On October 15 2012 15:05 MasterCynical wrote: The situation seems better than it actually seems.
This is probably one of the most BW like games ive seen, just imagine it without the toss floating so much
more tuning and balancing could make mech alot more viable. Morrow has also had some decent games on his stream.
That game is pretty awesome and gets me excited for HotS. And even though the terran loses due to a bad engagement at the end, it was still close throughout the whole game.
I hope mech is viable in HotS, because I am so tired of these bio-ball vs colossus-ball TvP's
It wasn't close at all. Avilo's ghost-mech army got stomped hard by what was basically 1A with archons/immortals.
Mines just suck ass past early game because they cost so much supply.
I was saying it was even throughout most of the game. The first time they were both maxed they traded pretty evenly, the second time avilo got caught in a terrible position and was stomped. He only had 6 ghosts though, and if he had a few more ghosts and hellions instead of tanks and had good position it would have looked much different.
Quite you. No saying that the issues could be a problem of positioning or not having enough battlehellions. It was clearly that the protoss a-moved and then the terran lost. That is how we complain that mech will never work.
On October 14 2012 16:19 GARcher wrote: Mech is never going to be viable as long as the Immortal exists and Thor and Battlecruiser have energy bars.
Im sure blizzard could think up another warhound and propel it far beyond viability in about 5 seconds. Big weaknesses exist, but dont assume that there can't be some kind of bandaid fix that is so overpoweredly broken that it more than makes up for them
In its current form, fast bases and widow mines seem to set you up pretty well, they are amazing early game and bridge the gap til you can get a formidable blob of tanks and later ghosts/vikings etc, but still doesnt look all too amazing IMO
Also, I would really like to see something along the lines of terrans using excess minerals to build a bunch of rax that they could float around with their army to make walls for their tanks.
On October 16 2012 20:51 Inquisitor1323 wrote: If mech is to become viable, it needs a counter to immortals. Without one, TvP mech is still not going to be viable.
Morrow doesnt seem to be having too many problems with them in particular with battle hellions having a really fast attack and being decent in general vs everything (takes stalkers ~17.28 seconds to kill battle hellions in equal numbers), widow mines bypassing hardened shields (and one-shotting the entire shield hp) and EMP completely removing shields
What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
I never said it should be impossible to break mine and tank lines, but also not the way it is currently where protoss is like "oh hey a siege line with mines, how cute, lets walk into it and crush it". It should at least be possible to defend 3-4 bases with a good position and require protoss to use more strategical moves other than straight up walking into that, like warpprisms, picking tanks off with tempests etc. If you watch the video that was posted on page 2, avilo was very careful where he positioned his tanks, always hugging a cliff and even building turrets with his army. And still he lost every single battle. In the last one he got flanked which is pretty hard to avoid. How is terran ever gonna be able to move out with his army to secure more bases? The instant he does, he will get flanked or counterattacked. Honestly, where is the benefit of going mech when the army is slow as hell and not even stronger than bio? In tradeoff to beeing very slow and having to siege up, it should be stronger or have other advantages right? Currently that is not the case, a bio army is still way more mobile, felxible and I would say even stronger in a straight up fight with micro. If the protoss army can be more mobile and stronger at the same time, then something is broken.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
I never said it should be impossible to break mine and tank lines, but also not the way it is currently where protoss is like "oh hey a siege line with mines, how cute, lets walk into it and crush it". It should at least be possible to defend 3-4 bases with a good position and require protoss to use more strategical moves other than straight up walking into that, like warpprisms, picking tanks off with tempests etc. If you watch the video that was posted on page 2, avilo was very careful where he positioned his tanks, always hugging a cliff and even building turrets with his army. And still he lost every single battle. In the last one he got flanked which is pretty hard to avoid. How is terran ever gonna be able to move out with his army to secure more bases? The instant he does, he will get flanked or counterattacked. Honestly, where is the benefit of going mech when the army is slow as hell and not even stronger than bio? In tradeoff to beeing very slow and having to siege up, it should be stronger or have other advantages right? Currently that is not the case, a bio army is still way more mobile, felxible and I would say even stronger in a straight up fight with micro. If the protoss army can be more mobile and stronger at the same time, then something is broken.
avilo won every single battle up to that first archon/immortal mixture (which was around 22mins after he took out the nexus), because he was properly positioned everytime up to that point where he moved way too far in the open and had a clumped ball of tanks that splashes each other against the chargelots and takes the full splash from archons.
