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.
That's not true at all Dwf, I respect how good you are but you're spreading your hyperbole once again. If Mech is so bad, why would people like Kop and Strelok play it against Toss? Why would there have been lots of Terrans playing Mech vs Toss in the initial WCS Europe Qualifiers against Toss? There's plenty of Pros playing mech vs Toss. Just because they're not Flash or Innovation doesn't mean they don't exist. Sure mech could do with a buff against Toss, I'm not doubting that. However a well positioned, well upgraded mech army with ghosts (even without early in the game) beats every toss ground army in the game. I'm not joking here, I have games where I've done it, I've seen pro games where it happens, mech isn't terrible, it's just not as versatile as Bio and the current map pool doesn't support mech play so people don't do it. It's as simple as that.
Also Viking/Raven beats Toss air completely. There's no compotition, although you need good micro against carriers.
I played strictly mech in TvP in WoL with pretty good success, mid-high master; so naturally I continued my mech play into the HoTS and found out mech is FAR worse in HoTS. I have found that if the protoss tries to play vs mech with a ground army its pretty balanced but the players that simply scout the mech and go straight into skytoss, usually tempests, just win. There is simply no way to cost effectively beat tempests without marines.
The thing with mech in TvP.. it's truly not a "mech" composition. For the toss, there'a s smooth transition into the toss ball where with the robo facility, where they can crank out immortals and all, or even possibly transition to some skytoss to counter the terran mech as for the terran, in order to go mech, you still need to tech up to t3, with ghost facilties, building up ravens to counter all the units toss can throw at them. Positioning in TvP isnt as important in sc2 as it was in bw, because of the unit count and the speed of the battles. TvP is bio favored because there's more mobility, you can maximize the unit's effectiveness better
Like some other people have said, why is terran hell bent on mech working in TvP? That's like if I made a bunch of whine threads about how going directly into sky toss doesn't work against terran bio. Buff sky toss? Or maybe just play a different style? Again, in brood war you never saw terran going bio medic vs protoss..... But no one was complaining for a buff. I understand some terrans want a different playing style, but there are definitely MANY unexplored options regarding bio and late game compositions anyways.
Protoss players failing to adapt and having really poor answers:
many of them are unwilling to unplug the anti bio play autopilot;
This is kinda the only reason i still do mech TvP. I can't count the games protoss did 2base all in zealot/storm/archon, with no scout and just died to my helbat/tank/medivac.
Also because of that P 'knows' T will always do bio against them they kinda "auto-counter" terran no, because of that mech is somewhat ok against them. Until they know and start reacting
On May 24 2013 03:39 LighT. wrote: The thing with mech in TvP.. it's truly not a "mech" composition. For the toss, there'a s smooth transition into the toss ball where with the robo facility, where they can crank out immortals and all, or even possibly transition to some skytoss to counter the terran mech as for the terran, in order to go mech, you still need to tech up to t3, with ghost facilties, building up ravens to counter all the units toss can throw at them. Positioning in TvP isnt as important in sc2 as it was in bw, because of the unit count and the speed of the battles. TvP is bio favored because there's more mobility, you can maximize the unit's effectiveness better
That's not true at all. Positioning is really important. If you clump your tanks in SC2, they will just get rolled over by everything. You need tank spreading and if you can get a high ground position away from the edge of the cliffs, that's a much better position than being in open ground.
There's also where you have to position your mines, turrets and hellbats depending on what army composition you face as different army compositions require different positioning. Collosus based requires Hellbats to be further back so they don't get sniped and they need to be up front against Archon/Immortalk compositions.
On May 24 2013 01:48 Markwerf wrote: 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..
Mech is less popular but people still use it. I think that as people figure out how to play with it, it will become more powerful than bio on certain maps. Strelock has shown good Hellbat Tank mech in WCS EU, and i think Kop used it in a proleague game. Also it isn't neccesarily stronger then bio, its just different. Better at holding positions. This means that Rather then attacking third directly you want to try to posture in between the his army and his third, then send over a few helbats and one tank and he needs to walk straight into you tank line and engage really cost inefficiently, or he can sac the expo. In response to air you just need to keep scouting for it. Also hellions+medivacs provide plenty of mobility. I don't think mech is entirely figured out yet, but it has potential
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.
Wow, so well put. People who are still arguing that mech works need to read this.
I'm not optimistic about mech even after LotV. Blizzard will 90% likely NOT buff anything about mech in HOTS. And the only way that mech will work is to add a mobile and fast-attack unit on the ground. Factory already has 5 units, so it's very unlikely that Blizzard will add another factory unit in LotV. I think we probably not going to see mech TvP viable in the entire SC2 series at all.
I don't see why ppl are going apeshit after blizz just because mech is weak vs P. In BW, bio was impossible vs P outside of a few cheesy timing all-ins and nobody ever complained.
Same could be said with TvZ mech before Flash era. High APM pro terrans didn't even bother to make tanks they just massed bio and vessels. At some point SK terran was the standard style vs zerg.
On May 24 2013 03:37 Qikz wrote: That's not true at all Dwf, I respect how good you are but you're spreading your hyperbole once again. If Mech is so bad, why would people like Kop and Strelok play it against Toss? Why would there have been lots of Terrans playing Mech vs Toss in the initial WCS Europe Qualifiers against Toss? There's plenty of Pros playing mech vs Toss. Just because they're not Flash or Innovation doesn't mean they don't exist. Sure mech could do with a buff against Toss, I'm not doubting that. However a well positioned, well upgraded mech army with ghosts (even without early in the game) beats every toss ground army in the game. I'm not joking here, I have games where I've done it, I've seen pro games where it happens, mech isn't terrible, it's just not as versatile as Bio and the current map pool doesn't support mech play so people don't do it. It's as simple as that.
Also Viking/Raven beats Toss air completely. There's no compotition, although you need good micro against carriers.
need some evidence to back up your claims, and a few replays wouldnt hurt. I have no idea where you are getting this information from, most of it sounds 100% incorrect, or youre describimg a very odd game situation.
Having played mech a lot and also offraced as Protoss for an entire two weeks during the beta, at this point I'd say mech is not ever going to be viable because dkim/blizzard refuse to make a few key changes that could make it so:
1. Hellbat not being bio 2. Tempest supply increase to 8 supply. 3. Tank damage has not been fixed vs Protoss, and Immortal is too hard counter/strong vs mech.
The reason you will never see people do mech 100% of the time as a standard strategy TvP is because of one reason right now: Tempest.
It is possible currently to mass 100% tempests vs a meching Terran and win every game with little to zero micro or effort. When you add in templar, you have broodlord + infestor 2.0 ON CRACK. It's currently possible to get up to around 25 tempests with templar.
This should not be possible. The tempest right now is the singular reason why mech vs P is a failure, the tempest currently is 4 supply.
A unit with the longest range in the game that is easily massable lategame should not be a 4 supply unit, it never should have been, and it was appropriately at 6 supply before they uber buffed it during the beta, because they thought it was "useless." Everyone should thank me for helping blizzard see the light about the +damage to massive ground, otherwise we'd have tempests right now that still 2 shot thors.
Korean Terrans are not stupid. If me, a "foreign Terran" has played out a multitude of games into theoretical longest lategame where the Protoss simply wins by massing PURE tempest + a few templar, then you can 100% bet that all of the korean teams have already explored mech vs P and come to the same conclusion that it's not viable.
Can you win with mech vs P? Yes, by killing workers. But that is it. And good Protoss will never let you do this.
So, mech will absolutely never be viable against PRotoss, EVER, until tempests supply is increased.
p.s. When I offraced as Protoss for two weeks during the beta, I never lost to a meching Terran. Once i saw factories -> immediate stargates -> mass tempest -> get templar underneath -> freewin. It was quite disgusting to play it from the Protoss side and realize how easy it was and just how many tempest you can mass.
p.s. #2: I informed blizzard about this on their "pro forums" with replays as well, and they have still refused to take it seriously to make mech tvp viable. They actually seem to "hate" mech, going by interviews. They have a paradoxical view where they don't want a passive game, but then they keep mech tvp a catch-22 where the mech player can never attack because of requiring 2 tech paths to counter immortals and/or air.
If the opponent goes mass immortal...you have to have ghost, aka you cannot attack till you have that tech, meaning you have to 100% turtle.
If opponent goes stargates, you have to have mass vikings, you cannot attack until you have sufficient AA or even 5 voids could kill your 200/200 mech army in an "early push."
This ironically means that if you play mech vs good Protosses you 100% can never attack until a 200/200 maxed army with ghosts + vikings. A 100% passive game is forced on a mech user by the bad design of the tempest/immortal, that blizzard refuses to address for mech tvp.
Isn't the real problem that you have to go either mech or bio? What happened to a balanced army composition being the best way to play? I mean in a real war barring nuclear holocaust the balanced army basically always wins.
Also balancing three races with completely different mechanics. Might not be the easiest task you could undertake. This far I think HotS is pretty decent except for the increased lag. Not sure what they did because I usually have higher fps in HotS, but it still feels like it lags more even if you preload units...
Balance seems pretty fine on the highest levels. I mean 2z,1t & 1p in the semis of first GSL. Can't believe terrans still whine with hellbats, medivacs with OPB, mines & free siege mode ^^ Seems to me zergs drew the shortest straw as usual and I play mostly random,terran & protoss these days. So pretty unbiased towards zerg.
On May 24 2013 02:51 sabas123 wrote: 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......
Hilarious, quoted this gem to find it again.
Its not a matter of trusting in my own logic. Its just the korean terran playing in Code S is better / has a better understanding of sc2 than i do. I am better at other stuff than the korean pro, but not in sc2. So i will never question their decisions. Of course the meta game will evolve and in a few months you could say i am an idiot for having played like this, but atm its the best strategy to use.
Thanks goes to Mr. Dwarf (just jokin, TheDwf) for trying to give logical reasons why stuff is as it is.
From the Protoss point of view I see mech as a free win (although I'm only diamond).
I literally just warp in DTs and blink stalker harass whilst getting a much better economy than the Terran. Except even though Mech gives me so much opportunity to get onto 2 more bases than them, it does nothing to help it in the final battle. Every time I seem to a-move + storm and win (maybe only by an immortal or 2, but still win) and THEN in comes my extra 60 supply of stalkers after I've had so much time to bank behind my pressure.
Maybe I'm just playing bad people, but I just love the ladder points I get for free against mech.
mech isnt weaker. its just not explored. playing mech vs tempest is hard yes, but its still possible to win even when its antifun to fight a 15 range unit.
i agree mech could need more small buffs. but its fully viable and works vs protoss almost as well as bio. right now koreans almost never use mech, because players are used to bio and practiced bio for so long so there is no reason to change their style. but give it some time and more korean progamers will use mech in tvp.
other than that: strelok crushed koreans in WCS EU with mech in tvsp.
I go siege tank, hellbat, mines and viking support. Yep, the major 3 mech splash dealing units. But like 12+ mines, which I position in front of my tanks.
Turns out the mine blast beats the crap out of the immortals and archons, which are the real ground problem vs terran mech. Their shields barely matter since the immortals shield gets wiped out in one hit. And anything that closes in is torched by hellbats.
The big weakness is of course air, but if you have ever played brood war you would know how to scout, anticipate and prepare for a protoss air transition. Also a few ravens help immensely vs tempests. If they make void rays, seeker missile them.
Forget about thors, too slow, get kited to death. Forget about banshees, too expensive and fragile to be wrecked by archons or storms.
If you are patient, calculative and good with positioning, mech is a blast to play tvp.
Also, the 2base thor, hellbat, banshee push with 16 scvs autorepair at 16:00 and +2 armor is an insane timing attack, that pretty much nobody uses on ladder. Just dont expect to carry on if it fails!
mech isnt weaker. its just not explored. playing mech vs tempest is hard yes, but its still possible to win even when its antifun to fight a 15 range unit.
i agree mech could need more small buffs. but its fully viable and works vs protoss almost as well as bio. right now koreans almost never use mech, because players are used to bio and practiced bio for so long so there is no reason to change their style. but give it some time and more korean progamers will use mech in tvp.
other than that: strelok crushed koreans in WCS EU with mech in tvsp.
just stop this nonsense argument.
Mech isn't close to bio when it comes to bio in TvP. Sure you can win with it if you had a good opening or you're opponent just reacts poorly, you can win with anything if you're ahead like the game shown.
Any smart protoss going up against mech will just realize you can outexpand terran easily while being safe with immortals and stalkers and then you easily transition into air. One of the fundamental problems is that factories become largely obsolete when P is switching to air, unlike BW where the goliath comes out of the factory there is no good unit against carrier/tempest/voidray coming out of the factory in sc2. Sure mass void is easily beaten by thor splash and mass tempest can be battled by PDD but a mix of void/carrier and maybe a few tempests you can only fight with vikings for which you need lots of new infrastructure and which is only even in cost effectiveness. Protoss is more supply effective with late air, has an easier time getting a bigger economy since he has the more mobile army and has the fast remax to roll you if the fight is even.
All these games that get posted that mech is good are always rediculously bad. Yes occasionally even at pro level mech wins a game here and there but they are practically always poor games where the protoss get's behind economically in some weird way while you easily have the advantage. It's the same way that people complain with bio against P that it's too weak lategame while you should never be on even economy playing bio, if you are you are already doing poorly.
Looking back at the beta it saddens me they never tried anything decent to fix this matchup though. All attention went to fixing reapers, oracles, hellbats, tempests and the new stuff. They never tried any real buff that could have fixed mech.
They really should have given the warhound more time because the concept for that was actually good. A factory unit that could fight air and stalkers. I really hope they bring it back in some way once but balanced to be mainly good in TvP. The bonus vs mechanical is actually an elegant way to make an unit good for TvP without making it overpowered in TvZ, but they removed it straight away before ever fiddling with it. The idea of it being an anti tank unit was just lousy, it should have been some unit like the queen: decent against ground but great against air.
On May 24 2013 02:51 sabas123 wrote: 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......
Hilarious, quoted this gem to find it again.
Its not a matter of trusting in my own logic. Its just the korean terran playing in Code S is better / has a better understanding of sc2 than i do. I am better at other stuff than the korean pro, but not in sc2. So i will never question their decisions. Of course the meta game will evolve and in a few months you could say i am an idiot for having played like this, but atm its the best strategy to use.
Thanks goes to Mr. Dwarf (just jokin, TheDwf) for trying to give logical reasons why stuff is as it is.
I agree. The dwarf (as I call him too lol) lays out clearly, and logically the truth of mech in TvP.
This is what cracks me up
Having played mech a lot and also offraced as Protoss for an entire two weeks during the beta, at this point I'd say mech is not ever going to be viable because dkim/blizzard refuse to make a few key changes that could make it so:
lol... "david kim and blizzard refuse to make a few key changes" I loved it. It cracks me up the almost conspiracy theory like nature of most of the people in this discussion.
Haha found another great gem of a statement...
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.
Beyond the sheer stubbornness and comical opinions-as-facts of all the MECH ONLY terrans, this topic is beaten to fucking death. Why do people keep making these same threads, over and over...
Beyond the sheer stubbornness and comical opinions-as-facts of all the MECH ONLY terrans,
The thing I don't understand about with this, is surely if there's people playing mech only, that proves that it is somewhat viable to do the strat against toss? I wouldn't play mech only if I lost more than I won.
I play less than 2 games per day on average and im still top 8 in masters using only mech vs protoss. Although my opening is a little unique and i only make a few tanks which i suppose most TLers dont consider to be mech. Massing up tanks and then just making golaiths when he switches to air worked great in BW but this isnt BW. The thor is designed to supplement your anti air so you need a decent amount if your going mech and you need ghosts. A typical protoss army consists of at least 3 things out of the gateway, something out of the robo, and probably stuff out of the starport. Thinking you should be able to counter all that with just factory units is silly and if the protoss were able to counter your entire entire army composition with just robo units, terrans would call this game broken.
I was trying to go Mech in TvP since some 6 months ago before the HotS launch and in WoL was almost imposible.I am talking about the "tank heavy" mech,not the Thor focused mech showed by Lyyna.
MECH IS VIABLE.
Why are we not seeing it in GSL? Easy. Korean are greedy. They like aggressive aproach in games. The Innovation TvZ with mines is aggro as hell. There is no T in the world able to play as good as this guy and macro at same time. I have seen Demuslim try it and its ok,but ,not the same timings as Innovation. Mech is stale and immobile. Korean like to harass and be able to keep enemy defensive while macroing. With Mech this IS posible,but more difficult. Finally they are used to BIO and it Works.Why should they change and learn new things if BIO is so succesfull? Even Korean T and EU/NA Terrans dont play the same. Almost no foreigner do the 10 min push with 2 medivacs and expand meanwhile. They go out,yes,but just poke arround without any clear objective and many times dont even go to check the 3rd to prevent it.Koreans almost never let you take your 3rd without a fight.Just check the Flash/Parting game in the group of Death and you will see the difference btw KR and Foreigner Ts:
You can make Protoss fear to move out ,while macroing and maxing your army. At 15 min you can be in front of his natural/3rd with 30 hellbats and 7-8 tanks.If you do well in the early harass,there is almost no army to stop you. If you are not able to finish the game there or the early harass is not so succesfull,prepare for air from 14 min. Mass Vikings+Thor is the answer. Vs Tempest you just need ravens with PDD.Kiting is posible. I know there are HTs with storm,but you need to micro and try Dodge them while sniping Tempest/Voids/Carriers.
Blizzard really dropped the ball with mech in HotS. They've stated that their number 1 goal with terran in HotS was to make mech a viable alternative to bio, especially in TvP. Going from WoL -> HotS, protoss and zerg got more stuff to better deal with mech while on the terran end of the spectrum they've had one of their new mech units removed (which was for the better, it was too much of a marauder 2.0 and mech isn't about a-moving) and the other ones (hellbat and widow mine) has helped bio out more than mech. Hell, a lot of T players stopped incorprating tanks into their bioball in favor of widow mines (although from time to time you do see some siege tanks, but at the end of the day that isn't mech)
I just wished blizzard would have tried to buff the siege tank. Anything really; 25 less gas (mech is very gas dependent), possibly 2 supply tanks, or even bonus damage vs shields similar to widow mine. Anything at all, but we didn't even get any of that in the beta.
It's very disappointing to me honestly. TvP was my favorite match-up in BW to both play (both T and P) and to watch and it's just completely alien in SC2. I love siege tanks, I love positional play, and I want to see mech in TvP. Even if we have to wait another 3 years for LotV, I hope blizzard can come to their senses and try to make it work (and not like HotS where they just add mechanical units; the siege tank is the problem).
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.
That's a nonsense argument. Playing mech in TvT is different from mech in TvZ, which would in-turn be drastically different from TvP. How long did it take before pros started playing mech in TvT? How long did it take after the Infernal Preigniter nerf before it came back? How long did it take after discovering mech in TvT to find a PROPER TvZ mech build? DAMN LONG TIMES. Mvp had to figure the entire matchup so that he could set up defenses for everything to just not die long enough to get to the late game. Bio is significantly easier to play. It doesn't get punished as hard for mistakes, requires less game knowledge to play at the highest level, and is much more explored so that you have more game knowledge should you want it.
StimmedProbe came up with a TvP mech build back at the END of WoL. Sure, some of his builds seem (and probably are) pretty gimmicky, but he's had success with it.
However, that being said, WoL was better for mech than HotS is (aside from Hellbat drops). Now, Protoss has super Void Rays (considering everything mech is armored except Hellbats) and Tempests. The classical issue of weak anti air as well as Immortals, Colossi, and Templar being pretty good just makes it hard. Also, even if you push, you're more likely to trade roughly evenly, which isn't good for Terran since Protoss can remake their army faster. If they walk into you, it's good, but Protoss players aren't THAT stupid. You need a pretty decisive advantage to win an engagement.
Well Mech now has the slowest speed and the smallest range out of all siege compositions and along with it has the worst anti air, most expensive production building cost. So it should obliterate 3 times its supply on the ground to make up for that, but that isn't possible because mech needs almost no upgrades to get to its maximum usefulness level. The lack of upgrades allows people to use the full power as soon as the factory is done, so mech units can't be that overpowered otherwise the midgame would be broken.
But slow and lowest range. Everyone can see what Hellbats do alone against anything faster with more range. Blizzard wants to allow multiple options to go for in Sc2, but Mech is just perfect against Bio (Bio below 800 apm). So as long as they want Bio as an option in TvT, Mech cannot be buffed enough to work in other matchups.
Dragon seems to have a lot of success with it and he plays 100% mech vs protoss (he is hovering around rank 10+- GM Na which I'm sure is higher than 100% of the people posting in here), although I don't know how it would hold against the very top, top Protoss.
Early on, he basically relies on Hellbat drops to do a good amount of damage because there's usually a timing window of opportunity before the protoss can really get a good amount of defenses up. Although rushing to Hellbat drops, it feels like theres A LOT of opportunities to die to early aggression (like 4 gate) but luckily for him, very few protoss do that these days.
His army composition generally consists of an early raven/viking to clear observers which I think is SUPER important - since mech requires very good positioning, denying your opponents vision will allow you move freely without his army being able to intercept yours too easily. The meat of his composition is almost always hellbat/tank + a few thors and he reacts into ghosts when he sees a good number of immortals, since immortals without shields aren't much of a counter to mech.
I've always thought mass void ray would be the appropriate counter to Mech since I don't see any unit really countering it... But I guess timing wise, the mech deathball is going to hit before you get a critical amount of them but I'm going to guess that it is auto-lose for the Terran player if the game ever reaches that stage.
Because while mech is the perfect example of deathball style that every BW player hated about SC2, Protoss simply has the stronger and more cost efficient deathball while having strong harrass options with the new units and cost changes.
Deathballs are punished through guerrilla warfare and multiprong hits. Something bio can easily achieve, making bio seem much more stronger than mech vs protoss.
Personally I dont consider mech and bio as the same race, since the mindset and play style is so different.
To answer OP's final questions, it depends how your usual gameplan vs protoss is to consider a style worth using or not. Bio is much weaker in a straight up fight vs protoss than mech, but since bio benefits HEAVILY on micro, the odds can be pulled to the bio player heavily through micro too, while for mech its a bit out of the question. Consider this - a highly spread bio force attacking into a balled up protoss force is actually a form of guerrilla warfare, since its coming from multiple angles and can easily retreat back. Bio also relies a lot on early-mid game guerrilla warfare to build up into the final killing blow, something mech can never ever accomplish smoothly.
Is there any point in using mech vs protoss in TvP? Its a game. If you think its fun and satisfying to play mech vs protoss, then do it. Personally I hate protoss and having anything to do with them so i just want the game to end early.....something mech cannot really achieve other than through allins, and there are plenty of better allins from bio to choose from.
