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I sort of disagree with the opinions on mineral dumping into marines or hellions. I really feel like you need to reserve your food for your air army. Stacking minerals may feel wrong.. but so does building 6 or 7 star ports. Almost every game I’ve lost with sky terran in the late game I mixed in bio or hellions… The games I don’t add them I pretty much dominate.
There’s nothing wrong with floating minerals with this strat.. it doesn’t make you a bad player if you’re floating money. Theres’ this misconception that having no money means you’re macro’ing well. If you feel that way build a PF/turret wall.
If you build a few hellions to mineral harass that’s one thing.. but I don’t feel like you should be adding them as component to your death ball.
If you see phoenix heavy comps I like to start BC production earlier than usual. Right as your 3rd goes up throw down your fusion core.
Get a crap ton of turrets and sit tight/expand until you max. If he goes voids get hunter seeker and yomato and laugh when they just explode
Your biggest worry IMO is HT and archons… feedback is not that effective when you hit critical mass with your banshees… but storm can make you a sad panda if you take your eyes off the battle even for a second… Also.. if he engages and you win the battle.. don’t just sit and wait for him to re-max.. go attack and rally units… stalkers alone do not beat banshee/BC.. and he won’t have any energy for storms if he just traded.. so press your advantage.
PDDs work on cannon fire! Use it to snipe nexus with a bunch of banshees and run away.
Final thought- Don’t get your banshees stacked up in a vortex.. archon toilet obviously annihilates sky terran with a good vortex. If you see HT heavy compositions you should actually be smart and get a few ghosts.. which means you can emp the mother ship if it comes to it.
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Low NA master here
For my TvPs where I'm feeling less cheesy (a.k.a not doing a Proxy Thor), I like to use a variation on a build that Jinro used so long ago (an anti-collosus build that I think Synystyr outlined in Liquipedia)... A 1 rax FE into 4 Rax Pressure into Mass Starport/Banshee.
Basically, what I've found is that if the 4 rax marine pressure doesn't do anything, I get the upgrades for marines: Stim/Combat Shield and +1 attack. I don't get +1 armor because it doesn't do anything against storm and only helps marginally against collossi.
Basically, I aim for a 12-13-14 minute push with 6-7 cloakshees (4 more on the way) and 20-30 marines with 15-16 scvs for auto-repair. The pure DPS of the all-in demolishes basically everything. If possible, mix in a thor/viking and a raven.
Step 1. Send Cloaked Banshees in to force sentries to back off/dance with stalkers/force collossi back
Step 2. Stim and a-move marines, grabbing small groups of them and splitting them.
Step 3. If battle is going well, use Cloaked Banshees to take out production facilities and crucial pylons.
I haven't experimented with what happens past Step 3 (it's either a win or a lose), but I'll keep you guys posted. I've been thinking of transitioning from that into Mass BC...
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Although what I outlined above is an all-in, there are variations on it that aren't and ways to transition into whatever unit composition you want. However, since it's geared so heavily towards banshees, I think that sky terran is the proper transition.
Loving the guide Synystyr, keep it up!
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
On August 02 2012 04:33 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
I sort of disagree with the opinions on mineral dumping into marines or hellions. I really feel like you need to reserve your food for your air army. Stacking minerals may feel wrong.. but so does building 6 or 7 star ports. Almost every game I’ve lost with sky terran in the late game I mixed in bio or hellions… The games I don’t add them I pretty much dominate.
There’s nothing wrong with floating minerals with this strat.. it doesn’t make you a bad player if you’re floating money. Theres’ this misconception that having no money means you’re macro’ing well. If you feel that way build a PF/turret wall.
If you build a few hellions to mineral harass that’s one thing.. but I don’t feel like you should be adding them as component to your death ball.
Banking minerals is almost never a good thing. Dumping minerals into mariners and hellions for a deathball might be bad, but that doesn't make hellions good. Now, assuming you don't want any mariners or hellions in your maxed armies, I recommend these options instead of banking minerals:
1) make suicide squads of marines and hellions and send them to harass. They will die. They might kill some stuff.
