|
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
|
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.
|
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.
|
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!
|
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
|
After seeing the games today, I agree.
|
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.
|
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)
|
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.
|
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.
|
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).
|
I underuse sentries because my multitasking isnt high enough level yet. i rather focus on heavier macro than more micro with sentries
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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?
|
I think it's more "bad usage" than under usage. imo
|
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?
|
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.
|
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 
|
That's such bad logic. Any top tier progamer that came and played a race perfectly would make it seem too strong, but it wouldn't make the race inherently overpowered. You have to have equally skilled opponents playing the other races at top level before you can make a claim (and even then, it's decidedly not what you're trying to say).
|
On September 10 2010 13:28 Tump wrote: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/CloningI 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.
Ok im really trying to understand what u do, when u engage the army u have all ur temps on c1 for example and the u shift deselect them to differant spots before emp hits????
|
i rarely use sentries in my PvT's although I don't have too much trouble with this matchup. i was watching tester yesterday and i was awed by how fucking gosu that guy is.
|
oh hey this is my game i think lol you're tumpys right?
>_> im a pretty bad player tbh and tvp is also my worst matchup at 40% over 160 games. i raged pretty hard after this game because i felt like i was decently ahead and all i needed to do was snipe your colossi and the game would be in the bag. but then you had some pretty good FFs and i was like fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
i think i had some issues with being too passive that game, i could probably have sniped your expo with my superior army when your nexus was still warping in, and the bunkers i had were just superfluous and 200 mins i could have used for earlier upgrades or another rax. also got blocked pretty hard at 54 supply >_>
i guess the obvious answer to your unit composition would have been to incorporate more ghosts and try to emp your sentries (i actually saw that tester game and i should have known what was coming but i didn't make the connection >_<). got any other suggestions for that one? maybe igniter hellions but warpgates are imba and let you change your unit composition instantly where i have to make multiple factories :p that was a pretty good game regardless
|
Like every unit composition there is advantages and disadvantages to each, and while I am fully aware of the disadvantages a more Sentry army may have, I feel, and clearly many other Protoss feel (but I guess this thread is an indication that the majority does not use more Sentries) that the advantages especially in P v T outweigh the disadvantages.
|
On September 10 2010 14:01 Darkren wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2010 13:28 Tump wrote: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/CloningI 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. Ok im really trying to understand what u do, when u engage the army u have all ur temps on c1 for example and the u shift deselect them to differant spots before emp hits????
In the panel where your units are selected at the bottom middle, you can deselect units from your current selection by shift clicking on one unit box. So if you want to easily spread High Templars, I press my High Templar hotkey (usually on 2 or 3), right click move, deselect Templar, right click move, deselect Templar, etc etc so on and so forth. Also you can press the group hotkey and just quickly click on one of the boxes to select an individual templar and move it, then press the group hotkey again and keep doing that over and over. I forgot which is the most optimal. But you get the idea.
On September 10 2010 14:03 rauk wrote:
oh hey this is my game i think lol you're tumpys right?
>_> im a pretty bad player tbh and tvp is also my worst matchup at 40% over 160 games. i raged pretty hard after this game because i felt like i was decently ahead and all i needed to do was snipe your colossi and the game would be in the bag. but then you had some pretty good FFs and i was like fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
i think i had some issues with being too passive that game, i could probably have sniped your expo with my superior army when your nexus was still warping in, and the bunkers i had were just superfluous and 200 mins i could have used for earlier upgrades or another rax. also got blocked pretty hard at 54 supply >_>
i guess the obvious answer to your unit composition would have been to incorporate more ghosts and try to emp your sentries (i actually saw that tester game and i should have known what was coming but i didn't make the connection >_<). got any other suggestions for that one? maybe igniter hellions but warpgates are imba and let you change your unit composition instantly where i have to make multiple factories :p that was a pretty good game regardless
Yeah that's me GG! and don't be so hard on yourself, I thought you played pretty well, and I was super happy to actually see you expand! Everyone on ladder usually just all-ins  Your build seemed really similar to Tester's opponents from that Metalopolis game too, except I was surprised you didn't attack before I got my Colossus out.
But yeah, my T practice partner who likes mixing in Hellions rapes me a lot. That's even without massing Sentries too, which I'd imagine would get torn up
I think the best response would be some tricky ninja Ghost EMPs (possibly using scans or Vikings to scout out some holes in the Protoss defense to allow for some key EMPs).
In any case, it seems like once you have a critical mass of forcefields bio becomes very weak without any kind of counter.
|
Sentries are a decent unit with FF but even the threat of a proxy ghost academy means having more than a few is pointless.
|
On September 10 2010 13:27 Jaen wrote:
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.
