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On May 25 2013 09:40 Quotidian wrote:
I'm kind of more interested in what happened to the mass air tvp style, since airtoss is such an obvious counter to mech now... I had a lot of fun with air terran in WOL, but I haven't bought HOTS (nor will I) so I haven't been able to try it out.
But there are things about mass banshee/raven with spider mines that intrigues me, would be cool to see some development there. Since seeker missile is so much better now, even spending it on observers to boost spider mine efficiency seems like a good move... especially since I would win games by doing that in WOL, so that my cloaked banshees would do maximum damage. Oh, and forward proxy PFs.. why aren't meching terran building those?
THIS!
I've been doing this since HOTS came out, ~80% winrate TvP up to now, I'm 650pts master this season (30-23 winrate). During the HOTS beta I gave up on meching because of Tempests and other buffs to Protoss and decided to try Skyterran instead...well, it's lots of fun even though a couple of storms can instantly evaporate your army and lose the game if you're not careful.
My thoughts on it:
-I don't use mines except for early defense
-I mass Hellbats/Hellions out of a reactor factory as a mineral dump. They're great to tank when you're going for the final push, great to buy time counter-all ins and very good at killing bases as you distract the toss with your air army.
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
-The new ravens kick-ass, especially at raping HTs (your biggest threat) with the new seeker missile (I bet the theorycrafters will contest me on this but I don't care, I've seen it work plenty of times during real games).
-If you have a very good economy you can even add ghosts to help fight templar late game.
-You need to be ahead economically AT some point to win doing this, if you're always in equal economy to the protoss you WILL die (assuming the opponent reacts PROPERLY, which rarely happens...)
My ridiculous winrate in the matchup is also due to a lot of protoss players never scouting it, granting me an insta win when I show up with a bunch of banshees/ravens/vikings at their natural or third and all they have to fight it are a handful of stalkers and useless robo units that cant shoot up. That being said, I did beat 1200+ pts master protoss players last season pretty convincingly. This style is very micro intensive and also a bit dicey at times, but it's a good alternative to mech.
I always mech'd in every MU, my style is inspired by Lyyna's and his post on this thread is SPOT ON when it comes to meching, most people are just bad at it because they've been developing a bio-centric skillset which just does not apply for mech. His post was so good that it inspired me to mech TvP again...KEEP ON MECHING~
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Mech can be weaker than bio, but bio can be weaker than mech. Every game is a microcosm with its own circumstances. For example if you get a good widow mine hit that kills 10+ probes then bio or mech would suffice to finish the game off. Likewise if Protoss does critical damage and you're playing from behind all game anything you do is going to seem "nonviable" or "weak"
Too be very general and quick about it because I hate making long posts; It depends on the map. If you want to win the most games possible then tailoring your cookie cutter ladder macro build to the map will probably yield the best results yeah? Some maps are better for bio or mech, in the current map pool for example Neo Planet S is can be really good for mech whereas Whirl Wind might be better for Bio.
I personally mech every game vs Protoss regardless of the map, as some one in this thread said earlier mech can be really really fun if its your sort of thing. Ever since watching the EU terrans play in WCS I've been copying their styles with really good success (masters http://sc2ranks.com/us/269668/CaptWaffles).
The Hellbat centric mech style is very fun and feels quite solid and versatile vs toss tbh. Its not like playing mech TvP WoL post Blue Flame nerf... that was... I don't think about those days anymore.
Lynna made an awesome point, lets all listen from each and be willing to learn from each others experiences.
http://day9.tv/d/Day9/day9-daily-575-mech-vs-protoss/ This daily goes over the general core of the style quite well.
Some of my most recent TvP reps:
http://drop.sc/337651
http://drop.sc/337649
http://drop.sc/337648
http://drop.sc/337647
http://drop.sc/337646
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Mech was pretty good when we had the warhound.
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The root of the problem with mech is, as I see it, this:
Even mech's detractors will agree that in TvT and TvZ mech will crush basically any semi-standard T/Z composition in a straight up fight. VS P... that's debatable at best. P has a lot of things that straight up hard counter mech, like immortals, and tempest/carriers/voidrays, so realistically if he reacts semi-logically you are going to need ghosts for the former, and vikings for the latter. If you are going to go a composition that will do ok against P if you have enough ghosts and vikings to counter his power units.... why aren't you going bio again?
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Immortals are just kind of "anti-mech" plus bio has been the meta for years and has had more success.
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I think it depends how you define mech.
