Hello everyone, I know I don't usually ever post let alone make any threads, but tonight's SotG has inspired me to make this thread. First of all, for those that don't know, I am Revsoda on the ladder (not in rev, just no name change) and I am a High Masters Terran player on the North American server. Anyways, I heard Artosis talk about mech play in both TvT and TvP. Even Though I disagree with his points about why terrans don't go mech, I have decided to try mech out in TvP. I've always been a bio player in TvP and I used to go mech everygame against Terran when Blue Flame Hellions were really strong but I switched after the nerf and I feel bio is indeed stronger. But I have decided that for the next week, I will be going exclusively mech against Toss. This includes ghosts+mech, marine/thor/banshee (see jjakji vs Puzzle in gsl november on daybreak), and pure mech compositions to see if going mech every game is a viable strategy. I'll be saving all my games from this week and then I will be sending them to Day9. I don't really care if he sees them or not, this is really for pure experimentation and if he uses them that would be cool too
Anyways, wish me luck. I might stream if anyone is interesting in hearing my thought process and what not. I feel mech is bad, but if Goody can win games off people that I can't beat, then there must be something to it right?
P.S. I'll probably be editing this blog with a replay pack and my overall thoughts after one week of testing.
Update (12/12):
After around 5 or so days of testing the viability of mech in TvP, I have some things to share about my opinion of this strategy at High Masters/GM level. First off, I would say that the first couple days of testing were primarily spent theory crafting and using all sorts of BO's to test their viability and what not. After that, I went in to the Unit test map to try things out. What I learned over this time was that Mech was barely viable, and not viable on most maps. I played a lot of games and talked a lot with my team mate (Butteryllama) and we came to this conclusion. We also learned that pure mech is completely garbage and that ghost mech is the only form of Mech that can consistently work. But again, this only works on specific maps. The reason for this is because mech needs to get a minimum of three bases to be successful. But the composition itself, is very, very, very tricky to pull off. You need perfect defense and flawless positioning. But the major problem is that even if you defend really well and harass decently, your army composition isn't strong enough to warrant all the risks that you have to take to get there. The reason why mech is considered strong is that when you get maxed, you are supposed to roll your opponents army convincingly. The thing with mech in TvP is that your army isn't even that strong. When maxed, protoss can still attack into you even if you are fully sieged and everything. So I would say that bio is indeed better, I know a lot of you probably already knew this, but these are just my opinions and I feel its good to share my thoughts on the matter because I just lost a whole bunch of ladder points this week testing it out(LOL).
But if you have some sort of mech fetish, I will share what can be strong about mech and common tactics you can use. First all, most of my games started off with a fast expansion or the standard 1 marine + 2 marauder push (something like that). After that, I would consider getting a factory for tanks. Getting blue flame is really risky after expansion because if they gateway pressure you, you're dead and that's no fun. I see most people go starport after factory, but I strongly disagree with early starport play with mech. The reason for this is because harassing your protoss opponent when they are on two bases isn't very strong in my opinion. Any toss can sit stalkers in their mineral line while on two bases and easily fend off banshee or hellions if they are smart. I would rather suggest going 1 fac making tanks, add second factory, third cc, armory, 3rd and 4th factory, then starport. The two factories will keep you safe while you get a good amount of tanks up. The quick armory is good for early +1 and if you time that right, your +1 will finish when you want to take your third. Your starport will be done when you are on three base and then you can start dropping. This is strong because they will most likely be on 4 base and spreading out their army will be harder for them and harass is more likely to succeed. Also, I would like to point out that thors are not very good and they don't really add anything to the composition so only add one or two max. But anyway, once you get 4 base, you should consider adding another armory and getting more barracks for ghosts, which is mandatory if you want to win. If you do this right, you should have a lot of tanks, 15 or so hellions, 8 ghosts, and vikings/banshee (ratio depends on colossi account obviously). One raven can be good also but I would not consider making more than two as HT kind of owns them hard. If you play your cards right, you can win using this basic Mech strategy.
Of course this isn't the only way to win with mech and people are probably going to disagree with some stuff but this is what worked for me over the last week of playing and testing. But anyway, I'll be leaving a link to the games I played below. Thanks for reading and sorry for wall of text TT.
P.P.S. I stopped playing mech because I lost so much after around 5 or so days so it was technically not a full week. But it was enough testing to draw conclusions from. Also, there were some games that I didn't include in the replay pack because they were just in base all ins from the toss.
Sounds like a good idea! If the games are good enough then im sure Day[9] will do a daily using them, after all he did say he wants more TvP mech and thats exactly what youyr sending him!
Edit: You could also try air terran? Banshee viking raven into BCs while you spend all your minerals on mass expanding OC's
I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius.
Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results.
Good luck
If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into.
I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU
On December 07 2011 19:36 FlaminGinjaNinja wrote: Sounds like a good idea! If the games are good enough then im sure Day[9] will do a daily using them, after all he did say he wants more TvP mech and thats exactly what youyr sending him!
Edit: You could also try air terran? Banshee viking raven into BCs while you spend all your minerals on mass expanding OC's
Air terran is kinda gimmicky and vunerable to templar, i dont think it is viable as a game style, whereas mech has some potential
On December 07 2011 19:41 Cyro wrote: I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius.
Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results.
Good luck
If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into.
I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU
The point isn't to use absolute pure mech, it is to not use standard marine/marauder/medivac compositions. At least, that is what I think. So marine/thor/banshee seems like it is worth mention, especially since I consider starport tech also a part of mech.
On December 07 2011 19:41 Cyro wrote: I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius.
Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results.
Good luck
If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into.
I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU
The point isn't to use absolute pure mech, it is to not use standard marine/marauder/medivac compositions. At least, that is what I think. So marine/thor/banshee seems like it is worth mention, especially since I consider starport tech also a part of mech.
I always considered them widely seperate, aside from probably vikings, and i think i still hold the same view with marine/thor/banshee. The last word that comes to mind to describe that composition is mech, and it is countered with a style that is horrible vs "standard" mech ie hellion siege tank core with a few other units around
On December 07 2011 19:58 rauk wrote: just copy what goody does, hellion tank every game every matchup
He switched to Bio in TvP cause he says Mech isnt playable after the last few patches.
I also dont consider your Thor Banshee Marine as Mech. And the more problem with this is: Once he has Colossus or High Templar you die. Colossus outrange Thors and wreck Marines. And HT counters every unit of that composition. Add some Archons and Zealots and its just over.
I was adjusting my TvP Mech play to a 2 Base Timingpush with Ghosts Marine Tank and Hellions. Aslong as the Toss aint stupid you will never win in the lategame
Was playing mech only TvP at high/mid masters level last season (EU ladder).
I had some very good success with one fac marines/tanks expo into double armory upgraded tanks/hellions/vikings plus ghosts for EMP.
No idea if this is viable at GM/high GM level though as I'm not exactly super talented nor have enough time to practice a lot, but it's fun and lots of P have no idea how to deal with it.
I think it will be interesting to see how successful mech can be in T v P. I feel like it has been a LONG time since I have seen T v P mech in any pro games. It needs to be done again since there has been buffs and nerfs that have happened over the past few months. If your lucky you might run into TT1, he likes to a-click into a full siege line and lose his entire army=)
On December 07 2011 20:21 Levistus wrote: Good luck man! I always chose Terran(BW/SC2) because of the Siege Tank.
