I made this thread to get feedback on a video and on a strategy.
Please remember that english is not my first language or second language and I might pause to think on the words I am trying to say.
This game is based off my most comfortable TvP strategy so far, it goes from a Barracks factory expand into 1-1-1 aggressive non all in play. I want to know what you feel it's weaknesses are and where it's strength or build order could be improved.
I would also like feedback on what you think of the video and if it's something I should abandon, what I could work on or if I should persue it.
What I feel about the strategy is that it's very safe however could possibly be refined to be a bit more greedy without sacrificing too much safety that it relies on the 1-1-1. How would you feel or where would you feel I could alter the strategy depending on what I scout?
And by > I mean I scout stargate so I go thor widow mine or sky terran as an example.
Update: I just wanted to provide you all with an update and for further feed back on some more videos that I tried to improve on since your last feedback
On January 19 2013 10:15 DeCoup wrote: Just trying to understand your decision making when you play. So based the thought processes you list above you don't produce units which are good against your opponents units, you do the opposite and choose units which his units are not specifically good against?
Thors because they are good against air in general from a ground to air standpoint to all but tempest. They are however still good against ground so mixing them in is great.
widow mine because they are great at countering voidrays oracles and carriers. They kill interceptors really well.
Vikings because they kill tempests ok with ravens and banshee to help counter some ground play mixed in with the stargate.
And by > I mean I scout stargate so I go thor widow mine or sky terran as an example.
A clearer way to put this in the future is arrows: ->, <-. Just a hyphen+arrow. EX: Stargate -> thor, widow mine, or sky terran I'll watch the video in a moment!
Nice replay,but we need some macro games.The issue in TvP was the early opening and the late game.You seem to resolve the Opening,but I just wanna see you taking 3rd,defending and winning above 20 mins
Tbh correct me if I am wrong, but I don't see how he could have lost if he would have warped in a few stalkers into his main and retreated his probes. Or hell only retreated his probes. He allowed you to almost kill all his probes with battle hellions, which are way too slow to chase probes. If he would have just retreated probes you either would have followed them with hellbats, which means 4 less hellbats on defense, or you would have moved them to defense and he would have been happily mining.
1. How do you deal with a more aggressive gateway opening? If your opponent moves out with zealot/stalker/stalker or triple stalker and you have half a walloff and 2 marines, how are you going to be able to defend? Just build a bunker to finish the walloff? MsC harass?
2. If your opponent does NOT open aggressively and instead just sits back and macros, how do you plan on doing damage? For instance, if a protoss player does 1-gate FE into 3 stalkers + sentry and starts double ups, can you do enough damage with a hellion/banshee opener to justify how late your own expansion is?
3. I feel like your build order is not as fluid as it could be. For instance, your first 2 hellions can only be produced 1 at a time; would it be better to just get a gas on 15 and save more minerals? Could you produce the first 2 without the reactor so that you can squeeze out an extra marine before using the barracks to make reactor? The banshee and/or medivac felt a little late, but I can't verify this.
4. There are perhaps better ways to pull off that drop. You could add a single widow mine to the drop and burrow it in the mineral line; this forces protoss to take all probes off of mining for an extended period of time AND get detection. In addition, just remember to use the speed of the medivac to better pull off the hellbat drop. Your opponent really should have pulled their probes or at least split them.
5. Supposing you didn't kill your opponent's entire mineral line with the hellbat drop, what's stopping your opponent from pressuring you and simply recalling when things get difficult? Won't you take pretty severe damage? In this game, you lost your starport, a few add-ons, supply depots, several SCVs, and ALMOST lost the factory + CC. I'm amazed you came out alive at all, but I suppose there is the looming threat that your opponent will do a bunch of damage, get surrounded on your ramp, then just teleport out.
This seems like a great opener. however i feel that it is very vulnerable to early msc stalker pressure. How can u safely skip the bunker? Lately ive encountered a lot of openers from p with 2 oracles harrasing my mineral line. How would ur opener deal with that since u have no ebay in time, supposng u build it as u did in the vod.