If you think mech = lots of factory units, then no, mech doesn't work. Protoss got 3 new units to counter Siege Tanks and Thors: Mothership Core, Oracle, and Tempest. Not to mention that Void Rays, Carriers, and Immortals always hard countered Tanks and Thors too. Adding Ghosts can help against some of these counters, but not all of them.
However if you're willing to expand your definition of mech into Starport units, then sure, mech is viable. BC/Raven is perhaps the powerful TvP army composition there is. Its just so difficult to attain that everyone plays the easier Bio/Mine instead.
Personally whenever I mech TvP I open Banshee/Viking and transition into Raven/Battlecruiser that way.
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pretty sure this can be summed up by
mech has upsides, but those upsides are all non-factors, aka you would win with bio in those cases too
mech has vastly more downsides.
mech sucks
you can build a raven/bc army without mech too. none of the tech is linked specifically to factory units.
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The gas income in SC2 is much different than it is in SC:BW, you effectively need 3-base gas to support 3 factory and onwards unless you forgo armory upgrades for a very long time. Is it possible to punish a protoss who is trying to take a fast third as mech? The answer is iffy, you almost always have to deal some sort of damage that allows your composition or follow-up to work.
Currently i have not seen a heavy tank-based army that reaches critical mass early in the game, photon overcharge is very strong in being able to deal with early pushes. I would love to see gamess of people experimenting with fast tech-lab tank + mine pushes just as a protoss expands
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On May 25 2013 14:34 TheLetterQ wrote:
The root of the problem with mech is, as I see it, this:
Even mech's detractors will agree that in TvT and TvZ mech will crush basically any semi-standard T/Z composition in a straight up fight. VS P... that's debatable at best. P has a lot of things that straight up hard counter mech, like immortals, and tempest/carriers/voidrays, so realistically if he reacts semi-logically you are going to need ghosts for the former, and vikings for the latter. If you are going to go a composition that will do ok against P if you have enough ghosts and vikings to counter his power units.... why aren't you going bio again?
I dont think you can beat Z if you dont do massive damage with drops and the Z reacts well. I would set up a SH contain with mass spines, to never let T have a 4th base. Vipers then pick the expensive mech units apart.
Idk if such a game happened in the GSL/PL yet (other leagues just dont count).
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On May 25 2013 17:39 gingerfluffmuff wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 14:34 TheLetterQ wrote:
The root of the problem with mech is, as I see it, this:
Even mech's detractors will agree that in TvT and TvZ mech will crush basically any semi-standard T/Z composition in a straight up fight. VS P... that's debatable at best. P has a lot of things that straight up hard counter mech, like immortals, and tempest/carriers/voidrays, so realistically if he reacts semi-logically you are going to need ghosts for the former, and vikings for the latter. If you are going to go a composition that will do ok against P if you have enough ghosts and vikings to counter his power units.... why aren't you going bio again? I dont think you can beat Z if you dont do massive damage with drops and the Z reacts well. I would set up a SH contain with mass spines, to never let T have a 4th base. Vipers then pick the expensive mech units apart. Idk if such a game happened in the GSL/PL yet (other leagues just dont count).
The only time that's ever going to happen I'd say is if the terran player is playing bad. If all you're doing is swarm host containing and using vipers, a) the tanks can slow push out and kill your swarmhosts and B) You should be getting dropped all over the place and c) he should have enough vikings/ravens to discourage you just pulling stuff away willy nilly.
You don't even need to do massive damage early on, although that does help.
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On May 25 2013 10:41 PureEvil wrote:
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
Maybe it is popular believe because it is a fact? Just had mech vs toss who wasnt an idiot, he want voids, and I lost horribly without a chance in hell to defeat them. Sure I cranked out vikings, and sure vikings against pure voids could kite them all day long, but you add support, tempests and other stuff that is simply not going to happen if you dont have extremely good micro.
And then you arrive at the point where the terran primary air to air unit, the vikings, is cost effectively countered by phoenix, voids and carriers. Only tempests are countered, but with their range it means you need to do your countering right on top of the enemy army, which means they still die horribly.
Sure if you are way ahead in upgrades you probably beat him, but why should a toss ever let that happen with chrono boosts?
Even mech's detractors will agree that in TvT and TvZ mech will crush basically any semi-standard T/Z composition in a straight up fight.
Against T? Yeah, although these days it has more to do with hellbats than tanks. But against Z? No way. Oh it isn't an autoloss, but vipers are a very good counter to any kind of mech play. So a mech army will definately not crush any standard Z composition in a straight up fight. Even without vipers it won't do that if the zerg can engage in an open area.
