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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
This could probably be tagged [D] but I guess we'll see...
I was just looking for some help on how to play against Roach/Hydra/Viper as a Meching player.
My biggest problem with it is how mobile it is yet still very strong in an engagement. It can pull you back and forth, and then engage very quickly. This tactic makes it extremely hard to both be in position in time to defend your expansions, and still be spread out enough to deal with Blinding Cloud. Especially in hallways.
For my Mech composition, I go the standard WoL style when facing Roaches, a few Thors and then just Tanks, but I add in Vikings and Ravens as I max out. PDD for Hydras and Vikings seem to be the most supply efficient way to deal with Vipers, especially considering Blinding Cloud cannot effect them and they match Viper Range. Maybe I am wrong though, and you are better off just getting Thors, mostly ignoring the VIpers, and just going for the strongest army against Roach Hydra while mitigating the effects of Blinding Cloud as much as possible. Maybe PDD isn't worth it against Hydralisks, because of their awesome attack speed (only .17 faster than Stimmed Marauders though so personally I don't think so..)
So to organize this discussion a bit, can we discuss these 2 things:
Composition: What's the ideal composition? Should you have a different composition in the mid-game? What production structures you should add on as you max out? Is PDD good or bad?
Tactics: How should you defend multiple areas? Just a few Widow Mines? Widow Mines + Tanks? Just Sensor Towers and keeping your army unsieged? How do you engage in hallways or keep your army spread out when rushing to a location to defend? Should you be comfortable to move out when you have the correct composition, or just turtle very hard against this aggressive mobile army?
If there is anything else I missed, please let me know
This Replay is a good example of a game where I felt I was at least even when the Zerg player, IMO ahead of them, and lost very handily to an attack + follow up attack. I definitely, definitely, made some mistakes in the game. But I also felt like I didn't know what to do so I was a bit distracted, and that's why I come to you guys to ask.
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as a zerg player the counter to this is going ghosts. i know that mech is very gas heavy but so is the roach hydra viper composition. snipe and emp arent effected by blinding cloud and ghosts with tank support are very awesome vs roach hydra since they just dont die vs that comp if protected by tanks and turrets.
so go for mech but dont play it WoL style with mass thors. instead play it BW style with a lot of turrets and lots of tanks. turrets will which are minerals only will kill the 200 gas viper very fast. after that instead of going thors go for a tank + hellbat + ghost compostion + mass turrets. you need to scout for the greater spire. a normal spire wont do anything since you will have mass turrets.
once you scoutet greater spire add ravens and vikings like you would do in WoL.
this is a very good counter to the new roach hydra viper play. you wont need 10+ ghosts or so. 6-8 ghosts are more than enough to deal with the 5-8 viper your opponent will build.
btw i love the dynamic the viper adds to the game and love how ghosts will be a lot more useful in ZvT again. blizzard is doing an awesome job in making every unit viable in HOTS :-)
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On November 29 2012 10:41 Decendos wrote:
as a zerg player the counter to this is going ghosts. i know that mech is very gas heavy but so is the roach hydra viper composition. snipe and emp arent effected by blinding cloud and ghosts with tank support are very awesome vs roach hydra since they just dont die vs that comp if protected by tanks and turrets.
so go for mech but dont play it WoL style with mass thors. instead play it BW style with a lot of turrets and lots of tanks. turrets will which are minerals only will kill the 200 gas viper very fast. after that instead of going thors go for a tank + hellbat + ghost compostion + mass turrets. you need to scout for the greater spire. a normal spire wont do anything since you will have mass turrets.
once you scoutet greater spire add ravens and vikings like you would do in WoL.
this is a very good counter to the new roach hydra viper play. you wont need 10+ ghosts or so. 6-8 ghosts are more than enough to deal with the 5-8 viper your opponent will build.
btw i love the dynamic the viper adds to the game and love how ghosts will be a lot more useful in ZvT again. blizzard is doing an awesome job in making every unit viable in HOTS :-)
That's something I hadn't even considered. Obviously you need ~3 Thors to be safe from Mutas early on, that's when you will get them. But after that, no more Thors if you scout the Roach/Hydra composition. Yeah I get that. But basically you're saying the second you scout Roach/Hydra/Viper I should basically do this:
1) Throw up mass turrets and play defensively
2) Start adding in Ghosts and get up ~8
What should I do after this? Continue to turtle? Can I establish a more aggressive position on the map? Or do I have to basically push with Turrets across the map?
