Hello! I'm SaharaDrac. I recently got back into StarCraft with HotS, and have found my skills wanting. Where once I was in Masters (albeit briefly), I now struggle in the upper regions of the Platinum League.
My biggest issue, my most hair pullingly, eyeball poppingly frustrating issue right now is Mutalisk harass. With their recent buffs, I am struggling mightily. Even with Widow Mines in my mineral lines, Thors on the patrol, Missile Turrets aplenty, and even Marines and Vikings in the mix, I just seem to get crippled by their speedy, delicious harassment.
I cast a game (myself being a very, very mildly well known caster...like very mild. Like mild as milk.) of a game I recently played against a Zerg. Even after killing nigh upon 30+ (yes I said 30!) Drones, he still manages to keep me panicking with Mutalisks long enough to retake his bases and kill me with Ultralisks.
Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks it's about something needing a patch, or just a gross imbalance issue. I think any obstacle in SC can be overcome. But I felt so exasperated after this game. I felt helpless against the simplest Muta control, and that for me to compensate for his easy work (press T, fly around), I had to veritably write a symphony just to stop it.
After viewing the replay, I definitely saw how my panic was affecting my game. I'm a moving with my whole army (much of which can't hit air) trying to chase the Mutas down, a plain rookie mistake. My SCV production is abysmal (always my weakest point). Many other issues with me. But I turn to you, TL, to implore you for help. I see now that a simple counterattack by my standing force was the answer. My base trade would be much faster than his with his Mutas. But what can I do so I don't have to be in a base trade scenario in TvZ? Can I simply not go pure Mech? Are masses of Marines required? What else?
Thanks for viewing and reading, I look forward to your feedback!
I think you should just definitely follow tighter build orders and try to do the same for every match up first before thinking about deviating a bit. Work on making svs / building same structures at certain timings so you can learn properly and then focus more on how to counter things
edit; for example after killing 15 or something drones at the beginning you should have pulled back to your base or a watch tower with your hellions. He's gonna be making lings for sure at this point you just have to play smart and try not to do too much with your units. You really want to save your units (hellions early tvz especially) and keep them alive longer instead of trying to do too much with them because they allow you to get your infrastructure earlier and safer. but also because you can take your third so much quicker if you scout for all ins properly.
When you have a very little economy and things get scrappy (like versus mutalisk) it's really hard for the meching player to get to an army that can freely move on the map vs zerg. If you plan on going mech consistently versus zerg, get three CCs earlier while going hellions. There are a few mech 2base allins but 3 bases mech just is that much stronger. I know HTOMario's using mech all the time but I think bio mines really crushes muta play in the mid game (before ultra). Perhaps you wanna explore a bit.
Widow mines were designed to keep mutalisks away or at least limit where they could go. One next to two or three turrets(in the right places) can do a LOT of damage. Watch some of the recent MLG VODs to decide where you want to place them.
As for the replay itself, you shouldn't be so scared of building a CC OUTSIDE your spawn. By the time the earliest possible effective pressure can come from Z, you should already have a bunker and six or so marines to defend it. If you're that afraid, build your bunker directly next to your CC, closest to your choke point. It'll minimize surface area and contribute to making a nice wall.
It's great that you killed so many drones at his main, but you can see that he is transfering some to his third. Instead of trying to run into the nat and getting killed by his ALL of his reinforcements, you could've had an extra five drones before your hellions bit it.
You need to keep production up. Not just building UNITS, but building unit making BUILDINGS. You're also far too cautious in landing your expansion. The fact you are not producing workers AND MINING from that base makes up for your thirty drone kills.
Mech TvZ requires Thors. Build them. It also require widow mines. Build them too. Mech also benefits from having mineral surplus, so spend your money on turrets and CCs.
