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Seems like there are many topics here with people having the same problem in this matchup. It is certainly extremely frustrating to play against PvT MMM balls when clearly those players know what they are doing (I'm talking about Diamond level PvT since I'm top platinum and facing tons of diamond players now).
I cross reference another topic where the OP has the same problems.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=142203
Anyway back to the topic, I'm generally having trouble with MMM balls in the later stages of the game. I am usually able to repel the initial assault, though with more minerals/gas lost against the terran because Marauders and Marines are way cheaper than Stalkers and Zealots. At any rate, in the later stages, once the MMM bioball is protected with Vikings/Tanks, it's pretty impossible to break the contain as Colossi fall pretty easily to them. Not to mention they could have easily placed a ghost academy and went for EMP instead. At any rate, I seem to be having trouble with terrans mid to late game as they seem to have way too many options to decimate the bulk of my toss army easily.
I've three replays here which show me losing to terrans (there are more of them, will probably add them in later as well.) I'd normally go for a 3 (or 4) gate before transitioning out of that build. I have no idea how effective a 2 gate to twilight to archives for HT build would be. But that seems way too heavy on gas, especially when sentries and stalkers are needed. And that would definitely leave alot of unspent minerals around and unable to be used because of the terran contain.
#1 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/54023-1v1-terran-protoss-blistering-sands
I wasn't expecting such an all-in move by the terran. But I made a glaring mistake when I waypoint my robo to the terran's base and forgot to change it back in the heat of the battle afterward.
#2 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/54024-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrant
I went for Stargate and the terran scanned me. I assumed that he would be busy building up an anti-air army of marines so I decided to expand but that mistake cost me dearly as marine ball was just as effective on my gateway army.
#3 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/54024-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrant
Tried an early pressure on the terran but failed to make any impact as I lost way to many zealots. Decided to tech to carriers but I believe it was too late. Also, stimmed marines with medivac support seem to be extremely effective against all forms of air.
I would greatly appreciate it if people could critique my PvT play, especially on how I'm faring on my micro and macro, apart from my strategies. Thanks!
EDIT: Just tried out HT tech against MMM, and it seems to have worked pretty well, though the players I were facing off against weren't as good as the ones in the replays above, I believe.
#4 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/55221-1v1-terran-protoss-xelnaga-caverns
Transitioned quickly from 3 gate to HT as fast as possible after I saw the very early Concussive Shell upgrade decimate my first stalker. I did make a couple of mistakes here and there, like losing my scouting probe very early on, and not scouting the immediate area outside my base earlier. If the terran had gone tanks, or planted down bunkers earlier, I'd have a far harder time to break out of the contain. Also, I didn't manage my HT's well, lost them on the first attempted break out.
#5 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/55223-1v1-terran-protoss-delta-quadrant
Tried Gnial's early stalker pressure. Very limited success for me. The terran went marines and tanks though. So I went robo and stargate instead. He scanned me and saw a stargate which was probably why he went Vikings. After my first unsuccessful break in attempt, he expanded and pushed me. But I had HTs by that time and managed to hit back his MM + tank + viking army. Way too many mistakes and botched build orders in the game, but at least the HT push worked and I won the game.
EDIT 2: Got matched with a Terran in Kulas Ravine and I realise the lack of starting base ramps on this map throws the terran into such an advantage as long as he does an early Marauder push.
#6 http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/57469-1v1-terran-protoss-kulas-ravine
This is why the lack of a ramp tips the balance so much in the favour of the Terran. I start with a stalker opening, and manage to scout 2 rax before my probe dies to an early marauder. I would have guessed it was a marauder rush, and I decided to pressure his rax with a Stalker. Nonetheless whatever a toss can do on this map, the terran can perform it better, as you can see from his 6-7 marauder push that totally decimated my base due to the lack of a base ramp. I doubt countering would be easy as there is just too small a window for you to get out the correct composition of units to block him.
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heavy zealot, stalker, colossus
no micro involved
rapemode gogo
User was warned for this post
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I'm a 600 diamond protoss player, and PvT is my strongest matchup right now (I'm probably running a 80-85% winrate in the matchup). To understand PvT, you have to break it up into Tier 1 early game , Tier 2 mid game, and Tier 3 late game.
PvT is fairly balanced at Tier 1 and Tier 3. At Tier 1, zealots, stalkers, and sentries do well against smaller bio forces. At Tier 3, once the protoss has unlocked all or most of his tech (especially templar tech), protoss has all the tools necessary to deal with anything that the terran throws at him. To be honest, I think that, if anything, toss has the advantage over terran at tier 3 because the toss can abuse his mobility advantage and make it very difficult for a terran to establish any kind of map control, thereby denying the terran expansions.
