The HotS Terran Help Me Thread - Page 262

On March 18 2014 22:19 TheDwf wrote:

Perhaps playing more agressive openings would give you better understanding of the flow of TvZ. Maybe try a 3 rax Hellions Medivac timing (+2 rax instead of a third CC), you can have the initiative for a long time with that build.

On March 19 2014 00:54 llaMWell wrote:
Is Terran like by design meant to not be able to win against a late game zealot-storm-archon army? I mean I beat top plat / diamond Zergs and Terrans, but I can't even win against gold league Protosses if it goes to late game. Is the idea that Terran has to avoid the Protoss army completely and instead just drop all over the place or something?

Replay example: http://drop.sc/377032
So I do the Polt reaper expand build, I hold his initial weird little chargelot-archon timing without much trouble. I macro up, wait for 1/1 and set out to push his natural. At this point I'm up by over 30 in army supply, I have more workers and we are even in upgrades. The moment I push he even messes up badly and uses mass recall to his natural from his own ramp instead of photon overcharge, which gives me some free kills before the battle even starts. I also EMP his mothership core before he gets a second try at overcharge. I get off one good EMP on some units, but misses his templars. He storms a few times and holds.

I fall back, continue to macro up, take my fourth and I'm soon up by 30 supply again. I move out, snipe three templars for free and attack. At that point I'm up by around 40 army supply. He storms a few times and holds no problem. Despite everything I'm still ahead or even in every field. My third push suffers the same fate as the two before. He finally manages to max out, a-moves his 30 chargelots, storms a few times more and wins.

It's so extremely frustrating to the point where I'm this close to uninstalling the whole game. It feels like I have to do so many things literally simultaneously to be effective, while chargelots and archons would be almost just as strong with the Protoss afk. In WoL we at least had the easier early game of the two... I don't really mind losing, but when I constantly lose to what feels like inferior players it really gets to me. It's like I'm running in a marathon where 1/3 of the guys get to use bikes at the end...

So what could I have done differently here? Should I just rely on drops more? What do you think?

Thanks in advance =)

On March 19 2014 00:54 llaMWell wrote:
Is Terran like by design meant to not be able to win against a late game zealot-storm-archon army? I mean I beat top plat / diamond Zergs and Terrans, but I can't even win against gold league Protosses if it goes to late game. Is the idea that Terran has to avoid the Protoss army completely and instead just drop all over the place or something?

Replay example: http://drop.sc/377032
So I do the Polt reaper expand build, I hold his initial weird little chargelot-archon timing without much trouble. I macro up, wait for 1/1 and set out to push his natural. At this point I'm up by over 30 in army supply, I have more workers and we are even in upgrades. The moment I push he even messes up badly and uses mass recall to his natural from his own ramp instead of photon overcharge, which gives me some free kills before the battle even starts. I also EMP his mothership core before he gets a second try at overcharge. I get off one good EMP on some units, but misses his templars. He storms a few times and holds.

I fall back, continue to macro up, take my fourth and I'm soon up by 30 supply again. I move out, snipe three templars for free and attack. At that point I'm up by around 40 army supply. He storms a few times and holds no problem. Despite everything I'm still ahead or even in every field. My third push suffers the same fate as the two before. He finally manages to max out, a-moves his 30 chargelots, storms a few times more and wins.

It's so extremely frustrating to the point where I'm this close to uninstalling the whole game. It feels like I have to do so many things literally simultaneously to be effective, while chargelots and archons would be almost just as strong with the Protoss afk. In WoL we at least had the easier early game of the two... I don't really mind losing, but when I constantly lose to what feels like inferior players it really gets to me. It's like I'm running in a marathon where 1/3 of the guys get to use bikes at the end...

So what could I have done differently here? Should I just rely on drops more? What do you think?

Thanks in advance =)

On March 19 2014 06:58 B-rye88 wrote:
IMO, attempting to kill a two base protoss is a futile endeavor, as is attempting to take an army v army fight without counters to his AoE.

On March 19 2014 05:23 Pursuit_ wrote:


So something really quick just to think about-

Especially when playing vs a Gateway heavy army, being up in supply is a bit decieving because units you have in production show up on your supply while Gateways your opponent has on cooldown do not. So a '30 supply advantage' is actually more like a ~10 supply advantage (with a significant portion of your units being in production), and then if you add defenders advantage (typically 1 production cycle) you're actually engaging with less supply than your opponent. So supply can be really decieving in TvP.

That being said, your macro was really quite good this game, constantly expanding / increasing your production / ect, although your money was quite high and you definitely could have used some more barracks in the later stages.

