How we going guy's, my names ZizLah and i've been making a series on all the different aspects of Mech TvP.
Pt1 explain's the opening, scouting, how to defend early cheese's and teaches the basic fundamentals of the matchup from a mech perspective.
Pt2 deals with how to respond and punish robo openings, what timings to hit, how to hit them, what unit composition at each timing and has 2 different builds as a response to robo builds. Theres 2 audio build orders in the description for people to listen to and help guide them through the strategy
Pt3 Turning the table on blink. Explains how to recognize it's blink, how to defend it, how to transition and how to run away with the game leaving the protoss player in the dust.
Theres more video's to come, each will contain an overview of dealing with 5 different protoss compositions. robo, blink, HT, Stargate and phoenix collossi.
Hope you enjoy!
Edit: i've put in this one as well for you guys to peruse on. It's a vlog talking about the TvZ mech thats going to win every game forever and ever amen in the future! Hope ya like it~ @10:04 i propose a change to buff zerg that would fix the matchup (imo)
unfortunately i have a fulltime job, a wife and i'm making these video's. I dont really have time for a tournament, but if you want, theres an audio build order in the description to use when anti-robo openings that'll help you learn really easily!
i recommend starting with the mass hellbat drop build, because it's easy to execute and it's insanely strong
Finally, Terrans showing that Mech is viable vs Toss. See GumiHo 2 weeks ago at dreamhack, see Reality today.
Mech + Ghosts is IMAO feels very unexplored too.
I love to see video guides on this strategy, this will encourage to actually try to exploit every possible strat in the game so we could balance things a bit better. Meta has been very fresh lately.
On May 18 2015 19:26 JCoto wrote: Finally, Terrans showing that Mech is viable vs Toss. See GumiHo 2 weeks ago at dreamhack, see Reality today.
Mech + Ghosts is IMAO feels very unexplored too.
I love to see video guides on this strategy, this will encourage to actually try to exploit every possible strat in the game so we could balance things a bit better. Meta has been very fresh lately.
Keep in mind that these progames often showcase a ton of mindgames, and quite awful reactions by protoss (Reality's game today was a strong example of the latter especially)
On May 18 2015 19:26 JCoto wrote: Finally, Terrans showing that Mech is viable vs Toss. See GumiHo 2 weeks ago at dreamhack, see Reality today.
Mech + Ghosts is IMAO feels very unexplored too.
I love to see video guides on this strategy, this will encourage to actually try to exploit every possible strat in the game so we could balance things a bit better. Meta has been very fresh lately.
Keep in mind that these progames often showcase a ton of mindgames, and quite awful reactions by protoss (Reality's game today was a strong example of the latter especially)
That example doesn't mean that mech is less effective. However I recognize that is very dependant on your opponent and of course, the map. But GumiHo played MarineTankRaven straigth for almost all the finals at Dreamhack (no real mindgames most of the time, playing it as a strat from the begging) and even with that PartinG felvery uncomfortable, what a pitty GumiHo didn't really use Ghosts.
Mech is in fact quite powerful, but Bio is much more comfortable due to the high mobility,the low costs, lower riks for Terran.
You way to show your BO is the most rare thing I have ever seen. From here you need to go to YouTube to find the BO in the Description. From there go to dropbox and tan download another audio to HEAR the BO??? WTF? Really? All this stuff for this? Could you please WRITE IT HERE?? I dont think its so difficult. What you did, was ever more difficult. And please post some replays. Not everybody understands your english and its so crazy to be listening if you dont even know from where to beginn.
I also have a lot of issues with poking stalkers or Zealot, Stalker MScore. They dont even try to kill the ebay.REactor on Factory is not finished and you have no time to macro while trying not to die to 3-4 stalkers poking your marines...
Hey buddy, in the first video it states the build order opening, and then in the second video it states how to continue if you've seen a robo!
I'll state it here to make it easier for you
12rax 13scout 18CC 4:00 double gas 5:00 factory 5:30 Factory 6min scan their main base.
For hellbat drop vs a late robo.
6:00 Armory Next 50 gas, Reactor on Factory next 100 gas Starport Next 50 gas Reactor on factory Next 50 gas Reactor on starport
As soon as armory finish's get +1armor, as soon as reactor on starport finish's get 2medivacs
Leave you base at 9minutes, Check for their third base at 10minutes Hellbat drop them at 11minutes
You need to make a bunker to defend the MSC zealot stalker push, but once you do that, they do no damage and the protoss is VERY far behind because his expansion is so late
You do different builds vs different openings. There is no "One build to rule them all" when it comes to mid-game. Everything you do is tailored to what the protoss does.
Avilo in his game, opened reaper expand, with 1 gas, then tried to do the build vs an early robo AFTER doing a widow mine drop as well. Thats 4 major mistakes which ultimately meant his opponent could see everything he was doing, and he hit 3minutes later with LESS units as a result.
You get double techlab openings vs twilight for example. I thought i explained the difference between the 2 builds and when to execute them pretty well, but i guess not if people think every game is HellbatDrop :/
Thats why the video is very specific on how to deal with Robo only openings
On May 20 2015 15:05 Bodzilla wrote: You do different builds vs different openings. There is no "One build to rule them all" when it comes to mid-game. Everything you do is tailored to what the protoss does.
Avilo in his game, opened reaper expand, with 1 gas, then tried to do the build vs an early robo AFTER doing a widow mine drop as well. Thats 4 major mistakes which ultimately meant his opponent could see everything he was doing, and he hit 3minutes later with LESS units as a result.
You get double techlab openings vs twilight for example. I thought i explained the difference between the 2 builds and when to execute them pretty well, but i guess not if people think every game is HellbatDrop :/
Thats why the video is very specific on how to deal with Robo only openings
Well thanks for the insight. I'll probably be re-watching the videos for a while.
my last try: scan at 6 min and I see twilight. bunkers,mines and he didnt attack. double mine drop him and did almost no damage, because there were cannona and units waiting. 3rd was defended with 30% life. he just moves with 6 collosi and 20+ stalkers and my 20 hellbats die... 14 mins
On May 21 2015 06:47 Dvriel wrote: my last try: scan at 6 min and I see twilight. bunkers,mines and he didnt attack. double mine drop him and did almost no damage, because there were cannona and units waiting. 3rd was defended with 30% life. he just moves with 6 collosi and 20+ stalkers and my 20 hellbats die... 14 mins
14 minutes you hit way to late.. Plus you need to react to builds not just sit there can do one build and hope they build a robo...