Or maybe we just have to wait for HOTS for Battle Hellions and especially the Warhounds which I heard were good vs mech(protoss has some mech right?).
stalker, sentry, colossus, immortal, warp prism, phoenix, void ray, carrier, interceptor, mothership, probe, observer so everything but zealot and the templar tech (dt, ht, archon).
i chose terran cause of tanks too ^.^
@guy with that awesome icon from france: after the season change some balance changes happened: + Show Spoiler +
1.4.0 Immortal
Attack range increased from 5 to 6.
Warp Prism
Shields increased from 40 to 100.
Hellion
Infernal Pre-Igniter damage upgrade decreased from 10 to 5.
1.4.2 Forge
The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 1 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 200/200 The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 2 has been decreased to 225/225, down from 300/300 The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 3 has been decreased to 300/300, down from 400/400 The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250 The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250
Ghost
EMP radius has been decreased from 2 to 1.5
I think every of those was a huge nerf to mech in tvp. especially emp and hellion nerf. (the warpprism just made them use it)
maybe i can find an interview of the only successful mech player at pro level (goody) where he states why mech aint useful anymore. i saw one last week but it was in german where he stated, that you cant trade efficiently after the last patches which makes it impossible. sure if the protoss player doesnt know how to react he will loose anyways.
I switched back to bio as soon as thors had energy again, and the recent immortal buff makes random games on XC even painful to mech with. I didn't see the SOTG episode yet but I'm interested now.
You need to rely on hellions shitting on workers, which is not too much of a challenge but there are a lot of very powerful immortal timings before the T is able to fit ghosts in that just straight up win in most circumstances. Regardless of what Artosis says, there's a reason why Korean T don't mech against P aside from 1 in every 50 series: because it's difficult, not cost effective, and there aren't any benefits over bio. We won't see much experimentation until HOTS probably =(
Should be interesting, but I feel any successful games will be due to the protoss not handling it correctly. Sometimes you don't even need to use the power of being a mobile army and can just straight up kill them once you get the correct tech paths. I'm pretty much sold that mech (at least in the form of helions and tanks) will just never work as it is right now. Thors have shown potential, but only for timing attacks rather than solid mid game and late game play. When even goody says he's practicing bio, then you know it's pretty bad.
You should veto all the small maps before you start. It will definitely give you a higher win % as well as giving a better reflection on what the playstyle would be like in a tournament (most of the big ones use macro maps exclusively).
But yeah I think mech is really strong, particularly if you sprinkle a few banshees in there to take care of imms and lots.
Interesting bit of trivia: If you a-move 200 supply of imms into sieged up siegetanks with line of sight and the same upps, the siege tanks win. I think 90 supply was the break even pt for siege tanks and immortals, although a few lots sprinkled in forces it much higher.
Always make sure sure sure sure that you have banshees mixed in. Without banshees, immortal collosus absolutely wrecks mech T_T I've had tosses break 32 tanks+hellion/thors mixed in, made me a sad panda. Anyways, Protoss has no true answer to terran air because vikings are so strong and stalkers take full dmg from tanks. However feedback is really good vs thor/banshee/raven and it's hard to get ghost out as well as the proper unit composition+upgrades off 6-8 gas. Right now I feel protoss has a pretty strong upper hand against mech builds because of how much gas is needed to support a true terran mechball(tank thor viking banshee raven ghost upgrades). The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 30-40 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
Oh yeah biggest piece of advice, if you are moving more than 5 tanks at once, you are doing it wrong. Getting caught out of position for even a second will lose you the game. If you ever have to panic siege, you lost the game, zealots are on top of your tanks, and you can't replace a mech army.
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
Fixed it for you
That's only 4 gas T_T 8-10 gas would be normal late game(24-30 workers) + some to build shit.
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
I played a few as this thread piqued my curiosity. It was pretty fun until they catch on to what your doing and start making stalkers and immortals. Then they would just a-move into my tank line. The hellions can't hold off the immortals long enough for the tanks to deal with them.
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: The biggest advantage with mech is the fact that if the game goes late enough you can mineral dump into orbitals and turrets and have only like 12 scvs, giving you an extreme army advantage.
Fixed it for you
Why is this an advantage of mech only?
Because when you play bio you can't mineral dump as mmm+ghost is much more mineral intensive and they build faster, and your main production facility cost no gas. When meching the only fast building mineral unit you build are hellions and generally you just send packs of them everywhere to harass while building gas units, cc's and turrets. If you ever play mech you will always have a mineral excess in the thousands because you can't support unit production and upgrades with your limited amount of gas.
On December 07 2011 22:27 sh4w wrote: I played a few as this thread piqued my curiosity. It was pretty fun until they catch on to what your doing and start making stalkers and immortals. Then they would just a-move into my tank line. The hellions can't hold off the immortals long enough for the tanks to deal with them.
Immortals are good against tanks in small to medium numbers, once the tank count gets high enough they actually counter immortals. EMP'ed immortals die instantly. Blink stalkers make it impossible to mech on maps where blink can go right into main and the third is far away(metalopolis).
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: Always make sure sure sure sure that you have banshees mixed in. Without banshees, immortal collosus absolutely wrecks mech T_T I've had tosses break 32 tanks+hellion/thors mixed in, made me a sad panda. Anyways, Protoss has no true answer to terran air because vikings are so strong and stalkers take full dmg from tanks.
If you dont build Vikings or Ghosts you are lost. Thats just normal. Banshees arent an option for Lategame. Though noone meching terran needs thors in TvP. They dont do anything better than any other mech unit. The Antiair isnt useful. Tanking damage aint good cause of feedback and hellions are a lot better at it. And the grounddamage is worse than any other meching unit (you need the splash)
On December 07 2011 21:08 superbabosheki wrote: Always make sure sure sure sure that you have banshees mixed in. Without banshees, immortal collosus absolutely wrecks mech T_T I've had tosses break 32 tanks+hellion/thors mixed in, made me a sad panda. Anyways, Protoss has no true answer to terran air because vikings are so strong and stalkers take full dmg from tanks.
If you dont build Vikings or Ghosts you are lost. Thats just normal. Banshees arent an option for Lategame. Though noone meching terran needs thors in TvP. They dont do anything better than any other mech unit. The Antiair isnt useful. Tanking damage aint good cause of feedback and hellions are a lot better at it. And the grounddamage is worse than any other meching unit (you need the splash)
A few thors early on is needed to survive allins, at least in my experience, since in that timing a small tank count does no dmg to zealots(35 a shot), and mass repair is always good. Thor ground dps is unrated, but I agree they are become pretty bad lategame. Vikings are obviously a staple unit that counters all protoss air and collosus, banshees are great vs a robo heavy player. Obviously ghosts are good too but there's no way you can afford them and maintain a high army count+upgrades until later on in the game, a bit after you secure your third.
On December 07 2011 20:21 Levistus wrote: Good luck man! I always chose Terran(BW/SC2) because of the Siege Tank.
Or maybe we just have to wait for HOTS for Battle Hellions and especially the Warhounds which I heard were good vs mech(protoss has some mech right?).
stalker, sentry, colossus, immortal, warp prism, phoenix, void ray, carrier, interceptor, mothership, probe, observer so everything but zealot and the templar tech (dt, ht, archon).
i chose terran cause of tanks too ^.^
@guy with that awesome icon from france: after the season change some balance changes happened: + Show Spoiler +
1.4.0 Immortal
Attack range increased from 5 to 6.
Warp Prism
Shields increased from 40 to 100.
Hellion
Infernal Pre-Igniter damage upgrade decreased from 10 to 5.