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On May 25 2013 19:33 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 10:41 PureEvil wrote:
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
Maybe it is popular believe because it is a fact? Just had mech vs toss who wasnt an idiot, he want voids, and I lost horribly without a chance in hell to defeat them. Sure I cranked out vikings, and sure vikings against pure voids could kite them all day long, but you add support, tempests and other stuff that is simply not going to happen if you dont have extremely good micro. And then you arrive at the point where the terran primary air to air unit, the vikings, is cost effectively countered by phoenix, voids and carriers. Only tempests are countered, but with their range it means you need to do your countering right on top of the enemy army, which means they still die horribly. Sure if you are way ahead in upgrades you probably beat him, but why should a toss ever let that happen with chrono boosts?
He's talking about skyterran, you're talking about vikings. Both aren't the same... Honestly, the new thor and the new raven allows you to beat an insane amount of VR with lot less units than him, and in lategame situations, ghost/raven/viking/BC can just put the opponent in a situation where he has to choose between running away from you, still getting hit by yamato's and vikings, or staying and fight, and getting SM'd to death
Vikings are horrible in direct fights vs VR and carriers. Vikings and Ravens beat any VR and/or tempest based army, and can trade decently with carriers. Vikings/Ravens/BC can handle any air composition from the protoss, and i'm not theorycrafting here . . . I struggled a bit at the start of the extension to fight the new VR and tempest, but now, i realised it's totally fine, using ravens/vikings to fight "early" air, and still doing the BC transition in lategame. The new missile is the key of fighting air toss now, and since most T thinks mech is a no-caster composition (so they can whine about HT,archon, immortal, he...), they of course ends up using the viking which is a terrible unit alone
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The main thing is, that your lategame army, which you are aiming/turtling/saving up for is not stronger than a good P lategame composition consisting Carriers/Tempests/HTs/Archons. Versus same army supply its just rape with any composition.
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Mech is viable, but there is no reason to use it since Bio is insanely powerful -- especially in HoTS with boosted medevacs. The best way to make mech more enticing would be to remove the marauder from the game.
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Why not remove terran from the game while you are at it? If terran had to go mech vs toss all the time, then only way I would see to win is to do an SCV rush. Not saying right now you cant win with mech, but if he knows you are going mech and has some experience with it there is no way he should ever lose.
On May 25 2013 20:27 Lyyna wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 19:33 Sissors wrote:On May 25 2013 10:41 PureEvil wrote:
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
Maybe it is popular believe because it is a fact? Just had mech vs toss who wasnt an idiot, he want voids, and I lost horribly without a chance in hell to defeat them. Sure I cranked out vikings, and sure vikings against pure voids could kite them all day long, but you add support, tempests and other stuff that is simply not going to happen if you dont have extremely good micro. And then you arrive at the point where the terran primary air to air unit, the vikings, is cost effectively countered by phoenix, voids and carriers. Only tempests are countered, but with their range it means you need to do your countering right on top of the enemy army, which means they still die horribly. Sure if you are way ahead in upgrades you probably beat him, but why should a toss ever let that happen with chrono boosts? He's talking about skyterran, you're talking about vikings. Both aren't the same... Honestly, the new thor and the new raven allows you to beat an insane amount of VR with lot less units than him, and in lategame situations, ghost/raven/viking/BC can just put the opponent in a situation where he has to choose between running away from you, still getting hit by yamato's and vikings, or staying and fight, and getting SM'd to death Vikings are horrible in direct fights vs VR and carriers. Vikings and Ravens beat any VR and/or tempest based army, and can trade decently with carriers. Vikings/Ravens/BC can handle any air composition from the protoss, and i'm not theorycrafting here . . . I struggled a bit at the start of the extension to fight the new VR and tempest, but now, i realised it's totally fine, using ravens/vikings to fight "early" air, and still doing the BC transition in lategame. The new missile is the key of fighting air toss now, and since most T thinks mech is a no-caster composition (so they can whine about HT,archon, immortal, he...), they of course ends up using the viking which is a terrible unit alone
Thors aren't really part of skyterran, and they aren't better against voids, they are worse due to their new upgrade. Against reasonable number of voids there is really no reason to change their anti air mode, the splash is better than no splash but bit more base damage. By far the best counter to voids/air is simply to not have mech but have bio. Honestly I think your best bet as mech when your opponent transitions to air is to go to bio. But that raises the question why not to start with bio in the first place.
Also a toss doesn't have to let the seeker missiles kill all his voids. There is a significant delay on seeker missiles. If the toss has an army that doesn't need much micro, he can use all his attention to pull back those voids that are flashing red. Or pull them forward and let the seekers explode over the terran army.
