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On March 20 2013 10:05 ZjiublingZ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 09:40 MrFrenchy wrote:You guys have to appreciate that this build is meant to counter the recent popularity of widow mine drop/reaper builds. It's effective because it applies pressure and harassment while giving you the tools to defend against drops. If the terran just builds a massive amount of marines, you will have to transition. Fortunately this transition will be easy to do because this build gives you awesome map presence. Here's an imperfect diamond level replay of the build. I transitioned to colossi and a third base because he didn't go for aggressive drop play and put mines in all his mineral lines. http://drop.sc/311499 The Transition is already a part of MC's build, as we saw in a couple of the games. He does it like he did Stargate play in 2011 WoL, except now he gets an Oracle with his 6 Phoenix before transitioning. And while this build does seem to be a solid counter to gas openings, specifically Widow Mine drops, as we have seen it's also *very* scary to gasless openings, because of the inherent dependence on Marines. It's an exclusively early game build, it has no bearing on the mid to late game except for hopefully you keep your Phoenix alive and deal with Medivacs better than normal.
Completely agreed, this build is great because it's viable against gas or gasless openings. I was just responding to earlier posters saying that it can't deal with a ton of marines.
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Has anyone tried this against the old standard 2 rax play? Or even 3 rax openers? 1 Gateway seems to be really tough, and by the time you have enough Phoenix to threaten Marines, the Terran will have a Reactors pumping away.
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On March 20 2013 11:06 Supah wrote:
Has anyone tried this against the old standard 2 rax play? Or even 3 rax openers? 1 Gateway seems to be really tough, and by the time you have enough Phoenix to threaten Marines, the Terran will have a Reactors pumping away.
Having played with the build a bit, I can tell you that the MSC absolutely demloshes these shenanigans. As long as you know how to expand properly, these builds are never an issue.
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Right, they're never a threat to kill you or do too much damage, however, I feel like it severely mitigates a Stargate opener, and essentially makes your Phoenix useless, albeit with 4-5 SCV kills and the errant Marine here and there, but much less worth it for the cost of all that Phoenix and delayed upgrade.
What about gasless play? As in, CC first, followed by the typical 2 Rax and then a few more later on. Do you just scrap the build and continue your merry way? I feel like you would have to do substantial damage to the economy to even merit Stargate play, and with that many Marines with a big economy that early.. I don't know.
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On March 21 2013 04:08 Supah wrote:
Right, they're never a threat to kill you or do too much damage, however, I feel like it severely mitigates a Stargate opener, and essentially makes your Phoenix useless, albeit with 4-5 SCV kills and the errant Marine here and there, but much less worth it for the cost of all that Phoenix and delayed upgrade.
What about gasless play? As in, CC first, followed by the typical 2 Rax and then a few more later on. Do you just scrap the build and continue your merry way? I feel like you would have to do substantial damage to the economy to even merit Stargate play, and with that many Marines with a big economy that early.. I don't know.
This is what you want to happen, their eng bay is delayed so your oracles and phoenixes do tons of damage.
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On March 21 2013 04:08 Supah wrote:
Right, they're never a threat to kill you or do too much damage, however, I feel like it severely mitigates a Stargate opener, and essentially makes your Phoenix useless, albeit with 4-5 SCV kills and the errant Marine here and there, but much less worth it for the cost of all that Phoenix and delayed upgrade.
What about gasless play? As in, CC first, followed by the typical 2 Rax and then a few more later on. Do you just scrap the build and continue your merry way? I feel like you would have to do substantial damage to the economy to even merit Stargate play, and with that many Marines with a big economy that early.. I don't know.
except now you have a bunch of map control with your phoenix's which can pick off stray units, and also help vs the vikings, meaning your transition to colo is a bit safer, it prevents any sort of drop shennannigans, and if they go gasless expand, 2-3 oracle should just straight up kill him
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On March 21 2013 05:44 polysciguy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 04:08 Supah wrote:
Right, they're never a threat to kill you or do too much damage, however, I feel like it severely mitigates a Stargate opener, and essentially makes your Phoenix useless, albeit with 4-5 SCV kills and the errant Marine here and there, but much less worth it for the cost of all that Phoenix and delayed upgrade.
