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Apocalypse.....now!
Disclaimer: + Show Spoiler +Please do your best to read through everything before critiquing the guide and leave any and all questions! Players below Platinum level may have trouble executing this style of play due to the mechanics and control necessary. I'd also appreciate if you guys checked out the replays too. I did my best to use only good quality games Thanks!
About Me/Credentials: + Show Spoiler +Hello TeamLiquid and welcome to my TvP Sky Terran guide. This guide is take two of an old, but popular build I created and used during the first year of SC2. You can find the guide on TL here. Please be aware that this guide is outdated, so some of the information/advice may not be useful anymore. I was once a High Master level player in the first seasons of SC2, but took an extended break from the game and have returned just a month ago. This season, I am currently Rank 1 diamond about to break into Masters. You can find my Battle.net profile here. I play Sky Terran against Protoss 100% of the time.
Build Order Background: + Show Spoiler +This build focuses on building up an air based army using each and every Starport unit to defeat a Protoss opponent. You will use tactics such as observer sniping, storm dodging, constant harassment and expansion denial to earn victories. This style abuses the lack of Protoss units that are sufficient anti-air combatants and allows you to play the game on your terms/create unfavorable situations for your opponent.
In my experience, playing MMM against a Protoss can be difficult due to the powerful ground forces and splash damage they have, which can melt bio armies at the slightest mistake. I found that eliminating the power of the ground units(Colossi, Sentries, Zealots and Immortals) by taking to the skies was a much better alternative. Mid and lategame Sky Terran armies are incredibly difficult to deal with and demand a much different response than the standard composition a Protoss would make against a tradition Terran army. If unscouted, you should win 90% of the time.
Version 1 of this guide relied a bit on an opponent's lack of knowledge against Sky Terran styles and the ability to deny scouting to hit with a timing attack where standard Protoss didn't have enough anti-air to respond. This time around, I will go over how to play against someone who knows exactly what they are going up against to counter any critique that this is a cheesy style against unlearned opponents.
How/why does Sky Terran work against Protoss? + Show Spoiler +Let's start by reviewing the relevant unit matchups. Full analysis of everything will be provided farther into the guide. + Show Spoiler [Banshee vs Stalker] +The core unit matchup you will face using this style.
Banshee: 140 HP 12 Dmg x 2 per attack 0 Armor 150 Minerals 100 gas cost Light Classification 3 Supply 17.6 DPS
Stalker: 80 HP 80 Shields (160 Effective HP) 10 Dmg (+4 vs armored) per attack 1 Armor 125 Minerals 50 gas cost Armored Classification 2 Supply 6.94 DPS (9.72 vs armored)
As a light unit, the banshee only takes 10 damage per shot from the stalker, which allows the banshee to take 14 hits before dying to one stalker, whereas it only takes a banshee 8 shots to kill a stalker. In a one-on-one encounter, the banshee flies away with half its health left. Without micro, A Protoss would need twice as many stalkers as there are banshees to win an encounter. Both units have 6 range while the Stalker has a slightly better movement speed than the Banshee by .2 + Show Spoiler [Viking vs Phoenix] + The second matchup of importance is for air superiority, if your Protoss opponent chooses to contest it: Viking vs Phoenix
Viking: 125 HP 10 Dmg x 2 per attack (14x2 vs armored) 0 Armor 150 Minerals 75 Gas cost Armored Classification 2 Supply 10 DPS (14 DPS vs armored)
Phoenix: 120 HP + 60 Shields (180 Effective HP) 5 Dmg x 2 per attack (10x2 vs light) 0 Armor 150 Minerals 100 Gas cost Light Classification 2 Supply 11.1 DPS (22.2 DPS vs light)
On paper, Phoenixes have a small advantage in a head on engagement against Vikings. In a realistic game scenario, the ability to poke with the 9 range of your Vikings, plus the fact you are upgrading your air units and your opponent(99% of the time) isn't, should tilt this matchup into your favor. Be mindful that you will be reinforcing with waves of 4+ vikings at a time while Protoss will only likely have 2 starports running. This matchup snowballs quickly in favor of the winner of the first contest for Air dominance.
+ Show Spoiler [High Templar vs Sky Terran] + This will likely be the response by Protoss once they scout your Air based army. Air units have a tendency to stack up, making it easy to land a storm on the majority of your units. All air units but Vikings have an energy bar as well, making Feedback strong against this army. However, a few things to note:
It takes two full storms(8 seconds of sitting in them) to kill a banshee. A high templar can be sniped in 4 banshee shots. HTs are much slower than Starport units.
Your goal is to kite out of storms and use moving shots to poke and prod at the Protoss army. Snipe high energy HTs when possible. Feedback can be good against small numbers of air units, but the Protoss simply will not have enough energy to feedback everything later on. If you can dodge storms, you will win this matchup. There's only so much energy that Protoss has
+ Show Spoiler [Other less notable, but important matc…] + You will see the occasional Void Ray or Archon response. Void Rays lose to Vikings quite handily and also take a long time to build. They are more of a response to BCs, but Yamato can 1 shot them.
Archons are very powerful vs stacked air armies, but only have a range of 4 and can be kited properly by banshees. Be mindful of where the archons are located in the army when engaging. I don't have too much experience vs any Carrier/Mothership play, but Vikings and BCs with Yamato Cannon do quite well against both.
Your goal is to build up a critical mass of banshees to overwhelm your opponent, while maintaining air superiority with Vikings/BCs so that you can gain full map control/ability to roam and freely kill observers, leaving your cloaked army unchecked. 1-2 Ravens added into the the composition give you a few PDDs and detection to protect your banshees. Battlecruisers are used lategame to secure air dominance versus Phoenix heavy players. Engagements are usually won by denying Protoss detection against your banshees.
Build Orders + Show Spoiler +For this guide, I will illustrate two build orders I use and how to execute them. Both rely on getting an early, safe expansion up in order to afford the high costs of your army. I consider these more of two different openers that transition to the same thing, rather than a precise build. These are general layouts and shouldn't be followed exactly but adapted more for each in game situation. + Show Spoiler [2 Rax Expand] + 10 Supply Depot 12 Barracks 14 Barracks 15 Orbital 15 Marine 16 Supply Depot Nonstop SCV/Marines when you can 21-22 CC @ Natural 26 Supply Depot 27 Refinery x2 ---> 3SCVs on each gas ~30 Bunkers(1-3) @ Natural's choke (Supplies are volatile at this point, will just give basic layout) Orbital @ Nat Engineering Bay -> 2-3 Turrets to deny Obs (1 at Natural choke for DTs, 1-2 in main) Factory Double Gas @ Nat -> 3 SCVs on each gas Armory + Starport as Factory finishes, add Tech Lab to Factory to hot swap with completed Starport Raven + Cloak OR Banshee + Cloak depending on whether you need defense immediately or not. +1 Ship Weapons immediately after Armory finishes, upgrade +2 and +3 whenever possible Add 3 more starports when money allows AFTER starting +1 Ship weapons and cloak. (Hold off until confirmed obs kill if you can) Push out with 8-10 banshees after +1 finishes. Expand/add racks/ports as needed
DISCLAIMER: You can use a 1 Rax Expo if you feel you can safely expand and defend off it and properly transition into Sky Terran. This BO is simply much safer vs any early pushes, but delays tech and earlier timing attacks. I use 1 Rax Expos myself to execute Sky Terran more frequently now.
+ Show Spoiler [Cloaked Banshee Expand] + 10 Supply Depot 12 Barracks 13 Refinery -> 3 SCVs 15 Orbital 16 Marine -> Constant production 16 Supply Depot @100Gas Factory ~20-21 Refinery#2 -> 3 SCVs Supply Depot Starport after Factory finishes, add tech lab to factory to hot swap with Starport Banshee + Cloak -> Harass/scout(Do not lose, can be used to roam map to find forward pylons and additional harass) Build CC in base immediately at 400 minerals after Banshee+Cloak is started Raven after Banshee Add Armory(+1 weapons), 3rd and 4th gas and additional Barracks after taking natural. Add 3 additional starports after sweeping the base with your Raven+Marines Push out/Expand after 9-10 banshees and +1 Ship weapons finishes
Build Order Analysis + Show Spoiler +In this section, I will explain how to execute each build order and the quirks to why they work. I will also go over when to attack, how to engage and other various scenarios as best as I can. WARNING: There's a lot of text in here. Some of the information is repeated in each section as well, as the builds end up transitioning very similarly as the midgame starts. + Show Spoiler [2 Rax Expand Analysis] +We open with a 12/14 Barracks expand. My reasoning behind this is to establish a very safe expansion that can hold off early attacks with extra marine production and bunkers. Starport based armies are expensive, especially gaswise, so it's important to expand ASAP. The 12/14 opening can also apply pressure on greedy expands and in general, can throw the Protoss off a little bit. You want to be scouting for Chronoboost allocation and whether Protoss takes a second gas with your initial scout. Generally you won't glean much, but if you scout an early expand, you can cut corners in terms of bunkers and turret timings and get your tech rolling faster instead. Look to kill the scouting probe if possible by scouting your nearby locations. Maynard 5-7 SCVs as your expand finishes. If you are bunkering heavily, do you best to create a FULL WALLOFF. Runbys really can hurt, and a bunker wall is very intimidating to try and pass. Get your gasses mining as soon as you can and get a Factory immediately at 100 gas. Create a turret ring that will block/snipe Observers and their predicted flight path when they try to get in. This can generally be done with 3 turrets on most maps. It's important to place your first turret at the natural choke as soon as you can, just in case of DTs (I've lost to DTs before because I turreted my main before my nat). Occasionally I'll get High Sec Auto Tracking to really deny the Observer. Well placed turrets are also great at stopping/delaying Warp Prism or Blink Stalker play, which is occasionally a response to bypassing the bunker wall at the natural. I like to do a scan at around 6:10~6:20 in the Protoss main to get a good feel of what tech path they are choosing. You can generally figure out if they have expanded, are all-inning you or their current tech path with a good scan. Important things I've learned to look for are Robo timings and general production capability. If you don't sense an obs coming soon, you can delay your turrets. I scan the natural around 8-9 minutes later on to check on army size and composition. Usually the Protoss is in the dark as to my current tech path at this point in time, but will see I am turtling behind 3 bunkers. I like to use my first banshee to do some delayed cloaked harass. Most Protoss don't expect this and you can force their army back home and sneak a few probe kills in. I usually hold position over the mineral line so my banshee isn't chasing any units. If possible, pick off stalkers to lower their count instead of probes. I've found that the less stalkers, the better. Do your best to conserve this banshee and use it to clear watchtowers and scout for pylons. Poke in and out when you can to keep Protoss on their toes. At this time, you should be focusing on getting your Banshee production flowing out of 4 starports, as well as Air attack upgrades in the armory. You should be able to barely afford this gaswise on two base and start creating an excess of minerals. I usually add anywhere between 3-5 Barracks and expand once to three times depending how much my macro slips Once you get a larger number of banshees(usually 2 rounds), I choose between two options. I'll either move out with all my marines, banshees and Raven and try to kill my opponent straight up, or move out with only my banshees and Raven and try to poke his undefended locations. The standard Protoss army at this time is usually Zealot heavy, with a handful of Stalkers/Sentries and either Colossus or Templar depending on the player. Your goal is to take out all