[G]TvZ Marine/Raven - Page 40

On October 09 2011 06:30 RaE21 wrote:
Yoshi,

1200 pt mid-high masters terran here and I watched the replays you posted... seems very strong! I actually love the hellion/banshee opening and transition, as long as you maintain map control and continuously harass it allows you to safely expand. Also, I love the corvid reactor upgrade early on, that way ravens have fairly high energy early on (enough for several turrets and pdd each). However, I do believe there is a window that the zerg can attack via baneling bust or roach that might put the terran significantly behind if it is successful, as hellion and banshee do take up the space of marines and bunkers, so in order for the transition to be successful I made a note that it is ESSENTIAL to keep the banshees and at least 2 hellions alive, or else any zerg all in will be extremely hard to hold.

On to the transition if you can make it to the mid/late game for the marine/raven composition. With careful turret placement, continuous harass and constant army trading with the zerg (mineral vs. gas units), I think the strategy is still extremely strong especially with the speed buff to hunter seeker missile. Standard ling/bane/muta should be shut down as the OP said with pdd, turret walls, and hunter seeker. However, if the zerg does tech to infestor or ultra, there is a significant problem, as ravens tend to clump and while its easy to say its needed to split/spread the ravens, its so hard when your both microing your marines and dropping turrets/pdd/HSM. In addition, I've found it fairly easy for the zerg to safely take lots of bases due to the lack of medivac drops (gas investment in ravens). Since mutas will be more or less shut down and zerg will most definitely tech to infestor, I'm thinking that drops via a few medivacs is absolutely needed in order to keep harass up. Its way to risky to fly some ravens to autoturret harass, as losing ravens to fungal will almost give you the autolose.

So my questions are: is there a way to work in 3 starports, with 2 pumping ravens and 1 naked starport pumping medivacs for pure harass purposes? And to counter hive tech, how many bases should we have to be able to pump ravens AND ghosts, as ghosts are almost critical to getting rid of mass ultras if harass fails? Sorry for long post, I really want this strategy to work since I'm bored of marine tank

On October 09 2011 06:36 aklambda wrote:
@Yoshi

Have been watching some of your replays. I am mid Platinum atm. What I noticed is that you build your additional barracks pretty late. Especially in the last game you posted. You lost 2 Ravens to the Muta harass and quite a lot of energy for defense. What if you build your barracks earlier and use the marines to defend against mutas?
You probabley can't support 3 port Raven and upgrades if you take the barracks earlier but you would be a bit more safe.

I am going to the ladder right now trying your build though myself and see how I do.

Maybe I somehow manage to win one too :p

On October 09 2011 22:56 Antisocialmunky wrote:
I wonder if you need to durable materials before Seeker in your opening Yosh. You are nearly completely naked against early aggression because you end up having close to 0 units on the ground since you cut hellion production so you can get your rax up. I think that's kinda dubious since a good zerg probably could murder you with some sort of 2 base. Though I will say I think the proper timing for zerg to hit is quite awkward since it is when they will want to take their third.

You rely on your turrets so much for that type of opening that turret alive time actually matters.

Edit: Also I think you really should work on your mechanics. There are some pretty big holes I can see like no constant SCV production and pretty big supply blocks. Those are pretty basic things. You really should smooth out your play more instead of focusing on making really detailed builds. Granted you're getting busted like crazy in your reps (and rightly so) but I'm seeing quite a few problems even before that. You can only coast on the fact that making a crap ton of ravens requires only 8 SCVs on each base and that no one seems to make effective AA against you (hydras, mass infestors) for only so long. Not trying to be mean or anything but there is a fair bit of room for improvement.

Edit2: You also should try and maintain map control your your 6-8 hellions instead of suiciding them in for drones each time because a good zerg will see you do that and drone up since you don't have a strong push with hellion timings (especially with no BF). If oyu have your Hellions alive then they will have to maintain some army production or invest in a large amount of lings to push out.

