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Hi,
I'm a mech high master Terran in WoL and I play at the same level in HOTS. I don't know what it is about Oracles but I swear they are almost worse for me than Hellbat drop. I either need a Turret in EXACTLY the right place or I need mines. Its not like I dont scout it; I see the double gas and proceed to move my marines in place but you need at least 5 marines (yes, i tried this in the unit test map) to kill one oracle. They are extremely fast and can harass even if they don't do the expected damage.
I enjoy watching Incontrol's steam and I've even faced Mr. Windrammer from time-to-time, but he even mentions that his toughest time is dealing with Oracles.
As a Terran my other problem is once I see an oracle and, not only do i have to turtle but the question becomes "are they also going Vray all-in?" Many opponents just go 1 Vray and "trick" their opponent into over producing vikings. I've also had people show 1 Tempest harass to over produce vikings. I'm really confused at this point: It seems any air I see as a Terran becomes "auto Turtle" unless I've inflicted a large deal of damage with a counter drop.
Is it just me? Or are other people having issues with the Oracle? What is the default build to shut that down as a mech Terran? Drop a e-bay or make vikings? I've tried Window mines, but many times if they see me burrow around the mineral line they just harass my army units and ignore the mineral line. Please help.
Thanks,
Pinky
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On February 19 2013 15:00 SirPinky wrote:
Hi,
I'm a mech high master Terran in WoL and I play at the same level in HOTS. I don't know what it is about Oracles but I swear they are almost worse for me than Hellbat drop. I either need a Turret in EXACTLY the right place or I need mines. Its not like I dont scout it; I see the double gas and proceed to move my marines in place but you need at least 5 marines (yes, i tried this in the unit test map) to kill one oracle. They are extremely fast and can harass even if they don't do the expected damage.
I enjoy watching Incontrol's steam and I've even faced Mr. Windrammer from time-to-time, but he even mentions that his toughest time is dealing with Oracles.
As a Terran my other problem is once I see an oracle and, not only do i have to turtle but the question becomes "are they also going Vray all-in?" Many opponents just go 1 Vray and "trick" their opponent into over producing vikings. I've also had people show 1 Tempest harass to over produce vikings. I'm really confused at this point: It seems any air I see as a Terran becomes "auto Turtle" unless I've inflicted a large deal of damage with a counter drop.
Is it just me? Or are other people having issues with the Oracle? What is the default build to shut that down as a mech Terran? Drop a e-bay or make vikings? I've tried Window mines, but many times if they see me burrow around the mineral line they just harass my army units and ignore the mineral line. Please help.
Thanks,
Pinky
One of the ways I counter this is picking the correct opening. I find that opening 1 gas into 1 barracks 1 factory helps defend a decent amount of all ins. You can get 4-5 marines and 1 hellion out to stop all the pokes except the mothership core one. However if you see a double gas you can just get a widow mine anyway. If you truly fear the oracle keep 1-2 widow mines in your mineral line and it helps negate it. I place 1 in my mineral lines, then 1 near my army then I usually go for siege tank play 3 or go into hellion harass into tank.
Another way to go about it is if you know it's going to be stargate tech, widow mine viking is pretty good at holding it off until you can get thor raven viking. The widow mines can run up under the tempest and burrow with the research, this is effective because he won't have collosai or storm yet.
It's all very dependent on what you scout. Be sure to scan his stargate occasionally to get an accurate reading.
I've used this opener a lot today, maybe this could be useful for you. I don't really want to sift through my replays to find you the tvp games this is easier.
http://www.twitch.tv/htomario/b/368778111
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I wish I had an answer to this. There's so many viable toss allins in HotS that it seems borderline impossible to defend against all of them. In addition to the already-strong WoL allins, we now have the bunker-buster VR allin, the oracle + frontal attack allin, and an even stronger blink stalker allin.
Concerning defending oracles, people will say "bring 5-6 marines into your main", or "build a turret in your main", which is great, and will hold off an oracle, except now you either are down 5-6 marines or have an ebay + turret doing nothing in your main, which makes a VR bust much harder to hold.
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose.