1.4.2 Forge
The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 1 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 200/200 The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 2 has been decreased to 225/225, down from 300/300 The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 3 has been decreased to 300/300, down from 400/400 The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250 The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175 The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250
Ghost
EMP radius has been decreased from 2 to 1.5
I think every of those was a huge nerf to mech in tvp. especially emp and hellion nerf. (the warpprism just made them use it)
maybe i can find an interview of the only successful mech player at pro level (goody) where he states why mech aint useful anymore. i saw one last week but it was in german where he stated, that you cant trade efficiently after the last patches which makes it impossible. sure if the protoss player doesnt know how to react he will loose anyways.
Here's an interview from dreamhack with goody where he says that mech isn't as viable anymore due to the blue flame nerf:
Good luck with your mech mission, just be wary of the blink stalkers, they are the main thing that's been keeping me from meching any longer. If protoss scouts my mech opening and goes for really fast blink there are so many ways to abuse the immobility of tanks.
On December 07 2011 21:30 Barburas wrote: Didn't fxoasd do a mech build which beat hero recently in the GSL? Game 2 on Bel Shir beach if I'm not misremembering.
The game you are referring to, was a bio-mech build. It was Thors (like 12-14 of them), marines (i would say 40+ of them) 3 banshees, 1 raven and 6-8 vikings. which isnt really mech™, but interesting no less, the type of mech people are talking about is tank based.
On December 07 2011 19:36 FlaminGinjaNinja wrote: Sounds like a good idea! If the games are good enough then im sure Day[9] will do a daily using them, after all he did say he wants more TvP mech and thats exactly what youyr sending him!
Edit: You could also try air terran? Banshee viking raven into BCs while you spend all your minerals on mass expanding OC's
Air terran is kinda gimmicky and vunerable to templar, i dont think it is viable as a game style, whereas mech has some potential
How is air any more gimmicky than any other build? And everything in the terran army is vulnerable to HTs - not just feedback, but storms as well. Mech is actually really bad against storms, because chargelots absorb the first tank volleys and then the HTs are in range to do guaranteed full damage on the tanks. And hellions don't last under storms either.
I really think a stable, 2/3 air 1/3 ground army split is infinitely better than bio-mech or straight up mech. The key is figuring out a build that lets you get to this point safely while keeping pressure on the protoss player I've been watching Avilo's stream a bit, and if he manages to get up to a significant number of BCs, nothing can really touch him. And mass banshee harass midgame is actually very effective, even when HTs are out. I've come back from really difficult situations, just because banshees in critical mass kills everything on the ground so quickly. Banshees are a great tool for game long harassment, much better than medivacs, imo.
On December 07 2011 19:41 Cyro wrote: I wouldnt consider marine/thor/banshee Mech, only one of those 3 units benefits from vehicle upgrades, and is built from a factory - alongside this, THE counter play involves a crapton of high templar (storms on marines+banshees, feedbacks on banshees+thors) which would just seem weird vs pure mech with sc2 storm damage and radius.
Aside from that, im glad that somebody has finally decided to do this, and it will be interesting to see some of your results.
Good luck
If you want something to start out with, as a protoss player i have found hellions amazingly difficult to deal with in early/midgame (before multiple colossi) because they trash zealots cost for cost, and stalkers are amazingly low damage vs light units (try killing 10 hellions with 6 stalkers, about equal cost) so all in all it is just hard to deal with the raw HP of the hellions with no units that are good vs light, splash damage is always nice on them of course, but they act as a buffer for siege tank shots, and atleast pre-patch, it wasnt too hard to just surround a few immortals and hold position or something while the low damage hellion flames ate hardened shield and the tanks shelled away at the protoss army, it is deceptively hard to hold off a hellion heavy push after 1gate expand into 3gate robo, so i think it is worth your time to look into.
I would offer to play a ton of pvt's with you, but im on EU
The point isn't to use absolute pure mech, it is to not use standard marine/marauder/medivac compositions. At least, that is what I think. So marine/thor/banshee seems like it is worth mention, especially since I consider starport tech also a part of mech.
You lose all the mobility of a bio army and you have to split upgrade paths in that case. The reason why people want to play as pure mech as possible is too keep the upgrades streamlined. Just look at Jjakji's Eye of the Storm game vs Oz. He opened with a ton of tanks and marines and did a great bunker contain against Oz. He preemptively switched to bio as charge finished, because he knew that the contain and the tanks couldn't deal with chargelots. The contain instantly evaporated, it really underlines why mech is so bad in tvp. Luckily Jjakji had done enough damage and gained enough of an advantage at that point, so he won the game anyway.
On December 07 2011 20:32 sixnoluv wrote: I think it will be interesting to see how successful mech can be in T v P. I feel like it has been a LONG time since I have seen T v P mech in any pro games. It needs to be done again since there has been buffs and nerfs that have happened over the past few months. If your lucky you might run into TT1, he likes to a-click into a full siege line and lose his entire army=)
what buffs/nerfs have supposedly been made to the game to make mech more viable? If anything it's the opposite (hellion nerf, immortal range)
Banshees get 1shot by feedback and if you stack them, you will loose your entire army to 1-2 storms, if you dont stack them, they are really not that good in combat. If you play air you are far more vunerable to storms than if you were to run with marine/marauder without any units to spot or any ghosts at like the half hour mark, your entire army is so low health. I havnt seen an air build work vs a decent protoss just because your entire army isnt really that good if it doesnt stack (cant prevent toss expanding almost at will) and if you do stack and try to micro banshees around etc you will just loose them all to one AOE shot, assuming you make it that far into the game without dieing to one of like 10 early-midgame pressure builds because you are committing to air.
I havnt played against it enough to go into much detail but in general i just dont see it working because of AOE damage and no way to deny expansions and/or templar, it seems to be rolled over without competition when protoss plays with that style
Here's the problem I've encountered with trying mech compositions against Protoss: my early game is way too vulnerable to early-game pressure/allins from Protoss.
My solution was to begin with a 2-rax reactor-first pressure, and expand behind it. It's not too terribly difficult to transition out of, and it's a great way to put pressure on your opponent, allowing you to tech and expand while maintaining a reasonably sized army.
On December 08 2011 00:56 Cyro wrote: Banshees get 1shot by feedback and if you stack them, you will loose your entire army to 1-2 storms, if you dont stack them, they are really not that good in combat. If you play air you are far more vunerable to storms than if you were to run with marine/marauder without any units to spot or any ghosts at like the half hour mark, your entire army is so low health. I havnt seen an air build work vs a decent protoss just because your entire army isnt really that good if it doesnt stack (cant prevent toss expanding almost at will) and if you do stack and try to micro banshees around etc you will just loose them all to one AOE shot, assuming you make it that far into the game without dieing to one of like 10 early-midgame pressure builds because you are committing to air.
I havnt played against it enough to go into much detail but in general i just dont see it working because of AOE damage and no way to deny expansions and/or templar, it seems to be rolled over without competition when protoss plays with that style
if you leave cloak on, feedback doesn't do anything against banshees. In fact, I've started getting a lot of good trades with protoss players using only a bunch of HTs for defense, because I've stopped running away at the mere sight of the HTs. They feedback, I take like 20 damage and then I kill all their costly HTs and then snipe some pylons or tech, and then I fly to a safe spot on the map and repair, while harassing with a fresh set of banshees somewhere else.
If you're playing air you should be bunkering up at certain positions to stop counterattacks, not leaving your marines out in the open, and you should be spending your excess resources on PFs (and turrets if the protoss is getting air units) Storm doesn't do anything against bunkers and PFs. Ideally you should only be doing the big army vs army fights around these bunkers and PFs, where it's likely that the random turrets will kill off observers and your banshees can now clean up. It's this part of the air style that makes it not gimmicky - terran's static defenses are really good.