To be honest, if I wanted to play a deathball style, Id just go play protoss.
Oh and I wouldnt bother trying to see whether pros use mech or not. I dont think they even give that much of a fuck about it. If they wanted to use it, they'll use it. If they didnt they wont. Simple. Its not about being lazy or not. If you are terran, why would you be practicing heavily with protoss?
On May 24 2013 08:26 Dvriel wrote: I was trying to go Mech in TvP since some 6 months ago before the HotS launch and in WoL was almost imposible.I am talking about the "tank heavy" mech,not the Thor focused mech showed by Lyyna.
MECH IS VIABLE.
Why are we not seeing it in GSL? Easy. Korean are greedy. They like aggressive aproach in games. The Innovation TvZ with mines is aggro as hell. There is no T in the world able to play as good as this guy and macro at same time. I have seen Demuslim try it and its ok,but ,not the same timings as Innovation. Mech is stale and immobile. Korean like to harass and be able to keep enemy defensive while macroing. With Mech this IS posible,but more difficult. Finally they are used to BIO and it Works.Why should they change and learn new things if BIO is so succesfull? Even Korean T and EU/NA Terrans dont play the same. Almost no foreigner do the 10 min push with 2 medivacs and expand meanwhile. They go out,yes,but just poke arround without any clear objective and many times dont even go to check the 3rd to prevent it.Koreans almost never let you take your 3rd without a fight.Just check the Flash/Parting game in the group of Death and you will see the difference btw KR and Foreigner Ts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsHk9dfbwCM
You can make Protoss fear to move out ,while macroing and maxing your army. At 15 min you can be in front of his natural/3rd with 30 hellbats and 7-8 tanks.If you do well in the early harass,there is almost no army to stop you. If you are not able to finish the game there or the early harass is not so succesfull,prepare for air from 14 min. Mass Vikings+Thor is the answer. Vs Tempest you just need ravens with PDD.Kiting is posible. I know there are HTs with storm,but you need to micro and try Dodge them while sniping Tempest/Voids/Carriers.
I think the issue with mech and Protoss is that you can't play passively and stay ahead of the Protoss at the same time. Also, early game can still be coinflippish against terran where going for a tech build can still be an auto loss.
Mech doesnt work as many have stated. Toward the end of wing of liberty Sea almost change my mind but he quit before he was able to ever prove it viability. Even then, I doubt it was ever viable since right now the scene is starting to show the rise of kespa player and Sea was considered one of the top terran kespa so it was probably just Sea out playing his opponent. People are saying mech is viable because it not explored enough, I will argue that mech is so weak that protoss dont even care to explore how they can deal with mech.
I still dont understand why tanks are not 2 supply
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
cause if mech is viable, then it will lead to a more diverse match up in TvP. Mech is also a distinctively different style because of how immobile it is compare to bio which SHOULD lead protoss protoss respond differently to counter this style. This will lead to a more different game. Protoss complain about not seeing carrier at all, with mech viable then carrier automatically become more viable. This is just another example and protoss will also have the option of playing a more mobile style and mass expanding abusing the immobility of mech rather then just massing death ball. How is this not good for everyone and the game itself?
Dont believe me just look at TvZ. Zerg respond differently to mech by going roach heavy mainly and then when dealing with bio they go ling mutas bane.
Im not entirely sure why it isn't viable, the strongest counters to mech that P has is mainly chargelot immortal, but both of those can be negated by hellbats quite easily, if t were to play mech like he's playing agianst terran, maybe a few medivacs because hellbats are bio, but going mostly vikings from the starport, that would nullify any real air counter to mech as well as allow for tankspotting. the hellbats buffer the chargelots and immortals, and if you get the conversion upgrade you can get them 2 at a time. widow mines, also able to be produced 2 at a time can help in funnelling the armies as well as buffer slightly against harass.
On May 24 2013 09:06 FeyFey wrote: Well Mech now has the slowest speed and the smallest range out of all siege compositions and along with it has the worst anti air, most expensive production building cost. So it should obliterate 3 times its supply on the ground to make up for that, but that isn't possible because mech needs almost no upgrades to get to its maximum usefulness level. The lack of upgrades allows people to use the full power as soon as the factory is done, so mech units can't be that overpowered otherwise the midgame would be broken.
But slow and lowest range. Everyone can see what Hellbats do alone against anything faster with more range. Blizzard wants to allow multiple options to go for in Sc2, but Mech is just perfect against Bio (Bio below 800 apm). So as long as they want Bio as an option in TvT, Mech cannot be buffed enough to work in other matchups.
There are ways around that. Blizzard is ok with convoluted solutions to problems, like the Hellbat bio tag or widow mine bonus to shields, shared ups. You could make Tanks with bonus to shields or psionic (Archons) etc.. They just can't be bothered IMO.
I think they wanted mech viable BUT with the marauder 2.0, the Warhound. Once they were shouted out of that terrible idea, i think they just decided to give up and started the "we don't know how much mech we really want" speech.
On May 24 2013 13:02 polysciguy wrote: Im not entirely sure why it isn't viable, the strongest counters to mech that P has is mainly chargelot immortal, but both of those can be negated by hellbats quite easily, if t were to play mech like he's playing agianst terran, maybe a few medivacs because hellbats are bio, but going mostly vikings from the starport, that would nullify any real air counter to mech as well as allow for tankspotting. the hellbats buffer the chargelots and immortals, and if you get the conversion upgrade you can get them 2 at a time. widow mines, also able to be produced 2 at a time can help in funnelling the armies as well as buffer slightly against harass.
Chargelots immortal are not the strongest counter, it is just another counter. Hellbat has help immensely with this so it not even that bad anymore to call it strongest counter is wrong. Strongest counter is carriers and if they get enough carrier you should just leave the game if you dont have viking+BC+ghost but even then you pretty much relying on emping the clump templar.
On May 24 2013 01:48 Markwerf wrote: 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..
I would agree that they hardly did anything to make mech more viable in HotS, but calling it a "catastrophic failure on many parts" is just a gross, biased exaggeration. Many progamers are saying that the game is much better than WoL ever was, and as a player/avid spectator I would agree.
The idea to give mech some bonus damage against shields sounds interesting, agreed that they should test.
However I will never understand why terrans want mech to be viable so badly. The arguments posted thus far are just things like "why shouldn't it?" and I'm not convinced that mech not being viable makes Starcraft 2 a bad game.
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)
Hellbats are good, every other mechanical units isnt against protoss. That's just how it is. Some people get the disillusion that mech is good because hellbats are good, when in reality they are just way better when mixed with bio.
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
why should multiple compositions from zerg or protoss be viable, but for terran, only bio, viable?
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
why should multiple compositions from zerg or protoss be viable, but for terran, only bio, viable?
Mech is viable vs terran and zerg. TvP was never a fun matchup once it hit the third year of WoL where most terrans were focusing on killing toss before the 15 minute mark, because of how strong the toss main deathball was while having the option to drop and harrass on multi fronts similar to terran mid game.
EMP siege tank damage (+ damage vs shield) upgrade from armory would be nice ahhahahaa, although protoss ground was never the main issue when it came to playing against toss.
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)
Hellbats are good, every other mechanical units isnt against protoss. That's just how it is. Some people get the disillusion that mech is good because hellbats are good, when in reality they are just way better when mixed with bio.
Hellbat+BIO are not so good. Why? No stim, man. If you cant kite and stim, its not good for you. Hellbats need a lot of time to kill a single building as well and we know how important is to snipe Protoss tech with drops. With mech, you cant snipe tech. Only kill workers with hellbat drop or Hellion/BFH runbies.Sometimes I am able to deny the 4th or 5th of P with 10 Hellbats.They arrive as hellions and transform.The splash is enough to kill a building nexus,but you must focus and almost be sure they will all die...
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)
Hellbats are good, every other mechanical units isnt against protoss. That's just how it is. Some people get the disillusion that mech is good because hellbats are good, when in reality they are just way better when mixed with bio.
Hellbat+BIO are not so good. Why? No stim, man. If you cant kite and stim, its not good for you. Hellbats need a lot of time to kill a single building as well and we know how important is to snipe Protoss tech with drops. With mech, you cant snipe tech. Only kill workers with hellbat drop or Hellion/BFH runbies.Sometimes I am able to deny the 4th or 5th of P with 10 Hellbats.They arrive as hellions and transform.The splash is enough to kill a building nexus,but you must focus and almost be sure they will all die...
Are you trying to MASS hellbats -_-? Its really just MMM with a dash of hellbats in a straight fight, similar to adding salt on french fries. Kiting is not an issue when the main units you want hellbats to deal with are gonna be charging at you right in the face, plus having a super tanky light armor unit (stalkers dont kill them fast enough, nor immortals) that can be healed in the front lines help bio immensely. No they dont arrive as hellions, people just build them straight out as hellbats. Bio+hellbat is insanely cost efficient vs toss ground in a non-maxed scenario, and do quite decently vs max chargelot archon HT with some collosi. You will NOT be dropping hellbats vs toss unless its early game vs probes, or mixing a few in with a doom drop to instantly melt chargelot warpins.
I think it was Keen who showed it recently vs some toss in code S, although I think it was only ro32. and obviously Keen is no Flash/Bogus
I was watching the Group D WCS NA last night and realised something: in TvT the Mech is better than Bio+tank. Hellions are quicker. Do splash. So mobile and are even good for defending drops. The upgrades are shared between the units(same for hellion/tank and viking). There is no "con" for mech vs bio+tank in TvT and even that the koreans Polt,Alive and Ryung give us 9 games playing only marine+tank. Why? I think because they are so used to it and its the best of their skills. They did not practice a lot with Mech and in the NA ladder Polt always plays bio+tank and always forcé Demuslim, Qxc and theognis to do the same....
Same is happening with TvP Mech. Koreans are just playing bio,but it doesnt mean TvP mech is not viable.
On May 24 2013 17:29 Dvriel wrote: I was watching the Group D WCS NA last night and realised something: in TvT the Mech is better than Bio+tank. Hellions are quicker. Do splash. So mobile and are even good for defending drops. The upgrades are shared between the units(same for hellion/tank and viking). There is no "con" for mech vs bio+tank in TvT and even that the koreans Polt,Alive and Ryung give us 9 games playing only marine+tank. Why? I think because they are so used to it and its the best of their skills. They did not practice a lot with Mech and in the NA ladder Polt always plays bio+tank and always forcé Demuslim, Qxc and theognis to do the same....
Same is happening with TvP Mech. Koreans are just playing bio,but it doesnt mean TvP mech is not viable.
Except Bogus trashed Flash that game that we will never mention as a good example of mech vs bio.....ever
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
Because not only does it mean we don't have to watch the same boring as hell games for the fourth year in a row (nothing has changed in Bio TvP at all, either the Terran wins early or gets rolled over lategame, it still happens after 3 years) and it forces Toss into only doing one or two things in the matchup rather than having more freedom.
Nearly every TvP plays out the same and there's little room for either side to transition out of the standard styles into anything more interesting. There's nothing bad about having everything possible in matchups and although I'm saying mech is viable, because it is, where it isn't as strong as it could be against toss a lot of people will never bother trying it or they won't use it in tournaments as they just want to win and bio is easier to do that if you're a korean player with sick micro since it's all you've played for 3 years.
Except Bogus trashed Flash that game that we will never mention as a good example of mech vs bio.....ever
Well that's just what happens when you don't get air control as mech (which is what happened to Flash) as the drops kept forcing his tanks out of position.
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
Because P auto-counter bio from terran from the start of the game? At least this way you can catch them surprised a bit! =)
Anyway, not talking about GM level or whatever .. but low/mid master TvP mech is viable? Yes/No? (i don't really care it's because they don't know how to react properly or because they are bad) I have no intention of getting to high master level or GM, i just want to stay in masters and enjoy the game. Can i do this with pure mech? (if not, i've been looking for some good bio builds vs P .. But seem to be failing at finding them. i remember a quick ugprade demuslim build, but where is it the only good build i think i found, because i havn't read it yet, is this one, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=411141)
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
Because P auto-counter bio from terran from the start of the game? At least this way you can catch them surprised a bit! =)
Anyway, not talking about GM level or whatever .. but low/mid master TvP mech is viable? Yes/No? (i don't really care it's because they don't know how to react properly or because they are bad) I have no intention of getting to high master level or GM, i just want to stay in masters and enjoy the game. Can i do this with pure mech? (if not, i've been looking for some good bio builds vs P .. But seem to be failing at finding them. i remember a quick ugprade demuslim build, but where is it the only good build i think i found, because i havn't read it yet, is this one, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=411141)
If this is NA we are talking about then its definetely viable. Im not sure about EU.
And no people hate Bio TvP because its boring and gimicky, not because P auto-counters bio
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
Because P auto-counter bio from terran from the start of the game? At least this way you can catch them surprised a bit! =)
Anyway, not talking about GM level or whatever .. but low/mid master TvP mech is viable? Yes/No? (i don't really care it's because they don't know how to react properly or because they are bad) I have no intention of getting to high master level or GM, i just want to stay in masters and enjoy the game. Can i do this with pure mech? (if not, i've been looking for some good bio builds vs P .. But seem to be failing at finding them. i remember a quick ugprade demuslim build, but where is it the only good build i think i found, because i havn't read it yet, is this one, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=411141)
If this is NA we are talking about then its definetely viable. Im not sure about EU.
EU
It's just, I got to this (atm 400-500points master level) with only mech. reading all these threads made me think if i should start learning bio or just stick to mech since i have no desire to be pro or whatever (i just want to stay masters and have fun). But since bio and mech are sooo different to play and i'm absolutely not used to bio, it will probably make me drop and i'll lose my master . So i was wondering, just keep mech and stay low/mid(?) master or (probably drop) and go bio (in TvZ/TvP) (TvT will be mech always for me, just because i like mech ^^)
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
Because P auto-counter bio from terran from the start of the game? At least this way you can catch them surprised a bit! =)
Anyway, not talking about GM level or whatever .. but low/mid master TvP mech is viable? Yes/No? (i don't really care it's because they don't know how to react properly or because they are bad) I have no intention of getting to high master level or GM, i just want to stay in masters and enjoy the game. Can i do this with pure mech? (if not, i've been looking for some good bio builds vs P .. But seem to be failing at finding them. i remember a quick ugprade demuslim build, but where is it the only good build i think i found, because i havn't read it yet, is this one, http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=411141)
If this is NA we are talking about then its definetely viable. Im not sure about EU.
EU
It's just, I got to this (atm 400-500points master level) with only mech. reading all these threads made me think if i should start learning bio or just stick to mech since i have no desire to be pro or whatever (i just want to stay masters and have fun). But since bio and mech are sooo different to play and i'm absolutely not used to bio, it will probably make me drop and i'll lose my master . So i was wondering, just keep mech and stay low/mid(?) master or (probably drop) and go bio (in TvZ/TvP) (TvT will be mech always for me, just because i like mech ^^)
For me, Mech is like the 4th race. Its not easy to be good with both styles as a casual player so I stuck with bio only. If you want to stick to mech just do it. Bio has a drastically different mindset compared to mech, and will take a LONG time to get used to coming from mech.
On May 24 2013 08:26 Dvriel wrote: I was trying to go Mech in TvP since some 6 months ago before the HotS launch and in WoL was almost imposible.I am talking about the "tank heavy" mech,not the Thor focused mech showed by Lyyna.
If you're talking about my 'troll mass thors into Thors/BC RoflBall' style, you're making a big mistake here, it was never my main style (the ghost/tank/air focused one) and my guide wasn't even talking about mass thors play since it has always been a terrible strat imo even in WoL versus decent toss (but a stupidly funny play versus bad ones).
About this topic : Well, the big problem problem of that kind of topic is that it'll always be a war between a few differents kind if people : -The "Mech doesn't work, i tried it and it's terrible" : Usually a terran player who played some 1 rax nogas FE into 35 tanks camping middle map for 5 games, and thinks he can talk about TvP mech.
-The "Look at pro they don't mech", itself divided into 2 categories : -"So Mech is slightly inferior/Less polished and there is no point for them to make it a mainstream strategy even if it sometimes used and may be viable in a normal game" -"So it shows they explored it fully and knows it's terrible" - which is idiot, as some people say before in this thread we could talk a bit about how TvT Mech was fully explored and considered terrible in like 3 distincts periods in WoL
-The "Lol U Noob Mech can't handle every early game play blindly, can't hardcounter every midgame composition and can't kill any lategame composition while losing less than 10 supply" - A bit exagerated, but that kind of people is seen on every "Mech TvP thread"... basically saying mech is unviable, while saying things that can apply to bio and allows to say bio is unviable as well.
-The "I tried Mech hardcore and i don't think it's viable" - I have some respect for these people, the problem is that often the way they played mech is flawed in my opinion (often they stick to one mech "style" and will not try anything else).
-The Mech Lover
And the big problem is that all these people will just yell pointlessly at each others, never listening to anyone else, never trying to understand what others say. In order to adress what everyone say, i would like to say a few things
-Mech may, or may not be viable at pro lvl. The past has shown us that "fully explored and so unviable play" was able to finally become one of the mainstream strat in a MU (hi Mech TvT and TvZ). We're not pro and it's not up to us to discuss that. Our discussions here will not make pro play mech, so all we can do here is try and watch any pro mech TvP game and try to get conclusions about how they play mech, but it's RETARDED to try and say "KOR pro fully explored it and consider it unviable" until someone do a poll with most pro terrans to ask them what they think/if they tried TP mech. We're not in their mind...
-Mech is DEFINITELY viable under pro lvl. Even in High Master/GM (even High GM). Players like me, HtoMario, and tons of others show this every day, destroying protoss on the ladder with big metal balls. Is it hard? Yes. Does it requires a totally different skillset compared to bio? Totally fucking yes. Is it super hard? Yes. Is it impossible ? No. You can't say it's not possible to mech at high lvl (on the ladder i mean) while there is so much people playing mech since the beginning on WoL for some, at this lvl, and without any big trouble.
-Mech may, or may not be viable as a mainstream strategy. I think it is, but it requires a tons of experience, and some people need to accept the fact thay even if in terms of raw skill/ranking/results they are superior to some "mech players" here, they aren't as qualified as these "inferior mech players" to talk about Mech. Myself, even if it might be considered as a cocky behavior, i wouldn't hesitate to argue with any pro about TvP mech, why ? Because i have nearly 3 years of Mech TvP experience, more than 2 of these being 90%+ of my games played with mech. Do i know everything about Mech? No. But i know far more that some people here who assume that because they are supposed to be "better" due to their rank on the ladder or anything like that, and these people should really realise that and think about it. Do i mean that they should accept everything the experienced mech players say as fact? No. But these people should stop thinking they have the absolute knowledge of Mech TvP, able to theorycraft from scracth every single situation that may kill mech, and stuff like this, and understand that if some people practice mech since years, their advice might be slightly better that their "superior" theorycrafting. At least their advice should be heard instead of being dismissed and answered by some "i'm better than you and i know that mech doesn't work, you play only terrible players lolololol". Is it a bit cocky to write this ? Maybe. But for me, the cocky behavior is the one used by people who thinks they are in the mind of koreans pro knowning their advices/pratice about mech TvP, and who thinks that because they are better in rank/result/reputation, what they say about something they don't know should be considered more valuable that what people experimented on the subject are saying. Mech is hard to learn. Stop thinking that because you are GM and you play pro every day, your 1 month mech practice can show you everything about mech. After 3 years of mech i don't even consider myself close of a "solid mech player"... How can some people think they saw everything about mech in a few months/weeks/games?
Edit : Damn ,didn't realise i wrote so much. I would just like to add that i don't want to frighten anyone, i just want everyone to calm down and listen of each other instead of camping on their own position... and here, i talk about Mech lovers, "pro who think they master mech after 2 weeks", people who read korean's minds and know they don't think TvP mech is viable, and every other kind of people i mentioned or which is posting on these threads
I don't think it is really viable. You can win if the protoss doesn't play well or makes mistakes, but over the last few weeks I feel protoss players have always getting better and better and fighting against mech. I still win games as a mid master player, but games which I feel I have the lead in(and I think I would've won a couple of weeks ago) are getting closer or I am loosing.
The mech army is just to weak in a straight up fight against a toss while harass relies on your opponent playing bad and you don't really have "building killers" that are mobile. So yeah it just comes down to a death ball which is weak enough to be able to get overwhelmed if you don't have signifant lead/opponent is playing bad.
Edit: But on the question of the thread, I'd most certainly say bio is stronger than mech in TvP. Ofcourse not in a straight up engagement, but you can choose your engagements better, can keep the toss on the backfoot easier and force mistakes.
Edit: I wanted to stay out of those completely useless BS discussions of two groups of people yelling at each other without arguments.
BUT: To everyone who says it's bad because GSL Terrans don't do it. By that logic you should get 2 Roach Warrants in 30% of your games and never ever research the Zergling attackspeed and try to get baneling Speed only 4 out of 5 games.
GSL players also make mistakes. GSL players also choose wrong strategies.
Saw how easy Sea won against a lot of Protoss players with almost pure Tanks? He did that even in tournaments. Goody has success with it. Dragon makes it work. Terrible no-name players manage to beat good Protoss players with Mech.
That all doesn't matter once you lost the third game in a row, obviously the problem is the game and not you. . . . That's the problem of our generation. . .
If you want to play mech, PLAY MECH. Who is to tell YOU that it is studid?
For a long time a Phoenix opening in PvZ was regarded is complete BS. Now it is 100% standard.
The most important thing is always to not be discouraged easily. Mech is so different from Bio it is close to learning a new race. Of course you will get worse results for a long time but that doesn't mean it's bad. If you want to go Mech, DO IT FFS. Mayb MAYBE to win a GSL you should rather train Bio. That doesn't matter for anyone in this forum. So, you know, just do it!
Or don't and get better grades and live better in a couple of years
I exclusively meched vs toss in WoL, and still in HotS. Why? Because I don't have godlike micro. My micro is good enough in TvT and TvZ, my early game micro is probably at least equal to that if others at my level, but with larger groups my micro just isn't awesome, so going bio vs toss was always an autoloss for me in WoL (granted I haven't tried it in a long time, but then I also have to relearn it, so I just stick with mech). One option was all-inning every toss, but thats now also pretty much impossible with planetary nexus. So mech it is.
So then we got mech. Imo the only reason it sometimes works is because of the toss not being used to it. When they realise their enormous mobility advantage that is much larger difference than between bio and toss deathball they should pretty much always win, unless they are way behind. And that was then also the often used WoL mech build: open with banshee harrasment. See toss panic, play horribly. Meanwhile you got map control and make your army. Small detail in HotS: banshee play heavily nerfed. Crap...
Alternative I see being used in streams is mainly hellbat drops (/widow mines), toss proceed to panic and lose half their mineral line. But that won't continue forever. Especially because there is no real reason to use hellbat drops only with mech.