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You really don't want to 1rax expand anymore. I assume you're 1rax expanding because that is the only way that oracles can be a problem. CC first gives twice the marine count you need to deflect it and with any gas build you can just defend with widow mines if you scout double gas. Maybe you can go 1rax into factory asap, but that seems like it would be very close to hold any gateway pressure.
Against VR all-ins I really don't think you want to build vikings... you probably shouldn't even have built a stargate at that point if you didn't confirm an expansion. Bunkers and turrets can still hold that just fine if you scout it.
Also start noting timings. I'm not sure when my first oracle hits, but VR all-in is very close to 7:30 with 2 void rays. If you send a marine out at 6:30 you should scout him building a proxy pylon and then you might have enough time to set up static defences.
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Open defensive widow mine vs 2 gas. Problem solved. 1 in each mineral line. Mine 1shot oracle. Suddenly you're lightyears ahead. Engi bay = doing nothing? how about upgrades ?
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Honestly, if you're getting 2 widowmines against double gas openers you should be fine....oracles die to widow mines 1 shot and as long as you make 1 bunker/marines behind it you should be able to hold...but the key is scouting whether they expoed or not...and as for overproducing...you should prolly scout with scvs...if you really don't know his comp then you're going to have to scan....in the case where they all in just pull back up your ramp and make another bunker (should be common sense for a high master terran) if in the case you went gasless expo well turret in combination with marine micro while getting a viking out should be decent against void ray all ins
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On February 19 2013 15:08 HTOMario wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 15:00 SirPinky wrote:
Hi,
I'm a mech high master Terran in WoL and I play at the same level in HOTS. I don't know what it is about Oracles but I swear they are almost worse for me than Hellbat drop. I either need a Turret in EXACTLY the right place or I need mines. Its not like I dont scout it; I see the double gas and proceed to move my marines in place but you need at least 5 marines (yes, i tried this in the unit test map) to kill one oracle. They are extremely fast and can harass even if they don't do the expected damage.
I enjoy watching Incontrol's steam and I've even faced Mr. Windrammer from time-to-time, but he even mentions that his toughest time is dealing with Oracles.
As a Terran my other problem is once I see an oracle and, not only do i have to turtle but the question becomes "are they also going Vray all-in?" Many opponents just go 1 Vray and "trick" their opponent into over producing vikings. I've also had people show 1 Tempest harass to over produce vikings. I'm really confused at this point: It seems any air I see as a Terran becomes "auto Turtle" unless I've inflicted a large deal of damage with a counter drop.
Is it just me? Or are other people having issues with the Oracle? What is the default build to shut that down as a mech Terran? Drop a e-bay or make vikings? I've tried Window mines, but many times if they see me burrow around the mineral line they just harass my army units and ignore the mineral line. Please help.
Thanks,
Pinky One of the ways I counter this is picking the correct opening. I find that opening 1 gas into 1 barracks 1 factory helps defend a decent amount of all ins. You can get 4-5 marines and 1 hellion out to stop all the pokes except the mothership core one. However if you see a double gas you can just get a widow mine anyway. If you truly fear the oracle keep 1-2 widow mines in your mineral line and it helps negate it. I place 1 in my mineral lines, then 1 near my army then I usually go for siege tank play 3 or go into hellion harass into tank. Another way to go about it is if you know it's going to be stargate tech, widow mine viking is pretty good at holding it off until you can get thor raven viking. The widow mines can run up under the tempest and burrow with the research, this is effective because he won't have collosai or storm yet. It's all very dependent on what you scout. Be sure to scan his stargate occasionally to get an accurate reading. I've used this opener a lot today, maybe this could be useful for you. I don't really want to sift through my replays to find you the tvp games this is easier. http://www.twitch.tv/htomario/b/368778111
Good advice. To most people in this thread too. I haven't really used HSM against skytoss yet. Is it a must? Just seems like shields too good.
