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On October 12 2010 17:13 sleepingdog wrote: I agree, terran should not be forced to play 3rax, this would be stupid because very inflexible; nevertheless there are TONS of other openings available to terran, many of them less effective vs robo-play than pure/greedy 1/1/1 but much more safe vs void rays; a) 2 rax reactor first: demuslims standard opening, can lead to the very dangerous marine/banshee/raven timing but also allows for flexible transitions into MMM if protoss eg. goes tech-heavy (aka stargate and TC of one base to counter banshees); seen it work on pro-level numerous times b) 1/1/1 supported with 2 turrets directly up the ramp; void rays can't break this: turrets are not there to kill but to buy time for vikings; if void rays shoot at turrets they shoot at nothing else instead; the turrets must be placed a little bit back so that void rays can not shoot at them without exposing them to marines (very critical, otherwise charged rays will just pick them up without taking much damage); you will lose your bunker, you will lose at least one turret, but this "should" allow you to get one viking out and the other one in construction; vikings can kite void rays indefinitely, I've seen on viking kill two pre-charged void rays because they just wouldn't get a shot off c) 1/1/1 with one viking "blind" - admittedly compromises the effectiveness of 1/1/1; but then again I don't see how this could screw up 1/1/1 altogether; it destroys the effectiveness of the hellion drop, but hey, who said that hellion drop should always be safe? it's damn strong as it is; now you'll say one viking will achieve nothing? true: nevertheless you can use the viking to scout for proxy-pylons/etc. ASAP - if there's nothing in the area, then there won't be a pre-charge any time soon; the reason is very simple: the frickin probe needs ages to get to your ramp, if there simply is no probe then there won't be a pylon;
also scouting for armies/probes is undervalued in this thread, again because of the meta-game: this scouting can be very easily achieved on delta quadrant and xel naga: once you control the tower(s) there are few ways a probe or units can take to get to your ramp; if your tower-control gets challanged by a strangely small warpgate-force without any robo-support, you MUST get suspicious because of the meta-game aspect - WHY...just why on earth would any protoss player in his right mind move out with his gateway army at THIS point in the game, when the risk of drops is extremely high? and potentially game ending? a protoss-player will simply NEVER move out in the mid-game unless (!) he has immortals; immortals allow for strong pushes vs small MM-numbers - but without immortals protoss is toast in mid-game; everyone knows this; therefore, what is a gateway-only force doing in the middle of the map in midgame? he has no business being there, unless something fishy is going on; I'd suggest you watch especially those pro-reps (or your own games) where protoss goes for robo-builds and observe the army-movement of protoss until colossi or early immortals are out: well - in 90% of the matches there simply is none! the other 10% of the protoss-players are obviously keen on getting their probes roasted vs hellion-drops, because no protoss in his right mind would try to pressure with gateway-only vs 1/1/1
Looking at your suggestions, I would like to respond: a) if you go pure marine, how on earth will you move out without stalker kiting you all day long? You need either marauders with shells or stim to prevent that. Granted I haven't played this, but I believe it delays your marine/banshee timing by a ton. b) in the early stages of the 1/1/1 money is really tight. I don't know where I should pull 325 min from. Besides there is barely a placement, where voids cannot focus the bunker out of turret range or just take down the turrets out of bunker range. Especially when it has to be out of stalker range, too. Then there is also another problem: Split forces. Voids in the back while the rest hits your front. You better have 2+ bunkers and SCVs already in place etc. provided you have more than 15 marines to man the bunkers AND combat the voidrays. c) 1 Viking indeed does little. So i don't understand why you bring it up. You won't have enough stuff to block his attack if you went 1/1/1, as nothing the factory makes is strong enough and you get hit when the first viking is done if the toss goes for 2 VR. Yes, you can scout, but that just means the viking gets hit by stalkers and he precharges his voids in your face on the building pylon.
To the scouting: As I have written in my ignored post (bottom p 21), 1 roaming stalker can easily kill anything you field early as long as you don't make marauders with shells (which eats into your marine count). True, midgame the toss rarely moves out, as soon as marauders are on the field, but with marauders on the field, the voidrays probably won't need the ground support. Also note the timing of the push: shortly after the first air unit has been completed in a 1/1/1 setup. There is no game ending drop. Sure, hellions could roast each and every of your drone, but not having a base or army is worse.