People have had 2 years of practicing bio. Let's give them time to work out more optimal builds and timings and practice execution before we conclude that mech won't work TvP.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
I never said it should be impossible to break mine and tank lines, but also not the way it is currently where protoss is like "oh hey a siege line with mines, how cute, lets walk into it and crush it". It should at least be possible to defend 3-4 bases with a good position and require protoss to use more strategical moves other than straight up walking into that, like warpprisms, picking tanks off with tempests etc. If you watch the video that was posted on page 2, avilo was very careful where he positioned his tanks, always hugging a cliff and even building turrets with his army. And still he lost every single battle. In the last one he got flanked which is pretty hard to avoid. How is terran ever gonna be able to move out with his army to secure more bases? The instant he does, he will get flanked or counterattacked. Honestly, where is the benefit of going mech when the army is slow as hell and not even stronger than bio? In tradeoff to beeing very slow and having to siege up, it should be stronger or have other advantages right? Currently that is not the case, a bio army is still way more mobile, felxible and I would say even stronger in a straight up fight with micro. If the protoss army can be more mobile and stronger at the same time, then something is broken.
avilo won every single battle up to that first archon/immortal mixture (which was around 22mins after he took out the nexus), because he was properly positioned everytime up to that point where he moved way too far in the open and had a clumped ball of tanks that splashes each other against the chargelots and takes the full splash from archons.
If you watch the fight at 29 min gametime, it was 200 vs 200 with almost no zealots from the protoss, like 2 that were stuck in the back. The protoss army mostly consisted of immortals and archons and avilo was sieged in the only position that allows him to defend his 4 bases. Avilo has a ton of mines in front of the tanks but lost his entire army and the protoss had 6 immortals left. He warped in about 18 chargelots and still had a huge bank, he could have just decided to take his 6 immortals and the reinforcements and walk up avilos ramp and kill him right there.
I'm not sure if it has already been mentioned, but I think one of the issues of the Avilo vs Wilco-game was that Avilo had so much of his supply tied up in SCV:s, and his maxed out mech ball never became as scary as it could have been. Compare it to Morrows playstyle, where he has 10 extra Orbitals at ~18 minutes and can sacrifice almost all his workers. A 130 supply mech army might not be so scary vs a 130 supply Protoss army, but with a 180 supply mech army, the situation is different.
On October 17 2012 00:01 kcdc wrote: People have had 2 years of practicing bio. Let's give them time to work out more optimal builds and timings and practice execution before we conclude that mech won't work TvP.
People have been trying to figure out ways for mech to work in that two years too. It doesn't.
Ideally the discussion should be the other way around - what can protoss do to beat mech?
If mech seemed retaredly OP in the beta and the protoss players had to start using all their anti-mech tactics and tools to their full extent in order to win then we would not have this discussion. A stationary mech army should be ridiculously hard to beat straight up. Right now ... not so much.
The fact that we are still discussing it from the other point of view indicates that TvP mech will not become viable at the highest level. The changes to terran are probably not enough and the addition of the tempest to the protoss army gives them yet another anti mech weapon.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
I never said it should be impossible to break mine and tank lines, but also not the way it is currently where protoss is like "oh hey a siege line with mines, how cute, lets walk into it and crush it". It should at least be possible to defend 3-4 bases with a good position and require protoss to use more strategical moves other than straight up walking into that, like warpprisms, picking tanks off with tempests etc. If you watch the video that was posted on page 2, avilo was very careful where he positioned his tanks, always hugging a cliff and even building turrets with his army. And still he lost every single battle. In the last one he got flanked which is pretty hard to avoid. How is terran ever gonna be able to move out with his army to secure more bases? The instant he does, he will get flanked or counterattacked. Honestly, where is the benefit of going mech when the army is slow as hell and not even stronger than bio? In tradeoff to beeing very slow and having to siege up, it should be stronger or have other advantages right? Currently that is not the case, a bio army is still way more mobile, felxible and I would say even stronger in a straight up fight with micro. If the protoss army can be more mobile and stronger at the same time, then something is broken.
avilo won every single battle up to that first archon/immortal mixture (which was around 22mins after he took out the nexus), because he was properly positioned everytime up to that point where he moved way too far in the open and had a clumped ball of tanks that splashes each other against the chargelots and takes the full splash from archons.