2) Make more orbitals and take more gasses! <3
3) Make turrets
These options, or some combination thereof, are how I'd solve the excess mineral problem in a way that doesn't fill your death-ball with gas-poor marines and hellions, and are ALL superior to just sitting on the money. If you hit 200/200, and you're banking gas as well, you'll want to save minerals for the remax, but if you're at like 160 food and have 0 gas and 3k minerals you should really be doing some of these things instead.
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On August 02 2012 04:39 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2012 04:33 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
I sort of disagree with the opinions on mineral dumping into marines or hellions. I really feel like you need to reserve your food for your air army. Stacking minerals may feel wrong.. but so does building 6 or 7 star ports. Almost every game I’ve lost with sky terran in the late game I mixed in bio or hellions… The games I don’t add them I pretty much dominate.
There’s nothing wrong with floating minerals with this strat.. it doesn’t make you a bad player if you’re floating money. Theres’ this misconception that having no money means you’re macro’ing well. If you feel that way build a PF/turret wall.
If you build a few hellions to mineral harass that’s one thing.. but I don’t feel like you should be adding them as component to your death ball.
Banking minerals is almost never a good thing. Dumping minerals into mariners and hellions for a deathball might be bad, but that doesn't make hellions good. Now, assuming you don't want any mariners or hellions in your maxed armies, I recommend these options instead of banking minerals: 1) make suicide squads of marines and hellions and send them to harass. They will die. They might kill some stuff. 2) Make more orbitals and take more gasses! <3 3) Make turrets These options, or some combination thereof, are how I'd solve the excess mineral problem in a way that doesn't fill your death-ball with gas-poor marines and hellions, and are ALL superior to just sitting on the money. If you hit 200/200, and you're banking gas as well, you'll want to save minerals for the remax, but if you're at like 160 food and have 0 gas and 3k minerals you should really be doing some of these things instead.
Agreed. You almost always should be spending your money.I like to make a few hellions with my 1 factory, the rest of the minerals go into OCs and turrets. You shouldn't bank that many minerals so don't mine too many minerals with SCVs. You want lots of gas and expand everywhere to abuse protoss immobility. You want to have LOTS of OCs (~20 or possibly more!) so that you can have only SCVs mining gas (~24) and have 176 army supply (he should only have 130 or 140!). If you think about the difference in supply, that could be 20 BCs, 10 Ravens, 13 vikings, vs 50 stalkers, 10 HTs, 5 Archons. Basically, you would rape his army (if you ever need to engage in the first place!).
I haven't tried marines to harass, maybe that would work well too (esp with a couple medivacs). It would add a new dimension to your harass and give him much more to worry about. Even without stim, it forces him to pay attention and spend more effort defending than it does for you to simply D + left click 1 or more areas on the map while harassing with your air fleet(s). Hellions work pretty well though if they don't like to put many canons (4 or more) at their expansions. I also use hellions just to take towers and keep them around the map to scout for army movement and such.
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You guys miss-interpreted what I was trying to say.. probably my fault. The point I was trying to embrace was the use of mineral dumping into marines/hellions…I suggested orbitals/PFs and turrets just like you…
I said using it on harassment options (specifically quoting hellions) is also not the issue. I am more aiming towards spending the food you have available on the tech you’re supporting.. i.e air army.
Spending it on unupgraded marines to add to your death ball (which it most instances will just get stormed and melted) is a bad idea.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
On August 02 2012 06:34 Ignorant prodigy wrote:
You guys miss-interpreted what I was trying to say.. probably my fault. The point I was trying to embrace was the use of mineral dumping into marines/hellions…I suggested orbitals/PFs and turrets just like you…
I said using it on harassment options (specifically quoting hellions) is also not the issue. I am more aiming towards spending the food you have available on the tech you’re supporting.. i.e air army.
Spending it on unupgraded marines to add to your death ball (which it most instances will just get stormed and melted) is a bad idea.
I understand you perfectly well. A lot of what you said was correct, and in many areas we agree. The part where you said "There’s nothing wrong with floating minerals with this strat", however, was not correct, and I offered methods to not float minerals.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Woah, I tried this out and if you deny scouting it completely destroys, made me smile when my opponent went heavy chargelot colossus.