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Would marine/tank combination work? Would slow 2/1/1 work? Is fast tech 1/1/1 build so sacred so that you ought to be able to play it blindly against anything?
I am not a terran (not a protoss either so I do not really care) but the statements alike to "blind 1/1/1 does not work" just make me laugh. I think it is perfectly OK to not be able to safely tech to whatever unit composition. Just tech slower. And if as a result T will be equal to P in early game rather than having distinct advantage and thus suck in late game? Great! In next patches/expansions T will get buffed and you will actually have an option to play macro terran!
On the other side if it is really rock paper scissors even when all the scouting measures fail, then I concur than something has to be done. Even indirect scouting (gas timing, army composition, weird behavior of units etc.), you know, the stuff Z needs to do every game.
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i watched the replay, here are some tips. Steppes of war the fight could have been a lot closer.
1) don't fight at your ramp! (void rays can cliff ya) 2) therefore don't even bunker it, it gives something the voids to keep their charge on instead of their own units 3) kite/bait the protoss into your base. If you do this right he will either lose the charge or damage his own units. You need to engage such that the voids are far from the cliff, and the army has not fanned out yet.
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So I've been thinking about this in the morning. Charging beam is a very interesting ability and it's very mechanically demanding and exciting to watch. However, massive amount of charged void ray can pose a huge problem in team games as well as lower level game, and evidently higher level game as well.
What I purpose here, is to change the void ray beam's behavior so it will charge up much quicker, but lose charge when its target dies. Meanwhile, the mothership will be given a beam similar to what the void ray has now, except twice as powerful. This enable some amazing charged mothership play without making it too powerful (you can't hit and run with MS, you can't make 30 MS and kill a base in 30 seconds)
I believe this will allow more mothership play as well as making mass void ray less frustrating to deal against.
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making the voidray charge go away after switching targets would make a unit that is WAY too situational now into a unit no one will ever use...cause comeon... who would want voidrays when they are so fragile and now losing their main use... their huge dps when charged? nty ill go for carriers instead lol
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So I've studied the reps provided and done some testing myself, plus what i've seen work against me.
Some thoughts
- Going 1 1 1 vs this build is fine, if you build marines while you can. Get a reactor and a tech lab from the factory, and put the reactor on the starport and tech lab on the barracks. Then switch to marauders, get a mix of vikings and medivacs, and get a second or third barracks for marines. You should have enough marines to hold off the first void ray. You will want a bunker to hold off an early push, but salvage it once you get marauders out.
- Remember you can land your vikings once the void rays are dealt with - they are worth a stalker each.
- You can surround the enemy stalkers with your scvs if you can lure him up the ramp, they will do pretty well actually, you'll be ahead on scvs anyway and you still have your mules.
- Stim doesn't help against charged void rays - it's good for sniping void rays, and killing them before they get charged, but it won't let you kill them with less losses if they're already charged. Get marine shield to kill more void rays with less marines. Then get stim and concussive shell to help your marauders stutter step against the stalkers.
Once the push has been survived you can do whatever you want. You could have a medivac and hellions, or maybe 6 vikings to land in his mineral patch while you pressure his front. Or you could just safely expand since it'll take a while for him to make more void rays and you'll be stronger than him then.
Make sure to scout to see if he expanded.
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On October 13 2010 04:55 PROJECTILE wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2010 02:11 slam wrote: This thread is crap. As the rules of the strategy forum state, give proof. I see no proof of Terran responding well to this strategy and still getting steamrolled.
Yes, if poorly responded, Voidrays can be very unforgiving. But they are not hard to counter and I do not believe that they are over powered.
EDIT: this is not so much directed to the OP. More so to all the QQ going on as a response. The only way to respond well (if you look through the replays shown) is to go a variation of 3 rax or marine/ghost, both of which are suboptimal against pretty much any other p build. And because you can't realistically scout this build, it essentially forces you to do this every game. As to scouting this build if it is indeed proxy/hidden that is kind of the point (if in base throw a scan or sac a reaper). There should be ways to be tricky and catch your opponent off-guard (and there is risk involved with putting tech in a undefended position). But also you ought to be able to see that something is fishy when your opponent only has 2 gates and no other tech and their army size is somewhat lacking and there is no expansion or units hanging outside natural waiting for expansion.
Why can't you counter with vikings? (I'm actually curious because they have crushed me many times before.) Especially since vikings will be useful with dealing with colossus as well which are very popular PvT.