So I hate doing this, but can someone answer this please?
|
|
|
I use it plenty, always cutting the bio ball in half, and still always end up losing (like 500 resources to 4k), so...
|
haha... this is directed to the people saying it's a bad idea due to ghosts:
no 1 cares if ghosts hard counter sentry. we're not massing sentries anyway. You must see this in context: See how many sentries tester had? 3. When did he get them? At the start, while he semi-fast expanded. Obviously by expanding and adding gateways, he churns out 2-3 sentries, which are low on minerals, and by getting it early you can save up energy.
Stop crying about how X counters Y and look at the whole game.
|
Getting sentries for that kind of forcefield really slows down Colossus or Templar, which most Protoss would much rather have. When Blizzard reduced the sentry damage from 8 to 6, they really killed its effectiveness, because having the critical mass of sentries for good FFs doesn't usually do the damage you need it to do. I think most players would rather forego mass sentry in favor of faster templar.
Good force field placement is a lot harder than it looks. The range isn't super long on the cast, and sentries tend to get blocked behind stalkers. It takes very good unit control to pull off what you see in the screenshots.
Though it's a very good point about marines and marauders. Their massive damage output comes from the fact that they clump so well, while stalkers are fat and bulky. The goal is not to split them in half, but rather to make it so that they can't all attack at once.
|
|
|
Tester's forcefield usage in that game literally made me jizz my pants.
Back on topic though.. I don't think forcefield is underused. Rather it is not properly used (lots of wasted energy, stacked ff's, too late or too early, etc.
|
tester was a beast and really showed how to use the force fields. its gonna be fun to see if this changes the matchup where P goes sentry heavy.
|
i have to say those were beautifully played.
but i wonder how does this compare to carpet storm? i always thought storm is better use for ur gas than sentries.
|
On September 10 2010 16:18 dybydx wrote:
i have to say those were beautifully played.
but i wonder how does this compare to carpet storm? i always thought storm is better use for ur gas than sentries.
Storm isn't always around, particularly when pursuing Robotics tech first.
|
I have to admit I did a fist pump after seeing that. Seeing another top tier GSL protoss get absolutely crushed by a timing attack from a bioball made this all that more awesome.
It shows again that principle of even small numerical superiority of firepower in an engagement produce overwhelming wins.
|
On September 10 2010 16:09 Inori wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2010 16:04 wxwx wrote:
haha... this is directed to the people saying it's a bad idea due to ghosts:
no 1 cares if ghosts hard counter sentry. we're not massing sentries anyway. You must see this in context: See how many sentries tester had? 3. When did he get them? At the start, while he semi-fast expanded. Obviously by expanding and adding gateways, he churns out 2-3 sentries, which are low on minerals, and by getting it early you can save up energy.
Stop crying about how X counters Y and look at the whole game. You might also notice that Tester didn't have trouble vs Ghosts because Terran didn't have Ghosts...
If the T did have ghosts his push would have been slowed and weakened.
|
After seeing Tester I can see why, that in Korea, Protoss is the strongest race.
Perhaps we should hesitate to call something imba before full scrutiny, and maybe consider the possibility we aren't playing optimally?
Nah, who are we kidding.
|
I would rather say ghosts are underused by bio ball players vs protoss....
Sentrys without mana are pretty useless for its cost you know.
|
On September 10 2010 17:50 Technique wrote:
I would rather say ghosts are underused by bio ball players vs protoss....
Sentrys without mana are pretty useless for its cost you know.
This.
2EMPs and ur Sentrys are going to be pretty much (hm no: fully!) useless ;p
Sentries may work fine vs the BioBall in the early to midgame, but should they work any further (like we saw on ur pic), the terran is horrible
|
I have a love hate relationship with sentires that go beyond hate when im terran lvoe when im protoss.
Its that unit that has the ability to force this game into more macro oriented games denying early all in pushes. However its still around to absolutely ruin later game play. The problem that terran armies have to figure out with sentries is the same as later game storm spam. What tester did was amazing but honestly not as hard to do after some practice and composure. It does however push the terran player to have perfect ghost play every time he wants to engage. Miss 2-3 temps or 2 -3 sentries and engage? Auto lose time.
Is this overpowered? Of course not its just shifting the meta game more towards terran dropping, engaging a protoss head on is absolute suicide.
|
I agree entirely, forcefields are the only way to combat early game mmm pushes. It's still difficult though and requires a lot of varied gateway units in a good arc.
|
actually i think FF is the reason why a lot of koreans believe P to be the strongest race overall. if you use them correctly you can stomp your enemy (just like u saw with tester and u described in you post)
|
On September 10 2010 14:01 Darkren wrote:
Ok im really trying to understand what u do, when u engage the army u have all ur temps on c1 for example and the u shift deselect them to differant spots before emp hits????