Now at this point both from own experience, but also what I see in streams, is generally to have a way larger army and keep bashing his until it dies. Not exactly cost effective encounters, but you are ahead and while you keep bashing his army he can't use his mobility to ruin your day. And this is where you have to win the game (and hope he didn't do a tech switch into mass voids).
Still didn't win? In WoL it was easy: transition into battlecruisers. The longer I stay on mech the larger my chance to lose, simply because in WoL I had around two large mech engagements I could win before the toss would realise he should make many immortals/archons. In HotS at this point I am completely at a loss. Battlecruisers get so horribly hardcountered by tempests (and improved voids, but mainly tempests). Tempests in general are for me pretty much impossible to counter (of course vikings, but I mean tempests + toss deathball. PDDs mainly extend your suffering, but still means you have to engage into his deathball). When toss realise they only need a bunch of tempests and can then better add carriers it becomes even worse.
And all that is imo kinda stupid that blizzard specifically stated they wanted to boost mech vs toss, and in my opinion it is worse than in WoL. And yeah we got hellbats, regarding hellbats, in my attempts to make it work I am planning to switch to hellions instead of hellbats. I survived with them in WoL (granted without all the new toss toys), but I really think hellbats are overrated. Yes they are good against mass chargelots. But they are very vulnerably to storms, take longer to strip immortal shields, their extra HP doesn't work against archons, and they are so freaking slow. Seeker missiles are nice, but also toss is the race most resistant to them.
My last game vs toss the result was me losing 4 maxed out mech armies without much I could do against his deathball. For me it is simply now either winning in midgame or losing. I don't have a lategame transition anymore. Actually considering transitioning to bio lategame, I am that desperate. But air doesn't work anymore, and when staying on mech they will transition to air and beat it. Or just make enough immortals/archons and roll over it.
I'm in Masters (and yes, it means I still suck), but I think going mech in TvP is dependent on dealing a certain amount of damage early on, in the way of either a hellion drop or hellbat drop. Since Protoss goes for such quick robos these days, a hellion drop, with two hellions coming into the natural is pretty much guaranteed to do damage, as they just won't have enough units out to deal with it. After this, you continue with the drop pressure until you can get your 3 bases up.
It depends on their composition, but I feel that most of the time you want to go hellbat heavy, with just a few tanks, and aim for a push around 130-140 supply. After this, get ghosts. You also need to scout for an air transition. If you see void production, this isn't even a problem, because you switch into widow mines. The voids won't be able to engage your army, and will either get killed or become useless. Tempest is the real problem, but you have to remember that they're slow. Even a mech army can out position them. And when you see it coming, you just throw down a ton of starports and transition into viking/raven, with those widow mines. If tempest chase you, you lay down your mines behind your army. Scan, kill observer, they can't follow, and you proceed to kill their bases. Works better on some maps than others, but that's basically the strat that I use.
I find mech to be far too clunky against Protoss. Aside from the times where a lucky harass does game-ending damage, the upgrades and units are just too gas-intensive and slow-building to stand a chance against late-mid to late game strength of the Protoss.
Hellbats are cute and widowmines are handy, but this isn't Broodwar. Mech still sucks compared to bio. It's hard to even think of a Protoss unit composition that can adequately force a mech response. Practically everything can be killed with the correct balance of Marine, Marauder, Ghost, Viking, Medivac.
On May 25 2013 04:16 dUTtrOACh wrote:Hellbats are cute and widowmines are handy, but this isn't Broodwar. Mech still sucks compared to bio. It's hard to even think of a Protoss unit composition that can adequately force a mech response. Practically everything can be killed with the correct balance of Marine, Marauder, Ghost, Viking, Medivac.
Closest one I suppose is one base blink all-in. Siege tanks play critical role in defense vs that. Few hellbats could count too if you see P going chargelot heavy composition, but yeah that's not really forced.
On May 24 2013 01:46 gingerfluffmuff wrote: 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.
I think I just fell in love with your Assumption, Reality, and Conclusion ^_^
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?
To me, the success of mech TvP is contingent on the two points TheDwf outlined, I would rather not base my play on the shortcomings of the other player, but aim to improve myself further with standard bio, in the fashion that the best players do.
I think people tend to ignore the fact that mech can be viable AND a poor choice of strategy at the same time. Just because something is viable, doesn't mean it should be used. Is walking a viable way for me to get 20 miles way? Yea. Am I going to choose doing that over using my car? No. (from watching the HTOmario video posted in this thread) It's possible that mech just requires harder in game decisions than bio and is also less forgiving. That would be a good reason for a professional player to stay away from using mech strategies, dont you think?
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
cause if mech is viable, then it will lead to a more diverse match up in TvP. Mech is also a distinctively different style because of how immobile it is compare to bio which SHOULD lead protoss protoss respond differently to counter this style. This will lead to a more different game. Protoss complain about not seeing carrier at all, with mech viable then carrier automatically become more viable. This is just another example and protoss will also have the option of playing a more mobile style and mass expanding abusing the immobility of mech rather then just massing death ball. How is this not good for everyone and the game itself?
Dont believe me just look at TvZ. Zerg respond differently to mech by going roach heavy mainly and then when dealing with bio they go ling mutas bane.
I'll expand here to give context to my previous question. There are always tech trees that each race have as their premier composition against another just because of what units the enemy can produce. For example, when Protoss is playing against Terran, they will usually not opt to go full Stargate tech. Not to say that Stargate opening is not viable when played correctly, but Stargate mid-game just has a lot of downsides against a race who produces the counter to 4/5 Stargate units out of its base building.. This is why even after HoTS, Protoss still go Robo tech transition into HT or vise versa and Terran does not produce mech. They are both playing their strengths.
There is a philosophical meta-game issue here. Strategically Mech is an attempt to get supply-efficiency out of high value units in order to form an immobile deathball and attain victory through crushing your enemy in the slow push. The problem is that this is the exact description of the entire Protoss race. It is the Terran playing on the Protoss' turf, but failing because they will simply never have that supply effectiveness to rival the Protoss. Protoss has this supply efficiency built into every single unit, not just one tech tree.
With this in mind, the Terran comes out victorious in this matchup because they don't try to rival the Protoss at what they are good at. They instead exploit the Protoss' racial weaknesses with high maneuverability and tactical strikes on the Protoss economy. Much the same, this is something the Protoss can never truly rival the Terran at. They could try to go for multi-prong Warp Prism harass with a Zealot/Stalker/Sentry composition, but will they ever trade efficiently against a Terran who is doing multi-prong Medivac harass with Marine/Marauder/Widow Mine composition? No; the Protoss is not the race for base racing and this is not something that could be balanced back in without completely overhauling their racial philosophy.
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~
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.
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?
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Funny you call people biased.
In an empty field PDDs will hardcounter tempests yes, but in a real game it is a bit different.
You have several possibilities. One is that his tempests are happily firing at you from long range, with his army near his tempests. Then yes PDDs block his shots, but that isn't more than a very short term solution, he will simply keep shooting until your ravens + PDDs run out of energy. So then the only thing you achieved is buying some time but losing seeker missiles. Not exactly what I call a hardcounter.
So I guess we still have to attack into his army, not the favourite position for a mech army, which rather has the other one attacking. Then we throw down some PDDs now. Always nice since they also soak up stalker shots, but that is immediatly the problem: those stalker shots will quickly drain energy of PDDs.
But the toss has no stalkers, then I guess he has an air army. His HTs can feedback them, and he can also take them down in no time with some voids. But if that doesn't happen, then yes PDDs hardcounter tempests.
But to say in general PDDs hardcounter tempests means you are only looking at a one on one basis, which is close minded and biased.
On May 24 2013 03:37 Qikz wrote: If Mech is so bad, why would people like Kop and Strelok play it against Toss? Why would there have been lots of Terrans playing Mech vs Toss in the initial WCS Europe Qualifiers against Toss?
Why was Noblesse still playing 2-bases timings into third at the end of WoL? Why is GuMiho still playing 2-bases gimmicks in TvZ? You ask them. They have their reasons. They believe in their builds. This is what they have prepared. They think their opponent won't have the answers, or that they will prevail anyway due to the experience asymmetry. Etc.
I am not pro, but I went mech in the last game of my bo3 against dignitasDreAm at the WCS Challenger League qualifier despite thinking mech is bad in TvP. Why? Honestly, I barely know myself. I used a build that I fully knew was a complete gimmick into another gimmick and it ended up working (because of luck). Just like GuMiho's 2-bases gimmicks worked in some games at Code S level against HyuN and LosirA.
Another little anecdote to illustrate my point. At the beginning of the last season, I was playing mech quite frequently against Protoss. I ran into a barcode Protoss that I won convincingly. After the game, I checked his rank and saw he was #1 Master P in Europe (i. e. of all the Protoss Masters in Europe, he was the first; not just his division). Yet his reactions to my mech play had been abysmal. The day after, I was watching ForGG's stream. He was playing standard bio against some Protoss and ended up being stomped. I checked who his opponent was, and lo, it was the very barcode who had lost against me the day before. He had totally crumbled when facing something unusual, yet obviously knew his affair when it came to standard play. Moral of the story: iffy, unorthodox stuff sometimes wins while standard play wouldn't. Doesn't mean that gimmicks are better; most likely that opponents were simply thrown off balance, reacted poorly and thus got rolled.
I know very well that some EU pros use mech in TvP. I'm top50 GM this season and I myself used mech several times against P, including vs pros such as Bling or Feast. And all my wins, without exception, obeyed to one or several of the following laws:
1. Massive econ advantage through build orders or harass (or both); 2. Protoss having poor reactions, e. g. sticking to horrible stuff like Stalkers/Colossi (e. g. Strelok vs finale, Daybreak); 3. Particular case of the above point, Protoss not scouting a 2-bases timing/all-in and a) taking third + teching 5 different things at once, then not having enough when a mech army with twice the size arrives or b) suiciding their own 2-bases timing/all-in into you, such as my game against dDreAm.
I really don't know how you can say that mech armies trade well against Protoss ground. The last game I saw mech winning against P at high level was Bunny vs Jogginghose on Whirlwind for the WCS Challenger League RO40. Bunny had decimated Jogginghose's economy with Hellbat drops (see the first law), was like max against 135 supply and still struggled to win the first main engagement. Actually he was technically defeated despite probably having +20-30 supply in the fight. In my experience this is what always happens. There's also a ByuN vs puCK (?) ladder game on Newkirk Precinct that illustrates the same thing. ByuN is convincingly ahead the whole game yet still fails to trade properly against mass Immortals and ends up losing while he would probably win 25-0 effortlessly with bio against the same opponent. There are countless examples of this. Strelok vs finale (unsure) on Newkirk Precinct was the same story. Tanks are fine/good against the following Protoss ground units: Sentries, Stalkers, Colossi and Templars. What do Protoss play? Mostly Zealots/Archons/Immortals, i. e. the units against which the Tank is complete garbage. Want to know why Tanks are bad against Protoss? Look no further:
Shots required for a x/3 Tank to kill ground units, rounded down or up (i. e. if it technically takes 1.02 shots to kill the unit, such as a x/3 Tank against a stimmed Marine with CS, I noted 1, because realistically the splash damage from the other Tanks will finish the unit anyway).
Conclusion:
On March 29 2013 07:19 TheDwf wrote: Mech still seems in the gutter in TvP. Hellbats are nice, Mines are nice, having valid openings is nice, but in the end none of this is enough because the problem is always the same: Tanks just lack firepower against Protoss. The primitive trade of mech is "mobility vs firepower," and with Tanks against Protoss you just give up the former without having the latter in return. Protoss barely raise their eyebrow when thinking about 30 Tanks, while even Ultralisks will anxiously look at each other to determine who should charge first against such a critical mass.
Mech is viable in TvT and TvZ because Tanks, past a certain point, completely dominate other ground units in those match-ups. Even Ultralisks, even Swarmhosts lose to critical mass of Tanks. As such, there is that accumulation dynamics which forces your Terran opponent into either "as many Tanks" or an air transition, and your Zerg opponent into Vipers or broods. So both in TvT and TvZ, Tanks → Tanks + Vikings/Ravens (and Battlecruisers in the end) is valid against whichever lategame transition your opponent is playing to deal with your Tank army.
But there is no such thing in TvP, not only because the first phase of the plan – get mass Tanks* and threaten to roll everything – doesn't work, but because the last phase i. e. (ghost)mech + air is still completely stomped by air/Templars. Again I have no idea how you can say that Vikings/Ravens beats air/Templars: Vikings are horribly frail for their expensive cost and have severe overkill issues when shift focusing individual units. Tempests massively outrange them (+6!) so dropping pdds wouldn't help since they would simply move away, or fire until all pdds run out of energy.
*Naturally you can replace Tanks with Thors in TvP, or mix both, or use more varied compositions, including whatever you want, add Ghosts, etc., it will come down the same.
Tanks + Vikings/Ravens could compete to some extent against broods/infests at the end of WoL, particularly post-IT nerfs, because you had the upper hand in the range war: Tanks outranged infestors (13 vs 9 + radius) while Vikings' range was roughly similar to broodlords (9 vs 9.5). In HotS, the 15 range nonsense bashes everything, especially as Terran doesn't have free units generators to initiate a cold war or Vipers to draw Tempests in the range of your units. Tanks are outranged, Vikings are outranged, Ravens are outranged, Battlecruisers (Yamato) are outranged, Ghosts (EMP) are outranged. You're bound to slowly crumble against his continuous siege.
On May 24 2013 08:12 Qikz wrote: The thing I don't understand about with this, is surely if there's people playing mech only, that proves that it is somewhat viable to do the strat against toss? I wouldn't play mech only if I lost more than I won.
At the end of WoL, I was watching Taeja's stream and he was playing Sickness (a Protoss korean pro) on Ohana. Taeja went 3-bases Battlecruisers out of a few Marines and Tanks. And when I say 3-bases Battlecruisers, I mean he only built Battlecruisers after the few defensive early game units. Sickness kept playing according to his anti-bio autopilot and found himself very surprised when his zeals/archons/stalks/colossi attack on the fourth met 10 upgraded Battlecruisers. Taeja won easily.
Still, no one would claim that "only Battlecruisers" is a viable strategy in TvP. You can win lots of game, even at high levels, with iffy plans and builds, because your opponents don't scout and thus don't react, or react badly, or simply make severe mistakes that make them lose even if they were adapting correctly in the first place. To determine the viability of something, you have to examine what happens when your opponent knows the correct answers and execute them at least decently.
On May 24 2013 08:22 Pookie Monster wrote: Thinking you should be able to counter all that with just factory units is silly and if the protoss were able to counter your entire entire army composition with just robo units, terrans would call this game broken.
Except robo tech was always conceived as a support tech for gate units, while fact tech is supposed to be relatively autonomous (and is even more so in HotS compared to WoL, though Starport support is still needed in most cases).
About the kOp vs Oz game.
First, the very fact you all use this single example for top Korean play should make you feel uneasy: when you have only one example to back up your claims on hundreds of TvPs, you should ask yourself questions.
Second, this game is no exception to the aforementioned laws; it completely falls under the 3b one, i. e. Protoss going agressive play against a 2-bases timing, subsequently failing because—assuming no huge disparity in army size—there is no way to break a defensive mech position without bypassing terrain through Prism(s), and thus giving the Terran a massive advantage to comfortably prevail with his original plan. To add insult to injury, Oz wasted even more gas in a useless dark shrine (since kOp had a Raven, and then a Turret at the front) and DTs. Oz had his first Immortal out at 11'45, when kOp had already 7 Tanks and was 25 supply ahead. kOp was 35 supply ahead when he reached Oz's natural, who had only 3 Immortals and no Archon at 14'. Sounds like a standard MechvP game to you?
Whenever you intend to play a 2-bases mech timing or all-in in TvP, you virtually auto-win against all 2-bases frontal attacks which commit because there is no way that Immortal busts, Zealots/Archons/Templars or Colossi all-in will break through (or simply trade efficiently against) a fortified mech position with Mines and sieged Tanks. Again, I know this from first-hand experience since numerous Protoss have suicided their timings/all-ins into my defensive position while I was preparing my own attack. In this game, kOp perfectly scouted and prepared for the Blink Stalker attack, so even if Oz didn't lose his army he still spent a lot of gas on suboptimal units (Stalkers) while lacking an extra anti-mech tech such as Archons, a second robo (which came in effect too late in the game since he started it at 12'30) or a Stargate; thus it is only natural he got stomped afterwards. Hence the game proves absolutely nothing about the viability of mech: it proves that throwing the dice sometimes turns out badly.
On May 24 2013 19:26 Lyyna wrote: -The Mech Lover
Yeah, this is the problem with the emotional approach. One has to stay rational. When I am saying that mech isn't viable in TvP I am not saying this light-heartedly. I am not happy with that. I do love mech too and I came in HotS thinking I would play mech 100% of the time thanks to the new tools. I was playing mech 100% of the time in TvT and TvZ at the end of WoL, so you see, I am not a mech hater.
No. You can't say it's not possible to mech at high lvl (on the ladder i mean)
Thing is, no one is saying that. Saying mech isn't viable doesn't mean you can never win with it.
-Mech may, or may not be viable as a mainstream strategy. I think it is, but it requires a tons of experience, and some people need to accept the fact thay even if in terms of raw skill/ranking/results they are superior to some "mech players" here, they aren't as qualified as these "inferior mech players" to talk about Mech. Myself, even if it might be considered as a cocky behavior, i wouldn't hesitate to argue with any pro about TvP mech, why ? Because i have nearly 3 years of Mech TvP experience, more than 2 of these being 90%+ of my games played with mech. Do i know everything about Mech? No. But i know far more that some people here who assume that because they are supposed to be "better" due to their rank on the ladder or anything like that, and these people should really realise that and think about it. Do i mean that they should accept everything the experienced mech players say as fact? No. But these people should stop thinking they have the absolute knowledge of Mech TvP, able to theorycraft from scracth every single situation that may kill mech, and stuff like this, and understand that if some people practice mech since years, their advice might be slightly better that their "superior" theorycrafting. At least their advice should be heard instead of being dismissed and answered by some "i'm better than you and i know that mech doesn't work, you play only terrible players lolololol". Is it a bit cocky to write this ? Maybe. But for me, the cocky behavior is the one used by people who thinks they are in the mind of koreans pro knowning their advices/pratice about mech TvP, and who thinks that because they are better in rank/result/reputation, what they say about something they don't know should be considered more valuable that what people experimented on the subject are saying. Mech is hard to learn. Stop thinking that because you are GM and you play pro every day, your 1 month mech practice can show you everything about mech. After 3 years of mech i don't even consider myself close of a "solid mech player"... How can some people think they saw everything about mech in a few months/weeks/games?
This is where you're deluded. Sorry if I sound harsh in the following but any Terran GM will instinctively have better mech TvP than you with better builds, better micro, better macro, better positioning, better everything basically. The fact you play mech since 3 years doesn't make you "more qualified" at all to talk about mech than someone with higher skill but less games. You certainly played more TvP mech than me, yet I'm ready to bet you would have nothing to teach me at all.
Isn't there always this guy, from time to time, who arises from the shadows to teach us the ways of "sky Terran" with his revolutionary PF on natural into 4-port banshees? What would you answer him if he tells you "I play sky Terran since 3 years, I know I'm only Diamond but I'm more qualified than you to discuss this!" after you criticize his gimmicks and label them as such? Obviously mech in TvP is not as bad as this, but you see my point.
You say we are not in the minds of Korean pros. Admittedly, telepathy is still to be invented. But what? Again the conspiracy, again the secret no one ever found? Where's the sanctuary? You think KeSPA Terrans wouldn't even try mech after coming from BW? You think they wouldn't try their best to make it work? You think people are happy playing bio 24/7 in TvP? No. People try mech, with various builds and compositions, see that they often struggle horribly to win even with an economic advantage, get regularly bashed by inferior players doing simplistic 1a and must acknowledge that the mythical "hidden potential" of the thing just doesn't exist.
You have an easy time saying the thing "isn't fully explored". It's true that the island isn't fully explored, but for good reasons: people accosted, saw the searing crater at the center of the island and quickly understood they couldn't live here, so only hardcore islanders remain, fascinated by the beauty of the landscape. "Exploring" mech vs P is like "exploring" a desert always hoping for an oasis, yet all you find after months and months is sand, sand and more sand.
On May 26 2013 02:42 headnut wrote: you realize that pdd hardcounters tempest?
Your statement makes as little sense as saying FFs "hardcounter" Roaches.
My opinion for why mech isn't used as often is because of the lack of synergy with medivacs, which are key to harassment and drops in TvP. Drop play is bigger than ever with buffed medivacs(which got put in at the same time as the mech buffs), and bio has the best synergy with medivacs for drops, so that's what people are using.
If mech had been buffed without any change at all to medivacs, I'm betting we'd see more mech play.
Great post TheDwf! I agree with the notion that the main problem with mech is the Siege Tank; it basically does 35 dmg to most protoss units, units that have a much higher HP base then T/Z counterparts. Mech will remain a gimmick until something is done with the Tank, no matter how strong they make Hellbats or the WMs.
BTW, the quote in my sig is one of the first things Coach Park said about SC2.
-Mech may, or may not be viable as a mainstream strategy. I think it is, but it requires a tons of experience, and some people need to accept the fact thay even if in terms of raw skill/ranking/results they are superior to some "mech players" here, they aren't as qualified as these "inferior mech players" to talk about Mech. Myself, even if it might be considered as a cocky behavior, i wouldn't hesitate to argue with any pro about TvP mech, why ? Because i have nearly 3 years of Mech TvP experience, more than 2 of these being 90%+ of my games played with mech. Do i know everything about Mech? No. But i know far more that some people here who assume that because they are supposed to be "better" due to their rank on the ladder or anything like that, and these people should really realise that and think about it. Do i mean that they should accept everything the experienced mech players say as fact? No. But these people should stop thinking they have the absolute knowledge of Mech TvP, able to theorycraft from scracth every single situation that may kill mech, and stuff like this, and understand that if some people practice mech since years, their advice might be slightly better that their "superior" theorycrafting. At least their advice should be heard instead of being dismissed and answered by some "i'm better than you and i know that mech doesn't work, you play only terrible players lolololol". Is it a bit cocky to write this ? Maybe. But for me, the cocky behavior is the one used by people who thinks they are in the mind of koreans pro knowning their advices/pratice about mech TvP, and who thinks that because they are better in rank/result/reputation, what they say about something they don't know should be considered more valuable that what people experimented on the subject are saying. Mech is hard to learn. Stop thinking that because you are GM and you play pro every day, your 1 month mech practice can show you everything about mech. After 3 years of mech i don't even consider myself close of a "solid mech player"... How can some people think they saw everything about mech in a few months/weeks/games?
