own cloak banshees to act as suicide bombers
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Don't innovate, refine... jeez. The answer is almost never to come up with a completely no answer to everything.
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I have been thinking about a turtle style mech TvZ and grinded some games this morning.
this is what i came up with:
(maps are daybreak and cloud kingdom)
- 1rax fe (send scout before depo finishes to ebay block zergs natural, works every time and forces the zerg to either get his 3rd first, in which case we go and block that too, or go pool first. Anyway, his natural is going to finish at about the same time as yours)
- as i build my nat i go double gas and put in 4 scvs
- build atleast 1 bunker on nat choke, send another scv scout to zergs 3rd
if you see 3rd just wall with depots and go straight for double starport
if no third, start siegemode asap, get tanks on hg, add a bunker,
- float out your rax, give reac to a new factory (at this point you can decide whether you want 2 reac factories or 1
1 fac means mor macro orbitals, 2 means more harrasment potential and more security regarding cracklings.
- get macro orbital, ebay, armory and a cc to take a forward base! (this is important, on daybreak take the typical 4th first and secure it with some tanks behind the mineral line so that they cover the entrance to your not yet placed 3rd and are protected by your pf
- make turret ring in main, couple of turrets at all bases (mutas can straight up kill you if you dont! mainly because we have been lazy about our thor production up to this point.
- make 2 vikings then 4 - 6 banshees, upgrade building armor+ hisec, hsm raven startingenergy
- make depo wall at 3rd base back door, let it be covered by 3 tanks behind the 4ths mineral line
-now, in the ideal case, we have a pf on the front base, 4 bases total, 1 macro orbital, 5 factories, 2 reac 3tlab, 2starports
2 armories getting +attack for air and ground building armor and hisec, a turret ring, tanks and buildings at our 4th, about 5 thors, around 8 tanks! no less no more! ah good chunk of hellions that we try to trade for lings and drones( with or without BF, it doesnt really matter all that much, a small fleet of banshees, some stray ravens with atleast 100 energy each.
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zerg should be on 5 bases and a couple of macrohatches and be looking to trade low cost units while building up either broods or ultras.
here is what we are trying to accomplish:
we put banshees on a seperate hotkey and use them to try to snipe hatcheries, make the b*tches fly!
hellions are on a speperate hotkey aswell, they dive in whenever we see that the main army is out of position and try to snipe drones. Split those up, they are much better when you like put 4 of em behind each mineralline zerg has and are much more annoying to deal with this way.
use the ravens singlefile, dont ever group them up and fly them alltogether without the protection of your mech balL!
what er do is we pick 1 raven at a time and send it out to drop 2 auto turrets at a location of our choice, then make them fly back to our main defense point where we have some idling scvs on auto repair. recharge energy, go again.
so basically we have this 3 way harrasmentstyle of hellion banshee raven and just try to hurt zergs infrastructure while building up a doom ball of thors tanks ravens and later on bcs.
what we need skillwise: multitasking! and efficient hotkeymanagement. mouse skills are not as important. eg we dont have to split units, ever! all we need to do is slowly claim the map and never let go on the harassmentfront.
timings we can be troubled by:
2 base roach ling attacks or ling bane attacks, that hit before we have siegemode done
these can be expected if you dont see a 3rd for zerg by around 8:30 and should be defended by pulling scvs back into your main and spreading bunkers while waiting for siegemode to finish. dont worry about losing some depots in your wall or the marines in the bunker, just dont donate your scvs or tanks.
3 base roach ling bane timings that try to deny our forward base from morphing into a pf and thus let us claim center ground
this can be rendered harmless if we leapfrog our tanks properly and use our rax for vision
3 base muta timings that hit when we slacked of on turret and thor production
you will occasionally get killed by this, there is no real way around it. even i you have a turret ring and thors, mutas will still do damage to you since we are delaying thorproduction to the point where we cannot afford not to build them. still if you die to this your scouting was off. a big indicator for mutaplay vs mech is the absence of a roach ling timing!!!
maxed broodlord armies that hit us without us having an additional reac starport up
if this comes at you, retreat slowly, gather your harrasment forces and either try to basetrade with your banshee raven while defending with your thors and the emergency vikings, or if you have enough energy on your ravens, carpet those broods with seekermissiles! and finish them with vikings. in anycase you DO NOT want to fight this army on open ground, retreat to your pf and buildings so that you are atleast covered from ground forces.
as a finishing word; we dont need to straight up attack at any point in the game because our force will eventually become much much stronger then what the zerg can muster up. thus, there is no reason for us to attack until it is very clear that we have a definit army advantage and the productioncapability to trade gas units.
thats it. works like a charm, makes zergs ragequit, and ignores creepspread.