There are 2 ways to do it, 1 was stated before me, the other is to use multiple hotkeys.
Say I have 6 templar hotkeyed to 3. I then hotkey 3 of those to c4 and 3 to c5. This way I can move them all with 1 key, or move different halves with other keys. I can spread them out easily while moving my army and before/during battles. It takes some practice but really helps.
You cannot dodge EMP currently, so it all has to be done preemptively. Another reason to split casters is so you can react with spells to different flanks and it also simplifies things a little when splitting your forces.
|
United Kingdom16710 Posts
a lot of the players i play on ladder make the mistake of making too many sentries just because they want a lot of forcefields. what they end up having is an army not dealing enough DPS and after the forcefields go down, my army still crushes them. they should learn to build a few as early on as you can and let the energy build up.
|
The problem early game is that sentries are very gas heavy units. So you will end up with loads of zealots. If you split their army with forcefields all units can still target your zealots.
Myself Ive been experimenting a bit with fast expansion out from gateway units into 4 fast gas while all minerals are still not saturated. This way you can get a sentry heavy army that is still most ranged units.
But what Ive noticed is that I prefer templars over sentries. Both are vulnurable to ghost while templars can feedback and do devastating damage.
I guess sentries really shines better with colossi.
|
On September 10 2010 13:27 Jaen wrote:
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.
True, but on the other hand, zealots have good attack and HP, so they can tank and having forcefields behind means the other player can't run away from the zealots. If the forcefields are gone the zealots won't catch the bio ball.
|
doesn't charge negate the use of forcefield to stop retreat?
|
On September 10 2010 18:54 a176 wrote:
doesn't charge negate the use of forcefield to stop retreat?
What do you mean by "negate"?
Marauders can still kite zealots with charge, they'll just get hit once every 10 seconds.
|
It's better to split your army in two and try to flank the MMM ball with the zealots so they can't retreat. Requires more skill, but less gas. 
|
On September 10 2010 18:00 abominare wrote:
I have a love hate relationship with sentires that go beyond hate when im terran lvoe when im protoss.
Its that unit that has the ability to force this game into more macro oriented games denying early all in pushes. However its still around to absolutely ruin later game play. The problem that terran armies have to figure out with sentries is the same as later game storm spam. What tester did was amazing but honestly not as hard to do after some practice and composure. It does however push the terran player to have perfect ghost play every time he wants to engage. Miss 2-3 temps or 2 -3 sentries and engage? Auto lose time.
Is this overpowered? Of course not its just shifting the meta game more towards terran dropping, engaging a protoss head on is absolute suicide.
Ghost play is easy. EMP does more depletes up to 100 shields, so even if you don't get them all you are still cutting 1/3 to 1/2 of a lot of unit's health.
No Ghosts (usually Marauders)? Sentries.
Ghosts? More Stalkers.
|
On September 10 2010 17:50 Technique wrote:
I would rather say ghosts are underused by bio ball players vs protoss....
Sentrys without mana are pretty useless for its cost you know.
The reason why people don't go Ghost frequently is because Ghost+Marine play early is beaten hard by Colossi. And later in the game, it's beaten by Storm (due to High Templar being so much cheaper).
|
Koreans in general think Protoss is the OP race and that may have a lot to do with a toss being 2k rated vs the next highest being 1600. However, rating doesn't mean anything to pro's because they don't reveal everything to the ladder and spend time practicing privately and playing in tournaments instead of laddering. The 2k rated toss player got knocked out in the round of 64 which backs my point.
It seems that Korean toss are still using a lot of force fields even though sentries don't do much damage and forcefield becomes useless mid-late game. It seems like Koreans are actually behind in this regard. There was a game where a toss with only ~1/2 the unit count fought off a huge marine/marauder ball early-mid game by splitting it but the terran should have not engaged that many sentries.He could have just macro'd more and waited to get ghosts, siege tanks, or medivacs. to engage the toss army safely.
|
Using FFs is not some new revelation. On top of Ghosts mitigating their efficacy, FFs usually help Tanks out way too much. You'll never come out ahead against a well balanced Terran army, it's just that 99% are so unimaginative (read: MM) so they can be exploited.
|
On September 10 2010 20:34 whateversclever wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2010 18:00 abominare wrote:
I have a love hate relationship with sentires that go beyond hate when im terran lvoe when im protoss.
