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On July 29 2013 23:15 teuthida wrote: On the topic of blink stalker all-ins (which I still cannot hold at all it seems) if I spot it early enough should I cancel my 2nd CC and use those mins for defense? (I typically use demuslims early ebay reaper expand build and scout with the scv after my 1st rax).
How would you go about identifying Blink before your CC finishes?
Why do you SCV scout when you are making a reaper?
On July 30 2013 07:17 Marathi wrote: Your reaper should have no problems with zealots and even with one or two stalkers out you can still get good scout reads with proper micro as reapers are faster than stalkers (just need to be careful when hopping up edges whether his stalkers are in place or not)
Even when opening reaper you kind of HAVE to scout with the scv that finished the rax. If you go 1 reaper reactor for example and you don't scout the zealot coming towards you (it doesnt have to take a direct path, your reaper might miss it) then you just die to 1 zealot 1 stalker which is just silly.
That's really the one and only reason to scv scout, the fact that you can identify a proxy faster is just a benefit (no 2nd pylon in main)
On July 29 2013 23:15 teuthida wrote: On the topic of blink stalker all-ins (which I still cannot hold at all it seems) if I spot it early enough should I cancel my 2nd CC and use those mins for defense? (I typically use demuslims early ebay reaper expand build and scout with the scv after my 1st rax).
How would you go about identifying Blink before your CC finishes?
Why do you SCV scout when you are making a reaper?
On July 30 2013 07:17 Marathi wrote: Your reaper should have no problems with zealots and even with one or two stalkers out you can still get good scout reads with proper micro as reapers are faster than stalkers (just need to be careful when hopping up edges whether his stalkers are in place or not)
Even when opening reaper you kind of HAVE to scout with the scv that finished the rax. If you go 1 reaper reactor for example and you don't scout the zealot coming towards you (it doesnt have to take a direct path, your reaper might miss it) then you just die to 1 zealot 1 stalker which is just silly.
That's really the one and only reason to scv scout, the fact that you can identify a proxy faster is just a benefit (no 2nd pylon in main)
Please note that I did not say he shouldn't scv scout. I only talked about his reaper issues. I scout with my supply scv for the same reasons you posted above.
Please note that I did not say he shouldn't scv scout. I only talked about his reaper issues. I scout with my supply scv for the same reasons you posted above.
Yeah it turns out I was just confused on the timings. I had thought up my question waking up early in the morning so it was just way off anyway . But yes that is why I scv scout too.
On July 29 2013 23:15 teuthida wrote: On the topic of blink stalker all-ins (which I still cannot hold at all it seems) if I spot it early enough should I cancel my 2nd CC and use those mins for defense? (I typically use demuslims early ebay reaper expand build and scout with the scv after my 1st rax).
How would you go about identifying Blink before your CC finishes?
Why do you SCV scout when you are making a reaper?
On July 30 2013 07:17 Marathi wrote: Your reaper should have no problems with zealots and even with one or two stalkers out you can still get good scout reads with proper micro as reapers are faster than stalkers (just need to be careful when hopping up edges whether his stalkers are in place or not)
Even when opening reaper you kind of HAVE to scout with the scv that finished the rax. If you go 1 reaper reactor for example and you don't scout the zealot coming towards you (it doesnt have to take a direct path, your reaper might miss it) then you just die to 1 zealot 1 stalker which is just silly.
That's really the one and only reason to scv scout, the fact that you can identify a proxy faster is just a benefit (no 2nd pylon in main)
Please note that I did not say he shouldn't scv scout. I only talked about his reaper issues. I scout with my supply scv for the same reasons you posted above.
My mistake I didn't mean to misrepresent you I just kinda boxed you two together <3
Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
On July 31 2013 00:45 Eagleeye777 wrote: Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
Hard to give you advice without a replay. I think you should provide a replay, so advice can be more specific. But, since you're silver I don't think the advice will be much more than macro better, since we can't realistically recommend Innovation 3 cc MMMM pressure.