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On October 13 2010 08:43 GoldenH wrote: - Going 1 1 1 vs this build is fine, if you build marines while you can. Get a reactor and a tech lab from the factory, and put the reactor on the starport and tech lab on the barracks. Then switch to marauders, get a mix of vikings and medivacs, and get a second or third barracks for marines. You should have enough marines to hold off the first void ray. You will want a bunker to hold off an early push, but salvage it once you get marauders out.
...
Once the push has been survived you can do whatever you want. You could have a medivac and hellions, or maybe 6 vikings to land in his mineral patch while you pressure his front. Or you could just safely expand since it'll take a while for him to make more void rays and you'll be stronger than him then.
Make sure to scout to see if he expanded. This.
Very affective in dealing with any Vray builds and transitions nicely.
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On October 09 2010 16:22 thesauceishot wrote: Toss player here. I think the mechanic should be adjusted, but not to the solution that you've provided. I wouldn't mind seeing a faster charge with a lower max damage output. They just feel like such a huge commitment and are not consistently effective, when banshees and mutas are more versatile.
i like this sorta thing, not to lower it so much that it doesnt really need to charge, but a lower gap between charged and uncharged would be good it also sorts out some issues with mass vr weak charge killing targets before any of the vrs actually charge (not that its very practical)
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the 3 gate voidray build is so similar to the reaver bulldog in SC1.
basically the best way to deal with it is to know if your opponent expanded + his stalker count. if he has no expo and lots of stalkers you can probly guess that 3 bunkers is a good idea. idk why people keep mentioning 1 1 1 like its good, but 1 1 1 is only good if you rush banshees (or i guess the hellion drop stuff).
A super popular build right now is 2 rax (1 tech 1 reactor) into reactored starport, and the delayed reaper in this build can hopefully give you the info you in time to throw up the bunkers/start building viking medivac. The reaper should be able to scout at least if he has an expo or his gateway count, and if you see 3 gate no robo in the main you can pretty much assume its either DTs, proxy startgate, or proxy robo trying to do some gay warp prism antics. you can be safe against all of these with 2-3 bunkers at the front + turret, so you dont really need to find where the stargate is. However, its kind of a shit show if you happen to miss the proxy pylon or voids coming, but if you defend the rush then you basically win when medivac count gets high enough so its not so bad.
what the real problem is comes in actually defending this shit with little to no warning. with like 1 forcefield protoss can totally fuck your ability to repair bunkers as well as get your units to actually shoot. I would have to agree that actually not dying to this is pretty damn hard
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I blame this to poor scouting. If you are pushing his front with even an SCV you will be able to tell that he is not at the unit numbers he should be at... Which should trigger you to scan and prepare for fishy play anyway.
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I've had this used on me before (1100 Diamond), I scouted it coming (Having had gone FE bioball), and just started to pump marines in addition to placing a missile turret at my choke (I was walled off)- did things correctly, maybe my micro was off or my macro was off, but either way at the end I lost my entire army, and his army was more or less intact (to the point where I don't think not having made mistakes would have made a difference)
I dislike the idea of most of the proposed VR nerfs- I believe the nerf should be "unable to charge on friendly buildings"- neutrals are still ok. (Maybe people will get in the habit of killing the rocks near their base then to stop neutral charge)
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On October 13 2010 04:07 Floophead_III wrote: This thread needs to be closed and stickied as an example of how a good OP can lead to a garbage pile of awful posts. It's a travesty and makes me really depressed to be a part of the same community as 90% of the posters here.
Not to mention the complete disrespect for Linko. I don't even want to start on that.
Um, there's complete disrespect for Link because standard 2 Rax Aggression which every Korean T does would have raped this. Not to mention that a simple scan would have immediately told him what was going to happen.
You don't have to be a genius to figure out that in game 2 the T had the game won if he grew a pair of balls and just went up the ramp. Any standard 2 rax aggression is hard to hold even with standard play if you aren't careful with your FFing, so what makes you think a non-sentry build is going to have any hope of holding it together?
If you as a T player are not pressing the P player early or at least forcing him to dedicate gas to defend your pushes, then you're doing something wrong. He allowed the P to take the initiative, did not punish him when he had the chance, did not scout properly, and was simply too passive the entire time.