The reason why air tvp isn't as bad as you think it is - and can be viable in the right hands - is that air circumvents most of the protoss army's power units and banshees beat stalkers in a straight up fight. This means blink stalker harass isn't that effective. Chargelots are reasonably trivial against bunkers with PFs and depots around them, colossi are free kills and microing against storm and archons isn't that hard.
The biggest problem with air terran is finding a way to effectively deal with protoss air, without ending up in a situation where you now have 6+ starports that you no longer can use.
On December 08 2011 01:10 mbr2321 wrote: Here's the problem I've encountered with trying mech compositions against Protoss: my early game is way too vulnerable to early-game pressure/allins from Protoss.
My solution was to begin with a 2-rax reactor-first pressure, and expand behind it. It's not too terribly difficult to transition out of, and it's a great way to put pressure on your opponent, allowing you to tech and expand while maintaining a reasonably sized army.
Wow thats exactly what i have been doing - down to the T ;O
i would open up 1-1-1 banshee hellions, use the mobility to harras and buy time for the mech army to build up so i played it more like zerg, defensively until i got the tech. so a fast exp was very helpful. because the main problem is the build up time of a mech army and vs toss its even harder to build it up Blink stalkers would crush this banshee hellion opening... still it might be good vs a fast robo or stargate. using your marines and bunkers to defend. A raven was very helpful using this build, the point defense drone will give u a free getaway.
i tried this build for a week and since then i never stray from bio in a tvp way to hard going mech or it could be my strat
GL Soda, you'll probably quit the game before the week is over or you'll lose your sanity. btw if at all just send day9 1-2 replays hes not gonna look through all of them o.o
On December 08 2011 01:10 mbr2321 wrote: Here's the problem I've encountered with trying mech compositions against Protoss: my early game is way too vulnerable to early-game pressure/allins from Protoss.
My solution was to begin with a 2-rax reactor-first pressure, and expand behind it. It's not too terribly difficult to transition out of, and it's a great way to put pressure on your opponent, allowing you to tech and expand while maintaining a reasonably sized army.
The biggest problem I see with opening 2 rax into mech is that it does actually transition poorly. I'm assuming this is the 1 gas tech lab reactor expand, where you get concussive shells. Sure it gives you a reactor and tech lab, but it reaaally delays your expansion and factory. The basic idea of transitioning to mech, is to have the most slim defense possible so you can get your factories started the fastest. Also how are these 2 barracks integrating with your overall strategy? Do you use them as like spotters later on, or maybe even putting them in front of the tanks to slow the zealots? Or perhaps even ghosts.
On December 08 2011 03:13 KawaiiRice wrote: GL Soda, you'll probably quit the game before the week is over or you'll lose your sanity. btw if at all just send day9 1-2 replays hes not gonna look through all of them o.o
This is actually a good point. Maybe just send him the best replays or a variety of replays. But I'll still be putting together a replay pack of all the games if anyone wants to watch them.
I'm going to be on a Masters smurf cranking out mech. I'm thinking maybe a 2 rax expo. Then swap the reactor and tech to the factories. Going biomech and slowly getting into pure mech.
What about Thor + Cloak Banshee, awhile back it used to be all the rage in TvP late game because you would always snipe their Obs and Protoss has no alternate like EMP or Fungal or scan in desperate situations.
On December 07 2011 20:20 PoP wrote: Was playing mech only TvP at high/mid masters level last season (EU ladder).
I had some very good success with one fac marines/tanks expo into double armory upgraded tanks/hellions/vikings plus ghosts for EMP.
No idea if this is viable at GM/high GM level though as I'm not exactly super talented nor have enough time to practice a lot, but it's fun and lots of P have no idea how to deal with it.
Replays please of high-mid masters on EU? That's impressive, considering the EU ladder is about half a league above its NA counterpart.
Pure theorycrafting, but back in BW, 1 rax expo or 1 fact expo into double armory into 3 fast third into mid-game 1/1 upgraded mech push or a later 2/2 almost maxed push, was a legitimate build. Why? Because although it gave up some map control due to the super early double armories, protoss could still not expand completely freely because of spider mines and vultures. Also, siege tanks were just much stronger, and the toss has to constantly be on his game and be ready to fend off pushes.
Now, here in SC2, you're doing essentially the same thing, which is bad in my opinion because if I ever play you, I would double expand and mass gates/robos with triple chrono'ed upgrades as soon as I see your factories making tanks with no starport and 2 armories. You probably had some success due to the rarity of the build, where tosses didn't optimally set themselves up for the mid-late game or failed to scout you.
The problem honestly lies in the strength of the siege tank. In BW, it was OK for a terran to turtle, because a 200/200 mech army in broodwar with upgrades is usually unstoppable. Depending on micro/spell usage/terrain, a toss in BW usually is happy to trade his entire 6 control groups of units for half of his opponent's mech army, and the game is decided by whether the terran can take additional bases or kill toss expos before his army gets completed picked up by toss reinforcements.
In SC2, mech just plain suck against toss, especially since your build gives so much time to the toss to tech and expand. You don't even need both; as long as colossi or templar tech is out, a protoss army trades cost effectively with the terran mech army, which is in my opinion utterly ridiculous. Again, the root of the problem is that siege tanks just don't do enough damage, especially when I play SC2 in a BW style going 1a2a3a4a5a6a from 6 angles to minimize splash damage making a nice concave. This is a serious problem because the siege tank does similar amounts of DPS unsieged vs sieged, the only difference being splash damage; this is great against zerglings/banelings, but against the much large stalker/colossi army with nice pre-engagement spreading, siege tanks blows balls. I'll look through my replays, but I distinctively remember a few games where I took an early economy hit due to a poorly defended hellion run-by or reapers (you should try proxying 1 rax near the toss base, then pumping 3 reapers with speed upgrade after the factory is complete, that shit is so gay if you don't see it coming @ guaranteed 8+ probe kills depending on his main army position), but came back easily winning easily simply because my opponent continued to mech whereas a bio transition probably would have killed me or denied me my third.
I almost think it's better to go thor/hellion tvp than tank/hellion, I just cannot stress how much siege tanks such in TvP in SC2. In BW, whenever Terran units came out of the natural expo, it instill FEAR in me; it was an instinct to pull back my army and stall for additional time. In SC2 I could do the same, but army strength usually makes it my habit to just 1a everything every time I see the terran try to move out as long as my upgrades aren't like 30 seconds away from completion, usually to good results and a quick victory.
I'm not saying mech is totally unplayable, but against equally skilled opponents, the terran player's win percentage would be much higher if he bio'ed every game rather than going mech.
I am working on this too, my feeling is that regardless of whether or not mech actually turns out to be viable at the end of a lot of people tinkering with this. The worst thing that can happen is that a lot of new stuff was learned on the way.
When it comes to the theory of mech in TvP I am of the opinion that it is the way you get to a mech army that is the crucial part of this puzzle and not so much how to lategame mech vs toss. I see two major vulnerabilities for mech in TvP. The first one is being able to take enough of the map and to remax without just dying or getting contained before that, and the second is how to deal with very specialized protoss armies designed to take down your mech force. Mass immortal/chargelot for instance.
I know mobility is also a vulnerability of mech but I reject the idea that this is of some particular importance in TvP. Terran bio is arguably way more mobile than protoss can ever be, and you can mech just fine vs pure bio. So whatever problems mech has to adjust for in terms of mobility the basic solutions from TvT will probably be applicable in TvP.