When they go mass stalker is it best to get out a few vikings and a raven, snipe the observer and throw down a pdd?
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1. Once the midgame starts, I begin to accumulate a lot of minerals and have trouble spending them. Are there any other options to spend the money on something more useful? The mass barracks and expands are nice, but unupgraded marines aren't that great outside of early game. Any spots in the build I could squeeze in upgrades?
You can make blue hellion to harass the mineral line of protoss expos like ESCgoody style
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You are the player that got dismantled by none other then creatorprime in playhem and u used the exact same strategy vs him. He has already proven that this build isnt viable at toptier level. Alll he did was mass pheonix and u tried to go for a thor transition then got ran over by charglot pheonix collosus oh and btw do u still have the replay vs creatorprime? He is my favorite protoss and i like to view/collect all of creatorprimes replays
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1. Once the midgame starts, I begin to accumulate a lot of minerals and have trouble spending them. Are there any other options to spend the money on something more useful? The mass barracks and expands are nice, but unupgraded marines aren't that great outside of early game. Any spots in the build I could squeeze in upgrades?
I don't think mass barracks is that bad, you can max out on 3 bases relatively quickly this way. Then sacrifice marines when taking out P's expansions whilst transitioning into mass 3:3 BC / raven and taking more expansions yourself.
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On August 02 2012 06:40 Blazinghand wrote:
I understand you perfectly well. A lot of what you said was correct, and in many areas we agree. The part where you said "There’s nothing wrong with floating minerals with this strat", however, was not correct, and I offered methods to not float minerals.
we can agree to disagree on the that.
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On August 02 2012 19:45 Rickyvalle21 wrote:
You are the player that got dismantled by none other then creatorprime in playhem and u used the exact same strategy vs him. He has already proven that this build isnt viable at toptier level. Alll he did was mass pheonix and u tried to go for a thor transition then got ran over by charglot pheonix collosus oh and btw do u still have the replay vs creatorprime? He is my favorite protoss and i like to view/collect all of creatorprimes replays
Does that mean that if CreatorPrime beat him if he went bio, bio wouldn't be viable?
On topic, when I get time, I look forward to trying this out. I current play mech TvP, using a style more similar to ST_Hack used rather than utilizing multiple banshees like lyyna did (the first TvP mech style I used) and it's still working and fun, but when that stops being the case, I can't wait to pull out the banshees again :D
How viable do you think opening heavy marauder (showing them also) to try and force non-stalkers early game and then trying to surprise them with banshees (maybe helps on good blink stalker maps?)? Also, have you tried opening CC first into 2 rax (for safety) into double gas? It's my current mech opener on larger maps (daybreak the prime example) but I'm not sure if going banshee/cloak instead of rushing to tank/siege is safe.
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On August 01 2012 19:07 AceLight wrote:
How do you make vikings in this build? do you have 3 ports for banshees and 1 port for vikings?
I like to put tech labs on all my ports. It's been my experience that I never want to make, say, 3 Banshees and 3 Vikings at a time. I always want to make either 6 Banshees OR 6 Vikings at a time. Banshees control ground, Vikings control sky -- but if I split my production then I risk losing control of both.
If I'm facing a Protoss opponent going Phoenix and I split your Banshee/Viking facilities into Tech Labs and Reactors, then I get screwed whenever the Protoss switches his chronoboost from Stargates to Warpgates (or vice versua). We need all tech lab ports in order to have enough production capacity to match chronoboost (and even then it's still really hard to do, especially if the Protoss hides their Phoenixes).
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On August 02 2012 19:42 yensaika wrote:
1. Once the midgame starts, I begin to accumulate a lot of minerals and have trouble spending them. Are there any other options to spend the money on something more useful? The mass barracks and expands are nice, but unupgraded marines aren't that great outside of early game. Any spots in the build I could squeeze in upgrades?
You can make blue hellion to harass the mineral line of protoss expos like ESCgoody style
No, your main mineral sink in the midgame should be CCs. Get geysers ASAP at every expansion you take.