On January 19 2013 19:41 Dvriel wrote: Nice replay,but we need some macro games.The issue in TvP was the early opening and the late game.You seem to resolve the Opening,but I just wanna see you taking 3rd,defending and winning above 20 mins
On January 19 2013 20:55 Sissors wrote: Tbh correct me if I am wrong, but I don't see how he could have lost if he would have warped in a few stalkers into his main and retreated his probes. Or hell only retreated his probes. He allowed you to almost kill all his probes with battle hellions, which are way too slow to chase probes. If he would have just retreated probes you either would have followed them with hellbats, which means 4 less hellbats on defense, or you would have moved them to defense and he would have been happily mining.
Warping in units at his main also would mean that his push was weaker. It would have been a different game.
On January 20 2013 01:26 SC2John wrote: 1. How do you deal with a more aggressive gateway opening? If your opponent moves out with zealot/stalker/stalker or triple stalker and you have half a walloff and 2 marines, how are you going to be able to defend? Just build a bunker to finish the walloff? MsC harass?
2. If your opponent does NOT open aggressively and instead just sits back and macros, how do you plan on doing damage? For instance, if a protoss player does 1-gate FE into 3 stalkers + sentry and starts double ups, can you do enough damage with a hellion/banshee opener to justify how late your own expansion is?
3. I feel like your build order is not as fluid as it could be. For instance, your first 2 hellions can only be produced 1 at a time; would it be better to just get a gas on 15 and save more minerals? Could you produce the first 2 without the reactor so that you can squeeze out an extra marine before using the barracks to make reactor? The banshee and/or medivac felt a little late, but I can't verify this.
4. There are perhaps better ways to pull off that drop. You could add a single widow mine to the drop and burrow it in the mineral line; this forces protoss to take all probes off of mining for an extended period of time AND get detection. In addition, just remember to use the speed of the medivac to better pull off the hellbat drop. Your opponent really should have pulled their probes or at least split them.
5. Supposing you didn't kill your opponent's entire mineral line with the hellbat drop, what's stopping your opponent from pressuring you and simply recalling when things get difficult? Won't you take pretty severe damage? In this game, you lost your starport, a few add-ons, supply depots, several SCVs, and ALMOST lost the factory + CC. I'm amazed you came out alive at all, but I suppose there is the looming threat that your opponent will do a bunch of damage, get surrounded on your ramp, then just teleport out.
1. It really depends on how I scout, If I see that he's going 2 gateways or chronoing units out fast I drop another barracks and a bunker.
2. I just uploaded another game that shows a pretty laid back protoss with some aggression.
3. I thought I was able to produce 2 at a time? I must have made a mistake somewhere.
4. I like this idea, a single widow mine could help a lot. However it also does cost gas and might take away from the build.
5. There is that threat yes, it all really depends on how I scout it. To be honest I've never been concerned with it.
On January 20 2013 03:11 Lunden wrote: This seems like a great opener. however i feel that it is very vulnerable to early msc stalker pressure. How can u safely skip the bunker? Lately ive encountered a lot of openers from p with 2 oracles harrasing my mineral line. How would ur opener deal with that since u have no ebay in time, supposng u build it as u did in the vod.
I try to make 3 marines to help with the mothership core and I can produce another 1-2 if it's really needed. If I think the protoss is hiding tech I try to drop an engineering bay really fast. It really depends on what I scout.
On January 20 2013 01:26 SC2John wrote: 1. How do you deal with a more aggressive gateway opening? If your opponent moves out with zealot/stalker/stalker or triple stalker and you have half a walloff and 2 marines, how are you going to be able to defend? Just build a bunker to finish the walloff? MsC harass?
2. If your opponent does NOT open aggressively and instead just sits back and macros, how do you plan on doing damage? For instance, if a protoss player does 1-gate FE into 3 stalkers + sentry and starts double ups, can you do enough damage with a hellion/banshee opener to justify how late your own expansion is?
3. I feel like your build order is not as fluid as it could be. For instance, your first 2 hellions can only be produced 1 at a time; would it be better to just get a gas on 15 and save more minerals? Could you produce the first 2 without the reactor so that you can squeeze out an extra marine before using the barracks to make reactor? The banshee and/or medivac felt a little late, but I can't verify this.