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On February 19 2013 16:17 Cloudshade wrote:
Honestly, if you're getting 2 widowmines against double gas openers you should be fine....oracles die to widow mines 1 shot and as long as you make 1 bunker/marines behind it you should be able to hold...but the key is scouting whether they expoed or not...and as for overproducing...you should prolly scout with scvs...if you really don't know his comp then you're going to have to scan....in the case where they all in just pull back up your ramp and make another bunker (should be common sense for a high master terran) if in the case you went gasless expo well turret in combination with marine micro while getting a viking out should be decent against void ray all ins
Blink stalker allin hard-counters the 2x widow mine defense (especially if they do it with an obs instead of a MSC). It is indistinguishable from any other opening if they proxy it. It does work vs oracles, though - but part of the issue here is that it's very hard to make a universal defense based on reliable scouting information.
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On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose.
Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny.
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On February 19 2013 17:13 hecticSc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose. Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny.
No, the point is that both players should have the opportunity to out-control the other to win. However, when you have to defend against 6 types of allins and several of them require vastly different responses and cannot be reliably scouted, it becomes more of rock-paper-scissors where the allin is awful if you guess the right one and unstoppable if you guess the wrong one. Prior to hots, this response didn't exist, because oracles didn't exist.
If you expect oracles in your main, and put 5 marines there or build an ebay and a turret, you're now very weak to void ray allins, and there is no way to reliably scout the difference.
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United Kingdom12025 Posts
I personally open rax, gas, factory, cc into one tank and then hellion or mine production depending on what I scout and find I have little to no issue with any kind of all in/hurass.
If I see double gas, then a 4 gate I add another tank at the top of my ramp and a bunker. Just make sure your tank is far enough away that it can hit stuff on the ramp, but can't be shot at by anything (all about positioning here, if you lose the tank you lose the game).
If I see double gas and a very low gate count I know it's most likely going to be a stargate so add a turret near my mineral line and one near my factory (this will also help later on when I want to keep my factory count secret from observers if I go for a 6 fact all in against early third.
You can say this kind of opening puts you behind, but it's better being behind than dead and the opening itself leads very nicely on to the mid and or late game. The tank/s protect you from any form of gateway agression, even blink if you pull scvs (better behind than dead and I'm on 2CC so I can afford to lose workers) and as long as you never forget to have a turret in your mineral line (put it close to the side where he flies in if there's little to no air space (e.g. cloud kingdom) and you'll never take any damage from any oracles, atleast not enough for you to worry about.
I really have no issue with toss having so many all ins early game against mech. It reminds me a lot of Broodwar and the all ins now are not half as bad as say reaver drops were to try and defend :p
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I started going gas first reaper into factory and some mines. I just build a single reaper and factory, then I start my CC. after I started the CC I build some marines to put in a bunker (I actually go bio off of this, so you may change that up).
I just put 4 mines around my mineral lines and scout the front with my reaper. if you scout an attack and at the front and no oracles, you should have enough time to pull your mines to the front.
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It's hard for me to understand why scouting is so hard. The only way I feel early game TvP to be hard is if you avoid gas or play too greedy. As soon as you see 2 gas at the P, reduce your greed.
What if you do it like this:
Scout with SCV on 14 for most maps. You will see if double gas and count pylons. If he is hiding his 3rd pylon, then hidden tech. FIND IT with a reaper. It's fast and mobile.
So I think to be safe you always gas open, fast reaper, and you can see what is building in the stargate or other tech.
Obviously new maps may not be figured out yet as to where things are to be hidden, so you'll have to scout a lot. If you only scout near places, that would normally eliminate stargate play though, right? [Edit: Except oracle openings I'd say, so just eliminates voidray] And if he is going for a super fast loan oracle, he will not research warpgate or build a stalker very soon... that's a big tell. If he is going for a VR all in, check number of gateways... timings will be very different than for a blink build, right? A voidray costs 250 minerals, blink only 150 minerals.
-I'm assuming you are bouncing your reaper in and out to scout if nothing else. You can always proxy a barracks, fly it, and scout his main if you know he's putting tech there. It's got to be cheaper than using a scan, huh?
Alternatively... is he hiding tech in his main? If his stalker is late, it's an oracle likely. If he builds a sentry, it's going to be a very late whatever so you have more time to prepare.