the anti-air you can and to snipe observers. An undetected fleet is an unkillable fleet. If you win the initial engagement, aim to take out mining bases (Focus fire Nexus), sniping key tech structures (Cyber Core, Forges, Templar Archives) to delay proper responses and keep rallying in Banshees/Vikings as needed. If the engagement is lost, salvage what Banshees you have left and try to defend. You can always reset an engagement if you can snipe all observers in the area, so make that a priority. It is very hard to come back if you lose a lot of Banshees early. Abuse banshee mobility as best as you can by flying to his bases and keeping the Protoss away from your base. You should notice a huge amount of minerals in your bank throughout the midgame stage of the game. Use it to expand aggressively and to create a sizeable marine ball at home with mass Barracks. This marine ball can be another force used to roam the map to defend zealot harass and poke in other locations than your banshees to keep Protoss split/multitasking. I add on anywhere between 3-5 starports and a Fusion Core after expanding to my 3rd base or more. Focus on getting the gasses on your extra bases running quickly. I usually use PFs for my later expansion with a turret in the mineral line. Building Armor and High Sec Auto Tracking are good upgrades if you can afford them at this stage. If you and the Protoss are even throughout the midgame, you want to create a sizable force of Banshees and Vikings as well as a Raven or two and start roaming the map, looking especially to pick off new expansions. Banshees are very good at sniping buildings quickly and escaping. The Raven and Viking support will stop any Air counter attacks, provide detection to snipe Obs and protect your army with PDD. 1-2 PDDs and a focus fire on the Nexus works quite well. Denial of additional resources for the Protoss with your Sky Terran while taking your own is your goal in the lategame. Max out and only engage in favorable situations, prioritizing picking apart the Protoss slowly through constant stabs in different locations. Storms and stalkers are still strong at any point in the game and your army is more fragile than I'd like. Add BCs ONLY if the Protoss starts massing Phoenixs. BCs are excellent against Phoenix and also screw with the AI, which causes them to attack the BCs and not your banshees. Viking also mess with AI in the same way. Otherwise, Banshee and their mobility do much better against mass Stalker armies. BCs can't kite and will be focused down quickly. They are more of a tanky air unit than damage. Always be sure to know when and when you don't need more Vikings, you don't want too much supply to be taken up by them when you may need more Banshees to kill stalkers. + Show Spoiler [Cloaked Banshee Expand] +Nothing too flashy with this build, just a standard Cloaked Banshee expand. I like using this as an opener as it gets you the tech you need for your mid/lategame at an early stage of the game and allows a few faster timing attacks at the cost of less defense and delayed economy. It's nice that this build does look similar to 1-1-1 and sometimes forces Immortals as a response. You want to be scouting for the same things as you normally would and look for any early timing attacks that might kill you while you tech. Keep your Cloakshee at home if you need to defend and add bunkers as needed. I like to harass as much as possible with the Banshee but not at the cost of it's life. Aim to pick off stalkers over probes IF you know you can get a one or two (No detection any time soon). Do your best to get a full scout of the base as well and save the banshee to clear watchtowers and scout for forward pylons. I get a Raven immediately after the first Banshee so that I can sweep my base for any observers and try and sneak the extra starports if I can. The earlier you can get the Raven out without dying, the better, as you get to start saving energy for those precious PDDs. Remember to continuously upgrade Ship weapons as the game progresses. Repeated information from previous analysis, can skip if you read itAt this time, you should be focusing on getting your Banshee production flowing out of 4 starports, as well as Air attack upgrades in the armory. You should be able to barely afford this gaswise on two base and start creating an excess of minerals. I usually add anywhere between 3-5 Barracks and expand once to three times depending how much my macro slips Once you get a larger number of banshees(usually 2 rounds), I choose between two options. I'll either move out with all my marines, banshees and Raven and try to kill my opponent straight up, or move out with only my banshees and Raven and try to poke his undefended locations. The standard Protoss army at this time is usually Zealot heavy, with a handful of Stalkers/Sentries and either Colossus or Templar depending on the player. Your goal is to take out all the anti-air you can and to snipe observers. An undetected fleet is an unkillable fleet. If you win the initial engagement, aim to take out mining bases (Focus fire Nexus), sniping key tech structures (Cyber Core, Forges, Templar Archives) to delay proper responses and keep rallying in Banshees/Vikings as needed. If the engagement is lost, salvage what Banshees you have left and try to defend. You can always reset an engagement if you can snipe all observers in the area, so make that a priority. It is very hard to come back if you lose a lot of Banshees early. Abuse banshee mobility as best as you can by flying to his bases and keeping the Protoss away from your base. You should notice a huge amount of minerals in your bank throughout the midgame stage of the game. Use it to expand aggressively and to create a sizeable marine ball at home with mass Barracks. This marine ball can be another force used to roam the map to defend zealot harass and poke in other locations than your banshees to keep Protoss split/multitasking. I add on anywhere between 3-5 starports and a Fusion Core after expanding to my 3rd base or more. Focus on getting the gasses on your extra bases running quickly. I usually use PFs for my later expansion with a turret in the mineral line. Building Armor and High Sec Auto Tracking are good upgrades if you can afford them at this stage. If you and the Protoss are even throughout the midgame, you want to create a sizable force of Banshees and Vikings as well as a Raven or two and start roaming the map, looking especially to pick off new expansions. Banshees are very good at sniping buildings quickly and escaping. The Raven and Viking support will stop any Air counter attacks, provide detection to snipe Obs and protect your army with PDD. 1-2 PDDs and a focus fire on the Nexus works quite well. Denial of additional resources for the Protoss with your Sky Terran while taking your own is your goal in the lategame. Max out and only engage in favorable situations, prioritizing picking apart the Protoss slowly through constant stabs in different locations. Storms and stalkers are still strong at any point in the game and your army is more fragile than I'd like. Add BCs ONLY if the Protoss starts massing Phoenixs. BCs are excellent against Phoenix and also screw with the AI, which causes them to attack the BCs and not your banshees. Viking also mess with AI in the same way. Otherwise, Banshee and their mobility do much better against mass Stalker armies. BCs can't kite and will be focused down quickly. They are more of a tanky air unit than damage. If you do get BCs, make sure you grab the Behemoth Reactor and Yamato Gun upgrades in that order. Ship Plating is extremely strong on them as well. Always be sure to know when and when you don't need more Vikings, you don't want too much supply to be taken up by them when you may need more Banshees to kill stalkers.
How to Engage + Show Spoiler + Once you have your army and are ready to push, it is very important that you micro your army properly, because this army is not very easily replaceable, due to the high cost of the core of your army.
When you engage, you should already have a general idea of what kind of army composition you should be facing. If your scout denying went well, then you should be looking at a Colossi + Gateway army mixture. Otherwise, you may see Stargate units, fast Templar tech or heavy upgraded Blink Stalkers.
The general rule of thumb when engaging is to follow three simple steps:
1. Use PDDs from Raven 2. Use Marines/Vikings to snipe Observers/Scan as needed 3. Cloak Banshees and spread/micro as needed
When you push into the Protoss base, you should have capped out the energy in your Raven. This allows for two PDDs and really helps you shut down the AA of the Protoss.
By far the most important part of this push is to snipe the observer as fast as possible. No detection means you have free reign to kill whatever you want.
Against Colossi + Gateway When facing Colossi + Gateway, be prepared to lose your entire ground army to the push, as the Protoss will have built an army for that purpose. Your banshees will automatically focus fire any stalkers or sentries in that army, and should easily clean up anything left behind. This is the ideal situation.
Against Stargate When facing a Stargate composed army (Stalker/Zealot/Phoenix), it is important to note what is there and if you can win the fight. If the composition is Phoenix heavy, RUN AWAY. It is absolutely not worth it to trade your Banshees for killing the Protoss ground army. His army is much more easily replaceable. However, if you were able to take out the Observer, kill everything you can, but do not chase into the Protoss base. Pull back, get your Vikings/BCs out and push back in. If you can do some harass with a Banshee or two, go for it, but be careful venturing out until you gain Air superiority.
Against Templar Tech
Engaging against HTs is completely dependent on your storm dodging skills. Banshees have a nasty habit of stacking on each other when they engage, so you need to be very wary of storms on top of them. The best way to handle this is to split your banshees up as much as possible to mitigate storms and to kite away from the location of the templar. It takes 2 full storms to kill a banshee, so keep moving as much as you can to try and minimize damage. Those who are good at moving shots will be rewarded here.
Feedback should not be an issue simply because there are too many banshees to feedback. If the Protoss decides the feedback your banshees, then he sacrifices storms, which is much scarier to face in my opinion. Do note that any banshees hit by feedback are no longer cloaked and will most likely die. This is the tradeoff that the Protoss is looking at when they decide between storms and feedbacks. Feedbacks on your Raven are never good, of course. Feedback is also one of the reasons I do not use BCs unless against Phoenixes, as the damage is not negligible (especially if you have the +energy upgrade) and softens them up too much for Stalkers to kill.
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In general, try not to engage head on against Stalker heavy armies, but instead try to pick units and structures off here and there to cripple the Protoss until you can deal a death blow.
Counters: + Show Spoiler + There are a few timing attacks I've encountered that have given me a few problems. These are attacks that usually hit before my 4 starports start producing units, or something that bypasses the bunker wall. I'll go through a few of the ones I have issues with and how I deal with it.
Blink Stalker Rush This is usually done in lieu with an observer in order to blink into your base and skip the bunkers. I was able to stop this with good turret placement that sniped the observer and stopped the play from continuing. High Sec Auto Tracking can help if you scout this early. If the blink into your base is successful, good Stalker micro will probably kill you if your starports are not ready.
4 Gate Warp Prism Same idea as the Blink Stalker rush. It is harder to stop the Warp Prism with your turrets, but easier to defend the drop with SCVs and marines, as you can micro vs non-blink stalkers and zealots. Be wary of the double pronged attack, which drops and warps units into your base while sending a wave of units to the attack your bunker wall, where you probably pulled marines from to deal with the units in your main. Try to pull only a few marines to defend inbase and enough to stop the push on the bunkers.
Sentry Bust This type of attack focuses on forcefielding the back of your bunkers to prevent SCVs from repairing it and then busting them down in the time they are not being healed. I think I've died more to this than survived, but depending on size of the army and timing of the attack, you may be able to defend if you produced enough marines and can delay until your cloaked banshees kick in.
