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Okay, so I'm a Diamond Terran not having a major problem in the TvZ matchup, and using my goto build to be 4M against ling/bane/muta and bio/tank vs heavy roach play. Lately however, I've been trying to open up about 6 hellions right into bio with much success in my league at least.
Bomber showed extremely well macro in his TvZ match-ups against Violet, especially the game where violet went heavy banelings vs the same.
So in my view the advantages of this style are quite simple... 1. Marauders tank banelings like its their job... heavily armored, and very easily maneuverable, unlike the mines which require totally different mirco mechanics and are very random... that's why, you spend your apm more on your bio, which is easier to do. 2. The more gas he spends in banelings, the less the muta count's gonna get, so its quite basic aggressive drop harass. 3. Ultra's are already countered with your heavy marauder style 4. You can't hold space like you could with mines, but without bio support, how were the mines gonna live anyways.
So with 11-13 raxes off of 3-4 bases. I've been churning out them marauders from at least 4 and taking bases more effectively, oh yea and shutting down zerg aggression way better... I've also outright died to small mistakes, but hey, its a new style, and its gonna take some time to get the old habits of mines outta my system... As day 9 pointed out, off of creep he splits... on creep, he picks up and gets the hell outta there...
Anyone think this one's worth trying?
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United States4883 Posts
This style is actually not new at all and has been used on and off throughout HotS with varying degrees of success.
The difficulty of playing a pure bio playstyle is that you have to have very crisp micro and macro and be able to mutli-task very well with constant aggression. Versus the 4M style that focuses on drilling one spot, pure bio requires you to be dropping in 2-3 locations constantly while doing pushes and never missing a cycle.
The way Bomber splits, though, is definitely unique. He never runs away from banelings, just moves his units just far enough back so that the banelings never reach them and has no problem losing a handful of marauders for like 12 banelings lol.
So...in short: nothing new, very mechanically challenging. If you want to do it in your league, just make sure you're staying on top of your MULEs and production at all times so that there's no hiccups at any point in time, then slowly add on the aggression (big pushes -> big pushes + 1 drop -> big pushes + 2 drops, etc).
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Bomber had been doing this for a while. I copied him maybe 6 ish months ago. I think it's a really strong style. Constant drops are one way to play. But with a parade push style, you can also just drill into one location (say the 4th) push effectively. With more use of roach hydra, I sometimes skip the hellions and go straight for bio. Hit at 12 and never stop till he dies. Very strong against roach hydra IMO. Once you hit 2/2, you stream to through (at least in plat anyway)
Just gotta make sure your macro is on point
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It reminds me of the old days of SK terran. Def a cool strat, but I think it's hard to do.
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It's definitely viable but your macro and aggression have to be spot on. If you let up a little bit it gets really hard to fight cost effectively vs. Zerg without splash damage.
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can you give me a link to the vods? i used to play this style alot in WoL, because it was good against infestor play, but i always ran into troubles against muta users.. i wonder how it changed in hots since mutas are so strong
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I wouldn't give too much credit to that style atm since we only saw it vs violet which is not what we can call a top tier zerg atm, he is still recovering to be back at the top.
Bomber micro and multitask was really sick but I can't help thinking he would be destroyed by code S players really easy with this style because they actually micro banelings really well.
Marauders are indeed good vs mass baneling playstyle and I definitively thinks everyone should play with some marauders in the mix from the middle game. It allows to tanks banelings and to be already ready for a possible ultra transition in lategame. This playstyle might be a good solution right now because of how weak and random the mine is atm.
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this style only really works because bomber is incredibly greedy and forgoes most scouting and safe precautions.
In order to make this work you need to outclass your opponent in mechanics, simply because the YOLO potential of zerg is very big whereas your army needs significantly more attention.
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On July 15 2014 16:31 DinoMight wrote: It's definitely viable but your macro and aggression have to be spot on. If you let up a little bit it gets really hard to fight cost effectively vs. Zerg without splash damage. This i agree with.
This style is viable, however rather than being mainly about macro and micro like many have said the major strength you need to play style is positioning.
The reason for that is that mine/tank is very good to siege an area, siege at the start of the creep and then gradually get closer to taking down the hatch for example. The reason this style is strong is that even if zerg gets a surround/flank which is the trademark zerg move the splash damage of mines usually helps enough to make the fight cost efficient anyway.
The all bio Bomber style is dependent on not getting surrounded which means you need to keep your army moving in a none predictable way so that the zerg cant get a surround off. If zerg swoops in with mutas before the trap is sprung you are also stopped from just picking your army up and getting the hell out of there. You can't just count on being able to pick up safely, the moment zerg gets mutas to stop the pickups and gets a surround off the army is dead and most likely the terran player too. Its a very unforgiving way of playing, while the WM player usually survives missing the first seconds of an engagement the all bio player is toast.
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Masters T here - if you actually watch the game that bomber did this the entire thing hedges on the first 10:30 or so double medevac drops. He does crippling damage here which puts him at a snowballing advantage.
There is actually no point of using pure bio vs. adding in widow mines if you are on even footing going into the mid/late game in my opinion.
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On July 15 2014 14:05 WiggyB wrote: Bomber had been doing this for a while. I copied him maybe 6 ish months ago. I think it's a really strong style. Constant drops are one way to play. But with a parade push style, you can also just drill into one location (say the 4th) push effectively. With more use of roach hydra, I sometimes skip the hellions and go straight for bio. Hit at 12 and never stop till he dies. Very strong against roach hydra IMO. Once you hit 2/2, you stream to through (at least in plat anyway)
Just gotta make sure your macro is on point You'd probably get destroyed by Hyun style though. 12 min is too late to hit and his attack hits at 10:30 with 130-140 supply of 1-1 roaches.