4. There are perhaps better ways to pull off that drop. You could add a single widow mine to the drop and burrow it in the mineral line; this forces protoss to take all probes off of mining for an extended period of time AND get detection. In addition, just remember to use the speed of the medivac to better pull off the hellbat drop. Your opponent really should have pulled their probes or at least split them.
5. Supposing you didn't kill your opponent's entire mineral line with the hellbat drop, what's stopping your opponent from pressuring you and simply recalling when things get difficult? Won't you take pretty severe damage? In this game, you lost your starport, a few add-ons, supply depots, several SCVs, and ALMOST lost the factory + CC. I'm amazed you came out alive at all, but I suppose there is the looming threat that your opponent will do a bunch of damage, get surrounded on your ramp, then just teleport out.
1. It really depends on how I scout, If I see that he's going 2 gateways or chronoing units out fast I drop another barracks and a bunker.
2. I just uploaded another game that shows a pretty laid back protoss with some aggression.
3. I thought I was able to produce 2 at a time? I must have made a mistake somewhere.
4. I like this idea, a single widow mine could help a lot. However it also does cost gas and might take away from the build.
5. There is that threat yes, it all really depends on how I scout it. To be honest I've never been concerned with it.
1. I just feel like the 1 zealot/1 stalker poke with a MsC is kind of painfully difficult to deal with if you have no walloff and just 2 marines, and it's not really scoutable because it's kind of the standard. I could be wrong on this one, though.
2. Excellent, I'll look at it in a second.
3. The second hellion is a little delayed due to the CC going down. That was my mistake, it just looked like you made them one at a time. It happens again with the 5th and 6th hellions too. I don't know if that was just a slip on macro, but it seems like it just doesn't flow very smoothly. The medivac also feels quite late for how early your invested in a starport.
4. From what I can see, you should be able to build a widow mine at the same time as you start the medivac.
5. I suppose it's a fairly thin defense on both sides, so it evens out. As long as you feel safe staying alive lol.
1. MUCH better refined build. I think you delayed the techlab, and that made everything flow a lot more smoothly. From there, it looks much smoother and less clunky.
2. Most of the game looks pretty good. I worry a little bit about sacrificing midgame armies, though, as the counterswing can be quite harsh, especially when coupled with a warp prism. Is there a way you could add in like 6-8 widow mines for a retreat pathway? I like that you stay on a relatively low number of factories and build fairly few tanks.
3. Your opponent opened with blink stalkers, but stayed quite defensive with them. I suppose it was somewhat necessary against the hellion count, but it slowed down his tech and everything quite a bit. Generally when protoss players open blink stalkers, they have to do some kind of damage in order to justify how late upgrades + tech are. Do you think that opening hellions does a fairly good job of shutting down blink stalker harass (with an expansion behind)?
4. I feel as if your opponent just tried to make a counter-army to try and engage head-on all game. While it's definitely cool to see that the mech army trades well against a protoss ball of zealots/archons/immortals at THE WORST POSSIBLE ANGLE (aka surrounded lol), I feel like your opponent could have relied a lot more on multi-pronged harassment in the midgame to stay even. How would you deal with a much more harassment-based protoss (warp prism in the back, blink stalkers at the front, small zealot or stalker warp-ins when you left your base, etc)?
5. In addition to your opponent building an army that would confront you head-on, he never got to a transition stage. There were points in that game where I felt he could have transitioned into 2-stargate production of void rays or tempests. Against a ground-based army with a few tempests, how would you adjust your unit composition from primarily BCs?
On January 20 2013 12:52 SC2John wrote: Second video:
1. MUCH better refined build. I think you delayed the techlab, and that made everything flow a lot more smoothly. From there, it looks much smoother and less clunky.
2. Most of the game looks pretty good. I worry a little bit about sacrificing midgame armies, though, as the counterswing can be quite harsh, especially when coupled with a warp prism. Is there a way you could add in like 6-8 widow mines for a retreat pathway? I like that you stay on a relatively low number of factories and build fairly few tanks.
