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On February 15 2013 14:40 HTOMario wrote:
I just wanted to make one comment real fast before this topic dies as it seems to be on the verge of doing. Over the spam of heart of the swarm beta there as been pages and pages of outcry for terran mech to work. I'm honestly a little surprised at the little amount of feed back this thread has recieved. The topics that beg for mech to work seem to vastly be more popular then topics showing mech working? I was just curious on if anyone has feed back on why that is. Don't get me wrong I am happy to share information and I did it mostly to help my fellow terran.
It's just that I expected a little more criticism or ideas to be spawned off this.
I agree with you, I feel than a lot of bronze/diamond people just want a 1A tank army to kill every protoss composition without scouting and being safe all the time, and that's what they call "mech" -> only tanks. These won't get you any interesting feedback !
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Interesting strategy and replays. What I found surprising is that you use widow mines beyond early game. In my experience if you use widow mines with your army vs Protoss they are just as likely to damage your own units as the opponent, ie the Zealots rush in and the mines splash your tank/thors to death.
Also I find that vs Carriers the problem is that mines attack the interceptors instead of the Carriers, either just wasting their shots, or killing your vikings at the same time due to splash.
So I just go mass Hellbat/Viking with Thor, Medivac and Ghost support. That composition is not really hard countered by anything Protoss has. It still dies to mass Carriers but as long as the push starts before he has mass air it works decently.
The key thing though is not unit composition. It is having enough factories so that you can remax fast enough if you trade. I have lost count on how many games I lost because I pushed before I had enough factories for a fast remax.
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Very nice thread, some interesting info there. I'm having a hard time calling a mass Thor comp "mech" though.
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One thing I've noticed is that it really matters how you possition your army in the fight. I mean, surely it does, but I was surprised how much of a difference it makes. The insane amount of DPS dealth by both sides is just happening instantly and if you have say 3-4 Immortals having free reign over your Thors/Tanks, you can lose the fight. At the same time, if you protect your heavy gas units correctly, Protoss will not fight cost effectively.
I think Mario, you could probably make a section where you would describe how to possition your army correctly and how to micro, what is priority, etc.. I find personally find this a big deal right after macro/scouting when meching.
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United Kingdom12024 Posts
On February 15 2013 16:28 LloydPGM wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 14:40 HTOMario wrote:
I just wanted to make one comment real fast before this topic dies as it seems to be on the verge of doing. Over the spam of heart of the swarm beta there as been pages and pages of outcry for terran mech to work. I'm honestly a little surprised at the little amount of feed back this thread has recieved. The topics that beg for mech to work seem to vastly be more popular then topics showing mech working? I was just curious on if anyone has feed back on why that is. Don't get me wrong I am happy to share information and I did it mostly to help my fellow terran.
It's just that I expected a little more criticism or ideas to be spawned off this. I agree with you, I feel than a lot of bronze/diamond people just want a 1A tank army to kill every protoss composition without scouting and being safe all the time, and that's what they call "mech" -> only tanks. These won't get you any interesting feedback !
I would hardly say people want a 1A tank army to work. If anything this is more 1A than that would be.
I've already said I find his composition interesting, but I seem to be finding more enjoyment/more success with tank/hellbat/viking and personally don't actually see what benefits using thors gives you over using tanks and vikings with hellbat support.
Especially against something like a gateway composition with templar support. Even immortal archon can be dealt with with tank hellbat by just using good EMPs. I'm happy people have found a way to make it work of course, but I'd rather stick to my style.
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On February 15 2013 14:40 HTOMario wrote:
I just wanted to make one comment real fast before this topic dies as it seems to be on the verge of doing. Over the spam of heart of the swarm beta there as been pages and pages of outcry for terran mech to work. I'm honestly a little surprised at the little amount of feed back this thread has recieved. The topics that beg for mech to work seem to vastly be more popular then topics showing mech working? I was just curious on if anyone has feed back on why that is. Don't get me wrong I am happy to share information and I did it mostly to help my fellow terran.
It's just that I expected a little more criticism or ideas to be spawned off this.
It's because mass Thor/ Hellbat mech comps are not what a lot of people see or want mech to be. Mass Warhound was very bad to watch, mass Thor is not a lot better.
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Well, with heavy-Tank based play (I mean pure Hellbat/Tank/Viking) I have following problems:
1) I need Vikings to prevent single Voidray/Tempest ruining my day. Then I lose to Zealot/Immortal/Archon while having dead supply in Vikings.
2) I need Ghosts, because pure Immortal/Zealot/Archon will devastate said Hellbat/Tank/Viking.
3) All my Tanks are dead supply the second Protoss switches to air, which is going to happen sooner or later.
So going Tanks forces me to go Vikings and Ghosts and more specifically, correct ratio between those 2 units, while going Thors is more forgiving.
Thor is just more universal, tank is very specialized.