This is where you're deluded. Sorry if I sound harsh in the following but any Terran GM will instinctively have better mech TvP than you with better builds, better micro, better macro, better positioning, better everything basically. The fact you play mech since 3 years doesn't make you "more qualified" at all to talk about mech than someone with higher skill but less games. You certainly played more TvP mech than me, yet I'm ready to bet you would have nothing to teach me at all.
Isn't there always this guy, from time to time, who arises from the shadows to teach us the ways of "sky Terran" with his revolutionary PF on natural into 4-port banshees? What would you answer him if he tells you "I play sky Terran since 3 years, I know I'm only Diamond but I'm more qualified than you to discuss this!" after you criticize his gimmicks and label them as such? Obviously mech in TvP is not as bad as this, but you see my point.
You say we are not in the minds of Korean pros. Admittedly, telepathy is still to be invented. But what? Again the conspiracy, again the secret no one ever found? Where's the sanctuary? You think KeSPA Terrans wouldn't even try mech after coming from BW? You think they wouldn't try their best to make it work? You think people are happy playing bio 24/7 in TvP? No. People try mech, with various builds and compositions, see that they often struggle horribly to win even with an economic advantage, get regularly bashed by inferior players doing simplistic 1a and must acknowledge that the mythical "hidden potential" of the thing just doesn't exist.
You have an easy time saying the thing "isn't fully explored". It's true that the island isn't fully explored, but for good reasons: people accosted, saw the searing crater at the center of the island and quickly understood they couldn't live here, so only hardcore islanders remain, fascinated by the beauty of the landscape. "Exploring" mech vs P is like "exploring" a desert always hoping for an oasis, yet all you find after months and months is sand, sand and more sand.
My goal wasn't much to say 'i'm better with mech than you since i practice it since long', the main purpose of my post was adressed to some people here who thinks they can talk about mech while their own experience with mech is only theorycraft or a few games of totally random build/composition. And (without wanting to sound cocky, or anything like this : just want to be clear) i think that a few people (including myself) can still teach a lot ot other players, for the simple reason that these few players are able to win with mech, with show there is a difference between the few mech players and the others.
I see your point here, but the fact is that you'll often find out that even after a few weeks/months, that genius who came with that PFexpo into 4 port will stop playing his own strategy after finding unavoidable flaws, while the kind of players i targeted with my statements are the ones who are basically playing the same style for years and have great experience of most aspect of this one.
Hm, i don't want to talk about a conspiracy or anything , i just want to point the fact that TvT mech was in the same state of "totally unviable strat played only by a few fools" before becoming one of a mainstream ones (and that happened like 3 times in WoL..), and that we don't have any advice from koreans about it : maybe they find it unviable, maybe they find it viable but inferior to bio, maybe they find it almost viable besides a few flaws that make it unusable in pro games, etc. But saying "koreans don't use mech tvp so it's 100%trash" as a lot of people do is silly.
Just to add, on a personal note, i don't really care about these discussions - i always play like i want to play, regardless of what is considered viable or not, and i lost the will to endlessly fight for fight - i make my guides for whoever want to read it, i post replays for whoever wants to watch my play, i record vods for whoever want to hear my FP insight on TvP mech, but i don't want to go into that "is mech viable or not" fight (which of course i have to at, at least partly, when posting in these discussions), i have my opinion and don't see the point to argue (i don't mind arguing - i love that, but that get tiresome) with everyone. The main point of my posts is to point the silly attitude of some people, as i described in the first one, which basically mean any "mech tvp" discussion die quickly because both mech lovers and haters, mech-experienced and unexperienced people, master and bronze, will just camp on their position and make this pointless...
I don't want to make a map of that unexplored island : i just explored a part of it, enjoyed what i saw, settled here, and don't mind showing it to whoever is interesting, nothing more
On May 24 2013 03:37 Qikz wrote: If Mech is so bad, why would people like Kop and Strelok play it against Toss? Why would there have been lots of Terrans playing Mech vs Toss in the initial WCS Europe Qualifiers against Toss?
Why was Noblesse still playing 2-bases timings into third at the end of WoL? Why is GuMiho still playing 2-bases gimmicks in TvZ? You ask them. They have their reasons. They believe in their builds. This is what they have prepared. They think their opponent won't have the answers, or that they will prevail anyway due to the experience asymmetry. Etc.
I am not pro, but I went mech in the last game of my bo3 against dignitasDreAm at the WCS Challenger League qualifier despite thinking mech is bad in TvP. Why? Honestly, I barely know myself. I used a build that I fully knew was a complete gimmick into another gimmick and it ended up working (because of luck). Just like GuMiho's 2-bases gimmicks worked in some games at Code S level against HyuN and LosirA.
Another little anecdote to illustrate my point. At the beginning of the last season, I was playing mech quite frequently against Protoss. I ran into a barcode Protoss that I won convincingly. After the game, I checked his rank and saw he was #1 Master P in Europe (i. e. of all the Protoss Masters in Europe, he was the first; not just his division). Yet his reactions to my mech play had been abysmal. The day after, I was watching ForGG's stream. He was playing standard bio against some Protoss and ended up being stomped. I checked who his opponent was, and lo, it was the very barcode who had lost against me the day before. He had totally crumbled when facing something unusual, yet obviously knew his affair when it came to standard play. Moral of the story: iffy, unorthodox stuff sometimes wins while standard play wouldn't. Doesn't mean that gimmicks are better; most likely that opponents were simply thrown off balance, reacted poorly and thus got rolled.
I know very well that some EU pros use mech in TvP. I'm top50 GM this season and I myself used mech several times against P, including vs pros such as Bling or Feast. And all my wins, without exception, obeyed to one or several of the following laws:
1. Massive econ advantage through build orders or harass (or both); 2. Protoss having poor reactions, e. g. sticking to horrible stuff like Stalkers/Colossi (e. g. Strelok vs finale, Daybreak); 3. Particular case of the above point, Protoss not scouting a 2-bases timing/all-in and a) taking third + teching 5 different things at once, then not having enough when a mech army with twice the size arrives or b) suiciding their own 2-bases timing/all-in into you, such as my game against dDreAm.
I really don't know how you can say that mech armies trade well against Protoss ground. The last game I saw mech winning against P at high level was Bunny vs Jogginghose on Whirlwind for the WCS Challenger League RO40. Bunny had decimated Jogginghose's economy with Hellbat drops (see the first law), was like max against 135 supply and still struggled to win the first main engagement. Actually he was technically defeated despite probably having +20-30 supply in the fight. In my experience this is what always happens. There's also a ByuN vs puCK (?) ladder game on Newkirk Precinct that illustrates the same thing. ByuN is convincingly ahead the whole game yet still fails to trade properly against mass Immortals and ends up losing while he would probably win 25-0 effortlessly with bio against the same opponent. There are countless examples of this. Strelok vs finale (unsure) on Newkirk Precinct was the same story. Tanks are fine/good against the following Protoss ground units: Sentries, Stalkers, Colossi and Templars. What do Protoss play? Mostly Zealots/Archons/Immortals, i. e. the units against which the Tank is complete garbage. Want to know why Tanks are bad against Protoss? Look no further:
Shots required for a x/3 Tank to kill ground units, rounded down or up (i. e. if it technically takes 1.02 shots to kill the unit, such as a x/3 Tank against a stimmed Marine with CS, I noted 1, because realistically the splash damage from the other Tanks will finish the unit anyway).
On March 29 2013 07:19 TheDwf wrote: Mech still seems in the gutter in TvP. Hellbats are nice, Mines are nice, having valid openings is nice, but in the end none of this is enough because the problem is always the same: Tanks just lack firepower against Protoss. The primitive trade of mech is "mobility vs firepower," and with Tanks against Protoss you just give up the former without having the latter in return. Protoss barely raise their eyebrow when thinking about 30 Tanks, while even Ultralisks will anxiously look at each other to determine who should charge first against such a critical mass.
Mech is viable in TvT and TvZ because Tanks, past a certain point, completely dominate other ground units in those match-ups. Even Ultralisks, even Swarmhosts lose to critical mass of Tanks. As such, there is that accumulation dynamics which forces your Terran opponent into either "as many Tanks" or an air transition, and your Zerg opponent into Vipers or broods. So both in TvT and TvZ, Tanks → Tanks + Vikings/Ravens (and Battlecruisers in the end) is valid against whichever lategame transition your opponent is playing to deal with your Tank army.
But there is no such thing in TvP, not only because the first phase of the plan – get mass Tanks* and threaten to roll everything – doesn't work, but because the last phase i. e. (ghost)mech + air is still completely stomped by air/Templars. Again I have no idea how you can say that Vikings/Ravens beats air/Templars: Vikings are horribly frail for their expensive cost and have severe overkill issues when shift focusing individual units. Tempests massively outrange them (+6!) so dropping pdds wouldn't help since they would simply move away, or fire until all pdds run out of energy.
*Naturally you can replace Tanks with Thors in TvP, or mix both, or use more varied compositions, including whatever you want, add Ghosts, etc., it will come down the same.
Tanks + Vikings/Ravens could compete to some extent against broods/infests at the end of WoL, particularly post-IT nerfs, because you had the upper hand in the range war: Tanks outranged infestors (13 vs 9 + radius) while Vikings' range was roughly similar to broodlords (9 vs 9.5). In HotS, the 15 range nonsense bashes everything, especially as Terran doesn't have free units generators to initiate a cold war or Vipers to draw Tempests in the range of your units. Tanks are outranged, Vikings are outranged, Ravens are outranged, Battlecruisers (Yamato) are outranged, Ghosts (EMP) are outranged. You're bound to slowly crumble against his continuous siege.
On May 24 2013 08:12 Qikz wrote: The thing I don't understand about with this, is surely if there's people playing mech only, that proves that it is somewhat viable to do the strat against toss? I wouldn't play mech only if I lost more than I won.
At the end of WoL, I was watching Taeja's stream and he was playing Sickness (a Protoss korean pro) on Ohana. Taeja went 3-bases Battlecruisers out of a few Marines and Tanks. And when I say 3-bases Battlecruisers, I mean he only built Battlecruisers after the few defensive early game units. Sickness kept playing according to his anti-bio autopilot and found himself very surprised when his zeals/archons/stalks/colossi attack on the fourth met 10 upgraded Battlecruisers. Taeja won easily.
Still, no one would claim that "only Battlecruisers" is a viable strategy in TvP. You can win lots of game, even at high levels, with iffy plans and builds, because your opponents don't scout and thus don't react, or react badly, or simply make severe mistakes that make them lose even if they were adapting correctly in the first place. To determine the viability of something, you have to examine what happens when your opponent knows the correct answers and execute them at least decently.
On May 24 2013 08:22 Pookie Monster wrote: Thinking you should be able to counter all that with just factory units is silly and if the protoss were able to counter your entire entire army composition with just robo units, terrans would call this game broken.
Except robo tech was always conceived as a support tech for gate units, while fact tech is supposed to be relatively autonomous (and is even more so in HotS compared to WoL, though Starport support is still needed in most cases).
About the kOp vs Oz game.
First, the very fact you all use this single example for top Korean play should make you feel uneasy: when you have only one example to back up your claims on hundreds of TvPs, you should ask yourself questions.
Second, this game is no exception to the aforementioned laws; it completely falls under the 3b one, i. e. Protoss going agressive play against a 2-bases timing, subsequently failing because—assuming no huge disparity in army size—there is no way to break a defensive mech position without bypassing terrain through Prism(s), and thus giving the Terran a massive advantage to comfortably prevail with his original plan. To add insult to injury, Oz wasted even more gas in a useless dark shrine (since kOp had a Raven, and then a Turret at the front) and DTs. Oz had his first Immortal out at 11'45, when kOp had already 7 Tanks and was 25 supply ahead. kOp was 35 supply ahead when he reached Oz's natural, who had only 3 Immortals and no Archon at 14'. Sounds like a standard MechvP game to you?
Whenever you intend to play a 2-bases mech timing or all-in in TvP, you virtually auto-win against all 2-bases frontal attacks which commit because there is no way that Immortal busts, Zealots/Archons/Templars or Colossi all-in will break through (or simply trade efficiently against) a fortified mech position with Mines and sieged Tanks. Again, I know this from first-hand experience since numerous Protoss have suicided their timings/all-ins into my defensive position while I was preparing my own attack. In this game, kOp perfectly scouted and prepared for the Blink Stalker attack, so even if Oz didn't lose his army he still spent a lot of gas on suboptimal units (Stalkers) while lacking an extra anti-mech tech such as Archons, a second robo (which came in effect too late in the game since he started it at 12'30) or a Stargate; thus it is only natural he got stomped afterwards. Hence the game proves absolutely nothing about the viability of mech: it proves that throwing the dice sometimes turns out badly.
Yeah, this is the problem with the emotional approach. One has to stay rational. When I am saying that mech isn't viable in TvP I am not saying this light-heartedly. I am not happy with that. I do love mech too and I came in HotS thinking I would play mech 100% of the time thanks to the new tools. I was playing mech 100% of the time in TvT and TvZ at the end of WoL, so you see, I am not a mech hater.
-Mech may, or may not be viable as a mainstream strategy. I think it is, but it requires a tons of experience, and some people need to accept the fact thay even if in terms of raw skill/ranking/results they are superior to some "mech players" here, they aren't as qualified as these "inferior mech players" to talk about Mech. Myself, even if it might be considered as a cocky behavior, i wouldn't hesitate to argue with any pro about TvP mech, why ? Because i have nearly 3 years of Mech TvP experience, more than 2 of these being 90%+ of my games played with mech. Do i know everything about Mech? No. But i know far more that some people here who assume that because they are supposed to be "better" due to their rank on the ladder or anything like that, and these people should really realise that and think about it. Do i mean that they should accept everything the experienced mech players say as fact? No. But these people should stop thinking they have the absolute knowledge of Mech TvP, able to theorycraft from scracth every single situation that may kill mech, and stuff like this, and understand that if some people practice mech since years, their advice might be slightly better that their "superior" theorycrafting. At least their advice should be heard instead of being dismissed and answered by some "i'm better than you and i know that mech doesn't work, you play only terrible players lolololol". Is it a bit cocky to write this ? Maybe. But for me, the cocky behavior is the one used by people who thinks they are in the mind of koreans pro knowning their advices/pratice about mech TvP, and who thinks that because they are better in rank/result/reputation, what they say about something they don't know should be considered more valuable that what people experimented on the subject are saying. Mech is hard to learn. Stop thinking that because you are GM and you play pro every day, your 1 month mech practice can show you everything about mech. After 3 years of mech i don't even consider myself close of a "solid mech player"... How can some people think they saw everything about mech in a few months/weeks/games?
This is where you're deluded. Sorry if I sound harsh in the following but any Terran GM will instinctively have better mech TvP than you with better builds, better micro, better macro, better positioning, better everything basically. The fact you play mech since 3 years doesn't make you "more qualified" at all to talk about mech than someone with higher skill but less games. You certainly played more TvP mech than me, yet I'm ready to bet you would have nothing to teach me at all.
Isn't there always this guy, from time to time, who arises from the shadows to teach us the ways of "sky Terran" with his revolutionary PF on natural into 4-port banshees? What would you answer him if he tells you "I play sky Terran since 3 years, I know I'm only Diamond but I'm more qualified than you to discuss this!" after you criticize his gimmicks and label them as such? Obviously mech in TvP is not as bad as this, but you see my point.
You say we are not in the minds of Korean pros. Admittedly, telepathy is still to be invented. But what? Again the conspiracy, again the secret no one ever found? Where's the sanctuary? You think KeSPA Terrans wouldn't even try mech after coming from BW? You think they wouldn't try their best to make it work? You think people are happy playing bio 24/7 in TvP? No. People try mech, with various builds and compositions, see that they often struggle horribly to win even with an economic advantage, get regularly bashed by inferior players doing simplistic 1a and must acknowledge that the mythical "hidden potential" of the thing just doesn't exist.
You have an easy time saying the thing "isn't fully explored". It's true that the island isn't fully explored, but for good reasons: people accosted, saw the searing crater at the center of the island and quickly understood they couldn't live here, so only hardcore islanders remain, fascinated by the beauty of the landscape. "Exploring" mech vs P is like "exploring" a desert always hoping for an oasis, yet all you find after months and months is sand, sand and more sand.
On May 26 2013 02:42 headnut wrote: you realize that pdd hardcounters tempest?
Your statement makes as little sense as saying FFs "hardcounter" Roaches.
You seem to feel really strongly about this, such a wall of text. Mech vs Toss is not the same thing it was in BW, just like everything else in SC2, there may be similar things in BW but their not the same. The tank costs 25 more gas and a whole extra supply while protoss got a dragoon that does 50 damage to armored and warp in and 200 mineral arbiters.
Tanks are not what they were against Toss, Blizz has done this very purposefully, for whatever reason they looked at Mech vs P and decided to change everything.
So T in SC2, as designed very purposefully by Blizzard is meant to be the aggressor, the same is true even with mech in HotS. Hellbat drops, widow mine drops, a banshee here and there, just some kind of aggression is needed from T to capitalize on T's midgame advantage. You can' sit back and mass pure tanks anymore. Those tanks are 3 supply now, you can't even make the amount you'd need to make a P ground army disappear (well you could but like one Tempest...lol) need support, in the form of hellbats and mines and some odd starport units here and there.
Mech does not work in the same way it does in TvT and TvZ. Terran does not work in the same exact way it did in BW. The game has changed as well as the play. All that being said you're right that mech in the BW style is not viable, it never was and it never will be. But mech in the SC2 style is at the very least "unexplored" but in no way not viable. The beauty of Sc2 is that even if mech becomes popular enough vs protoss that they actually start to account for it you can simply switch to back to bio play and own a prepared anti mech protoss.
TL;DR BW and Sc2 are similar yet different games and mech works differently in both games but just because it is different does not make it not a viable way to play. Terran in Sc2 (as stated several times by Blizz) is the agressive race and that is true even with mech what with hellbat and or widow mines drops or whatever you want to make and attack with I guess.
Did amateur D+/ C+ rated people in BW come out with new strategies and claim they are "viable"? What happened in SC2 that if you are diamond+ people start to think they can actually invent new all round "viable" strategies?
I'm wandering what someone like Flash or Innovation would think about foreign posters that claim to have "solved" mech...They should learn English ASAP and get on reading all the guides, that GSL money has never been easier
On May 26 2013 05:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: Did amateur D+/ C+ rated people in BW come out with new strategies and claim they are "viable"? What happened in SC2 that if you are diamond+ people start to think they can actually invent new all round "viable" strategies?
I'm wandering what someone like Flash or Innovation would think about foreign posters that claim to have "solved" mech...They should learn English ASAP and get on reading all the guides, that GSL money has never been easier
While I think my opinion regarding TvP mech is clear, such posts are imo just really stupid. If we followed your logic we get even more what you already now see alot: many people only mindlessly following the strats used in Code S, because if it isn't used in Code S, how could it possibly be viable?
Just because it works for Flash, doesn't mean it works for you. And more important, just because it doesn't work for Flash, really doesn't mean it can't work for you. It is a strategy game, which means it isn't actually forbidden to think of your own strategy. And sure, the vast majority of the new 'strategies' invented by non-GM players are completely useless in GSL. But then those players don't play in GSL. And since at the same time many people share your mindset: only Code S players can make viable strategies, so I don't have to worry about countering anything that isn't written down in the BO, those strategies can work fine at levels of us mortals. Even though they are far less refined than what the opponent who is mindlessly copying a BO uses.
More ontopic, I do also agree that TheDwf has a very nice summary. One reason I can think of to do a midgame mech push after having gotten significantly ahead is that it is less volatile: against a competent toss I don't think you trade cost effectively, but at the same time you have less chance that two storms completely decimate your army when you weren't paying attention for a second.
On May 26 2013 06:10 SHODAN wrote: Lynna, mechanical units =/= mech. mech will always be defined by positional-based play with siege tanks as the core unit.
Which is exactly what i do... i may not blindly mass tanks like some people would love to , but the way i play is still totally based on tanks and positionning... and i even think this is one of the reason i can decently with mech : because even if my play is tank/position-based, my army composition is based on the right units to support tank
On May 26 2013 05:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: Did amateur D+/ C+ rated people in BW come out with new strategies and claim they are "viable"? What happened in SC2 that if you are diamond+ people start to think they can actually invent new all round "viable" strategies?
I'm wandering what someone like Flash or Innovation would think about foreign posters that claim to have "solved" mech...They should learn English ASAP and get on reading all the guides, that GSL money has never been easier
While I think my opinion regarding TvP mech is clear, such posts are imo just really stupid. If we followed your logic we get even more what you already now see alot: many people only mindlessly following the strats used in Code S, because if it isn't used in Code S, how could it possibly be viable?
Just because it works for Flash, doesn't mean it works for you. And more important, just because it doesn't work for Flash, really doesn't mean it can't work for you. It is a strategy game, which means it isn't actually forbidden to think of your own strategy. And sure, the vast majority of the new 'strategies' invented by non-GM players are completely useless in GSL. But then those players don't play in GSL. And since at the same time many people share your mindset: only Code S players can make viable strategies, so I don't have to worry about countering anything that isn't written down in the BO, those strategies can work fine at levels of us mortals. Even though they are far less refined than what the opponent who is mindlessly copying a BO uses.
They are stupid only if you have reading comprehension problems.
When we talk about a strategy being good or bad or viable or whatever, we talk about the highest level of play. What YOU do on the ladder is unimportant to the grand scheme of things and has no bearing whatsoever on how good strategies are. Bad play at non-pro levels makes almost any build/ strategy possible, should we talk about BC rushes to?
FYI, i've played mech exclusively in WOL from release, rated around diamond and masters depending on how much time i had to play. This of course has fuck all to do with how good or bad mech was, it was just me having fun and making mistakes against people that did the same, with the added advantage that my opponents (Protoss) did not have any experience against mech.
Sapphire, that's all well and good, but the question asked didn't ever mention the pro level.
If it works up to GM level, which it does. It's viable for the majority of people to do., Anyone GM or less should be able to pull it off with good play and it works. if it works, that means it's viable. It may not work at WCS Korea Premier level, we can't say as nobody has ever tried it in a telivised game. I would say that less than 1% of the forums population are even pros, let alone play at that level so why would we even bother talking about what's viable for Flash and Innovation to do? Who would you be speaking at? He's asking the population of this forum, who vary from GM, Masters all the way to Bronze and there's been people like myself who have come out and said mech is weaker than bio in terms of versatility, but can still be used at our levels.
I'm going to stop talking about this subject now as it's infuriating to speak to a brick wall, but I like to think I've made my point.
Good post dwf. Pretty much says it all. Sad thing is blizzard fails to recognize all of that and beyond. The tempest being at 4 supply is essentially a big middle finger to all people that wanted mech tvp to be viable in HOTS.