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As much as I like the idea of this thread, it's really not relevant unless you had a bunch of high level players, familiar with Terran, trying to pump out strategies and then to post replays of that strategy in the different MUs v. different builds.
I mean first comment I read after seeing the dps post was "wow reapers are incredible. why aren't terran using them. no wonder they are losing." It's comments like these that make me wish people had their league pinned to their username.
The fact is reapers are bad. Not terrible, but certainly not worth the expense. I have tried them in TvP late game and you're better off investing the minerals and gas into ghosts. The best (and only) way to win late game TvP is to mass PF the main chokes. Get +2 armor, +1 range, mass ghosts, get nukes and mass drop. In the meantime you can get 3-4 starports and tech to 3/3 battlecruisers as you mule away your side of the map.
If you can successfully get PFs established in the choke, you are in a really good position. Again, battlecruisers are great in Tv, but you the necessary condition to attain them is a bunch of PFs at main chokes so you have the time and map control you need to trade down supply in drops and produce BCs.
I actually wish the Raven was more useful. It's so expensive and has so little utility. I actually played megaton many, many times with mass Raven so I could effectively shift click all of its spells and master the unit. Unfortunately, I haven't even been able to use the Raven much because I cannot win any macro game TvZ (rank 1 master last season). Literally on sc2 gears, I have gone 0-12 in macro games, so ever since I just cheese Zerg every game until this game gets balanced. But my point is that the Raven is weak and expensive. Sure in late game v. BL/infestor/corrupter, you would like them for HSM. But note that you're still less than even with the Zerg even if you have 16 Ravens.
Because all it takes is 1 fungal, 1 moment and it's GG. Or even 1 tech switch for that matter to ultra. Ravens cannot cast whilst being fungaled and fungal outranges HSM. Additioanlly, Infestors and ultras can outrun HSM on creep.
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The lategame for terran appears to be "meso sada racea not OPea anymora mesa make whine thread". Maybe it will work maybe it wont. One thing is for sure. People are gonna hate themselves for wasting time whining when they could have improved their skills.
It's kinda funny to me no terrans where complaining when a few ghosts could win a game where zerg was so massively ahead nobody even thought it was possible. Where 111 was basically autoloss for protoss. Ofcourse you will win less when the game is balanced because you won because race was OP not because skill was OP. A diamond terran a few months ago probably had the skill of a platinum zerg or protoss.
I play random because I am achieve whore. However when I am on losing streak I play terran just to get a win and that still works even though I am alot better with zerg.
When I watch progames today game seems quite balanced. When I read the forums there is just terran whine everywhere. Infact if I was a terran I would switch race just to not be associated with all the bitch ass whiners.
Ps. I take bets on warning or ban ^^ 5 to 2 , hard to give good line since I don't know if mod plays terran LOL
User was temp banned for this post.
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TvP Ghost/BC is an extremely strong "deathball" and it can be obtained once you're on 3+ bases mining from 6+ gas. You dont even have to go pure BC either, a few marine/maruder medivacs with around 16 BC's + ghosts is extremely difficult to beat as protoss.
TvZ Thor/Ghost/BC is probably the best unit composition that you can get, you just need to be able to get off key emps on infestors and utilize yomato. The problem with this unit comp is that its very immobile so you'd have to reinforce your expansions with PF's to buy you enough time to defend your expansions. Reasons why this unit comp is amazing, Thors are excellent vs ultras, clumped corruptors & Broodlords, and good vs every zerg unit. Ghosts can be used to harass with nukes and can nullify infestors while supporting the thors/bcs with snipe, and BC's are good because in mass (16+) they can snipe Zergs T3 with Yomato.
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I have an interesting suggestion to come in the late game with terran against protoss.
Why shouldn't we use the Thor+Marine+Banshee composition, which uses MMA, Jjakji and NaDa in the past?
I just would replace the Marines with Hellions to open up new ways of harassment and easier dealing with Zealot heavy compositions, because they melt against hellions.
