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Man, I also rarely use tanks at this point in the game - and that really bothers me because I loved tanks in BW. Hell, I started playing Terran when SC2 came out just because I love all the fun Terran toys like siege tanks.
Sadly, siege tanks aren't nearly as effective as they were in BW, or (obviously) beta SC2. I know people will say that they're strong, and they have better targeting, but their damage is really kinda "blah" - when you compare it to what you get out of infantry with stim.
You can, in most cases, take the same cost in infantry, stim, run forward, and do more damage in less time than your tank would. That's depressing. Tanks aren't a threat until you have sufficient numbers, in which case they're still such a huge sink in resources that I always think to myself "Man, this cash would have been better spent on something more mobile..."
Infantry is the be-all and end-all of the Terran army. You don't make marines to protect your tanks, you only make tanks to protect your marines. It's sad, really.
That being said; no unit will ever be as much fun as a siege tank. Even if it isn't as strong as it used to be.
EDIT: You know, I'll even go so far as to say that tanks never should have been nerfed in beta. Yep, I'm saying it. Tanks should still do 50 dmg flat out and you know what? Infantry should have been nerfed. I feel that so much of Terran's nerfs all come back to the fact that infantry does stupid amounts of damage. So there. I said it. Flame away.
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On March 29 2012 04:32 Tal0n wrote: sounds to me like you play wrong race! most terrans WANT to make tanks because they are frikken fun to make. you could always argue a certain unit is better than another one in some situation. starcraft 2 is stylistic. you can pick how you wanna beat your opponent.
That's the thing, I do like building tanks. If I could have my way, I would build nothing but, it's just I would never win another game if I did that and what I like more than building tanks is winning games where the opponent says things like 'lol teran 0 skil bg!' and quits. Those are the kinds of wins I've been getting with bio.
I did try protoss for a spell and I liked their noob units (air) but felt completely lost using any kind of gateway focused play. I've never liked playing zerg. Don't know why, but they're not my thing. It might be the injects... Yeah, it's the injects. My macro is bad enough as it is without having to worry about that.
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For vs Z you'd have to link me the games where T forgoes tanks alltogether often. I know now there's a lot of delayed tanks, where you delay tanks to rush fast 3 bases and still put on pressure with faster upgraded bio + medivacs, but I can't imagine any T who forgoes tanks, and I watch way too much sc2 for my own good. Pure bio seems weak to good Zergs who go infestor/ling/bling, or roach/ling/bling. Like I've seen pure bio before in GSL matches and it's decent and you keep up on supply so it looks good, but you're one mismicro'd engagement from being completely dead. And tanks just give you an army you need hive tech to deal with. Sure you're doing fine and you can show me your reps of it working but that means nothing still.
Marine king used a tankless style against DRG a few times in both the Winter Areana and Columbus, however i think you really have to be MKP to pull it off.
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marauders are nice against banelings if you have the control yes and you always want a few marauders in your army just in case, but lategame you want those pairs of siege tanks that one shot the infestors, when they are trying to fungal your vikings or marines. Or if the broodlords are alone with the infestors out of position you want those tanks that 2 shot lings and broodligns while your marines are busy. So imo marauders are more of a marine replacement before cracklings then a tank replacement. As those marauders just add some survivability to your marines when you split against banelings. (ling surrounded marauder with medivac heal = some lings out of the fight) Also thanks to the marauders you can get out your tanks later, so you can use the gas for different things. So Marauders help the terran composition alot without adding to much extra control, but i wouldn't skip siege tanks, they are just more flexible against lategame zerg, then the ghost.
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I think MKP showed the viability of going tankless against Z in the recent MLG. Some people respond asking if anyone has MKP level micro, but DRG is 'pretty good' too. Most likely, your Z opponents wont be as good as DRG, and you don't need MKP level micro to pull it off against an opponent that's many times weaker than DRG.