I stopped at 11:40 on the YT video. What you should do is go to the HoTS Terran help thread and look through all of the stuff there. All of it. While many replays available are only from 1.5.3 (or w/e the last Wings patch was), find all of the mech replays you can find from MVP, Polt, Thorzain, etc and watch them. http://www.sc2replays.eu/search.html
Your muta defense is non-existent. You had mines, but they weren't placed where they are going to hit anything. From what I saw you only had 2 mines in your main. The rest of your mines were with your tanks and hellions. Trust me tanks and hellions will do just fine against lings. put more of those mines in your mineral line. Also, build a few turrets. Also dont just put your thors with the rest of your army. Use them as defense if you are staying in your base. Also saturate your bases instead of building a ton of CC's that spread you out. If you limit the number of bases by saturating them, you have less areas to defend and your macro is still just as good.
Also you should scout his composition a little better. You had waaaaaaay to many tanks/hellions for that little ling and bane. If you would have had 1 more thor you would have won straight up with no micro at that first big battle. Also, you need to be scanning/scouting ahead so that you can siege your tanks before you attack. He should never catch you completely unsieged.
Also, just hotkey your command centers so you don't even have to look and you can build scvs.
At 4:49 you stop producing SCVs. You don't queue up any more units until around 6:30.
7:05 after harassing with hellions, your resources are 1000/500, you have no wall or anything at your natural, and you're behind in workers. You're not actually ahead at all because your expo is so delayed and you just lost your army.
You would have been way ahead if you had simply been producing the whole time and landed your expo as your hellions were on the way out. The lings wouldn't have even killed your marines if there were 15 more of them and an extra tank.
People on TL still dont understand what hellions are for in TvZ huh?
Before the 10 minute mark, they are NOT for suiciding. You absolutely CANNOT lose your hellions. Yes, you got lucky. Your opponent was shit. He let you run all the way into his main mineral line without any ability to stop them. He let you make BBQ out of his delicious workers.
Why was he making drones so hard again? Because you have nothing after losing those hellions. No map presence, no ability to threaten him. Losing hellions early on is inviting the zerg to directly grab base 3 and base 4 and hit 80-90 drones instantly before you can come up with any counter attack. Your 20 drone kills? Absolutely pointless. You couldnt even expand properly because of the amount of zerglings you forced by running the hellions in - Now imagine if those hellions didnt die. You wouldve continued to camp the shit out of him outside his nat, preventing him from grabbing a third, forcing more and more units until ~10-11 minute when he FINALLY gets mutalisks out. You wouldnt have lost the huge group of marines then, giving you a LOT more power.
Your third base has rocks you can use to block - use those.
Moving out with mech - You need to constantly be using hellions to know what hes doing. That or scan at least, otherwise you'll be playing very, very blind.
Two thors are NOT enough against 19 mutalisks. By then you need at least 4 thors. Reasoning? Widowmines are great on paper, but the friendly damage they deal is also extremely strong vs your own army. Any amount of magic boxing will also kill everything you had right then and there - good thing he didnt know how, right?
While listening to you play - you keep mentioning 'Oh I killed so many workers here, I killed so many workers there" This is a terrible mindset - Did you kill the base? Why didnt you just A move your army into the third base and shoot down the hatch? Theres nothing stopping a half decent zerg to simply just make more drones if your army doesnt do much. Players in the GSL have lost 90+ drones and still won because of this - without sniping the hatchery its almost the same as having mules for terran - drop a couple and still have a lot of income.
You mentioned in your post that you made turrets - WHAT TURRETS YOU DIDNT MAKE JACK SHIT. 19 MUTALISKS? You need at least TEN turrets. TEN. UPGRADED. WITH THORS IF BEST.
VIkings are good vs viper/broodlords, NOT mutalisks. Grab a lot more thors if you need to. Camp a thor inside your main as a mobile turret. If you absolutely needed air support vs mutalisks your could try ravens.
Composition scouting - Tanks are good against roach hydra swarmhosts. They are NOT that great vs ling baneling after you have more than 5. Hellions/firebats will do the job much better there - However, you continued to make tanks blindly without at least checking what your opponent is going for.