I try this a couple times these days and it works really well. (just diamond)
The build looks like 1 rax fe with cloak banshee into Thor Hellion. On 2 Base i get 3 Fac (TTR)+2 Starports (TT) and maybe 2 Armory for double upgrades with this mass thors+banshee and hellion you are really save against everything in the mid and early game. I dont understand why terrans play with heavy tank compositions. Yeah sure they are really powerful if you siege them up in time but protoss is so mobile they can just outrun you. Maybe they just outrun me but the point is you dont have to siege up with Thor+Hellion+Banshee. You can scan and snipe observer and mass banshees with no obs against protoss is really fun. For this reason they are afraid to attack into this mass banshee force. I get 250mm cannon on 2 Base because you can snipe immortals, archons and collosi and they die instant. On maybe 4-5 Base you can transition into BC+Ghost but i dont that experience with it, because my hellion+banshee harassment is so hard that every protoss left the game before.
I'am really interested in your opinion about this composition.
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On June 25 2012 19:25 saaaa wrote:
I have an interesting suggestion to come in the late game with terran against protoss.
Why shouldn't we use the Thor+Marine+Banshee composition, which uses MMA, Jjakji and NaDa in the past?
I just would replace the Marines with Hellions to open up new ways of harassment and easier dealing with Zealot heavy compositions, because they melt against hellions.
I try this a couple times these days and it works really well. (just diamond)
The build looks like 1 rax fe with cloak banshee into Thor Hellion. On 2 Base i get 3 Fac (TTR)+2 Starports (TT) and maybe 2 Armory for double upgrades with this mass thors+banshee and hellion you are really save against everything in the mid and early game. I dont understand why terrans play with heavy tank compositions. Yeah sure they are really powerful if you siege them up in time but protoss is so mobile they can just outrun you. Maybe they just outrun me but the point is you dont have to siege up with Thor+Hellion+Banshee. You can scan and snipe observer and mass banshees with no obs against protoss is really fun. For this reason they are afraid to attack into this mass banshee force. I get 250mm cannon on 2 Base because you can snipe immortals, archons and collosi and they die instant. On maybe 4-5 Base you can transition into BC+Ghost but i dont that experience with it, because my hellion+banshee harassment is so hard that every protoss left the game before.
I'am really interested in your opinion about this composition.
Feedback+Psi Storm+Colossus kills that. It worked as a mid-game timing because the Protoss didn't have much of his T3 up.
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why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not
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On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not
It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats.
The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it.
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On June 25 2012 19:29 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 19:25 saaaa wrote:
I have an interesting suggestion to come in the late game with terran against protoss.
Why shouldn't we use the Thor+Marine+Banshee composition, which uses MMA, Jjakji and NaDa in the past?
I just would replace the Marines with Hellions to open up new ways of harassment and easier dealing with Zealot heavy compositions, because they melt against hellions.
I try this a couple times these days and it works really well. (just diamond)
The build looks like 1 rax fe with cloak banshee into Thor Hellion. On 2 Base i get 3 Fac (TTR)+2 Starports (TT) and maybe 2 Armory for double upgrades with this mass thors+banshee and hellion you are really save against everything in the mid and early game. I dont understand why terrans play with heavy tank compositions. Yeah sure they are really powerful if you siege them up in time but protoss is so mobile they can just outrun you. Maybe they just outrun me but the point is you dont have to siege up with Thor+Hellion+Banshee. You can scan and snipe observer and mass banshees with no obs against protoss is really fun. For this reason they are afraid to attack into this mass banshee force. I get 250mm cannon on 2 Base because you can snipe immortals, archons and collosi and they die instant. On maybe 4-5 Base you can transition into BC+Ghost but i dont that experience with it, because my hellion+banshee harassment is so hard that every protoss left the game before.
I'am really interested in your opinion about this composition. Feedback+Psi Storm+Colossus kills that. It worked as a mid-game timing because the Protoss didn't have much of his T3 up.
you begin to add ghosts in mid game. jjakji,nada,mma attacked around 17:30 min until then you should have enough ghost with cloak.
and the protoss have to decide if he storms the banshees or feedback the thors.
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On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it.
ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first
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On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first
but vikings in mech in TvP means ~3 less banshees. I really like to snipe obs. with thors.
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On June 25 2012 21:04 saaaa wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first but vikings in mech in TvP means ~3 less banshees. I really like to snipe obs. with thors.
Banshees are 3 supply that's why, so its a pretty bad late game option. And sky terran is easily shutdown by 200/200 blink stalkers, you end up running out of cloak from all the blinking in/out, PDD's run out of energy in one volley, and you can't abuse the mobility.
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On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first
I meant with Vikings still. You're going to have Vikings no matter what against Colossus anyway, unless you're going Sky Terran.