On May 21 2015 06:47 Dvriel wrote: my last try: scan at 6 min and I see twilight. bunkers,mines and he didnt attack. double mine drop him and did almost no damage, because there were cannona and units waiting. 3rd was defended with 30% life. he just moves with 6 collosi and 20+ stalkers and my 20 hellbats die... 14 mins
14 minutes you hit way to late.. Plus you need to react to builds not just sit there can do one build and hope they build a robo...
I didnt hit at 14 mins. I died. I saw the teilight researching at 6 mins snd build 4 bunkers and 8 mines, marines and medivacs. at 9 min there was no attack so drop 4 + 4 mines at main and 6 mines and 2 hellions at natural and 8 marines at empty 3rd. killed some probes and mining time. Took my 3rd and made 3 more factories for tanks. He came at 13:30 and I died at 14
What do you do when you see nothing with your scan at 6 mins? Let's say your scv didnt get to see where were all the pylons (so that's the case when you're completely in the dark)
literally just 1 rax, 2 techlab factory's, you can hold what ever they do, and once you've held you can mech the game out from there, or you can build 7rax, get combat shield and go all in with siege tank marine vs their late tech
On May 21 2015 11:03 TwiggyWan wrote: Hey, good stuff for a good strat!
What do you do when you see nothing with your scan at 6 mins? Let's say your scv didnt get to see where were all the pylons (so that's the case when you're completely in the dark)
a stalker wont be out until about 4:20 (it's really easy to remember, 420BlaZeIT) and if they opened up with double gas, and you cant see the 3rd pylon, it's pretty indicative of a proxy stargate, so in that scenario i finish the ebay, send some SCV's on the map to scout common locations, and start 2 turrets and get them to 90%finished before stopping them building.
If i see an oracle i just finish the turrets, and if i dont (by about 6:30 at the latest) i cancel the turrets and prepare for either blink or DT by getting some tanks
The biggest drama i have now is just consistency in practice.
I have a full time job, a house and a wife and each of these video's have taken me 30 hours to make, so it's essentially another part time job, not much time to play.
Things that catch me out are really bizarre stuff like, pooling 4 oracles before attacking and bursting down my turret, over-reacting to a pressure play and missing my timings window ect.
Most of the styles are fairly fleshed out (because theres another 4 for me to show you guys in coming vids) but getting consistent practice vs each style is hard because in the little time i can play, i'm only hitting protoss about 25% of the time, and then of that and the 15ish different 2 base openings they have (not an exaggeration) it can take some time to flesh out the perfect play and timing windows vs each of those different openings.
Thats why i have a few practice partners i have grind out specific builds, and then get them to grind out the builds with the optimal response's and openings, such as with the 2nd video, skipping the stalker to get the robo out faster vs a 1rax expo.
I vs'd hundreds of protoss players on ladder before i vs'd one VERY smart protoss player that was amazing at reactive play. And it was him that was able to showcase to me that if a protoss plays and reacts perfectly the hellbat drop doesn't work. Because up until i played that guy i slaughtered every robo opening with the hellbat drop. That basically meant i had to go back to the drawing board and flesh out the entire otherside of TvP where i eventually found out how good BC's where.
So yeah, TvP is a VERY complicated nuanced matchup and when i'm showcasing these strategy's i wanna be 100% certain and clear in every facet of the game, which is why theres going to be 6 video's all up.
So yeah Part 3 should be done in about 3 weeks (yeah i know it's a wait and i'm sorry about that, i'll literally be out of the country for a week and a half so theres not much i can do about it :/) After that i'll finish a video every week, before i dwelve into other strange strategy's like Ghosts in TvT vs Gas first openings ect
it's mostly just macro or micro stuff on my end. Not hitting my timings so my tanks become less useful or not dropping my hellbats over my army properly.
It's just common mistakes that happen at all levels of play
Been having a lot of fun with this, but it feels a little gimmicky and random. So much stuff Protoss can do to punish you. For example it seems that scouting a late Robo can mean anything in TvP.
Here I was, happily going along with the build as proposed. E-bay block, into his main I see 1 gas, 2 pylons, he gets MSC and a stalker. Pretty standard stuff. Runs down the ramp starts chipping away at the E-bay. Just as planned
Scan at 6 minute, saw a 66% done Robo and 3 gateways. Oh wow, I'll do the double factory reactored hellion into hellbat drop. Strap in, we're off to the races!
But little did I know, just out side of scan range, a Twighlight Council was warping in. 9minute Warp Prism+DT -> no turret, all energy on mules to afford hellions.
Maybe you always have to add safety turrets no matter what vs toss?
On May 25 2015 23:05 terrancake wrote: Been having a lot of fun with this, but it feels a little gimmicky and random. So much stuff Protoss can do to punish you. For example it seems that scouting a late Robo can mean anything in TvP.
Here I was, happily going along with the build as proposed. E-bay block, into his main I see 1 gas, 2 pylons, he gets MSC and a stalker. Pretty standard stuff. Runs down the ramp starts chipping away at the E-bay. Just as planned
Scan at 6 minute, saw a 66% done Robo and 3 gateways. Oh wow, I'll do the double factory reactored hellion into hellbat drop. Strap in, we're off to the races!
But little did I know, just out side of scan range, a Twighlight Council was warping in. 9minute Warp Prism+DT -> no turret, all energy on mules to afford hellions.
Maybe you always have to add safety turrets no matter what vs toss?
I think that when meching you just need to build turrets most of the times if you don't see much, since it's a more passive opening. Also 2 mines on the back of command centers can help a ton just in case. But anyways, timings are also quite interesing here. A 3gate build would kick tech around minute 4:30 to 5:30 or so. Protosses commonly make their first tech choose not later than minute 5. So it's a bit suspicious to see a "late" robo.
PvT commonly follows 3 potential builds: Stargate>Robo (commonly at 1 gateway), Twilight> Robo or Robo>Twilight. 2/3 possibilities have potential safety turrets.
I think that the e-bay block tends to cause overreaction on Toss. Most players tend to go aggro/all-in because it feels like a potential situation to be falling behind on macro. And being delayed vs Terran isn't the most comfortable thing, since Bio is easy to produce, will outnumber the Protoss army, and without enough colossi there is little to do about it.
On May 25 2015 23:05 terrancake wrote: Been having a lot of fun with this, but it feels a little gimmicky and random. So much stuff Protoss can do to punish you. For example it seems that scouting a late Robo can mean anything in TvP.