Really, with Mules and the ability to expand safely inside your own base, Terran has really nice all-in defense... only the oracle requires special planning IMO. Blink stalker all ins aren't all that much scary in HOTS because if they go for the MsC variety, the MsC is about as expensive as a robo... so they basically get one more stalker out of the deal. Blink research is slower now, so... I just think it's very holdable. I can't remember the last time I saw a blink all-in kill a Terran in GSL... even MC failed miserably last time he tried it. Only the introduction of the oracle and confusion on the side of the Terran could make this build scary, IMO. Terran has new weapons with much faster reaper scouting, free siegemode, widowmines. And if you just go marine/marauder with bunkers you get a free win already if you knew it was coming.
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On February 20 2013 01:06 Blacklizard wrote:
It's hard for me to understand why scouting is so hard. The only way I feel early game TvP to be hard is if you avoid gas or play too greedy. As soon as you see 2 gas at the P, reduce your greed.
What if you do it like this:
Scout with SCV on 14 for most maps. You will see if double gas and count pylons. If he is hiding his 3rd pylon, then hidden tech. FIND IT with a reaper. It's fast and mobile.
So I think to be safe you always gas open, fast reaper, and you can see what is building in the stargate or other tech.
Obviously new maps may not be figured out yet as to where things are to be hidden, so you'll have to scout a lot. If you only scout near places, that would normally eliminate stargate play though, right? [Edit: Except oracle openings I'd say, so just eliminates voidray] And if he is going for a super fast loan oracle, he will not research warpgate or build a stalker very soon... that's a big tell. If he is going for a VR all in, check number of gateways... timings will be very different than for a blink build, right? A voidray costs 250 minerals, blink only 150 minerals.
-I'm assuming you are bouncing your reaper in and out to scout if nothing else. You can always proxy a barracks, fly it, and scout his main if you know he's putting tech there. It's got to be cheaper than using a scan, huh?
Alternatively... is he hiding tech in his main? If his stalker is late, it's an oracle likely. If he builds a sentry, it's going to be a very late whatever so you have more time to prepare.
Really, with Mules and the ability to expand safely inside your own base, Terran has really nice all-in defense... only the oracle requires special planning IMO. Blink stalker all ins aren't all that much scary in HOTS because if they go for the MsC variety, the MsC is about as expensive as a robo... so they basically get one more stalker out of the deal. Blink research is slower now, so... I just think it's very holdable. I can't remember the last time I saw a blink all-in kill a Terran in GSL... even MC failed miserably last time he tried it. Only the introduction of the oracle and confusion on the side of the Terran could make this build scary, IMO. Terran has new weapons with much faster reaper scouting, free siegemode, widowmines. And if you just go marine/marauder with bunkers you get a free win already if you knew it was coming.
So, in conclusion. What opening build do you propose that a Mech Terran has to use for your theory to work?
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United States7483 Posts
On February 19 2013 17:26 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 17:13 hecticSc wrote:On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose. Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny. No, the point is that both players should have the opportunity to out-control the other to win. However, when you have to defend against 6 types of allins and several of them require vastly different responses and cannot be reliably scouted, it becomes more of rock-paper-scissors where the allin is awful if you guess the right one and unstoppable if you guess the wrong one. Prior to hots, this response didn't exist, because oracles didn't exist. If you expect oracles in your main, and put 5 marines there or build an ebay and a turret, you're now very weak to void ray allins, and there is no way to reliably scout the difference.
In what way shape or form is this different from how Protoss has to react to a terran who gets a fast second unfinished supply depot down to block the ramp so the scouting probe can't get in, and thus has to guess entirely what terran is doing based on a stalker/zealot poke until an observer is out? Meanwhile, Terran can be doing 6 different builds easily, and by the time you scout it, it's quite late to make any significant changes to your build, and you can be in a lot of trouble. It's especially fun when you don't all-in and find out later he went triple orbital and you're super far behind because you played as safe as possible before your observer got there to make sure you'd be prepared for a marine/scv all-in or something.