If you watch the fight at 29 min gametime, it was 200 vs 200 with almost no zealots from the protoss, like 2 that were stuck in the back. The protoss army mostly consisted of immortals and archons and avilo was sieged in the only position that allows him to defend his 4 bases. Avilo has a ton of mines in front of the tanks but lost his entire army and the protoss had 6 immortals left. He warped in about 18 chargelots and still had a huge bank, he could have just decided to take his 6 immortals and the reinforcements and walk up avilos ramp and kill him right there.
Was Avilo in a good position in that last fight? I can’t review the video again at work, but from what I remember he did not get a good engagement.
On October 16 2012 21:45 Aquila- wrote: What makes me wanna throw up is the fact that protoss can just a move into like 15 already sieged tanks with hellions and mines and come out ahead. This is ridiculous, tanks and especially tanks with mines are supposed to hold a position where the opponent cannot attack. Protoss is supposed to drop zealots on tank or go air or find another way to break that position. Instead, its just derp a click into tanks and win the fight. That should not be possible.
That's exactly the kind of stuff that makes no sense whatsoever, when people talk about mech.
Just a random siege somewhere with burrowed mines open fields has nothing to do with a sieged position. That's just a bunch of sieged tanks. Yeah, guess what, a random army somewhere that is neither positioned nor microed (in this case not microable by a lot) should never be impossible to break by a well chosen composition.
If stuff like that happens in chokes or something, then there is a serious problem with mech. If it is just a random open map move and siege up and burrow queue command, we are not talking about carefully positioning. The siege button is not an invincibility button. It just does what siege does and does not magically create favorable positions. Might be that something like that can not even exist in SC2 to the degree mech needs it to be strong against Protoss, because of the lack of Terrain influences and the lack of overkill balance (that would make formation matter), but being sieged =/= holding a fortified position.
I never said it should be impossible to break mine and tank lines, but also not the way it is currently where protoss is like "oh hey a siege line with mines, how cute, lets walk into it and crush it". It should at least be possible to defend 3-4 bases with a good position and require protoss to use more strategical moves other than straight up walking into that, like warpprisms, picking tanks off with tempests etc. If you watch the video that was posted on page 2, avilo was very careful where he positioned his tanks, always hugging a cliff and even building turrets with his army. And still he lost every single battle. In the last one he got flanked which is pretty hard to avoid. How is terran ever gonna be able to move out with his army to secure more bases? The instant he does, he will get flanked or counterattacked. Honestly, where is the benefit of going mech when the army is slow as hell and not even stronger than bio? In tradeoff to beeing very slow and having to siege up, it should be stronger or have other advantages right? Currently that is not the case, a bio army is still way more mobile, felxible and I would say even stronger in a straight up fight with micro. If the protoss army can be more mobile and stronger at the same time, then something is broken.
avilo won every single battle up to that first archon/immortal mixture (which was around 22mins after he took out the nexus), because he was properly positioned everytime up to that point where he moved way too far in the open and had a clumped ball of tanks that splashes each other against the chargelots and takes the full splash from archons.
If you watch the fight at 29 min gametime, it was 200 vs 200 with almost no zealots from the protoss, like 2 that were stuck in the back. The protoss army mostly consisted of immortals and archons and avilo was sieged in the only position that allows him to defend his 4 bases. Avilo has a ton of mines in front of the tanks but lost his entire army and the protoss had 6 immortals left. He warped in about 18 chargelots and still had a huge bank, he could have just decided to take his 6 immortals and the reinforcements and walk up avilos ramp and kill him right there.
Well, he does exactly what he himself says is bad: mass widow mine in the lategame. Widow mines are like roaches, really strong per cost, really bad per supply. He has like 60 widow mine supply, but only 1ghost in a maxed scenario, when his opponent has only quality units, archons, stalkers and immortals. Also there are no damage eating units like battle hellions or thors, so he can get overrun quite easily. I really don't think that this should be the ultimate mech composition and if mech proved to be viable, I'm pretty sure it would look quite a bit different.
But I agree, it's quite hard for mech to get in a good defensive position, because apart from main/natural/third chokes, spaces tend to be very, very open. Avilo's position wasn't really good again, but yeah, he has to make his stand somewhere...
I find that Battle Hellions work a lot better late game than mines (even with archons in play), and BH do surprisingly well against immortals and stalkers. sometimes I even have 2-4 BH for each tank... depends on the amount of immortals.
EPT
