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All,
I'm a masters Terran, that is, at the time of writing this, but am likely to get demoted pretty soon, with one of the main reasons being my abysmal TvP.
I've played I think about 10 TvPs today and lost them all, all of them, most of which are at the diamond level due to the fact that I've been losing 1/3 of my games (and more since today have been about 50% P) automatically.
I've tried all openings, concussive expand, gasless expand, and 111. I don't really see a ton of value in the 111 anymore and feel that it is basically figured out, with zealots, immortals, phoenixes, what have you.
As far as the more macro centered openings I really don't see a huge variation in them and feel they generally result in the same thing, we're both going to macro up, get our unit composition, I'm going to try to counter whatever it is you go, and then we're going to battle hardcore, after which I come out the loser and that's game.
I'm going to make a bold statement here and say that my macro in these games is pretty good. Often you see me up in supply, harvesters, etc. Very few supply blocks if any, constant scv production, low spending. Also focusing on upgrades and having 22 by the 20 mins mark and often 33 on the way, which I think is pretty reasonable and better than a lot of other people I've watched who are significantly higher. I fill my army with ghosts, medivacs, and vikings like every good terran should.
I have two hypothesizes as to why I am losing these games, given all of the above.
1. I am absolutely terrible at engaging. I have a hard time managing the army, because separate hotkeys for ghosts, vikings, and MM are too difficult for me, and emp takes priority over stim and that usually results in me fumbling around to get my stim off. I can't dodge storms, and have a hard time hitting HTs with my ghosts since they keep them in the back and I don't get cloak for awhile...
2. I have poor decision making, I'm not sure how to punish the P, even if I come out ahead, which is rare. Furthermore, I don't really have a great sense of timings, usually I look to 2/2 finishing, or just max 200, or maybe I scout some tech like storm or what not and I try to beat it.
I would like people to comment on what they see, particularly things like proper unit composition, timings, and decision making...
TvP Bio (gasless expand)
Game 4
Game 3
Game 2
Game 1
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On October 11 2011 10:38 dschneid wrote:
bump?
Have some patience, it takes more than an hour to even watch all of this and formulate a response. I'll take a look later myself tomorrow too.
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Yeah me too. I'm very bad at engagements and my ghosts always get feedback. I also suck at microing out of storm and aiming emps. I really suck at a microing against chargelots.
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Ok I watched your game on Shakuras
Im at about a 10% win rate TvP as well, but from what I saw in Shakuras there are some major points you need to work on
- T is supposed to be the aggressor, you never attacked. The only thing you did was try to get some collsi snipes. But all that did was make him switch out of collsi because he had all the time in the world to switch since you werent attacking. You cant just expect to get to 200/200 vs toss and then just roll him, Toss has the advantage late game, espcially when you have down no dmg to him.
-If your going to control the middle of the map at least pre concave ur units to really lock the position down.
- You did 0 drops that game, thats kind of the point of TvP is to split his army up and weaken him. Not dropping will pretty much lose you every TvP.
-Your upg timings are off, you should be looking at 3-3 by 20 min not 2-2
You should take your third faster.
Those are some main things I would work on, but ill tell you, being the aggressor is going to make it hard, I agree you had really good macro that game, but anybody can have good macro if they never attack. TvP gets extremely hard once u are being aggresive because it is very hard to stutter step/drop and macro at the same time.
I have to agree tho with the whole build order thing, the MU is really lame right now it always ends up being ball vs ball and then someone destroys the other and GG. Theres barely any strategy to it.
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I found myself in a similar boat a couple months back. I would FE in literally every matchup and I think my terran macro is pretty good. I've got two ideas for you,
one would be working on your vision, and knowing where your opponents army is when you're moving out. The engagement must happen on your terms for it to be successful because to scramble, land emps stim and spread at an instant is ridiculously hard to do.
If you stim single marines and run them out to towers and to your opponents army you can get your army across the map safer knowing your opponent is back. Suiciding marines in will also let you know whether you can take a moment and arrange your units for a concave + ghosts infront vikings together etc because you can see your opponents army and if he is coming at you. Additionally, scanning your own army / keeping it near a turret before you move out is key that he won't get the jump on you.