I tried BC transition myself also in HotS often, and yes with plenty of raven/viking support. But they are simply raped by tempests so hard, that the only thing you can do is bring some lube. HT feedback/storm will really hurt your air army, taking out PDDs also isn't exactly hard. HTs hardcounter ravens. If they both cast at max range, than all ravens will at least be out of energy and many will be dead, and all HTs should be fine by just moving a little bit back. And those HTs will also make PDDs/BCs fairly useless and storm vikings to death.
Another issue that late game air/mech has is that it is pretty much impossible to hurt his infrastructure outside the frontal assault. Sure you can kill his probes, but for killing his buildings small groups of bio are so much better.
Edit: Guess I am going to try hellbat/thor/bio again. That at least gives me bio lategame as option. I just don't see mech working if you haven't beaten him by midgame, and I also have no faith whatsoever in terran air beating a toss army. Both standard deathball and air. Only way I see it happening is if the toss allows for lots of seekers fully hitting a clumped up army. And even then tempests kill battlecruisers so fast unless he leaves a bunch of PDDs intact with energy.
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On May 25 2013 21:39 Sissors wrote:Why not remove terran from the game while you are at it? If terran had to go mech vs toss all the time, then only way I would see to win is to do an SCV rush. Not saying right now you cant win with mech, but if he knows you are going mech and has some experience with it there is no way he should ever lose. Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 20:27 Lyyna wrote:On May 25 2013 19:33 Sissors wrote:On May 25 2013 10:41 PureEvil wrote:
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
Maybe it is popular believe because it is a fact? Just had mech vs toss who wasnt an idiot, he want voids, and I lost horribly without a chance in hell to defeat them. Sure I cranked out vikings, and sure vikings against pure voids could kite them all day long, but you add support, tempests and other stuff that is simply not going to happen if you dont have extremely good micro. And then you arrive at the point where the terran primary air to air unit, the vikings, is cost effectively countered by phoenix, voids and carriers. Only tempests are countered, but with their range it means you need to do your countering right on top of the enemy army, which means they still die horribly. Sure if you are way ahead in upgrades you probably beat him, but why should a toss ever let that happen with chrono boosts? He's talking about skyterran, you're talking about vikings. Both aren't the same... Honestly, the new thor and the new raven allows you to beat an insane amount of VR with lot less units than him, and in lategame situations, ghost/raven/viking/BC can just put the opponent in a situation where he has to choose between running away from you, still getting hit by yamato's and vikings, or staying and fight, and getting SM'd to death Vikings are horrible in direct fights vs VR and carriers. Vikings and Ravens beat any VR and/or tempest based army, and can trade decently with carriers. Vikings/Ravens/BC can handle any air composition from the protoss, and i'm not theorycrafting here . . . I struggled a bit at the start of the extension to fight the new VR and tempest, but now, i realised it's totally fine, using ravens/vikings to fight "early" air, and still doing the BC transition in lategame. The new missile is the key of fighting air toss now, and since most T thinks mech is a no-caster composition (so they can whine about HT,archon, immortal, he...), they of course ends up using the viking which is a terrible unit alone Thors aren't really part of skyterran, and they aren't better against voids, they are worse due to their new upgrade. Against reasonable number of voids there is really no reason to change their anti air mode, the splash is better than no splash but bit more base damage. By far the best counter to voids/air is simply to not have mech but have bio. Honestly I think your best bet as mech when your opponent transitions to air is to go to bio. But that raises the question why not to start with bio in the first place. Also a toss doesn't have to let the seeker missiles kill all his voids. There is a significant delay on seeker missiles. If the toss has an army that doesn't need much micro, he can use all his attention to pull back those voids that are flashing red. Or pull them forward and let the seekers explode over the terran army. I tried BC transition myself also in HotS often, and yes with plenty of raven/viking support. But they are simply raped by tempests so hard, that the only thing you can do is bring some lube. HT feedback/storm will really hurt your air army, taking out PDDs also isn't exactly hard. HTs hardcounter ravens. If they both cast at max range, than all ravens will at least be out of energy and many will be dead, and all HTs should be fine by just moving a little bit back. And those HTs will also make PDDs/BCs fairly useless and storm vikings to death. The only way I see a terran air army beat a toss air army is if there are no HTs, all BCs are full with energy and the toss does the frontal a-move assault.
The best counter to VR is bio, but mech can fight it. As i said, a combination of thors/Ravens, with vikings support can handle tons of VR.