On October 10 2011 11:17 RyLai wrote:
I find it to be a somewhat okay build.

In team games, it's amazing except against Protoss (due to Colossi then High Templar which you can't snipe using HSM). And it automatically denies early DT aggression (or at least severely mitigates it).

The thing I really like is that you can afford to get double upgrades and start them pretty early. Also, the ability to be mobile and attack without Tanks is nice, however, your defensive ability against heavy Baneling all ins is significantly weaker unless you have a really good reaction time that only high level players really possess. There's no way you're stopping ~20 Banelings from crashing your wall around your natural.

Also, the build is REALLY easy to macro with. Extra minerals? Make SCVs, Marines, Depots, and Barracks. Extra gas? Power upgrades (and there are plenty to be had that support your army) and make Medivacs and Ravens. But I have issues with the 2 Starport concept... I really wish I could have 3 (2 Tech and 1 Reactor) so I can always have Medivacs handy as well as always having a solid Raven count (similar to always having a solid Tank count with a reasonable flow of Medivacs). If I go 2 Tech Labs, it becomes really technical on whether I should make Medivacs or Ravens. Of course, your current resources can easily dictate that you can only make Medivacs at the time, but since you're splitting production between Medivacs and Ravens, I'd like more flexibility. If you go 2 Tech Labs, you can only make 2 Medivacs at a time while making no Ravens. If you go 1 Tech Lab 1 Reactor, you can make 2 Medivacs at a time as well as constantly making a Raven, but you never have the option of powering Raven production. I feel if you could get 2 Tech Labs and 1 Reactor, you'd be in the perfect range as you could easily power either Raven or Medivac production. However, If you land good HSMs, there's not much need to really have more than 1 Raven constantly in production. But the thing is, with the mediocre range on HSM, the friendly splash on HSM, and the fact that Ravens are relatively easy to snipe, having more Ravens gives you a bit of a safety net.

And it's always nice to not have to waste Scans for Burrowed Banelings or Creep Tumors. And to check ahead, you can simply Stim a Marine and have him run as far as he can to his death. You might also want to Stim a few to check all paths that Zerg can flank you from, so you know where to position your Ravens to HSM from in order to quickly protect your Marines from Banelings.

But I also feel you can't really threaten the Zerg before the 10 minute mark like you normally could with a Tank-based build. All you have access to is a bunch of Marines, some Medivacs, and a Raven or two (I prefer to go 1 Tech Lab 1 Reactor in 1v1 for a steady flow of Medivacs to compliment the ~30 Marines I'll have at that point, though I get HSM later as a result). You can't really push with low energy Ravens. Auto Turrets aren't really good enough to do anything but harassing damage (they're like somewhat stronger Marines, but Marines are good when you have a LOT of them, and you won't be able to drop that many Auto Turrets). Point Defense Drone is useless except if they have Mutalisks, and they likely won't want to engage your Marine army anyway, and you have little reason to stay in 1 place anyway since you have no Tanks to slow push with. As a result, you can only really push them once you have HSM, which takes a while even with the energy upgrade. So your only real option is to drop them while sending a Marine group to their third (either double drop or 1 Medivac into the main and a group of Marines by foot). If anything, going for 3 attacks (dropping the main and natural while harassing the third by foot) is also a reasonably good idea as long as your drops don't get picked off in the air or caught early. If they do, you're down like 24 Marines and 2 Medivacs, which is essentially everything you had except a Raven. But 3 attacks that actually land, even if killing only 1 Drone each, is bound to do a lot of damage. You can basically snipe 1 Hatchery and deny a LOT of mining time if your opponent doesn't respond efficiently (even then you're guaranteed to deny a lot of mining time unless he wants to lose a ton of Drones).

I feel like, with really good control (the macro basically performs itself if you just keep checking on your upgrades), this could be a REALLY good build. Again, with REALLY good control (like Professional or GM level control).