Bio + hellbat is 20x better, you get the benefit of hellbat drops + the only Terran army that can actually attack Protoss in many places and be cost effective.
There's very easy ways that blizzard could make mech tvp viable guys. Don't think because people are saying it's not viable that it couldn't be. Just know that blizzard continually refuses to do anything about it purposely.
They said they wanted mech tvp viable, they completely went back on that word and essentially gave up on it/let it be a failure. This was very obvious to me during the beta when dkim had his brain set on making the hellbat a bio unit, and when they actually buffed the tempest to 4 supply and other things.
Can't say i didn't try guys, but there weren't many people championing the matter during the beta, especially on the blizz feedback forums that went directly to them =/ i wrote page long posts and basically gave them the blueprints on how to make mech tvp viable and it seems like they just ignored it all and said "NAAAAAAH, that'll never work, let's just put in the hellbat and call it a day."
The biggest mistake myself and the community made was getting blizzard to get rid of the warhound. Yes, it was the right call to remove it but we were all under the assumption they would actually replace it or compensate for it's removal and buff mech tvp to be more viable in some way, or tone down immortals or something.
Instead, they just removed it and let beta go on for another 3 months with no real improvements to mech tvp other than "drop dem hellbats."
On May 26 2013 06:27 Qikz wrote: Sapphire, that's all well and good, but the question asked didn't ever mention the pro level.
If it works up to GM level, which it does. It's viable for the majority of people to do., Anyone GM or less should be able to pull it off with good play and it works. if it works, that means it's viable. It may not work at WCS Korea Premier level, we can't say as nobody has ever tried it in a telivised game. I would say that less than 1% of the forums population are even pros, let alone play at that level so why would we even bother talking about what's viable for Flash and Innovation to do? Who would you be speaking at? He's asking the population of this forum, who vary from GM, Masters all the way to Bronze and there's been people like myself who have come out and said mech is weaker than bio in terms of versatility, but can still be used at our levels.
I'm going to stop talking about this subject now as it's infuriating to speak to a brick wall, but I like to think I've made my point.
Finally a good point! Time to differentiate the "what i play" from the "what i watch".
You are right of course from a "playing the game" perspective. But then, mech was "viable" even in WOL to about master EU level, many have showed it and i know it to. If this is the point of the thread then great, mech is perfectly viable from bronze to master/ low GM (WOL and HOTS) and we have the vods and replays to show it. We also have some worker rush starts for bronze as an added bonus.
The impression i get though, is that people use their amateur play experiences to pass judgement on the state of mech at all levels, including top level pro. They talk about things like: the Koreans just don't explore it, they can't be bothered to try since bio is good, they are stubborn, solving mech, etc.
When Blizzard promised to make mech viable in HOTS, i'm fairly sure they were talking about the pro level. To make diversity in part for the players, but mostly for us as fans.
There is a lot of great conversations going on that I find picking the right ones to respond too might prove difficult. I wish to say that mech isn't even close to being fully explored. Through hundreds of games and facing top 16 gms and doing pretty good I see my style and their responses constantly changing and evolving.
The thing is that bio is much more practiced and refined. Until mech really gets the attention it deserves we can't accurately judge how good it can be.
On May 26 2013 05:56 Sapphire.lux wrote: Did amateur D+/ C+ rated people in BW come out with new strategies and claim they are "viable"? What happened in SC2 that if you are diamond+ people start to think they can actually invent new all round "viable" strategies?
I'm wandering what someone like Flash or Innovation would think about foreign posters that claim to have "solved" mech...They should learn English ASAP and get on reading all the guides, that GSL money has never been easier
there have been plenty of times where I've seen pro players do things that are slightly unconventional - along the lines of what people who mess around with unorthodox builds on the ladder would do - but they actually won't have their builds as fleshed out as these lower level "scrubs" do. An example would be how pros never really utilized mass nuke play lategame tvz, like how Avilo talked about ages ago. It's such an obviously powerful strat that barely got implemented on the highest level of play.
On May 24 2013 12:14 apeiro wrote: I don't understand why everyone wants mech to work in TvP so much. Why should every tech tree be viable in every matchup?
cause if mech is viable, then it will lead to a more diverse match up in TvP. Mech is also a distinctively different style because of how immobile it is compare to bio which SHOULD lead protoss protoss respond differently to counter this style. This will lead to a more different game. Protoss complain about not seeing carrier at all, with mech viable then carrier automatically become more viable. This is just another example and protoss will also have the option of playing a more mobile style and mass expanding abusing the immobility of mech rather then just massing death ball. How is this not good for everyone and the game itself?
Dont believe me just look at TvZ. Zerg respond differently to mech by going roach heavy mainly and then when dealing with bio they go ling mutas bane.
I'll expand here to give context to my previous question. There are always tech trees that each race have as their premier composition against another just because of what units the enemy can produce. For example, when Protoss is playing against Terran, they will usually not opt to go full Stargate tech. Not to say that Stargate opening is not viable when played correctly, but Stargate mid-game just has a lot of downsides against a race who produces the counter to 4/5 Stargate units out of its base building.. This is why even after HoTS, Protoss still go Robo tech transition into HT or vise versa and Terran does not produce mech. They are both playing their strengths.
There is a philosophical meta-game issue here. Strategically Mech is an attempt to get supply-efficiency out of high value units in order to form an immobile deathball and attain victory through crushing your enemy in the slow push. The problem is that this is the exact description of the entire Protoss race. It is the Terran playing on the Protoss' turf, but failing because they will simply never have that supply effectiveness to rival the Protoss. Protoss has this supply efficiency built into every single unit, not just one tech tree.
With this in mind, the Terran comes out victorious in this matchup because they don't try to rival the Protoss at what they are good at. They instead exploit the Protoss' racial weaknesses with high maneuverability and tactical strikes on the Protoss economy. Much the same, this is something the Protoss can never truly rival the Terran at. They could try to go for multi-prong Warp Prism harass with a Zealot/Stalker/Sentry composition, but will they ever trade efficiently against a Terran who is doing multi-prong Medivac harass with Marine/Marauder/Widow Mine composition? No; the Protoss is not the race for base racing and this is not something that could be balanced back in without completely overhauling their racial philosophy.
Protoss can not go full stargate tech because it just lead to the same style that is a death ball style and is largely the same as every other protoss death ball style. There is basically no difference in style from stargate to the classic protoss death ball style and it largely 1-A. Terran mech and terran bio is VERY distinctively different to the point that they look like different races. Can you say the same about protoss stargate and classic protoss death ball style? Also, terran mech is ALMOST possible and terran is unique that they already have the option to go both mech and bio it just that mech sucks. The terran race is unique because mech can be buffed without buffing the power of bio and vice versa (minus hellbat which were made biological for no good reason). Buffing any form of stargate unit will be too powerful because it synergize well with gateway unit and also stargate tech dont have a cheap mineral fodder so it impossible to go PURE stargate and the same can be said for PURE robo etc etc.
Regarding protoss not being able to play a mobile style is something I dont agree with. Like I said before, mech and bio are completely different and can be pretty much considered different race because it basically impossible to transition back into one or the other once you have committed to the other without being severally punished by a good player. Protoss is not as mobile as the terran bio BUT mech is also more immobile than the protoss death ball. Considering how immobile mech is, protoss mobility (even though it not as good as bio) should be good enough to deal with mech. People claim that terran dont explore mech but it is even MORE true that protoss dont explore their mobility option. Yes protoss playing a mobile style might suck but the only time it might be viable is against mech.
I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
Do you know any high level mech players? I only know of Strelok.
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
Do you know any high level mech players? I only know of Strelok.
Goody, other EU Terrans I can' think of atm but I'm sure you could find on liquipedia under WCS EU.
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
Do you know any high level mech players? I only know of Strelok.
On May 24 2013 03:37 Qikz wrote: If Mech is so bad, why would people like Kop and Strelok play it against Toss? Why would there have been lots of Terrans playing Mech vs Toss in the initial WCS Europe Qualifiers against Toss?
Why was Noblesse still playing 2-bases timings into third at the end of WoL? Why is GuMiho still playing 2-bases gimmicks in TvZ? You ask them. They have their reasons. They believe in their builds. This is what they have prepared. They think their opponent won't have the answers, or that they will prevail anyway due to the experience asymmetry. Etc.
I am not pro, but I went mech in the last game of my bo3 against dignitasDreAm at the WCS Challenger League qualifier despite thinking mech is bad in TvP. Why? Honestly, I barely know myself. I used a build that I fully knew was a complete gimmick into another gimmick and it ended up working (because of luck). Just like GuMiho's 2-bases gimmicks worked in some games at Code S level against HyuN and LosirA.
Another little anecdote to illustrate my point. At the beginning of the last season, I was playing mech quite frequently against Protoss. I ran into a barcode Protoss that I won convincingly. After the game, I checked his rank and saw he was #1 Master P in Europe (i. e. of all the Protoss Masters in Europe, he was the first; not just his division). Yet his reactions to my mech play had been abysmal. The day after, I was watching ForGG's stream. He was playing standard bio against some Protoss and ended up being stomped. I checked who his opponent was, and lo, it was the very barcode who had lost against me the day before. He had totally crumbled when facing something unusual, yet obviously knew his affair when it came to standard play. Moral of the story: iffy, unorthodox stuff sometimes wins while standard play wouldn't. Doesn't mean that gimmicks are better; most likely that opponents were simply thrown off balance, reacted poorly and thus got rolled.
I know very well that some EU pros use mech in TvP. I'm top50 GM this season and I myself used mech several times against P, including vs pros such as Bling or Feast. And all my wins, without exception, obeyed to one or several of the following laws:
1. Massive econ advantage through build orders or harass (or both); 2. Protoss having poor reactions, e. g. sticking to horrible stuff like Stalkers/Colossi (e. g. Strelok vs finale, Daybreak); 3. Particular case of the above point, Protoss not scouting a 2-bases timing/all-in and a) taking third + teching 5 different things at once, then not having enough when a mech army with twice the size arrives or b) suiciding their own 2-bases timing/all-in into you, such as my game against dDreAm.
I really don't know how you can say that mech armies trade well against Protoss ground. The last game I saw mech winning against P at high level was Bunny vs Jogginghose on Whirlwind for the WCS Challenger League RO40. Bunny had decimated Jogginghose's economy with Hellbat drops (see the first law), was like max against 135 supply and still struggled to win the first main engagement. Actually he was technically defeated despite probably having +20-30 supply in the fight. In my experience this is what always happens. There's also a ByuN vs puCK (?) ladder game on Newkirk Precinct that illustrates the same thing. ByuN is convincingly ahead the whole game yet still fails to trade properly against mass Immortals and ends up losing while he would probably win 25-0 effortlessly with bio against the same opponent. There are countless examples of this. Strelok vs finale (unsure) on Newkirk Precinct was the same story. Tanks are fine/good against the following Protoss ground units: Sentries, Stalkers, Colossi and Templars. What do Protoss play? Mostly Zealots/Archons/Immortals, i. e. the units against which the Tank is complete garbage. Want to know why Tanks are bad against Protoss? Look no further:
Shots required for a x/3 Tank to kill ground units, rounded down or up (i. e. if it technically takes 1.02 shots to kill the unit, such as a x/3 Tank against a stimmed Marine with CS, I noted 1, because realistically the splash damage from the other Tanks will finish the unit anyway).
On March 29 2013 07:19 TheDwf wrote: Mech still seems in the gutter in TvP. Hellbats are nice, Mines are nice, having valid openings is nice, but in the end none of this is enough because the problem is always the same: Tanks just lack firepower against Protoss. The primitive trade of mech is "mobility vs firepower," and with Tanks against Protoss you just give up the former without having the latter in return. Protoss barely raise their eyebrow when thinking about 30 Tanks, while even Ultralisks will anxiously look at each other to determine who should charge first against such a critical mass.
Mech is viable in TvT and TvZ because Tanks, past a certain point, completely dominate other ground units in those match-ups. Even Ultralisks, even Swarmhosts lose to critical mass of Tanks. As such, there is that accumulation dynamics which forces your Terran opponent into either "as many Tanks" or an air transition, and your Zerg opponent into Vipers or broods. So both in TvT and TvZ, Tanks → Tanks + Vikings/Ravens (and Battlecruisers in the end) is valid against whichever lategame transition your opponent is playing to deal with your Tank army.
But there is no such thing in TvP, not only because the first phase of the plan – get mass Tanks* and threaten to roll everything – doesn't work, but because the last phase i. e. (ghost)mech + air is still completely stomped by air/Templars. Again I have no idea how you can say that Vikings/Ravens beats air/Templars: Vikings are horribly frail for their expensive cost and have severe overkill issues when shift focusing individual units. Tempests massively outrange them (+6!) so dropping pdds wouldn't help since they would simply move away, or fire until all pdds run out of energy.
*Naturally you can replace Tanks with Thors in TvP, or mix both, or use more varied compositions, including whatever you want, add Ghosts, etc., it will come down the same.
Tanks + Vikings/Ravens could compete to some extent against broods/infests at the end of WoL, particularly post-IT nerfs, because you had the upper hand in the range war: Tanks outranged infestors (13 vs 9 + radius) while Vikings' range was roughly similar to broodlords (9 vs 9.5). In HotS, the 15 range nonsense bashes everything, especially as Terran doesn't have free units generators to initiate a cold war or Vipers to draw Tempests in the range of your units. Tanks are outranged, Vikings are outranged, Ravens are outranged, Battlecruisers (Yamato) are outranged, Ghosts (EMP) are outranged. You're bound to slowly crumble against his continuous siege.
On May 24 2013 08:12 Qikz wrote: The thing I don't understand about with this, is surely if there's people playing mech only, that proves that it is somewhat viable to do the strat against toss? I wouldn't play mech only if I lost more than I won.
At the end of WoL, I was watching Taeja's stream and he was playing Sickness (a Protoss korean pro) on Ohana. Taeja went 3-bases Battlecruisers out of a few Marines and Tanks. And when I say 3-bases Battlecruisers, I mean he only built Battlecruisers after the few defensive early game units. Sickness kept playing according to his anti-bio autopilot and found himself very surprised when his zeals/archons/stalks/colossi attack on the fourth met 10 upgraded Battlecruisers. Taeja won easily.
Still, no one would claim that "only Battlecruisers" is a viable strategy in TvP. You can win lots of game, even at high levels, with iffy plans and builds, because your opponents don't scout and thus don't react, or react badly, or simply make severe mistakes that make them lose even if they were adapting correctly in the first place. To determine the viability of something, you have to examine what happens when your opponent knows the correct answers and execute them at least decently.
On May 24 2013 08:22 Pookie Monster wrote: Thinking you should be able to counter all that with just factory units is silly and if the protoss were able to counter your entire entire army composition with just robo units, terrans would call this game broken.
Except robo tech was always conceived as a support tech for gate units, while fact tech is supposed to be relatively autonomous (and is even more so in HotS compared to WoL, though Starport support is still needed in most cases).
About the kOp vs Oz game.
First, the very fact you all use this single example for top Korean play should make you feel uneasy: when you have only one example to back up your claims on hundreds of TvPs, you should ask yourself questions.
Second, this game is no exception to the aforementioned laws; it completely falls under the 3b one, i. e. Protoss going agressive play against a 2-bases timing, subsequently failing because—assuming no huge disparity in army size—there is no way to break a defensive mech position without bypassing terrain through Prism(s), and thus giving the Terran a massive advantage to comfortably prevail with his original plan. To add insult to injury, Oz wasted even more gas in a useless dark shrine (since kOp had a Raven, and then a Turret at the front) and DTs. Oz had his first Immortal out at 11'45, when kOp had already 7 Tanks and was 25 supply ahead. kOp was 35 supply ahead when he reached Oz's natural, who had only 3 Immortals and no Archon at 14'. Sounds like a standard MechvP game to you?
Whenever you intend to play a 2-bases mech timing or all-in in TvP, you virtually auto-win against all 2-bases frontal attacks which commit because there is no way that Immortal busts, Zealots/Archons/Templars or Colossi all-in will break through (or simply trade efficiently against) a fortified mech position with Mines and sieged Tanks. Again, I know this from first-hand experience since numerous Protoss have suicided their timings/all-ins into my defensive position while I was preparing my own attack. In this game, kOp perfectly scouted and prepared for the Blink Stalker attack, so even if Oz didn't lose his army he still spent a lot of gas on suboptimal units (Stalkers) while lacking an extra anti-mech tech such as Archons, a second robo (which came in effect too late in the game since he started it at 12'30) or a Stargate; thus it is only natural he got stomped afterwards. Hence the game proves absolutely nothing about the viability of mech: it proves that throwing the dice sometimes turns out badly.
Yeah, this is the problem with the emotional approach. One has to stay rational. When I am saying that mech isn't viable in TvP I am not saying this light-heartedly. I am not happy with that. I do love mech too and I came in HotS thinking I would play mech 100% of the time thanks to the new tools. I was playing mech 100% of the time in TvT and TvZ at the end of WoL, so you see, I am not a mech hater.
-Mech may, or may not be viable as a mainstream strategy. I think it is, but it requires a tons of experience, and some people need to accept the fact thay even if in terms of raw skill/ranking/results they are superior to some "mech players" here, they aren't as qualified as these "inferior mech players" to talk about Mech. Myself, even if it might be considered as a cocky behavior, i wouldn't hesitate to argue with any pro about TvP mech, why ? Because i have nearly 3 years of Mech TvP experience, more than 2 of these being 90%+ of my games played with mech. Do i know everything about Mech? No. But i know far more that some people here who assume that because they are supposed to be "better" due to their rank on the ladder or anything like that, and these people should really realise that and think about it. Do i mean that they should accept everything the experienced mech players say as fact? No. But these people should stop thinking they have the absolute knowledge of Mech TvP, able to theorycraft from scracth every single situation that may kill mech, and stuff like this, and understand that if some people practice mech since years, their advice might be slightly better that their "superior" theorycrafting. At least their advice should be heard instead of being dismissed and answered by some "i'm better than you and i know that mech doesn't work, you play only terrible players lolololol". Is it a bit cocky to write this ? Maybe. But for me, the cocky behavior is the one used by people who thinks they are in the mind of koreans pro knowning their advices/pratice about mech TvP, and who thinks that because they are better in rank/result/reputation, what they say about something they don't know should be considered more valuable that what people experimented on the subject are saying. Mech is hard to learn. Stop thinking that because you are GM and you play pro every day, your 1 month mech practice can show you everything about mech. After 3 years of mech i don't even consider myself close of a "solid mech player"... How can some people think they saw everything about mech in a few months/weeks/games?
This is where you're deluded. Sorry if I sound harsh in the following but any Terran GM will instinctively have better mech TvP than you with better builds, better micro, better macro, better positioning, better everything basically. The fact you play mech since 3 years doesn't make you "more qualified" at all to talk about mech than someone with higher skill but less games. You certainly played more TvP mech than me, yet I'm ready to bet you would have nothing to teach me at all.
Isn't there always this guy, from time to time, who arises from the shadows to teach us the ways of "sky Terran" with his revolutionary PF on natural into 4-port banshees? What would you answer him if he tells you "I play sky Terran since 3 years, I know I'm only Diamond but I'm more qualified than you to discuss this!" after you criticize his gimmicks and label them as such? Obviously mech in TvP is not as bad as this, but you see my point.
You say we are not in the minds of Korean pros. Admittedly, telepathy is still to be invented. But what? Again the conspiracy, again the secret no one ever found? Where's the sanctuary? You think KeSPA Terrans wouldn't even try mech after coming from BW? You think they wouldn't try their best to make it work? You think people are happy playing bio 24/7 in TvP? No. People try mech, with various builds and compositions, see that they often struggle horribly to win even with an economic advantage, get regularly bashed by inferior players doing simplistic 1a and must acknowledge that the mythical "hidden potential" of the thing just doesn't exist.
You have an easy time saying the thing "isn't fully explored". It's true that the island isn't fully explored, but for good reasons: people accosted, saw the searing crater at the center of the island and quickly understood they couldn't live here, so only hardcore islanders remain, fascinated by the beauty of the landscape. "Exploring" mech vs P is like "exploring" a desert always hoping for an oasis, yet all you find after months and months is sand, sand and more sand.
On May 26 2013 02:42 headnut wrote: you realize that pdd hardcounters tempest?
Your statement makes as little sense as saying FFs "hardcounter" Roaches.
this pretty much says it all. It's very tiring to see the argument returning: "but mech is not refined so we can't really judge it!". That statement is just so rediculous to assume that these further refinements will solve the massive problems mech currently has, even more lack of refinement for a new style almost always comes in how to play AGAINST it, now in how to play WITH it. It's easy for a player to just constantly play mech himself and refine the style for him, tweaking and adjusting till he feels comfortable and instantly knows how to react against anything. It's much harder to know how to play against a style that is almost never played. Mech has been tried by plenty of players and the good players practically all realize that bio is just the better style. If mech is viable or not is just semantics then, i'd say it isn't because any game you could have won with mech could basically be won with bio too but you can also argue you can win with mech, you're just making it a bit harder on yourself.
When new strategies are tried you basically always see them doing well at first untill the responses are figured out, it's just unrealistic to assume mech is somehow reversed. Why would everyone know how to play against it very well but somehow there is some key thing missing in the way people execute mech.. SC is a fairly shallow game when it comes to tactics, it really isn't that hard to find the general options a strat has..
In hindsight I agree with avilo, it's sad the warhound got axed so hard without a replacement. The problem with mech has always been that it was repeatedly nerfed because of TvZ (blue flame, tanks etc. in WoL, hellbats etc. in HotS). The idea behind the warhound for something with bonus to mechical was ok as some specific anti-protoss that doesn't excel vs zerg is really the only way to balance mech in all matchups. The warhound was just a horrible implementation.
I really hope they have the guts to bring back a buff for mech against protoss (bonus vs mechanical or bonus vs shields really). It would only take a buff for tanks against protoss units and/or a buff for thors against protoss air, both are really easy to implement by just adding an upgrade. I also think it would be nicer for the game to return some upgrades to mech from a design point of view. At the moment mech is basically an upgradeless route, the only techs are blueflame, transformation and widow mine burrow time. The first 2 are rarely used because it seems pointless to bother when you can just make hellbats straight away, the latter is more a bio upgrade than a mech upgrade. You don't really use lategame mines with mech anyway..
Long story short, what is stopping blizzard from adding a little upgrade that buffs tanks and/or thors against protoss. Bonus to mechanical might be risky as it could spoil the fun in TvT but with careful consideration it can be done.
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
Your analogy of comparing mech and bio to SG opening and Robo opening in PvZ is all wrong. Mech is NOT just an opening it is also a unit composition. You are not using the factory unit as a support, you are using the factory unit as your core. Opening SG and Robo in PvZ is using them to support your gateway army not as a core so saying that they are the same is completely wrong.