Also, any advice on how to defend multiple locations better?
Thank you for your help.
EDIT: Also, how does this army defend tech switches? It seems as if Tank/Ghost/Hellbat would just fold to a BL army. How do you deal with the Zerg if they can instant remax? Or are Ghosts so good that you can afford to have some Vikings/Thors to buffer?
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I use roach/hydra/viper against mech and it's really awesome, but it's not invincible. I've lost to players who traded their vikings cost efficiently with vipers, if you can trade 6 vikings for 6 vipers, you are doing your job because there is nothing else zerg has in the air. I wouldn't go over board with vikings either and I've beaten many terrans who make too many vikings and then don't have enough money or supply to make tanks. Tanks are absolutely essential, you actually want to keep making tanks so zerg has to invest in vipers and you NEED tanks to combat hydras, then getting 4 vikings and focus firing each viper down 1 at a time is a good option. The best composition for zerg is a roach/hydra max out with like 3-6 vipers to fill in the 200/200 or even go over to like 218/200, anything more than 6 vipers is overboard because 3 supply each is a lot. So with that in mind, try not to go overboard on vikings because zerg should limit itself on vipers.
I haven't seen ghosts in a long time in ZvT so I can't say how good they are, but I would imagine that's a pretty good place to start as well. I've lost several ZvP's with roach/hydra/viper when I was up against templar and they feedbacked my vipers and stormed my hydras, it's pretty devastating.
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i feel that terran has to play a lot more BW style in HOTS if going mech. so its a lot of mass turret, PF, OC play with widow mines, tanks and some ghosts as your go to units.
the only hard counter to all that are BLs which you need to scout for. but roach hydra viper soaks up very much gas so its not like vs ling infestor where zerg can get like 10+ BLs in a small time window. you will need to scout for the greater spire (which isnt a problem if going mech since you have overmints = lots of OC = lots of scans anyway) or you will die, BUT as i said zerg wont have 10+ BLs at once because roach hydra viper eats a lot of gas + since he wont have infestors vikings are so much better vs corruptors. basically if he wants to go BL corruptor infestor out of roach hydra viper he has 0 melee upgrades for broodlings and need A LOT of gas for infestors, BLs and corruptors since he basically needs to replace his whole army (except keeping his vipers). that means for you you will have a lot of time to build ravens and vikings.
mech in HOTS is a lot slower, a lot more turtly, a lot more BW like (tank, turret and mineheavy) but also a lot stronger than in WoL if played correctly.
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
On November 29 2012 11:24 emc wrote:
I use roach/hydra/viper against mech and it's really awesome, but it's not invincible. I've lost to players who traded their vikings cost efficiently with vipers, if you can trade 6 vikings for 6 vipers, you are doing your job because there is nothing else zerg has in the air. I wouldn't go over board with vikings either and I've beaten many terrans who make too many vikings and then don't have enough money or supply to make tanks. Tanks are absolutely essential, you actually want to keep making tanks so zerg has to invest in vipers and you NEED tanks to combat hydras, then getting 4 vikings and focus firing each viper down 1 at a time is a good option. The best composition for zerg is a roach/hydra max out with like 3-6 vipers to fill in the 200/200 or even go over to like 218/200, anything more than 6 vipers is overboard because 3 supply each is a lot. So with that in mind, try not to go overboard on vikings because zerg should limit itself on vipers.
I haven't seen ghosts in a long time in ZvT so I can't say how good they are, but I would imagine that's a pretty good place to start as well. I've lost several ZvP's with roach/hydra/viper when I was up against templar and they feedbacked my vipers and stormed my hydras, it's pretty devastating.
