We all know the downsides of mech: 1. Harder to respond to harass. 2. Much harder to remax army. 3. Less benefit from strong micro skills compared to bio. 4. Requiring much better positioning skill compared to bio. 5. Harder to punish a greedy opponent.
The upsides are: 1. Less fragile. 2. Less reliant on micro skills. 3. Stronger in a straight up engagement in TvT and TvZ.
But the problem I see is this, in TvP mech have all the classic downsides of mech, but is not actually stronger than bio. A maxed out sieged up Terran army with lots and tanks and buffer units can still be a-moved over by the Protoss army, something that could never happen in TvT and very seldom happen in TvZ.
Protoss is actually stronger in a straight mid/late game engagement both compared to bio, and compared to mech. Only by hurting the Protoss players economy by splitting the army in many small groups and do simultaneous attacks can Terran gradually build up enough advantage to actually win the game. Bio is better against Protoss when split up, but mech is not.
Am I wrong in this assumption? Is it actually pointless to use mech in TvP since mech is just as weak as bio in the actual engagement but lack all the advantages of bio? Is there actually any point in using mech in TvP apart from mech being easier to micro?
Assumption: T players in the GSL are the best of their kind. Reality: No one plays mech vs P in GSL Conclussion: Its not viable / bio is better in TvP.
I guess it comes down to your seriousness with your play. Killing Ps in high GM - Bio. Killing Ps in master - doesnt matter.
There is a reason noone uses mech in TvP. HotS was a catastrophic failure on many parts, most of all trying to get mech to work in TvP. It was basically the focus of the entire terran revamp but didn;t do anything.
Early tank play can be fine and mixing in hellbats later is alright but pure mech just stinks. No mobility, no proper counter for air and just not even that great against ground.
For this reason alone David Kim needs to be fired really, so much effort in the beta trying to fix this somehow but no success at all. Especially since they've shown to give up in using elegant fixes only I don't see any reason why they haven't made a fix for mech in TvP. After all if you make some incredibly ugly fixes like these: - hellbat being biological - spores do bonus against bio - hellbats taking more cargo space than the hellion - widow mines doing bonus damage against shields then why don't they fix mech by actually making some fixes specifically targeted at mech v P, for example just some upgrade for tanks giving them bonus damage against shields.
Instead the retards at blizzard are applauding themselves practically saying the balance is just right now and they want to wait a bit longer to make changes, ie. mech won't be fixed before LotV. It's not so hard either to make balanced matchups if you change them very little from WoL..
It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
I go mech in TvP a lot on Zerus Prime (on ladder), but I think the way you pull it off is very situational. The general idea is that you have to put on a lot of pressure early (I use hellbat drops) while taking a silly fast third, then outmacroing the toss with 5 factories and a starport with reactor. I have been reasonably successful against my teammates doing this, but if they have any idea that its coming, they counter it really nicely with storm/immortals/voidrays. In short, I think it is a really good gimmick in a best of something series if you have shown a lot of bio styles in previous games, but bio is just so much more robust and consistant.
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
I agree with this aswell!
It's like Flash and all the others are soo used to BIO play. Why change what you know =) (this is I think the reason they don't try mech .. because they know they can win/play good with BIO)
The upsides are: 1. Less fragile. 2. Less reliant on micro skills. 3. Stronger in a straight up engagement in TvT and TvZ.
Terran army with lots and tanks and buffer units can still be a-moved over my the Protoss army
Bio is better against Protoss when split up, but mech is not.
Am I wrong in this assumption? Is it actually pointless to use mech in TvP since mech is just as weak as bio in the actual engagement but lack all the advantages of bio? Is there actually any point in using mech in TvP apart from mech being easier to micro?
1.- in high levels your micro is godly so if better micro = metter use of the unit, bio is waaaaaaaaaaay better 2.- why on earth would you want to 1a2a3a on high level? 3.- mech is way to inmobile, P would just take 2 WP and star harrasing all your base, and you would be pin to 2 or 3 bases while he can get a 4th/5th and star getting voids/tempes/carrier and then he could 1a.