MMM + blue flame hellion could be a nice composition against ling/bling compositions. is this better than tank play? maybe, maybe not. we'll know if this type of play becomes more popular and becomes a standard alternative to tank play. best complement of any strategy is when people are using it more often
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On March 29 2012 04:07 Unwardil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 03:36 aebriol wrote: 1) Do you want to move out on the map before 200 / 200 outside of drops? 2) Do you want to be defended against counterattacks?
Answer: Yes, to both questions, and get tanks in ZvT. What I've been finding happens if I go pure bio is that I can move out with a relatively small group of marines and marauders as my first medivacs start to pop, (and when I have 1/1 finished) deny the zerg's third base, then pick up and run along home without taking any serious damage. At the same time, both my bases have reached full saturation and I have a macro orbital for mules, so my 2 bases are mining better than the zerg's two bases. Sure zerg makes a round of units and double expands afterwards so I can't stay out on the map for any length of time, but I'm safe from counter attacks because I'm still only on two bases and my reinforcements are rallied to my natural where I have a fairly impenetrable wall-in. If the zerg made units, and you don't have blue flame hellions or tanks, he can just kill your wall if he spots you moving out and made units.
Granted, it might be random, but having 1 ling in front of terran base and 2 overlords watching the most likely paths for a medivac out of the base, if you just a-move his wall after he moved out, you'll beat it down and win the game. Because when you move out, yes, you rally units behind your wall, but you basically have no units at home at all (at least the most normal timings is to move out with basically all your units, which just fills up the first 2 medivacs).
This build you are doing relies on the zerg not building units until he has to. However, if he does, you are really weak.
Now, it's a gamble, and there's nothing wrong with taking a gamble... but you should be aware that you simply aren't defended vs counterattacks at all when you use those openings.
The build you are mentioning, 3rd orbital around 6:00, fast upgrades, and moving out with units ... if it's spotted, it dies to any attacks off 2 base with delayed lair. So you are relying on the zerg not being aggressive at all.
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tanks are awesome, pro's use them all the time. i watch alot of starcraft 2 and tanks are used to great success all the time, are you perhaps from bizarro world, i would post a link to a reaplay of pros using tanks but ill just put this instead. www.gomtv.net
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I use tank in everymathcup even vs toss in lategame. They are amazing !!!
The tank is not a bad unit.
But im sure you can use a viable style without them.
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I find that late-game TvP, the only alternative to 10~16 tanks + bio would be a mix of Marauders/Marines, Ghosts, Vikings, Medivacs and Ravens, which would require inhuman control to reach the same efficiency as tanks (try to Stim, PDD, EMP and focus the vikings on the collosai all in 2 seconds, WHILE kiting. You got the idea), while with tanks you need to siege them up, and only worry about the bio ball and maby a few EMPs (drops not included). Plus, in late TvP, on some maps, you can usually build (or float and transform) a Planetary in the middle of the map, with a few auto-repeir SCVs, just to create a choke. The only reason to do is is if you hold that choke with a few tanks+bio+vikings, while the other access to your bases is nearby and the rest of the army can stay there, and this way you can drop-harass and out-macro the toss without fear. Of course, all the above is relevant only in the 200/200 late game, but toss can, naturally, turtle it to late sometimes, no matter how hard you try to kill them early-mid, and then you got no choice but to get tanks (and Planetary, and optionally reapers) or simply die in the last fight or in a base trade (if you both trade bases and lost equal amounts of armies in the attack, and got same sizes of armies left, he'll win unless you got better positioning WITH mass tanks left, protecting some last CC).
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On March 29 2012 01:14 Jermstuddog wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 00:57 KimJongChill wrote:On March 29 2012 00:54 zmansman17 wrote: Rank 2 master Terran here and I actually use marauders over tanks.
I think Tanks are too weak in TvZ and it always bothers me when I watch replays of Zergs who beat me who only mass lings on even upgrades and trade their army MORE cost efficiently than I do with a healthy swath of Terran units (properly seiged, split, stimmed, etc).