So my thought is that people who try mech are way too focused on meching the whole game, where as I am more inclined to think that the goal would be to mech in the later stages of the game and use a set of solid transitions during the early and mid game which will get you into a meching position in the lategame while controlling protoss's decisions so that they can't just make that perfect army.
While I don't know exactly how I would design this build or where it's weaknesses lie I am thinking of a two punch transition while expanding based on already viable terran strategies. Open with a 2 rax expand to instantly put pressure on protoss and punish greedy play while you get your first expand up safely. Then go into something on the lines of the old iechoic tvp or synystyrs tvp where you make banshees as actual fighting units and not just one or two to harass. What I am thinking about is that you play banshee's like mutas. You keep adding banshees while focusing on retaining all of them. You don't throw them away, keep harassing keep adding them up and keep killing off lone units, buildings etc. Use cloak and the ability to pick off observers to prevent toss from just going all in on you off 2 base. Hellion harass is probably viable during this phase as well. Basically the idea is to put a shitload of pressure on protoss while you take a third and maybe even a fourth and transition into pumping tanks 3 at a time. But the banshee play most importantly forces protoss into unit choices that are not ideal against mech.
Everyone who says mech is impossible instantly jumps to the example of zealot/immortal vs tank based play but that is assuming you just let protoss go zealot/immortal. If you try to go marauder/hellion all game in TvZ zerg will not just allow that but will go mutas and punish you for it. If you retain a banshee ball protoss is forced to add anti air. Stalkers actually suck against banshees in higher numbers and even blink is pointless if you have PDD and just play it safely. I don't think that protoss can actually afford to not go air if you keep putting banshee pressure on and phoenixes deal very well with banshees. But that is the whole point, to force protoss unit comp into several tech paths.
If not you get a situation that we occasionally see in TvT when one player goes mech and the other goes biotank where the meching player gets just one or two banshees and starts picking off the bio/tank players tanks because he has no air control. In the late game you just need a dash of banshees to pick off every single immportal on the field if protoss refuses to battle for air control. Feedback is useless if you keep using cloak to drain energy.
Exactly what your composition would be in the lategame I don't know, I imagine that you would try to keep pressure on protoss to get to a tank/ghost core with banshee/raven mixed in small numbers. Then you need a buffer against zealots and blink stalkers and you need to have the anti air against a protoss air build. You could go for pure marines as buffer to deal with air or marine/hellion mix as a buffer or even just hellions and just play vikings reactively if you actually see protoss going air.
I am just brainstorming here I actually do not know if you could make a build where you don't die to timing pushes while doing the transition from banshee's to mech or which unit compositions is the best one in the lategame, or even if 2 rax and then banshee is the best way to pressure and buy time. But my feeling is that this idea of using non tank based pressure to give yourself the room to go tanks, and to force protoss unit compositions is the key to mech.
On December 08 2011 11:07 VanGarde wrote: I am working on this too, my feeling is that regardless of whether or not mech actually turns out to be viable at the end of a lot of people tinkering with this. The worst thing that can happen is that a lot of new stuff was learned on the way.
When it comes to the theory of mech in TvP I am of the opinion that it is the way you get to a mech army that is the crucial part of this puzzle and not so much how to lategame mech vs toss. I see two major vulnerabilities for mech in TvP. The first one is being able to take enough of the map and to remax without just dying or getting contained before that, and the second is how to deal with very specialized protoss armies designed to take down your mech force. Mass immortal/chargelot for instance.
I know mobility is also a vulnerability of mech but I reject the idea that this is of some particular importance in TvP. Terran bio is arguably way more mobile than protoss can ever be, and you can mech just fine vs pure bio. So whatever problems mech has to adjust for in terms of mobility the basic solutions from TvT will probably be applicable in TvP.
So my thought is that people who try mech are way too focused on meching the whole game, where as I am more inclined to think that the goal would be to mech in the later stages of the game and use a set of solid transitions during the early and mid game which will get you into a meching position in the lategame while controlling protoss's decisions so that they can't just make that perfect army.
While I don't know exactly how I would design this build or where it's weaknesses lie I am thinking of a two punch transition while expanding based on already viable terran strategies. Open with a 2 rax expand to instantly put pressure on protoss and punish greedy play while you get your first expand up safely. Then go into something on the lines of the old iechoic tvp or synystyrs tvp where you make banshees as actual fighting units and not just one or two to harass. What I am thinking about is that you play banshee's like mutas. You keep adding banshees while focusing on retaining all of them. You don't throw them away, keep harassing keep adding them up and keep killing off lone units, buildings etc. Use cloak and the ability to pick off observers to prevent toss from just going all in on you off 2 base. Hellion harass is probably viable during this phase as well. Basically the idea is to put a shitload of pressure on protoss while you take a third and maybe even a fourth and transition into pumping tanks 3 at a time. But the banshee play most importantly forces protoss into unit choices that are not ideal against mech.
Everyone who says mech is impossible instantly jumps to the example of zealot/immortal vs tank based play but that is assuming you just let protoss go zealot/immortal. If you try to go marauder/hellion all game in TvZ zerg will not just allow that but will go mutas and punish you for it. If you retain a banshee ball protoss is forced to add anti air. Stalkers actually suck against banshees in higher numbers and even blink is pointless if you have PDD and just play it safely. I don't think that protoss can actually afford to not go air if you keep putting banshee pressure on and phoenixes deal very well with banshees. But that is the whole point, to force protoss unit comp into several tech paths.
If not you get a situation that we occasionally see in TvT when one player goes mech and the other goes biotank where the meching player gets just one or two banshees and starts picking off the bio/tank players tanks because he has no air control. In the late game you just need a dash of banshees to pick off every single immportal on the field if protoss refuses to battle for air control. Feedback is useless if you keep using cloak to drain energy.
Exactly what your composition would be in the lategame I don't know, I imagine that you would try to keep pressure on protoss to get to a tank/ghost core with banshee/raven mixed in small numbers. Then you need a buffer against zealots and blink stalkers and you need to have the anti air against a protoss air build. You could go for pure marines as buffer to deal with air or marine/hellion mix as a buffer or even just hellions and just play vikings reactively if you actually see protoss going air.
I am just brainstorming here I actually do not know if you could make a build where you don't die to timing pushes while doing the transition from banshee's to mech or which unit compositions is the best one in the lategame, or even if 2 rax and then banshee is the best way to pressure and buy time. But my feeling is that this idea of using non tank based pressure to give yourself the room to go tanks, and to force protoss unit compositions is the key to mech.
I skimmed your post, and it seems to me that every single one of your idea about making mech viable revolves around gaining some sort of early advantage, pretty much ignoring mech completely until you would win with anything anyway. 2 rax into expansion into continually pumped banshees... then after securing 1-2 more expansion purely with banshee/hellion harass, start making tanks 3 at a time? Seems to me if the toss is getting harassed so hard that he lets you take additional bases and mass tanks, then you've won already.
Have you tried 1 rax expand into 2/1/1 timing transtition into mech? I don't particularly like the idea of straight mech from start to finish to legitimize it as "mech" and not "bio-mech" but I think some mech units can work as a transition. Day9 suggested a reactor rax opening, I would probably even try a 2 or 3 rax opening, maybe you can make a cool clean transition that uses the rax to make a bunch of add-ons and save time =p That's something I would enjoy at least, gl!
I'm streaming now, if anyone wants to see mech TvP. So far 0-6 against toss. Probably due to the fact that I have absoultely no experience vs Toss with mech...
On December 07 2011 20:20 PoP wrote: Was playing mech only TvP at high/mid masters level last season (EU ladder).