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This was occasionally used in WoL.
I really see no advantage of using this over 4m against zerg. No splash, which is OK if bane count is low, but if you lose a single engagement it can snowball very quickly.
Drops are useful but not always reliable with mutas roaming the map, and you can drop with 4m just as easily, if not be even more annoying by including mines with drops like innovation. Plus, they are planning to buff mines.
Bomber would have won that one game regardless if he went pure bio or if he went 4m.
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Do you guys remember a TvZ game on Akilon Wastes about 1.5/2 years ago???
The Terran was agile with his Bio&Medvacs: fighting then lifting, dropping, over and over, etc... That would be an apt replay right here.
(Was the zerg Dimaga?? The Terran, Maru or Byun??)
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On July 15 2014 10:01 SC2John wrote: This style is actually not new at all and has been used on and off throughout HotS with varying degrees of success.
The difficulty of playing a pure bio playstyle is that you have to have very crisp micro and macro and be able to mutli-task very well with constant aggression. Versus the 4M style that focuses on drilling one spot, pure bio requires you to be dropping in 2-3 locations constantly while doing pushes and never missing a cycle.
The way Bomber splits, though, is definitely unique. He never runs away from banelings, just moves his units just far enough back so that the banelings never reach them and has no problem losing a handful of marauders for like 12 banelings lol.
So...in short: nothing new, very mechanically challenging. If you want to do it in your league, just make sure you're staying on top of your MULEs and production at all times so that there's no hiccups at any point in time, then slowly add on the aggression (big pushes -> big pushes + 1 drop -> big pushes + 2 drops, etc). Bomber only used drops in one of his games against violet, the other one he just repeatedly drilled into Zergs 4th base over and over until he eventually overwhelmed and won. I dont think drops are necessary to win with this style, just the ability to trade cost efficiently against banes over and over.
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This is what I do in 2012 WOL, pure bio vs zerg, inspired by marineking. It can work, but just make sure though...your micro has to be...almost perfect and macro too, but when you do win using this style, you can be proud knowing your micro skills won you the game :D
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I disagree this style is viable without the extreme drops constantly barraging the enemy and doing damage. Terran, without splash, will not be able to fight against ling/bling/muta. Going mostly off personal experience, where I didn't use widow mines for the longest time (until maybe just before last season). I was fine for the longest time, but Zergs got constantly better and better at not missing injects, and I simply could not keep up with them production wise, even on 3 base, full production, not missing many cycles, etc.
EDIT: To the poster above, basic zergs have even got substantially better since 2012 on injects and macro, at least relative to Terrans imo. Terrans got far more refined and crisp build orders since that time as well, but in terms of pure production, Zergs have easily excelled the most (considering Zergs were also punished the most by not using their macro mechanic - every missed inject was simply less larvae, every missed mule still had the energy accumulate to be used).
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I used this style the other day and did very well against diamond zergs.
Macro wise this style is easier to execute than bio+mine just for the simple reason that you don't need to select a different production facility as the case is when making mines. This might seem minor but from my own personal experience it matters quite a bit.
Micro wise, too, it's easier than bio+mine. You need to split your units very well when using both strategies only with bio you need not focusing on hotkeying mines, splitting mines relative to each other, burrrow/unburrow.
In short, your attention is more centered around things that are really hard: micro your bio, pressure with your bio and macroing all at the same time. Mines will distract you from this both in production and in overall control.
What do you miss out on when going full bio? Well, the splash damage from mines obviously but what is it really good for when it doesn't actually stop the zerg from rolling over you? Instead of mines you build marauders which are actually better against banelings than mines are imo. I guess it's a matter of preference but if you're a terran struggling in the TvZ matchup you and you're playing with mines, you might wanna try this strategy out. You'd be surprised how fluid it feels.
Oh, one more thing might being worth mentioning: mines are unreliable. Meaning you can't predict how a fight is going to go beforehand. Terran is the race who is all about planning and controlling the pace of the game. If you lose this control you're suddenly in a very bad spot. You want to have an idea of how strong your army is and how well it's going to perform against the current army of the enemy. With full bio this is a much easier prediction to make resulting in less fights that backfire on you when your mines turn out to be duds.
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What do people think about the viability of this style just as an option to switch into? Say, for instance, you start double dropping once you get your medivacs, and it goes excellently, and you manage to clear all the creep in front of the zerg's fourth by 13 minutes. What do you think about simply ceasing factory production at that point (you dont' make a second factory yet) and going up to 10 barracks and streaming bio? And if the early midgame doesn't go as smoothly you can just go up to standard 8 rax 2 fact and play normally.
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This style is all about using it to catch your opponent off guard and creating a snowball advantag. Your first 2 medvac push is going to have slightly more hitting power because of how fast you added the 4th and 5th additional raxes.
If the zerg overcommits to your units because he thinks you are getting factory units behind it, then you can normally take a pretty good engagement off of creep. This is not a viable style to use every game especially a gainst someone who knows you are going to use this style, hence why Bomber doesn't use this style every single game in every single bo3.
Widow mines are also NOT random, they are only random because every terran player that thinks they are random don't pay attention to them and burrow them without much thought, or "randomly" which makes the whole concept of correct widow mine usage (look at a player like polt) seem like a foreign language.
The only difference between Bomber's pure bio style and someone like Polt's 4M style is that polt can transition into this army composition in 100% of his games where Bomber would only be able to use a pure bio style maybe once in a bo3
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Does anyone take advantage of Starport Tech Lab to research Moebius Reactor for Bio Force?
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