On another note, I think 2 rax reactor->tech lab
quick 2nd gas / stim / fact / tanks
is just such a solid opener. Shuts down voidrays hard, if there's no expo by the 6:30 mark scan at 6:45 or w/e. Prioritize siege over tanks after 1 tank and consider a starport. If there army isnt infront of your base by 7 minutes its probs dts which is fine because we can get a raven, have a massive marine count + tanks.
The 630 scout is essential. If you lose ur first scout send out another one immediately and hide it.
You will have to work out what kind of timing you want to try depending on when they take their expand ( pulling 8-10 scvs at times can take out their expo and leave u ahead) but in general a slow tank push with bunkers, is killer. You get those 5-6 tanks + bunkers up and it can be ridiculously hard to deal with. You dont want to do a big stim->engage you just build a force they arent gonna break. Clyde used this last season in GSL but I dont recall vs who. The korean variant usually opts for 3 rax but I dont know the exact way they make it work, and I kinda prefer the flexibility of having earlier gas.
It will feel weird the first couple times you play this build but your relative army will feel so OP in many situations, which is the opposite of what
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I agree with most of this but have a few questions/comments
1. To your point about being the aggressor, what are appropriate timings for attack?
2. I definitely think my drop play needs improvement, you will see in other games if you watched those replays I do some drops and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The thing is, I feel that in general these tend to be a wash, sometimes u lose all your units, sometimes you snipe some nice tech, it all depends on how prepared the toss is. Furthermore, even when you do do a "successful drop" you probably kill a few probes, etc, but I never feel like anyone attributes their win to the drop that happened at 10 min etc. This is not only from my own play but from watching many many streams of pros.
3. UPG timing is ok, not great, there are some games there where I am on 3-3 by 20 mins and some not so much, in general though I feel I keep up with the Toss reasonably well on upgrades.
4. One last point on macro, you do say that anyone can have really good macro if they aren't being the aggressor, however, in the games when I am not "aggressing" (and the toss is not being "aggressed", so to speak, I generally out macro him, so I don't think it's as cut and dry as, well duh)
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I am a #2 diamond T who regularly beats Masters P and my only 2 wins v GMs were P. I favor 2 rax pressure, reactor and TL. Asap combat shields followed by eng bay at 6:00 for detection/obs popping. And I poke their base around 6:45 to see what theyre up to, if theyved expanded you can usually destroy it. By 9:15 I have stim and +1 weapons and engage again. I buy CC at 7:00 into reactored starport.
I believe 2 rax aggressive style is best v protoss. Competing against psi storm can be a pain.
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What is your name and char code? I'm a high diamond P. I wouldn't mind playing some practice games with you to help you out. PvT is my strongest match up.
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On October 11 2011 11:37 dschneid wrote:
I agree with most of this but have a few questions/comments
1. To your point about being the aggressor, what are appropriate timings for attack?
2. I definitely think my drop play needs improvement, you will see in other games if you watched those replays I do some drops and some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The thing is, I feel that in general these tend to be a wash, sometimes u lose all your units, sometimes you snipe some nice tech, it all depends on how prepared the toss is. Furthermore, even when you do do a "successful drop" you probably kill a few probes, etc, but I never feel like anyone attributes their win to the drop that happened at 10 min etc. This is not only from my own play but from watching many many streams of pros.
3. UPG timing is ok, not great, there are some games there where I am on 3-3 by 20 mins and some not so much, in general though I feel I keep up with the Toss reasonably well on upgrades.
4. One last point on macro, you do say that anyone can have really good macro if they aren't being the aggressor, however, in the games when I am not "aggressing" (and the toss is not being "aggressed", so to speak, I generally out macro him, so I don't think it's as cut and dry as, well duh)
First attack with a FE should be around 9-12 min mark its basically a timing with 2 medivacs a handful of MM +1 attack stim/CC/conc thats when T is extremely strong is in the midgame. Unless Toss is doing a 1 base, at this point your army is really mobile, really powerful, and can be in 2 places at once. Its a very strong attack I usually try and do an octo drop while pushing at the front. Even if he has stalks to def il just run my medivac to the cliff and jus wait there, Protoss Hate this so much cuz they are forced to leave half their army in base in case of drop. This is a perfect time to take an aggresive third while hes stuck.