Here I was, happily going along with the build as proposed. E-bay block, into his main I see 1 gas, 2 pylons, he gets MSC and a stalker. Pretty standard stuff. Runs down the ramp starts chipping away at the E-bay. Just as planned
Scan at 6 minute, saw a 66% done Robo and 3 gateways. Oh wow, I'll do the double factory reactored hellion into hellbat drop. Strap in, we're off to the races!
But little did I know, just out side of scan range, a Twighlight Council was warping in. 9minute Warp Prism+DT -> no turret, all energy on mules to afford hellions.
Maybe you always have to add safety turrets no matter what vs toss?
I think that when meching you just need to build turrets most of the times if you don't see much, since it's a more passive opening. Also 2 mines on the back of command centers can help a ton just in case. But anyways, timings are also quite interesing here. A 3gate build would kick tech around minute 4:30 to 5:30 or so. Protosses commonly make their first tech choose not later than minute 5. So it's a bit suspicious to see a "late" robo.
PvT commonly follows 3 potential builds: Stargate>Robo (commonly at 1 gateway), Twilight> Robo or Robo>Twilight. 2/3 possibilities have potential safety turrets.
I think that the e-bay block tends to cause overreaction on Toss. Most players tend to go aggro/all-in because it feels like a potential situation to be falling behind on macro. And being delayed vs Terran isn't the most comfortable thing, since Bio is easy to produce, will outnumber the Protoss army, and without enough colossi there is little to do about it.
I hear you man. If you watch the second video in the OP, Bodzilla changes his build if he sees the Robo warping in when he scans. This is when he transitions into the hellbat drop. This was the build I was trying to do, it looks and feels really strong if you are allowed to get away with it.
The problem I see with that one is that you are spending 400 minerals per round of units (2x2 hellions) and you want to start 2 medivcas (200 / 200) and +1 armor (100 / 100). You have to use the energy for mules or you just don't have the minerals. It is already kind of tight so adding the E-bay+turret(s) seems clunky and I don't know how to fit it in.
Ever since herO started doing the DT stuff it seems like a lot of Protoss right now is following suit. One sign you can scout for is the amount of stalkers/sentries so I guess you could send the first hellions out on the map to try to figure it out. If you see a low number of gas units, get one round of mines and use the excess minerals to add the E-bay just in case. I'm just theorycrafting though since I've only played against it the one time when doing this build.
Most of the time it is as you write, the tech is already done at 6 minute but in that case, following the build in the OP, you don't go for the hellbat timing.
On May 25 2015 23:05 terrancake wrote: Been having a lot of fun with this, but it feels a little gimmicky and random. So much stuff Protoss can do to punish you. For example it seems that scouting a late Robo can mean anything in TvP.
Here I was, happily going along with the build as proposed. E-bay block, into his main I see 1 gas, 2 pylons, he gets MSC and a stalker. Pretty standard stuff. Runs down the ramp starts chipping away at the E-bay. Just as planned
Scan at 6 minute, saw a 66% done Robo and 3 gateways. Oh wow, I'll do the double factory reactored hellion into hellbat drop. Strap in, we're off to the races!
But little did I know, just out side of scan range, a Twighlight Council was warping in. 9minute Warp Prism+DT -> no turret, all energy on mules to afford hellions.
Maybe you always have to add safety turrets no matter what vs toss?
I think that when meching you just need to build turrets most of the times if you don't see much, since it's a more passive opening. Also 2 mines on the back of command centers can help a ton just in case. But anyways, timings are also quite interesing here. A 3gate build would kick tech around minute 4:30 to 5:30 or so. Protosses commonly make their first tech choose not later than minute 5. So it's a bit suspicious to see a "late" robo.
PvT commonly follows 3 potential builds: Stargate>Robo (commonly at 1 gateway), Twilight> Robo or Robo>Twilight. 2/3 possibilities have potential safety turrets.
I think that the e-bay block tends to cause overreaction on Toss. Most players tend to go aggro/all-in because it feels like a potential situation to be falling behind on macro. And being delayed vs Terran isn't the most comfortable thing, since Bio is easy to produce, will outnumber the Protoss army, and without enough colossi there is little to do about it.
I hear you man. If you watch the second video in the OP, Bodzilla changes his build if he sees the Robo warping in when he scans. This is when he transitions into the hellbat drop. This was the build I was trying to do, it looks and feels really strong if you are allowed to get away with it.
The problem I see with that one is that you are spending 400 minerals per round of units (2x2 hellions) and you want to start 2 medivcas (200 / 200) and +1 armor (100 / 100). You have to use the energy for mules or you just don't have the minerals. It is already kind of tight so adding the E-bay+turret(s) seems clunky and I don't know how to fit it in.
Ever since herO started doing the DT stuff it seems like a lot of Protoss right now is following suit. One sign you can scout for is the amount of stalkers/sentries so I guess you could send the first hellions out on the map to try to figure it out. If you see a low number of gas units, get one round of mines and use the excess minerals to add the E-bay just in case. I'm just theorycrafting though since I've only played against it the one time when doing this build.
Most of the time it is as you write, the tech is already done at 6 minute but in that case, following the build in the OP, you don't go for the hellbat timing.
I think that the problem was that in the vid (part 2) the Toss went 1 gate Robo with early Nexus, meaning that it was very very unlikely for the Toss to have hughe resistance prepared for the attack , and you might have faced 1 base cheese or with late nexus. 3 gates, Robo and Twilight at min 6 feel too much thing for an early nexus IMAO.
On May 25 2015 23:05 terrancake wrote: Been having a lot of fun with this, but it feels a little gimmicky and random. So much stuff Protoss can do to punish you. For example it seems that scouting a late Robo can mean anything in TvP.
Here I was, happily going along with the build as proposed. E-bay block, into his main I see 1 gas, 2 pylons, he gets MSC and a stalker. Pretty standard stuff. Runs down the ramp starts chipping away at the E-bay. Just as planned
Scan at 6 minute, saw a 66% done Robo and 3 gateways. Oh wow, I'll do the double factory reactored hellion into hellbat drop. Strap in, we're off to the races!
But little did I know, just out side of scan range, a Twighlight Council was warping in. 9minute Warp Prism+DT -> no turret, all energy on mules to afford hellions.
Maybe you always have to add safety turrets no matter what vs toss?