On July 31 2013 00:45 Eagleeye777 wrote: Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
If he has made that many mutas push his base with your army, you should kill his production faster than he will kill yours and you should force him to defend to allow you to get more turrets up or move into mines or thors. He will have hardly any defence at home and shouldn't have the gas bank to make a ton of banelings if he has just made all those mutas.
On July 31 2013 00:45 Eagleeye777 wrote: Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
If you have a specific question like this, it´s better to provide a replay, so that someone can identify your problems.
In general:
Mutas cost a lot of gas, so when he is building up his muta count, he can´t spent his money on something else. The mutas are meant to pin you back in your base and get additional bases up. The first appearence is very important. If he get´s you off guard, he can do a lot of damage and slow you down this way. However if you scout that mutas are comming and have your defenses ready to deflect his first 10-12 mutas without taking damage, you can go into the initiative and attack. Mutas don´t stand a chance in a straight up fight, so he has to use banelings in order to stop your attacks. With attacking you force your opponent to make a lot of banelings, so that he can´t build up his muta count or he builds his muta count and takes a lot of damage from your attack or looses all his mutas.
From my experience it is easy to scout if you get an early starport. I usualy get a banshee and a viking. The banshee can freely fly between his bases and scout everything or it get´s killed by the mutas, which should give you enough time to get turrets up. The Viking is good to kill the overlords on the drop paths. This way you can do drop harass even when your opponent is going mutas.
On July 30 2013 13:27 tarpman wrote: I'm still trying to learn Terran, and I'm still having an awful time of it. I thought I should try to learn a build order, so I'm working on Bomber's opening from Day[9] Daily #530. (The "Newbie Tuesday" label sounded perfect for me.) A rough list of the things that are killing me the most often:
massive speedling runby at about 8 minutes (probably what I die to most often)
mass mutalisks
zealot/stalker or zealot/stalker/MSC pressure
a worker killing the SCV building my barracks or CC, sometimes the second SCV as well (delays my build, makes the followup aggression even more effective)
pretty much anything one base: blink stalkers, banshee, tank drop, ...
Can Bomber's opening be modified to be a bit safer against these sorts of things, or should I be choosing a different build as the first one I learn? The detailed and newb-friendly video tutorial is the reason I started with this one but I'm sure there are others.
(edit: Forgot 4 gate on the list, of course. Just died to that twice in a row. Even had a tank out before it hit, the second time. Sigh.)
Massive speedling runby: use supply depots and a bunker to wall off your natural expansion
mass muta: may not be the answer you were looking for but attack is the best form of the defence. easiest solution is to make him scared and keep them defensively. try not to fight on creep though if you are just pushing out to scare him.
otherwise if you don't feel comfortable pressuring, combination of turrets and widow mines. until the muta count gets too high one turret per mineral line. have a couple of widow mines at one likely muta attack place, when he takes a big hit he'll be a lot more wary about harassing. also when those 2 mines hit move them to a different place as he won't attack where they were.
if you can react fast enough then repairing turrets in mineral line can force him back. also for your third base try and put a bunker behind the mineral line, helps against zergling runbys and muta harass.
protoss early gateway unit pressure: main thing is just getting bunker down in time there are also tactics to keep him back, with your scouting scv you can engineering bay block his natural expansion so his units have to kill it or he cant expand, reaper expand means he has to keep stalker at home if he wants to deny your reaper scouting, widow mine openings punish these pressures by just simply killing them. widow mine openings really solid opening for people learning terran as they can help you against quite a few allins and proxy plays
losing early construction worker: kind of obvious this one, just as soon as you see an enemy scout take one of your workers and a-move his, if you react slow pull two workers. one to attack his worker, whilst you use t (in my hotkey setup) to halt construction, send the damaged worker back to mine, whilst the 2nd pulled worker resumes building.
