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Hi guys
I did a search, and despite there are few posts regarding how to deal with mech terran, I didn't find any guide on decision making, timings, and general strategy.
So, I would like to ask, how to deal with mech?
General answers are: do immortal, do tempests, etc etc, but I still do things without any precise order.
Mech players usually aim for hellbat+tanks with bunch of vikings/ravens, others go for mass banshee ravens as they saw ur higher ground units count. When protoss should switch from colossus to immortal? When they should start archons? When they should go for tempests?
Also, when they turtle, how to deal with them? Turrets and well placed tanks make impossible to harass, and they keep taking all bases.
Any good protoss could answer with a nice guide on how to deal with mech?
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Sorry I'm not a protoss, and I can't give you anything specific, but I'll try.
Since vs mech is often a slower paced game, it's a lot less about the timings than it is about the unit compositions and expanding. You have a lot of time to scout his composition and be sure his doesn't counter yours (it's easier for him to scout you), but at the same time unit compositions are really strict in that any small imperfections will have significant consequences.
Also since vs mech matchups are very underdeveloped, specific builds and timings are also not as useful or effective (you are trying to counter something that may be unoptimal or unpredictable, compared to just playing reactively and adapting).
Mech is the one that reacts usually to the protoss composition, and the mech player has a harder time taking bases due to mech units being weaker and slower in small numbers compared to protoss. With protoss you want to catch the mech player off guard with a winning composition, and/or just constantly keep him in check throughout the game by doing lots of pressure and harass and worrying less about the direct engagement.
To play this matchup you just have to know how units interact, what's cheap, what's effective, what's annoying, etc. For example if he gets tons of turrets and tanks, then adding a few tempests to snipe all those turrets could be a good idea. Or maybe just add more immortals and go in on him if you notice he doesn't have enough emp/banshees. If he's spamming that much static d, maybe you could just win the war of attrition by holding more bases than him. If he's holing up with tanks everywhere, that means any of the sides are weak because not all the tanks are there, and even 2-4 less tanks in a fight will make a huge, huge difference.
You say they keep taking all bases, so that's something specific I could help with. Do any combination of these. Keep pylons around the map, and do mass zealot warpins. Mix in DTs with the zealot warpins. Do 10-15 mass DT warpins. Keep 1 dt at each of their next possible bases. Drop him and reposition your army to threaten his new expansion path so he cant establish it. Send a mass zealot/DT wave to take out an expansion elsewhere (DTs destroy PFs, unless they have maybe 2 or more PFs and it's well sim city'd), while repositioning your army to where he's trying to expand.
Whether you want to go for the direct engagements mainly or try to harass mainly, you want to be expanding a lot because you can. Zealots can be warped in en masse when needed, so you can focus on gas units while making lots of nexuses and even spamming a few canons at each to stop hellions, stop banshees, and slow siege advances unless he starts nuking them. It's very hard for the mech player to take out a nexus without his main army, unless there is a fight somewhere else and he's able to send some reinforcements to take out a base or something, because of mass zealot/DT warpins which are very very strong in relatively small sizes to the main army.
Switching from colosuss to immortal is not required and depends, and you could start with immortal instead or even void ray, phoenix, etc. You could go zealot HT archon first too. It depends on so many things, and then your preferences too. It's not like PvT bio where there are mainly 2 paths you go (colossus or HT, and rarely but possibly phoenix), and then eventually you had the other (you go colossus then HT or HT then colossus), and the terran goes some combination of MMM ghost viking WM. There aren't set progressions to your composition vs mech, it depends on the mech player, the map, what kind of game you play, etc. For example if he's going for a fast hellbat tank push at about 14-15 mins before you get your 2nd tech up (you have gateway colossus and starting to get HTs but no storm yet), to defend this you could either have gone for gateway immortal or gateway colossus. Gateway immortal micro would more focus on trying to get a surround, so a map with a very open attack path could be good for this. Gateway colossus is weaker straight up, but you can get lots of mileage out of the colossus by kiting his army all the way across the map. Or if you go gateway HT, it would be similar to colossus in that you storm the mech army with HTs (prepared and positioned out on the map if you want) while it moves across the map. If you want to do some drops, and the attack path isn't too long (not too much length to kite), then maybe gateway immortal is better, because the warp prisms are very good with dropping immortals on top of the tanks, etc.
Hope this helped somewhat, feel free to ask some more specific questions if needed!
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YOSHI!!!! Such an amazing guy 
Mech can be a very versatile gameplay, slow or fast. Depends a lot on the player. However it always required gas so according to the gas income u can predict what size the enemy army will be.
As soon as you see mech, you should stop doing colossus unless thermolance is already done.
At this point of the game, they're too expansive. Add 2nd robo, immos is a good unit. you need colossus if you enemy stays a lot on 3 base(lot of mineral = lot of hellbat^^)
HT are better because they force ghost(if not, spam it^^) and u can load them in prism and let rain falls on the enmy army easly.
But Gas should be for upgrades which must always be chronoboosted, that's where the main advantage of toss is.