Fast Thermal Lance 1 Base Push This one gets me every time T_T. The colossi can siege the bunkers from a distance, pick off SCVs and grant high ground vision to pick off turrets and allow warpins into the base. I think it's a build order loss in this scenario unless I adapt quickly when I scout it (Tanks?).
Proxy Void Ray/Zealot Another tough one. Two Void Rays will hit while you have only a limited number of marines. Low ground pylon Zealot warp-ins into the main with Void Ray vision really tax your marine numbers and will kill you if you lose too many marines. If scouted, turrets on the edge of your base will stop Void Rays from entering. If you can't stop the push from happening, try to use SCVs to surround your marines, kill the zealots and then force the Void Rays out.
Replays: + Show Spoiler +
Conclusion/Discussion + Show Spoiler +I hope my overview of Sky Terran in TvP was helpful to you guys. I'd first like to poll you guys on the quality of my guide for future reference for other guides I have planned. Poll: How was the quality of my guide?[5] High quality, this guide is very detailed and would like to see more like it. (46) 60% [4] Good quality, definitely a helpful guide for many, but could be cleaned up in a few ways. (16) 21% [1] Low quality, wasn't helpful. Needs a lot of work. (9) 12% [3] Decent guide, good insight, but leaves something to be desired (4) 5% [2] Had some useful information, but not something I'd be interested in using (2) 3% 77 total votes Your vote: How was the quality of my guide? (Vote): [1] Low quality, wasn't helpful. Needs a lot of work. (Vote): [2] Had some useful information, but not something I'd be interested in using (Vote): [3] Decent guide, good insight, but leaves something to be desired (Vote): [4] Good quality, definitely a helpful guide for many, but could be cleaned up in a few ways. (Vote): [5] High quality, this guide is very detailed and would like to see more like it.
I also have a few discussion questions and general things I'd like to ask the community. I'd really appreciate if you guys partook/had some insight into these. + Show Spoiler [Questions] + 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?
2. Are there any other ways to tech up to mass Starport production more quickly or safely? I like my openers, but everything has a weakness and I'm always looking to optimize the style more.
For those of you who would like to reach me, my ingame ID is "Synystyr.193" PMs are also welcome too!
This concludes my updated guide to playing Sky Terran in TvP. Thanks for reading and hope that the huge walls of text weren't too much to get through. Leave constructive criticism, questions or discussion in the comments and I'll answer as best I can. Hope to see more of this style of play take over the scene soon!!
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Thanks for updating your guide; I've always had a lot of success in diamond with this.
Out of curiosity, why did you take out the two thors? The old build used those both to snipe obs and help out during the push.
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I am a masters terran on eu. Have been using air vs toss since beta on and off. Have stopped using it for 3 seasons but this season I switched back to air play.
My build is almost completely different than yours though and i do make a lot of bio with it (mainly ghosts duting late game) and an idea or two more ravens. As for bcs i make 3, at most 4, and rely on vikings and pdd vs phoenix.
The nice thing is I have a ton of replays which I am to pm to the Op so he can decide whether to include them or not.
What I like about this strat is that it is very easy to execute and you will more often than not find that you are a moving like a toss than properly controlling your army. And it's nice for a change:
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Blazinghand
United States25546 Posts
Another great guide by Synystyr! This seems like a natural development of your anti-colossus build. I'll point my Terran friends struggling with the matchup at this. Keep up the great work!
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This seems like a great build. I just have one question: why don't you make a viking after the first banshee, and then make your raven?
This would delay the raven by 42 seconds and it would be another 75 gas. Are you strapped for minerals at this point in the build? Because I believe a viking would help enormously for sniping the first observer(s) and for helping deal with most of the builds that seem to counter you: Proxy stargate, Warp prisims in general, fast blink stalkers (observers), and 1 base colossus.
I think that if you are careful with the viking and repair it when it gets hurt, it could give you the necessary time to get those 3 other starports up and running. Against the void ray rush, you can just stay behind your turret line and kite the void rays. The viking would be great for killing the warp prisim or at least softening it up. The only trouble I could see would be against 1 base colossus, but with the right positioning you should be able to hurt or kill the colossus.
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Been meeting sky terran on ladder. It's really strong.
Only way for me to win was to deny expansions of terran by warping in zealots and speed-prism stormdrops, main army was double stargate phoenix, templars and blink stalkers.
Observers should also be used carefuly, so they are not easily sniped and feedbacking raven and pdd's and storms are vital.
Also was thinking that Sky Toss>Sky terran, but haven't tried it.
First call to understand that this is comming is double-port banshee, you should get SG asap, when scouting more than 5 banshee second SG is advised and switch to templar-blink tech, and use robo only for obs. Cannons should be added at all expansions.
What you want to get as P is:
Better eco than T, use zealot warp-ins and stormdrops. Army of phoenix, stalker, tempar (+archon). Tempars with storm should be all around and not miss the opportunity to storm the sky-T's ball. Get a defensive MS.
I found that direct engagement is really hard for protoss to deal with, so when battles accured. 1. Feedback raven, PDD. 2. Storm 3. Make archon, as T will targe-fire your templar 4. Blink and Target fire stalkers (90% that after that all the stalkers will die) to kill the vikings, so phoenix can attack banshee. 5. Warp in zealots to terran's mineral line 6. If everything elsee sucseeded -chase running banshees with phoenix+obs 6.b If the engagent was bad, and storms and feedbacks was bad, do not continue - use recall. And do a warp in to T's base,so his army is forced to go back. 7. Rebuild your ground army.
Hope that other P will contribute to what should be done, as I have very limited experience with sky-T. This is really hard for P to deal with and standart deathball will die to this. Good guide.
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Haha Synystr!!!! Your back! I used your 2 rax into 3 bunkers build and won a lot, but that was ages ago
So, the counters you listed all seem to be quick aggressive play, but if you can survive that, what can a Protoss do to counter? Assuming both are well established, maybe going to late game.
Just watched the replay, and you still DO 2 rax 3 bunker lol. Brings back memories. It is very similar to that 4 starport banshee build btw. Hmmmm this is super similar to your 4 starport build lol what is the difference?
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Great guide, though I think Sated is right. Back when I did Sky Terran builds, the thing that would always get me is early Blinkstalker rushes before I had enough air units out to beat it. The production cost to get a lot of Banshee/Viking is just so high, you have to get Marauders and delay your Starports in order to defend that.
Luckily, the 2 Rax FE build is used to play Bio as well, so unless you only go Sky Terran in TvP, you can 2-Rax into Bio as well and force your opponent into a coin-flip (provided you can beat the Blinkstalker all-in with 2 Rax FE into Bio consistently) if he wants to kill you before you get your infrastructure up.
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I'm here just want to say thank you, this build is amazing I've just won a GM Toss with this build ( I'm diamond Terran )
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Excellent guide! I would like to add a thing though. When you go for mass air, it means that your army is very mobile, and you should be expanding to the opposite corners of the map. So on Cloud Kingdom, that would mean top left and bottom right.
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I do a similar build as T - 1 rax FE into 4 rax & 4 port. Make stim marines, cloaked banshees and 1 raven. Push out with 8+ banshees and 20+ marines. The marines are really just bait for the protoss army, the idea is to crash into their army, drop a PDD, wipe out anything that can hit air or detect and have your banshees mop up the rest.
Attack move - drop a pdd, stim, cloak. My attack sequence is for the big is " 1 a d * [tab] t [tab] c"
1. Defend 4 gate and early warp prisms = win. Scout and build several bunkers or move marines to the drop.
2. Double stargates usually dies to this build. If you scout it, put in 1 round of vikings & win. If not, cloak and run and build 1 raven, 2 rounds of vikings and win. P simply cannot produce enough air units to compete.
3. Snipe any observers asap. Cloak can both hide your units and hide the numbers. It is easy to see you are being attacked by cloaked banshees, but tough to see if it is 2 or 4 or 8.
4. HTs, archons & cannons can defeat this - split your army as much as possible. Archon shots can hit multiple banshees, and a storm aimed at the bait (marines) could hit your banshees. Cannons give vision and are tough on banshees.
5. Ignore colossus until everything else is dead. Take out probes or other tech.
6. After the initial fight, watch for stalker warp-ins, especially on high-ground. Attack them as they are warping in.
7. If you have 5+ banshees near his base after the initial engagement and his warpgates are on cool-down, snipe the cyber-core and gg.
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On July 26 2012 14:13 Thunderflesh wrote: Thanks for updating your guide; I've always had a lot of success in diamond with this.
Out of curiosity, why did you take out the two thors? The old build used those both to snipe obs and help out during the push.
I found that it just delayed tech too much and I can cover my grounds with turrets instead. You can still use the Thors though. One of the main purposes that I had those in the previous build was that I could relay false information when Protoss scouted and make them think some kind of mech play was happening, which would force the wrong units to deal with Sky Terran.
On July 26 2012 16:09 Lagcraft wrote: This seems like a great build. I just have one question: why don't you make a viking after the first banshee, and then make your raven?
This would delay the raven by 42 seconds and it would be another 75 gas. Are you strapped for minerals at this point in the build? Because I believe a viking would help enormously for sniping the first observer(s) and for helping deal with most of the builds that seem to counter you: Proxy stargate, Warp prisims in general, fast blink stalkers (observers), and 1 base colossus.
I think that if you are careful with the viking and repair it when it gets hurt, it could give you the necessary time to get those 3 other starports up and running. Against the void ray rush, you can just stay behind your turret line and kite the void rays. The viking would be great for killing the warp prisim or at least softening it up. The only trouble I could see would be against 1 base colossus, but with the right positioning you should be able to hurt or kill the colossus.
I like the idea. I think if you can get a good idea of what Protoss is doing as your Starport finishes (scans, scouting), then you can prep a viking if you need it. I'm not the best at scouting so that is a good reason to why I lose to these allins as well
On July 26 2012 17:52 dynwar7 wrote:Haha Synystr!!!! Your back! I used your 2 rax into 3 bunkers build and won a lot, but that was ages ago So, the counters you listed all seem to be quick aggressive play, but if you can survive that, what can a Protoss do to counter? Assuming both are well established, maybe going to late game. Just watched the replay, and you still DO 2 rax 3 bunker lol. Brings back memories. It is very similar to that 4 starport banshee build btw. Hmmmm this is super similar to your 4 starport build lol what is the difference?
The builds are similar to what I used in the past, but the way I play the style out is different now. Rather than rehash a very old post that's filled with clutter of old posts, I figured I'd start a fresh Version 2.0 of the guide.