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On June 25 2012 21:09 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 21:04 saaaa wrote:On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first but vikings in mech in TvP means ~3 less banshees. I really like to snipe obs. with thors. Banshees are 3 supply that's why, so its a pretty bad late game option. And sky terran is easily shutdown by 200/200 blink stalkers, you end up running out of cloak from all the blinking in/out, PDD's run out of energy in one volley, and you can't abuse the mobility.
Shut down in the mid game with Blinkstalker/HT*
Pure Blinkstalker gets shut down by Viking/Raven/Banshee. You need the thread of Feedback and the AoE of Storms to keep him from clumping up and abusing ledges outside your base, otherwise the Vikings snipe the Observer, and Ravens throw down PDD's and or HSM's once the Stalkers blink in, and you can't retreat and you die.
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On June 25 2012 21:09 sluggaslamoo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 21:04 saaaa wrote:On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first but vikings in mech in TvP means ~3 less banshees. I really like to snipe obs. with thors. Banshees are 3 supply that's why, so its a pretty bad late game option. And sky terran is easily shutdown by 200/200 blink stalkers, you end up running out of cloak from all the blinking in/out, PDD's run out of energy in one volley, and you can't abuse the mobility.
BC with Raven are incredible strong. You just need enough ravens maybe +6 to shutdown any stalker attacks.
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On June 21 2012 18:40 Entteri wrote:
The only really viable TvZ lategame ever was mass ghost and it was nerfed to the ground (just like everything else). There is no viable "standard" type lategame composition for terran and if you come up with anything that isn't standard it's going to get instanerfed to hell. Also, no matter what you come up with the answer to that is infestors because they counter both tightly packed small units(fungal) and big single units(neural parasite). They also counter air and cloak and they happen to be the standard ZvT for a reason.
User was warned for this post
lol, retard. Sorry to quote a warning but it's really funny.
Cloaked ghosts are great units and in my opinion theyre great in late vP and vZ. Turn multi drop harrass into multi nuke harrass and build a planetary/ turret wall as far forward as you can. Hotkey all the planetaries so you can make scvs in a crunch if you run out of mules (don't run out of mules). inb4 Raven. Also get all the upgrades you never get, structure armor, auto tracking, neosteel, etc.
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what about a couple PF with a raisable supply depot wall (so chargelots get bugged)? Sprinkle in a few vikings and tanks + missile turrets (and building armor + PF range ofc) and you get yourself a bastion that is really hard to crack for protoss
never really understood why terran wouldn't do it like in SC:BW (place a few tanks in strategic locations, wall them in with buildings/missile turrets. Sure you have no spider mines in SC2, but you have PF and you can do a full walloff since to get your tank out you can just lower one supply depot).
oh, and also try to take out gateways lategame. It forces the protoss to retreat with his army (if you just drop more than his warp in limited by supply cap can handle), and if you take out his production suddenly he has a one-shot army (and not infinite resupply to max in 5 sec). If you cannot take out the majority of his gateways, just kill his tech buildings, especially templar archives (since late game protoss often times has too much gas and too low minerals, so he gas dumps into mass archon)
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On June 25 2012 23:15 Cirqueenflex wrote:
what about a couple PF with a raisable supply depot wall (so chargelots get bugged)? Sprinkle in a few vikings and tanks + missile turrets (and building armor + PF range ofc) and you get yourself a bastion that is really hard to crack for protoss
never really understood why terran wouldn't do it like in SC:BW (place a few tanks in strategic locations, wall them in with buildings/missile turrets. Sure you have no spider mines in SC2, but you have PF and you can do a full walloff since to get your tank out you can just lower one supply depot).
Problems here are
-If you aren't going tanks from the start (so uppgrading them the whole game), they're going to be terrible at holding your PF wall
-PFs take a long time to build, so basically you need to put everything into holding "the" key area while building/morphing it
-A Deathball can basically a PF in seconds. and if you have tanks,he's going to have air, so basically he can try to come in, snipe a PF with his air army, and fly away immediatly
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I am master Terran and never really had the chance to experiment with this... How bad does 3 PFs fare vs a deathball? Or hell, your smaller bio (due to the transition to BCs (?)) + the 3 PFs should be enough, shouldn't it?
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On June 25 2012 21:11 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first I meant with Vikings still. You're going to have Vikings no matter what against Colossus anyway, unless you're going Sky Terran.
ghost does pitiful dps against protoss though, and having banshees mean you can still harass all game
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On June 25 2012 19:25 saaaa wrote:
I have an interesting suggestion to come in the late game with terran against protoss.