I don't understand how Zergs can mass lings all game (refer to Stephano v. Polt where he massed 165 lings at 20 minutes), defend nearly all timings, trade evenly and save gas for any fast tech/upgrades. It just doesn't feel right that a tier 1 unit doesn't have a good counter in the Terran army. Tanks really aren't good against mass lings, but are good for target firing banelings.
Then ling run bys actually win games and contain Terran extremely well.
I think TvZ is in a sad state of affairs. I agree that something must be done with the tank as its utility just isn't there. As a result, I've opted for strong mid game MM timings. I seem forced to use this comp. at this time.
Aren't hellions the counter to zerglings? Lol, and marines, and tanks. Hell, even marauders and thors can kill lings cost-effectively. No counter to lings... LMAO
If lings are so easily countered, how does Stephano hold off Polt in nearly every game -> 20 minutes with just mass lings. And then even in some games after 20 minutes. If a zerg trades even relatively cost efficiently with mass lings, then the zerg is already far ahead.
Assuming the zerg is expanding and banking gas and upgrades, I would love to be taking even trades with my mass ling army as a zerg player.
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On March 29 2012 06:49 aebriol wrote:
The build you are mentioning, 3rd orbital around 6:00, fast upgrades, and moving out with units ... if it's spotted, it dies to any attacks off 2 base with delayed lair. So you are relying on the zerg not being aggressive at all.
I use a reactor hellion expand into fast double upgrades, favoring getting +1 before stim or combat shields and starting +2 right as +1 finishes. I'm aware of the fast 3rd before gas build, but that's not the one I do. My rational (it could be wrong, but this is what it is) is that even though I have fewer units, the units I do have are beasts due to their heavy upgrades so when I finally do move out onto the map to either deny the zerg's third base or secure my own third, my units are going to trade much more cost effectively in any engagement. Your typical marine/tank push happens with stim and +1 finishing. Against a zerg getting double upgrades, they already have 1/1 on their lings. My push comes as I'm finishing +2 weapons, meaning that third hatch of zerg just melts when I focus it down and because I'm not tied down with tanks, when zerg's units arrive, I just pick up and leave.
Also, I pretty much stay on 2 base with 3 orbitals worth of mules for a very long time, reason being, I don't need the extra gas. You can get 3/3 upgrades, reactor medivacs and a lot of bio on just 4 gas no sweat. When my main is running dry I'll expand to a third and secure it with a planetary, but by then I have plenty of units to secure it. Because I'm not trying to build tanks into the mix as well, I have no dire need to take a fast third. This is of course something where you should consider the map layout. Antiga and Entombed valley positively BEG for you to take a fast 3rd, so I do on those maps because I can safely skimp on defenses and get away with it. When the 3rd is further away, I simply rely more heavily on punishing zerg for trying to take a third either with multi pronged haras or simply walking up and sniping the 3rd hatch if zerg is silly enough to let me (often they are, but that might just be a diamond league thing).
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In TvZ marauders are good early on against roaches, and later on against infestors/ultras. Theres a window where you want super heavy marines tho - Marauders are absolute shit against lings. Other than that, if you manage to maintain aggressiveness against zerg I dont think you need tanks. A lot of pros are able to use tanks super effeciently is because they can maintain map control and freely move their tanks across the map without fearing a sudden ling runby to rape everything. Most terran on ladder play more passively when it comes to tanks so it doesnt feel as strong. Tanks, when played aggressively , is super high risk and super high reward. I also usually just opt for marine marauder too :/ - for mass ling style just throw in some hellions
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I agree that marauders are terrible in an open field fight against lings, but that's where medivacs come on. If zerg catches you with lings in a bad position, it's a pretty safe bet that the infestors are not close enough to hit you with a fungal. A quick hot pickup and go not only gives you an achievement, but means you can redeploy those marauders onto say, a ramp, where lings cannot surround them, and in that situation, maruaders actually do just fine against the lings, especially when you have even armor upgrades to zerg's attack ups.