The problem for PvT is Tier 2. To be blunt, protoss does not have anything that stacks up well against bio masses (especially when supported by medivacs and/or ghosts) at Tier 2. Chargelots, immortals, blink stalkers, void rays, and phoenixes all MELT in head on confrontations. Honestly, I think that there is a balance problem here, but we can save that for another thread.
A protoss player has to design and map out his PvT gameplan with this Tier 2 disadvantage in mind. This means that a protoss player either has to kill the terran at Tier 1 (or before the terran is able to fully leverage his Tier 2 advantage), find a way to quickly get to Tier 3, or secure a large enough economic advantage that the Tier 2 disadvantage doesn't matter. Protoss players who are successful in PvT invariably do one of these three things.
My personal preference is use void ray builds (as do a lot of other protoss players who are good at PvT) because I can make a play at all of these goals at once. If the terran does not have a marine-heavy build, he dies outright. If the terran does have marines, then I can harass the terran with my void ray(s) and buy time for me to expand and tech up to colossi or high templar. At that point, the terran's Tier 2 advantage doesn't matter anymore (ie a MMM+G push is manageable). There are a number of other threads that describe various void ray builds in PvT and how to use them, so I'll refrain from providing all the details here.
Void rays aren't the only answer. There are a number of builds that other players use. However, just keep in mind the Tier 2 window that terrans have to rape protoss and plan for it accordingly.
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^^ Hat's off to you, sir. Succinct and informative.
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I havn`t tried this strat yet because im gone at work, but wouldn`t fast ht`s in the early game to counter the bio ball? I remember sombody saying to have some zealots to flank, well have 3 or 4 zealots hiding but close to your ramp(maybe behind the farthest gas) then when you see him push force field your ramp bring in the zealots from behind, now you have a contain, storm with you ht`s, then merg them and make a push....
All be trying it when i get home...later this weekend.
and if it works all post the buildorder on the forums....
sorry i could`nt watch your vid the comp im using doesn`t have the power to run the replay
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Learn the timings. Learn when the terran is strong (typically when he has just got emp or stim or medis). Forcefield rmap and move out when you are strong.
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Very good post xDaunt !
I love the way you describe it. YES, it is damn hard to win a bioball midgame. Maybe you can't. But that doesn't imply imbalance in the matchup in his whole : you have to find your way through.
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For PvT, you kind of just have to jolt yourself into tier 3 much like you did against Z in BW. I mean also against like deep6 you had to push yourself as protoss into Tier 3 aka reavers or templar.
Like basically what was said you cant really stay around the midgame very long. Immortals can be a good transitional unit until you get temps, but you really do have to get big splash out there against bio and I would also say mech. Colossi in that match up as well, I would also consider transitional, because 4 vikings shut down colossi, so its more of a stepping stone of not dying now until you get templar.
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I also agree with xDaunt's post. Although I don't like to use the void ray to stay alive in phase 2 of the game, it is indeed very true that you need to harass the terran player while getting your more powerful tech units out. Be it blinkstalkers, void rays, phoenixes or whatever. Once the bioball gets too big and the terran player pushes out without you having any HT/Colossi and a formidable warp gate mixture, you're done for.
Just got to add that although I don't like VR to harass with in the earlier stages of the game, late game Speed Rays are great if you can get 6-8 out before he pushes out. Speed Rays are actually very fast and can decimate a base in seconds if the terran army is out of position. Too bad Fleet Beacon costs a crapload of resources, and you need to get out other important units too.
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From personal experience from PvT
- The void ray build works but once in a while you will fall on a faster starport/marine heavy build and that will be the end of you. Very hard to recover from that, but possible. With very good micro it is possible to pull off(dont lose your void rays, no matter what happens - at least if the harass dosent work, you can force him to stay at his base/defend the MMM push with your zeal/sentry/stalker combo.
- the second build(which is my favorite), is fast zeal speed to templars. However you sometimes have to stall the attack slightly and keep chrono boosts for storm upgrade. You also have to go more zealot heavy, to keep gas for a couple of templars. Feedback the medivac + storm and you can stop him. The only problem with this build is - you lose to fast banshees&hellions. Against ghost its a micro intense battle, if you can feedback the ghost/spread your templars enough. If he has a cloacked ghost then that means you had time to make a good number of templars.
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On August 11 2010 06:17 Adaptation wrote:
From personal experience from PvT
- The void ray build works but once in a while you will fall on a faster starport/marine heavy build and that will be the end of you. Very hard to recover from that, but possible. With very good micro it is possible to pull off(dont lose your void rays, no matter what happens - at least if the harass dosent work, you can force him to stay at his base/defend the MMM push with your zeal/sentry/stalker combo.