Why shouldn't we use the Thor+Marine+Banshee composition, which uses MMA, Jjakji and NaDa in the past?
I just would replace the Marines with Hellions to open up new ways of harassment and easier dealing with Zealot heavy compositions, because they melt against hellions.
I try this a couple times these days and it works really well. (just diamond)
The build looks like 1 rax fe with cloak banshee into Thor Hellion. On 2 Base i get 3 Fac (TTR)+2 Starports (TT) and maybe 2 Armory for double upgrades with this mass thors+banshee and hellion you are really save against everything in the mid and early game. I dont understand why terrans play with heavy tank compositions. Yeah sure they are really powerful if you siege them up in time but protoss is so mobile they can just outrun you. Maybe they just outrun me but the point is you dont have to siege up with Thor+Hellion+Banshee. You can scan and snipe observer and mass banshees with no obs against protoss is really fun. For this reason they are afraid to attack into this mass banshee force. I get 250mm cannon on 2 Base because you can snipe immortals, archons and collosi and they die instant. On maybe 4-5 Base you can transition into BC+Ghost but i dont that experience with it, because my hellion+banshee harassment is so hard that every protoss left the game before.
I'am really interested in your opinion about this composition.
Get destroy completely by HT and mass zealot play. Your making 3 type of different unit that require 3 different upgrade. It too hard to have the gas to upgrade them all. Banshee and marine need upgrade to be able to deal stalker and zealots well (dont forget guardian shield). Since banshee and marine are fast DPS unit, if protoss get armor upgrade, it messed up their DPS exponentially. Compare to the thor, it does like 60 damage (not real number I am just using an arbutarly high number) per shot and so 1 armor only decrease it to 59 which isnt that big of deal. While banshee shot 2 missle per shot and marine shot really fast so armor messed up their DPS if you arent on par with upgrade.
HT shit on banshee with storm and feedback rape Thor and banshee. You can get some ghost but ghost is going to be tough because you already having problem with gas upgrading 3 different type of unit along with having very gas intensive unit.
It used to be a powerful strategy at the start of sc2 release. I think Painuser was the one that discovered it and display it power at MLG that with +1 thor, they 1 shot observers and banshee owned everything but during this time everyone made collosus and didnt understand how powerful storm was. It came back for a bit after HT got the kydrian amulet nerf but it quickly disappear after protoss found out again that HT wasnt useless.
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On June 26 2012 04:08 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 21:11 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first I meant with Vikings still. You're going to have Vikings no matter what against Colossus anyway, unless you're going Sky Terran. ghost does pitiful dps against protoss though, and having banshees mean you can still harass all game
What? Protoss players these days have Cannons+HT's guarding their bases from drops anyway...
Ghosts do 22 damage against Zealot armor, the same DPS as un-stimmed Marauders do against Stalkers, and they have EMP which does huge damage if you EMP all the Protoss units, plus it gets rid of the energy on Sentries, which means no Guardian Shield, and no Psi Storm if you get the HT's too. HT's also die to 1 Snipe if you EMP them first.
Banshees do high DPS per supply, but have very low HP per supply. Marines, Reapers, and Marauders are all better for that purpose. The two advantages are that it can Cloak, and it can fly. Unfortunately those are negligible against late-game Protoss, which has at least two Robotics Facilities anyway, which means double Observer production.
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On June 26 2012 03:56 xTrim wrote:
I am master Terran and never really had the chance to experiment with this... How bad does 3 PFs fare vs a deathball? Or hell, your smaller bio (due to the transition to BCs (?)) + the 3 PFs should be enough, shouldn't it?
Even one PF lasts fairly long against a weakened Deathball. If you engage a Protoss Deathball with your Bioball near a PF you will always win the engagement unless he gets wicked storms off. Two PF's make it even more one-sided.
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On June 25 2012 20:11 saaaa wrote:Show nested quote +On June 25 2012 19:29 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:25 saaaa wrote:
I have an interesting suggestion to come in the late game with terran against protoss.
Why shouldn't we use the Thor+Marine+Banshee composition, which uses MMA, Jjakji and NaDa in the past?
I just would replace the Marines with Hellions to open up new ways of harassment and easier dealing with Zealot heavy compositions, because they melt against hellions.