What about gasless play? As in, CC first, followed by the typical 2 Rax and then a few more later on. Do you just scrap the build and continue your merry way? I feel like you would have to do substantial damage to the economy to even merit Stargate play, and with that many Marines with a big economy that early.. I don't know. except now you have a bunch of map control with your phoenix's which can pick off stray units, and also help vs the vikings, meaning your transition to colo is a bit safer, it prevents any sort of drop shennannigans, and if they go gasless expand, 2-3 oracle should just straight up kill him
Yeah about the Colossus transition, for those who don't know, 6 Phoenix (how many MC was getting) beat 7 Vikings. So it's going to be really hard for your opponent to counter 1 or 2 Colossus. Do you force him to make 8 Vikings to kill 1 Colossus? Does he make a few less than that and just try to focus fire them, losing the Vikings so you can keep making Colossus? I think the 1 or 2 Colossus transition is really strong because of the strain it puts on the Starport production in this way, it makes the ability of you to take out Medivacs so well that much stronger when they are forced into so many Vikings.
(And now that Phoenix have 5 range like marines, there isn't any range discrepancy between the Marines and Phoenix, so if their Marines are hitting your Phoenix, your Colossus can hit their Marines)
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On March 20 2013 00:06 Treehead wrote:
A few things we should probably consider before people go making stargate their staple for PvT.
1. Can stargate-based play do this much damage consistently? Oracles are *good* against marines - don't get me wrong - but at 150/150, with 160 health, 0 armor and 25 dps vs. light (consuming energy), they aren't exactly cost effective against marines either. The Oracle is worth about 9 marines of resources (including supply costs), and that many marines make really short work of an Oracle (it dies in a little under 3 seconds, having killed a single marine). Make it a bunker and 4 marines (instead of 9), and you'll find a similar result. The Oracle does almost nothing, and dies rather quickly.
2. Can stargate-based play hold all attacks? Using phoenixes to snipe medivacs sneaking out towards mineral lines is cute, but what about when the medivacs are immediately backed by a large force of marines? Using photon overcharge to grant the protoss an extra minute with which to defend a bio-based allin is nice, too. But will the delay to Colossus tech prove this to be safe? MC gets AE damage quite late - and as we said above, Oracles are *good* against marines.... but not THAT good. And of course, the most pressing question - what happens when you need to use Oracles against marines and for detection - as is the case for marine/WM or marine/banshee pushes?
3. Late Game - What about vikings? It's been widely known for some time that Vikings are good against Phoenixes (due to the longer range in part). And Vikings absolutely annihilate Voids, Oracles, Carriers and Tempests without Storm. And if you're going Stargate, and then straight into storm, your opening for bio-heavy pushes is even wider. Keep in mind that the one game where MC pushes with Colossus (at least according to the unit counts in the OP), the Protoss has a supply lead. Someone who's opening Stargate into Expand into Robo should not expect this against a player who's kinda just going with a standard bio composition.
It's way too early to say that this is good or bad, but keep in mind the player you're talking about. Sure, he was one of the first to make popular the 1-gate FE in PvT - but he was also the guy who Void-Ray allined a surprising amount in PvT early in WoL, the guy who got a Carrier allin going against Kas in a pro tournament. He does these things not because they're solid inherently but because nobody else does them. MC takes risks - a lot of risks. It's part of his playstyle. Having put this style out there now, you can expect the next major tournament he's involved in to show a lot of Terrans trying intentionally to break this style. Maybe it'll stick around - but my spider sense (aka bits of analysis I'm doing above) makes me think that this is more a result of how much damage he's doing to players who don't expect it and aren't sure the optimal reaction to it - and not because the style itself is solid.