- the second build(which is my favorite), is fast zeal speed to templars. However you sometimes have to stall the attack slightly and keep chrono boosts for storm upgrade. You also have to go more zealot heavy, to keep gas for a couple of templars. Feedback the medivac + storm and you can stop him. The only problem with this build is - you lose to fast banshees&hellions. Against ghost its a micro intense battle, if you can feedback the ghost/spread your templars enough. If he has a cloacked ghost then that means you had time to make a good number of templars.
The void ray build isn't necessarily crushed outright if the terran gets vikings out quickly. You just have to make sure that you don't overcommit to void rays and make sure that you're transitioning more quickly into templar tech. If you're worried about a quick marine-centric counterattack, you can throw down some cannons at your expo to stay safe until high templar are online.
I'm not a huge fan of twilight builds anymore because they leave you entirely blind to what the terran is doing. Also, I don't think that they're as effective as void ray builds in terms of securing a quick expansion.
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This is a very good post!, I am a 400 point diamond Terran player and I constantly abuse the points mentioned, the match up for me boils down to:
A) Can i survive the early game pressure from toss once he realizes i am getting bio, not too many people can break me here I usually have a bunker built at my ramp, but some really strong 4 gate all ins can win but it doesn't seem like a good thing to promote because you are screwed if it fails.
I would also not suggest going void rays as a harass unless you have amazing micro, since remember the Terran player will have a LOT of marines, early blink seems to be decent as you tech into tier 3 for storm. Keeps me in my base without really investing that much.
B) Once i have 2 ghosts, stim, shields and a few medvacs (maybe 1+ weapons) i push out assuming I don't see a robo bay which makes me want to get a few vikings. If i don't do enough damage here or just win, my success rate of winning the game goes down a ton as we enter into tier 3. I think the real key in winning this battle as toss is getting some good forcefields off
C) If my first push didn't do enough damage, I just go into drop mode, trying to abuse the fact that having to warp in units everywhere is annoying and fragments your army.
Anyway hope that helps understanding the mind set of a Terran doing MMM against a toss
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Ok, try having 1-2 voidrays on top of your zealot/stalker/ht mix. That's not there for damage as much as it's there to scare the crap out of marauder abusers and allow your charlelots more room to chase them. Marauders can't kite while being shot by voids, and if Terran lets 2 voids charge on his marauder army it'll be toast in 30 seconds. When he goes for marines still keep the voids, but be careful to keep them alive behind your army, so you can more easily storm and wrap around the bio ball with chargelots as he tries to focus the void. Oh and poke in their base with the voids just to force turret/viking. The whole point is to make the life of your chagelots and HT easier on the ground.
You'd be surprised at how much Terrans out there are scared of just the sight of voidrays, most of them will overreact.
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Not to keep agreeing with the the masses but xDaunt's post is exactly right. The toss mindset in the matchup has to be surviving until they get to tier 3. I really don't like trying to win the game in tier 1, the terran can bunker up, they'll probably be making barracks units and its very hard to win with a four gate or 2 gate zt rush against a competent terran. If they're doing a tech build to something like siege tanks or cloaked banshees it can work but because most terrans wall their ramp and have early marines the toss is blind to what's going on so a four gate is dangerous in that regard.
I think the safest option is the 3 gate + robo build and getting the early observer out. It's just so critical to know what the terran is doing since they has so many options. From there you can respond accordingly either by doing some kind of blink stalker harass into high templar, going straight for colossus, force field juggling your ramp til tier 3 if an all out stim push comes etc. The stargate build can certainly work but as a 400ish diamond player I've never really had success with it.
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On August 11 2010 01:54 xDaunt wrote:
I'm a 600 diamond protoss player, and PvT is my strongest matchup right now (I'm probably running a 80-85% winrate in the matchup). To understand PvT, you have to break it up into Tier 1 early game , Tier 2 mid game, and Tier 3 late game.
PvT is fairly balanced at Tier 1 and Tier 3. At Tier 1, zealots, stalkers, and sentries do well against smaller bio forces. At Tier 3, once the protoss has unlocked all or most of his tech (especially templar tech), protoss has all the tools necessary to deal with anything that the terran throws at him. To be honest, I think that, if anything, toss has the advantage over terran at tier 3 because the toss can abuse his mobility advantage and make it very difficult for a terran to establish any kind of map control, thereby denying the terran expansions.
The problem for PvT is Tier 2. To be blunt, protoss does not have anything that stacks up well against bio masses (especially when supported by medivacs and/or ghosts) at Tier 2. Chargelots, immortals, blink stalkers, void rays, and phoenixes all MELT in head on confrontations. Honestly, I think that there is a balance problem here, but we can save that for another thread.
A protoss player has to design and map out his PvT gameplan with this Tier 2 disadvantage in mind. This means that a protoss player either has to kill the terran at Tier 1 (or before the terran is able to fully leverage his Tier 2 advantage), find a way to quickly get to Tier 3, or secure a large enough economic advantage that the Tier 2 disadvantage doesn't matter. Protoss players who are successful in PvT invariably do one of these three things.