I try this a couple times these days and it works really well. (just diamond)
The build looks like 1 rax fe with cloak banshee into Thor Hellion. On 2 Base i get 3 Fac (TTR)+2 Starports (TT) and maybe 2 Armory for double upgrades with this mass thors+banshee and hellion you are really save against everything in the mid and early game. I dont understand why terrans play with heavy tank compositions. Yeah sure they are really powerful if you siege them up in time but protoss is so mobile they can just outrun you. Maybe they just outrun me but the point is you dont have to siege up with Thor+Hellion+Banshee. You can scan and snipe observer and mass banshees with no obs against protoss is really fun. For this reason they are afraid to attack into this mass banshee force. I get 250mm cannon on 2 Base because you can snipe immortals, archons and collosi and they die instant. On maybe 4-5 Base you can transition into BC+Ghost but i dont that experience with it, because my hellion+banshee harassment is so hard that every protoss left the game before.
I'am really interested in your opinion about this composition. Feedback+Psi Storm+Colossus kills that. It worked as a mid-game timing because the Protoss didn't have much of his T3 up. you begin to add ghosts in mid game. jjakji,nada,mma attacked around 17:30 min until then you should have enough ghost with cloak. and the protoss have to decide if he storms the banshees or feedback the thors.
Hmm... I guess, maybe it could work?
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I commend any terran for trying to turn lemons into lemonade. As a zerg, I'll be rooting for you to figure out a standard end game comp so that long zvt's can continue to be the best matchup in the game!
In my humble low diamond terran offrace account, I usually open triple OC into 4 rax and attack with like maybe 20 marines without stim, from there I've gotten double gas to transition into marine tank and, as the game goes on, start to transition out of marine tank into mech with the emphasis on thors + vikings and a couple ravens (hopefully I've kept tanks alive through the mid game).
Is this a viable thing to do and are people already doing it? I mean the transitioning into mech. Or is it merely possible at my low level cause we're all macroing like shit and have enough money to do that?
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Fun Fact 1: TWO planetary fortresses can cover FOUR bases by ground on Tal'Darim Altar. This, combined with a few bunkers and tanks could create a minimal-supply "Maginot Line" and allow Terran to mine EIGHT geysers. Turret wall the sides and you're safe from air as well!
Now I have no idea what kind of weird build order you'd have to do to get these two CCs in place, but considering the benefit of 4 safe bases, I think it warrants some investigation!
PF placement images follow.
+ Show Spoiler + (Note, red circles indicate +1 range upgrade.) Top PF: ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AaCpr.png) Bottom PF:
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Fun Fact 2: ONE PF (very nearly) covers THREE bases by ground on Condemned Ridge.
+ Show Spoiler +
Fun Fact 3: TWO PFs cover THREE bases by ground on Entombed Valley.
+ Show Spoiler +
Of the three PF options,
• Condemned Ridge seems to offer the best (most survivable early-game) ROI on PFs to bases (1 for 3), followed by
• Tal'Darim Altar (2 for 4), then
• Entombed Valley (2 for 3).
I recommend people interested in this try to make 1PF on Condemned Ridge work before attempting a 2PF wall.
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Zerg player here with a few suggestions for T.
Depending on the Z build and your micro skills, one possible strategy to skip tanks for attacks in the Mid-game because they almost always never get home from a battle exchange, granted, they are great for focus firing banelings, but maybe mixing in more BF hellions, keeping your medivacs alive can give you enough gas and time for building late game units.
I'm thinking a small group of vikings first to go overlord hunting and really keep the zerg supply count down, while getting BCs. BW use to have a lot of overlord hunting, and its strange we don't see this so much in SC2.
Tanks and PFs to keep your 3rd and 4th from ling / bane infestor,attacks, while building a sizable BC fleet of 6 should be good enough to take out a few Z expansions and defend against any base trades.
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composition wise i think its important to have a backbone of cheap, easily replaceable units (bio, or mech if you opened and upgraded mech). think about lategame protoss. they still get gateway units/have a shit ton of gates lategame, and support those units with t3 units. they dont just mass t3.
i honestly believe terran is the mineral race, more expansions, more raxes, and good micro will win you lategame tvz and tvp. i think BC's and Thors as supporting units (in small numbers and not necessarily upgraded) work well
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On June 26 2012 08:33 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 04:08 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 21:11 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 21:02 iky43210 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:43 Fencer710 wrote:On June 25 2012 19:34 iky43210 wrote:
why is no terran using heavy banshee in late game army against protoss?