versus 1-base builds: unfortunately most 1 base-builds require different reactions, read the OP for details on how to hold the tvp 1 base all-ins, tvt the most important thing is to scan his main at about 5:30-6:00 (not exactly sure when, i do it base on my build timings) to check if you need engi bay and turrets for cloak and whether he is doing a 1 base tank push or not. 1 base tank push you tend to either need your own tanks to defend or to pull some of your workers with your army and attack him outside your base before he can siege
Sounds like you are at a lower level tarpman. If that's the case always wall off with supply depot, barracks, supply depot. This alone will save you in many games. If you are going to build a CC then build it on the high ground (in your main base). Always scout. If protoss doesn't have nexus up by 5:00 then build at least one, possibly even 2 bunkers behind your supply depots. For zerg the same concept but their hatch should be up by 3:00 mins. Terran is kind of iffy because it's kind of volatile right now and they can always build a CC on their high ground. To be perfectly safe against terran build an engineering bay at 5:30. Scan his base around 6:00 and build turret if you see banshee tech.
Thanks for the response! Yeah, I'm struggling to hold platinum with terran... little embarrassing coming from mid diamond zerg I'm walling off my natural more consistently now and that is helping. Walling my main seems less important so far, since if I have units getting up into my main then my natural defenses are already gone and the game is likely over.
Massive speedling runby: use supply depots and a bunker to wall off your natural expansion
mass muta: may not be the answer you were looking for but attack is the best form of the defence. easiest solution is to make him scared and keep them defensively. try not to fight on creep though if you are just pushing out to scare him.
otherwise if you don't feel comfortable pressuring, combination of turrets and widow mines. until the muta count gets too high one turret per mineral line. have a couple of widow mines at one likely muta attack place, when he takes a big hit he'll be a lot more wary about harassing. also when those 2 mines hit move them to a different place as he won't attack where they were.
if you can react fast enough then repairing turrets in mineral line can force him back. also for your third base try and put a bunker behind the mineral line, helps against zergling runbys and muta harass.
protoss early gateway unit pressure: main thing is just getting bunker down in time there are also tactics to keep him back, with your scouting scv you can engineering bay block his natural expansion so his units have to kill it or he cant expand, reaper expand means he has to keep stalker at home if he wants to deny your reaper scouting, widow mine openings punish these pressures by just simply killing them. widow mine openings really solid opening for people learning terran as they can help you against quite a few allins and proxy plays
losing early construction worker: kind of obvious this one, just as soon as you see an enemy scout take one of your workers and a-move his, if you react slow pull two workers. one to attack his worker, whilst you use t (in my hotkey setup) to halt construction, send the damaged worker back to mine, whilst the 2nd pulled worker resumes building.
versus 1-base builds: unfortunately most 1 base-builds require different reactions, read the OP for details on how to hold the tvp 1 base all-ins, tvt the most important thing is to scan his main at about 5:30-6:00 (not exactly sure when, i do it base on my build timings) to check if you need engi bay and turrets for cloak and whether he is doing a 1 base tank push or not. 1 base tank push you tend to either need your own tanks to defend or to pull some of your workers with your army and attack him outside your base before he can siege
This is awesome and more helpful than I had dared to hope for. Thanks so much! Like I wrote above I'm walling my natural more consistently now and that's helping (but I do need to figure out how to scout a baneling bust before it happens), and starting my bunker earlier too.
When you say to press t, is that on the scv or the building? I didn't know you could pull the scv off without cancelling the whole building, so I think that will help a lot with losing fewer workers early.
I'll push my luck and dare to ask a couple more questions since you've both been so kind. First, how can I keep better track of where the opponent's army is? I'm holding watchtowers as much as I can and using lots of scans, but still the enemy army often turns up at an expansion when my army is way off across the map. I'm used to having total maphacks with overlords and creep so it's a bit of a change Secondly I haven't learned how to use the new HOTS units yet but widow mines seem useful, can you recommend a basic and defensive build order involving widow mines that I could practice? Do widow mines replace tanks in my army or complement them?
Thanks again, those are both really helpful replies!
Sensor towers can be useful if you are struggling with map control / awareness. Just don't crazy with them as they cost significant gas. Otherwise keeping some marines or hellions in key areas is useful. Don't burn too many scans as you'll be behind in minerals then.