I like Oracles, and the best feelings I get in PvT is when I'm able to play Oracle Stalker MSC aggression effectively (and it is effective), but it's hard to know if it's effective because it's a solid play, or because there's a couple slight adjustments Terrans haven't figured out yet which'll absolutely negate it once they do.
A good place to start to think about this is what made Stargate openers not viable in WoL? While certainly a dedicated 2-base MMM push is quite threatening to a stargate opener in WoL, which spent a lot of resources on phoenixes, this wasn't the reason Stargate wasn't viable because you could defend against it if you had tight timings (MC and Hero both fancied Stargate openers for a time).
The real reason Stargate openers weren't viable was due to the popularity of the fast triple CC, which by the time you could scout it it was too late. You would do damage with Phoenixes yes but due to the limited energy for lifts you couldn't do enough to stay equal with Terran economically. Protoss' then tried to all-in off 2 base with Zealot/Sentry/Phoenix but Terran could repel that easily with simcity and bunkers.
Fast forward to WoL and guess what, fast 3rd CC is now scoutable much earlier due to MsC. Defending expansions with minimal ground forces is easier now with Nexus cannon. Void Rays are beasts now with the activated charge and melt armored units (comparable DPS to an Immortal when they are charged!), making Void Rays viable for defending pushes. And Oracles can dish out much more economical damage than Phoenixes ever could, and are can overwhelm small number of marines. Phoenixes are also better to manuver to take out Vikings now as they got a range increase. Phoenixes and Vikings roughly traded cost-for-cost in WoL and nothing has changed there.
What this all means is that is that IMO fast 3rd CC is a thing of the past, and that defending 2-base MMM pushes with a stargate opener is not going to be a problem. The real question is how stargate openers compare relative to other openers, such as where it puts you economically compared to Terran. IMO with proper play it is a much safer opener compared to robo or twilight since stargate affords you some map control and mobility, and that robo and twilight builds are going to be relegated more for timings attacks or for particular maps.
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I personally favor stargate openers to the alternatives, but to be frank i still think it is kinda gimmicky. If you look MC's games over you will see that he does massive amounts of damage (that could have been avoided with turrents or otherwise) in every game he wins. This is basically how i feel about stargate as a whole. Either you do significant damage with it (witch to be fair is rather easy considering how bad terrans are at defending it at the moment) or you lose to lack of aoe like always.
The issue with both oracles and phoenix'es is how weak they are to static defense. A terran can with minimal investment be relatively safe against both while also getting access to early upgrades. Something you as a protoss will lack. This makes marines absolutely lethal unless you have aoe witch is also delayed. All in all not a very good situation. Oracles fair very well against marines in the early game, but once stim and combat shield get into play it is a whole different beast. All of this combined with widow mines make for a fairly unstable situation.
Oracles do one thing really well however. There high mobility and high damage make them very good at forking. This can be seen very well in MC's win over innovation where he threatens to hit the workers at the main base while actually going for a bust. The ability to do this kind of attack is very potent. However once again, if you don't do damage you're behind. Stargate is cool, but i would personally prefer a safer style if i felt one was around.
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United States4883 Posts
On March 21 2013 06:56 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 00:06 Treehead wrote:
A few things we should probably consider before people go making stargate their staple for PvT.
1. Can stargate-based play do this much damage consistently? Oracles are *good* against marines - don't get me wrong - but at 150/150, with 160 health, 0 armor and 25 dps vs. light (consuming energy), they aren't exactly cost effective against marines either. The Oracle is worth about 9 marines of resources (including supply costs), and that many marines make really short work of an Oracle (it dies in a little under 3 seconds, having killed a single marine). Make it a bunker and 4 marines (instead of 9), and you'll find a similar result. The Oracle does almost nothing, and dies rather quickly.