TL;DR: is "interesting" at most, but on lower leagues it coud be usefull because a player may not know how to react to ir, you cant just 1a 7 immortals an a bunch of zealots to a line of tanks (i did it... its horrible, tanks dps is just too much when they get to some point)
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
This is such a nonsense argument. They've tried mech plenty in their practice and they know how to play mech from other matchups. Even so them being uncomfortable with mech would easily balance out with opponents being uncomfortable to play against it. Mech in TvP is not something that needs to be explored more and actually has a lot of hidden strength, if anything P players are unfamiliar with playing against it because P is never the aggressive harassing player in any matchup.
Mech just stinks, it has trouble fending off harass (blink stalkers or air), it is poor to open with because of the many different aggressive things P can do and it isn't even that strong when you assemble the ball because of immortals or carrier/tempest. Basically you play a rigid difficult composition that only has a small window to excel before an air transition from protoss even nullifies it. Without serious buff it will never be viable.
TvZ it's already underpowered a little but there I can see value in it for switching it up occassionally and being fine at smaller cramped maps. TvP it's never any good.
I disagree. I don't think a protoss can just a-move into a mech army if the terran knows what he's doing. If the terran uses EMP, the toss is just throwing his army away if he simply a-moves into it. Hellions/banshees are great harass early on and force the protoss to make cannons. The only exception I can think of is a toss maxed on carriers, in which case pretty much no terran army aside from mass BCs can really beat head to head. Here is an example of probably the best Mech I've seen dealing with the alleged counter to mech voidray/immortal. A lot of the successful mech users like HTO.Mario think that mech isn't inferior to bio, it's just unexplored.
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
That bold part really annoys me. It asumes that players just use new strats at official games, therefore...no mech from the koreans on TV => they are not exploring. Complete BS.
Players, especially Koreans, train a fuck ton and play test strategies on ladder and especially custom games. We have not seen mech in WOL or HOTS because the pros have tried it and came to the conclusion it's crap. They will only play at official games what has worked in practice.
Any top player would want to use a strat that his opponent has very little if any experience playing against, but that start has to first be proven in practice that it has legs.
Let's not go back to the Artosis WOL argument of mech is great, but the Korean pros are lazy to explore. It was pathetic then and is so now.
I'll never understand why mechers cant just mix in a couple of ghosts. When you are on 3 bases I think its easy enough to get like 5-7 ghosts for blanket EMPs, and then push in with thor helbat while focusing down EMP'd immortals with tanks. Anything that stays far away gets shot by tanks, anything that tries to get into 7 range is blasted by thors and EMPs, anything that tries to come even closer is killed by helbats and mines. A properly controlled mech army WITH EMPs is probably much stronger than bio in a straight up battle.
Although the anti air part is a problem. When I see mech I usually just go straight for carriers and harass a lot and add tempests vs thors. The slow mech army will never get in range of the tempests/carrier fleet before dying, and surprisingly, if the vikings are behind on upgrades(which is probably because being gas starved by going mech) then carriers and tempests actually beat vikings supply for supply.
On May 24 2013 02:29 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote: I disagree. I don't think a protoss can just a-move into a mech army if the terran knows what he's doing. If the terran uses EMP, the toss is just throwing his army away if he simply a-moves into it. Hellions/banshees are great harass early on and force the protoss to make cannons. The only exception I can think of is a toss maxed on carriers, in which case pretty much no terran army aside from mass BCs can really beat head to head. Here is an example of probably the best Mech I've seen dealing with the alleged counter to mech voidray/immortal. A lot of the successful mech users like HTO.Mario think that mech isn't inferior to bio, it's just unexplored. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WqPcvXe_o
agreed, also i am getting sick of everybody going "gsl terrans don't do it so i don't do it" arguments. its invalid and just plain out stupid. you always should trust your own logic over any other trend.
if you want to hear it from a pro level player, go to the day9 podcasts......