I think that when meching you just need to build turrets most of the times if you don't see much, since it's a more passive opening. Also 2 mines on the back of command centers can help a ton just in case. But anyways, timings are also quite interesing here. A 3gate build would kick tech around minute 4:30 to 5:30 or so. Protosses commonly make their first tech choose not later than minute 5. So it's a bit suspicious to see a "late" robo.
PvT commonly follows 3 potential builds: Stargate>Robo (commonly at 1 gateway), Twilight> Robo or Robo>Twilight. 2/3 possibilities have potential safety turrets.
I think that the e-bay block tends to cause overreaction on Toss. Most players tend to go aggro/all-in because it feels like a potential situation to be falling behind on macro. And being delayed vs Terran isn't the most comfortable thing, since Bio is easy to produce, will outnumber the Protoss army, and without enough colossi there is little to do about it.
I hear you man. If you watch the second video in the OP, Bodzilla changes his build if he sees the Robo warping in when he scans. This is when he transitions into the hellbat drop. This was the build I was trying to do, it looks and feels really strong if you are allowed to get away with it.
The problem I see with that one is that you are spending 400 minerals per round of units (2x2 hellions) and you want to start 2 medivcas (200 / 200) and +1 armor (100 / 100). You have to use the energy for mules or you just don't have the minerals. It is already kind of tight so adding the E-bay+turret(s) seems clunky and I don't know how to fit it in.
Ever since herO started doing the DT stuff it seems like a lot of Protoss right now is following suit. One sign you can scout for is the amount of stalkers/sentries so I guess you could send the first hellions out on the map to try to figure it out. If you see a low number of gas units, get one round of mines and use the excess minerals to add the E-bay just in case. I'm just theorycrafting though since I've only played against it the one time when doing this build.
Most of the time it is as you write, the tech is already done at 6 minute but in that case, following the build in the OP, you don't go for the hellbat timing.
I think that the problem was that in the vid (part 2) the Toss went 1 gate Robo with early Nexus, meaning that it was very very unlikely for the Toss to have hughe resistance prepared for the attack , and you might have faced 1 base cheese or with late nexus. 3 gates, Robo and Twilight at min 6 feel too much thing for an early nexus IMAO.
Hmm let's see if I can explain what I meant.
If you watch the replay that Bodzilla posted or watch the video again, if the toss doesn't get his second stalker, he can easily afford a Twighlight at the third pylon. Which should be out of scan range (and is in the replay).
When the scan goes down at 6:09 in the replay, the toss has 170 minerals, 200gas, 1 zealot, 1 stalker, 1 stalker building, an early 4th pylon building and a MSC.
So with the DT+prism build you cut the second stalker and the too early 4th pylon should not have been built in the first place. The toss in the replay would end up at 395 minerals 200gas, that's a lot of cheddar.
1 Twighlight and 2 more gates requires 450 minerals/ 100 gas The twighlight goes down at almost the same time as the Robo, the gates at around 6:10-6:15 which is within the scan duration.
So what you see with the scan is, 1 Robo warping in (2/3 done), 1 gate way done and 2 gateways starting to warp in making it look like a pretty normal timed safe Robo build. What you don't see with the scan is the Twiglight at the third pylon.
That's why I was pondering the idea of sending the first 2 hellions out to scout for the amount of stalkers, if there is only one cut hellions and get e-bay. If there is two or more, go on with the hellbat build.
But on the other hand, he could be cutting stalkers to get a really fast colossus bay instead, planning on doing a colossus all in. Or just some variation on Robo+Blink. Who knows? So maybe the hellion scout won't tell you a lot anyways unless you suicide them up into his main.
I would love to see more replays from the OP so we can see how he deals with and scouts all the variations because the build is really fun to play.
Sorry i've been gone for a while guys, I had my brothers wedding outside the country and i've been sick ever since. But....good news everyone!
Part 3 Turning the tables on blink, is coming along nicely, i managed to really grind out about 6hours of just solid TvP blink games and am confident in the builds i have. Now i just need to finish the script and edit. Hoping to be up by tuesday next week.
On June 04 2015 01:52 Bodzilla wrote: Sorry i've been gone for a while guys, I had my brothers wedding outside the country and i've been sick ever since. But....good news everyone!
Part 3 Turning the tables on blink, is coming along nicely, i managed to really grind out about 6hours of just solid TvP blink games and am confident in the builds i have. Now i just need to finish the script and edit. Hoping to be up by tuesday next week.
The only thing I do not agree with is going Battlecruicers. Tempest still kill Battlecruicers given equal gas cost and equal supply, especially with air attack upgrades. Even though pdd is nerfed it seems better to invest the gas in Ravens since you get twice as many Ravens for the gas cost and three time as many Ravens for supply.
But please hurry up with the other parts of the series since it is hard to evaluate the overall strategy without seeing all the parts.
the thing about tempests is with a handful of ravens thrown in and the nerf to tempest damage (which is a HUGE nerf) they can micro backwards and kite, but they're unable to hold positions. Thats why i rally in hellbat thor behind it. With tempests constantly forced to run away from key points of the maps and yamoto being so great at killing robo units like immortal and collossi, they just have no way to defend positions.
I have to agree. Battlecruisers are a must in TvP mech. Been trying to follow bod's builds and the late robo/hellbat push works 99% of the time! Been having trouble with DT/twilight openings.. but getting in the hang of it.
But seriously, the battlecruiser rocks. Its so effective and once you get a nice number of them (along with hellbats/thors), its game over 99% of the time. Some try mass carriers but at the end of the day all the interceptors are dead or yamato'ed. Same story for tempests/voids or mass archons/stalkers w/e. Ive yet to see a P deal with this composition effectively and the only thing I can see them is careful HT usage and attacking around the T deathball/abuse its mobility.
On June 05 2015 19:12 MockHamill wrote: The only thing I do not agree with is going Battlecruicers. Tempest still kill Battlecruicers given equal gas cost and equal supply, especially with air attack upgrades. Even though pdd is nerfed it seems better to invest the gas in Ravens since you get twice as many Ravens for the gas cost and three time as many Ravens for supply.
But please hurry up with the other parts of the series since it is hard to evaluate the overall strategy without seeing all the parts.
Even if it not mainstream, I think BC's are relatively strong right now in TvP if you are going full mech style and you can take a 4th runnning. The only counter Protoss has right now is HTs, since Voidrays are easily decimated by Yamatos, Vikings and even Seeker missiles, and Tempest nerf is very, very noticeable (damage was cut almost to a half).