Don't make any orbitals beyond your main (at least in the midgame). And even then, save your main orbital purely for scan after you get your third CC. You don't need the bunch of useless minerals that Orbitals provide. Instead you need PFs to delay counterattacks and base trades, because Sky units take about 3x as long to produce as bio.
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a PF at your natural is a bit overkill IMO.
Having lots of orbitals is never a bad thing.. you can out mine extended expansions much quicker with mass mule drops.. and sac SCVs to increase your army size..
I can see a PF at your 4th and even your 3rd if you’re paranoid. You can hold what they throw at you early game if you scout well enough.
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On August 02 2012 19:45 Rickyvalle21 wrote:
You are the player that got dismantled by none other then creatorprime in playhem and u used the exact same strategy vs him. He has already proven that this build isnt viable at toptier level. Alll he did was mass pheonix and u tried to go for a thor transition then got ran over by charglot pheonix collosus oh and btw do u still have the replay vs creatorprime? He is my favorite protoss and i like to view/collect all of creatorprimes replays
Curious as to how you know that, was the game streamed?
CreatorPrime is a GSL level player. I am merely a low-mid level Masters who is trying something new. I was absolutely ecstatic about getting to play against Creator though, and I think that there was a definite possibility that I could have won the game. Had I scouted better, noticed he was committing to only Phoenixes and gotten out more Vikings rather than made more Banshees, I feel like I could've won the game once I took Air control and started to snowball the game. I never tried a Thor transition also.
I made a few crucial mistakes that game. I didn't retreat properly when I saw his phoenixes and lost my entire Banshee army due to a misclick. I also allowed him to scout my 5 starports too soon, which allowed him to get the proper AA units out. Given another chance, I would love to try playing Sky Terran against him again, as I still think it's viable.
Here is the replay!
http://drop.sc/232859
WP to him regardless
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
On August 03 2012 02:59 Synystyr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2012 19:45 Rickyvalle21 wrote:
You are the player that got dismantled by none other then creatorprime in playhem and u used the exact same strategy vs him. He has already proven that this build isnt viable at toptier level. Alll he did was mass pheonix and u tried to go for a thor transition then got ran over by charglot pheonix collosus oh and btw do u still have the replay vs creatorprime? He is my favorite protoss and i like to view/collect all of creatorprimes replays Curious as to how you know that, was the game streamed? CreatorPrime is a GSL level player. I am merely a low-mid level Masters who is trying something new. I was absolutely ecstatic about getting to play against Creator though, and I think that there was a definite possibility that I could have won the game. Had I scouted better, noticed he was committing to only Phoenixes and gotten out more Vikings rather than made more Banshees, I feel like I could've won the game once I took Air control and started to snowball the game. I never tried a Thor transition also. I made a few crucial mistakes that game. I didn't retreat properly when I saw his phoenixes and lost my entire Banshee army due to a misclick. I also allowed him to scout my 5 starports too soon, which allowed him to get the proper AA units out. Given another chance, I would love to try playing Sky Terran against him again, as I still think it's viable. Here is the replay! http://drop.sc/232859WP to him regardless
Yeah I gotta say if the biggest flaw with this strategy is "Synystyr, an NA mid-master couldn't use it to beat Creatorprime, a korean GSL pro" then this is like the greatest strategy ever. No offense to Synystyr, as he could crap on me 6/7 days a week, but he's not even in Creatorprime's league. I'll check out this replay, of course, but to say that it shows this isn't viable is just... false. If a bronzie failed to beat a diamond player with it, that doesn't mean anything, just as it wouldn't mean anything if Synystyr and I can't beat people who literally make their livings playing Sc2 with it.
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On August 03 2012 03:11 Blazinghand wrote:
No offense to Synystyr, as he could crap on me 6/7 days a week
Not if we had to play TvT >_> I'm so awful at that matchup, really is holding me back xD.
Let me know what you think of the game, what you think I could've done differently etc. I was even or ahead of him in economy at most points and I just think if I had scouted higher Phoenix numbers earlier, I could have committed to more Vikings and won the Air battle.
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yes the game was streamed and thnx for the replay
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you mean... you as a low masters player cannot beat one of the best protoss players in the world with this build?..
close this thread.. it's completely not viable...
/sarcasm
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EPT