TL;DR - Early hellion control - work on that. Never suicide them. Losing hellions early on at my league is almost an instant loss, dont bother playing. They are for INDIRECT DAMAGE and only VERY rarely can you manage to get drone kills without losing them - plus the amount of multitasking needed just makes it not very worth it - Id rather prevent him from grabbing a third and keep being an asshole, forcing units left and right, sniping creep tumors and queens (if possible) while grabbing my own third and getting more and more ahead rather than suicide them. Nothing is scarier and causes more problems for the zerg than having 6-8 hellions with 2+banshees camping right outside the nat.
Turrets. Turrets. T-U-R-R-E-T-S. GET MORE OF THEM.
Thors - MORE THORS.
Moving your mech army - SCAN HEAVILY, SEE HOW MANY UNITS HE HAS AND WHERE.
Tank sieging - You need a LOT more experience on this...but even if you are in kr dia I would still yell at you for shit sieging so its ok.
EDIT: Forgot to mention. People in the lower leagues constantly overestimate the power of mutalisks - Yeah sure they seem unstoppable, forcing you to stay at home, and when the mutalisk count builds up, they seem impossible to deal with. Mutalisks are so fucking expensive + apm intensive if mutalisks is all they do theres nothing stopping you from just dumping down a bunch of turrets and go and kill him. Hell, bring scvs and start building turrets out there just to show him what proper manners mean.
For mech - yes, mutas seem a huge problem. make 1 thor per 5 mutalisks and you will be fine. Push out and bring scvs for repair + turrets if you have to.
Thanks for the great feedback guys! Again, I know I screwed up a lot of aspects. But I am definitely getting a better idea of what I need to be focusing on. Thanks again, and sorry for the horrible video quality! I was trying some recommended render settings, and turns out they are not the way to go!
Just wanted to throw out a few things, because you're getting tons of very detailed advice however a lot of it is just stuff to throw away. The reason a lot of it is throw away is because once a bad decision is made you can put yourself in a situation that might be winnable, but has very little quality learning left in it.
Your opening hellions kill drones indirectly, and you fail to realize this. By keeping them alive and just killing zerglings you stop his drone production. Your goal with these hellions should be to kill as many lings as you possibly can while keeping them alive. It's okay to kill drones at his third, but dont go into his main or his natural without extremely good information that it will be safe to escape as well. With good Hellion control it's entirely possible to kill upwards of 70 zerglings, which is roughly the same as killing 35 drones. You also prevent any kind of harrass on your own base because he needs to defend the hellion threat first before he can think about attacking.
You can't float money while doing the harass. You need to be making your transition to either mech or bio, getting upgrades, getting your infrastructure up and making units. If you try to do this after your hellions die, or after you get a big warchest you'll lose the game and be very, very behind. When going back to macro one of the best things you can do is take a watchtower with your hellions and stare at the minimap so you can control them if need be while macroing up behind it. The entire point of using hellions here is to have the rest of your army ready to move out while your opponent is sitting on zergling tech, this way you can attack him before the mutas are even a threat.
The only other thing I'll say is that mech just isnt that good in TvZ right now. It's viable yes, but biomine gives you much, much better control over the outcome of the game. You wont see mech show up in the gsl very soon because biomine just has so many advantages over it.
Edit: Oh and about the muta's, once they're out and you haven't moved out yet you're in a lot of trouble. Once the muta count starts to hit the 30's you're pretty dead as a Terran, especially on maps where moving your army around is extremely difficult. The only time you'll really ever kill his muta's is when he wants you to so he can remax on better units to finish the job.
For mech - yes, mutas seem a huge problem. make 1 thor per 5 mutalisks and you will be fine. Push out and bring scvs for repair + turrets if you have to.
How is it a huge problem? You have an excess of minerals... if anything that should let you make more and more turrets.
EPT
