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Does anyone else think that Terran bionic only seems overpowered because of the underusage of Force Field? Most players in this game recognize that Force Field is a very strong ability. They also realize that they must have at least a handful of Sentries in their army for a Guardian Shield and Force Fields to turn the tide of the battle. However, I don't think players aren't building quite enough Sentries.
Typically, most Protoss players will be quite heavily Stalker and Zealot based. This is a nice mix, particularly in the very early game. However, once the full Marine/Marauder stimball is on the field, it is quite weak without Forcefields. Zealots are easily kited with stimpack and killed extremeley fast. Stalkers get destroyed by Marauders.
Lately, I've been opting for getting my 2nd gas on 18 almost every PvT, even when I'm going for 2-3 Gate Robo Builds. This allows me to get a lot of Sentries early on. Not only this, Sentry and Zealot handedly defeats that early pure Marauder aggression. With Marines in the mix, or if you are expecting some kind of Banshee build, you probably want more Stalkers in your unit composition.
During Day 5 of the GSL in the Tester series, it looked as if he was about to be utterly crushed by a very strong Terran timing attack. However, he used lots of Force Fields to completely decimate his enemy with pure Warpgate units, only 1 Immortal and keep his natural expansion alive.
![[image loading]](http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/1425/testerff.jpg)
Today, I played a PvT (around 1k diamond) against what I perceived to be a pretty compotent opponent. I went for a 3 Gate Robotics build, whereas he went for 2 Rax 1 Tech 1 Reactor expand into 4 Rax Rauder 1 Rax Reactor Rine w/ Medivacs. After seeing his expand, I responded by expanding myself, and continuing to macro up units (lots of sentries and zealots), tech (Council>Archives), and production buildings (3 additional Warpgates and another Robo). I feel like I have a nice army, I just produced two Immortals off my double Robo, so I decide to go check out his 3rd. We engage at the top Xel'naga tower on Blistering Sands. I have 2 Collosus, 13 Sentries, 5 Stalkers, 14 Zealots. No weapon, armor or shield upgrades. Only Extended Thermal Lances My opponent has 6 vikings, 4 medivacs, a marauder/marine ball. A slight (4) harvester lead at this point too, 15 food ahead of me, and +1 upgrades for his infantry. However, almost every single one of my Sentries had full energy. Needless to say, I made a LOT of forcefields. Just huge lines, as many rows as I could make. My Gateway units/Immortals, even with only two Collosus (who are getting heavily harassed by Vikings) are able to decimate him. Stalkers have nice range so they can clean up everything quite nicely instead of getting hit by the full collective force of the Marauders and dying way faster. Immortal/Stalker reinforcements are able to force the gg shortly after the big confrontation. Here's a pic for fun:
![[image loading]](http://img841.imageshack.us/img841/9656/screenshot2010090922150.jpg)
I'd like to hear people's thoughts on the matter. In my opinion, I think lots of people are using Force Field to a good potential. However, I think with faster 2nd gas and more Sentry production early on, you can really turn the tide of battle in your favor with an over abundance of Force Fields. Thanks for reading! Start spamming those force fields! :D
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I agree, after watching some GSL, those Toss guys don't seem to have a problem with Bio at all. Some well placed forcefields really turn the battle, and is quite a sight to watch.
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I tried to write a funny reply but I came up with nothing. This is old news. 2-3 gate robo is as standard it gets.
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yeah force field is definitely extremely important when handling terran attacks. People complain about Terrans kiting their army. Just warp/drop a few sentries behind the Terran army and trap em!
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I absolutely love forcefields and storms because they have the ability to turn the tide of a game in a matter of seconds regardless of who is macroing better and has a "bigger stick". A few days ago I won a PvP and my opponent told me I was bad and that I'm going to lose games because I love sentries too much. Mind you this was all after I held off his 5-gate all in 1-base attack(Yeah he even sent the probes) with forcefields while I got my natural up.