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TvP is pretty broken in Hots, Protoss has 20 different cheeses while beeing safe with the planetary nexus, so it is hard to find a safe build that is economical at the same time. What works best for me so far is 12 rax 14 gas, get a factory but continue marine protuduction off the rax, so dont make an addon since you would die to core and stalker harass. Get a bunker at ramp and put mines in mineral line. Once the bunker is up and the first mine is out you can safely get a reactor on the rax to later get double mine or hellion. I also like to get a starport just to drop the mines later on in his base when I feel safe. I do this off 1 gas so I can afford a CC, then get second gas and add a factory and armory for hellbats. Or you can go bio from there too.
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On February 20 2013 02:08 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 17:26 iEchoic wrote:On February 19 2013 17:13 hecticSc wrote:On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose. Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny. No, the point is that both players should have the opportunity to out-control the other to win. However, when you have to defend against 6 types of allins and several of them require vastly different responses and cannot be reliably scouted, it becomes more of rock-paper-scissors where the allin is awful if you guess the right one and unstoppable if you guess the wrong one. Prior to hots, this response didn't exist, because oracles didn't exist. If you expect oracles in your main, and put 5 marines there or build an ebay and a turret, you're now very weak to void ray allins, and there is no way to reliably scout the difference. In what way shape or form is this different from how Protoss has to react to a terran who gets a fast second unfinished supply depot down to block the ramp so the scouting probe can't get in, and thus has to guess entirely what terran is doing based on a stalker/zealot poke until an observer is out? Meanwhile, Terran can be doing 6 different builds easily, and by the time you scout it, it's quite late to make any significant changes to your build, and you can be in a lot of trouble. It's especially fun when you don't all-in and find out later he went triple orbital and you're super far behind because you played as safe as possible before your observer got there to make sure you'd be prepared for a marine/scv all-in or something.
I thought there are tonnes of two base all in play that just basically kills any terran who went for a quick CC?
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On February 20 2013 02:08 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 17:26 iEchoic wrote:On February 19 2013 17:13 hecticSc wrote:On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose. Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny. No, the point is that both players should have the opportunity to out-control the other to win. However, when you have to defend against 6 types of allins and several of them require vastly different responses and cannot be reliably scouted, it becomes more of rock-paper-scissors where the allin is awful if you guess the right one and unstoppable if you guess the wrong one. Prior to hots, this response didn't exist, because oracles didn't exist. If you expect oracles in your main, and put 5 marines there or build an ebay and a turret, you're now very weak to void ray allins, and there is no way to reliably scout the difference. In what way shape or form is this different from how Protoss has to react to a terran who gets a fast second unfinished supply depot down to block the ramp so the scouting probe can't get in, and thus has to guess entirely what terran is doing based on a stalker/zealot poke until an observer is out? Meanwhile, Terran can be doing 6 different builds easily, and by the time you scout it, it's quite late to make any significant changes to your build, and you can be in a lot of trouble. It's especially fun when you don't all-in and find out later he went triple orbital and you're super far behind because you played as safe as possible before your observer got there to make sure you'd be prepared for a marine/scv all-in or something.
We get free hallucination and can scout everything; terran has to get lucky with scans or just use a lot of them. Also, scans won't detect proxy stargates, which are part of the all-in list.
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On February 19 2013 17:26 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2013 17:13 hecticSc wrote:On February 19 2013 15:18 iEchoic wrote:
It seems to be a rock-paper-scissors game at this point, where if you guess the allin, you win, and if you don't, you lose. Lol, and isn't that the point of an allin ? You wanna just be safe vs allins going standard macro build, that's funny. No, the point is that both players should have the opportunity to out-control the other to win. However, when you have to defend against 6 types of allins and several of them require vastly different responses and cannot be reliably scouted, it becomes more of rock-paper-scissors where the allin is awful if you guess the right one and unstoppable if you guess the wrong one. Prior to hots, this response didn't exist, because oracles didn't exist. If you expect oracles in your main, and put 5 marines there or build an ebay and a turret, you're now very weak to void ray allins, and there is no way to reliably scout the difference.
How about, map control, scans, towers etc. There is plenty of ways to scout. You could simply do an aggressive opener yourself because most aggressive T openers involved decimating mineral lines. So do that, pull all SCVS to hold. Win.
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EPT