Regarding mech harassment option, it strong but it also gimicky and can be countered easily by sim citying to block hellion and hellbats and putting a few cannon. If you scout terran going mech, investing in 1 or 2 cannon easily pays off. Beside, mixing in a few hellbat into your bio army is way better than going pure mech. There are TON of replay showing mech failure to harass and losing the game. If you are doing enough damage with your harassment then you could of pretty much went any unit composition and won the game. You won the game due to hellbat not mech. Now regarding banshee, they just not as good in TvP after people figure out how to play against them and they have fallen off the meta game. They are also quiet an investment and are not that good in straight up fight. They also share different upgrade from other factory unit so later on if you dont upgrade they fall off.
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
Do you know any high level mech players? I only know of Strelok.
Goody, other EU Terrans I can' think of atm but I'm sure you could find on liquipedia under WCS EU.
Aye, but none of them is successful, so quite irrelevant.
I just think mech works in both TvP and TvZ at lower levels because low masters and below the players are just on autopilot vs terrans. The Zerg will go ling bane muta and will be killed instantly, because he fails to explore a world out side of it. A protoss wouldn't make any immortals/archons late game, and try and counter mech with gateway units, storms and colossi (hell I've even seen zealot warp ins in front of 20+hellbats)
So if you're macro and understanding of the game is better than your opponents, I see mech doing a really good job, as one bad engagement aint gonna lose you the game.
ON ANOTHER NOTE:
HTO_Mario has had some sick lategames vs P using mine micro like I've never seen anybody use before, and he's an only mech GM. Check out his stream also. Maybe there is a secret out there not many people have explored.
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......
Why should I go mech when I can't even counter the Protoss late game army where all he has to do is throw random storms while his Colossi do all the work as I try to maneuver my MMM + Ghosts + Vikings? I have to split my army into 3 hotkeys and try to EMP while getting Stim out while flanking his Colossi with my Vikings instead of sending them all into their death then have Protoss BM me with a "I love 1A."
Now at highest levels of play, Mech is good, but then it can easily be countered by Sky Toss. If Protss players think about it, mass Void Rays would easily win against Mech. Seige Tanks don't shoot up. Hellbats/Hellions don't shoot up. Only Vikings counter air, and Void Rays can easily deal with Vikings now that they're even better than before. Plus, Protoss can always go to Tempest and "zone" out the Terran army.
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.
On May 29 2013 16:22 padfoota wrote: This thread really needs to die.
If it makes you feel any better, the OP cleverly does this every couple of months. Seriously, MockHamil has started like 4 mech threads since the beginning of HotS, and each and every one has been filled with everyone screaming, "NO MECH IS VIABLE", "NO ITS NOT KOREANS DONT USE IT", "THEYRE JUST TOO LAZY", etc., etc.
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.
Sea vs Naniwa...? Sea vs Genius...? (IPL5)
Are you seriously using those terrible games as evidence? If you ever bothered watching Sea's stream you saw that when he played mech in TvP on the KR ladder he got rolled more often than not.
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.
Sea vs Naniwa...? Sea vs Genius...? (IPL5)
Are you seriously using those terrible games as evidence? If you ever bothered watching Sea's stream you saw that when he played mech in TvP on the KR ladder he got rolled more often than not.
I think it's best to remember that Sea's mech was based off of the meta and only continually worked well because players were unprepared for something like that and didn't know proper responses. I honestly love the builds Sea came up with and I think they're genius, but they definitely can't be considered solid or reliable ways to mech. I don't think "solid" mech exists in TvP anyway.
On May 28 2013 23:45 LOLZEY wrote: I personally do not believe that mech is weaker than bio when done properly in TvP. That's like saying opening SG is weaker than opening Robo in PvZ. One is reliant on doing direct harass/indirect damage in order to be even, and one is very flexible and safe. Same thing with mech, it's very easy to do damage with hellbat drops, hellion runbys, banshees, ect.
In fact, I have yet to see a VOD or replay where a high-level mech player tries to harass but does almost no damage, and the protoss ends up rolling the mech player convincely with a perfect composition. Does anyone have one?
If you manage to do enough damage with drops as terran, it doesn't matter what you follow it up with. That's not a testament to mech's viability, but rather to the fact that terran has very strong harass options. But the army you're building back home that consists of tanks and other mech units, that are supposed to finish the game for you because you've effectively done a lot of harass damage, is easily countered by protoss.
So there's no reason to harass specifically to make space for the terran to mass mech units like you did in BW. That's basically the difference between BW and SC2 mech - in BW, mech was super strong if you just got your army up. In SC2, going mech behind good harass is a liability and will only succeed if you basically won the game outright with the harass (which is very possible)
1. One tank can hold off an entire terran or zerg push with one siege shot. One tank is the shields of a stalker or worse, 10 damage off an immortal. Thus mech openings are far more vulnerable to early aggression than they are against terran and zerg. The number of times I've seen a protoss back off from a siege tank shot, realise how little damage it did and then just walk directly into said mech army without really caring and kill it off is beyond silly.
2. You need tanks. Lots of them. At the same time, the unit you need to build up is directly hard countered by no less than 3 units in the standard protoss deathball (chargelots, blink stalkers and immortals). The tank is so diametrically opposed by the protoss race that you basically need to be left alone to build them up. In the end game it is directly hard countered by 5 units.
3. Mech takes forever to build up to a critical mass. In that time, a protoss can easily make a virtually unstoppable air transition which is much stronger in HoTS than in WoL with respect to void rays and tempests.
4. Mech is hugely immobile. It has no real area denial unlike in BW and thus can't cut off flanking lines. Evenly spaced tanks can help, provided your protoss opponent doesn't just lead with 3 immortals and then blink directly into your evenly spaced tank lines, thus aiding them in killing your own damn tanks with the splash from YOUR TANKS.
5. Too reliant on the factory for the amount of power said units have. A normal mech deathball needs around 60-70 army supply to successfully go toe to toe with an equally upgraded protoss deathball composed purely of normal units (stalker/immortal/colossus/chargelot). Putting down 10 factories is not a trivial gas investment.
Why is this different from TvZ and TvT? TFour words.
Hellion Marine Zergling Roach
Roaches are armoured and take spectacular damage from even mild tank volleys. Marines can't take tank volleys at all without additional unit support. Zerglings can flank tanks but are hard countered early game by tanks (melee range) and can survive at most two direct hits and will often be killed solely by splash. Hellions are fast and can get into tanks but take absolutely forever to kill them.
Simply put, the tank is capable of zoning out areas of the map from these units with clever placement and other things. All a protoss needs to do to prevent this effect entirely is to research blink or to make an immortal.
Mech offers no early game safety. It offers midgame supremacy but is nowhere near as powerful lategame as it was.
As for how to make mech work better vs P? You either make tanks deal with protoss units better or you make protoss deal with tanks worse. Not sure which I'd go for.
Widow mines and hellbats just don't cut it for protecting tanks against early or late game aggression.
I think an upgrade on TL Factory (requiring maybe armory, for mid-game) 'Magnetised Shells' or whatever, does +'x' damage to shielded units. This would allow tanks to be better in TvP, without affecting other matchups at all. It is simple and allows Blizzard to tweak the numbers as they see fit, it could even scale with +1/2/3 vehicle attack if it was required.
On June 07 2013 06:41 LOLZEY wrote: can someone tell me what would be the most optimal and reliable response if I do scout mech? in terms of engagement, composition wise
On June 07 2013 06:41 LOLZEY wrote: can someone tell me what would be the most optimal and reliable response if I do scout mech? in terms of engagement, composition wise
Long story short, what is stopping blizzard from adding a little upgrade that buffs tanks and/or thors against protoss. Bonus to mechanical might be risky as it could spoil the fun in TvT but with careful consideration it can be done.
I believe Blizzard stated why in not-so-subtle manners. They don't want strategies that force turtling, resulting in boring and long games. Read "Situation Report" and how strong Blizzard's anti-mech sentiment is.
You can't expect honest words out of a corporation's PR. But Blizzard said in many times in many words "No" to mech TvP. I think it's time to let it go until LOTV beta.
Mech or bio is a complet different style. I am P master who win vs top master bio and lose to mid master mech because i am not used to play vs mech. And tank are quite good and the mine harass are a good option too.
Blizzard failed with mech play on HotS after they removed the warhound which was the perfect counter to immortals which have made the terran mech deathball playable.
Sure you can mech in tvp aswell but only if you are very skilled and your opponent is not or you have a lot of luck in the positioning/engagement or you open your match with a very sucessfull cheese.
Mech works fine vs Protoss it just functions differently. And saying Immortals counter tanks is a joke. Tanks shred immortals before they get more than a couple of shots off (talking 6+immortals) and a mine will instantly remove the shield and you'll have either ehllions or hellbats between the tanks and immortals.
Mech is fine it's not weak like people say I'm masters and I only ever mech. Yeah tanks so considerably less damage than broodwar and nothing truely fills the role of the vulture and goliath but it's still viable.
The only issue I find is that in TvP I need to transition into thors > tanks in the end game which is irritating but it's still mech.
Long story short, what is stopping blizzard from adding a little upgrade that buffs tanks and/or thors against protoss. Bonus to mechanical might be risky as it could spoil the fun in TvT but with careful consideration it can be done.
I believe Blizzard stated why in not-so-subtle manners. They don't want strategies that force turtling, resulting in boring and long games. Read "Situation Report" and how strong Blizzard's anti-mech sentiment is.
You can't expect honest words out of a corporation's PR. But Blizzard said in many times in many words "No" to mech TvP. I think it's time to let it go until LOTV beta.
Yet Blizzard introduced the Swarmhost, a unit that when used defensively results in turtling, boring and long games (see Tod vs Stephano from DH Summer that was played yesterday. Day[9] also did a daily (595) on it http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-595-stephano-s-stupid-zvp-style-p1-6602920 ). The Siege Tank needed a buff, badly. But it never got one.
Instead, Blizzard introduced the Hellbat, whose defined role is to counter Zealots, yet Hellbats are used far more often for dropping and killing workers, which was predicted by the community, yet it was released in such a state despite the warning from the community. And now it appears it will require Blizzard two nerfs in order to fix. And don't be surprised if the Hellbat disappears after the second nerf.
Why couldn't Blizzard have had any foresight? Why couldn't they have listened to the community, to simple logic, or to the experience we all had with blue flame Hellions? It certainly doesn't require Nostradamus to figure out how a new unit will effect the game. I wrote the following on both this forum and Blizzard's forum a week after getting Beta access, back in October (~5 months before they released HOTS):
On October 27 2012 15:50 BronzeKnee wrote: The Hellbat is also too cost effective for a mineral only unit. It is not only an effective main line fighter but it can still harass very effectively. Furthermore, when dropped from Medivacs Hellbats easily wipe out a mineral line in a few shots with it's wide arc of fire. Think pre-nerf Blue Flame Hellions!
I'm happy I'm not the only one who thinks Blizzard completely failed when it came to making Mech viable in HOTS, and not the only one who thinks that some heads need to roll in order for SC2 to reach it's potential. Maybe when even more people realize it, it will happen.
Blizzard is clueless. Hellbats did little to make Mech viable in TvP and the needed buff to Siege Tanks never came. Thankfully, it doesn't effect 95% of players. Mech works in TvP for the vast majority of players. But Blizzard destroyed any hope of us watching amazing Mech play come out of the top players in the world.
On June 14 2013 19:15 battleboy wrote: Blizzard failed with mech play on HotS after they removed the warhound which was the perfect counter to immortals which have made the terran mech deathball playable.
Sure you can mech in tvp aswell but only if you are very skilled and your opponent is not or you have a lot of luck in the positioning/engagement or you open your match with a very sucessfull cheese.
I think thats the key points here...
you couldnt be more wrong.
mech is as viable as bio, its just not figured out by pro players because bio still works.
Why should you guys shouldn't be able to use mech vs protoss?
If you guys can two kinds of ground force tech paths against us, does that mean blizzard will make it so our Tier 1 doesn't get completely shredded against your Tier 1?
Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz. So don't cry on a forum but analyze some reps and then do dat shit yourself for at least two months. Come back after those two months and write your opinion!
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz.
LOL. Dont believe quantum mechanics, derive your own formalism...
OT: Its safe to say when there is no mech play (outside of the 3 Dwf rules) in GSL, its not viable. No need to even discuss this.
On June 14 2013 19:15 battleboy wrote: Blizzard failed with mech play on HotS after they removed the warhound which was the perfect counter to immortals which have made the terran mech deathball playable.
Sure you can mech in tvp aswell but only if you are very skilled and your opponent is not or you have a lot of luck in the positioning/engagement or you open your match with a very sucessfull cheese.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz.
LOL. Dont believe quantum mechanics, derive your own formalism...
OT: Its safe to say when there is no mech play (outside of the 3 Dwf rules) in GSL, its not viable. No need to even discuss this.
Do you participate in the GSL? Do you know their reasons? Will you forever keep doing what people say is "normal"? Have fun living in your hillbilly house with 1.7 kids, a dog, a wive that doesn't really love you, a boring ass job that pays average, with little vacation, while cheering for the local sports team or watching retarded shows like biggest loser.
Well, guess my absence in the strategy Forum was smarter than expected, people like you will always bleak what someone else tells you and feel smart because your opinion is popular. I'm off lifting some heavy weights and then do some bitches.
HF
Edit: Also, every single strategy in the history of gaming was not seen at pro level play untill it was. Doesn't mean it would have been worse before, just that it was not popular or undiscovered.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz.
LOL. Dont believe quantum mechanics, derive your own formalism...
OT: Its safe to say when there is no mech play (outside of the 3 Dwf rules) in GSL, its not viable. No need to even discuss this.
Do you participate in the GSL? Do you know their reasons? Will you forever keep doing what people say is "normal"? Have fun living in your hillbilly house with 1.7 kids, a dog, a wive that doesn't really love you, a boring ass job that pays average, with little vacation, while cheering for the local sports team or watching retarded shows like biggest loser.
Well, guess my absence in the strategy Forum was smarter than expected, people like you will always bleak what someone else tells you and feel smart because your opinion is popular. I'm off lifting some heavy weights and then do some bitches.
HF
Edit: Also, every single strategy in the history of gaming was not seen at pro level play untill it was. Doesn't mean it would have been worse before, just that it was not popular or undiscovered.
blabla stop being so rediculous in defending mech. Sure not seeing it at pro level is not 'proof' but a good indication. Plus the fact there are lot's of problems with it that are hard to deal with like immortals and protoss air it isn't hard to see mech is just not that good. Your silly argument can be used to show mass air, mass thor whatever is also viable but just not explored etc. Mech plain stinks compared to bio in TvP, every good player agrees on that. Just end this silly discussion, besides mech will probably be nerfed even more because the hellbat in itself may be a little too good mooting the discussion even more.
The only problem in mech is that it's too expensive, not really cost effective, and the tanks doesn't fullfil their role of controling positions. Since the tanks are not going to get any buff, mech will never be really viable. At least give a bonus damage against shields, or an upgrade, i don't know. Right now, MMMVG is still the best way to play TvP, and adding maybe some hellbats + mines.
I've lost to a few meching Terrans on the ladder, but they all used Ghosts. The trick is scouting it early and reacting properly.
I think the biggest error Terrans make when they make is commit too much to ground.. a good Protoss will immediately transition to air + Templar when reading mech. Therefore I think it's important to start making/upgrading Vikings early and not overmake Tank/Hellbat. GHOSTS are also very important. When you knock the shields off Immortals they die very fast. And obviously they're necessary against Templar for EMP.
Also, late game Ravens w/ seeker missiles are REALLY good against a bunch of clumped up Voids.
TLDR I think the reason "Mech doesn't work" is because people think mech should be only Tanks and Hellbats. Keep in mind that if you made pure Tank Vulture in BW, you'd lose to Carriers then too :p
I concentrate EMP's more on immortals and archons. Sure if possible I also EMP templars, but tanks also kill templars fast. While you really want EMPs to kill archons and immortals fast.
Regarding ravens and seeker missiles, there is a significant delay before they will hit, you got quite some time to split them off. And the problem is HTs. They will feedback ravens without delay. So if you launch from shortrange you lose all ravens to EMPs (many before they launch), if you do it from long range he can just move back a bit and they all fail.
You are correct vikings are important, but their problem is (besides that toss air is pretty good against them) that if he doesn't go air it is really easy to overproduce them. I have lost at least as many games to toss due to viking overproduction as due to not enough vikings. Sure you can land them, but the result generally isn't pretty, and it was definately not a great investment of your resources.
The only reason I think mech works somewhat against toss is that it is only a minority that uses mech, so toss aren't used to dealing with mech. As simple example, luckily on ladder the vast majority of the toss attack directly into my army, while they could also have walked around my army and just gone for my base. And then I would have to unsiege tanks and run after a toss army that can turn around at any time. Also for example a group of raiding blink stalkers aren't exactly easy to counter with mech.
On May 29 2013 04:31 Markwerf wrote: Long story short, what is stopping blizzard from adding a little upgrade that buffs tanks and/or thors against protoss. Bonus to mechanical might be risky as it could spoil the fun in TvT but with careful consideration it can be done.
Because of smartfiring and the way units clump in the SC2 engine. If anything I wonder why Blizzard hasn't tried or been asked to try changing tanks to shoot a little shell projectile thing with a fast travel speed so that it would be possible to force tanks to "overkill", then maybe they could have more damage without breaking the game a la 2010 TvZ. Side effect would be PDD stopping tank shots, but that doesn't seem too terrible. Then if the T matchups become all cool and dynamic and shit and zealot bombing comes back and all these things, maybe Browder or Kim could have an epiphany like in the movies where all the events of the past 3 years flash before their eyes and they suddenly realize...
seems to me that unit that really needs to change is the thor. At least make its collision box much much smaller. Thors require so much baby sitting its annoying and even then they still get stuck behind this or that and become a giant paper weight when you desperately need them in battle. Why not give them the over step that colossus has....is there a reason that they dont get this? I guess you can argue that 20 scv's sitting under a thor would make it invincible but really the easy solution to that is just increase a scvs threat when healing a thor or dont even worry about it since storm would be hilarious
I feel the biggest problem with mech atm is t he mobility (vs t and z) combined with the new big and open maps, there are almost no maps where u could splitmap and/or get a 4th base easy, so if u want to get a 4th base u are always spread out and its hard to defend and reposition to every path your opponent can attack from.
To make it more viable it would be good if u could be a litte bit more mobile and move out on the map a little bit safer and my suggestiuon would be to make Drilling Claws (widow mine upgrade) a "global" upgrade that would allow every mech tranformation to be faster (widow mines, tanks, thors, vikings maybe aswell).
Then u could move out more aggressive and defend on open maps better without a huge fear that ur opponent will catch u once out of possiotion and unsieged and just overrun u easy.
I have found that using hellbat drops to soft contain protoss in their base while taking a fast third and getting relatively slower tanks is a safe way to start meching and get an early economic lead, as the protoss I play generally have a hard time dealing with hellbat drops, especially if they took a fast third. With a fast third, it isn't unreasonable to have a maxed out army in 13 or 14 minutes, and then you can just a-move the protoss (if you have been making vikings). This is just my experience with mech, and I have been practicing with teammates (high master/gm) who take very few games off of this style. Medivacs make HotS mech very strong in TvT, yet in TvP people don't seem to like (or have the mechanics) to keep medivacs all over the map, threatening the counterattack.
Everyone on this thread blaming blizzard is being absolutely absurd. They made the game, and if you want to play mech, then figure out the best way to do it. The fact that so much of this thread about the possibilities of mech is complaints about hellbats and tanks is so sad, as they don't realize the potential that these new units have.
On June 19 2013 23:58 SuperYo1000 wrote: seems to me that unit that really needs to change is the thor. At least make its collision box much much smaller. Thors require so much baby sitting its annoying and even then they still get stuck behind this or that and become a giant paper weight when you desperately need them in battle. Why not give them the over step that colossus has....is there a reason that they dont get this? I guess you can argue that 20 scv's sitting under a thor would make it invincible but really the easy solution to that is just increase a scvs threat when healing a thor or dont even worry about it since storm would be hilarious
Honestly, I'm not a big fan of the thor. I would rather them just get rid of it and replace it with a modified warhound. Not the a-move warhound from beta but a goliath-esque unit.
I always liked the way they looked and it is a shame they spent so much time/resources on the model/voice actor for the warhound and he isn't even present
Long story short, what is stopping blizzard from adding a little upgrade that buffs tanks and/or thors against protoss. Bonus to mechanical might be risky as it could spoil the fun in TvT but with careful consideration it can be done.
I believe Blizzard stated why in not-so-subtle manners. They don't want strategies that force turtling, resulting in boring and long games. Read "Situation Report" and how strong Blizzard's anti-mech sentiment is.
You can't expect honest words out of a corporation's PR. But Blizzard said in many times in many words "No" to mech TvP. I think it's time to let it go until LOTV beta.
Such a shame really. BW TvP was by far my favorite match-up. It had so many unique features to it. Dragoons with range attacking bunkers while scvs had to repair (until the siege tank came out), vulture micro vs individual units and in major fights (deploying all the spider mines). Mine dragging from the protoss point of view. Terran trying their hardest to contain the P with tanks/mines/vultures/turrets/bunkers and the protoss busting out with the help of arbiters.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz. So don't cry on a forum but analyze some reps and then do dat shit yourself for at least two months. Come back after those two months and write your opinion!
Well, that's just my opinion. I don't know where you're pulling my rank from, HTOMario isn't GM in HotS, he's top8 master like me and I'm at his MMR. So congratulations on pulling the league card.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz. So don't cry on a forum but analyze some reps and then do dat shit yourself for at least two months. Come back after those two months and write your opinion!
Well, that's just my opinion. I don't know where you're pulling my rank from, HTOMario isn't GM in HotS, he's top8 master like me and I'm at his MMR. So congratulations on pulling the league card.
well he is Master this season doesn't mean he isn't GM in Host lmao, there was 3 seasons hots before
I have been trying HTO mario's mech style. It is pretty strong. It is not like bio where you have to split you army so much and kiting non-stop. You can battle the protoss army head on. But I do not feel it is like mech in TvT or TvZ, where you army is much stronger and can crush/lay siege on your opponent's army directly.
I have been thinking a mine, tank, thor, raven style. Thor + Raven will deny detections, Tanks will kill Protoss aoe units to protect the mines, as well as to siege. The mines will buffer the entire army, kill immortals...etc.