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The fact he's getting three Voidrays means his army will be significantly smaller, and a scan near his entrance (if he's the type to move units back so a scouting SCV can't see how many of what he has) or just running an SCV up to see what it dies to can easily show you if he's teching or at least spending lots of resources on something other then what killed the scv. 3VRs account for 750mins and 450gas, with a scan it becomes very noticeable if he's hiding something, that or just has seriously bad macro in which case you should steam roll him.
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voids easier to scout for than banshee.....
honestly as a full time toss player, never plays terran, I hate using voids, especially agaisnt terrans, rines n viking too strong. People always say oh man, these void rays just came in and blew up all my stuff. IT is NOT EASY TO CHARGE UP VOID RAYS, even harder to keep them charged. In big numbers (over6) you cant even get them charged unless you micro them to shoot at seperate buildings at once(also not easy), otherwise they will destroy whatever they are shooting before charging up.
IF void rays got changed to this, "Lose charge between targets", than you mine as well get rid of the unit completely. BECAUSE THEY WILL NEVER CHARGE UP(wtf is the point of charging then?they will be charged up and do full damage for like 1 millisecond). They would ONLY be useful agaisnt massive units then, ie bc's or ultras. You would jsut have to change their damage to something Like a viking, but with ground targeting, and beef the range up again, which loses teh unqiue-ness of protoss, something blizzard wont do.
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random player here:
dont know how may wins ive gotten by proxy void ray vs terran or zerg because i know how hard it is to stop if scouted 30 seconds too late. i think TOO MANY.... it feels so cheese i stopped doing it.
i hate voidrays in ffa's!! i dont know how many times i've lost a 4 ffa after killing 2 ppl but the 3rd just masses void rays and wins even though im so far ahead economically. but by the time i get the correct counter units they are fully charged and wrecking my base. its like if i see a toss in a ffa i have to automatically make a shit load of marines stalkers or corrupters. taking away from fun unit composition. getting beat by a FE cannon void ray cheese is too common. any idiot can do it thats why i see it so much. almost as newb as 4 gate..
i know some of u will say well u should have scouted. bc;s or mass banshee or mass muta is just as bad.... ect.. but they are not nearly the same... mass void rays are the gayest shit in the game after they have been charged. sure its easy to stop if it's 1v1 and u build the counter unit early enough because your scouting him all game... but i truely think the mass voidray is a mass newb cheese unit.
also a few times when i've played terran 1v1 and i went a marine heavy build but was just enough out of position for them to get charged i've lost... i went back looked at the replay.. according to my build i should have crushed him.. but since he got charged and i didnt have vicking i got owned. it also got to the point where i build extra queens just to be safe. gimmick
they should do more initial damage and less charged damage.
mark my words the unit will be changed sooner or later u watch and see
forgive my spelling
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I'd also tentatively lend support to "remove charge on own units." I saw a 'toss player doing this today--the rocks you can kill (neutral charge) but letting the VR charge on the player's own units? There's no counter to this!
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On October 13 2010 11:19 SovereignGFC wrote: I'd also tentatively lend support to "remove charge on own units." I saw a 'toss player doing this today--the rocks you can kill (neutral charge) but letting the VR charge on the player's own units? There's no counter to this!
Do you have a way to balance them after you remove the charging on your own units? Or should we just stop using them?
Personally I think they should have a higher minimum damage, lower top end, but charge faster. That way they kill a Thor in the same speed, but aren't so useless against anything that can shoot up (if you're not charged).
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The first game is a 2450 resource army vs an 1325 resource army which is almost impossible to lose.
On top of that there is no combat shield so when the terran stims he has 35 hp instead of 45 hp which means you need 30% more marines and the terran runs into his own choke and doesn't focus fire the voids which do 3 times as much damage as the stalkers. And this just happens to be a map where it's extremely ez to precharge your voids.
To put this in perspective it's like a protoss trying to 3 gate with a semi fast expo and then when the terran does a 3 rax attack the protoss stalkers cut off his zealots and he gets destroyed. How would anyone think that's a fair example of something too powerful?
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Although I'm just a lowly silver player, I tried this build yesterday and didn't lose once out of a bunch of matches against terran. There are a few points where the Terran could concievably hit me early and I would be mostly undefended, but silver/gold terrans tend to just sit in their base building up marauder heavy MM so they lose automatically. Maybe terrans will have to get more aggressive early on to counter this build?
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