|
Background
+ Show Spoiler +Hello, my name is UpperBound, a lowly mid-diamond NA Terran who has been working a lot on TvP recently. I recently stumbled upon a good use of the Raven in TvP-- after my opponent opened DT expand and spread DT in the open map, it became ineffective for me to rely on scans, especially since my third was a Planetary at the gold base. I therefore made 2 ravens to help me move across the map, and then needed another use for them. I started using auto-turrets to create better positions in TvP.
Analysis
We zoom to the 19 minute mark of the same game on Shattered Temple, where my opponent and I have both saturated a third at the gold and have very similar army sizes, economies, and tech investment at the time of this fight. I go to try to deny my opponent's third before he can get out too many HT with storm -- as you can see, storm is still several seconds from completing at the beginning of this engagement, so my opponent morphs extra Archon.
This area in Shattered Temple is usually a tough place to engage for Terran; it's nearly impossible to get a good concave and a solid zealot wall with Archon, Colossus, or Storm AoE does quite well. I decide that I can create a more favorable engagement, and try to entice a battle by moving forward to attack the Nexus.
My opponent sees my marines clumped and without the ability to really stutterstep, and starts to move in. I use my Ravens to cast a line of Auto-Turrets along the front.
These auto turrets serve a number of functions:
1. They allow me to reposition my army by providing a shield -- turrets have 150 health points each with 1 building armor, so they are approximately 20% more effective at tanking than marauders.
2. They draw charge from the zealots. If your army is a hex or two behind the turrets, that still means the zealots will have to slow walk from the turrets to your army. This is time where you will be able to stand and fire without stutterstepping.
3. They provide a buffer between archon splash and my bio. Archon strikes do not splash off of the turrets, and they do not get their bonus against bio. This makes them very ineffective. They also cannot simply ignore the turrets, because their range is too short. Colossus would be somewhat more effective, but it still requires the Protoss to actively control the colossus or they will simply target the much closer turrets.
It's also notable that with the current Protoss approach to micro, your Ravens will be safe from feedback because the HT will be mostly in the back to guard against EMP. Ravens have 140 HP, and the maximum a feedback should be able to do is 49, so the Ravens are generally quite safe.
Here's what happens when the zealots charge into the front line of turrets, and then have to still travel to the bio:
After this, the usual micro ensues: EMP the zealot line and front layer of Archon. As you can see, the zealots will get very few hits on my bio with maybe 1 or 2 small stutters necessary.
And then stim, and the battle is pretty elementary from here.
I end up losing about half my army and killing everything, despite my opponent's 1-1 upgrades to my 1-0 (my 2-1 was about 1/2 to 2/3 done).
Obviously, there are other ways I could have improved my play: I forgot to throw down extra rax when I took my third, and did not queue up supply depots and got supply blocked in the seconds leading up to the battle, hence my money rising. However, I think it is useful to look at this battle in a vacuum and go from there. In my mind, this use of the Raven has plenty of merit and has not been fully explored. I encourage you all to try it out and post your results.
On a higher-level perspective, the usage makes sense: it allows the Terran to take advantage of all 6 geysers available on three bases, instead of pooling 1000 resources as is normal without Raven use. Also, it allows Terran to zone areas of the map: the turrets last 180 seconds, so if the Terran can force the Toss into an engagement, he is already in a much more favorable position.
Although I believe this works best against Templar tech rather than Robo builds, the manuever has worked for me against any chargelot-reliant composition. Given that the zealot has become Terran's most feared adversary in the matchup, hopefully this helps.
I look forward to any feedback, even though this suggestion is certainly not as good as the Noblesse one just posted (sad panda).
|
Cool tactic, especially if you've got the ravens anyways and there aren't enough stalkers to bother with PDD. One other tactic you might want to practice is one that DeMuslim does on-stream and looks like fun:
-Stim a single marauder and run it near his army (not close enough to take archon hits in this case). The marauder usually lives long enough to force most of the zealots to burn their charge, similar to your turret strategy. This is more generically applied because you won't always have ravens in your army TvP.
|
Nice idea, I just don't see myself having so much gas to spare at a time in the game when I need so many ghosts and medivacs. Theres just no gas left over for cute tactics using 400+ gas. I might try it out if for some wierd reason I found myself really floating gas and short on minerals.
|
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell.
|
I saw this on a stream recently but I forget who it was. They put down one turret before engaging and the Protoss player couldn't stop his zealots from wasting their charge on it and he easily won a game that should have been a lot closer.
|
On December 19 2011 04:00 Fuzer wrote:
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell.
Did you even read the guide? HT go in the back of the toss army, and you will be laying down turrets before the templar get in range to feedback. If you get feedbacked, you're doing it wrong.
|
The only reason I ever use turrets is to distract them wit something that takes a while to kill at the back of their mineral line :D
My only issue with turrets is they die too fast against immorts and do 0 damage, but yeah its a nice damage soak indeed.
|
On December 19 2011 04:04 upperbound wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2011 04:00 Fuzer wrote:
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell. Did you even read the guide? HT go in the back of the toss army, and you will be laying down turrets before the templar get in range to feedback. If you get feedbacked, you're doing it wrong.