(Add Hellbats and Vikings according to protoss response)
There's 2 problems. Pro players don't like thinking for themselves and don't try this enough. What Pro players don't try, amateurs don't copy. Mech is not weaker than bio, but it doesn't work on a lot of maps. I've been promoting the use of barracks as terran force fields in every single tvp mech thread i've seen up to date, but it seems like nobody wants to pick up easy wins. gg
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
The weakness of mech is that while Protoss sucks at harass, they have a very strong ability to all-in you where your army is not. The problem for mech is not the fights (Protoss are actually the worst vs mech in straight-up fights), it's blink stalkers and warp prisms.
Protoss can't directly take on the mech army, but it's much easier for them to just kill all of the Terran production and bases than it is for any other races.
Also, Terran bio + hellbats rapes the crap out of Protoss in the mid-game if Protoss doesn't have superior positioning (eg: Terran attacks into storms). Late-game Protoss gets too strong to attack into, but it's not really strong enough to attack Terran either if Terran composes their army correctly (which is IMO the hardest part of TvP).
On June 20 2013 00:14 GoOdy wrote: I feel the biggest problem with mech atm is t he mobility (vs t and z) combined with the new big and open maps, there are almost no maps where u could splitmap and/or get a 4th base easy, so if u want to get a 4th base u are always spread out and its hard to defend and reposition to every path your opponent can attack from.
To make it more viable it would be good if u could be a litte bit more mobile and move out on the map a little bit safer and my suggestiuon would be to make Drilling Claws (widow mine upgrade) a "global" upgrade that would allow every mech tranformation to be faster (widow mines, tanks, thors, vikings maybe aswell).
Then u could move out more aggressive and defend on open maps better without a huge fear that ur opponent will catch u once out of possiotion and unsieged and just overrun u easy.
Sorry but are u real GoOdy ? Can you tell me what maps u veto ?
I think it is sorta viable in the early-midish game. I have used it before and steam rolled protoss (that just massed immortal and chargelots). I know I am not top echelon tier terran but there is some viability in using mech (especially with Hellbats). I know Bogus (or Innovation) uses bio/mech in TvP all the time and he wins (Marauder / Hellbats).
On June 20 2013 17:01 TigerKarl wrote: There's 2 problems. Pro players don't like thinking for themselves and don't try this enough. What Pro players don't try, amateurs don't copy. Mech is not weaker than bio, but it doesn't work on a lot of maps. I've been promoting the use of barracks as terran force fields in every single tvp mech thread i've seen up to date, but it seems like nobody wants to pick up easy wins. gg
Are you insinuating that pro players haven't tried out mech TvP extensively? I'm pretty sure they would know better than anyone the shortcommings, and good things about mech. Obviously when they compared mech performance to bio in TvP, they found Bio superior. And it is superior.
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
Just tested it with 25 tanks vs 20 immortals. If immortals are one blob tanks just win. If I split them into two groups and then a-move them (just to make sure they don't prevent each other from shooting), immortals easily win.
Anyway regardless of that, I have a nice composition for you that results in a one-sided landslide victory for toss vs mech. Air units...
I've been promoting the use of barracks as terran force fields
Do you have a replay of that? Because I pretty much cannot see that working ever. If you think toss has a huge mobility advantage vs mech, imagine having to wait on floating barracks. You have to siege up really early also, since otherwise those barracks will never land. Not to mention they also aren't exactly free. Honestly mass producing bunkers with a bio army seems more viable to me.
On June 19 2013 22:43 Sissors wrote: I concentrate EMP's more on immortals and archons. Sure if possible I also EMP templars, but tanks also kill templars fast. While you really want EMPs to kill archons and immortals fast.
Regarding ravens and seeker missiles, there is a significant delay before they will hit, you got quite some time to split them off. And the problem is HTs. They will feedback ravens without delay. So if you launch from shortrange you lose all ravens to EMPs (many before they launch), if you do it from long range he can just move back a bit and they all fail.
You are correct vikings are important, but their problem is (besides that toss air is pretty good against them) that if he doesn't go air it is really easy to overproduce them. I have lost at least as many games to toss due to viking overproduction as due to not enough vikings. Sure you can land them, but the result generally isn't pretty, and it was definately not a great investment of your resources.
The only reason I think mech works somewhat against toss is that it is only a minority that uses mech, so toss aren't used to dealing with mech. As simple example, luckily on ladder the vast majority of the toss attack directly into my army, while they could also have walked around my army and just gone for my base. And then I would have to unsiege tanks and run after a toss army that can turn around at any time. Also for example a group of raiding blink stalkers aren't exactly easy to counter with mech.
Why in the world would you try to chase down the toss army instead of going for a base trade? Your buildings can float and the toss cannot do that.
In my experience with mech. Hellbat Thor seems to kill the toss if they are going gateway HT or if they are going gateway void ray. I think what counters Hellbat thor the hardest are immortal/col builds or if they are going carrier gateway. If you make starports though you can pump out vikings if they are going heavy col and you can get ghosts for EMP if they are going heavy immortals and if you end up going air you have the benefit of already having your air armor upgraded.
On June 19 2013 20:17 kckkryptonite wrote: Honestly, bio is straight up better. A lot of P just don't play vs. much mech so I can see how it might seem strong, it would be a pocket composition at the most. Tanks just suck against Protoss.
Says the mid to high Silver Terran that knows his shit.
Some pretty bad Terrans got pretty damn far playing mech. That obviously shows how bad it is.
Tanks suck? You suck using tanks. You played 5 Mech games over 2 months with no idea of what your build could look like and lost 4 of those games. Obviously mech sucks! Take a month, take half a year to figure it out and THEN you can know if it's any good or not, but maybe you are just not good with mech because your strengths are not in army positioning but in stutter stepping?
But most of you played a single game of Mech sitting back in your base trying to get a good Tank count but die to a fast Oracle or a Blink all-in and run crying to your mommy.
If you haven't tried it, you cannot know. If you haven't tried to make it work hard you haven't tried at all.
So 99.9% of the Terrans saying "mech is bad because Immortal OP" just never ever tried. Fuck them. Decide for yourself and don't give up as soon as you see a tiny little problem. . .
To sum up: Unless you gave it your honest best shot over a long preiod of time you don't know if it is better or not. If you gave it your best shot over a lont time you would be like HTOMario and run from mid Diamong into GM ezpz. So don't cry on a forum but analyze some reps and then do dat shit yourself for at least two months. Come back after those two months and write your opinion!
Well, that's just my opinion. I don't know where you're pulling my rank from, HTOMario isn't GM in HotS, he's top8 master like me and I'm at his MMR. So congratulations on pulling the league card.
??
I'm top 100 grandmasters minimum this season. rank 70 at the moment I think. The only season I haven't been gm is last season because I spent a lot of time goofing off and trying out new things on europe.
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
What?? Protoss ground armies can 1a 15-20 Tanks with ease. Only Ghosts can give Terran the upper hand.
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
What?? Protoss ground armies can 1a 15-20 Tanks with ease. Only Ghosts can give Terran the upper hand.
Well... that's not entirely true. The biggest problem with a protoss army is the immortal buffer, as long as you can get rid of it efficiently and have decent splash the army will melt. For example hunter seeker missiles or widow mines could do the same thing.
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
What?? Protoss ground armies can 1a 15-20 Tanks with ease. Only Ghosts can give Terran the upper hand.
For a blue poster you're pretty hyperbolic at times.
It really does depend on what the army is. Pure gateway armies just die to that many tanks for example.
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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.
This is categorically false. Even if it's pure immortals vs pure tanks, tanks still win (when army sizes are big enough, you can do a search for this having been tested), a more normal composition sees a one-sided landslide victory for mech vs Toss. Protoss cannot kill a mech army in (or even two) attacks.
What?? Protoss ground armies can 1a 15-20 Tanks with ease. Only Ghosts can give Terran the upper hand.
For a blue poster you're pretty hyperbolic at times.
It really does depend on what the army is. Pure gateway armies just die to that many tanks for example.
Why are you even talking about "pure gateway armies" against 15-20 Tanks? Why would your opponent have 0 robo or stargate unit by the time you get that army?
If you mix in immortals yes, but there's no way you'd ever have only pure tanks against immortals. I'm talking purely 15-20 tanks and no buffer units (which would never happen).
If we're talking about tanks with buffer units and you mix in blue flame hellions (against mainly archons) or hellbats (against mainly zealot immortal) 15-20 tanks can hold their own pretty damn fine against anything that isn't stargate units or mass, mass, mass immortal.
Debating about how well 15-20 tanks will deal with any protoss composition is as useful as talking about pure marines vs 8-10 colossi - it's not a realistic situation. What is important about tanks aren't how many tanks you have, it's what support they have...
On July 01 2013 08:29 Qikz wrote: Even with Collosus, the tanks should win.
If you mix in immortals yes, but there's no way you'd ever have only pure tanks against immortals. I'm talking purely 15-20 tanks and no buffer units (which would never happen).
If we're talking about tanks with buffer units and you mix in blue flame hellions (against mainly archons) or hellbats (against mainly zealot immortal) 15-20 tanks can hold their own pretty damn fine against anything that isn't stargate units or mass, mass, mass immortal.
Sorry, I assumed it was fairly obvious that when I said "15-20 Tanks," it was implied there was something in front of them. I don't understand why you talk about BFH since Hellbats die in the same number of hits (~3) against Archons, but have +50% hit points against other units and deal way more damage to Zealots. And yes your opponent will have a lot of Immortals since Protoss going ground against mech will have 2 and sometimes even 3 robos. Without Ghosts, Zealots/Archons/Immortals will easily trash a Tank-centric army.
On July 01 2013 08:39 TheDwf wrote: Without Ghosts, Zealots/Archons/Immortals will easily trash a Tank-centric army.
Untrue. A Hellbat/tanks/thors army in the right position (aka, not open field) can deal with this army. It is far from being efficient or a good trade or anything, but the mech player can win the battle itself. It was also doable in WoL with BFH. Of course in an open field the protoss army will destroy the terran, but if you're pushing middle map with these compositions into play, the terran is probably far from an half decent mech player
On July 01 2013 08:29 Qikz wrote: Even with Collosus, the tanks should win.
If you mix in immortals yes, but there's no way you'd ever have only pure tanks against immortals. I'm talking purely 15-20 tanks and no buffer units (which would never happen).
If we're talking about tanks with buffer units and you mix in blue flame hellions (against mainly archons) or hellbats (against mainly zealot immortal) 15-20 tanks can hold their own pretty damn fine against anything that isn't stargate units or mass, mass, mass immortal.
Sorry, I assumed it was fairly obvious that when I said "15-20 Tanks," it was implied there was something in front of them. I don't understand why you talk about BFH since Hellbats die in the same number of hits (~3) against Archons, but have +50% hit points against other units and deal way more damage to Zealots. And yes your opponent will have a lot of Immortals since Protoss going ground against mech will have 2 and sometimes even 3 robos. Without Ghosts, Zealots/Archons/Immortals will easily trash a Tank-centric army.
I've found through playing a hell of a lot of games that blue flame hellions are actually better against archon centric armies as they don't clump up half as much as hellbats do so they can't do all the extra splash damage they need. You also have a longer line of AOE damage so you hit the stuff behind the archons a lot easier than you could do with hellbats.
I've even tried with a friend to test this theory by setting up an engagement then trying once with the hellions transformed and once when they're not and It was the exact same situation both times, but I won convincingly when I used hellions instead of hellbats and actually lost everything with the hellbats.
People may think Hellbats are supremely better in every single situation, but I've found from testing and playing that this simply isn't the case. TvT mech vs mech for example I've found BFH to be much more effective than battle hellions if you're in a defensive position.
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)
Flash and co. played mech tvp in BW1 so they don't have that extensive bio practice vs. protoss that you speak of.
On July 01 2013 08:45 Qikz wrote: I've found through playing a hell of a lot of games that blue flame hellions are actually better against archon centric armies as they don't clump up half as much as hellbats do so they can't do all the extra splash damage they need. You also have a longer line of AOE damage so you hit the stuff behind the archons a lot easier than you could do with hellbats.
Hellions have the some collision size as Hellbats, so assuming a similar formation for both units you will be dealt the same amount of splash damage (in percentage).
I've even tried with a friend to test this theory by setting up an engagement then trying once with the hellions transformed and once when they're not and It was the exact same situation both times, but I won convincingly when I used hellions instead of hellbats and actually lost everything with the hellbats.
I have tried BFH too against Protoss, trying to soften up the Zealot wall with some hit & run before the fight, but honestly I never faced a situation in which it ended up being better than 1aing Hellbats. Quite on the contrary, I lost many games in which having Hellbats instead would have netted me the win for sure. Hellions are just too frail against the brutality of Protoss armies.
People may think Hellbats are supremely better in every single situation, but I've found from testing and playing that this simply isn't the case. TvT mech vs mech for example I've found BFH to be much more effective than battle hellions if you're in a defensive position.
Again, I really don't know where this comes from. Each time I have tried BFH/Tanks against Hellbats/Tanks, I have been completely demolished. The only advantage BFH have is that they can hit & run against Hellbats, but then you face the same issue you had in WoL against Zealots, either you stand before your Tanks and his beefier melee line murders yours before smashing your Tanks, or you keep hitting & running, end up behind your Tank line and his melee units just slaughter your unprotected Tanks. BFH do have some use, but in actual massive engagements there are only very few situations in which they will do better than Hellbats.
Hellion range is 5, where as Hellbat's range is only 2. If you have lots of hellions and he has lots of hellbats, your hellions unless he's perfectly lined up and not clumped at all, not only do bonus damage vs light, but they also hit the hellbats stuck behind which are doing no damage. If you're defending up the top of a ramp for example, there's no way they're ever going to break you with hellbat tank if your tanks are not in a completely terrible place.
Same goes for not only zealots, zerglings as well as archons and stalkers. It all entirely depends on what sort of position your in. If you're in a very open space or you're up a ramp but your enemy is in a choke it's more beneficial to use BFH (depending on what your facing)
However if you're in a big open space and so is your enemy, it's better to use hellbats. This isn't completely ridiculous by the way, I've been playing mech since the beginning of the WoL beta and I've played extensively throughout the HoTS beta and the actual release testing all this stuff since I find it very interesting. Maybe I'm wrong and what I'm seeing in my own games is incorrect, but based on the numbers as well as my own data collected from playing, that's my opinion.
Also the transformation servos upgrade going back to that is a lot better for reinforcing as if you need hellbats, you rally in hellions which move a lot faster and then just transform them.
He goes air, me tank viking. I win after he lose fight. Counterattack. Viking is strong against air and colossus. Tank kill other. PM for help or replay. Keep mech playing, Terran brothers.
Really no offense meant, and this is the first time I ask someone, but are you bronze? Because that won't work in higher leagues. He is way ahead of you, my guess would be he severely lacked production facilities, possibly upgrades.
On June 19 2013 22:43 Sissors wrote: I concentrate EMP's more on immortals and archons. Sure if possible I also EMP templars, but tanks also kill templars fast. While you really want EMPs to kill archons and immortals fast.
Regarding ravens and seeker missiles, there is a significant delay before they will hit, you got quite some time to split them off. And the problem is HTs. They will feedback ravens without delay. So if you launch from shortrange you lose all ravens to EMPs (many before they launch), if you do it from long range he can just move back a bit and they all fail.
You are correct vikings are important, but their problem is (besides that toss air is pretty good against them) that if he doesn't go air it is really easy to overproduce them. I have lost at least as many games to toss due to viking overproduction as due to not enough vikings. Sure you can land them, but the result generally isn't pretty, and it was definately not a great investment of your resources.
The only reason I think mech works somewhat against toss is that it is only a minority that uses mech, so toss aren't used to dealing with mech. As simple example, luckily on ladder the vast majority of the toss attack directly into my army, while they could also have walked around my army and just gone for my base. And then I would have to unsiege tanks and run after a toss army that can turn around at any time. Also for example a group of raiding blink stalkers aren't exactly easy to counter with mech.
Why in the world would you try to chase down the toss army instead of going for a base trade? Your buildings can float and the toss cannot do that.
Why in the world would you go for a base trade in such a situation? If your base trade is based around the idea that you can float your buildings away it is a very bad idea, unless you are really early game (which clearly wasn't the case here).
Oh yeah I have gone for base trades with mech vs toss, but in general it isn't a good idea. The toss army is much faster, so it can simply demolish your base faster. And if you want to somewhat fast kill the toss base you have to stay unsieged, which means you will take alot more damage. Aditionally the toss can warp in units with his main army, while your new production gets slaughtered when it spawns. Finally he can simply kill your base, and before you are ready to kill his main he recalls back and defends.
And not to forget he can rebuild his infrastructure + army way faster. So while sometimes an option, in general I really wouldn't advice to base trade with mech vs a toss.
I know the picture above with the missle turrets is kinda goofy, but the concept I think is more important. Why dont we see terran players bringing along some scvs to construct some kind of barrier? imagine how much better engagements would go if zealots had to either go around some supply depots or try to cut through them. Im not saying that you will necesarily have time to build a forretress or that the toss player will be dumb enough to attack into it, but if you see the toss army bearing down on you and you know that an engagement is coming, wouldnt it help if the zealots had to kill 5 or 6 75-100 health supply depots? the extra time it would buy isnt much, but your seige line could maybe get another shot off. This was an integral part of playing mech against toss in bw as I understand, and we all know that mech has plenty of minerals to spare. is there a solid reason that i have never once seen this, not even in practice?
On July 03 2013 07:49 Aveng3r wrote: I know the picture above with the missle turrets is kinda goofy, but the concept I think is more important. Why dont we see terran players bringing along some scvs to construct some kind of barrier? imagine how much better engagements would go if zealots had to either go around some supply depots or try to cut through them. Im not saying that you will necesarily have time to build a forretress or that the toss player will be dumb enough to attack into it, but if you see the toss army bearing down on you and you know that an engagement is coming, wouldnt it help if the zealots had to kill 5 or 6 75-100 health supply depots? the extra time it would buy isnt much, but your seige line could maybe get another shot off. This was an integral part of playing mech against toss in bw as I understand, and we all know that mech has plenty of minerals to spare. is there a solid reason that i have never once seen this, not even in practice?
Well, problems are -Time : If you're in a defensive position you'll already have shit in front of your tanks, and if not, you'll often see him too late to build stuff + position tanks + etc etc -Resources : you can't always have like 1k resources (honestly supply aren't that good you need rax) in midgame, and . .. -In lategame (or even in midgame depending of his comp) there will be air which don't care about any wall, and since zealots get demolished by hellbats now the main threat are distance units. In fact that walling thing was good in WoL because you could force zealots to get funneled and destroyed by BFH but since hellbats are way better in a 'line vs line' frontal fight it's overkill in HoTS
and if i remember correctly, that was mainly done in bw with turrets to compensate for lack of AA when needed
ha, just listened to Flash talk about mech and identifying the supply of Tanks being to high and Immortals being to much of a hard counter as the reasons mech is bad. How long will it take Browder to swallow his pride and fix mech...or maybe we need a few more years of "exploring"
On May 24 2013 01:35 MockHamill wrote: 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?
Mech is shit because your army is terrible until you are maxed. I can play greedy, i can hide air, i can do anything. When i VS mech on ladder i laugh as i collect my free win.
With that said i think mech all ins are viable, but in a macro sense not at all
I am a Terran player myself and I wish playing mech in all match ups, but TvP is different...
In TvT and TvZ, a maxed out mech army is far superior than your opponent's army. But of course it is much slower and much more difficult to re-max..etc. (All the downside of mech)
But in TvP, mech does NOT do better than bio. The fire power of tank is not as rewarding due to the nature of protoss units. They are beefy, bigger size and relatively high HP. Zealot is high HP, light unit. Stalkers being big unit radius (Reduce splash damage), and of course the Immortals which are able to soak up a large amount of damage.
Is mech truly less fragile against protoss? I feel marauders/hellbat/viking is far more robust than mech. A healbat does not die against any gateway unit. The composition is less fragile against storms and colossus (2 main protoss AOE).
I think it will be until LOTV that we see some true mech in TvP.
Hellion runbys are awesome, widow mines do damage to stuff like Immortals, and tanks shred gateway units. The only issue I see is responding to robo/colossus play. Ooh, maybe tomorrow I'll try 2 base factory shenanigans then adding on viking/banshee vs toss....
I find mech-ghost really good vs Protoss in late-game as long as you don't make any tanks since they are horrible.
Thor-Hellbat-Raven with the standard Ghost-Viking support and a dozen Pfs + 40 turrets + 10 sensor towers + Massive orbital farm is really strong and I think it's superior to bio when you play below high master.
The only good composition vs this imo would be some kind of Skytoss-Templar-Cannon army. Tempest get absolutely demolished by PDD, and void rays clump up like nothing else in this game, seekers and javelin missile wreck them.
It all comes down to the Templar vs Ghost fight in the end anyway though.
The biggest problem for the Terran is obviously getting to this point.
I should stop talking now before someone gets angry.
On July 08 2013 03:01 DavoS wrote: Hellion runbys are awesome, widow mines do damage to stuff like Immortals, and tanks shred gateway units. The only issue I see is responding to robo/colossus play. Ooh, maybe tomorrow I'll try 2 base factory shenanigans then adding on viking/banshee vs toss....
Zealots are very good vs Tanks, Archons tank as much as Immortals and do bonus to Hellbats, HT storm Hellions/Hellbats. Tanks do not shred anything Protoss.
On July 08 2013 03:01 DavoS wrote: Hellion runbys are awesome, widow mines do damage to stuff like Immortals, and tanks shred gateway units. The only issue I see is responding to robo/colossus play. Ooh, maybe tomorrow I'll try 2 base factory shenanigans then adding on viking/banshee vs toss....
Zealots are very good vs Tanks, Archons tank as much as Immortals and do bonus to Hellbats, HT storm Hellions/Hellbats. Tanks do not shred anything Protoss.
They do shred the ass out of sentries, lol.
Meching vs Protoss still sucks. I can't sit there and make 15 tanks hoping that my opponent doesn't make the right units. At virtually any time while you're trying to hit crit. mass of tanks your Protoss opponent can come over and kill you. I'd rather not beat the dead horse that is trying to make mech wok in TvP. Yes, it works for some players... in Europe... but that's about the extent of its usefulness.
On July 08 2013 03:01 DavoS wrote: Hellion runbys are awesome, widow mines do damage to stuff like Immortals, and tanks shred gateway units. The only issue I see is responding to robo/colossus play. Ooh, maybe tomorrow I'll try 2 base factory shenanigans then adding on viking/banshee vs toss....
Zealots are very good vs Tanks, Archons tank as much as Immortals and do bonus to Hellbats, HT storm Hellions/Hellbats. Tanks do not shred anything Protoss.
They do shred the ass out of sentries, lol.