I had some very good success with one fac marines/tanks expo into double armory upgraded tanks/hellions/vikings plus ghosts for EMP.
No idea if this is viable at GM/high GM level though as I'm not exactly super talented nor have enough time to practice a lot, but it's fun and lots of P have no idea how to deal with it.
Replays please of high-mid masters on EU? That's impressive, considering the EU ladder is about half a league above its NA counterpart.
Pure theorycrafting, but back in BW, 1 rax expo or 1 fact expo into double armory into 3 fast third into mid-game 1/1 upgraded mech push or a later 2/2 almost maxed push, was a legitimate build. Why? Because although it gave up some map control due to the super early double armories, protoss could still not expand completely freely because of spider mines and vultures. Also, siege tanks were just much stronger, and the toss has to constantly be on his game and be ready to fend off pushes.
Now, here in SC2, you're doing essentially the same thing, which is bad in my opinion because if I ever play you, I would double expand and mass gates/robos with triple chrono'ed upgrades as soon as I see your factories making tanks with no starport and 2 armories. You probably had some success due to the rarity of the build, where tosses didn't optimally set themselves up for the mid-late game or failed to scout you.
The problem honestly lies in the strength of the siege tank. In BW, it was OK for a terran to turtle, because a 200/200 mech army in broodwar with upgrades is usually unstoppable. Depending on micro/spell usage/terrain, a toss in BW usually is happy to trade his entire 6 control groups of units for half of his opponent's mech army, and the game is decided by whether the terran can take additional bases or kill toss expos before his army gets completed picked up by toss reinforcements.
In SC2, mech just plain suck against toss, especially since your build gives so much time to the toss to tech and expand. You don't even need both; as long as colossi or templar tech is out, a protoss army trades cost effectively with the terran mech army, which is in my opinion utterly ridiculous. Again, the root of the problem is that siege tanks just don't do enough damage, especially when I play SC2 in a BW style going 1a2a3a4a5a6a from 6 angles to minimize splash damage making a nice concave. This is a serious problem because the siege tank does similar amounts of DPS unsieged vs sieged, the only difference being splash damage; this is great against zerglings/banelings, but against the much large stalker/colossi army with nice pre-engagement spreading, siege tanks blows balls. I'll look through my replays, but I distinctively remember a few games where I took an early economy hit due to a poorly defended hellion run-by or reapers (you should try proxying 1 rax near the toss base, then pumping 3 reapers with speed upgrade after the factory is complete, that shit is so gay if you don't see it coming @ guaranteed 8+ probe kills depending on his main army position), but came back easily winning easily simply because my opponent continued to mech whereas a bio transition probably would have killed me or denied me my third.
I almost think it's better to go thor/hellion tvp than tank/hellion, I just cannot stress how much siege tanks such in TvP in SC2. In BW, whenever Terran units came out of the natural expo, it instill FEAR in me; it was an instinct to pull back my army and stall for additional time. In SC2 I could do the same, but army strength usually makes it my habit to just 1a everything every time I see the terran try to move out as long as my upgrades aren't like 30 seconds away from completion, usually to good results and a quick victory.
I'm not saying mech is totally unplayable, but against equally skilled opponents, the terran player's win percentage would be much higher if he bio'ed every game rather than going mech.
I will post some replays of it when I get back home (older patch version though).
I agree the main problem with the build is the lack of aggressive options until midgame, especially since even hellions come a bit late. But as you take more expansions yourself you essentially force a macro game unless the P commits to an early bust or some sort of cheesy opening. And when the upgraded BF hellions come in you can start poking around everywhere, preventing more expos and so forth.
Then when you get your massive tanks/hellions/vikings force with 2-2 upgrades or more and a couple ghosts, P seems to have a hard time dealing with it unless they catch the tanks unsieged or make some kind of undetected, sudden air switch.
Then again, BF hellions use to completely crap on zealots and EMPs were more effective when I used that build a lot. May not work as well today at the same level. Still I'll post a few replays later just in case.
I too am trying this because it sounds pretty fun. I already mech TvT and apparently I have a semblance of knowledge behind mech tvz since I won my games with it yesterday. TvP however felt so much different then the other two match ups. I feel like the order in which you will develop your midgame is really really delicate compared to tvt and tvz. Since the final composition is so spread out (tank, hellion, thor, banshee, viking, ghost) you need to be really careful to develop properly.
From my own experience with like 5 games, I feel like the banshee is the most important unit to mech properly.
I for one hope some good mech builds come out of this challenge. I think people don't like playing mech not only because it's easy to mess up, but also because when you lose you feel really stupid. A bunch of stalkers blink on top of your tanks and you're just... dead.
It's like in TvZ; mech is viable, but if you don't have thors by the time mutas come out you're just... dead. Not only are you dead, you feel so stupid. You just watch him kill all your scvs. Or, if he prefers, swoop down on your tanks and hellions, and then just kill you with whatever other army he has. Or if you don't get tanks up soon enough and he roach pushes you, you'll just watch as roaches stream up your ramp and kill you. You might not even lose more often, but it's just plain demoralizing the way you lose.
That being said, the siege tank is also probably the single biggest reason I chose Terran in BW, and I do wish there was more to the TvP matchup than marine marauder medivac and mini-emp ghosts. I understand that Terrans haven't had a lot of reason to try mech when MMM+ghost viking has been so successful, but tanks actually ain't bad against Protoss. Hell, pure immortal zealot doesn't even crush tanks as hard as you'd think with a decent hellion count in place. With the main bio AoE (EMP) nerfed, maybe Terrans will be looking around for alternatives?
On December 09 2011 19:22 ChristianS wrote: I for one hope some good mech builds come out of this challenge. I think people don't like playing mech not only because it's easy to mess up, but also because when you lose you feel really stupid. A bunch of stalkers blink on top of your tanks and you're just... dead.
It's like in TvZ; mech is viable, but if you don't have thors by the time mutas come out you're just... dead. Not only are you dead, you feel so stupid. You just watch him kill all your scvs. Or, if he prefers, swoop down on your tanks and hellions, and then just kill you with whatever other army he has. Or if you don't get tanks up soon enough and he roach pushes you, you'll just watch as roaches stream up your ramp and kill you. You might not even lose more often, but it's just plain demoralizing the way you lose.
That being said, the siege tank is also probably the single biggest reason I chose Terran in BW, and I do wish there was more to the TvP matchup than marine marauder medivac and mini-emp ghosts. I understand that Terrans haven't had a lot of reason to try mech when MMM+ghost viking has been so successful, but tanks actually ain't bad against Protoss. Hell, pure immortal zealot doesn't even crush tanks as hard as you'd think with a decent hellion count in place. With the main bio AoE (EMP) nerfed, maybe Terrans will be looking around for alternatives?
This all used to be true, except hellions don't actually kill zealots very well at all any more
On December 08 2011 00:56 Cyro wrote: Banshees get 1shot by feedback and if you stack them, you will loose your entire army to 1-2 storms, if you dont stack them, they are really not that good in combat. If you play air you are far more vunerable to storms than if you were to run with marine/marauder without any units to spot or any ghosts at like the half hour mark, your entire army is so low health. I havnt seen an air build work vs a decent protoss just because your entire army isnt really that good if it doesnt stack (cant prevent toss expanding almost at will) and if you do stack and try to micro banshees around etc you will just loose them all to one AOE shot, assuming you make it that far into the game without dieing to one of like 10 early-midgame pressure builds because you are committing to air.