On May 24 2013 02:29 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote: I disagree. I don't think a protoss can just a-move into a mech army if the terran knows what he's doing. If the terran uses EMP, the toss is just throwing his army away if he simply a-moves into it. Hellions/banshees are great harass early on and force the protoss to make cannons. The only exception I can think of is a toss maxed on carriers, in which case pretty much no terran army aside from mass BCs can really beat head to head. Here is an example of probably the best Mech I've seen dealing with the alleged counter to mech voidray/immortal. A lot of the successful mech users like HTO.Mario think that mech isn't inferior to bio, it's just unexplored. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WqPcvXe_o
agreed, also i am getting sick of everybody going "gsl terrans don't do it so i don't do it" arguments. its invalid and just plain out stupid. you always should trust your own logic over any other trend.
if you want to hear it from a pro level player, go to the day9 podcasts......
How is it invalid? I trust the logic of guys who are paid to do it and play (and win) at the highest level over any master or even relatively no-name GM player any day, and so should you.
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
This is such a nonsense argument. They've tried mech plenty in their practice and they know how to play mech from other matchups. Even so them being uncomfortable with mech would easily balance out with opponents being uncomfortable to play against it. Mech in TvP is not something that needs to be explored more and actually has a lot of hidden strength, if anything P players are unfamiliar with playing against it because P is never the aggressive harassing player in any matchup.
Mech just stinks, it has trouble fending off harass (blink stalkers or air), it is poor to open with because of the many different aggressive things P can do and it isn't even that strong when you assemble the ball because of immortals or carrier/tempest. Basically you play a rigid difficult composition that only has a small window to excel before an air transition from protoss even nullifies it. Without serious buff it will never be viable.
TvZ it's already underpowered a little but there I can see value in it for switching it up occassionally and being fine at smaller cramped maps. TvP it's never any good.
If you can not hold off blink stalkers then you are just bad. If you can not hold of warp prism then you are not watching the mini-map(i.e playing badly). Terran midgame army don't lose to immortal but late game do if you don't have a ghost. Playing something in practice and in a tournament is two different things and they are probably more uncomfortable to pull mech off when the pressure is on. You want something you know is good and not something you think is good.
On May 24 2013 02:29 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote: I disagree. I don't think a protoss can just a-move into a mech army if the terran knows what he's doing. If the terran uses EMP, the toss is just throwing his army away if he simply a-moves into it. Hellions/banshees are great harass early on and force the protoss to make cannons. The only exception I can think of is a toss maxed on carriers, in which case pretty much no terran army aside from mass BCs can really beat head to head. Here is an example of probably the best Mech I've seen dealing with the alleged counter to mech voidray/immortal. A lot of the successful mech users like HTO.Mario think that mech isn't inferior to bio, it's just unexplored. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WqPcvXe_o
agreed, also i am getting sick of everybody going "gsl terrans don't do it so i don't do it" arguments. its invalid and just plain out stupid. you always should trust your own logic over any other trend.
if you want to hear it from a pro level player, go to the day9 podcasts......
How is it invalid? I trust the logic of guys who are paid to do it and play (and win) at the highest level over any master or even relatively no-name GM player any day, and so should you.
as long as 'we' arn't trying to go pro .. Why should 'we'?
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
This is the same argument people used in WoL in support of mech. That it just needs practice.
Why do people think that mech has to be necessarily viable? In 12 years of BW bio TvP was not viable past allin.
On May 24 2013 02:29 MaTaAeRuKaNa wrote: I disagree. I don't think a protoss can just a-move into a mech army if the terran knows what he's doing. If the terran uses EMP, the toss is just throwing his army away if he simply a-moves into it. Hellions/banshees are great harass early on and force the protoss to make cannons. The only exception I can think of is a toss maxed on carriers, in which case pretty much no terran army aside from mass BCs can really beat head to head. Here is an example of probably the best Mech I've seen dealing with the alleged counter to mech voidray/immortal. A lot of the successful mech users like HTO.Mario think that mech isn't inferior to bio, it's just unexplored. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2WqPcvXe_o
agreed, also i am getting sick of everybody going "gsl terrans don't do it so i don't do it" arguments. its invalid and just plain out stupid. you always should trust your own logic over any other trend.
if you want to hear it from a pro level player, go to the day9 podcasts......
How is it invalid? I trust the logic of guys who are paid to do it and play (and win) at the highest level over any master or even relatively no-name GM player any day, and so should you.
as long as 'we' arn't trying to go pro .. Why should 'we'?