Dropping is very hard, its the reason imo alot of T's have trouble in the MU, you are so dependant on drops doing damage, yet to do a double drop while controlling main army and mmacroing is very very tricky. Bio takes so much skill to pull off like the koreans who make it seem so OP. But yea you gota drop, no matter what.
Your UPG timing should always be great, UP's are so important in this MU if he gets +2 armor before you get +2 attack his army is so cost-effcieent its obnoxius.
Well the guy I watched was pretty Terrible.... He was down 20 workers without being harassed... Generally P should be ahead 10 works to compensate for mules. Whats ssad is that you can out macro Protoss players all day, yet if your drops dont go or you dont position right, youll still lose by alot.
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Tried playing games with him, he's cocky and unwilling to listen to what I say. Series was 1-1. Although I'm a high diamond, I beat plenty of masters, I just don't ladder to much. If he would open his ears, he could win the match up. But instead he's cocky and incoherent. GG's though... Take advice from players of all leagues.. one day it could just help.
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thanks for coming back and posting a ridiculous comment attempting to ruin the thread.
This is just gonna be a he said/she said but I don't believe this is true at all and I'm not really sure why you came to this thread to further whatever it was you had going on, at the end of the day you came in with the attitude that you were right while I was wrong didn't know anything, probably because I was the one who posted in TL asking for help and you were "doing me a favor"
We played two sets and they went well, 1-1 split, I was asking for some advice as well as giving some of mine, not condescending and nothing to do with league (did I ever mention you were Diamond and frankly I start this thread by saying I'm basically diamond myself...)
I do appreciate that you played a few games with me and tried to help, but I think you could be a bit more open minded in stead of just saying "NOPE", "NOPE" to ever question or comment I have or going on and on about the only reason you lost the first game was cause you were caught off guard or something...
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Furthermore one should be able to ascertain from my previous posts that I am completely willing to listen to the advice of others and generally follow up with some questions.
If anyone else with a good head on their shoulders would like to comment on the above replays or play a few and talk about them i'd be more than happy, thanks.
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Alright, I'll weigh in a bit. Masters Terran, only real problem I have with Protoss is early Immortal timings. I can go late-game against them no problem, and that seems to be what you're struggling with.
If you go MMMVG (and to be honest I could never get any other composition to work), the important idea is to always drop, preferably simultaneously, but never, ever lose your drops. Drops in TvP and TvZ are very, very different, and the reason is very simple: Protoss doesn't have Mutalisks, and cannot pick off a Medivac that's not near solid ground. A successful drop is defined differently in TvP because your Medivac is not on a one-way trip, unlike TvZ. Also, because Protoss army builds linearly like yourself instead of Zerg (which builds in bursts), you can't afford to lose drops- because that means your army is growing slower than his.
If you force him to pull his Probes, your drop is successful. If you kill off his warp in cycle before his main Stalker army arrives, your drop is successful. You want to take advantage of Protoss's lack of speed by keeping at least 2 Medivacs hidden around to drop his main and his third as often as you can. You want to scan inbetween your two drops to see how well he splits his army to deal with your drops. The one time he messes up in the splitting, you can sacrifice that drop to snipe as much as you can.
This also makes it very hard for Protoss to move against you, and MMMVG generally should keep one base ahead of a deathball Protoss, and should do its absolute best to keep Protoss on 2 base for as long as possible. If he keeps Stalkers at his bases, use two Medivacs, he'll have to use his main army to deal with that.
Your final composition should be mainly Marauders, ~6-8 Medivacs (not counting the 2 floating), Ghosts, and Vikings.