And with viking long range, you could add 4 viking in your army, do a scan, and one shot the observers. never tried to do it in an actual game,but i don't see why not It's almost as effective if you go 8+ Ghosts, snipe the Observer like you say, and cloak>EMP the entire Protoss army, then run in with stimmed Bio and kill everything, or what you can as he retreats. The difference is that you don't lose if you can't snipe the observer, or he has multiple of them and ends up mass Feedbacking you when you don't expect it. ghost have short range, they aren't so easy to snipe observers. Vikings on the other hand u can literally a-move them and they'll hit observer first I meant with Vikings still. You're going to have Vikings no matter what against Colossus anyway, unless you're going Sky Terran. ghost does pitiful dps against protoss though, and having banshees mean you can still harass all game What? Protoss players these days have Cannons+HT's guarding their bases from drops anyway... Ghosts do 22 damage against Zealot armor, the same DPS as un-stimmed Marauders do against Stalkers, and they have EMP which does huge damage if you EMP all the Protoss units, plus it gets rid of the energy on Sentries, which means no Guardian Shield, and no Psi Storm if you get the HT's too. HT's also die to 1 Snipe if you EMP them first. Banshees do high DPS per supply, but have very low HP per supply. Marines, Reapers, and Marauders are all better for that purpose. The two advantages are that it can Cloak, and it can fly. Unfortunately those are negligible against late-game Protoss, which has at least two Robotics Facilities anyway, which means double Observer production.
most protoss i watched from stream don't make cannons, they aren't that cheap investment early to mid game
ghost does 14 dps on ground unit to light, and 7 dps to none light, and have very little harass option. Banshee does 19dps to all, can harass early to mid game, and with viking support I don't see why killing observers + harass can't be done with proper micro.
Maybe someone have tested it yet, but I have never seen anyone go with banshee+ viking. Its usually one or the other, and any time u can tie protoss to make observers instead of lasers is good in my book
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I'm absolutely clueless in TvZ, but TvP I've just been absolutely loving some mech->skymech play.
Usually open 1rax FE, get a second rax to maybe pressure if toss went for greedy play and made next to no units (will also occasionally block nexus with a bunker or put a bunker at the top of P ramp). From there, fast 3rd OC with 3fax/1port and double armory, adding on more facs while taking the third. The general aim as I shimmy into 3base play is to build up a strong tank/hellion count with a light supporting cast of ravens with HSM and 2-3 vikings to deal with warp prisms and observers.
Heading into fourth base, go up to 4 starports and usually around 10fac (often maxed around here), have 2-3 planetaries at 4th and guarding the way into 3rd/nat/main. Attack P fourth or fifth base with large use of scans so that you don't get caught out of position. If you knock out the P army and an expo or two, gjgj. Usually 3-5 HSM's + siege tank/hellion can take care of any colossus-centric army composition, because it's very common for the templar transition to come after they've lost their colossi in my experience and so feedback won't be available
Slowly add on more starports for more ravens, dumping minerals into mass planetary to help secure 5th/6th (main/nat on a 4player map, otherwise hard to get to this point). Slowly begin to phase out tanks, going up to 12-15 ravens, hellions, and a smattering of thor/tank. add on a light dash of banshee and battlecruiser and you should be good to go. 8-10 Seeker missiles can drop a protoss army down 80 food in seconds, tanks/thors can deal with stalkers while bc's/thors tank, and hellions can deal with zealots. If you're on 6base I usually have 15fac/10port so it's very easy to remax on either mech, skymech, or you can just add more ports if you want to go pure sky. The central goal should be to abuse cost effectiveness and limit the expansions that the protoss can take-ravens are key because they allow you to dump minerals into more bases=more income=easier to remax and move out again to deny more bases.
Works very well on Condemned ridge. Antiga is much more favorable to a 3base max and just pure mech push, although securing the center and then PFspam across the middle would probably get you to the endgame pretty well (but you've pretty much won if you can do that :|). I veto TDA, Entombed is tough for me personally because of the space between bases, unlike the closer 4th bases that you can take on Condemned. Cloud Kingdom is also good for the 3base mech-raven pushes, as there's no chance to really safely take 5-6 bases. Shak plateau is easy to cover both main/nats entrance with planetaries, and then use Xel'Naga towers as central rally points to secure bases 5+6. Can't remember what other maps though ^^
Also, I've never tried it but theoretically you could add in 2-3 medivacs and ball up all the flying energy things so that P could maybe waste feedback on those~
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All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive.