I still like to use ~4-6 Tanks in my army to force engagements, snipe Ht's, cannons or just hold ground vs Colossus. I just can't imagine myself not going for Thors, because it deals very well with all gateway units, clumped up Voidrays, can take beating from Archon/Immortal and somewhat gives you chance to fight heavy air. It's just too good not to use them.
You still need to add Ghosts/Vikings if Protoss army is specialized in one way, but it's way easier for me to play mech with focus on Thors.
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United Kingdom12024 Posts
In response to everlong.
+ Show Spoiler +[quote][QUOTE]On February 15 2013 19:14 Everlong wrote:
Well, with heavy-Tank based play (I mean pure Hellbat/Tank/Viking) I have following problems:
1) I need Vikings to prevent single Voidray/Tempest ruining my day. Then I lose to Zealot/Immortal/Archon while having dead supply in Vikings.
2) I need Ghosts, because pure Immortal/Zealot/Archon will devastate said Hellbat/Tank/Viking.
3) All my Tanks are dead supply the second Protoss switches to air, which is going to happen sooner or later.
So going Tanks forces me to go Vikings and Ghosts and more specifically, correct ratio between those 2 units, while going Thors is more forgiving.
Thor is just more universal, tank is very specialized.
I still like to use ~4-6 Tanks in my army to force engagements, snipe Ht's, cannons or just hold ground vs Colossus. I just can't imagine myself not going for Thors, because it deals very well with all gateway units, clumped up Voidrays, can take beating from Archon/Immortal and somewhat gives you chance to fight heavy air. It's just too good not to use them.
You still need to add Ghosts/Vikings if Protoss army is specialized in one way, but it's way easier for me to play mech with focus on Thors. [/QUOTE]
[quote]I disagree with those. If he's going zealot/immortal/archon you scout it with your constant scans and don't overmake vikings. You need ghosts with thors anyway because immortal zealot is really good against all mech compositions and if the toss is switching air, you can scout it since you have so many scans and go push him and punish him for being low on units.
The only time tank/hellbat doesn't work against Toss is if you play overly defensive and let the toss do whatever they want. You can make some really nice midgame pushes with it if you learn the timings for whatever level you are.
Anyway, this is a discussion for another thread. If Mario's style works too, that's awesome. More mech styles, more variety, the better for the game IMO.
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On February 15 2013 21:20 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 19:14 Everlong wrote:
Well, with heavy-Tank based play (I mean pure Hellbat/Tank/Viking) I have following problems:
1) I need Vikings to prevent single Voidray/Tempest ruining my day. Then I lose to Zealot/Immortal/Archon while having dead supply in Vikings.
2) I need Ghosts, because pure Immortal/Zealot/Archon will devastate said Hellbat/Tank/Viking.
3) All my Tanks are dead supply the second Protoss switches to air, which is going to happen sooner or later.
So going Tanks forces me to go Vikings and Ghosts and more specifically, correct ratio between those 2 units, while going Thors is more forgiving.
Thor is just more universal, tank is very specialized.
I still like to use ~4-6 Tanks in my army to force engagements, snipe Ht's, cannons or just hold ground vs Colossus. I just can't imagine myself not going for Thors, because it deals very well with all gateway units, clumped up Voidrays, can take beating from Archon/Immortal and somewhat gives you chance to fight heavy air. It's just too good not to use them.
You still need to add Ghosts/Vikings if Protoss army is specialized in one way, but it's way easier for me to play mech with focus on Thors. I disagree with those. If he's going zealot/immortal/archon you scout it with your constant scans and don't overmake vikings. You need ghosts with thors anyway because immortal zealot is really good against all mech compositions and if the toss is switching air, you can scout it since you have so many scans and go push him and punish him for being low on units. The only time tank/hellbat doesn't work against Toss is if you play overly defensive and let the toss do whatever they want. You can make some really nice midgame pushes with it if you learn the timings for whatever level you are.
Ok, I'm going to try it this evening, so I'll post my results.
But I really doubt I can go Hellbat/Tank heads on vs Protoss. I often run into something like Zealot/Immortal/Archon + Voidrays and what I don't like about Tanks is that the second I'm missing critical number of some units (be it Ghosts or Vikings, or Hellbats as a buffer), whole my army gets overrun like immidiately. If I fail to scan correctly how many Voidrays he has (which happens), I'm done. With Thors, I can deal with Voidrays somewhat okay. Similar situation happens with Ghosts, but Ghosts are generally good against all Protoss units, so you can't really go wrong with them. That leaves us with air being the only problem. I mean, Thors are not THAT much worse vs all ground, but they are infinetely better against air. Also, I don't like to go for some kind of 3base "all-in" mech push. I take into account the game could go longer then 20 min. I guess I just want to be more well-rounded with my army composition. Notice that I don't skip Tanks completely. I just build my army around Hellbat/Thor and I take Tanks as a support unit, much like Vikings or Ghosts.
I'm in masters in WoL, currently top8 diamond in HotS if you are interested.