2. Can stargate-based play hold all attacks? Using phoenixes to snipe medivacs sneaking out towards mineral lines is cute, but what about when the medivacs are immediately backed by a large force of marines? Using photon overcharge to grant the protoss an extra minute with which to defend a bio-based allin is nice, too. But will the delay to Colossus tech prove this to be safe? MC gets AE damage quite late - and as we said above, Oracles are *good* against marines.... but not THAT good. And of course, the most pressing question - what happens when you need to use Oracles against marines and for detection - as is the case for marine/WM or marine/banshee pushes?
3. Late Game - What about vikings? It's been widely known for some time that Vikings are good against Phoenixes (due to the longer range in part). And Vikings absolutely annihilate Voids, Oracles, Carriers and Tempests without Storm. And if you're going Stargate, and then straight into storm, your opening for bio-heavy pushes is even wider. Keep in mind that the one game where MC pushes with Colossus (at least according to the unit counts in the OP), the Protoss has a supply lead. Someone who's opening Stargate into Expand into Robo should not expect this against a player who's kinda just going with a standard bio composition.
It's way too early to say that this is good or bad, but keep in mind the player you're talking about. Sure, he was one of the first to make popular the 1-gate FE in PvT - but he was also the guy who Void-Ray allined a surprising amount in PvT early in WoL, the guy who got a Carrier allin going against Kas in a pro tournament. He does these things not because they're solid inherently but because nobody else does them. MC takes risks - a lot of risks. It's part of his playstyle. Having put this style out there now, you can expect the next major tournament he's involved in to show a lot of Terrans trying intentionally to break this style. Maybe it'll stick around - but my spider sense (aka bits of analysis I'm doing above) makes me think that this is more a result of how much damage he's doing to players who don't expect it and aren't sure the optimal reaction to it - and not because the style itself is solid.
I like Oracles, and the best feelings I get in PvT is when I'm able to play Oracle Stalker MSC aggression effectively (and it is effective), but it's hard to know if it's effective because it's a solid play, or because there's a couple slight adjustments Terrans haven't figured out yet which'll absolutely negate it once they do. A good place to start to think about this is what made Stargate openers not viable in WoL? While certainly a dedicated 2-base MMM push is quite threatening to a stargate opener in WoL, which spent a lot of resources on phoenixes, this wasn't the reason Stargate wasn't viable because you could defend against it if you had tight timings (MC and Hero both fancied Stargate openers for a time). The real reason Stargate openers weren't viable was due to the popularity of the fast triple CC, which by the time you could scout it it was too late. You would do damage with Phoenixes yes but due to the limited energy for lifts you couldn't do enough to stay equal with Terran economically. Protoss' then tried to all-in off 2 base with Zealot/Sentry/Phoenix but Terran could repel that easily with simcity and bunkers. Fast forward to WoL and guess what, fast 3rd CC is now scoutable much earlier due to MsC. Defending expansions with minimal ground forces is easier now with Nexus cannon. Void Rays are beasts now with the activated charge and melt armored units (comparable DPS to an Immortal when they are charged!), making Void Rays viable for defending pushes. And Oracles can dish out much more economical damage than Phoenixes ever could, and are can overwhelm small number of marines. Phoenixes are also better to manuver to take out Vikings now as they got a range increase. Phoenixes and Vikings roughly traded cost-for-cost in WoL and nothing has changed there. What this all means is that is that IMO fast 3rd CC is a thing of the past, and that defending 2-base MMM pushes with a stargate opener is not going to be a problem. The real question is how stargate openers compare relative to other openers, such as where it puts you economically compared to Terran. IMO with proper play it is a much safer opener compared to robo or twilight since stargate affords you some map control and mobility, and that robo and twilight builds are going to be relegated more for timings attacks or for particular maps.