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On June 26 2012 15:37 Adonminus wrote:
All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive.
Forgive me if I'm wrong but could you not simply make stalkers?
Don't get extra damage from ghosts and can kill medivacs and vikings after~
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On June 26 2012 16:38 GTPGlitch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 15:37 Adonminus wrote:
All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive. Forgive me if I'm wrong but could you not simply make stalkers? Don't get extra damage from ghosts and can kill medivacs and vikings after~
I go Ghost/Viking/Medivac/Marauder/Reaper and cut out the Marines as much as possible in the late-game.
The difference is that you have units that do a lot of DPS vs casters that do much less DPS.
Edit: Reapers and Marauders also cost gas.
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On June 26 2012 14:36 ncsix wrote:
Zerg player here with a few suggestions for T.
Depending on the Z build and your micro skills, one possible strategy to skip tanks for attacks in the Mid-game because they almost always never get home from a battle exchange, granted, they are great for focus firing banelings, but maybe mixing in more BF hellions, keeping your medivacs alive can give you enough gas and time for building late game units.
I'm thinking a small group of vikings first to go overlord hunting and really keep the zerg supply count down, while getting BCs. BW use to have a lot of overlord hunting, and its strange we don't see this so much in SC2.
Tanks and PFs to keep your 3rd and 4th from ling / bane infestor,attacks, while building a sizable BC fleet of 6 should be good enough to take out a few Z expansions and defend against any base trades.
then Z just makes a bunch of corruptors to kill the BC's with corruption ability, and then morphs them into bl's?
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On June 26 2012 16:38 GTPGlitch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 15:37 Adonminus wrote:
All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive. Forgive me if I'm wrong but could you not simply make stalkers? Don't get extra damage from ghosts and can kill medivacs and vikings after~
Ghost dps is insane even without light bonus, they destroy buildings in seconds. While stalkers don't even get extra damage against ghosts and with medievac heal they don't even die. Further more, you can cloak all ghosts, and snipe observers with vikings.
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On June 26 2012 15:37 Adonminus wrote:
All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive.
nice post u had me at overpowered
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On June 26 2012 18:40 CtrlShiftAltGrrrrrrr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 15:37 Adonminus wrote:
All I know is that one of the options for very late game TvP it's to go Ghost Viking Medievac and that's an absolutely overpowered and unstoppable composition, ghosts dps is simply too good especially when your army also gets emped and colossus die to viking. It's unstoppable but very expensive. nice post u had me at overpowered
Well, it's a composition you rarely can get. It's like getting those mass 3/3/3 carriers as protoss which are too overpowered and unstoppable.
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What about using planetary fortress and turrets to turtle, whilst massing an army or biscuitcruisers or ravens (Ketroc Style). With the pf most ground is neutralised and the turrets neutralise air. Slowly taking the map and using auto turrets.etc to harrass bases :D (MvP Vs. Squirtle, MvP just turtled whilst massing bcs)
Although personally I find this a little slow and boring, I prefer to zerg my opponent <3
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Hello strategists,
For a long time I am thinking the same thing OP proposed. Just turtling slowly and slowly and defend what your opponent throws at you in TvZ and TvP. I couldn't read the whole thread right now but it's really good to see other people has seen this kind of play as our salvation.
The problem is it's also not easy to pull of a solid turtle style. It's may be the most methodic style. I remember it from early day of brood war (99-2000) while terrans were turtling hard.
Anyway I will read the whole thread when I have time, I really want to adapt turtle style in my play.
Thanks everyone,
Kull
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i've been tinkering around with a build that is more mech-ish heavy rather than the mmm we are told to do a lot and this recent game i played against a top diamond lvl protoss and my beta build rather worked. it's a hellion/banshee build that works very well. If you need the rep i can post it. It's not just hellion/banshee it uses other units
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On June 24 2012 14:36 iAmJeffReY wrote:Show nested quote +On June 24 2012 12:47 heaven- wrote:
Heavy Raven play seems to be the only way to keep up with the zerg late game deathball. As for the late game Protoss ...I have no idea. I would assume its going to be a mix of these units:
1.Ghosts
2. Ravens
3. Loads of tanks.
and probably vikings too. ....what Please explain this. I just don't see this combo doing anything in TvP.
Mech vs protoss.
You need all those components for it to work.
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This is the Beta build i was working on. I would like to get your guy's feedback on it and what not:
http://drop.sc/208189
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZrmF0.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rM2VA.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XXr16.png)