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So far I find tvp the hardest to make mech work mainly because of the air switch by toss. Tempests seem to shut down mech quite hard even with a good amount of vikings. Just wondering when against a skytoss with vrs and tempest which mode should thors be in? I find the splash quite useful against vrs cause they tend to clump but really bad vs tempests.
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On February 17 2013 03:38 reconcrap wrote:
So far I find tvp the hardest to make mech work mainly because of the air switch by toss. Tempests seem to shut down mech quite hard even with a good amount of vikings. Just wondering when against a skytoss with vrs and tempest which mode should thors be in? I find the splash quite useful against vrs cause they tend to clump but really bad vs tempests.
Thor Viking Ghost is very strong against Protoss air. But I honestly feel like Protoss air is super strong currently and it's hard for all the races to deal with it. I'm expecting it to get toned down. If you're actively scouting the protoss though, you should realize the air switch and respond accordingly. If you just do your own thing and have the wrong unit composition, you may just straight up lose the game. This works both ways though, if Protoss doesnt respond to mech properly with certain unit composition, they just lose.
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+ Show Spoiler +I just wanted to make one comment real fast before this topic dies as it seems to be on the verge of doing. Over the spam of heart of the swarm beta there as been pages and pages of outcry for terran mech to work. I'm honestly a little surprised at the little amount of feed back this thread has recieved. The topics that beg for mech to work seem to vastly be more popular then topics showing mech working? I was just curious on if anyone has feed back on why that is. Don't get me wrong I am happy to share information and I did it mostly to help my fellow terran.
It's just that I expected a little more criticism or ideas to be spawned off this.
I don't know if I am just being stubborn or what, but what makes me love mech from bw all the way to hots is the siege tank. I know, I know, I shouldn't be picky, but while I guess this is mech, it seems more of a death ball than true mech. The concept of having to deploy before the unit can even fire (and its long range, high splash) is what makes mech mech. Too me atleast this is hardly different to bio, just hellbats instead of marines and other support units instead of viking, ghost etc.
Don't take this as a discouragement or rant (even if it is by definition), it's really cool Mario and others are trying to make factory units work, but to me at least, this comp/style isn't different to any other death ball. I sincerely hope blizz will make the siege tank effective in TvP. =]
btw, I have Mario's stream open in a pinned tab all the time with adblock off, so I do honestly admire and am trying to support your efforts.
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Amazing post!
I've seen his stream once or twice and he definitely knows what he's talking about. I'll give this a shot for sure when I off race.
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Lots of good info here, thanks for making this guide!
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Great guide Mario! As Echoic said, a core of hellbat, thor, and widow mine seems to work really well (I'm only masters though, not GM like you two :-P). Then, adding in a handful of tanks/ghosts/vikings (situationally dependent for each) helps you hold most anything. After the 200/200 2/2 engage, I find myself remaxxing on a high number of ravens too, at that point. Ravens are too good to not use in this matchup with a (relatively) spammable AoE spell and PDD to block tempest/stalker shots.
My question regarding widow mines is: when do you get the burrow upgrade for them? Gas always seems to be short until the third base is established, and even then the mech player wants double armory and more factories. I can't seem to figure out where to squeeze it in. Right before I move out seems to be the most logical, as that's when the mobility is required, but I am not sure.
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On February 17 2013 07:09 JoshFreeman wrote:
Great guide Mario! As Echoic said, a core of hellbat, thor, and widow mine seems to work really well (I'm only masters though, not GM like you two :-P). Then, adding in a handful of tanks/ghosts/vikings (situationally dependent for each) helps you hold most anything. After the 200/200 2/2 engage, I find myself remaxxing on a high number of ravens too, at that point. Ravens are too good to not use in this matchup with a (relatively) spammable AoE spell and PDD to block tempest/stalker shots.
My question regarding widow mines is: when do you get the burrow upgrade for them? Gas always seems to be short until the third base is established, and even then the mech player wants double armory and more factories. I can't seem to figure out where to squeeze it in. Right before I move out seems to be the most logical, as that's when the mobility is required, but I am not sure.
I really like to get it around the same time I establish my third, I require more ground to cover and need to relocate faster.
Thanks for all the great feedback and support everyone.
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That makes sense. Thanks for the quick response.
Also- I love watching you stream. My fellow mech-ers are few and proud.
Here's looking at you Echoic, YoshiKirishima, LemonyTang, avilo, and of course HTOMario. <3
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These builds are indeed very awesome. Its great to see people learning to push the limits of some of these units some more. Except that im Zerg :I
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On February 17 2013 10:56 JoshFreeman wrote:
That makes sense. Thanks for the quick response.
Also- I love watching you stream. My fellow mech-ers are few and proud.
Here's looking at you Echoic, YoshiKirishima, LemonyTang, avilo, and of course HTOMario. <3
Don't forget coLTheStC, all though he isn't pure mech he is a very talented player whose mech style is unique when he does it.
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You're one of the few non-featured streams that I watch. Very interesting to watch, keep it up!
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EPT