Its that unit that has the ability to force this game into more macro oriented games denying early all in pushes. However its still around to absolutely ruin later game play. The problem that terran armies have to figure out with sentries is the same as later game storm spam. What tester did was amazing but honestly not as hard to do after some practice and composure. It does however push the terran player to have perfect ghost play every time he wants to engage. Miss 2-3 temps or 2 -3 sentries and engage? Auto lose time.
Is this overpowered? Of course not its just shifting the meta game more towards terran dropping, engaging a protoss head on is absolute suicide. Ghost play is easy. EMP does more depletes up to 100 shields, so even if you don't get them all you are still cutting 1/3 to 1/2 of a lot of unit's health. No Ghosts (usually Marauders)? Sentries. Ghosts? More Stalkers.
Ok sorry but i think i disagree here. Ghost telling you to make more stalkers seems a little...well a lot bad. First the unit that get hurts the absolute most by emp in terms of life would be a stalker stimmed marines will melt them all day long. Zealots especially charge zealots would be a far better choice, a because theyd only lose 1/3 health and are rarely the priority to emp in the first place and b. if he has ghosts hes severely cut into his marauder production to do so, making kiting less of an issue.
Getting clutch emps when youre the aggressor and the protoss has terrible map awareness is indeed easy. Especially if they suffer 1 control group syndrome. The solution protoss solution to emp on casters is an amusing situation the idea is to spread your army, and most toss think to just spread their 1 control group laterally when in actuality you want to separate your casters entirely and put them behind your army so that your main army (which is still spread somewhat) can kill a ghost trying to run for caster town to rain on their parade.
You shouldnt care too much about the army itself getting emped its your casters that make up for it. Oh no you emped my stalkers and zealots well too bad wham! I just insta gibbed all your marines (which are actually terrans main dps) and the marauders will take atleast 40-50 dmg trying to move out of the storm plus the 22 or so for stim (translate theyre at half health now too!) Pre-storm youre doing a similar thing splitting his army up in painful ways to eliminate dps.
Once both sides are getting casters it becomes a real cat and mouse sort of deal about feedbacking, unit formation, cloak/cloak detection, map awareness, and choosing when to retreat and engage. Thats part of what can make TvP an interesting matchup when one side gets a caster it behooves the other to respond in same and its completely a balanced albeit strenuous situation.
If you dont respond and play the spy vs spy game then yes your only choice is to play drop wars for terran.
|
one thing that bother me with FF is the range of sentries. they usually get stuck behind my stalkers and by the time they throw their stuff, the battle is over
how do you deal with that ?
|
Every sentry is 2/3rds of a High Templar less. I mean, in some situations it might be a better investment, but...
Maybe if there damage had never been nerfed
|
I'm usually sentry heavy if its a Bio ball I'm facing. If it's a bio and mech mix I tech to colossi.
|
I hate FF as Z since you can't counter it, you can only be raped by them until ultralisks. Sure, the spell is awesome when you use it but for the opponent it's boring and stupid, you simply cannot do anything about it (except for running in and backing just to make them waste FFs but won't work if the sentries got some energy :S)
|
underused - yes, overpowered - yes, need hp-limit - yes
|
I hate FF as Z since you can't counter it, you can only be raped by them until ultralisks. Sure, the spell is awesome when you use it but for the opponent it's boring and stupid, you simply cannot do anything about it (except for running in and backing just to make them waste FFs but won't work if the sentries got some energy :S)
I find this really odd. As a Toss player, I find FF to be way more useful in PvT and PvP than in PvZ. Zerg armies just run away whenever I drop FFs which wastes all my energy, or they run around them if they're on creep. The only real use I've found for FFs in PvZ is to help prevent retreating by the Zerg army in some cases (which doesn't win you a fight you wouldn't have won otherwise, it just makes a win you would have gotten anyway more devastating) and for early ramp wall-offs.
If you've been forcing a Protoss to wall off his ramp early on, even with just some relatively early zerglings, its pretty unlikely that he'll have enough energy for more than a few FFs later on unless he's just massing sentries. Provoke him into using them, then run away. Repeat like two times and in almost all matches he won't have enough energy to swing the battle with forcefields, especially if you've got ranged units that would force him to use guardian shield as well.
Forcefields are so devastating against Terran and Toss because their T1 armies tend to be slow as fuck. Apart from harass units like reapers and hellion, Terran armies move slow as molasses--you pretty much have to stim a bioball to effectively retreat with them, which turns forcefield into a really cheap way to damage their entire army. And Gateway units need upgrades, either charge or blink, to move fast at all. In both cases, a well-placed wall of forcefields can cause them huge headaches.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