I believe the proper Protoss response to this is HTs and upgraded Blink Stalkers. Stalkers have great mobility and are a decent answer to Banshees, while HT spells are strong as well. In order to win these engagements, obs sniping is important as it is difficult to win head on engagements against heavy Stalker numbers unless you can designate groups of 8 banshees to focus fire stalkers to max you DPS efficiency
On July 26 2012 18:27 Sated wrote: I feel like I should point out that you won't beat a Blink Obs all-in by using Turrets as your guide suggests. Only an idiot flies the Observer up the cliff without using it to snipe cliff-edge Turrets/Bunkers/units first. If you snipe the Protoss player's Observer during a Blink Obs all-in then they did something wrong, and you shouldn't be relying on your opponent doing something wrong. In my experience (I've been using that all-in a lot recently), defending against a Blink Obs all-in relies entirely on getting Stim, a good number of Marauders, and Medivacs. Without these things you'll have a really hard time dealing with a Blink Stalker all-in on maps that suit it (Cloud Kingdom, Metropolis, Antiga Shipyard...)
EDIT:
Sorry if that was a little off-topic; the rest of your guide is amazing. I've never beaten this style save for occasions where I've happened to all-in the opponent pre-emptively T_T There's so much synergy in this composition and so little viable Protoss anti-air (especially since PDD neutralises most of them) that I think the aim for Protoss should be using Blink Stalkers to harrass the Terran anywhere and everywhere, doing everything they can to avoid a direct engagement. Sitting back and massing up units like Protoss does in a standard game isn't the way forward; that only really works against MMM, where the Terran needs to be the one trying to avoid a direct engagement. Essentially, this build flips around the balance of the match-up, so you're going to get a lot of wins with it because Protoss players are not used to playing the way you need to play to beat this composition.
EDIT2:
Then again, Banshees do the same DPS as Colossi, so trying to play the harassment game could lead to your own bases getting sniped off incredibly quickly.
You are actually correct about killing the turret off first. I had this happen to me, but I was able to move units to defend before he was able to blink in. The timing is off of one base, so the longer you delay the blink inside the main, the easier it will be defend when he finally penetrates.
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Thanks for putting a lot of effort in this guide, you did a good job at it. I was a big fan of your original guide.
However I guess I would disagree with the path that you took it. To me your guide doesn't read much like Sky Terran...it's Biosky Terran. And the problem I have mixing Marines with Banshees is that Marines actually cost a lot of early gas. Sure after you get all your upgrades Marines become these beautiful mineral sinks. But first they need stim, shields, ebay upgrades, reactors...I've found that it's much better to lean on faster Banshees+PFs.
I've been playing Sky Terran TvP almost exclusively the past 6 months and I've found that I've had the most success with a more purist approach. Sure, make 4-8 Marines, Bunkers, or 1 Thor to keep you alive against scary things like 3 Gate Robo Blink allins. But the goal should be to get away with the least amount of bio and mech as possible. Instead get your tech out faster and expand earlier. Lean on tech to survive the early game, instead of Marines AND tech at the same time.
I also take issue with your statement that you should try to win engagements via denying Protoss detection. I feel that is a terrible rabbit hole to get sucked down into. Yes it will work a ton against low league Protoss players who don't hotkey their Obs and have never played against Sky Terran before. But it's a really bad idea to base your entire game plan around hoping that your opponent makes a huge mistake. You might win those games, but you won't improve as a player.
I feel that Cloak is best used as a defensive weapon in this matchup. Both obs and cannons build so cheap and so quickly that you shouldn't be able to play the "no detection, gotcha!" card offensively more than once per game. Cloak's true value is as a defensive weapon, because while the Protoss has the ability to produce a gazillion cannons and a gazillion obs, they won't necessarily have the time to get them to your front. So Cloak is more a tool to stage comebacks with, instead of a tool to win games.
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I mostly agree with RoboBob's assessment, especially regarding cloak in the mid to late game. If the protoss has survived your first serious push then they will make extra obs / cannons to reveal your units. Relying on having cloaked units at this stage is a roll-the-dice risk.
Midgame I use cloak to sit behind turrets at PFs as a defensive position, and late game I use D/C to quickly drain all energy as mass feedbacks can really hurt a full energy banshee cloud.
One thing i'm not so sure about is the pure air approach once on 3+ basis. I find if P makes mass gateways he will always be able to out produce Banshee / BC production. I end up with a billion minerals but still gas and production starved. If P then engages in a war or attrition with upgraded blink stalkers I am in trouble even with PDD. This is where I use Marines, to assist maxing out.
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Awesome, more air openings :D
Nice to see you back, synystyr! (from making guides i mean)
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I'm a fan of anything that shakes up the TvP unit composition. Bio is fine to play against, but every once in a while I like to face different compositions. Thanks for putting this guide out and encouraging some diversity.
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United Kingdom12010 Posts
I've never thought of playing Sky Terran against Protoss before but it seems a lot nicer than me just failing to storm dodge when I have too much bio. Can't wait to give this a go <3
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damnnn just when i started to get really good at tvp in high masters =/ well i guess i will try this! i always wanted to
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On July 27 2012 16:57 rebotfc wrote: I mostly agree with RoboBob's assessment, especially regarding cloak in the mid to late game. If the protoss has survived your first serious push then they will make extra obs / cannons to reveal your units. Relying on having cloaked units at this stage is a roll-the-dice risk.
Midgame I use cloak to sit behind turrets at PFs as a defensive position, and late game I use D/C to quickly drain all energy as mass feedbacks can really hurt a full energy banshee cloud.
One thing i'm not so sure about is the pure air approach once on 3+ basis. I find if P makes mass gateways he will always be able to out produce Banshee / BC production. I end up with a billion minerals but still gas and production starved. If P then engages in a war or attrition with upgraded blink stalkers I am in trouble even with PDD. This is where I use Marines, to assist maxing out. Sky Terran's ideal mineral SCV : gas SCV ratio in the TvP lategame is 8 mineral mining SCVs to 6 gas mining SCVs. That is assuming no MULEs, no depots, and no CCs. This is the ideal resource collection ratio for both 100% Banshee production and 1:1 Viking:Battlecruiser production. It is also the ideal collection rate for 1:1 Viking:Banshee production, but that requires 1 OC to dedicate all its energy to MULEing.
So past two bases, you should never have more than 1 SCV per mineral patch on any of your bases (unless you need more CCs or more Depots). If you do ever get in the situation where you have too many SCVs, then take them with your Sky army and make a frontal attack. 2 Banshees can kill 3 Stalkers, but 2 Banshees and 2 SCVs can kill 4 Stalkers. Completely ignoring SCV's value as a resource collector, trading 100 minerals in SCVs for 125 minerals and 50 gas in Stalkers is a pretty good deal.
PFs are essential to making Sky Terran work. All the minerals that MULEs provide are worthless, but you need the extra static defense in order to be able to expand agressively enough to achieve and maintain that 8:6 mineral:gas ratio. The logical solution is to make PFs instead of making Orbitals. And I'm not talking just about your third and beyond, I'm actually talking about your natural. You still want your main to be an Orbital because you do need a big burst of minerals early on to make that many CCs. But everything else should be PF.
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I love the discussion going on in here RoboBob definitely seems to know quite a bit about Sky Terran, which is really awesome since I actually haven't had many people to discuss it with and really developed most of this on my own. Really good shit, his insight is great.
I myself have found that faster tech is super important, and try to get it as fast as possible off a 1 Rax FE now. I like your points about cloak being a defensive tool, rather than an offensive. one. It's extremely true, as you can reset an engagement by sniping the obs and the reinforcement time will be too long for the Protoss to keep up with their push.
Do any of you guys have replays I could take a look at? Preferably anything that goes into the later stages of the game where the initial pushes don't kill the Protoss, but they stabalize and it plays out. I love being able to analyze things and it'd be nice to get inside the heads of other Sky Terran players.
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i watched one of your losses noticed something
the toss dont need to be agressive he just need to outexpand you and win with nummbers since you cant attack him under 10 min with a army
i mean the few banshees you have he can defend with stalker obs and if you make 2 rax opener it takes time until the first banshee gets out on that time he can expand on his 3rd
marine/ banshee is very cost effetive and has high dps
my suggestion is maybe get asap a medivac drop 8 marine from 1 base and on the same time rush with 3-4 hellions on his expand and do dmg and follow up with expansion banshee play
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On July 28 2012 12:44 perser84 wrote: i watched one of your losses noticed something
the toss dont need to be agressive he just need to outexpand you and win with nummbers since you cant attack him under 10 min with a army
i mean the few banshees you have he can defend with stalker obs and if you make 2 rax opener it takes time until the first banshee gets out on that time he can expand on his 3rd
marine/ banshee is very cost effetive and has high dps
my suggestion is maybe get asap a medivac drop 8 marine from 1 base and on the same time rush with 3-4 hellions on his expand and do dmg and follow up with expansion banshee play
it's not about attacking him... at least this isn't the only way tto play with air
your banshes keep him in his home while you expand everywhere he ccan move out butt that's why you shoud have lots of base (PFs), so that you will have ahuge adv in base race (esp on maps like shak, where there is SO much space to float off buildinsg and move your army safely thru) and lik MMM drops, right when theyy move out ur air fleets move in to start killing him
i'm sure a marine drop + hellion opener kindf of 111 will also work well,, it works similarly to a [cloak] banshee opening, so if u want to open 111 or 1 base i guess u could use the one that's better for that specific map
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On July 28 2012 12:02 Synystyr wrote:I love the discussion going on in here RoboBob definitely seems to know quite a bit about Sky Terran, which is really awesome since I actually haven't had many people to discuss it with and really developed most of this on my own. Really good shit, his insight is great. I myself have found that faster tech is super important, and try to get it as fast as possible off a 1 Rax FE now. I like your points about cloak being a defensive tool, rather than an offensive. one. It's extremely true, as you can reset an engagement by sniping the obs and the reinforcement time will be too long for the Protoss to keep up with their push. Do any of you guys have replays I could take a look at? Preferably anything that goes into the later stages of the game where the initial pushes don't kill the Protoss, but they stabalize and it plays out. I love being able to analyze things and it'd be nice to get inside the heads of other Sky Terran players. Here's a late-game TvP that I played a few days ago and was pretty happy about it. I botched my initial harass and the Protoss took a big economic lead. But I managed to claw my way back into the game by mass expanding and trading Banshees for Nexii: http://drop.sc/229723
(I'm only diamond BTW, but I have a lot of experience playing Sky Terran TvP)
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On July 29 2012 01:29 RoboBob wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2012 12:02 Synystyr wrote:I love the discussion going on in here RoboBob definitely seems to know quite a bit about Sky Terran, which is really awesome since I actually haven't had many people to discuss it with and really developed most of this on my own. Really good shit, his insight is great. I myself have found that faster tech is super important, and try to get it as fast as possible off a 1 Rax FE now. I like your points about cloak being a defensive tool, rather than an offensive. one. It's extremely true, as you can reset an engagement by sniping the obs and the reinforcement time will be too long for the Protoss to keep up with their push. Do any of you guys have replays I could take a look at? Preferably anything that goes into the later stages of the game where the initial pushes don't kill the Protoss, but they stabalize and it plays out. I love being able to analyze things and it'd be nice to get inside the heads of other Sky Terran players. Here's a late-game TvP that I played a few days ago and was pretty happy about it. I botched my initial harass and the Protoss took a big economic lead. But I managed to claw my way back into the game by mass expanding and trading Banshees for Nexii: http://drop.sc/229723(I'm only diamond BTW, but I have a lot of experience playing Sky Terran TvP)
I watched your replay. It was extreeeeemely helpful in a bunch of different ways. The Protoss you played was nothing special, and I never felt like you were in any trouble the whole game. What I did learn though, was that you can support 5 starports off 2 bases quite well. I've been using that extra starport and have definitely noticed a difference in production.