Hmm... the problem I have with just using a handful of Vikings is although they might clear out the Vipers after the fight, the Vipers are fast enough that all but 1, maybe 2, will get off their spells before they die. And once the spells are off, you trade really badly. Please look at my replay as a good example of this.
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On November 29 2012 11:29 ZjiublingZ wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2012 11:24 emc wrote:
I use roach/hydra/viper against mech and it's really awesome, but it's not invincible. I've lost to players who traded their vikings cost efficiently with vipers, if you can trade 6 vikings for 6 vipers, you are doing your job because there is nothing else zerg has in the air. I wouldn't go over board with vikings either and I've beaten many terrans who make too many vikings and then don't have enough money or supply to make tanks. Tanks are absolutely essential, you actually want to keep making tanks so zerg has to invest in vipers and you NEED tanks to combat hydras, then getting 4 vikings and focus firing each viper down 1 at a time is a good option. The best composition for zerg is a roach/hydra max out with like 3-6 vipers to fill in the 200/200 or even go over to like 218/200, anything more than 6 vipers is overboard because 3 supply each is a lot. So with that in mind, try not to go overboard on vikings because zerg should limit itself on vipers.
I haven't seen ghosts in a long time in ZvT so I can't say how good they are, but I would imagine that's a pretty good place to start as well. I've lost several ZvP's with roach/hydra/viper when I was up against templar and they feedbacked my vipers and stormed my hydras, it's pretty devastating. Hmm... the problem I have with just using a handful of Vikings is although they might clear out the Vipers after the fight, the Vipers are fast enough that all but 1, maybe 2, will get off their spells before they die. And once the spells are off, you trade really badly. Please look at my replay as a good example of this.
Yeah and zerg should be controlling his vipers so that vikings dont' just kill them so that hydras can kill them 9and what not.
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I agree actually, and probably should have mentioned that even if vipers and vikings trade, it's usually better for the zerg player because they remove the important units, siege tanks. I've also lost games where I felt I traded poorly because tanks were spread out really well and there were enough vikings to ensure that i could only get a couple spells off. The spell zerg wants most is a blinding cloud when facing a near max or maxed out mech army. Abduct is nice and all, but it's not worth losing a 200 gas unit to grab one siege tank, zerg is always looking to trade 200 gas for 3-4 seige tanks.
And again, I hope you are now experimenting with ghosts. If you are seeing roach heavy armies and you scan a hive on the way, you might want to make an academy in anticipation of vipers. Snipe might actually be better than emp, I don't know as I don't play terran, but you would have to experiment.
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Seems like it would be really hard to EMP vipers... you'd be better off with Snipe, though it'll take 3 snipes to kill a viper.
So it seems like having 6 vikings around (one-shotting Vipers) would be a far easier thing to manage.
I think you just need to go Tank/Viking heavy, mix in only a few Thors if you're afraid of Mutas, and dump the rest into battle hellions for the buffer. Tanks still SHRED Roach/Hydra. You have to be really proactive with your vikings though. If you're spread out, it might make sense to split your vikings in groups of 3 (2-shoting Vipers) so that the zerg is forced to lose the viper if they cast any spells.
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Tried EMP'ing vipers (with a good tank spread) but i had fewer vikings. and i went BIO + Tanks + Hellions and a couple of widow mines. Almost worked except for the infestors that i didnt notice (which were burrowed right behind my tanks as my ravens got decimated by a few mutas who flanked me) Vipers were still able to pull a couple of tanks away (i guess the zerg had like 4 or 5 of them.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Someone said about mass turrets around siege tanks? It will be useful for you to buy +1 weapon range upgrade for all turrets to defend better your siege tanks against vipers.
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On December 02 2012 09:34 Existor wrote:
Someone said about mass turrets around siege tanks? It will be useful for you to buy +1 weapon range upgrade for all turrets to defend better your siege tanks against vipers.
Yeah turrets around siege tanks with some vikings is best way to fight it I think.
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EPT