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Wow what region do you guys play on???? I wish I faced terran with no tanks.... as a zerg player, no tanks means auto win. Tanks are a vital part of terran in all mu.....Allows you to hold map control, defend, put aggression out when needed. With out them, z can just walk all over you with large amounts of speed lings/infestors/roaches/blings pretty much anything they wish, with out much threat of your bio ball. Terran req a larger skill curve with proper postion/micro and if you are cought out of postion then you will die.
Honestly the only person that can really get away with out much early tank use is marineKing, then again he is one of those pros with just flawless micro, and in alot of games he gets last sidge or none, he does get punished for it.
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On March 29 2012 15:43 silentdecay01 wrote: Wow what region do you guys play on???? I wish I faced terran with no tanks.... as a zerg player, no tanks means auto win. Tanks are a vital part of terran in all mu.....Allows you to hold map control, defend, put aggression out when needed. With out them, z can just walk all over you with large amounts of speed lings/infestors/roaches/blings pretty much anything they wish, with out much threat of your bio ball. Terran req a larger skill curve with proper postion/micro and if you are cought out of postion then you will die.
Honestly the only person that can really get away with out much early tank use is marineKing, then again he is one of those pros with just flawless micro, and in alot of games he gets last sidge or none, he does get punished for it.
I play on EU, and I do bio often vs zerg masters, most of the time with 2 tanks early midgame just to prevent busts and then up to 4 to zone off my 3rd as well, but my real army is mmm and lategame with ghost viking. Works fine for me, never felt it was an autoloss, even if i skip tanks if i feel safe enough to rush for stim drop. If i feel a bust is coming and I have no tanks, I usually just reinforce my wall. Depots in front of bunker, and doubling wall if its not a rax or ebay, and if i cant do that, i´ll try to create small chokes behind my wall for the lings, banes or roaches to funnel through.
The only time I feel I absolutely need tanks is when the zerg is mining on 3 bases and can afford to throw a huge number of banes at me, but this is midgame where I usually already have 2 tanks to prevent that.
Early on, 2 marauders on hold position in front of your depots can put a full stop to any early bane busts.
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On March 29 2012 08:20 zmansman17 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 01:14 Jermstuddog wrote:On March 29 2012 00:57 KimJongChill wrote:On March 29 2012 00:54 zmansman17 wrote: Rank 2 master Terran here and I actually use marauders over tanks.
I think Tanks are too weak in TvZ and it always bothers me when I watch replays of Zergs who beat me who only mass lings on even upgrades and trade their army MORE cost efficiently than I do with a healthy swath of Terran units (properly seiged, split, stimmed, etc).
I don't understand how Zergs can mass lings all game (refer to Stephano v. Polt where he massed 165 lings at 20 minutes), defend nearly all timings, trade evenly and save gas for any fast tech/upgrades. It just doesn't feel right that a tier 1 unit doesn't have a good counter in the Terran army. Tanks really aren't good against mass lings, but are good for target firing banelings.
Then ling run bys actually win games and contain Terran extremely well.
I think TvZ is in a sad state of affairs. I agree that something must be done with the tank as its utility just isn't there. As a result, I've opted for strong mid game MM timings. I seem forced to use this comp. at this time.
Aren't hellions the counter to zerglings? Lol, and marines, and tanks. Hell, even marauders and thors can kill lings cost-effectively. No counter to lings... LMAO If marines are so easily countered, how does MarineKing hold off Nestea nearly every game -> 20 minutes with just mass marines. And then even in some games after 20 minutes. If a terran trades even relatively cost efficiently with mass marines, then the terran is already far ahead. Assuming the terran is expanding and banking gas and upgrades, I would love to be taking even trades with my mass marine army as a terran player.
And now your quote references the TvZ situation that has been around since the beginning of the game and continues to exist to this day.
The only thing that has changed is Zergs have found ways to close in on the Terran army before he is sieged up in range of the natural.
Bringing it back to the point of the thread, siege tanks are still an integral part of TvZ, it appears as though many of you have been using them the wrong way for the past year.