3. Your opponent opened with blink stalkers, but stayed quite defensive with them. I suppose it was somewhat necessary against the hellion count, but it slowed down his tech and everything quite a bit. Generally when protoss players open blink stalkers, they have to do some kind of damage in order to justify how late upgrades + tech are. Do you think that opening hellions does a fairly good job of shutting down blink stalker harass (with an expansion behind)?
4. I feel as if your opponent just tried to make a counter-army to try and engage head-on all game. While it's definitely cool to see that the mech army trades well against a protoss ball of zealots/archons/immortals at THE WORST POSSIBLE ANGLE (aka surrounded lol), I feel like your opponent could have relied a lot more on multi-pronged harassment in the midgame to stay even. How would you deal with a much more harassment-based protoss (warp prism in the back, blink stalkers at the front, small zealot or stalker warp-ins when you left your base, etc)?
5. In addition to your opponent building an army that would confront you head-on, he never got to a transition stage. There were points in that game where I felt he could have transitioned into 2-stargate production of void rays or tempests. Against a ground-based army with a few tempests, how would you adjust your unit composition from primarily BCs?
1. Yes I decided I did not need it quite as fast.
2. I'm still deciding on how much I want to trade or where, I'm doing pretty good so far put it doesn't seem completely solid.
3. I don't think hellions itself can hold it off. I think I need to switch to siege tank once I scout heavy stalker usage.
4. A lot more missile turrets and some sensor towers.
5. The more tempest he has the more ravens and vikings I throw in, this allows me to disable their slow shooting shots and overwhelm the tempest.
Update: I just wanted to provide you all with an update and for further feed back on some more videos that I tried to improve on since your last feedback
I am sorry Mario,but your TvP is not good.I would not recommend it to anyone.Still seem to be a lot to improve,but the most important is this style you call "Mech".
I like to believe the tank is the core unit of this,but understand how difficult is to make it work.Anyway in this replay neither you nor your opponent played well.There is many to improve and some early aggressions are not solved.Immortal sentry push will kill you so easy and going 1-1-1 its not so safe.
Using the Ravens to throw HSM for probes is just...silly.I have tried lot of openings and even talked to you in your stream 2 days ago and your opening was different.
12 rax,12 gas is better and not walling the entry. the reactor on the rax is for the factory later and its ok,but instead of hellions I preffer to go for widow mines,because sometimes the P is gonna proxy SG and Oracles will come at 5 min mark and crush your mineral line and the 2 marines wont save you.Even 4 gate will be hard to stop..
I preffer to make 2nd factory after the CC and begin with making tanks as soon as possible.If there is aggression or cheese coming just stay with widow mines.They are much cost efficient than hellions.They one-shot-kill every P unit in early game while hellions are soo fragile.
After 2nd factory I build Starpot on new reactor made by the rax(which I use for addons,same as you did) and maybe go for medivacs for drops or vikings if the P goes for quick Air transition.Anyways two of them are out always to patrol for incoming Warp Prisms.
You can take your 3rd on 5 factories:3 lab,2 reactor+1 ractor SP and begin with the Ghost Academy at 12-13 min.Only building tanks and Hellbats will be enough to keep you safe.If the P goes for Collossus we already got the reactor Starport.For the ghosts I usually make 2-3 rax and make 5-7 of them.You wont believe how costeffiecient becomes your army after 5 EMPs,no matter the P got there.Tanks wont allow HTs to feedback ghosts and Hellbats on hold in front of them will tank any incoming P units.Collosus wont kill them,because must expose them on tank fire and you can EMPs them easy or snipe with Vikings.
This are the basically early-mid game units.Late is almost the same,but it depends of what P does.If he is smart,he want stay on Zealot,stalker,Collosus like the one in your replay.He may go for Archon/Immortal/HT/Chargelots.This combo will never die to hellion/thor/raven.Your style is kinda "deathballish" and I think lot of Mechplayers wont like,as we all are in love with the BW style.Tanks are not so good,but as well as P need HTs or Collosuss for Splash,we NEED ghosts for EMP the Immortals/Archons to make tanks show their real power.