Going for a strong gate army quickly allows you to be agressive and deny bases/ delay production or upgrades (speed for prism=and that the reason you need robobay^^ not for colossus) and ofc expand, expand ^^ before he reachs full pop.
Going for tempest can be risky if u dont have the bak for it and the upgrades :S
I think with good pilons, obs and prism placement you can have good intel on what your enemy is doing as soon as he moves one finger you should move 2^^ Ex: he go to kill one base, you kill one too and also drop some dt/zealot in main(prism killed by turrets must be rebuild asap)
As you scout the enemy army, you can adapt yours. that's why gateway unit first is better because you can switch quickly from HT / zealot to stalkers. (20 gates is good but u can add more). When you have the bank, you can go for a more expansive composition
Edit: i like to play aggressive in PvT mech but there is time when you just have to wait fo him to move ^^
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Depends on your openning, strategy, plan, and mech type...there is slow turtle mech , semi agressive mech and ridiculous mech with mass mines ;D....
So basic idea, be ahead always, because mech is slow.
It means, mess him, don't give him easy 2-nd base, when he got 2-nd base try to get 3-d earlier, and don't let him go out. When tanks unsieged, you should pressure him. So in late game, best solution to get carriers.
If you open blink, try not to loose much probes to agression, and always have 1 probe on the field, when they drop mines/helions on you, defend drop, while proxy pilon is building. And counter attack immedeately from 3gate blink(assuming standart 1gate expand, to twillight +2gate +robo), you will just finish this games.
If you got more specific questions, don't afraid to ask ;o
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Ok i will try to be more specific. I will talk about situations, here is the first one.
I started standard -> gate exp->robo. Terran didn't Reaper, so I pressured: he didnt take natural as expansion, but a later ninja expansion, wich I scouted and denied asap. I was 3 base vs 2 base terran (natural wasn't even saturated). With army and eco advantage, I pushed.
First fight:
http://i.imgur.com/WjWPMKB.jpg
I had 4 colossus, some gate units; he went tanks and mines turtle. I managed to kill lots of tanks and mines, loosing all gate units, then he pulled scv and come with vikings: I lost whole army and now he put himself on 4 base vs my 3. Btw, during the fight i build 3 stargates: as soon i saw his turtle I decided to go tempests.
Second fight:
http://i.imgur.com/MowDX4l.jpg
I saw his mass vikings, so i decided to go for hts while tempests would take care of tanks.
My army was tempests, storms and few void and zealots. He clumped nicely with his mass viking and hellbat, but...
http://i.imgur.com/iBkneEY.jpg
He won the fight..Despite he got 3-4 volley of storms in the face, hellbat are still alive. 1 mistake I did in this fight was to be overconfident: i spammed storms (i had 7-8 but they took 3-4 because i didn't timed them good).
Now, what kind of considerations could we do on this game? Should I just avoid the first fight, getting a fourth base vs 2 base terran, get more time with my first army (colossus based) occuping/dening his third while switching to tempests? Or should I just add 2 robos to spam immortals?
I got a time window where he had 3 mines, 3 tanks and 6 marines, while I had 4 colossus and 8 stalker. If I pushed would I have won? Or loose anyway because the fight would take place in the choke with mines and tanks placed?
If i timed better my storm, would I won the second fight? I had only 15 zealots as wall, with storms+hellbat maybe I would loose anyway because he got ground superiority...should I wait for some tanky units like archons?
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I don't really get why people are asking how to deal with mech with protoss, since mech is sooo terrible against P.
I mean blink stalker runbies are like roach runbies but they can teleport on your tanks, and immortals with some kind of AoE wreck any terran army.
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First fight
Why push? He's already waiting for you. You see no third, scout for ninja and wait  He has to move out wait for him^^
This is a bad decision making You're ahead go for expand, keep scout and pressure on weak spots not impale yourself on tanks and mines :p (only Zest can do that)
Fight 2: Zealot are for harass, you have too much of them. Archons can be an option if no ghost The big issue is the 4 (??!!??) HT why not 10 spread from his base to yours, seems a more reasonable number.
Also storm doesnt stack up so,as you mentionned it, you need to be careful not to spam it. (10 dmg/0.5sec max 80 so 3 storms = 240 dmg and Hellbat HP = 135..... )
Voyd at this point are not really costeffective they take a lot of aoe dmg from thor(unless you split aka micro :S) and are useless with that many viking.
GOing frontal vs mech can be ok but u need to deal dmg with harass. You have 170 vs 193 pop a bit short.
Imagine at the end of this fght if you had 2 prism, with your 1.5k bank you could have warp 8 and 8 zealot in main and natural. That could have delt dmg and give you time to rebuild good units(tempest, HT, ms ).
It's not about avoiding fights it's to provoke it when the time is good, wait for him to move to expand or push to counter him(aka when mines and tanks are not siege^^)
Going tempest without 4th already mining is, i fell, too soon. For the second fight you have 8 tempest decent number but also useless zealot and voyd and not a big gas bank :S And certainly your upgrade must be a bit low
You have to play more kitting style because as soon as tanks are siege, dmgs will fall from the skies so retreat will be hard. As soon as he reachs the end of the detection tower with his army dont fight, storm, he goes to the left to avoid a bit of the dmg, too bad there is ht here too, storm. he starts moving to your 3rd, storm^^ Especially vs viking that are being clumped, with 2-3 storms, if he has 1 army group, it's an autowin^^ Also if you go air-tempest, add oracle for revelation it will easier to make it rain :p
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thanks for the tips!