My personal preference is use void ray builds (as do a lot of other protoss players who are good at PvT) because I can make a play at all of these goals at once. If the terran does not have a marine-heavy build, he dies outright. If the terran does have marines, then I can harass the terran with my void ray(s) and buy time for me to expand and tech up to colossi or high templar. At that point, the terran's Tier 2 advantage doesn't matter anymore (ie a MMM+G push is manageable). There are a number of other threads that describe various void ray builds in PvT and how to use them, so I'll refrain from providing all the details here.
Void rays aren't the only answer. There are a number of builds that other players use. However, just keep in mind the Tier 2 window that terrans have to rape protoss and plan for it accordingly.
"ok"...
First : You aren't a protoss player i think...terran
Second : T1 balance? "ok" early proxy reaper and marauder you need take probe out...lose probe etc...
Third : T2 is imbalance, good time push mass rine ghost GG
Fourth : Late game : How much time you see 150 pop T FUCK HARD 200 pop protoss? How much game you see which in protoss need +3 exp late game for kill terran with mass difficulty...
All terran come on my behind will say "AHHHHH STOP WHINE" omg...play protoss against terran....lose again a lowest skill than you then come speak...i just lose on scrap station (stupid map imba for terran 2 bunker tourette banshee exp on isle no way to follow banshee when they back...) joke!
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On August 11 2010 07:29 FoUsTy wrote:
"ok"...
First : You aren't a protoss player i think...terran
What?
On August 11 2010 07:29 FoUsTy wrote:
Second : T1 balance? "ok" early proxy reaper and marauder you need take probe out...lose probe etc...
I'm sorry that you're not good enough to beat early terran cheese. However, there are plenty of protoss players that can beat it. As a protoss player who knows how to beat these terran cheese attacks and basically autowins when a terran tries this crap, I love it when terrans try proxy reapers or early marauders against me.
On August 11 2010 07:29 FoUsTy wrote:
Third : T2 is imbalance, good time push mass rine ghost GG
Yes, as I said above, Tier 2 is imbalanced. That's why I said that protoss players need to plan around that disadvantage. Again, it doesn't mean that protoss can't win PvT.
On August 11 2010 07:29 FoUsTy wrote:
Fourth : Late game : How much time you see 150 pop T FUCK HARD 200 pop protoss? How much game you see which in protoss need +3 exp late game for kill terran with mass difficulty...
Honestly, I can't remember the last time that I lost a late game PvT. It was sometime back in Phase 1 of beta. Again, maybe you don't know how to do a late game PvT, but it's something that other protoss players and I don't have problems with.
On August 11 2010 07:29 FoUsTy wrote:
All terran come on my behind will say "AHHHHH STOP WHINE" omg...play protoss against terran....lose again a lowest skill than you then come speak...i just lose on scrap station (stupid map imba for terran 2 bunker tourette banshee exp on isle no way to follow banshee when they back...) joke!
Ok, whatever. Seriously, dude. You posted total garbage in another thread and you're posting more garbage here. Make sure that you know what you're talking about before you post crap like this.
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Terran is strong in late game, but so is Protoss. The Terran player will have the advantage if the Protoss player just charges head on into a prepared Terran static defense (well, DUH!), however, a combination of HT and Colossi with a good chunk of gateway units (and maybe a few air units as well, phoenixes are great for those pesky Ravens) seems very very hard for even a potent Terran static defense to defeat.
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As a toss player, I generally go Chargelot into Templar. Early pressure is easily taken care of by sentry/chargelot. A lot of times Terrans will push when Charge is about half way done, 2 FFs at the ramp will give me time to finish charge, and once charge is done, I generally just trash their early push. At about this time I spend minerals on Lots, and my next chunk of gas on Archives, and an HT or two. Chrono out storm, and usually by the time terrans push again I have 1 or 2 STorms worth of energy, and usually one of them can afford a feedback as well, so at that point it's just HT vs Ghost micro.
The only real tricky time is if they push real early, but I usually have enough zealots/sentries to cut his army in half and prevent too much Marauder kiting, so I'm usually okay. The exception being a really early all-in, but I don't see that particularly often.
Essentially, I agree with xDaunt's post.. I use esntries to buy me enough time to get charge up, and then speed up to t3, using quick teching to circumvent the fact that Terran armies are rough at certain stages of the game. Zealot/templar is a really strong lategame vs T, in my experience, as well.
Just my $.02 =]
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leyra: I agree, chargelots are amazing, allowing you to go HT/colossus with np. I struggle at this as Terran actually.. what would a terran do vs that? The bio ball just gets melted. Transition to mass BC's or mech?
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EPT