I also found that skipping right to Banshee tech and surviving on just my bunkers allows me to get my Banshees out just in the nick of time to defend any ground based allins. It was awesome to watch another Sky Terran play. If you end having any close games or good replays you'd like to share, I'd absolutely love to see more. Thanks!!
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I’ve been preaching sky terran for months. People shot me down saying if scouted it’s easy to stop. People in game saying it will never work outside of diamond.
Glad there’s some actual ‘viability’ testing going on.
I’ve been playing it out for awhile and personally I feel like jumping straight into the banshee’s resulted in most of my losses.. so I’ve been delaying my starports to get a few siege tanks out.
I’ve found with the mobility of air supremacy and PFs make it actually easier for terran to out expand the protoss.. protoss has to invest a lot in cannons to protect their base and the typical ground army to fight sky terran (i.e. high templar) are amongst the slowest in the game.
Wasting money on bio is a mistake… if you float 2K then build orbitals and planetaries instead of marines to spend your minerals. All your gas should be on your air army and tech and you need that food in air army.. marines in lategame PvT are beyond useless when un-upgraded. They will just take up food.
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Mid master (~900 points) terran here. I've been using this build ever since I saw this guide come up a week or so ago, and I'm really loving the style. My TvP win ratio has noticably improved (or so I feel) with this unit composition. Additionally I enjoy using 2 reactor factories instead of bio in the late game because I find it a better mineral dump and they tend to allow you to be passive with your actual army while maintaining the harrass you need to keep protoss from expanding everywhere.
Thanks for the build!
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Great guide, looking forward to watching the replays and trying it out. I do have a couple of questions though for whoever wants to answer, synstyr or robowar or whoever.
How many ravens do you aim for by late game? Just the 2? Or do you go up to 3 or 4 for more redundancy? Their build time and energy charging take so long that only 2 seems risky, getting even 1 of them sniped off seems like a big blow.
@Robowar Do you ever get extra in-base orbitals for scan? I like the idea of PF expanding even at the nat but scans are so useful. Even extra ravens for detection can be slow and vulnerable, and an orbital can quickly pay for itself with a few mules and then be just for scans. I find scan to be so invaluable, for scouting ahead of attacks, seeing their base, picking off observers, etc, that I don't want to sacrifice too much of it.
@PVequalsNRT How do approach your engagements with hellion+air force? Mineral dumping into hellions seems like an interesting idea, cost is similar to marines mineral dumping, but the hellion's high speed may complement a fast air army well, need less upgrades, and have more retreat/kite capability. Also, how many hellions do you need to mass for a stable ground force with your attack for this style? The need for AA may force more stalkers than chargelots, and hellions will obviously be absorbing hits like vultures in BW TvP, but basically how many hellions do you need to attack, and how few do you drop to before you retreat and regroup with reinforcements?
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@PVequalsNRT How do approach your engagements with hellion+air force? Mineral dumping into hellions seems like an interesting idea, cost is similar to marines mineral dumping, but the hellion's high speed may complement a fast air army well, need less upgrades, and have more retreat/kite capability. Also, how many hellions do you need to mass for a stable ground force with your attack for this style? The need for AA may force more stalkers than chargelots, and hellions will obviously be absorbing hits like vultures in BW TvP, but basically how many hellions do you need to attack, and how few do you drop to before you retreat and regroup with reinforcements?
Typically, I'm using hellions to punish bases that the protoss are trying to take. I will literally throw away a dozen hellions, ignoring any stalkers or cannons, to clear as many probes as I can. These are not meant to be super cost efficient, just to slow down your opponent's economy as much as possible. Similar to a zerg throwing army after army in different locations while pooling up infestors and other high tech units. Against a protoss that is expanding wide and far, hellions are fast and are much cheaper to lose for probes than the critical mass of banshees you're trying to build up. Against a protoss that is balling up very defensively, taking less bases, and moving for a more concentrated push, hellions are less useful, though still not bad to build. Just don't let them hog supply that could be taken by a banshee.
If the protoss has high numbers of collosus/chargelots, perhaps building them before he has scouted that you're going skyterran, your hellions will do poorly. This is very good for your air units, but mostly bad for your hellions. Before commiting to major battles, make sure to have thrown them away and ensure that your maxed supply is filled with more air units. That being said, most protosses will have their slow moving ball of templar in the back that can be harrassed with just a few (6-8) cost efficient hellions.
Against a protoss that has committed to primarily stalker/templar/archon, hellions can again regain a bit of usefulness. The line aoe of the hellion is great for distributing damage across the protoss' whole army and distract stalkers in the back from shooting your banshees. They're also fast to build, so after large engagements, hellions can be used to pump up an army faster than with just your starports alone, not to mention that after a fight is exactly when you want to start reharrassing bases
Regarding your raven query, I get 2-3, though I'll admit that since this build is gas limited, I save scans for my vikings to kill observers more than I rely on my ravens to detect.
Hope that was helpful.
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On August 01 2012 07:19 PVequalsNRT wrote: Mid master (~900 points) terran here. I've been using this build ever since I saw this guide come up a week or so ago, and I'm really loving the style. My TvP win ratio has noticably improved (or so I feel) with this unit composition. Additionally I enjoy using 2 reactor factories instead of bio in the late game because I find it a better mineral dump and they tend to allow you to be passive with your actual army while maintaining the harrass you need to keep protoss from expanding everywhere.
Thanks for the build!
I really like the idea of using hellions as a possible mineral dump. They do quite okay against Stalkers and would be great at soaking damage for the Air units. Also, you can go in ahead of time with them and try to snipe HTs. I'll have to give this a whirl....do you have any replays where this is extremely successful, and another where it isn't?
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....do you have any replays where this is extremely successful, and another where it isn't?
Yeah, quite a few, though I need to get home first. They'll be up in a few hours
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On August 01 2012 08:12 Fyrewolf wrote: Great guide, looking forward to watching the replays and trying it out. I do have a couple of questions though for whoever wants to answer, synstyr or robowar or whoever.
How many ravens do you aim for by late game? Just the 2? Or do you go up to 3 or 4 for more redundancy? Their build time and energy charging take so long that only 2 seems risky, getting even 1 of them sniped off seems like a big blow. I'm not a huge fan of the Raven in lategame TvP. Phoenix chomp up Ravens because they're Light. Feedback will one shot them, and Ravens are useless without energy. Scan is superior for killing obs because while Ravens can be focused down, nobody can stop scan.
I will make at least 1 Raven 1 Viking in the early-midgame to clear my base of obs before slamming down a gazillion Starports. And I will bring that Raven+Viking with me on my first big push to clear out obs midmap. But thats pretty much it.
The only scenario when I build a bunch of Ravens is if the Protoss commits to a pure Gateway army (so no Templar). PDD is amazing against pure Stalkers just like it is in any 1-1-1 allin. But most Protoss are smart enough to not rely upon pure Stalker for antiair.
@Robowar Do you ever get extra in-base orbitals for scan? I like the idea of PF expanding even at the nat but scans are so useful. Even extra ravens for detection can be slow and vulnerable, and an orbital can quickly pay for itself with a few mules and then be just for scans. I find scan to be so invaluable, for scouting ahead of attacks, seeing their base, picking off observers, etc, that I don't want to sacrifice too much of it. I do make macro orbitals lategame for scan, but I never plan to do it. Its more "oops I messed up my macro, how do I best minimize the damage I did to myself"
Its not a huge deal because I've discovered that Sky Terran doesn't need scan nearly as much as standard play. With standard TvP, if you mis-position then you will lose entire armies to forcefields. Thats bad, so you're forced to scan a ton to make sure that never happens. However because Sky Terran is immune to FF, you don't need to worry about being caught out of position as much. You can always fly away, so you don't need that scan as much.
With more scans you can force more obs. Which is nice, although it is questionable whether a 550 mineral structure is worth *maybe* killing a few more obs. I think trading scans for obs in standard TvP is worth it because it eats into the Protoss' Robo build time. But with Sky Terran, if the Protoss has any brains then they will only be making Observers from their Robo anyway.
The only situation where I need lots of scan in the lategame is when Protoss go cannon crazy. The best way to deal with mass cannon as Sky Terran is to mix in a handful of Ghosts and use scan to nuke from the max 12 range, which is just out of sight range of Cannons. Ghosts are a good fit for this role because you only need to make 1 or 2 production facilities for them to do the job quickly and adaquately. Tanks take forever to crawl across a cannon field and require a lot of attention, Bio won't have the upgrades to trade cost-efficiently, and Sky units can't trade cost-effectively. Yeah you can PDD or Yamato but given how cheap Cannons are I think energy on those units is more valuble than those resources. Especially when there are HTs on the field.
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Sky Terran isn't abused enough. I got so sick of the state of TvP that I started 2 port Banshee every game and I'm around 70-80% win rate against Protoss.
Thanks for the guide.
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Great guide and discussion. I've been enjoying this play style vs. Protoss, despite never doing it as correctly as what's mentioned in the comments. Love the hellions as mineral dump as well. Thanks for everyone's insight!
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I used to have a very specific build where I opened 2 thors where I would deliberately let my opponent scout it by waiting to kill obs until Thor was revealed and having the Thors at my ramp. I would go for a fake push with 2 thors and a bunch of marines while teching to 3 starports off 2 bases and eventually getting a 3rd. All to force robo units. I found out that I wanted the build was more relying on my opponent not scouting it and thereby the build was far too gimmicky for me who wants to improve, so I stopped doing it. Did have quite alot of wins on it, but this was back in the "Slag pits" days.
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How do you make vikings in this build? do you have 3 ports for banshees and 1 port for vikings?
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Hey guys! I just used this build in a Diamond level TvP... Worked Beautifully!
He attacked early on, but my two bunkers with repair held easily. I just started making Banshees and 1 Raven after that. Got up a few of them, and pushed. Totally crushed through his front with PDD-Banshee, and took out his expo. He had a few Voids, but my Marines kept them at bay.
Needless to say, my macro was AWFUL during that time, because I was pumped, but it's definitely a very strong build! +1, nice work OP.
Here's my replay: + Show Spoiler +
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practiced this build for around 1 week, my problems are about :
- Aggressive Toss - Phoenixs play - HTs counter
Maybe I was very bad in engagement or it's hard to play with HTs and Phoenix tech, any help ?