Engagement should begin with most of the Ghosts out front firing EMPs, the Vikings near a ledge to fire at Colossi and kite back against Stalker retaliation, and Marauders Stimming and trying to get the Chargelots to charge ahead to be kited while the Colossi are out of range. A few Ghosts should always be way in the back to EMP any HTs he was holding back until your Ghosts have died. Straight up Marauder-Medivac can eat Chargelots with little casualties if they're separated from the rest of the army. And then, it's an A-Move forward if the Colossi and HTs are cleaned up.
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Preamble:
I'm a masters terran myself, 1400+ pts. TvP is my best matchup by a decent margin at the moment. I've got pretty good mechanics compared to the rest of my play, so I tend to rely on just having more stuff than my opponents, and out macroing/microing/multitasking them. I feel that if you can force the game into a low-tech vs low-tech situation, the mule advantage + bio beating gateway units before charge gives terran a fighting chance.
I would like to suggest that you try 1 rax CC into 4 rax as a way to help you get a better feel for the matchup.
It's super safe, you won't be losing to cheese, and you will also eliminate all the greedy nexus into fast tech builds as they'll just die to your first attack.
The reason I suggest this build is not just because it's freaking kickass, but because it force you to engage with protoss more often, it will give you a better feel the matchup, and you'll be able to say, "oh, that's a lot of sentries and an immortal, I should get ghosts to deal with the probably immortal bust coming my way."
You will have to use 3 hotkeys if you want to have any semblance of decent army control in TvP, I have bio + medivacs on 1, ghosts on 2 (or vikings if I don't have any ghosts), and vikings on 3 (or dropship harass if I'm not using it).
The simple concept with army control in TvP is to EMP everything before you engage, as if you start shooting first, your EMP's won't do much since the shields will be gone already. You pretty much can't ever afford to eat a storm, so #1 priority is eliminating all HT energy, either via snipe if they're in the front of the toss army, or via EMP if they're towards the back.
Here are a few replays of the build I'm referring to, you can message me on b-net @CatInTheHat.476 if you have any questions that you feel don't belong in this thread.
Shakuras vs Akt (double robo 2 base immortal bust into colo)
http://drop.sc/42770
Shattered vs RGNFuture (1gate nexus into 3 gate warp prism, I was half asleep in this game)
http://drop.sc/42519
Antiga vs Glekio (standard macro colo into HT with double upgrades, passive game)
http://drop.sc/41061
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My PvT is about as abysmal as your TvP and I'm around your level (masters)... Practice partners gogo :D
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I'm a 1500 point master terran, try the 3-rax stim/conc stiming, its a great all-in vs Toss in the metagame because it hard counters 1 gate expand (if you execute it well) and has a 50-50 chance against a 3 gate expand. It has a slightly better chance against 4 gates (depends on micro) and immortal busts. The BO I do is different from the "normal" 3 rax stim, and its very tight. If you scout 2 gas, then save 2 scans before you do your push, and if they really are going DT's, go for a base race. If you scout an expo, then mule away.
Here are some replays:
http://drop.sc/43014
http://drop.sc/43013
http://drop.sc/43018
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i have the exact same problem as you do. i would try to avoid huge macro games if possible. i dont mean to cheese or all in every game but atleast try to keep the protoss honest. ive found that if i let the protoss 1gate fe then im in a world of hurt in the midgame even if i fast expanded myself. double robo collosus all ins are too good. have an all in ready to punish greedy builds such as the nexus first. thor all ins are particularly good
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This is a little lazy cause i haven't watched ur reps yet, but coming from a toss player, its pretty important for you to drop vs. toss, or at least delay the third when playing bio because toss can just double forge and get both templar and colossus tech and A-move into you with 3-3 when you are at 2-2 at best with double engineering bays. At that point, even godly micro will only get you an even army trade; and if somehow he has colossus leftover; its gg when he remaxes.
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iam low master terran and my TvP is also very very bad... i like the macro style so i play almost everytime 1 ras fe... the problem is that my Micro in late game is bad (emps, storm dodging, stimming etc.)
My opening and my disadvantage stays in contrast, because i marco hard to fight in big armys, but iam bad at fighting with big armys... so i loose almost every game... think about what your focus is... you have to become a situation where you good at...so play to get this situation...
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EPT