I also had another PvP where we both moved out our main armies at the same time and I scouted him with an obs on the other path to my base. So I warp in a bunch of sentries to block my ramp and watched his army spoon against my forcefield while I decimated his base.
Illusion is another ability that has potential. I played at least 1 game where I successfully fooled my opponent that I went with void rays just by bouncing them in and out before they expired while I really had a handful of immortals to counter his stalkers.
I play a lot of PvP games apparently. xD
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After seeing the games today, I agree.
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Really interesting. I for one have been getting less than ideal sentries cuz of their low dps... But massing forcefields would definitely improve my game at times. I'll see what happens in the next few games.
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I feel like the best use of forcefields is when you aren't trying to cut their army in half, but putting "columns" in their spread, which leaves them having only like 5-6 marauders firing at a time.. That is the type of FF's that I find super effective and dominates terran hard, but its very hard to pull off in the middle of a battle (esp since it leaves them with room to potentially run away)
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On September 10 2010 13:02 Skyze wrote:
I feel like the best use of forcefields is when you aren't trying to cut their army in half, but putting "columns" in their spread, which leaves them having only like 5-6 marauders firing at a time.. That is the type of FF's that I find super effective and dominates terran hard, but its very hard to pull off in the middle of a battle (esp since it leaves them with room to potentially run away)
Agreed, but once you have a critical mass of Force Fields available, it's very easy to do this. In my game, the second screenshot, several "pockets" of troops were blocked from firing within the big glob of force fields.
In the Tester game, it was a much earlier confrontation and he had no choice but to use his limited (albeit still plenty) to split the army in half, blocking a good amount of troops from engaging.
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On September 10 2010 13:02 Skyze wrote:
I feel like the best use of forcefields is when you aren't trying to cut their army in half, but putting "columns" in their spread, which leaves them having only like 5-6 marauders firing at a time.. That is the type of FF's that I find super effective and dominates terran hard, but its very hard to pull off in the middle of a battle (esp since it leaves them with room to potentially run away)
Not really, because a good terran if he has an escape path will simply stim and run. Cutting his army in half as long as you have stalkers already limits him because of the range of the units behind the forcefields.
Furthermore even if he does stim and run, he can only save half his army.
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The problem with mass sentry at this point is ghosts. If you skew your build towards sentries and he scouts this, all he has to do is add a ghost academy and make 2 ghosts. If he hits good EMPs you have about 600-700 gas of dead weight in your army. Units that are literally useless. Having spent this 700 gas (instead of maybe 200) you will have delayed and weakened your tech unit production. Meaning you will have less templar or later colossus etc. Since tech timings are of utmost importance vs terran right now most protosses choose to spend that money on faster tech and more meaty units such as stalkers / zealots.
I don't know for sure how terrans play on the US servers but from what I see on streams people like mass marauder without ghosts or tanks TvP. On EU high diamond those builds are considered gimmicky and not often used. The reason is that YES sentry does rape pure marauder. If you see a terran make a marauder heavy army then you just make a significant ammount of sentries and you're good to go. But when the composition is skewed towards marines with ghosts or early medivac with the sole purpose of marauders to tank damage and slow units then sentries become very cost ineffective and you actually need storm or colossi to combat his army. Either that or you need a very large zealot/stalker count. The focus on alot of sentries both delays tech and decreases your armys dps output.
The other reason that I've allready talked about slightly is the fact that protoss tech structures cost an insane ammount of gas. You really need to devote most of your gas early to tech vs terran. Especially considering that all the terran tech counterparts are about half the cost on gas and comes from a building that you have 3 minutes into the game.
In conclusion: Sentries are great for curbstomping players who try to play cutie style marauder stim and kite builds but not so much vs a marine focused composition. Obviously later in the game when he has 2 base he can go into a more marauder heavy compo without suffering against sentries.
Edit: Btw I agree with your decision to go for a faster second gas (unless you are doing 1 gate FE) because then you have the oppurtunity to choose whether to spend that gas on sentries or tech (countering what he does).