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Hi there I've played some games vs top diamond Protoss with using kinda similar style, but I'm still focusing on bio army. Actually, my composition was standart mmm + banshees.
The most awesome part of this composition - when you have so many banshees, your opponent has to be passive OR do invest in static defense + doing awesome observer placements and, the most important one: going mostly stalkers instead of zealots. And bio are crushes that army easily. At least more easily.
HTs is not a big problem because you can drain energy from your own banshees by switching on/off cloak ability, and storms can be easily dodged because of speed and ability to actually FLY over battlefield. Colossi are even less problem because of 4 freaking starports.
In addition, you have less ground army, so it does damage better because of small size (every unit do damage) and being not clumped and stacked is REALLY helpful, because AOE of protoss does less damage, because it really more easy to spread more smaller army.
+ Show Spoiler +http://drop.sc/232419
I've played with my mate 5 games, and he already knows, that I CAN do "stuff with mass banshees" As you can clearly see, there are tons of improvements can be done on this
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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 States25546 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 States25546 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 States25546 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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Thank you everyone for answering my questions so thoroughly, especially about the hellions. They're not there so much to fight as they are to control space and expansions, since you are not focusing on the ground fight to take to the skies almost completely. I wouldn't want too many ravens either, especially not for detection, just figured PDD would be useful at shutting down AA for a Sky T army, but I guess even 2-3 would cut it for that with good positioning and viking protection. I def want to check out that Creator replay too, sounds like a fun game to watch. Thank you all again.
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On August 02 2012 22:42 Ignorant prodigy wrote: 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. PF at nat is a must imo with this playstyle. Its impossible to expand AND tech AND build an army at the same time. But Sky Terran requires a lot of expos to get the gas geysers it needs to work. And Starport tech is at the very top of the tech tree. So you are going to have to lean on a very small army on 2-3 bases. By the time the Protoss punches out a 6gate or a 3 Gate Blink you will only have 2-3 Cloak Banshees plus 1 bunker full of Marines. Thats not enough, you need the PF.
You don't want to mine out extended expansions with mass mule drops. Sky Terran is so mineral-light that there are many games where I never mine out my main.
SCV sac to megamax is not really a good idea with Sky Terran either. Because most of our SCVs will be on gas, which cannot be replaced by MULE. And also, we want a good number of SCVs spread out at every expo to repair PFs and any air fleets pasing by. Its a real pain to pull SCVs off gas to repair, so there should be at least 4-12 mineral mining SCVs at every expo.
With Sky Terran mass orbital is more useful for scan than megamax. You never want to max with a sky terran army because it takes forever to rebuild if you do lose it. That goes double for a megamax army.
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My win ratio with sky terran v. P is close to 75% and I have NEVER have built a PF at my natural… so I can’t disagree more when you say it’s “impossible” to do this build without a PF at my natural.
To each their own I suppose.
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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
I just watched this replay. I think you were doing fine for a while in this game, but like you said, you didn't scout the 2stargate Phoenix until late. What would have helped against this, had you seen it, would be earlier BCs. I think massing banshees is fine when the protoss doesn't make a stargate or two and gives up air control, but if the toss decides to go air, you probably should stop or minimalize banshee production. BCs are good against Phoenixes because they have very high base armor, so it forces the Toss to make another form of anti-air. More turrets would have helped...you had almost none at your third and fourth. Thors wouldn't hurt, either, but the main thing would be to have BCs because Phoenixes counter support-less Vikings.
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Hey guys, I just wanted to share a replay of me opening hellion maurader into this build on Shakuras. This is vs a ~1200 master protoss.
The more I open hellion maurader, the more I like it. Maybe its just because I like hellions.
http://drop.sc/234064
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On August 03 2012 21:26 RoboBob wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2012 22:42 Ignorant prodigy wrote: 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. PF at nat is a must imo with this playstyle. Its impossible to expand AND tech AND build an army at the same time. But Sky Terran requires a lot of expos to get the gas geysers it needs to work. And Starport tech is at the very top of the tech tree. So you are going to have to lean on a very small army on 2-3 bases. By the time the Protoss punches out a 6gate or a 3 Gate Blink you will only have 2-3 Cloak Banshees plus 1 bunker full of Marines. Thats not enough, you need the PF. You don't want to mine out extended expansions with mass mule drops. Sky Terran is so mineral-light that there are many games where I never mine out my main. SCV sac to megamax is not really a good idea with Sky Terran either. Because most of our SCVs will be on gas, which cannot be replaced by MULE. And also, we want a good number of SCVs spread out at every expo to repair PFs and any air fleets pasing by. Its a real pain to pull SCVs off gas to repair, so there should be at least 4-12 mineral mining SCVs at every expo. With Sky Terran mass orbital is more useful for scan than megamax. You never want to max with a sky terran army because it takes forever to rebuild if you do lose it. That goes double for a megamax army.
there used to be a bunch of maps where PF at your natural hardly even defends you much from anything. but maps like that have been phased out of existence mostly
desert oasis is one example, of course thats 2+years old
one good modern example is entombed valley. A pf at your natural there does ZERO in defending protoss aggression on that map.
its a very strange map. a PF at your third also sucks on entomed. but its a strange map where theres like 1choke for your natural and third
And theres some other maps where PF at your natural is easy for toss to just walk by
not saying any builds bad or anything was just commentating on my thoughts on pf at naturals
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He may be master, but he doesn't have much of a clue, his scouting is terrible and he just lets your hellions waltz into his main mineral line. You got seriously lucky that game.
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On August 04 2012 03:19 ineversmile wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 02:59 Synystyr wrote: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 I just watched this replay. I think you were doing fine for a while in this game, but like you said, you didn't scout the 2stargate Phoenix until late. What would have helped against this, had you seen it, would be earlier BCs. I think massing banshees is fine when the protoss doesn't make a stargate or two and gives up air control, but if the toss decides to go air, you probably should stop or minimalize banshee production. BCs are good against Phoenixes because they have very high base armor, so it forces the Toss to make another form of anti-air. More turrets would have helped...you had almost none at your third and fourth. Thors wouldn't hurt, either, but the main thing would be to have BCs because Phoenixes counter support-less Vikings.
pheonix is a definite heavy counter to sky terran (before BC's)
1 pheonix, cost for cost, is SOO much stronger and more powerful than a viking. It has like TWICE the health and equal damage to eachother, but they cost the same (pheonix is 25 more gas, whatever)
the best counter cost for cost scouting heavy sky terran is definitely pheonix. 2 stargates is not that much money (300/300 compared to 200/200 cloak) and lets a toss crank out like 4 pheonix a minute which can kill 6-7 vikings a minute with guardian shield soaking a couple shots before the sentry dies
i still think sky terran is viable, however protosses best counter is most likely pheonix (as creator showed). pheonix is such a strong counter, it forces terran to stop his lowtech sky play and he must probably get to BC's faster, possibly with some thors maybe or just bio/bunkers/vikings to serve as defense while BC's come out
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On August 05 2012 06:14 PVequalsNRT wrote:Hey guys, I just wanted to share a replay of me opening hellion maurader into this build on Shakuras. This is vs a ~1200 master protoss. The more I open hellion maurader, the more I like it. Maybe its just because I like hellions. http://drop.sc/234064 That looked like a fun game, but I think most things work against a protoss who has 24 probes at 11 min..
But it does show that even master players can think that collossi/immortal is a goto composition against mass banshees. Personally, I have never been able to make it work, I get too crushed by HT:s.
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As you said almost anything can work when you get lucky with mass probe kills. Also note that the 'master' protoss didn't scout at all what the terran was doing, he had NO IDEA he was facing mass banshee, he blindly assumed a standard bio transition.
I mean perhaps the marauders at the front is a clever trick, and the turrets help, but most toss should sniff it out pretty easily imo.
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toss crank out like 4 pheonix a minute which can kill 6-7 vikings a minute with guardian shield soaking a couple shots before the sentry dies
The problem with this is that the more phoenix P makes the easier it is for T to mass expand with PFs and hide behind a turret wall. Sure it locks down T's own aggression but only as far as you have enough Phoenix, if you make too many T can wipe it out end game with 3:3 BC and HSM.
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Is it not very easy to counter this style? All you have to do is produce pure stalkers and camp the Terran 3rd so that he can never take it.
2-base Terran can only produce 4.5 banshee per minute and each starport requires 125 gas just to build (with a tech lab). Meanwhile Protoss can produce stalkers at half the gas price from 150 mineral only buildings.
Am I missing something? Or does this strategy rely on the opponent not scouting or not knowing how to play against it?
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I think that it does rely on the opponent not knowing how to play against it, but atm that is actually a fair bet. For example I don't think you know how to play against it, banshees are actually pretty good vs stalkers, and while you are camping the third he is destroying your probes/production/tech. Suddenly when you have to split your stalkers into 2-3 groups they aren't that good vs banshees, especially with PDD.
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Zeal/HT/archon with upgrades should be a direct counter to this strategy in theory. Archons beat banshee, ravens, and marines pretty well for supply and maybe even for cost(and they splash vs cloak). Zealots trade well with marines. HT obviously have storm/feedback which is great vs light units.
Blink works good as well(vs harass).
I guess the game hinges on if Protoss can keep his observers alive.
I think this strategy is a little cheesy, but still decent and it's a nice write-up.
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The thing I don't get about this strategy is what are the advantages apart from surprise?
In many respects it seems very similar to bio play, it's all about multi task, harass and out manoeuvring your opponent. But it also shares the same weak points, you can still lose your army in an instant if you mis-micro or just aren't watching your units. Like bio you need to be avoiding storms, and feedbacks, and while you don't have colossi to worry about, you do have phoenix which are kinda similar in that you need to scout them coming, prepare and kite against them.
However the great weakness is that unlike bio it is very hard to put on direct frontal pressure.
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On August 05 2012 06:30 kaokentake wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2012 21:26 RoboBob wrote:On August 02 2012 22:42 Ignorant prodigy wrote: 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. PF at nat is a must imo with this playstyle. Its impossible to expand AND tech AND build an army at the same time. But Sky Terran requires a lot of expos to get the gas geysers it needs to work. And Starport tech is at the very top of the tech tree. So you are going to have to lean on a very small army on 2-3 bases. By the time the Protoss punches out a 6gate or a 3 Gate Blink you will only have 2-3 Cloak Banshees plus 1 bunker full of Marines. Thats not enough, you need the PF. You don't want to mine out extended expansions with mass mule drops. Sky Terran is so mineral-light that there are many games where I never mine out my main. SCV sac to megamax is not really a good idea with Sky Terran either. Because most of our SCVs will be on gas, which cannot be replaced by MULE. And also, we want a good number of SCVs spread out at every expo to repair PFs and any air fleets pasing by. Its a real pain to pull SCVs off gas to repair, so there should be at least 4-12 mineral mining SCVs at every expo. With Sky Terran mass orbital is more useful for scan than megamax. You never want to max with a sky terran army because it takes forever to rebuild if you do lose it. That goes double for a megamax army. there used to be a bunch of maps where PF at your natural hardly even defends you much from anything. but maps like that have been phased out of existence mostly desert oasis is one example, of course thats 2+years old one good modern example is entombed valley. A pf at your natural there does ZERO in defending protoss aggression on that map. its a very strange map. a PF at your third also sucks on entomed. but its a strange map where theres like 1choke for your natural and third And theres some other maps where PF at your natural is easy for toss to just walk by not saying any builds bad or anything was just commentating on my thoughts on pf at naturals Yes some maps like emtomb have bad expos for PFs. Pure Sky TvP is not viable on those types of maps. Its a big reason why I have that map vetoed even though I'm Terran.