The Skytoss.Here is the real issue in TvP for now and the most difficult to solve. I dont know why everyone is building those Thors..They are so useless!!! Tempest/Carrier outrange them while Immortals and storms just make them pityfull.Their new AA upgrade is so slow and do nothing Voids or Carriers,but works well only vs Tempest.Anyways you will never face Tempests alone,so Thors for me are death supply.Siege tanks+hellbat +Vikings+Ravens are the answer.The siege wont allow HTs to come closer and Vikings+PDD are damn good vs Tempest,but still you need a hell of Vikings and the perfect combo to counter everything.Its not easy,but still VIABLE.
I know you will say tanks and hellbats are death supply vs Air transitions,but if you got too many you con trade them sniping the P expansions on the map,while building your AA army of Vikings+RAvens.
I can provide some replays,but BETA caught me and now we cant even see them.I tried on WoL,but its impossible.Is there any way to see replays without being in Bnet?
I only speak of my experience in Platinum/Diamond,but this works.
On March 02 2013 06:11 Dvriel wrote: I am sorry Mario,but your TvP is not good.I would not recommend it to anyone.Still seem to be a lot to improve,but the most important is this style you call "Mech".
I like to believe the tank is the core unit of this,but understand how difficult is to make it work.Anyway in this replay neither you nor your opponent played well.There is many to improve and some early aggressions are not solved.Immortal sentry push will kill you so easy and going 1-1-1 its not so safe.
Using the Ravens to throw HSM for probes is just...silly.I have tried lot of openings and even talked to you in your stream 2 days ago and your opening was different.
12 rax,12 gas is better and not walling the entry. the reactor on the rax is for the factory later and its ok,but instead of hellions I preffer to go for widow mines,because sometimes the P is gonna proxy SG and Oracles will come at 5 min mark and crush your mineral line and the 2 marines wont save you.Even 4 gate will be hard to stop..
I preffer to make 2nd factory after the CC and begin with making tanks as soon as possible.If there is aggression or cheese coming just stay with widow mines.They are much cost efficient than hellions.They one-shot-kill every P unit in early game while hellions are soo fragile.
After 2nd factory I build Starpot on new reactor made by the rax(which I use for addons,same as you did) and maybe go for medivacs for drops or vikings if the P goes for quick Air transition.Anyways two of them are out always to patrol for incoming Warp Prisms.
You can take your 3rd on 5 factories:3 lab,2 reactor+1 ractor SP and begin with the Ghost Academy at 12-13 min.Only building tanks and Hellbats will be enough to keep you safe.If the P goes for Collossus we already got the reactor Starport.For the ghosts I usually make 2-3 rax and make 5-7 of them.You wont believe how costeffiecient becomes your army after 5 EMPs,no matter the P got there.Tanks wont allow HTs to feedback ghosts and Hellbats on hold in front of them will tank any incoming P units.Collosus wont kill them,because must expose them on tank fire and you can EMPs them easy or snipe with Vikings.
This are the basically early-mid game units.Late is almost the same,but it depends of what P does.If he is smart,he want stay on Zealot,stalker,Collosus like the one in your replay.He may go for Archon/Immortal/HT/Chargelots.This combo will never die to hellion/thor/raven.Your style is kinda "deathballish" and I think lot of Mechplayers wont like,as we all are in love with the BW style.Tanks are not so good,but as well as P need HTs or Collosuss for Splash,we NEED ghosts for EMP the Immortals/Archons to make tanks show their real power.
The Skytoss.Here is the real issue in TvP for now and the most difficult to solve. I dont know why everyone is building those Thors..They are so useless!!! Tempest/Carrier outrange them while Immortals and storms just make them pityfull.Their new AA upgrade is so slow and do nothing Voids or Carriers,but works well only vs Tempest.Anyways you will never face Tempests alone,so Thors for me are death supply.Siege tanks+hellbat +Vikings+Ravens are the answer.The siege wont allow HTs to come closer and Vikings+PDD are damn good vs Tempest,but still you need a hell of Vikings and the perfect combo to counter everything.Its not easy,but still VIABLE.
I know you will say tanks and hellbats are death supply vs Air transitions,but if you got too many you con trade them sniping the P expansions on the map,while building your AA army of Vikings+RAvens.