As someone mentioned above, they are not the punch of your army, that would be the marine. Siege tanks exist specifically to protect your marine force and allow you to pressure Zerg bases while maintaining a defensive posture.
There's nothing wrong with siege tanks, you've just been doing it wrong.
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On March 29 2012 16:08 yoona2012 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 15:43 silentdecay01 wrote: Wow what region do you guys play on???? I wish I faced terran with no tanks.... as a zerg player, no tanks means auto win. Tanks are a vital part of terran in all mu.....Allows you to hold map control, defend, put aggression out when needed. With out them, z can just walk all over you with large amounts of speed lings/infestors/roaches/blings pretty much anything they wish, with out much threat of your bio ball. Terran req a larger skill curve with proper postion/micro and if you are cought out of postion then you will die.
Honestly the only person that can really get away with out much early tank use is marineKing, then again he is one of those pros with just flawless micro, and in alot of games he gets last sidge or none, he does get punished for it. I play on EU, and I do bio often vs zerg masters, most of the time with 2 tanks early midgame just to prevent busts and then up to 4 to zone off my 3rd as well, but my real army is mmm and lategame with ghost viking. Works fine for me, never felt it was an autoloss, even if i skip tanks if i feel safe enough to rush for stim drop. If i feel a bust is coming and I have no tanks, I usually just reinforce my wall. Depots in front of bunker, and doubling wall if its not a rax or ebay, and if i cant do that, i´ll try to create small chokes behind my wall for the lings, banes or roaches to funnel through. The only time I feel I absolutely need tanks is when the zerg is mining on 3 bases and can afford to throw a huge number of banes at me, but this is midgame where I usually already have 2 tanks to prevent that. Early on, 2 marauders on hold position in front of your depots can put a full stop to any early bane busts. That's how I think you should play heavy bio ... with just a few tanks to make sure you are safe against counterattacks and runbys. Otherwise with no tanks, you just leave yourself so vulnerable. You don't really need the tanks for attacks, but for defense ... they are just something you should have, imho. (mid master zerg EU).
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On March 28 2012 16:10 tpmraven wrote:i try my HARDEST to play terran without tanks, and i lose alot of games because of it. I have recently started building tanks out of frustration, and my win rate against zerg and terran nearly doubled. sad fact is, tanks are easier than no tanks, and unless you are mkp or you dont care about your win rate, you will be forced into tanks. Im just a diamond terran, so maybe in masters you will have the skill to play without tanks, but im just not good enough Yeah. You can play without siege tanks, but you definitely need mid-high master level micro at least to negate splash damage and the root/nuke that is Fungal Growth. It also requires much more APM, which must be spent negating splash and doing a *** ton of drops to keep the Z/T on their toes and to snipe tech/reactors/queens/workers.
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I dont see how pure bio requires more micro honestly. I think it actually requires less. With tank marine I have to first siege my tanks and THEN stim, THEN split and usually I've already eaten a couple bad fungals by that point. With marine marauder I only have to stim and then pull back my marines. That's less actions. I think this 'you need to split better if you don't have tanks' mentality is a myth. The reason you need to split well when you DO have tanks is largely to negate the friendly fire damage of your own tanks. If you have a lot of medivacs, marauders do not die to ling infestor. They just don't, they can sit there in a tight clump getting fungalled all day long but they won't die. Eventually the lings will nibble them down, but the marines can clean up the lings and if the infestors get too close to the marines, hey, just focus fire the infestors with marauders. If you think tanks are good against infestors, you should see 3/3 marauders at work. That is a sight to behold.
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The MKP vs DRG argument isn't that good. even though your opponent might not be as good as DRG, zerg units work differently than terran's and unit control isn't the most important thing for zerg. its just too easy to make mistake or get caught it a bad position.and marauders aren't that good against banes without good split, they have less hp than roaches and stalkers and have smaller sizes. obviously mkp isn't the only terran who can go tankless and still beat zerg, and i'm not saying going tankless is insanely difficult, just that MMM vs zerg not only require good micro, but good timing as well.
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