Personally, I think it also has to do with the fact that oracles can 1) keep terran players pinned back at home and 2) defend against marines as well. The main issue I had with using Stargate in WoL was the fact that terran players could do things like 2raxs or any kind of early push with stim to really deal a lot of damage. With phoenixes, you could barely survive, but you'd be so far behind economically and tech-wise that you would straight-up lose to a follow-up MMM push. Even against the standard 3rax 10:00 timing, phoenixes lost their usefulness too early and caused your AoE to be too late to deal effectively with the 10:00 push; oracles can do so much more damage so much earlier that terran can't skip out on turrets or a fast ebay in order to deal with them.
Stargate almost always worked against gas first openers. In fact, we saw MC ALWAYS go stargate in response to the 1-1-1, with an amazing amount of success. But the main threat from these openers were not big balls of marines and marauders, they were cute little hellion drops, tank rushes, and banshees, all of which phoenixes excel at defending.
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On March 21 2013 09:00 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 06:56 Skyro wrote:On March 20 2013 00:06 Treehead wrote:
A few things we should probably consider before people go making stargate their staple for PvT.
1. Can stargate-based play do this much damage consistently? Oracles are *good* against marines - don't get me wrong - but at 150/150, with 160 health, 0 armor and 25 dps vs. light (consuming energy), they aren't exactly cost effective against marines either. The Oracle is worth about 9 marines of resources (including supply costs), and that many marines make really short work of an Oracle (it dies in a little under 3 seconds, having killed a single marine). Make it a bunker and 4 marines (instead of 9), and you'll find a similar result. The Oracle does almost nothing, and dies rather quickly.
2. Can stargate-based play hold all attacks? Using phoenixes to snipe medivacs sneaking out towards mineral lines is cute, but what about when the medivacs are immediately backed by a large force of marines? Using photon overcharge to grant the protoss an extra minute with which to defend a bio-based allin is nice, too. But will the delay to Colossus tech prove this to be safe? MC gets AE damage quite late - and as we said above, Oracles are *good* against marines.... but not THAT good. And of course, the most pressing question - what happens when you need to use Oracles against marines and for detection - as is the case for marine/WM or marine/banshee pushes?
3. Late Game - What about vikings? It's been widely known for some time that Vikings are good against Phoenixes (due to the longer range in part). And Vikings absolutely annihilate Voids, Oracles, Carriers and Tempests without Storm. And if you're going Stargate, and then straight into storm, your opening for bio-heavy pushes is even wider. Keep in mind that the one game where MC pushes with Colossus (at least according to the unit counts in the OP), the Protoss has a supply lead. Someone who's opening Stargate into Expand into Robo should not expect this against a player who's kinda just going with a standard bio composition.
It's way too early to say that this is good or bad, but keep in mind the player you're talking about. Sure, he was one of the first to make popular the 1-gate FE in PvT - but he was also the guy who Void-Ray allined a surprising amount in PvT early in WoL, the guy who got a Carrier allin going against Kas in a pro tournament. He does these things not because they're solid inherently but because nobody else does them. MC takes risks - a lot of risks. It's part of his playstyle. Having put this style out there now, you can expect the next major tournament he's involved in to show a lot of Terrans trying intentionally to break this style. Maybe it'll stick around - but my spider sense (aka bits of analysis I'm doing above) makes me think that this is more a result of how much damage he's doing to players who don't expect it and aren't sure the optimal reaction to it - and not because the style itself is solid.