Because a strategies viability "factor" is determined by the highest levels of play. At lower level (wood..masters/low GM AM) you can win consistently with less then optimal strategies, making a discussion on whether a strat is good or not almost moot.
The sad thing about mech is that it is weak with ghosts, and even weaker without them.
The real problem is tank itself. 20 tanks should be able to RAPE everything on the ground with good positioning. But it is not true anymore.
Protoss got uber shielded immortals, tanks are not artillery anymore with reduced dmg, and there is no proper antiair unit from factory to fight against toss air.
The problem exsist even in TvT, where proper positioned siege tanks got raped by stimmed marines because some people dont like / dont know how to play strategy games, and feel its boring, so they decided to cry for blizzard to nerf tanks and we got some crappy shit right now ;/
Even HotS buff to tanks doesnt help. Who cares about instant siege mode, when unsieged tanks got higher dps?
Something went wrong ;/
Shame on blizzard. They destroyed the role of this unit completely.
Edit:
Even in TvZ there is no need to build them anymore. Mines + bio is much more effective than old Tanks + bio. It is easier, more rewarding to place mines and rape mutalisk banelings lings, instead of making tanks and kill some banes. Playing full mech vs zerg is a joke compared to bio + mines. If you dont kill the zerg early or dont harras them, you just die in late game, while bio + mine can just afk macro and still be able to destroy zergs so easy.
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
This is such a nonsense argument. They've tried mech plenty in their practice and they know how to play mech from other matchups. Even so them being uncomfortable with mech would easily balance out with opponents being uncomfortable to play against it. Mech in TvP is not something that needs to be explored more and actually has a lot of hidden strength, if anything P players are unfamiliar with playing against it because P is never the aggressive harassing player in any matchup.
Mech just stinks, it has trouble fending off harass (blink stalkers or air), it is poor to open with because of the many different aggressive things P can do and it isn't even that strong when you assemble the ball because of immortals or carrier/tempest. Basically you play a rigid difficult composition that only has a small window to excel before an air transition from protoss even nullifies it. Without serious buff it will never be viable.
TvZ it's already underpowered a little but there I can see value in it for switching it up occassionally and being fine at smaller cramped maps. TvP it's never any good.
On May 24 2013 02:13 Qikz wrote: It's viable, it's possible and it against a ground protoss force is stronger in every single way than Bio is.
The only difference is, is at the highest level there's very few terrans playing mech as they know they can go bio and have been practicing and using that for 3 years now. Mech is outside of a few players unexplored in TvP at the highest level, but it's certainly strong.
As soon as people explore it more, it'll be used. Much like Mech vs Zerg.
That bold part really annoys me. It asumes that players just use new strats at official games, therefore...no mech from the koreans on TV => they are not exploring. Complete BS.
Players, especially Koreans, train a fuck ton and play test strategies on ladder and especially custom games. We have not seen mech in WOL or HOTS because the pros have tried it and came to the conclusion it's crap. They will only play at official games what has worked in practice.
Any top player would want to use a strat that his opponent has very little if any experience playing against, but that start has to first be proven in practice that it has legs.
Let's not go back to the Artosis WOL argument of mech is great, but the Korean pros are lazy to explore. It was pathetic then and is so now.
Yeah, this. Enough with the mech conspiracy. According to this "mech is not figured out yet" thesis there is a secret, somewhere, about how to play mech in TvP. But funnily enough, the secret is so well hidden that no one has ever discovered it despite repetitive attempts. The reason is of course simple: the secret does not exist.
As people above me said, pros did try mech. It doesn't take long to see it's still awful. All you have to do is draw two imaginary columns, list the disadvantages of going mech vs bio in the first one and the advantages in the second one, just like the OP did. Needless to say, the "disadvantages" column is full while the "advantages" one is desperately empty. I don't know how one can says that mech ground armies are more powerful than bio. It's flat out wrong, even with the Hellbat wall Protoss can still 1a lines of Tanks (or Thors) with pathetic ease as long as they have an appropriate composition.