It's still uncommon for me to face mech players, and I feel my decision makings sucks. This will help me a lot!
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just make tempests and win.
if he tries to engage them just kite back. he can't chase them if you have a templar archon army below the tempests.
With the pdd nerf there is no answer to mass tempest anymore so just kill everything from the distance without endangering your units.
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I have other few questions.
Let's say terran has the standard comp: hellbat, tanks, vikings. Best way to deal with is is archons, ht, immortals?
Do i need zealots? Do i have to put in few colossus?
In the engage phase, are there any tips? because I dont think i can go with immo/achons a-click on his comp because of siege tanks.
I could take them unsieged, but this means I have to be in the middle of the map and not close in my baseses, right?
If I start going tempest, I would hide them to avoid his mass viking. But if he scouts my tempest, shall i just have storms or there is another counter I can do?
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@Icekin
Because u have a good scout intel on his positions, as soon as you see him move out, your move army to intercept. Spread army, try to avoid choke points unless from harass with prism/Ht or surround, IF NO GHOST,10 zealot to take the first dmg of tank/hellbats, 10 archon , 10 immo, 10 ht(4 prism/6 army) :p Always a pilon or prism near by for more zealot or stalker reinforcements.
Colossus cost a lot of gas, viking shares upgrade so it's more about if terran doesnt have a lot of viking, pop 4 colossus to force more of them. As you need RoboBay for speed (obs/prism), going colossus is an investment. If the situation allowed for it, why not.
When you switch to tempest, strat upgrades even before first tempest? Storm and revelation is all you need, archon and stalker can help a bit too.
About scout, for example, when i see your minimap on the image of the first fight, you have barely the minimun (b3(y) and vs drop (y/n).
http://i.imgur.com/WjWPMKB.jpg
When mech player takes a base and the game slows a bit, that when you shoudl first (as you did vs ninja), check map for stuff and establish a map control. Because on the second image http://i.imgur.com/MowDX4l.jpg No more intel :S left side came back fog of war :p As mech is slow with a very closed scout you can land good storms that can even kill the army of your enemy before he comes near your bases. Imagine after the the fight with that kind of lowlife army 3 hts to defend and it's good and with a pilon on the left side 10zealot/3dt no more pfs
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On August 02 2015 20:56 Icekin wrote:
I have other few questions.
Let's say terran has the standard comp: hellbat, tanks, vikings. Best way to deal with is is archons, ht, immortals?
Do i need zealots? Do i have to put in few colossus?
In the engage phase, are there any tips? because I dont think i can go with immo/achons a-click on his comp because of siege tanks.
I could take them unsieged, but this means I have to be in the middle of the map and not close in my baseses, right?
If I start going tempest, I would hide them to avoid his mass viking. But if he scouts my tempest, shall i just have storms or there is another counter I can do?
Yes, counter to hellbat tank viking is archon HT immortal (assuming about equal economy and tech and production on both sides; what i mean is the best would be mass carriers). Of course you need zealots, zealots are to tank the hellbats. Otherwise the hellbats will destroy your army. Hellbats beat everything protoss -- the only reason hellbats aren't OP is because they can't chase and can be kited. If you have minimal zealots, you risk being cornered by the hellbats and roasted (or he will just sac his army to trade a bit while also killing a base of yours).
But all that he would need to do is add a few medivacs and if he has time, ghosts. It's not so simple to just "deal with X with Y", the timings are important (can you get this in time before he reacts and changes composition?)
Engage phase is really complicated. Every unit interaction is very significant and it just takes a lot of experience to know when to engage/commit, where to put your units, how to time the different units of your army to engage, when to try to surround, what to target fire, etc.
But in general a surround if timed decently is great and there isn't really a counter to it. But if he's good he will be aware and not be surrounded because a surround takes lots of time and map control to set it up, which means you already had some advantages.
Sometimes mech groups up and mixes up his units before moving out, that way any direction he will be engaged from will be equal, but at the same time his most ideal engage isn't as strong as possible (if he has all hellbats in front and you attack his front, then that's better than having some hellbats in the back and unable to fight). So if he doesn't group and mix up, try to flank his weak side.
Priority is to kill the zealots because then the meaty archon/immo tear through the tanks.
Hellbat tank is very very weak against archon immortal especially if you have storm to take out the hellbats. He really needs medivacs and ghosts. The vikings are useless. An equivalent comparison would be MMM ghost vs gateway archon and no storm. You absolutely get rekt.
Unlike bio, there's no simple "if he's heavy on vikings, go less on colossus and go more on templar" things. There's a lot more intricate unit interactions and also a larger range of units on both sides, you really just have to gain more experience and be able to play out battles in your head / plan ahead of time.
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I frequently play vs Goody and easily deal with him, remind me on skype to help you out.
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EPT