I like Oracles, and the best feelings I get in PvT is when I'm able to play Oracle Stalker MSC aggression effectively (and it is effective), but it's hard to know if it's effective because it's a solid play, or because there's a couple slight adjustments Terrans haven't figured out yet which'll absolutely negate it once they do. A good place to start to think about this is what made Stargate openers not viable in WoL? While certainly a dedicated 2-base MMM push is quite threatening to a stargate opener in WoL, which spent a lot of resources on phoenixes, this wasn't the reason Stargate wasn't viable because you could defend against it if you had tight timings (MC and Hero both fancied Stargate openers for a time). The real reason Stargate openers weren't viable was due to the popularity of the fast triple CC, which by the time you could scout it it was too late. You would do damage with Phoenixes yes but due to the limited energy for lifts you couldn't do enough to stay equal with Terran economically. Protoss' then tried to all-in off 2 base with Zealot/Sentry/Phoenix but Terran could repel that easily with simcity and bunkers. Fast forward to WoL and guess what, fast 3rd CC is now scoutable much earlier due to MsC. Defending expansions with minimal ground forces is easier now with Nexus cannon. Void Rays are beasts now with the activated charge and melt armored units (comparable DPS to an Immortal when they are charged!), making Void Rays viable for defending pushes. And Oracles can dish out much more economical damage than Phoenixes ever could, and are can overwhelm small number of marines. Phoenixes are also better to manuver to take out Vikings now as they got a range increase. Phoenixes and Vikings roughly traded cost-for-cost in WoL and nothing has changed there. What this all means is that is that IMO fast 3rd CC is a thing of the past, and that defending 2-base MMM pushes with a stargate opener is not going to be a problem. The real question is how stargate openers compare relative to other openers, such as where it puts you economically compared to Terran. IMO with proper play it is a much safer opener compared to robo or twilight since stargate affords you some map control and mobility, and that robo and twilight builds are going to be relegated more for timings attacks or for particular maps. Personally, I think it also has to do with the fact that oracles can 1) keep terran players pinned back at home and 2) defend against marines as well. The main issue I had with using Stargate in WoL was the fact that terran players could do things like 2raxs or any kind of early push with stim to really deal a lot of damage. With phoenixes, you could barely survive, but you'd be so far behind economically and tech-wise that you would straight-up lose to a follow-up MMM push. Even against the standard 3rax 10:00 timing, phoenixes lost their usefulness too early and caused your AoE to be too late to deal effectively with the 10:00 push; oracles can do so much more damage so much earlier that terran can't skip out on turrets or a fast ebay in order to deal with them. Stargate almost always worked against gas first openers. In fact, we saw MC ALWAYS go stargate in response to the 1-1-1, with an amazing amount of success. But the main threat from these openers were not big balls of marines and marauders, they were cute little hellion drops, tank rushes, and banshees, all of which phoenixes excel at defending.
I'm not sure I follow. A 2-rax rush hits before you even drop a stargate, and phoenixes actually defends hellion drops quite well due to being able to pick up 1-base hellion drops to prevent damage to your econ plus the ability to chase down the medivac. Both of these strats really are meant to punish fast expands and abuse Protoss' inability to scout Terran early game and not really all that relevant to stargate openers.
As I said above even in WoL you could defend the 10:00 minute push itself, and in HotS it's even easier with Photon Overcharge, Oracles, and buffed Void Rays and Phoenixes. The problem was that the Terran could expand to their 3rd much faster than Protoss could (worst case would be a fast 3rd CC, but even a 3rd at the 10 min mark, which is pretty much standard in a vanilla 3-rax 10:00 timing, would put you far behind), and the limited potential of harass from Phoenixes were not enough to overcome this deficit. All of this changes in HotS. All the issues Stargate openers had are all gone except the delayed AoE, and I'm not entirely convinced at this point you absolutely need AoE to secure your 3rd with a stargate opener. I believe it may be possible to secure your 3rd with Chargelots and some combination of Stargate units. If you can get the medivacs down (new Void Rays burn them down FAST) then you're pretty much good to go.