Ahh... back in WOL i lost a few games to hallucination Immortals, used all my EMPs on them lol
One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
mech isnt bad if you know how to play it, it just doesnt have the same level of flexibility afforded by bio play. at the highest levels of play you need to be able to react quickly and be flexible, and that will always be the achilles heel of mech - its slow and clumsy albeit heavy hitting.
What I've never gotten is why mech needs to be viable. The only non-mirror where there are a couple compositions for both sides is PVZ. In TVZ there is basically only one composition for both sides, as most games end up MMMM vs ling/bane/muta. There are slight variations by both sides sometimes, but usually anything else (like roach bane) is only seen as an all-in. In addition, protoss really only has one composition in PVT as well. Yeah, you can get colossus first or you can get storm first, but almost all protoss end up with both of those + gateway support, and not much else. Having more variety wouldn't be bad, but as it stands having one standard composition for a matchup seems to be more the norm than having multiple viable compositions.
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
And tanks are much worse in SC2 than BW. Yeah they don't overkill, but I'd rather overkill a zealot than having it tank the shit out of my seige-tanks.
Blink and overall stalker mobility with a movespeed(2.95) that overtakes a worker. Pathing issues are also gone in SC2. Blink stalkers are not bad at all~
On July 03 2013 09:19 Lyyna wrote: and if i remember correctly, that was mainly done in bw with turrets to compensate for lack of AA when needed
The goliath, actually. The only Protoss air unit worth writing home about in PvT was the carrier, and a few turrets but more importantly scouting it and producing a lot of golaiths and focus firing them down was effective. In hots, there is no factory unit that can shoot air units as effectively (yeah, thors shoot up but maxed out air beats maxed out thors, definitely not the case for goliaths), you have to rely on raven viking and praying to the SC gods that his tempest control isn't good enough
There is a reason why mech Tvp is almost never played at a professional level. Protoss is just too good at killing every unit in a mech comp. Immortals, Void rays, and Tempests just simply hard counter mech. One thing I've seen is mech with Ghosts. On paper this works incredibly well, EMPs on immortals so they can't even get close to your tanks would give a nice timing before the Protoss has mass air out. Although, when I thought more about it I realized this wasn't entirely true. EMP would stop the Protoss from engaging you but it still would not allow you to engage into them. Putting a few Colossi in between the Ghosts and Immortals would stop the Ghosts from ever getting a good EMP off, while still allowing the Protoss to hold their position, especially on high ground. So you would be left with a stalemate situation while to Protoss transitions to air, and lets face it Feedback makes Terran air is even less viable then mech. The reason some pros are able to pull off mech TvP is no Protoss practices against mech without knowing they are going to play someone who only goes mech. Which is why the players that do only mech never have much success in anything other then bracket based tournaments. TL;DR Protoss has far to many counters to mech for it to be viable. If you have success with mech on ladder it is probably because you are low league where Protoss players aren't quite sure how to counter it.
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
Stalkers have much better DPS in general in SC2 than Dragoons did in SC1. Dragoons did 10 DPS to large/armored, Stalkers do 9.7 DPS to large/armored. Dragoons did 5 DPS to small/light, Stalkers do 6.9 DPS to small/light. Stalkers get the range upgrade for free and the changes to shield mechanics in SC2 are worth a lot more than 20 HP. Also, you know, blink.
In BW, stalkers would have been awesome yeah. But now we have marauders too, and we can have a very dense bioball stimming at one point where it was not possible in BW. Hence they're not as crucial as dragoons were in BW.
I think a big piece of the mech question is the difference between the hellion/hellbat and the vulture. Vultures just in general were more cost efficient units than hellions are (75 instead of 100 minerals for better damage vs Protoss). The hellion/hellbat is better at fighting Zerg units than the vulture was at the cost of the better single target damage the vulture did. Also, the siege tank has no role except killing stalkers (already done by thors or widow mines) and is not needed. But tankless mech does not have the positional control that BW mech did and cannot be as effective for securing large areas needed to continue taking bases. There are less "abusive" places for tanks on modern maps which further limits the siege tank. Finally the immortal is just really good at taking thor or tank shots. There was nothing like it in brood war for such low gas cost. However, wasting money on tanks really hurts your army's durability, as 125 gas per tank gives much less health than 200 gas per Thor, and with warp gate a durable army is 100% necessary for a Terran (a further advantage of bio- you fight in their base and can lose and retreat and heal).
Yeah. I often face terran players going mech and most of the time it ends up with them raging about how protoss is op and how i countered they army with one unit in amove (immortals). Maybe they should just give up, although I've also met talented mech players who harass constantly with BFH to keep my immortal count low. I think that is the only way to win with mech because once protoss is 200/200 with the correct unit composition there's no way.
Problem isn't really "mech is unusuable". problem is "mech UNITS are unusuables". And THAT sucks.
Yeah, there is 4M play in TvZ. And one or two tanks can hold off all-ins. But that's all. In Wol MMMHellion worked well, especially against infestor comp, but the new mutas make it worse, and infestor comp aren't used anymore. Tanks, well... Tanks sucks. And Thors just slow your bio, and that's bad for a style that rely on mobility and constant agression.
In TvP, yeah we can still add hellbats. And certain timings can use tanks, or even thor maybe. But you CAN'T use a mech-centric composition, it could be "mech+marines" why not, or pure mech. Some guys do it ye, but this isn't as easy as bio to pull it off, and maybe less and less "viable" in pro-matches,.
Nearly all units in the zerg or toss arsenal can be used in all matchups. Even PvT stargate units. Collossus/phoenix is played by a lots of pros theses days, and it works. And i'm talking about composition used in a macro-game, a playstyle, not timings. Terran units, other than bio or SUPERLATEGAME sky, can't be used effectively. and that is just bad.
On a serious note, tanks need maelstorm round upgrade or something. Then again, I still dont get why Blizzard didn't halve the thor into a cheaper warhound that costs less supply/resources. Would have made mech much better in TvP.
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
And tanks are much worse in SC2 than BW. Yeah they don't overkill, but I'd rather overkill a zealot than having it tank the shit out of my seige-tanks.
Blink and overall stalker mobility with a movespeed(2.95) that overtakes a worker. Pathing issues are also gone in SC2. Blink stalkers are not bad at all~
Tank damage when sieged in BW dealt 70÷2(explosive vs small) = 35 base damage to zealots. Attack rate converted into SC2 cooldown is 1.25 (assuming the "22" frame cooldown in BW was actually 22.222¯).
Tank damage when sieged in SC2 deals 35 base damage to zealots. Attack rate in SC2 cooldown is 1.2 (equivalent to 21.333 frames in BW). Sieged Tank Range + 1 compared to BW, zealot shields down by 10 compared to BW. They should kill zealots more quickly aside from charge. :D Only real thing that might make them 'weaker' is having less due to them costing 25 more gas and the general desire NOT to have tanks vs protoss in SC2.
Kids always forget about the Divide by 2 for explosive versus small units part, it seems.
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
And tanks are much worse in SC2 than BW. Yeah they don't overkill, but I'd rather overkill a zealot than having it tank the shit out of my seige-tanks.
Blink and overall stalker mobility with a movespeed(2.95) that overtakes a worker. Pathing issues are also gone in SC2. Blink stalkers are not bad at all~
Tank damage when sieged in BW dealt 70÷2(explosive vs small) = 35 base damage to zealots. Attack rate converted into SC2 cooldown is 1.25 (assuming the "22" frame cooldown in BW was actually 22.222¯).
Tank damage when sieged in SC2 deals 35 base damage to zealots. Attack rate in SC2 cooldown is 1.2 (equivalent to 21.333 frames in BW). Sieged Tank Range + 1 compared to BW, zealot shields down by 10 compared to BW. They should kill zealots more quickly aside from charge. :D Only real thing that might make them 'weaker' is having less due to them costing 25 more gas and the general desire NOT to have tanks vs protoss in SC2.
Kids always forget about the Divide by 2 for explosive versus small units part, it seems.
Kids always forget about shields taking FULL damage in BW. So a zealot would be hit by 70 damage on the first shot.. (85 when at wep ups 3) therefore it later gets 2~3 shotted when involving the splash damage. Same goes for archons and any protoss ground units.
If the "shield" specific part was introduced back to SC2 it would be a nice tank buff without breaking the other matchups.
Haha, touché. XD Also just to be clear, the "kids" was just used as a phrase, not arrogance or intending to be a real arse about anything to anyone. I typed the wrong damn cooldowns though, I have no idea why. Rather than 1.25 vs 1.2, that's the zealot attack, oops.
It should have been 75 frame cooldown in BW = 4.21875 SC2 game second cooldown. versus 3.00 SC2 game second cooldown.
That means the following: 4 hits to kill in BW meant 16.875 SC2 game seconds for a BW tank to kill a BW zealot (sieged tank of course, with no splash from other tanks). 5 hits to kill in BW meant 15 SC2 game seconds for a SC2 tank to kill a SC2 zealot (sieged tank of course, with no splash from other tanks).
EDIT: What the hell, UK Firefox dictionary? Arse is not in there by default!
On July 14 2013 13:40 YyapSsap wrote: If the "shield" specific part was introduced back to SC2 it would be a nice tank buff without breaking the other matchups.
Actually, it's not really related to the topic, but personally I'd like that for indirect mild buffs to banes and corruptors vs protoss. =P Get on it, Blizzard!
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
Blink Stalkers are some of the best units in the game when vsing mech because of insane mobility, being able to trigger mines and take no damage, good damage to armored, and insane health/cost ratio — just by exploiting them you can easily take games off of top mech Terrans. Your example is completely false for these reasons.
On July 08 2013 08:32 Fig wrote: One thing being overlooked here I think is the fact that Stalkers are not Dragoons. Tanks in BW made a living turning Dragoons into blue goo, but Stalkers are much worse than Dragoons as actual combat units vs Terran. They have terrible DPS and no range upgrade, and are mainly good for surgical strikes, defending drops, and protecting Colossi. You never want to make many Stalkers in PvT, and the ones you do make aren't filling the same role that Dragoons used to, so tanks have lost their purpose in the matchup.
Stalkers have much better DPS in general in SC2 than Dragoons did in SC1. Dragoons did 10 DPS to large/armored, Stalkers do 9.7 DPS to large/armored. Dragoons did 5 DPS to small/light, Stalkers do 6.9 DPS to small/light. Stalkers get the range upgrade for free and the changes to shield mechanics in SC2 are worth a lot more than 20 HP. Also, you know, blink.
On July 14 2013 08:16 mantequilla wrote: I don't get the terrans' obsession with playing mech in PvT. Some unit compositions are not viable in some matchups, isn't it only natural?
The issue isn't really when one composition isn't viable in a matchup, but if there is only one viable composition in a matchup. It is simply more fun it there is diversity. Thats btw also my main issue with toss: terran has mech, bio, and combinations of those two. Zerg has ling based composition, roach, swarmhost, etc. Toss simply mixes everything and puts it in one big deathball.
On July 14 2013 09:35 KingAlphard wrote: Maybe they should just give up, although I've also met talented mech players who harass constantly with BFH to keep my immortal count low. I think that is the only way to win with mech because once protoss is 200/200 with the correct unit composition there's no way.
BFH harass doesn't work against toss. Simple as that. If you try to harass the units at the outside of their army than colossi with range burns down your BFH. Harassing workers should be impossible since it is so trivial to make mineral lines BFH proof for toss, simply use some warpgates to block paths, since you need them anyway and it doesn't matter anyway where you put them. (In case of a base trade it is actually useful to have them spread out).
The number of reasons NOT to mech is quite huge. Already covered heavily in the thread, except few people have talked about Void Rays.
1) The present unit balance:
Voids are sick good, they eat all mech units for lunch, and if the terran invests in vikings too heavily the templar sort them out. Immortals are still good. But why build voids and imms when you can build Tempests? They...win...betterer. Yeah.
2) The past unit balance.
Before the HotS skytoss buffs, there were no omglazervods and temps, and yet the immortal / templar comps owned mech anyway. It was never particularly viable BEFORE HotS - and terran ground isn't massively different, since Mines cost supply. They sort of tried with the energy removal and the alternate AA mode - but the 250mm cannon gives up the one advantage the Thor had - splash damage versus stacking of Voids. So even if they removed Tempests from the game tomorrow, and didn't nerf hellbats, mech would STILL suck. That's how bad it is.
3) The "why" question.
Bio is...better. Easier and most consistent in its harass, more mobile, more scalable with gamestate (you don't need eco advantage to contemplate it), isn't hard-countered by any composition, replaceable and gas-efficient. You'd be an idiot to go anything else for any reason but variety's sake AND a desire to never win.
4) The future.
Blizzard don't like mech. They gave Zerg two new hard-counter units, both of them earlier tier tech than the existing Broodlord. They gave Protoss two new hard-counter units, in addition to the existing immortal. They don't like slow passive games. They will never improve mech, so stop wasting your time and breath on the subject.
I love going against the tide when it comes to strats and styles, and questioning established wisdom even more - but mech is doomed.
The number of reasons NOT to mech is quite huge. Already covered heavily in the thread, except few people have talked about Void Rays.
1) The present unit balance:
Voids are sick good, they eat all mech units for lunch, and if the terran invests in vikings too heavily the templar sort them out. Immortals are still good. But why build voids and imms when you can build Tempests? They...win...betterer. Yeah.
2) The past unit balance.
Before the HotS skytoss buffs, there were no omglazervods and temps, and yet the immortal / templar comps owned mech anyway. It was never particularly viable BEFORE HotS - and terran ground isn't massively different, since Mines cost supply. Even if they removed Tempests from the game tomorrow, nerfed voids into the ground and didn't nerf hellbats mech would STILL suck. That's how bad it is.
3) The "why" question.
Bio is...better. Easier and most consistent in its harass, more mobile, more scalable with gamestate (you don't need eco advantage to contemplate it), isn't hard-countered by any composition, replaceable and gas-efficient. You'd be an idiot to go anything else for any reason but variety's sake AND a desire to never win.
4) The future.
Blizzard don't like mech. They gave Zerg two new hard-counter units, both of them earlier tier tech than the existing Broodlord. They gave Protoss two new hard-counter units, in addition to the existing immortal. They don't like slow passive games. They will never improve mech, so stop wasting your time and breath on the subject.
I love going against the tide when it comes to strats and styles, and questioning established wisdom even more - but mech is doomed.
On July 14 2013 23:52 DaemonX wrote: The number of reasons NOT to mech is quite huge. Already covered heavily in the thread, except few people have talked about Void Rays.
1) The present unit balance:
Voids are sick good, they eat all mech units for lunch, and if the terran invests in vikings too heavily the templar sort them out. Immortals are still good. But why build voids and imms when you can build Tempests? They...win...betterer. Yeah.
2) The past unit balance.
Before the HotS skytoss buffs, there were no omglazervods and temps, and yet the immortal / templar comps owned mech anyway. It was never particularly viable BEFORE HotS - and terran ground isn't massively different, since Mines cost supply. They sort of tried with the energy removal and the alternate AA mode - but the 250mm cannon gives up the one advantage the Thor had - splash damage versus stacking of Voids. So even if they removed Tempests from the game tomorrow, and didn't nerf hellbats, mech would STILL suck. That's how bad it is.
3) The "why" question.
Bio is...better. Easier and most consistent in its harass, more mobile, more scalable with gamestate (you don't need eco advantage to contemplate it), isn't hard-countered by any composition, replaceable and gas-efficient. You'd be an idiot to go anything else for any reason but variety's sake AND a desire to never win.
4) The future.
Blizzard don't like mech. They gave Zerg two new hard-counter units, both of them earlier tier tech than the existing Broodlord. They gave Protoss two new hard-counter units, in addition to the existing immortal. They don't like slow passive games. They will never improve mech, so stop wasting your time and breath on the subject.
I love going against the tide when it comes to strats and styles, and questioning established wisdom even more - but mech is doomed.
The problem is that your post is only talking about compositions and directs battles, and you seems to assume that the terran is only going for some kind of tank/viking (like most people who try to demolish mech while having exactly 0 knowledge about it, aka most 'anti mech' posters on this thread), so let's correct it a bit : 1) VR may be strong vs mech, but they're not cheap and easy to mass and any kind of AOE for the T player means he has to micro his VRs heavily (and then it means they just don't shoot, hey), especially if there is ravens on the field. 2) It was already possible to win vs immortal/HT based army even before HOTS with pure mech, by using a tons of hellions well micro'd to snipe HT (could also be done with tanks) and ripe immortal's shields (and this became better in Hots with hellbats + few medivacs, which just won't die to immortals), but any decent form of TvP mech will at some point include ghosts versus this kind of play, meaning that immortals become nothing but tank with less range and no AOE, and well, no energy HTs will have to morph into archons and . . ghost. Don't talk about something you don't know anything about, mech may not be the strongest thing ever, but no, any decent mech player won't just get owned by an immortal/HT army (or then it's not a decent mech player) just because these units are supposed to be the counter to TANK (not to the whole mech army) 3) Bio is better, but this doesn't mean it's fun to play for everyone. My personal advice is that playing bio is all about looking cute with drops and stuff while knowing you have to exploit some windows in midgame (and that you are very weak at some windows, too), going into a lategame where you have to win 3 fights in a row (and by win, i mean crushing him with at least enough of your army to fight a warp in + planetary nexus; and using it to take down a base) while 1 defeat often lead to a crushing loss. May be only my own point of view, but for me that's enough to want to play mech 4) Probably the only thing where i agree at least a bit with you, even if i don't see how oracle is supposed to be a counter to mech specifically
Since I started this thread I guess I should get my current opinion after having played 1000+ more mech games:
I think Mech is viable at least under pro level, as long as you do the following: 1. Go Marine/Tank early game 2. Go Tank/Thor/Hellion/Hellbat/Ghost midgame. 3. Go Thor/Raven/Ghost late game.
I think the reason Mech do not work for many people is that they a) Try go get mech too fast. You really need lots of un-upgraded marines to compliment your tanks early game or you natural will fall. b) Try to use Tanks after early game. I typically never build more than 4-6 tanks, after that Thors works much better since they can fight both ground and air. c) Get upgrades too early. You really need to prioritize unit number and getting Ghosts more than being behind on upgrades. Being behind on upgrades using bio is bad, with Mech it does not matter as much. d) Do not realise that Raven/Ghost is insanely good in those late game scenarios where you both are on 4+ bases and Protoss invest in lots of pop efficient and gas heavy units. There is no Protoss combo that hard counters Thor/Raven/Ghost given equal resources.
That said Mech is really vulnerable during the transition from Mech/Ghost to Mech/Ghost/Raven. After that, not so much.
Mech is absolutely viable unless you're grandmaster or pro. All the "counters" to mech are countered by one unit : the Raven. PDD block tempests shots (which are very slow), missile seekers DESTROYS void rays if they're not splitted (which mean they don't shoot), Thors don't have energy anymore, Battlehellions are much better at tanking damage and melting chargelots, and immortals are not an issue thanks to seeker missile (which ignore the shield) + the buffer of battlehellions in front or your gas units.
The more I play around with Ghost-Viking with Thor-Hellbat-Raven in the lategame the more certain I am that it is fully viable below pro-level. I would even say that mech is stronger than bio on some maps. You do have to over-invest in turret-sensortower and pfs though, your Static defence ring should look a bit ridicolous imo. And in the late-game you don't want any tanks at all.
The only viable tech patch for the toss is carrier, tempest with mass cannon-templar support
The MMM-VG is twice as hard to control.
I would like to stick my neck out and say that during the next 6-7 months we will see a rise of mech play TvP. It's all about safety and transitions I think. Protoss is immensely powerful during the early game, their flexibility is unparalleled in the rts world. But I dare to say that if you get the ghost-viking-Thor-raven comp with a good eco you can stomp the toss.
On July 15 2013 02:08 MockHamill wrote: Since I started this thread I guess I should get my current opinion after having played 1000+ more mech games:
I think Mech is viable at least under pro level, as long as you do the following: 1. Go Marine/Tank early game 2. Go Tank/Thor/Hellion/Hellbat/Ghost midgame. 3. Go Thor/Raven/Ghost late game.
I think the reason Mech do not work for many people is that they a) Try go get mech too fast. You really need lots of un-upgraded marines to compliment your tanks early game or you natural will fall. b) Try to use Tanks after early game. I typically never build more than 4-6 tanks, after that Thors works much better since they can fight both ground and air. c) Get upgrades too early. You really need to prioritize unit number and getting Ghosts more than being behind on upgrades. Being behind on upgrades using bio is bad, with Mech it does not matter as much. d) Do not realise that Raven/Ghost is insanely good in those late game scenarios where you both are on 4+ bases and Protoss invest in lots of pop efficient and gas heavy units. There is no Protoss combo that hard counters Thor/Raven/Ghost given equal resources.
That said Mech is really vulnerable during the transition from Mech/Ghost to Mech/Ghost/Raven. After that, not so much.
Agree with this mostly. I just don't see the real use in the raven lategame.. Smart protoss imo just goes massively into skytoss + immortals against mech, just a couple voids the rest carrier and non-stop immortal from one robo. Maxed out that beats any terran mech composition really since carriers are supply efficient against anything (except BCs maybe). I really don't get why you would always get ravens with mech.. their gas cost doesn't synergize with mech at all and they are only good against bad anti-mech protoss play imo like mass tempest or mass voids. If protoss get's mostly carrier they do nothing (raven's are just a juicy unit to snipe) and they prevent the max out. I think mech is usually on a clock against toss going into skytoss and should just open with some sort of marine/mine/tank into thor/hellbat/ghost/viking and play aggressively from that point before P actually get's too much air. Traditional maxing out and playing super defensive is not the way to go against carrier imo (though arguably few P do this and go with silly stuff like mass zealot/archon). P in general make so many mistakes playing against mech though when you see it, it's rediculous but just the result of mech being too rare. I really wish mech would get a good buff just because as protoss it's so much more fun playing against mech occasionally than just bio only. Thors need a slight AA buff for both modes imo (buff for first mode against muta basically and second mode for P air really) and tanks still need some tiny buff. Mech wasn't viable (ie close to as good as bio) before patch but now it's just even more. It's just so silly
Tanks are entirely unnecessary unless your opponent is getting tons of colossus/stalkers. The Thor is the best unit TvP particularly now that Terran has a unit (hellbat) that can tank zealot damage without instadying, as thors are not good at killing zealots. IMO the best way to go into mech is a cloaked banshee 1-1-1 with a cc behind it as it forces your opponent to not play super greedy and deals with some of the extreme immobility of mid-game mech. Combined with hellbat drops they just make the Protoss play defensively like yourself (mech) and get stalkers, which are bad vs mech. Then you are on even bases and either a better economy or a better army composition and you can push if they have lots of stalkers and kill a base or if they are behind in economy you can max out and push then.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://img11.hostingpics.net/pics/706119Tanks.jpg)
Can you tell me what maps u veto ?![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dV94iRZ.jpg)