Don't the HTs want to storm the marines, instead of hurting a unit, anyways? It would be stupid for the toss for waste his storm energy.
|
On December 19 2011 04:00 statikg wrote:
Nice idea, I just don't see myself having so much gas to spare at a time in the game when I need so many ghosts and medivacs. Theres just no gas left over for cute tactics using 400+ gas. I might try it out if for some wierd reason I found myself really floating gas and short on minerals.
In TvP all you ever make is MMM+ ghosts, so you should have an insane amount of gas floating around, I like to use turrets too and get ravens incase of pesky DTs and snipe observers.
|
You already have to do a ridiculous amount of stuff to win a TvP fight.
But this trick does have potential, and a raven is always useful in sniping off observers or preventing DTs or PDD. And yes HTs may get the ravens, but they would have to move to the front to cast feedback and you can thus snipe them. Plus any energy spent on something other than storms is always worth it.
|
On December 19 2011 04:10 DigiGnar wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2011 04:04 upperbound wrote:On December 19 2011 04:00 Fuzer wrote:
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell. Did you even read the guide? HT go in the back of the toss army, and you will be laying down turrets before the templar get in range to feedback. If you get feedbacked, you're doing it wrong. Don't the HTs want to storm the marines, instead of hurting a unit, anyways? It would be stupid for the toss for waste his storm energy.
Last time I checked feedbacking a ghost was considered a good move?
|
I really wish Ravens were useful, especially since T floats gas if he caps all geysers.
But I think the solution is simply that T doesn't need as much gas/resources, since it benefits less from it. Ravens are not answer because you will get really little mileage out of auto turrets in direct combat. TvP is all about army movement and positioning, and you will be forced to reposition out of turret by colossi + storm. The moment colossi get in range, you will need to kite, so the turrets are really just a minor speed bump.
One arguable use for turrets is to spam them at an expo to attack or defend. 5 Ravens is more efficient food wise than any loaded medivac (10 food). 10-20 turrets is far more deadly than any 8 marine drop, and will either require significant enemy positioning or saccing of the expo. This isn't something that's really explored since it requires the building armor upgrade for auto turrets, and a ton of time for mana build up.
|
On December 19 2011 04:00 Fuzer wrote:
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell.
This argument is so flawed. Nobody has perfect micro and engagements. Saying a unit with energy is useless just because Templars should feedback them is the same argument that Templar are useless because Ghosts should EMP them.
To OP, great find! I find that Ravens are so unexplored in every matchup, thanks for making this more apparent!
|
On December 19 2011 04:00 Fuzer wrote:
Sir....
The only feedback I can give you about this is that the only reason why this doesnt work is FEEDBACK.
Ravens in TvP are useless, because of the one spell.
that's like saying HT's are useless because they can get sniped/emp'd,
ghosts are useless cause they can just get feedbacked,
and infestors are useless because they can get sniped, emp'd, and fungal'd, etc.
...
what's really more important is positioning, and makes all the difference in all of these scenarios
|
also, PDD is great VS alot of stalkers..but thats widely known
actually if you emp the HT's and then do hunter seeker........ on the stalkers..........hmmmmm.
ravens are such a great caster unit, i can't wait til people realise there full potential ^^
|
Nice trick, will try it for sure as I do struggle with combo of emp/stutter step, resulting in me getting trashed by chargelots more often then not lol... turrets tanking giving you some time to wastem with emps and then micro your bio back seems cool to me nice post.
|
But.... where do you get the gas???
|
Hunter seeker missles are the real reason Ravens are great. Use them like nukes to maintain positional advantages.
|
To all the people giving negative feedback, pun intended, the presence of a counter to a tactic never nullifies the tactic...that just makes no sense.
By that logic, why even play Protoss because of EMP? Why even play zerg because of snipe? EMP counters shields and snipe counter bio, so certainly because these entire races are countered, we should all just play terran right?
To the OP: this is creative, interesting, a potentially very useful. Do not listen to anyone that takes 1 sentence to respond to your post and tell you that you are wrong. IMO ravens are one of the least explored and potentially most useful unit in the game. The problem is a lot of pros will not try new strategies against evenly matched opponents because they play to win. This is why you only see this stuff on ladder or on TLattack.
|
On December 19 2011 04:49 MrRicewife wrote:
But.... where do you get the gas???
Good question.
From looking at OP's army composition, it is so heavily marine based that a storm or a colossus would've destroyed the army really badly. By allocating gas to marauders the terran army survives late game AOE damage from protoss.
IMO raven is a TvT unit. The gas dump just cannot be justified unless you are going 1/1/1.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg197/scaled.php?server=197&filename=raven1.png&res=medium)
![[image loading]](http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg842/scaled.php?server=842&filename=raven2.png&res=medium)
![[image loading]](http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg684/scaled.php?server=684&filename=raven3.png&res=medium)
![[image loading]](http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg819/scaled.php?server=819&filename=58469874.png&res=medium)
![[image loading]](http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg4/scaled.php?server=4&filename=raven4.png&res=medium)