I havnt played against it enough to go into much detail but in general i just dont see it working because of AOE damage and no way to deny expansions and/or templar, it seems to be rolled over without competition when protoss plays with that style
Also, learned a cool trick from a TL guide today:
If you have banshees in your army and you don't want them to get one-shotted by feedback, select them all and alternate pressing C-D-C-D-C-D-C-D-C-D. Every cloak blows 25 energy, so if you do this pre-battle you can effectively waste any feedbacks that get spent on your banshees.
man im just getting totally owned all day trying mech. i just dont think its ever going to be possible. I had some success going mass air, that is to say just banshee/viking/raven, but man, tanks even in insane numbers, just get rolled by zealots/archons/immortals, frankly everything except stalkers just wrecks my army, and once you lose that mech army, games over, cant rebuild. You spend the whole game making this incredible army, then you lose 1/2 of it to zealots and archons, then the toss will just remax off his like 12+ gateways, and destroy you. in the passed 2 months going mech, ive probly played about 30 games vs toss using mech, ive won 3 games, and that was too a friend who was high as a kite and mid diamond. Im high masters FYI. i hope tuesday we can see something that will make me return to mech, but right now, ive lost too much using this strat, its too bad cause i love mech, but now im forced to make marauders. ergg.
Bio=Rax units Mech=Factory units Sky/Air=Starport units
I think many people in this thread are confusing "mech" with the attribute "mechanical". When Day9 was saying "mech", he was really refering to heavy factory play. So Thor with a sprinkle of Banshee would be fair game, but something like 4 port Bashee + 1 fact Thor would not.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I went through all the Goody TvP replays I could find, post-BFH nerf. I have been having fun with Sky Terran in TvP, and I really wanted to figure out how to make mech TvP work too. Unfortunately, the results were not very encouraging. It's definitely Goody's weakest matchup.
For the most part, it looked like his most successful "pure mech" opening was RFH+Banshee (without cloak). But even then, it was only somewhat okay against FEs, and terrible vs against 1 base. I think some of that has to do with name recognition. The Robo holds all the counters to mech: Observers to Blink up bases and defend against Cloak, Immortals to kill Tanks and Thors, Colossi to kill Hellions and Thors. Because everyone knows Goody goes mech, everyone goes Robo before expanding vs Goody...and Goody knows that, so he rarely goes Cloak. Kinda funny mind games going on there.
Early Game: Most of Goody's TvP wins actually came from bio openings, such as 2 Rax FE and Reactor Marine/Tank, which would both later transition into 2 base Ghostmech. I noticed that his Marine/Tank openings in particular were very sensitive to the P's opening. If the P opened with a FE and Goody gets to push out, then he usually smashes the P's face. However, if the P stays on one base and forces Goody to stay inside his main, then Goody almost always loses. Stalker pressure is always too good at delaying his expo (Goody is usually fine vs Stargate). Goody really seems to struggle to make mech work with just 2 gas. The only other thing worth noting is that if Goody goes for less than 2 Rax worth of bio production, then he will definitely get a fast Viking for early anti-air + scouting.
Mid Game: Here, Goody's play is surprisingly similar to MMMGV players. He gets double armory at about the same time MMMGV gets double Ebay. (he affords the Armories by not getting more than 1 Medivac for Hellion drops) He, too, scouts for Collosi/Templar at the standard time and adds on Vikings/Ghosts as needed. His army backbone is always Tank plus the least amount of Vikings he can get away with. Here in the midgame he'll also make a big Hellion ball with maybe 1 or 2 Medivacs/Banshees and suicide them around the map in order to buy time for his upgrades+Tank count to peak. He recycles Hellion supply for Ghost/Thor supply as soon as he can afford it.
Late Game: If Goody gets to 3/3 and/or high Ghost count, then he usually wins. Goody always maintains a fleet of at least 5-6 Vikings to discourage sudden Colossi production. Other than that, it's pure Tank/Ghost with maybe a handful of Hellions. I guess it makes sense because as long as you can keep Colossi+Stargate off the field, Tanks destroy everything as long as you hit EMPs. Chargelots don't seem to bother Goody much, he just adds 1 or 2 Thors. It's shocking how fast Chargelots melt to 3/3 tank fire, compared to 0/0 tank fire. The extra armor on the tanks really helps mitigate the friendly fire problem. Goody will often build empty bunkers in front of his tanks just to zone out the Chargelots, which is pretty smart imo. You want some SCVs there anyway to repair after each battle. If there isn't anything to repair, then you might as well use them to build some throwaway fortifications.
So yeah. The builds that seem to give Goody the most trouble are 1 base Blink Stalker and heavy Immortal pushes that hit before Goody gets 3/3 and/or a large number of Ghosts. Sometimes I see Goody win a 2+ base game without armories, but never a 2+ base game without Ghosts. I guess you cannot go pure mech in TvP like you can in TvZ and TvT. It really must be Ghostmech.
For some reason Goody doesn't like floating his buildings during trades, and he doesn't like to abuse Cloak either. I think Goody is just personally bad at base trading+queueing. So it's not that it's an inherent weakness of mech, or anything like that. You just need to be as careful where you Siege your Tanks, just like everywhere else in the game.
It is true that Goody does not like Sensor Towers in TvP. I think Artosis made a really good argument for them on SotG. However unlike Artosis, I don't believe that Goody is just ignorant. Goody does use Sensor Towers a *ton* in both TvT and TvZ (far, far more than the average Terran) so there's got to be a good reason why he doesn't also use them in TvP. I just don't know what it is.
On December 07 2011 19:28 sSoda wrote: thors are not very good and they don't really add anything to the composition so only add one or two max.
have you considered that the thors ability kills an immortal from 100% hp and stuns it during the entire time it takes to cast the ability ? obviously ht's counter it, but then again ghosts counter that... It also kills a collusi from 100% hp, but i don't think it "stuns" it because it is massive.
I love playing this build when I TvP, yeah the VOD is pre-hellion nerf but I think the effect is negligible, you have 3 reactor'd factories pumping hellions and their purpose is more to give your push momentum rather than do massive amounts of damage.
I think the gasless expand straight into factory might have some problems vs early pressure, but if you can feel it out and add bunkers/have scvs ready to repair I think you can hold and your siege tank+siege mode comes pretty fast. And pushing with so many hellions is fun, you can be really obnoxious and dart into mineral lines etc
In my experience this build really crushes expand-> colossus play
If I may be so bold to chime in, I think the key to mech TvP in the mid and late game as far as unit composition goes is mostly mass hellions and tanks. Vikings will be needed if any air play is detected and can be used to extend the range of tanks by acting as spotters. 1 - 2 Ravens will help augment to keep pesky stalkers and DTs away. Turrets will most definitely be needed to keep pesky pheonix away.
The reason why I say mass hellions and tanks mostly is for several reasons actually:
1. Mass hellions and tanks = all splash. Even if the total dps is minimal, you can still do a lot of damage with splash because simply splash damage stacks up almost exponentially. I don't care what units you make, if you have enough splash, it will crush anything.
2. Hellions produce at a speed of 30 seconds. Tanks produce at a speed of 45 seconds. Those 2 units are probably the fastest producing units in a mech composition. If I'm not mistaken, marauders also produce at 30 seconds. You can make 2 hellions out of a reactor which is almost like having 2 barracks. Thors won't work because they take 60 seconds to build and are easily cut down by HT. 60 seconds is too long my friends. Likewise, banshees also take 60 seconds to build. I don't believe ghosts will be very helpful as they will eat into your tank count too much, especially in the mid game. Perhaps in the very very late game you can add a touch of ghosts.