You can press T on the constructing building and it will move the working scv off.
Widow mines, in TvZ is mostly where I use them though they can be useful in TvT and sometimes in TvP. In TvZ I go bio and mine, no tanks. In biomech they can complement tanks. In TvZ I do the standard CC first build with natural wall off, and put my mines down outside the wall to hold off all-ins. Then when I have a decent amount of mines (6-8) and marines (you want mostly marines unless you scout roaches) and a couple medivacs I start pressuring the zerg.
If you want a build order it is something like:
10 depot 14 CC at wall (check out how to wall with a cc and rax) 15 rally 15th worker to wall and barracks -> 2 marines -> reactor 16 gas 18 OC on main 100% CC(2) OC on that 100 gas factory -> when down swap to reactor and make 2 hellions or 2 mines tech lab on the swapped out rax -> stim make gas (2)
at this point I play more aggressive so I throw down 2 rax and an engy and starport when I can, reactors on the rax, make marine s and mines and medivacs then push, and expand behind that. You can also make your 3rd early instead of the rax if you want to be more defensive / econ based.
On July 31 2013 00:45 Eagleeye777 wrote: Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
If you have a specific question like this, it´s better to provide a replay, so that someone can identify your problems.
In general:
Mutas cost a lot of gas, so when he is building up his muta count, he can´t spent his money on something else. The mutas are meant to pin you back in your base and get additional bases up. The first appearence is very important. If he get´s you off guard, he can do a lot of damage and slow you down this way. However if you scout that mutas are comming and have your defenses ready to deflect his first 10-12 mutas without taking damage, you can go into the initiative and attack. Mutas don´t stand a chance in a straight up fight, so he has to use banelings in order to stop your attacks. With attacking you force your opponent to make a lot of banelings, so that he can´t build up his muta count or he builds his muta count and takes a lot of damage from your attack or looses all his mutas.
From my experience it is easy to scout if you get an early starport. I usualy get a banshee and a viking. The banshee can freely fly between his bases and scout everything or it get´s killed by the mutas, which should give you enough time to get turrets up. The Viking is good to kill the overlords on the drop paths. This way you can do drop harass even when your opponent is going mutas.
Messy game, please remember I am still learning. If someone wants to go over this and help me get better, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Sensor towers are a Mid/Late Game scenario Item specific to certain maps in the mid game in order to get a jump on either drops or army movement that couldcatch you off guard on either a base that is far away from your Nat and will be further away from your army for instance Star Station the 4th can be tough to take if you are out of position and if you react to the 4th you can have them come at your third this is the situation you put a sensor tower preferably where you are least covering to ensure you dont get blind sided from the enemy team.
On July 31 2013 00:45 Eagleeye777 wrote: Since I did not find anything in the OP about it, gonna give it a try here.
In recent games more and more Zerg did a ling/bane/muta style to me, that I did not encounter so often before. I am still learning the game (High Silver by now) and have been pretty focused on my makro so far.
I was wondering how I could actually beat this build. Zerg just makes 30 Mutas crushes my ring of turrets down and kills my 3rd. Then I am behind he's harassing even more and when I finally manage to kill maybe half of his mutas with marines and mines he just baneling busts whats left of my army and it is gg. Because of all the harass i seldom have money for more than 2 or 3 tanks and those banelings simply kill everything then.
What could i do here? Skipping tanks and trying to mass mines with drilling claws and hope I can kill the overseers? So far I did not find something decent that is working.
Or stop training makro for now and trie learning to mikro finally
If you have a specific question like this, it´s better to provide a replay, so that someone can identify your problems.
In general:
Mutas cost a lot of gas, so when he is building up his muta count, he can´t spent his money on something else. The mutas are meant to pin you back in your base and get additional bases up. The first appearence is very important. If he get´s you off guard, he can do a lot of damage and slow you down this way. However if you scout that mutas are comming and have your defenses ready to deflect his first 10-12 mutas without taking damage, you can go into the initiative and attack. Mutas don´t stand a chance in a straight up fight, so he has to use banelings in order to stop your attacks. With attacking you force your opponent to make a lot of banelings, so that he can´t build up his muta count or he builds his muta count and takes a lot of damage from your attack or looses all his mutas.