And I am saying this despite having some wins against some EU Protoss pros using mech. But those wins simply followed the pattern below:
On April 17 2013 22:04 PredY wrote: think the most difficult thing in tvp mech now is to find an optimal opening and then figure out how much stuff to build etc, i see too many people lose because their mass tank army gets obliterated by immortals. strelok and bunny showed some interesting builds in wcs eu althought im not so sure how they deal with really strong early agression.
Yes, that is the most difficult part for sure. I've been exclusively mech TvP again, and i know others are still attempting it as well.
What i've found is a reaper into 111 with any type of medivac into cloak banshee is one of the best mech openers because you have a way to pressure Protoss's probe count and still defend all-ins with reaper/scv scouting.
Also, many, many hellbat drops are a key to getting mech TvP to work, but that is something most of us already knew - mech TvP relies on killing a lot of workers through hellion harrass/banshee harrass otherwise Protoss can do whatever they want.
I saw a bunch of the posted bunny/strelok/krass games...pretty good mech TvPs but in a bunch of those it looked like the Protosses were all 1 gate expanding for the most part, very few all-ins. In particular I saw strelok do a 15 CC into 1 rax and then 1 refinery...literally any all-in from Protoss kills this...but if the game goes on past this point then through harrass mech TvP is looking a bit better lately.
Most elite Protoss vs mech players will abuse DTs, warp prisms, immortals and stargate tech + all-ins as openers that end up not being all-in because of doing massive damage. Didn't really see a lot of P abuse in those WCS EU games, a lot could have to do with mech being so rarely seen that the protosses didn't react as efficiently as they could.
The game that comes to mind that I saw was strelok vs finale on newkirk. Finale adjusted from the first game and began immortal production much sooner in this game instead of building so many collosus. And strelok actually had a huge lead and at one point i saw almost 170 supply mech Terran get crushed by like a 120 supply Protoss (lol).
I do think ghosts are necessary with mech, they were in wings of liberty, but the optimal timing of when to start such things is not so mapped out yet, even for really experienced mech tvp users.
This matches my experience as well. Mech in TvP "works" mainly because of two factors:
massive economic advantage, obtainable through:
greed, for instance metagaming a passive MSC expand with CC rax gas, or teching Hellbats drops behind one Bunker and a couple of Mines, etc.;
killing mass Probes with harass, e. g. Hellbats drops, BFH raids, etc.;
or both.
Protoss players failing to adapt and having really poor answers:
many of them are unwilling to unplug the anti bio play autopilot;
or they react too late to mech play;
or they resort to hackneyed tactics such as massing 10+ Immortals on dual robotics, etc.
Which, of course, means mech technically does not work, because defending Probes only comes down to having 2+ Cannons per mineral line to shut down all forms of mech mild harass, and thinking a bit to find various ways to exploit mech's numerous weaknesses is quite simple.
Another case of victory can be "Protoss playing too greedy and not scouting a 2-bases all-in/timing" (or, in the same way, suiciding a 2-bases timing/all-in against a fortified mech position in the Terran's base).
On May 24 2013 02:47 uh-oh wrote: I'll never understand why mechers cant just mix in a couple of ghosts. When you are on 3 bases I think its easy enough to get like 5-7 ghosts for blanket EMPs, and then push in with thor helbat while focusing down EMP'd immortals with tanks. Anything that stays far away gets shot by tanks, anything that tries to get into 7 range is blasted by thors and EMPs, anything that tries to come even closer is killed by helbats and mines. A properly controlled mech army WITH EMPs is probably much stronger than bio in a straight up battle.
To quote myself:
On April 19 2013 21:27 TheDwf wrote: Just like in WoL, the best way to play mech in TvP—outside of not playing it—is probably ghostmech, but then the amount of units (with many of them being gas-intensive, and naturally slow to produce) required to deal with Protoss armies quickly becomes ridiculous... If Protoss incorporates Stargate units you end up with Ghosts/Hellbats/Mines/Tanks/Thors/Vikings/Ravens, and the mere enunciation of such a unit composition says everything (and even with all of that you're not even guaranteed good trades...).
So people do play Ghosts along with mech, but on top of being horribly passive massing your expensive army you will still get rolled by air/Templars in the end.
EPT