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Here are a few more master league replays from today.
http://drop.sc/311796 - Pretty bad start since my first oracle ate a widow mine (should have been more careful especially since he scanned the stargate) and then lost the second oracle while it was detecting for a mine drop (make sure your oracle is at a distance!). Still managed to stay ahead in probes even though he took a pretty early third. I kept my upgrades going and once I had storm I was safe to grab a third while defending my main from drops thanks to phoenix + HT + MSC. Once my third got saturated I switched into double robo colossus which he was completely unprepared for.
http://drop.sc/311782 Very close game that I barely wound up losing. A few critical mistakes were that I built my 3rd nexus without scouting the timing on his (it was actually considerably late, he added an extra barracks before it to stay very aggressive). I also lost my mothership core a few times and didn't immediately rebuild it, so I wound up with periods that I didn't have a critical photon overcharge or time warp. I should have also had a few more HT and gateway units at my natural -- with those I should have been able to hold his pressure and be in a good spot for a long game.
http://drop.sc/311804 One thing that really threw me off in this game was a hellbat drop which nobody has been doing. He opted for an interesting stim marauder + hellbat push (and took a fast 3rd CC behind it) and my composition was just not adequate versus that. I tried chrono boosting out some void rays when I realized what was going on but it was too little too late. In retrospect I think that adding a second stargate might be a good idea since he is heavily lacking in anti-air (and I actually did get a good scout with my first oracle on his composition). If I had sent over a hallucinated pheonix earlier I would have been in even better shape to prepare for it, perhaps only getting 1 oracle and adding the second stargate immediately for 4-5 phoenix and then pure void rays. Since I can't rely on zealots for zoning his army, I would have needed either forcefields or a sim city at my ramp. Even though he had stim marauders I think that if I had a wall and he tried to bust it in a frontal assault, he could be stalled for long enough for my void rays + overcharge to kill most of his units (I can also lift and nullify some of the marauders with phoenix).
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there's a lot of situational play, against gasless 1 rax FE you can harass, against a fast teching player, they'll have mines out, so just try to do damage in non obvious places (harass buidings that are constructing etc..) alternatively you can get creative and use envision/phoenix+ oracle harass later if theyr'e relying purely on mine protection.
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Don't know if this was asked already, but what tech path is better for the mid game, Colossus or Templar (considering they will make vikings against my air)?
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On March 22 2013 01:36 Kinon wrote:
Don't know if this was asked already, but what tech path is better for the mid game, Colossus or Templar (considering they will make vikings against my air)?
I've been trying both, there are definitely pros and cons to either one but the most important thing is not to over-invest in air when you don't get any damage done with your first 1-2 oracles and you notice they are not trying to drop/ are just macroing up a big marine ball. In that case you need to cut phoenix and either chrono the hell out of storm or get some colossus/sentries ASAP for the incoming push. If you keep your oracles alive then you should try to get a revalation on the medivacs at all times so you can focus on defending a full frontal assault without having to worry about him backstabbing your main with drop play.
As for the actual decision between colossus/templar... I feel like it is easier to survive his bio timing by getting a colossus or two and a few more sentries than it is to go the TC route (especially if you didn't get any damage done with your harass) but the templar tech makes it easier to secure a third base when the time comes and sets you up for a stronger lategame. So if you are doing a lot of work with your oracles/phoenix and see that his push is going to be severely delayed (or he's just opted for a faster third CC) then I like the templar route more. Most decent players won't build more than 1-2 vikings do deal with oracle harass so I wouldn't count on going templar tech to "counter" their vikings, since any sizable number of vikings should be built reactively to seeing colossus tech. That being said, if you get a lot of damage done with your air units it can also be viable to just hit a 2 base colossus timing and kill him (as MC did in a few games) but those decisions are also going to depend on the map and how comfortable you are going into lategame.
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On March 22 2013 01:36 Kinon wrote:
Don't know if this was asked already, but what tech path is better for the mid game, Colossus or Templar (considering they will make vikings against my air)?
a better question to ask is, how good is your micro? If you go templar tech, you need to understand that you will probably have about two storms should he do a standard bio push at ~10-11 min timing. Ofc your storm timing is completely based on how much gas you invested into air and how fast you get those gases at your natural. If you miss your storms, and you havent completely trapped his army with FF, i really can't see you surviving for very long. Imo, colossus is the "safest and easier" route simply because of the consistent damage output you will get from colossus, and you'll have access to observers which are so much more reliable for detection and scouting.
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EPT