However I think that the most important aspect to make BC's worth it is keeping the upgrade train going, specially armor upgrades if you scout VoidRays. With 2 upgrades only, Terran Mech can be really devastating vs Protoss if played well. In order to compete, Toss needs their 5 upgrades.
heyo bodzilla dunno if you know me or not, but i am a top 16 gm terran on NA, gave mech a try and they both ended around the 20 min mark, with a banshee-based macro opener
Righto so i've watched the replays and i'll throw some things out there for ya.
I generally start my 2 armory's and my 3rd, 4th and 5th factory, around the 10minute mark off a widow mine drop opening. Leaving me with a total of 5facs and double upgrades constantly researching while i've already secured a 3rd.
In your video you managed to get some unexpected and significant kills with banshee's despite the fact that he had observer's seeing everywhere they went. Do you think the trade off you got with opening banshees as opposed to mine drops was worth the much later tech and upgrades? Do you think you got further ahead then you would have doing the other form of pressure? Do you think this is consistent enough to open banshee's every game and get the same response? Just remember the mine drop doesn't have to do damage, because as long as i'm building tanks and he's building stalkers to defend i'm pulling ahead.
If you think your opening was better then what i do then stick to it, but i think that delay in getting your production up severely hampered your siege tank push in the midgame around 14 minutes or so.
The protoss by this point already had storms, immortals and if he macro'd better he'd have the zealot count to deal with it. I think he panicked when he saw your army though and didn't feedback your medivacs or storm your army, instead choosing to morph them into archons and if he did those things he would have demolished what you had.
It's possible to play reactor'd marine opening with hellbat banshee but i think the cost of doing that is pretty significant.
Greetings, I have taken your advice good sir and implemented it into my tvp gameplay today!
I definitly agree with your point about the banshee harass being questinoable, i've cut it out and instead opted for a more defensive game opener to power up my 3rd and 4th cc and my extra factories as quick as possible. I also was wondering if youve noticed the same thing too, but i have jsut started to mech and already i easily pull ahead 20-30 supply after my 4th cc starts to kick in, i was wondering if you see the same thing happen as well
This one shows different mech unit compositions that I tried before ultimately arriving at a widow mine thor based unit composition, which seems to deal quite well with immortal based play as you'll see in the replay http://drop.sc/399984
this game is vs puck, cringe game how i am up 180 supply vs 110 but respected him too much as a player to try to end the game faster lol http://drop.sc/399985
Righto so i've checked your last 2 replays and theres a few things to note.
1. The way you played against a pheonix collossi player was EXACTLY how you want to play. Hellbat thor viking with a turret contain is a chokehold that they cant really get out of, however you did throw the lead and positional advantage that you had by not committing to a 2nd starport and you over extended with your units allowing him to pick off your army and stabalize. So things to improve? Try getting a PF there as well (maru does it, it's insanely good vs ph/collo), 2nd starport, dont over extend
2. A mistake you have in both your replays is your committing too much to a ground based mech army and your missing the one powerful siege tank timing that you have vs a protoss player. Your attack timing is hitting after they've already established a chargelot archon immortal army, which in all honestly is next to impossible to defeat with any ground based mech composition. The widow mine stuff you did with your army was a great way to get the best out of the army that you had, but you where still compositionally behind. That let him clean up your army and counter attack killing your 4th and nearly winning the game
The reason i only get 5 factory's despite it being a "mech" strategy is that you have to transition at some point away from siege tanks. For example, with pheonix/collo game, at 17:30 you've only lost 1460 resources vs his 4174 resources. Your in a commanding lead. You have a turret contain a bigger army, map control and your 4th is already mining with 3k 1k in the bank.
But by 21minutes you've lost that entire lead because he hits the critical mass of immortals. you lose map control, compositional advantage and he gets even with you on resources lost. Once this compositional pivot is reached you need to transition into BC's, preferably with at least 2/2 upgrades and 3/3 on the way. Once they get more then 4 immortals holding positions and trading effectively are incredibly hard.
Now i know BC's sound crazy, but tempests are half as good as they used to be, and you'll render their entire robo army obsolete with a handful of well placed yamoto's. With a 6 or more BC's and good upgrades they're in a terrible spot to try and hold positions on the map. Thats when you can go back into hellbat thor and use yamoto to neutralize the counters they have, namely immortal and collossi.
BC's and ravens cost the same Gas/minute as each other, you can invest in either or and not harm your production in anyway from other units. A handful of ravens like 4-6 will render tempests useless in a straight up engagement.
While they may be able to kite away from your army and attack without taking damage it means they cant hold a position on the map. This just lets you run in to attack an expansion and as they micro back you just kill it and walk away. Not to mention the nerf they got vs massive units mean they do so little vs BC's now, they're just terrible.
Also feedbacks vs a full energy BC will do 200 damage. BC's have 500 health and a whopping 6armor with 3/3, even being down 200 health (which wont happen) they still have nearly as much health as a colossus. They're still even with storm, feedbacks AND blink stalkers under them, insanely hard to kill. Once you get them you just yamoto down all their immortals and collossi and they cant build the counters then need to deal with your hellbat thor reinforcement
hope yall don't mind i keep uploading my mech games, this was a cross position game on cactus valley. The protoss went sky protoss but I just starved him out, not sure if I had right unit composition or not though, do i want more bcs, more thor, more wm or what vs his unit comp?
On June 11 2015 03:58 EJK wrote: hope yall don't mind i keep uploading my mech games, (...)
Please do it, EJK! Due to your level of play, your replays are reliable, as well as, the fact that you post your opinion and discuss with Bodzilla. It's nourishing the discussion. Much better to listen to someone who is actually trying it out and is experiencing in flesh the advantages and disadvantages of this style
Also, add up the fact that bodzilla is busy and he's not able to post replays as often as he'd like.
So, please do keep it up! Thanks to you both, EJK and Bodzilla. Love reading this thread and seeing it evolve day by day.
On June 11 2015 03:58 EJK wrote: hope yall don't mind i keep uploading my mech games, this was a cross position game on cactus valley. The protoss went sky protoss but I just starved him out, not sure if I had right unit composition or not though, do i want more bcs, more thor, more wm or what vs his unit comp?
not sure what to do vs mass carrier, seems fairly strong and wm and thor splash doesnt do nearly as much as i thought
Hey buddy watching that replay i saw a few things.
The second you know they're committing to air whether it's mass air like this or pheonix collossi you really need to take advantage of your vikings earlier which will allow you to poke and prod more.