3. Hellions provide a good mineral dump and are excellent at harassing. You have to use them like a zerg uses zerglings and do lots of hellion harass, hellion drops, hellion runbys and you only need to use 3-4 hellions to do it. Hellions are also very mobile and can abuse the immobility of protoss armies. Even if you have to do several hellion harasses at once to split the protoss army up, they are still effective at abusing immobility. So hellions are good for applying constant pressure throughout the game, and if you keep up the pressure, the protoss will be less inclined to move out to attack in fear of a hellion runby.
Since we've talked about unit composition, let's talk about production. A fundamental problem with going mech TvP is simply that you can't produce at the same rate as your protoss counterpart should you trade armies. This is why it's imperative that you stick to mostly hellions and tanks since they only take 30 and 45 seconds to build. This is also why it is equally important to make more production capacity than what you can economically support with constant production. In other words, make MANY more factories than you would normally have. Go ape-shit with factories especially in the late game since you will have extra resources and mech armies tend to max out a lot. Every factory with an add-on will give you 3-4 supply every 30-45 seconds. Let's do some simple math:
Warpgates have a 18-28s cooldown with or without chronoboost on zealots. Warpgates have a 30-45s cooldown on high templar. It takes 2 high templar to make an archon with an additional 12 seconds to build for a total build time of 42-57s. Immortals take 55 seconds to produce.
Hellion tanks: Hellions take 30s to produce and can be produced 2 at a time for the cost of a 200/150 factory. Tanks take 45 seconds to produce.
Keep in mind, protoss units are extremely expensive and terran units are relatively cheap compared to protoss. You don't see protoss constantly warping in units and using their gateways, do you? No a lot of protoss players like to build more gateways than they can economically support so that they can create a surge of reinforcements if they need to. Why not do the same thing with terran factories? Keep in mind we are talking more in the late game when resources are more abundant.
HMMM... maybe it is possible to keep up with protoss production using mech....
Now upgrades, you should be able to stay relatively even with protoss, since you are doing mech and so that requires only 2 upgrades. Upgrades early on will be crucial to success.
So now we have our end game strategy for winning: Keep pressure on the protoss with lots of harass and economic damage, take advantage of his immobility with hellions thus keeping him pinned from moving out, start upgrades early and be atleast even with upgrades, and try to be atleast even in bases.
So, we have our strategic plan and a new problem arises: How do we get to that point? What opening do we use? What openings give us the most flexible and easy, smooth transitions? What transitions do we use to get the final result?
Well my friends, I see some parallels in the matchup with other matchups such as mech TvZ. With mech TvZ, I'm finding that it is absolutely critical to apply early pressure, and so I've taken a build that Goody uses where he goes naked factory expand off 1 gas into a 9 minute marine tank hellion push. I believe we can abuse this same timing in TvP as a bridgestone for going into full mech, especially if protoss decides to do some type of early expand. Colossus doesn't show up until around 12 minutes after a protoss fast expand. At 9 minutes there's not a whole lot to threaten you. Blink stalkers shouldn't be much of a problem as you'll only have about 3 tanks with this push and a lot of marines and hellions, and I don't think he'll want to blink into a ball of marines and hellions after taking a volley of tank shells. Heck, I don't think you even have to siege up the tanks. Tanks have 7 range unsieged, stalkers have 6. Stalkers will have to get in range of your marines and hellions to do damage to tanks. Tanks also do more dps to a single unit when unsieged. Zealots and sentries aren't much of a worry because marines and hellions rip through zealots and sentries that early in the game. Immortals won't be a problem early in the game with such a high marine count. Probe pulls get roasted by hellions. As this push is happening, you definitely want to take your third base and transition over to full mech.
With this opening you might think that you are vulnerable to early protoss shenanigans, and you would be correct, which is why you won't do it BLINDLY! This build gives you the flexibility to scout with an early hellion once your factory is complete. Your hellion scout will see what the protoss is doing in time. If you see 1 base protoss play, then go into defense mode and get extra bunkers. I believe we can all use 4K.Warden's early scouting TvP guide to read our opponent as to what he is doing and react appropriately. (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=232753 and http://imgur.com/r/starcraft/FVxdk) If you suspect air play, get a reactor on the factory to swap over to the rax and get a starport out for vikings. If you suspect 4 gate, then get extra bunkers and techlab on factory to get tanks. DTs? You have about 1 minute and 30 seconds to almost 2 minutes before they hit, plenty of time to get a turret at your ramp.
So far I have not tried this opening yet, so this is only theoretics, but I believe it might work. However, there is an alternative opening. Happy's 111 banshee harass opening to keep the protoss pinned back from attacking and into an expand and getting a raven out and going for a 2 base push. I believe we can make a 2 base timing attack with marines, hellions, and tanks and not go for full mech UNTIL we do some damage and get a 3rd base up and running.
These openings offer nice aggression and an awesomely smooth transition over into full mech. I truely believe that you won't be able to go full mech early to mid game in TvP. You need to be super aggressive early in the game and through out the game. I don't like the 2-3 rax openings that people are talking about because they don't transition to full mech in a smooth way. Any builds that require more than 1 rax in the early game I feel is wasteful and just adds extra pork to your build and deviates from your end goal. Much like Day9 said in his Daily #319 that any step you take AWAY from your main strategy is THAT much further you are going away and will take more effort to go back on track. I think it's very important to look at this from an efficient perspective. Using a reactor rax for mass marines early on does NOT deviate at all from the end goal of mass Hellion Tanks, because you are extending the purpose of that barracks. If you build a structure and only use it one time, then it is wasteful. We want to be efficient and make the most of all of our buildings, so the reactor rax gives us a nice bridge to transition over to full mech. Not to mention that a push with such numbers of marines and hellions allows you to be aggressive with tanks early in the game.
I have used the big strategy of being constantly aggressive and doing lots of hellion harass and going hellion tank for pretty much the rest of the game after 2 base and I have used it with a little bit success as I have only recently started going mech TvP. It's that early game transition that's the bugger-oo and tricky part. I strongly believe that if you play more like a zerg in TvP and take advantage of toss immobiliy with hellions, then you will stand a good chance of winning. You will essentially keep the protoss on 2 bases as his 3rd base will nevery really become fully operational if you keep his probe count down.
That's all I got folks, please feel free to critique my post and comment on it with your ideas.
I would really eruge anyone that is interested in Terran Mech vs Protoss at the moment to watch avilo's blog post on it:
For those of you who aren't familiar with him he's a Terran that plays a lot of mech games and late games/long macro games of mech vs all races. He breaks the current metagame of TvP using mech units vs toss very well. I highly recommend it. .
I love playing this build when I TvP, yeah the VOD is pre-hellion nerf but I think the effect is negligible, you have 3 reactor'd factories pumping hellions and their purpose is more to give your push momentum rather than do massive amounts of damage.
I think the gasless expand straight into factory might have some problems vs early pressure, but if you can feel it out and add bunkers/have scvs ready to repair I think you can hold and your siege tank+siege mode comes pretty fast. And pushing with so many hellions is fun, you can be really obnoxious and dart into mineral lines etc
In my experience this build really crushes expand-> colossus play
This is actually a very similar build to what I was thinking about in my post, but factory expand instead and a 9 minute marine hellion tank push with about 2 tanks. It's a build Goody does in TvZ and I love it. It's a very great way to put on pressure early on the game and threaten the protoss natural. This essentially makes it so that the terran player is being aggressive with his mech and the marines and hellion allows the terran to get up in the face of the protoss. I think that's one important key is being able to get up in the protoss' face early on in the game.
Who says that mech needs to be a passive style of play? You can actually be aggressive with mech if you open properly and have the right stuff at the right time and take advantage of certain timings.