But the biggest issue I'm having with this build is how to start it. If you open 2 Rax, a lot of the game hinges on how well your 2 Rax went and how much you committed to it because the more you commit, the later your expansion, which is a critical timing for when everything in this build starts to kick in. If you open a Hellion expand, your expansion is later than I'd like, but you do get the early Factory, map control, and the option to deny Creep Spread (which is always good, but less necessary in my opinion with this build).

I feel that opening a gasless expand (cutting the first Depot and second Marine for a faster CC) is the most idea way to open this build in terms of how to get everything pumping as quickly as possible, but we all know that isn't a realistic option in TvZ since early Zergling pressure and lack of ability to apply your own pressure are two big things that can sink you (especially combined with the fact you have no real ~9 minute timing attack). In most cases, Zerg will power their economy insanely hard, and you can't do anything about it. They get an early third base, maybe even get as far as saturate it, and don't have to really worry about any pressure from you.

So the most realistic opener would probably be the Hellion expand with 1 Rax Bunker pressure.

But the thing I REALLY hate about this build is how much of it relies on HSM. In TvZ, the only REALLY effective ability the Raven has is detection and HSM. Turrets are basically only good to harass. If I want Ravens for Turrets, I could've cut the Factory and Starports of of my build, severely reduced my gas intake, and went pure Marine Medic and have way more extra Marines than what I could've had in Auto Turrets. And Marines are more mobile than Auto Turrets. HSM NEEDS to be reduced to 75 or 100 energy cost in order for this to be anything more than maybe a late game transition. You can probably go standard Marine/Tank/Medivac and transition into this build (you can easily do visa versa), which would take out a lot of the early game problems of this build. HSM just comes out WAY too late. You're pinned to do damage through nothing but drops, which could very easily be denied with Mutalisks.

I don't care if Ravens ended up with 100 max energy, HSM NEEDS to be more available. You can't pop a Raven at around 9 minutes and say, "okay, I need to wait 50 seconds now before I can do any damage with a push". And you'll only have 2 HSMs max and you NEED to make them count.

Ravens are good (as are all casters that do outright damage though Energy), but I'd rather have Psi Storm or Fungal Growth (especially Fungal Growth, omg... Imagine Terran with a unit that had Fungal Growth) at 75 energy as opposed to a HSM at 125 energy that isn't even guaranteed to hit more than 1 unit against a good player. (And hey! High Templar and Ravens are Tier 3, while Infestors are Tier 2... I'd MUCH rather have Infestors; though almost all other units Zerg has is terrible, so Blizzard PLEASE buff Hydralisks and nerf Infestors. Oh... And buff Ravens...)

On October 11 2011 05:23 itsMAHVELbaybee wrote:
Facts:
- auto turrets are zero supply
- banelings must use their building attack on auto turrets
- auto turrets side-by-side make perfect walls and 3 turrets will block normal ramps easy
- a turret will beat a queen one-on-one but burn down afterwards
- auto turrets are upgrade-able to have +2 armor, +1 range, and extra time on countdown

I don't see why auto-turrets are completely useless. HSM is more useless in my opinion other than against baneling clumps and mutalisk balls. Using HSM most likely means losing that raven as well. 6 range will get your raven's killed, which is why you can't heavily rely on HSM. However 1 medivac, 2 raven drop. Drop 6-7 autoturrets or 4-5 autoturrets+PDD, you have a deadly drop that could easily do more damage than normal. Also one raven could drop 4 turrets at one expo, which might not seem like much, but definitely enough to kill an expansion. Combined with generic medivac drops ravens can add so much more to the aggression.

An interesting game to check out is Day[9] Daily #284 Funday Monday . Where people could only pick 3 units to build all game. Drewbie goes marine/raven/medivac, and utilizes ebay upgrades(even bunker space upgrade), and shows some neat ways to slow push with mass bunkers and auto turrets. Also using all the spare minerals to make barracks walls at chokes where zerg can counter attack.