I can provide some replays,but BETA caught me and now we cant even see them.I tried on WoL,but its impossible.Is there any way to see replays without being in Bnet?
I only speak of my experience in Platinum/Diamond,but this works.
The siege tank is awesome, mech however is defined by some as factory + a few starport / barracks or back bone siege tanks. Only one actually works.
I read your post however I'm skipping to the bottem here, thors are not useless. They are incredibly strong... Immortals 3 shot siege tanks and siege tanks can't shoot up. The thor is a beefy unit that can be ok in normal and sky toss play. With mech immobility and the fear of air switches the thor helps greatly in preventing a flat out hard counter. Storms don't really do too much to 400 hp thors..
You want to make siege tanks against tempest comps over thors?
Siege tanks are expensive and yes it is dead supply and no it isn't worth it to just sacrifice them if you can prevent it, they cost a lot and there is no guarantee you will get the expansion and then you free yourself up to ground attacks because you traded your army.
I appreciate your feedback however what exactly did you expect making a post saying my play is terrible , that you don't recommend it for anyone while I'm grandmaster. (which means anyone who tries to mech masters or below could very well benefit) and then proceed to write an essay on what you feel is best while you're in platinum / diamond.
Edit: And yes I change my openings and strategies or methods of harass frequently because when you're too predictable you can just flat out get hard countered by people who know your style. And the raven harass... I've once killed 20 workers with 2 ravens and hunter seeker missile. Trading 100-200 energy for 20 workers is always a good thing.
Now I don't just want to play the league card because I am a firm believer that amazing theory crafters can come from any bracket. However until proven otherwise it's a theory and not confirmed. So I say unto you, I posted my games in which I show that I can win using my strategies. If you could post some evidence that proves your strategies are superior to mine, I will gladly change my play for the better.
Sorry if I expressed me so wrong.Your strategy is NOT terrible and obviously is working,but not of my OPV where TANKS are the dominant unit.Your style is totally viable in GM as you showed and ofc you are better player then me,its just i feel the "mech lovers" wont see this as real mech.
Cant say that my strategy is "superior",its just different but involving tank.Once the game is released I hope they allow us keep the BETA replays and I will post them,if not will play some games and will show them here.In the beginning of the BETA was pretty hard for me even to beat gold players,but finally with Blizzards patches help I found the opening and can defend everything P throw on me,which I think is not the case with the 1-1-1.
Sorry once again if you felt bad of my words,It wasnt my intention.I am great fan because not many GMs dare to try mech as hard as you did.Keep doing it.
On March 02 2013 08:03 Dvriel wrote: Sorry if I expressed me so wrong.Your strategy is NOT terrible and obviously is working,but not of my OPV where TANKS are the dominant unit.Your style is totally viable in GM as you showed and ofc you are better player then me,its just i feel the "mech lovers" wont see this as real mech.
Cant say that my strategy is "superior",its just different but involving tank.Once the game is released I hope they allow us keep the BETA replays and I will post them,if not will play some games and will show them here.In the beginning of the BETA was pretty hard for me even to beat gold players,but finally with Blizzards patches help I found the opening and can defend everything P throw on me,which I think is not the case with the 1-1-1.
Sorry once again if you felt bad of my words,It wasnt my intention.I am great fan because not many GMs dare to try mech as hard as you did.Keep doing it.
Misunderstandings happen all the time, I wish you luck in your tank dominant army!
Well, I see the thread is a little dead after the BETA closed,but I will keep my promise. I promised to show one of my replays,but was unable to convert them in videos,so I played some games in WoL.Well,I tried,because only play vs T or Z and finally got Protoss and here is my style.
Its not the same as in the BETA,becauase I open Reaper,widow mines to defend any early aggression and go directly into tanks,but this is one of my first openings trying mech in the BETA when Widow mines werent able to "oneshot kill" zealots,stalkers...
You just must change the Blue Flame upgrade with the Transformers Servos and instead of Hellions imagine,there are Hellbats. After watching the replay I realised,my engagements arent cost efficient,but if there were hellbats instead of hellions the numbers change a lot.
EPT