Watching the game, the biggest problems I noticed you having were

1) Your whole army is on one control group even when you had Ghosts, try getting used to using Ghosts on a seperate control group, it's going to take awhile to get used to but eventually it's to make your life a lot easier when you can quickly move between controlling Ghosts and your main army. Bio + Vikings on one control group is acceptable. There were a lot of times where you didn't stim / stimmed late and I'm guessing it's because you had Ghosts on the same control group as your MMM.

2) You're always attacking into your opponent without seeing what he has AND with your army clumped up, if you're going to attack into your opponent you should always first pre-split your army (and try to split it wide rather than deep, forming a bit of a concave), then move forwards with a small group of bio or scan ahead when you do move forward, and constantly be pulling parts of your army to the side to keep it well spread and not clumped. If you rush in with your entire army clumped up like you did in this game, you're always going to get stormed.

3) You pretty much always fail to EMP your opponent's HT, I know it's really hard to do and unfortunately there isn't really a set method for doing it correctly that I can explain here, but basically just being more patient will help you out a lot here, dont run your ghosts in head first trying to get off EMPs try to bait your opponent's army into yours and scan to see where his HT are coming from so you know exactly where to EMP.

4) Always be kiting vs Protoss armies. There were quite a few moments where you could have straight up won the game (the engagement around 21:00 is the best example), but you had your army sitting and fighting and then 2 storms came up and hit your entire army. It doesn't matter if your army can beat his chargelots without moving, kiting is still super important because bio kiting moves faster than a HT can catch u so you're less likely to get hit by a storm. If they pull back, you can re-engage but make sure you do it carefully like I explained in point 2).

As a final note, dont think about things like how much harder it is for you than your opponent when you're playing, try to focus only on the things you have direct control over. If you spend your time / energy thinking 'Oh I have to play 100x better than my opponent this is stupid ect', you're not going to enjoy yourself and you're not going to improve, try to think about what mistakes you made and what you could have done better. And take breaks often, after a few games you will always start falling into the former mindset and when you do the best thing you can do is take a quick ~10 minute break and get some food / go for a walk / ect.

On March 19 2014 15:07 Pursuit_ wrote:


I noticed is that your opening is overly defensive (TvZ you can go CC before second depot + CC on the low ground and be consistently safe), this probably isn't a huge deal however.

Your 2nd and 3rd barracks are really late and your gas at your natural is really late too, looks like you're getting caught up in micro? Floating ~1k minerals and you should have your 2nd and 3rd rax done and 4th and 5th started.

Your marines are coming out pretty late, you need to have a handful (~16 or so) by 11:00 minutes to deal with mutas, I wouldn't get more than 1-2 mauraders before then and even then only if you suspect a roach timing. You've also go no add-ons on your rax (due to lack of gas?), it's inefficient to use naked rax but not the end of the world.

Really bad supply blocks at 116 and 156, and you're overmaking turrets a lot, you should really only make 1-2 turrets per mineral line in the early game because it's super important to have units out in the early stages of TvZ. Make the turrets in the mineral line too so you can repair in time. You're also playing really passively, it's kind of working out this game because your opponent isn't droning very well but typically if your opponent isn't being harassed they're going to be at 80-90 drones by 12:00 and maxed out by 13-14 minutes.

If you want to play hellbat you need a third factory (with a tech lab) and you need to add in a couple thors, pure hellbat / marine will get slaughtered by high mutalisk counts.

Your upgrades are pretty late too, you'll want to start engineering bays by 8:30 or so at the latest. Mid game can be really hard if you're on 1/1 and your opponent has 2/2.

Maybe play a couple practice games and just focus on getting maxed out around 14:00, the biggest problem you have is just making your production on time and avoiding getting supply blocked.

On March 20 2014 00:27 Pursuit_ wrote:


You should be able to hit them vs very easy AI after a few tries, probably not in a real game. I'm only mid masters but both I and my opponents can hit those benchmarks in game. Really just focus on getting your production up asap though, Terran production (if you get add-ons at least) takes longer than any other races to get going even if you have a pretty complicated add-on swapping setup like most pros do, while Zerg's takes the least amount of time and resources. So it's really important you minimize that window where you have very little unit production after 3CC and your opponent has 3-4 hatch worth of production (typically 8:00-10:00 or so) or you're going to start losing a lot of games to unit floods around the 8-11 minute mark even if you scout them.

If you haven't already read this guide it's definitely worth doing so, information is still relevent http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/425617-4m-a-guide-to-modern-tvz

On March 20 2014 01:07 DinoMight wrote:


Yeah I think I'm getting a little too caught up in microing my first few Reapers and Hellions and not giving macro enough attention. Will focus on getting all that stuff earlier as I'm sure it will help as I make my way up the ladder.

Thanks.