The 2nd thing is how you take engagements vs carriers. Carriers are a unit you either yamoto down if you can catch them OR you bait into widow mines. To explain it, it's kinda like how use widow mines vs zealots and HT openings. You deploy your mines and then poke backwards and forwards over your mines. What your hoping to achieve is for him to trigger your mines on his interceptors, rather then just trying to kill his carriers directly. Now you have to be careful when you do it because the widow mines will detonate over your army, so it's critical to keep your army spread out and try to bait them into them, rather then try to fight them directly. Try to get about 1 mine per carrier and if you can get a good hit you'll turn them into flying paper weights.
You also put your thors quite often into High impact payload where they do a single large shot. This made you miss a few thor shots which could have killed alot more interceptors during your fights. I think the only time you truly wanna use that ability if vs ravens in TvT where they avoid PPD, outside that, missing out on potential splash damage just isn't worth it
Now to deal with the carrier "harass" where he moves forward, snipes a base and recalls out you simply have to commit alot to turrets. When a carrier attacks into a turret he will ALWAYS trade inefficient. He'll lose alot more minerals in interceptors then you do in tanks. Now If you get hi-sec auto tracking and building armor earlier as well it'll also go along way to just making his attacks detrimental to him. So just remember to make stupid amounts of turrets, like 10+ and it wont be worth it for him
2. A mistake you have in both your replays is your committing too much to a ground based mech army and your missing the one powerful siege tank timing that you have vs a protoss player. Your attack timing is hitting after they've already established a chargelot archon immortal army, which in all honestly is next to impossible to defeat with any ground based mech composition. The widow mine stuff you did with your army was a great way to get the best out of the army that you had, but you where still compositionally behind. That let him clean up your army and counter attack killing your 4th and nearly winning the game
I'd like to challenge the chargelot archon immortal army composition and say it is beatable with ground mech, with a combination of good unit positioning and a widow mine hellbat siege tank viking based army
hi EJK, i watch your stream sometimes and u always do the gas first reaper into mech build TvT. I've been trying that but it seems like I always fall behind because of the late expo (7:00). Assuming the other terran went reaper FE into fac or 15 gas expand into fac, anyway I can pressure???
2. A mistake you have in both your replays is your committing too much to a ground based mech army and your missing the one powerful siege tank timing that you have vs a protoss player. Your attack timing is hitting after they've already established a chargelot archon immortal army, which in all honestly is next to impossible to defeat with any ground based mech composition. The widow mine stuff you did with your army was a great way to get the best out of the army that you had, but you where still compositionally behind. That let him clean up your army and counter attack killing your 4th and nearly winning the game
I'd like to challenge the chargelot archon immortal army composition and say it is beatable with ground mech, with a combination of good unit positioning and a widow mine hellbat siege tank viking based army
Watching that replay i saw alot of mistakes from the protoss on how to engage you. At 16mins when your attacking into his 4th the protoss is too hesitant to attack you. at 16:17 if the protoss turns around and just a moves into your tank he'll slaughter your army and gain map control letting him get the 5th much faster.
He also weirdly kept building stalkers through out that game which hurt him pretty severely in engagements. e.g. by 19:30 he's already built an extra 10 stalkers after holding off your attack at the 4th.... even though he's facing a siege tank army. Doesn't make alot of sense and is a waste of 1250 minerals and 500 gas. Then at 21:30 he does the chargelot reload which lets him clean up your army... and then he goes back to making stalkers again.
So with your play the biggest thing i'd work on is utilizing your medivacs more. Once you know you're vsing a (primarily) chargelot archon immortal build it means you can hellbat drop his army. This will literally make your hellbats 400% better in engagements in 2 ways. When you drop the hellbats over him they'll get the maximum amount of splash damage they can do vs his clumped up army, rather then getting stuck behind each other where only the front line is firing and their splash is negligible while they buffer for the siege tank army. They act more like baneling mines in this scenario. The 2nd thing is they'll mess up his AI severely. leading them to stutter while in range of your siege tanks letting you get extra hits off. It'll make all the difference in the world for some simple micro management.
The final thing i'd say is if you really want to stick with a siege tank army through out the game, why not get ghosts? You already have the barracks, more then enough minerals. a ghost acad is only 50 gas and with each ghost being so effective vs immortals with EMP it seems like your leaving potential on the table. It'll also give you another option for harassment and the ability to split the protoss players attention span more.
On June 11 2015 03:58 EJK wrote: hope yall don't mind i keep uploading my mech games, this was a cross position game on cactus valley. The protoss went sky protoss but I just starved him out, not sure if I had right unit composition or not though, do i want more bcs, more thor, more wm or what vs his unit comp?
not sure what to do vs mass carrier, seems fairly strong and wm and thor splash doesnt do nearly as much as i thought
Hey buddy watching that replay i saw a few things.
The second you know they're committing to air whether it's mass air like this or pheonix collossi you really need to take advantage of your vikings earlier which will allow you to poke and prod more.
The 2nd thing is how you take engagements vs carriers. Carriers are a unit you either yamoto down if you can catch them OR you bait into widow mines. To explain it, it's kinda like how use widow mines vs zealots and HT openings. You deploy your mines and then poke backwards and forwards over your mines. What your hoping to achieve is for him to trigger your mines on his interceptors, rather then just trying to kill his carriers directly. Now you have to be careful when you do it because the widow mines will detonate over your army, so it's critical to keep your army spread out and try to bait them into them, rather then try to fight them directly. Try to get about 1 mine per carrier and if you can get a good hit you'll turn them into flying paper weights.
You also put your thors quite often into High impact payload where they do a single large shot. This made you miss a few thor shots which could have killed alot more interceptors during your fights. I think the only time you truly wanna use that ability if vs ravens in TvT where they avoid PPD, outside that, missing out on potential splash damage just isn't worth it
Now to deal with the carrier "harass" where he moves forward, snipes a base and recalls out you simply have to commit alot to turrets. When a carrier attacks into a turret he will ALWAYS trade inefficient. He'll lose alot more minerals in interceptors then you do in tanks. Now If you get hi-sec auto tracking and building armor earlier as well it'll also go along way to just making his attacks detrimental to him. So just remember to make stupid amounts of turrets, like 10+ and it wont be worth it for him
Hope that helps buddy!
so your telling me high i mpact payload isn't as good as the normal mode? Or should i do half and half for maximum effeciency? I feel like the low attack speeed of the thors means their splash damage doesnt do nearly as much as it should and interceptors fly around so much that they dont stack up either
edit: just played this game vs sky transition, mass carriers
So far from playing, there seems to be two good styles against mech, a heavy immortal ground army or a fast switch into air. You have to ID which style your opponent is doing and the rest of the game is pretty straight forward.