You can try to play very greedy and try to go with OC at nat on any map with this playstyle...but any good protoss will scout that and kill you before you get more than 2-3 cloak banshees. Without properly positioned PFs you will lose base trades with this playstyle.
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On August 05 2012 22:15 MockHamill wrote: Is it not very easy to counter this style? All you have to do is produce pure stalkers and camp the Terran 3rd so that he can never take it.
2-base Terran can only produce 4.5 banshee per minute and each starport requires 125 gas just to build (with a tech lab). Meanwhile Protoss can produce stalkers at half the gas price from 150 mineral only buildings.
Am I missing something? Or does this strategy rely on the opponent not scouting or not knowing how to play against it?
Pure stalker sitting at the terran 3rd is not the answer. Ok you stop me from getting my 3rd.. but.. my buildings fly… so I fly my 3rd command center to another base which is close by air.. seeing as how my army flies.. this is not an issue to defend Oh wait… I have 3 vikings and a raven.. I’ve now killed your obs and my banshees are killing your ‘less than even trade’ stalkers. Oh you’ve somehow managed to get like 10 cannons up at my 3rd because I’m terrible… Ok then I just fly my army across the map and start killing you. Pretty sure you’re criticizing people who “don’t know how to fight it” when you yourself “don’t know how to fight it”
Oh and to quote a friend of mine.. “even if you can see a banshee it can still f*ckin’ kill you”
They actually have decent DPS and can fight straight up against stalkers even uncloaked. Once you start mixing in BCs then it usually comes down to macro and avoiding storms with the banshees. Which IMO is much easier than BIO because there’s no forcefields and you have the air advantage.. no restrictions in movement.
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I started playing with this yesterday and I must say that I like it quite a lot. Feels a bit easier to play than bio and it's refreshing to not have to worry about colossi.
That said I really really have troubles surviving the early game. I was using the cloak banshee expand build described in the OP and I dont think I managed to win a single game against a 1base protoss. 4 gates hits before you have banshee/cloak out, and even if the banshee finishes before the attack hits, it just doesnt change much since he can kill everything you have while ignoring the banshee (see Mondragon vs that toss who opened stargate (Nightend?) from TSL3, same idea )
Maybe going Bomber 1rax FE, and then at the point where you add medivacs you instead start adding banshees. Then cut down on bio production progressively while adding startports would work, but it feels like it would delay our tech (and/or third base) too much.
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On August 07 2012 16:35 BobMcJohnson wrote:I started playing with this yesterday and I must say that I like it quite a lot. Feels a bit easier to play than bio and it's refreshing to not have to worry about colossi. That said I really really have troubles surviving the early game. I was using the cloak banshee expand build described in the OP and I dont think I managed to win a single game against a 1base protoss. 4 gates hits before you have banshee/cloak out, and even if the banshee finishes before the attack hits, it just doesnt change much since he can kill everything you have while ignoring the banshee (see Mondragon vs that toss who opened stargate (Nightend?) from TSL3, same idea ) Maybe going Bomber 1rax FE, and then at the point where you add medivacs you instead start adding banshees. Then cut down on bio production progressively while adding startports would work, but it feels like it would delay our tech (and/or third base) too much. The key to defeating 4 gates is a bunker. Just 1 bunker at your choke with 4 SCVs waiting to repair is all you need. If they do 4 gate with sentries and try to FF your buner, then Banshees killing everything. If they do 4 gate with Stalkers then you pull 8 additional SCVs (plus 2 per banshee) and focus down Stalkers. 2 Banshees kill 3 Stalkers, but 2 Banshees and 2 SCVs kill 4 Stalkers.
The Bomber build is great but it is so mineral intensive that it takes you a long time to reach that critical 8 geysers that makes Sky Terran click. It is also time intensive as well; if you waste time researching stim/shields/shells and getting Reactors then your Cloak and 6+ Starports will be massively delayed. By the time Banshees start to pop Protoss will almost always have 2-3 Obs on your half of the map, which will make it really hard to depend upon Cloak to repel those dangerous 2-3 base timings when you are trying to mass expand.
I guess I'm more of a purist. I think it is much stronger to focus on one goal (mass banshee/viking on 4 base asap) then to dilute goals (open with a fast expand, go for a bio timing attack, tech switch into mass banshee/viking). The more choices you make, the more chances you can make a mistake. Yes you learn from these mistakes, but its easier to learn a lesson that is attatched to one goal ("Gee I guess I was too greedy getting my Starports up") than myltiple goals ("hmm not sure if I lost that game because I was too greedy and passive with my expo, or if it was because I messed up my timing, or if it was because I was too greedy getting my Starports up")
The Bomber build is standard for a good reason. It isn't hard countered by anything, and it is not map dependent. It also has a high skillcap because all of its units are so micro-friendly.
Sky Terran can be hard countered and it is map dependent. But it can still be viable.
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Full disclosure: I'm Silver league terran for the 2 season's I've played.
Synystr.....This build rocks After 2-3 botched attempts, I went on a run of 9 consecutive TvP wins with this. Here's how I've found the build working:
-The first banshee goes to kill workers, waits for obs to show up and then runs for it. Generally P doesnt respond well by attacking my base, and sits home to build up forces instead. -Build up starports after the first 3 or so units produced at the first port, usually up to 3-4 before pushing out with around 8 banshees, 1-3 vikings, and 2-3 ravens. This push usually ends the game. If not, a susequent push with twice the unit count (3 vikings max usually, ravens at a 1:5 ratio to banshees usually) ends it. -Defending at home with 1-3 bunkers works well enough to delay an attack until the banshee fleet returns home to defend.
I've mixed between OCs and PFs at nat and 3rd, and I've never pushed out with marines or any ground troops. Also have never built BCs.
The usual protoss response after the first banshee is more stalkers. Turrets and ravens ofter catch the observers so maybe few P at my level see the sky terran style coming even after the first banshee....I still see immo and colossi get built. I have had 2 P use HTs as a counter, but I was able to not get hit enough to be hurt, and feedback wasnt used effectively on PDDs. Pheonixes I've seen once, but extra ravens and vikings worked fine.
I was able to beat a blink stalker player once on ohana, despite him taking out several tech labs on starports, by massing the air army and focusing on picking the best engagement possible, while leaving marines and hellions along the edges of the base, and of course lots of sensor towers. Another blink stalker player hit me before i even had a second starport or turrets, so I lost that one.
Once I didnt see the toss ground army move out and I was 3/4 to their base by the time the large gateway+collossus army hit my front door. I turned my army around, killed them off (after they got killed my nat and got into the main), and then hit their base. I agree that this is a great great build defensively, and can pull games from sure loss to easy win if engaging well
The BIGGEST loss I've had (out of like 3-4 losses since using this style) was against a high-gold player who I didnt pressure enough, and he transitioned beautifully to stalker, HT, archon, mothership. A complete loss due to a poor engagement in which I got archon toilet-ed. I should have let his slow MS travel to my base, then base traded and tried to pincer his army after crippling his base.
Overall: This has been an insanely fun build to use, and i'm 90% with it. Highly recommended. Perhaps I'll throw up a replay or two sometime of losses to get some suggests on where i should have improved (again I'm silver so there's probably lots to choose from ;-) ).
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Hi,
High diamond/low masters random player here.
I took a look at this build and I have a question.
Would it be reasonable to 15 CC in base and THEN go into 2 rax, since builds like these (where you take two gas in main sort of fast) leave you with about half saturation in your line, thus making an in base CC not the worst investment. I feel like this would eliminate the need for the 3 bunkers and allow you to take gas a bit earlier while building up your scv count for a transfer later on.
Please tell me if that sounds like a good idea or not, I just might try it out.
Edit: Also, when it comes to micro, why not magic box over the HTs if they dont have a lot of stalkers? Or if you're able to snipe the obs?
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Tribe,
I haven't found HTs very challenging to deal with due to banshee's speed, but I've never seen them get enough to blanket an engagement zone effectively either.
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I guess this build is still working for some Terrans, but as a Toss that opens with 2-base templar, a banshee-based composition sounds like a joke. Your guide says that Toss can't get enough templar to beat your banshees, but for the gas cost of 3 banshees, I can have 2 feedbacks and 4 storms....
I guess most Toss below mid-master only know how to a-move colossi?
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On September 21 2012 03:23 kcdc wrote: I guess this build is still working for some Terrans, but as a Toss that opens with 2-base templar, a banshee-based composition sounds like a joke. Your guide says that Toss can't get enough templar to beat your banshees, but for the gas cost of 3 banshees, I can have 3 feedbacks and 6 storms....
I guess most Toss below mid-master only know how to a-move colossi?
Haha...yes indeed. Plat Pross and below that I've played against (recalling I'm silver) tend to a) not scout skyterren effectively b) scout but not respond appropriately (ie more stalkers) c) respond with HT but use storm which is easy to dodge even at my level with quick banshees.
The best response by protoss is HT Feedback on the PDDs first and foremost (or ravens), but feedback isnt used much at lower levels.
like I said in my post, getting caught in an archon toilet is auto-lose too ;-)
The reason I like this build is because there are so many things Protoss can do wrong
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I guess this build is still working for some Terrans, but as a Toss that opens with 2-base templar, a banshee-based composition sounds like a joke. Your guide says that Toss can't get enough templar to beat your banshees, but for the gas cost of 3 banshees, I can have 2 feedbacks and 4 storms....
I guess most Toss below mid-master only know how to a-move colossi?
I've played plenty of protoss that go templar first while going this build (1200 masters last season, so mid masters). In situations such as this, yes a protoss is going to have sufficient templar support to make direct engagements or harrass very tough.
However, I personally stock large numbers of hellions even into the late game for the sole purpose of templar elimination when the protoss moves out. So I'll just grab as many bases as I can and build up production in the mean time. When the Protoss starts to move out for a push, in drive 15-20 suicidal blueflame hellions and usually get a fair percentage of the templar, even at maxed army sizes. I still usually have enough time to fill the 40 supply with air units by the time the protoss hits my side of the map.
Out of all the times I've lost end game battles with this composition, I can only count a couple handfuls of them that were due to killer storms.
That being said, templar are still definitly the best (most efficient perhaps?) way to beat this build.
