How to fix TvZ Mech - Page 17

On June 03 2010 15:25 Wr3k wrote:
I am really starting to think this boils down to thor AA being too good. Mech wasn't OP when thor AA sucked. There should be some negative about making 10 tanks. In BW if you had a tank heavy force and Z went heavy mutas, you would lose. There was this relationship where muta>tank, goliath>muta, hydra>goliath, and tank>hydra. No such relationship exists in SC2 because thors AA is just too good.

On June 03 2010 15:37 k!llua wrote:
deal with it or find a better idea (like a reduction to the siege tank radius or something).

On June 03 2010 15:19 cHaNg-sTa wrote:

EDIT: Roaches need to be rebuffed a bit. They were a decent a decent option back then, now they are just crap. Tunneling claws was pretty good at catching Terran sieges offguard if there weren't any detectors, but no one even gets roaches anymore because they've been nerfed to hell.

On June 03 2010 15:43 whatthemate wrote:
Turned out to be a noob turtling fest of 40 minutes. Zerg is not sim city its about mass bigger army first and taking initiative to attack.

On June 03 2010 15:41 red_b wrote:


tanks deal 60 to armored, 45 to normal units, and 30 to light units?

also remove sensor towers so terrans have to scan more.

On June 03 2010 15:56 lu_cid wrote:
So it's the thor that is OP now? Geez it's not even that good against air units. Only light air units that are clumped together.

On June 03 2010 15:43 whatthemate wrote:
AT OP, those replays didn't display anything. The one on Steppes of War, Sheth made a roach warren and ended up making no roaches before lair.

So many mistakes in Sheth's Low APM play. QXC is the better player.
Mistakes spotted in Sheth
1. Natural expansion had ultra late gas econ. Extractors at natural came too late.
2. Too many zerglings at start hurt his economy. Built 16 zerglings and fell behind in economy.
3. Compare drone count to scvs. 36-33. Why bother playing zerg if you're gonna have only a 3 drone difference.
4. Lair came ultra late.
5.All tech buildings came ultra late.

Turned out to be a noob turtling fest of 40 minutes. Zerg is not sim city its about mass bigger army first and taking initiative to attack.

If army sizes are equal terran always win duh? Same in SC1 maxed out protoss > jaedong.

On June 03 2010 15:09 sadyque wrote:


Yes please you should really explain your theory to maka (T) who lost vs cool (Z) in a prize money BO5 tournament. Im sure he was just not paying enough attention considering that maka said quoute "We need to win to feed ourselves".
Name one terran who won a tournament since patch 11? TLO lost TvZ BO% vs Sen with a mech strat he claimed it was unbeatable on EU server. Day9 even made a daily on how imba that strat was. Still Sen wtfpwnedkkthxbyebye him w/o too much trouble. But im sure you zerg guys who post here tried everything and did everything perfecly and Sen/Cool/Dimaga are just lucky to kill terrans in every tournament.

On June 03 2010 16:04 drewbie.root wrote:


this is a terrible idea, it would completely break tvp, because mass zealots already rape tanks


also your logic for removing sensor towers is dumb, minerals dont matter at all in the situation the OP is talking about.

On June 03 2010 15:28 cHaNg-sTa wrote:


It was a good relation too. And the person with the better micro always won that match. It seems like micro is now less significant in this match up now (at least for Terran) and it tends to show as armies grow in numbers.

As it currently stands siege tanks own on anything on the ground. This is how it should be. The tank is a relatively immobile, dedicated anti-ground unit, and it does a great job. With its fancy new AI preventing overkill the tank is even better than its brood war counterpart, and this is fine.

In SC2, when you build a force that is specialized into one role, such as anti-ground, anti-light, anti-armored, anti-air etc. it should also be weak against something else.

For example, the immortal fills its role very well as an anti-armored unit, yet is extremely weak against lings. The hellion is extremely strong against lings/zealots/hydras but is very weak against roaches, marauders or stalkers. The colossi is great against clumps of low hp ground units like MM or hydra/roach, but is weak against air. I'm sure we can all agree that units should be unique, and have specific roles that make them great for some purposes and not so great at others. The large majority of units in the game are exactly like this. They have a specific role, something they excel at.

Units form synergies with each other in many ways, and some have stronger synergy than others. For example, zealots and immortals work very well together because zealots are strong against lings, and immortals provide anti-armor fire support for the zealots. If you work sentries into the mix the force becomes even more effective at a variety of tasks. Each units strengths in combination form a cohesive unit which is better than one specific type of unit alone. If a unit is more specialized, it will have better synergy with other units. This can be illustrated with examples like marauder/hellion. Since the hellion provides anti-light and the marauder provides anti-armor the two mixed together can be insanely powerful against a mixture of light and armored units. Typically Terran units have the strongest synergy followed by protoss and zerg units due to their high degree of specialization.

If a unit is too strong at one or more specific roles, it can result in an insanely powerful composition. I previously mentioned hellion/marauder. Since a few hellions can kill vast numbers of zerglings, but are weak against armored, combining them with marauders forms a very strong all-around composition. These types of relationships can be dangerous if a certain unit composition is too good at multiple tasks. With the marauder and hellion this is not the case, since neither can attack air.

Enter the thor...

This role confused unit is quite good at multiple tasks including absorbing damage, dealing high dps to high hp ground targets, and even dealing with air units (more specifically light air).

Thors are in fact so good at killing lightly armored air units (i.e. mutalisks) that they can often kill several times their own value in mutalisks. This effect compounds in larger numbers, as 4-5 thors can easily kill 4x their value in mutalisks. When mixed with small numbers of marines, they become even more effective. I am beginning to think that they are too effective.

A mech force consisting of 3-4 thors, 10-15 marines, and 5-8 tanks is extremely effective at killing ground and air targets. In fact, this composition is not weak against any tier 1 or 2 zerg unit composition. The Thor is the reason that mech is overpowered against zerg. The only tier 2 unit that "counters" tanks is the mutalisk, and since a few thors can easily dismantle large numbers of mutalisks zerg simply has no answer to mechanized forces.

In SC1 there was a very interesting relationship between zerg ground forces and mech.
In general:
Tank>Hydra/ling
Muta>Tank
Goliath>Muta
Hydra/ling>Goliath

This was great, because even though mech was quite powerful, zerg had a response. If the terran chose to make a tank heavy force, a mutalisk heavy force would be effective, and if terran chose a goliath heavy force, hydra/ling would be effective. Zerg was still quite cost ineffective at mech overall, but mobility and zergs booming economy typically made up for that fact.

In SC2 things are different. A large number of mutalisks cannot do any damage to a mechanized force. Additionally, marines are even better against mutas, and missile turrets have 240% the damage output against mutas as they did in SC1, for only 33% higher cost.

Imagine if the SC1 goliath was given extra damage and splash. You would have a situation where small numbers of goliaths could offset large numbers of mutas, allowing the terran to maintain a tank heavy force, and thus be extremely strong against anything the zerg could make. Combine this with a 240% increase to missile turret damage, and the mobile mutalisks wouldn't even be able to abuse the low mobility of the mech force.

Please nerf thor AA so that terran actually have to make more than 4-5 units to counter 20+ mutas. Terran weren't having severe issues with mutalisks prior to thor AOE being buffed, now things are just broken.

On June 03 2010 16:07 drewbie.root wrote:

i'm sorry but you are an idiot, sheth was hands down the best zerg on USA server 2 months ago, and only reason he isn't now is because he was a bit inactive and stopped playing in tournaments. You aren't going to find any non-korean zergs that can do a better job vs that than sheth.