In this game, I almost left after i lost a fight lol! that's probably the #1 reason why i lose a game, because I leave the game before I actually lose hahaha
It seems the best way to deal with carriers is to deplete their interceptor count instead of actually killing them head on, was a pretty interesting game. For the most part though, I feel I am winning through just general macro, my benchmarks are usually to get a 5th base by the 20 minute mark (that should be standard) and then to trade out armies until my opponent mines out
On June 13 2015 02:13 EJK wrote: It seems the best way to deal with carriers is to deplete their interceptor count instead of actually killing them head on, was a pretty interesting game. For the most part though, I feel I am winning through just general macro, my benchmarks are usually to get a 5th base by the 20 minute mark (that should be standard) and then to trade out armies until my opponent mines out
Correct!
At the start of the game with early engagements you messed up and had your widow mines splash damaged your own vikings but then after that you learned and adapted to do some poking to trigger the interceptors then retreated behind your mines or to your turrets and you just cleaned his interceptors up turning them into paper weights.
Carriers cant fight with no interceptors and widow mines are an EXCELLENT way to do it.
I'd also be more wary of warp prisms and get some sensor towers up to help in that aspect. I'd also like your upgrades to be faster with hi-sec auto tracking for your missle turrets to really give that boost in defense for when he counter attacks!
Now while you are out macroing your opponents in each of your games by how fast you get to 4CC but you have to also remember that the protoss's players money if you watch the replay never gets over a thousand. He spends his minerals REALLY well and most of the time averages about 400 minerals in the bank through the entire course of the game. When your building carriers that cost 400 AND you have 67 probes, that's a VERY good result from him macroing. What your seeing is just how efficient you can be in engagements and trading.
Now besides that, theres not really much more help i can give you in this replay because you played it out pretty much perfectly compositionally and positionally.
I just got a mech flower sprouting through my chest watching that hype video. I AM SOLD. Great videos, entertaining even fi I don't really play the game.
3 more games, this time I changed up the tempo of my aggression/macro so these 3 replays are all different ways of me trying to play play a harass-based more mobile-mech style
I experimented with a mech composition geared more towards widow mine siege tank banshee hellbat pushing and hellion/banshee harass
Iron fortress game was kinda rocky though I was having a bit of trouble deciding what kind nof army to m ake to go kill him and as a result the game long past my game plan
On June 16 2015 19:40 Bodzilla wrote: I wish gorgeous that you'd make some BC's in some of your games >: (
its not my thing I don't even make bcs in tvz mech either! They are too slow, too expensive, and you have to wait forever before you can actually afford to make them!
Pt3 Turning the table on blink. Explains how to recognize it's blink, how to defend it, how to transition and how to run away with the game leaving the protoss player in the dust.
Pt3 Turning the table on blink. Explains how to recognize it's blink, how to defend it, how to transition and how to run away with the game leaving the protoss player in the dust.
On June 17 2015 03:00 EJK wrote: its not my thing I don't even make bcs in tvz mech either! They are too slow, too expensive, and you have to wait forever before you can actually afford to make them!
Well BC's are only good to yamoto vs infestors. Everything else your better with banshee's because if they have some SH or do a corrupter viper flood the BC's will auto attack everything on the ground first and just die to corrupters without some insane targeting which makes them clump up pretty hard.
But vs protoss it's different. They're the ultimate endgame unit. Just try it once and you'll see WHY i keep saying that.
On June 17 2015 03:00 EJK wrote: its not my thing I don't even make bcs in tvz mech either! They are too slow, too expensive, and you have to wait forever before you can actually afford to make them!
Well BC's are only good to yamoto vs infestors. Everything else your better with banshee's because if they have some SH or do a corrupter viper flood the BC's will auto attack everything on the ground first and just die to corrupters without some insane targeting which makes them clump up pretty hard.
But vs protoss it's different. They're the ultimate endgame unit. Just try it once and you'll see WHY i keep saying that.
lol I compromised, My ground mech army wasn't cutting it cross spots inferno pools so i made 4 starports and made....banshees!!! He never transitioned to anything more then stalkers and archon for anti-air so mass banshees tore his army apart! If I am stuck again, I will go BCs just don't know what they would counter the best
They cant kill them, you can instantly kill immortals, collossi which means your mech army is better, but they also survive storm easily, feedback is a million times worse vs them and you can yamoto carriers.
they're literally better in every single way. once you get 6+ and 3/3 the game is over.
But enough of that, i'm looking for feedback on this vid at the moment and i dont wanna have it get buried for the people looking for it ;__;
But your scouting pattern looks very abusable : a cheeky protoss may as well throw an unused random proxy pylon and 2 gas and trick you to respond with that double tank prod while playing standard. Assuming you still scan at six minutes, i guess that's not that big of a deal.
But about 2 base blink all-ins, you explained how to counter it but you didn't explain how to scout it : iiuc you're like "he's doing a cheese, it's too late for oracles, too late for 1base blink, it can be 2base blink".
Just really a limitation of doing a video series, if i go too in-depth and go on for too long the audience just drops off a cliff, and seeing as the standard audience attention span is 3:30 and i'm already pushing 12 minutes of content i'm playing risky as it is.
With that said, It's true protoss CAN throw you off with extra pylons, and it's happened to me before, that said generally if they're doing that it'll be a 1 base build with double gas and you'll see that. In that scenario you built turrets and if you see no oracle you start building tanks! So you cover the 3 main options of DT, oracle, blink.
Now with 2 base blink scouting you scan at 6 minutes, which will give you a pretty good idea if he's doing blink, 9 times out of 10 if you know where all the pylons are you'll figure it out and then you have 2minutes and 30 seconds to respond to it. That scan will also hit before you start building addons allowing you to tech switch is he's not. If you dont see it with the first scan, you should have another scan ready about 10-15 seconds later which isn't a much bigger investment in time, but it is in minerals, so it's only if your still not sure what he's doing.
If you cant see what he's doing, i'd revert to the mine drop you see in part2 because robo and stargate are the most common openings at the moment. While you can build tanks and transition, it's ALOT harder vs robo and stargate and the biggest thing you give up is the siege tank push in the midgame that lets you trade efficiently that i do in part2.
I may do a written guide at some point, but not until after the series has finished.
The reason i havn't is because as you can see, i got 6 video's out of it, so thats an insanely long wall of text, and i wanted to help bring people into the build gradually so they didn't get lost.