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On September 21 2012 03:23 kcdc wrote: I guess this build is still working for some Terrans, but as a Toss that opens with 2-base templar, a banshee-based composition sounds like a joke. Your guide says that Toss can't get enough templar to beat your banshees, but for the gas cost of 3 banshees, I can have 2 feedbacks and 4 storms....
I guess most Toss below mid-master only know how to a-move colossi?
I play exclusively sky terran in TvP, and while two base HT is the most challenging opener to handle, I still handle it easily. I never stop reactoring marines and building bunkers once I identify that opener. On most maps (ohana, taldarim, antiga, etc) I can bunker my way to a third and keep my bashees plenty far back defensively.
Look up my replays on drop.sc/ my name is JoshFreeman on NA. Any TvP on there is sky terran and my opponents range from top 8 diamond to top 8 masters. It works at high levels.
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Hello Everyone, I am an experienced Sky Terran on the NA server. If anyone would like to test me, I promise I won't dissappoint. I also Sky vs Zerg as well. Feel free to add. AHvmpingDogi.549
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On September 21 2012 04:36 IcemanA wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2012 03:23 kcdc wrote: I guess this build is still working for some Terrans, but as a Toss that opens with 2-base templar, a banshee-based composition sounds like a joke. Your guide says that Toss can't get enough templar to beat your banshees, but for the gas cost of 3 banshees, I can have 3 feedbacks and 6 storms....
I guess most Toss below mid-master only know how to a-move colossi? Haha...yes indeed. Plat Pross and below that I've played against (recalling I'm silver) tend to a) not scout skyterren effectively b) scout but not respond appropriately (ie more stalkers) c) respond with HT but use storm which is easy to dodge even at my level with quick banshees. The best response by protoss is HT Feedback on the PDDs first and foremost (or ravens), but feedback isnt used much at lower levels. like I said in my post, getting caught in an archon toilet is auto-lose too ;-) The reason I like this build is because there are so many things Protoss can do wrong
Why develop an entire guide that relies on your opponent being bad?
Air vs Protoss can work but as an opening.. Skyterran is super gimmicky.
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Hello Everyone, I am an experienced Sky Terran on the NA server. If anyone would like to test me, I promise I won't dissappoint. I also Sky vs Zerg as well. Feel free to add. AHvmpingDogi.549
HvmpingD0gi, do you have any replays of sky terran vs Z, i'm really struggling in that I can get up to 4 bases fine, however by that time I either have to deal with huge ling run bys (BCs are too slow to catch) or mass corruptors (even with PDD/seeker this fight is hard).
Thanks!
Why develop an entire guide that relies on your opponent being bad?
Any strategy will benefit from their opponent being bad. Sky terran has its weaknesses sure, (HTs & blink stalkers mainly) but so do other compositions, the challenge is how to mitigate those weaknesses.
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On September 24 2012 16:57 rebotfc wrote:Show nested quote +Hello Everyone, I am an experienced Sky Terran on the NA server. If anyone would like to test me, I promise I won't dissappoint. I also Sky vs Zerg as well. Feel free to add. AHvmpingDogi.549 HvmpingD0gi, do you have any replays of sky terran vs Z, i'm really struggling in that I can get up to 4 bases fine, however by that time I either have to deal with huge ling run bys (BCs are too slow to catch) or mass corruptors (even with PDD/seeker this fight is hard). Thanks! Any strategy will benefit from their opponent being bad. Sky terran has its weaknesses sure, (HTs & blink stalkers mainly) but so do other compositions, the challenge is how to mitigate those weaknesses.
This build relies on your opponent having absolutely no idea what to do.
That's what we like to call cheese.
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HvmpingD0gi, do you have any replays of sky terran vs Z, i'm really struggling in that I can get up to 4 bases fine, however by that time I either have to deal with huge ling run bys (BCs are too slow to catch) or mass corruptors (even with PDD/seeker this fight is hard).
Thanks!
Yes, I do have replays you can watch. How do I send them? Or where do I upload them to? And I would not recommend using BCs in TvZ, too slow and and takes a lot of time too build, as well as being countered super well by corruptors. Do not use ravens until you have spare gas in the late game, unless you lose air superiority early on, but that's just how I do it.
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This build relies on your opponent having absolutely no idea what to do.
That's what we like to call cheese.
I'm almost positive over 90% of the games I play they have an absolutely good idea of what I'm doing. They even choose the best ways and the correct counters to deal with a build like this. I don't always win, but I win a lot more than I lose and that's forsure. Still cheese?
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Yes, I do have replays you can watch. How do I send them? Or where do I upload them to?
Hey HvmpingD0g, i find the best place to upload them is here http://drop.sc . You just drag the replay file to the page.
This build relies on your opponent having absolutely no idea what to do.
I've seen many protoss respond in the right way, however it is still possible to win these games.
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On September 25 2012 03:31 MahE wrote:
This build relies on your opponent having absolutely no idea what to do.
That's what we like to call cheese.
I would dispute that it RELIES on it, just that it helps more than some other builds.
If my enemy has observers blink stalkers and HTs, have they not responded correctly? If I still win (dodge storms, lay down pdds, snipe observers), is it still cheese if the opponent did respond well?
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what is a good defensive opener i can do in order to get to that point in time, i find that the problem i have is staying alive in the early game.
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On September 27 2012 03:55 Blackknight232 wrote: what is a good defensive opener i can do in order to get to that point in time, i find that the problem i have is staying alive in the early game.
What are you facing in the early game at what timings? It's hard to say without that.... But generally, if you are losing before you get your first banshee out (which can clean up some early P rushes all by itself with cloak), maybe you should use the 3rax variant synystyr mentions instead of the 1rax, and have 3 bunkers instead of 1 or two. Responding quickly with workers to repair is critical too.
If your banshee is out harassing, they are likely going to try to respond to that, but if they decide to attack your base and let you take out probes, your first raven should be out momentarily to help with a PDD, and certainly by this time 2-3 bunkers should be filled, with some overflow of marines.
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like i've been dieing to blink stalkers, 4 gate(yes i've been dieing to that even with shit tons of bunkers still can't hold it) 1 base collsi and no matter what opener i do: i've done from sige expand, 1 rax f.e, 2 rax expand, even went 3 rax one time and got c.s , stim, and neosteel frame just to hold any kind of play from the toss which i know delays my ports a lot but i feel like if i rush to ports he'll just a move and attack me and win.and i don't like 1/1/1 openers as i don't do any kind of harassment and i like to play defensive till i got a decent army and i'm able to move out and get map control due to toss being able to wrap any they please it makes it hard to move out. i vetoed all 2 player maps and kept all 4 player maps just to have some distance between me and my opp
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Blackknight, do you have any replays. In what minute are you dying, what level do you play at?
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On September 25 2012 17:39 rebotfc wrote:Show nested quote +Yes, I do have replays you can watch. How do I send them? Or where do I upload them to? Hey HvmpingD0g, i find the best place to upload them is here http://drop.sc . You just drag the replay file to the page. I've seen many protoss respond in the right way, however it is still possible to win these games.
I'll have some replays up for you by this weekend rebo. Sorry for the delay, very busy during the week.
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On September 27 2012 04:51 Blackknight232 wrote: like i've been dieing to blink stalkers, 4 gate(yes i've been dieing to that even with shit tons of bunkers still can't hold it) 1 base collsi and no matter what opener i do: i've done from sige expand, 1 rax f.e, 2 rax expand, even went 3 rax one time and got c.s , stim, and neosteel frame just to hold any kind of play from the toss which i know delays my ports a lot but i feel like if i rush to ports he'll just a move and attack me and win.and i don't like 1/1/1 openers as i don't do any kind of harassment and i like to play defensive till i got a decent army and i'm able to move out and get map control due to toss being able to wrap any they please it makes it hard to move out. i vetoed all 2 player maps and kept all 4 player maps just to have some distance between me and my opp
Blackknight, you should not being losing to 1 base collosi. But being an experienced Sky Terran, I think I can speak for most that if your opponent does a 1 base blink stalker opening it's almost a build order win. UNLESS you have atleast 3 rax pumping marines to aid your banshees, sometimes it is even possible with 2 rax but that is just too hard. Of course you can use marauders, but me being stubborn I refuse to use anything but sky. Keep in mind protoss builds involving a rebotics bay in the early game(which is highly probable) means they will have an observer, with that being said why would you need cloak right? I only research cloak if I plan on sniping obs or if I see early HT(cloak and decloak to waste energy so HTs cannot feedback). Get cloak later if being defensive early game, so you can get banshees out quicker.
Remember it's not all about cloak, it's about the banshee's DPS.
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On September 27 2012 06:26 A HvmpingD0gi wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2012 04:51 Blackknight232 wrote: like i've been dieing to blink stalkers, 4 gate(yes i've been dieing to that even with shit tons of bunkers still can't hold it) 1 base collsi and no matter what opener i do: i've done from sige expand, 1 rax f.e, 2 rax expand, even went 3 rax one time and got c.s , stim, and neosteel frame just to hold any kind of play from the toss which i know delays my ports a lot but i feel like if i rush to ports he'll just a move and attack me and win.and i don't like 1/1/1 openers as i don't do any kind of harassment and i like to play defensive till i got a decent army and i'm able to move out and get map control due to toss being able to wrap any they please it makes it hard to move out. i vetoed all 2 player maps and kept all 4 player maps just to have some distance between me and my opp Blackknight, you should not being losing to 1 base collosi. But being an experienced Sky Terran, I think I can speak for most that if your opponent does a 1 base blink stalker opening it's almost a build order win. UNLESS you have atleast 3 rax pumping marines to aid your banshees, sometimes it is even possible with 2 rax but that is just too hard. Of course you can use marauders, but me being stubborn I refuse to use anything but sky. Keep in mind protoss builds involving a rebotics bay in the early game(which is highly probable) means they will have an observer, with that being said why would you need cloak right? I only research cloak if I plan on sniping obs or if I see early HT(cloak and decloak to waste energy so HTs cannot feedback). Get cloak later if being defensive early game, so you can get banshees out quicker. Remember it's not all about cloak, it's about the banshee's DPS.
Agreed. I only go 1-1-1, and you MUST, i repeat MUST kill probes with your first banshee. Cloak will be ready by the time you get there with this build order.
1 base colossi should be an easy win. Quick blink stalker, depending on how perfectly executed, can be 50/50...or just 0 if you dont have your first pdd ready.
I feel that obs sniping is a key part of this build.
If you are not willing to harass and prefer to turtle till you have a big army, this build is not for you. You must harass with banshee #1 and then hit when you have around 8 banshees 2 ravens 1-2 vikings. That said, this build (once you get a sky army that size) is very powerful defensively too. But its the early game you have trouble with, and just microing 1 banshee distracts and delays most protoss.
I'd also want to see a replay of having a tonne of bunkers and losing....that doesnt sound right.
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