From my experience it is easy to scout if you get an early starport. I usualy get a banshee and a viking. The banshee can freely fly between his bases and scout everything or it get´s killed by the mutas, which should give you enough time to get turrets up. The Viking is good to kill the overlords on the drop paths. This way you can do drop harass even when your opponent is going mutas.
Messy game, please remember I am still learning. If someone wants to go over this and help me get better, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
I did a full analyze of your replay, here are my notes :
- You scout a zerg not taking an expansion and you react by dropping down a second barrack -> Drop a bunker instead. 1 base zerg is often a baneling all-in so you want to sim city your wall while producing constant scvs from 2cc.
- You aren't producing marines constantly -> As a terran, the thing that will get you to higher leagues is a constant unit production, try not to forget a single marine/scv. To do so you can spam your control groups to see if there are units building or not.
- You turtle on 1 base but you don't know what the zerg is doing -> Drop a scan to see if he expanded, send a marine to see the unit count in front of your base
- 2 Blind bunker is too much, consider dropping only 1 bunker and walling the rest of the natural wall with depots
- Dropping your expension at 11 minutes is way too late ! -> Consider expanding AS FAST AS YOU CAN, even if it implies fighting the small group of zergling in front of your base.
- You make more barracks because you got excess minerals, that's great, but you need to produce units with them, your production buildings are idle most of the time, they shouldn't.
- You're hitting 100 population at the 14 minutes mark. If you would have produced constantly from all the barracks, you would have been at ~160 population. Higher leagues players are at 200pop at the 14minute mark.
I won't go further, now forget everything you've read and concentrate on this :
-> Constant SCV and MARINES production -> Constant SCV and MARINES production -> Constant SCV and MARINES production
Watch this video :
(You can watch the whole bronze to master series if you want, but concentrate on the first 3-4 episodes first).
That pretty much anything you need to improve now.
I have a quick question, in each matchup, what are good timings to scan your opponent? I got myself into the habit of using MULEs whenever I have energy, to the point that I over-do it actually and have had to re-train myself to save energy at some timings for defensive purposes (DTs, banshees) which I still sometimes forget to do.
But at what points should I start regularly start scanning my opponent? Are there particular timings when it is the most efficient to see what they have / where they are? And what map areas is it most useful to scan in the early-mid to midgame? I'm not including instances like a tank standoff for example.
On August 01 2013 08:59 arena_say_what wrote: As a kinda rule of thumb, how many raxes should you have when on 2 bases and then 3 bases? I'm finding it hard to resupply in all my matchups
3 rax with add-ons on 2 bases + factory + starport 5 rax with add-ons when you prepare for taking your third 8 rax when you get your third down
When your third get well saturated you can go up to 10 - 12 rax while you start building your fourth
That's how i work
On August 01 2013 08:24 teuthida wrote: I have a quick question, in each matchup, what are good timings to scan your opponent? I got myself into the habit of using MULEs whenever I have energy, to the point that I over-do it actually and have had to re-train myself to save energy at some timings for defensive purposes (DTs, banshees) which I still sometimes forget to do.
But at what points should I start regularly start scanning my opponent? Are there particular timings when it is the most efficient to see what they have / where they are? And what map areas is it most useful to scan in the early-mid to midgame? I'm not including instances like a tank standoff for example.
TvT : Scan at 6:20 -> Look for buildings and add-ons TvP : Start saving scans by 6:00 if you suspect DT rush TvZ : Scan at 9:00 approx to see if they make mutas or not. You will also scan at the 15:00 mark to see if they transition to T3 or if they are still on T2
EPT
. But yes that is why I scv scout too.
I'm walling off my natural more consistently now and that is helping. Walling my main seems less important so far, since if I have units getting up into my main then my natural defenses are already gone and the game is likely over.