There is a delay on SM, ofc. But as i mentioned, it forces the toss to make a choice : spread to take SM on single targets (take time to micro, may miss a targeted unit) while fighting, flee with his army (meaning he'll get hit by vikings while flying away, and since SM cost so few now, you can repeat this a great number of times), which isn't possible if your ravens are close enough, and if he runs into your army, well, it's up to you to micro your vikings to snipe any incoming red VR
I said (i think i did so... not sure) that i was mainly talking about the 'air part' of mech in these posts : when talking about the BC/raven/viking thing , i assume you have some mech on the ground (more like ghostmech, since imo mech requires ghost). Playing the endgame Air + ghost combo looks a lot like the bio vs Deathball, where you need to snipe/EMP any HT before they can stormcarpet your bio or feedback every single ghost/medivac in your army
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On May 25 2013 21:39 Sissors wrote:Why not remove terran from the game while you are at it? If terran had to go mech vs toss all the time, then only way I would see to win is to do an SCV rush. Not saying right now you cant win with mech, but if he knows you are going mech and has some experience with it there is no way he should ever lose. Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 20:27 Lyyna wrote:On May 25 2013 19:33 Sissors wrote:On May 25 2013 10:41 PureEvil wrote:
-Contrary to popular belief, skyterran>>>skytoss, mostly because by doing this style you'll be probably be up in upgrades.
Maybe it is popular believe because it is a fact? Just had mech vs toss who wasnt an idiot, he want voids, and I lost horribly without a chance in hell to defeat them. Sure I cranked out vikings, and sure vikings against pure voids could kite them all day long, but you add support, tempests and other stuff that is simply not going to happen if you dont have extremely good micro. And then you arrive at the point where the terran primary air to air unit, the vikings, is cost effectively countered by phoenix, voids and carriers. Only tempests are countered, but with their range it means you need to do your countering right on top of the enemy army, which means they still die horribly. Sure if you are way ahead in upgrades you probably beat him, but why should a toss ever let that happen with chrono boosts? He's talking about skyterran, you're talking about vikings. Both aren't the same... Honestly, the new thor and the new raven allows you to beat an insane amount of VR with lot less units than him, and in lategame situations, ghost/raven/viking/BC can just put the opponent in a situation where he has to choose between running away from you, still getting hit by yamato's and vikings, or staying and fight, and getting SM'd to death Vikings are horrible in direct fights vs VR and carriers. Vikings and Ravens beat any VR and/or tempest based army, and can trade decently with carriers. Vikings/Ravens/BC can handle any air composition from the protoss, and i'm not theorycrafting here . . . I struggled a bit at the start of the extension to fight the new VR and tempest, but now, i realised it's totally fine, using ravens/vikings to fight "early" air, and still doing the BC transition in lategame. The new missile is the key of fighting air toss now, and since most T thinks mech is a no-caster composition (so they can whine about HT,archon, immortal, he...), they of course ends up using the viking which is a terrible unit alone Thors aren't really part of skyterran, and they aren't better against voids, they are worse due to their new upgrade. Against reasonable number of voids there is really no reason to change their anti air mode, the splash is better than no splash but bit more base damage. By far the best counter to voids/air is simply to not have mech but have bio. Honestly I think your best bet as mech when your opponent transitions to air is to go to bio. But that raises the question why not to start with bio in the first place. Also a toss doesn't have to let the seeker missiles kill all his voids. There is a significant delay on seeker missiles. If the toss has an army that doesn't need much micro, he can use all his attention to pull back those voids that are flashing red. Or pull them forward and let the seekers explode over the terran army. I tried BC transition myself also in HotS often, and yes with plenty of raven/viking support. But they are simply raped by tempests so hard, that the only thing you can do is bring some lube. HT feedback/storm will really hurt your air army, taking out PDDs also isn't exactly hard. HTs hardcounter ravens. If they both cast at max range, than all ravens will at least be out of energy and many will be dead, and all HTs should be fine by just moving a little bit back. And those HTs will also make PDDs/BCs fairly useless and storm vikings to death. Another issue that late game air/mech has is that it is pretty much impossible to hurt his infrastructure outside the frontal assault. Sure you can kill his probes, but for killing his buildings small groups of bio are so much better. Edit: Guess I am going to try hellbat/thor/bio again. That at least gives me bio lategame as option. I just don't see mech working if you haven't beaten him by midgame, and I also have no faith whatsoever in terran air beating a toss army. Both standard deathball and air. Only way I see it happening is if the toss allows for lots of seekers fully hitting a clumped up army. And even then tempests kill battlecruisers so fast unless he leaves a bunch of PDDs intact with energy.
you realize that pdd hardcounters tempest?
i cant believe how close minded and biased most of the people in this thread are.
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Mech is possibly viable, but until a large number of top tier terrans consistently use mech TvP, I'll stick with what I know works
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EPT