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I underuse sentries because my multitasking isnt high enough level yet. i rather focus on heavier macro than more micro with sentries
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toss underuse FF vs T because of emp, but alot of times terran dont even have EMP...
even if they do, spread out ur sentries force multiple ghosts/emps.
u can usually get at least some FF or GS off.
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So when you split their army with forcefields, do not engage with your zeals until the FF wears off ? Cause against a terran army if your zeals engage the front row, usually the back rows has the range to hit the zeals through the forcefield.
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Speaking on the EMP matter, I like to key clone (shift-deselecting on unit selection panel) to issue multiple move commands to my casters, easily spreading them out. More info here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Cloning
I always use this method to easily split my casters to avoid EMP. While some stuff will still certainly be EMP'ed, it helps quite a lot, particularly with High Templar.
It would be much harder to effectively do this with Sentries as you need to do so much more, but it still is nice. I usually just drag select split my army, and save key cloning for High Templar. I think as the game goes on we'll see better Sentry spreads vs EMP as well.
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What StarBrift is saying is resonating with me (with regards to ghosts). I'm going to attempt to illustrate why.
Please correct me if I am wrong (only 700ish Diamond, so I would love some input), but this is how a STANDARD PvT works as I see it.
- T can do many things, but consider he goes bio or a modified bio (the latter most commonly being bio + a few tanks).
- The safest standard build for P is 3 gate Robo, observer first (observer second if you need to get an early immortal to fend off marauders).
- Quoting StarBrift here:
If you skew your build towards sentries and he scouts this, all he has to do is add a ghost academy and make 2 ghosts.
What he doesn't mention is that even if your opponent doesn't scout a large number of sentries, ghosts are a completely standard tech path. Remember that the bio ball is already established at this point. (As an aside, I know that Trump and some others are an advocate of going ravens instead of ghosts, but that is not the standard.)
- So basically, at this point it is likely that the bio ball will have at least one ghost in it.
If he hits good EMPs you have about 600-700 gas of dead weight in your army.
Exactly. Unless you are just vastly superior to your opponent, there is no way that you are going to be able to pick off the ghost before an EMP. The standard way of dealing with ghosts is Feedback, but obviously it is way too early in the game for this, since if you are playing standard you probably won't even have a Twilight Council yet. In fact, to deal with this newly emerged bio ball, most players tech to colossus instead of storm since the Robo is already out and the Twilight Council is not.
In conclusion (to the OP), this strat is pretty dangerous.
Now (to everyone else), am I way off or is does that sound accurate?
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I think it's more "bad usage" than under usage. imo
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I think Protosses in general lack FF usage... ZvP, my ground army gets decimated by good forcefiels (and colossi...). I don't know why people don't go keep 4-5 sentries with their army, maybe it's because of the damage nerf back in beta?
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Depending on force field is risky you know.
Thats what makes toss such a weird race. Toss is balanced in that force field plays a role in win/loss. (not entirely but definitely for certain builds).
If really reallly good players like FLash nad Jaedong come to Sc2 and play toss, then in that case Toss will be heavily over powered. This is because they will be able to place perfect force fields no matter what. They will have the apm and micro management skills to do everything perfectly.
However, nerfing protoss would mean that 99.9999% of the people use toss will have an under powered race simply becasue they can't take advantage of those force fields.
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You're still able to tech super fast to Collosus even if you spend some gas on Sentries (due to the 18 gas) so if you scout Ghosts with your Observer you can probably just produce Stalkers and Collosus over Sentry/Immortal since he will have less (or none?) Marauders. The Ghost/Marine push hasn't been a problem for me for a while...Collosus seems to wreck it, plus Stalkers can be microed a bit (harder though because of Stim) Besides, some top Protoss like HuK have been favoring delaying the Thermal Lances anyways (until the Nexus is up, iirc?) so it's not too gas heavy. The real trouble for me is when they have a healthy mix of Marine/Marauder/Medivac so you have to have Collosus, Immortals, and all the Warpgate units to boot 
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EPT