Any questions you have i'll gladly answer for ya mate, especially if english is not your native language! I read this thread about 10 times a day literally looking for questions to answer!
I like to learn through videos the most, the ways you can retain information and remember it are more significant (for instance, remembering images like the way you describe your build order in the first video or remembering [funny] moments).
I would really like to listen to how you deal with the general aspects of mech in the match-up: - How do you deal with protoss harassment? For instance, Blink Stalkers threatening to jump onto your production or your expos, catch you off-guard, or zealot/DT drops. Do you make turrent rings like most mech players? Or do you apply the "best defense is a good offense" logic on your games? - Are there openers in TvP Mech other than 1Rax FE? - When you transition into BCs, what's your starport production setup? 2-3 techlab starports? Do you use any reactor starport?
I may come up with more questions as I come up with them Love your videos, can't wait to see the video on how to deal with Phoenix Colossus, mostly on how to deal with phoenixes, I feel that when they get a decent amount of them, no amount of turrets can really deal with its harassment or they simply don't let you get the turrets in time.
--Well you'll see from the 3rd video it walks you through on the basic's of defending a blink attack from a protoss player, after that narrow timing window, any blink attacks become exponentially worse. They're just not as good as they are early game and nearly any combination of units will clean them up once you get to midgame. Alot of hellions, a few tanks, widow mines... just about anything will hold them off past 10 minutes into the game!
-When it comes to zealots, DT's and drops, any base i take apart from my main has a sensor tower, a PF and some turrets. Generally with good scouting and some turrets you can fend off any zealot drops!
-When it comes to openings i wouldnt recommend anything else. The reason why is i have it mapped out to literally seconds when it comes to scouting and reacting to opponents strategy's. It all leads into the 2 factory's, 1 at 5minutes and another at 5:30.
-The main reason why i recommend 2 factory as an opening over 1/1/1 openings such as mine drops or hellion drops is that If we scout at the correct timings (like the SCV scout and the 6minute scan) it is incredibly flexible. If we push the scouting probe out of our base and get a bunker up in time to defend a poke from their gateway units the protoss player is playing essentially blind. Our build can look like anything. We can go into bio, or mech and The protoss player has to commit to a tech path blindly. We have a window in the game for a few minutes where once we've scanned at 6 minutes we have complete knowledge of what our opponent is doing and they have no idea what we're doing. We abuse this lack of information to get a quick compositional advantage that will let us defend everything (or put on pressure) And take our third base very early with next to nothing the protoss can do to punish it. 1/1/1 doesn't have the necessary flexibility to quickly commit to a series of units that will gain us a similar compositional advantage. If we consider the starport, the only thing we can build out of it is either banshee's, ravens, vikings or medivacs... and none of these are particularly useful in holding off an aggressive protoss. Where as tanks will demolish stalkers, hellbat drops will demolish immortals and collossi and double mine drops will pin a protoss player back to their main base.
-When i get BC's the rule of thumb is BC's cost 200gas per minute. Now each gas geyser is 100 gas per minute in mining, so you can afford 1 BC per base. Generally I'm taking a 4th base when i start getting BC's so i like to get 4 starports. All of them have techlabs, because if i'm building 4 vikings at a time off techlab starports and it's still not enough, they'd have to be played REALLY weird!
Hi Bodzilla, i really love ur post. I have 2 questions.
-Your standard game if you scan a late robo is double mine drop, right =? Could u plz post a replay of u playing ur standard play. Iam not sure how ur transition look like. What time u add factory´s etc.
- If u see 1 base toss and ur ebay block cant finish. Do u build one in your main ?
@MockHamill For the longest time i had TvZ mapped out completely with mech, but the SH change has thrown be through a bit of a loop ;__; In time i'll do it.
Standard play is the mine drop if you scan an early robo, the reason for this is they can get vision of your base around 7minutes where vs a robo opening thats made after they get a few stalkers they generally cant get into your base until 8:30, which is too late to react on the fly.
Yes, but it depends 99% of the time you should be able to get it done, but on maps like coda and echo you actually see the probe leave their base to throw down a proxy pylon for 5 minute oracles or blink. In the scenario where you simply dont know but cant get the ebay block, getting another ebay is good and just going straight into mine production to start is good as well, so long as you throw up extra bunkers.
On June 19 2015 15:17 Bodzilla wrote: You naughty wicked boy! i should spank you for your insolence!
i watched them on x8, i cant really go over them right now, but i will later. How do you fair vs 1 base blink all in's or 5 minute oracles?
I have a lot of experience dealing with these shenanigans with bio so I know the timings inside and out. General factory play with marine/wm defence, 5 min oracles require a turret and a bunker on your main ramp and is fairly easy to scout and 1 base blink allin hits a lot later when i have wm out already
1. What do you do on a 4-player map where he expands before you can e-bay block his expansion? 2. What do you do if he simply takes another expansion instead of trying to kill off your ebay? 3. Could you please include a few replays for each of your videos. The videos are excellent for getting an overview, but replays are better for build order and viewing the smaller but important things like positioning tanks against blink. 4. Is there any reason why you go hellbats instead of mass window mines? I generally find mass mines with tank/viking support to be more robust since you can deal with both ground and air while you are fucked if you go hellbats and do not spot his air units in time. 5. How do you deal with warp-prism attack off 1 or 2 bases? Sometimes I expect blink and instead he goes warp prism making bunkers useless and tanks close to useless if he also drops immortals etc. 6. Why Battlecruicers? A replay demonstrating how you use them would be really useful. In my games I just get the BCs feedbacked, the repairing SCVs killed by storms and then the BCs are killed off by stalkers.
1. The ebay block isn't essential, it's just a tool we have to start throwing the protoss off early in the game, and then if they make a few mistakes like Stalkers before robo, or go 5 minute oracle we can just finish it to be doubly annoying and all in them or force them to all in us. It's not essential, it's just nice if you can do it
2. That means he's more exposed and easier to attack into. Naturals are generally fairly sheltered base's but 3rds are magnitudes easier to attack into.
3. I'm not including replays at the moment, but plan to at a later date. Take in mind that the clips i use are from games where we've resumed from replay multiple times in order to dial in exactly on whats possible, fix macro/micro mistakes and try to play the game at 100% The Video's are essentially perfect games from both players which is why timings are as crisp as they are, They're examples of whats possible on the theoretical level E.G. having 3 tanks for a blink timing ect The other reason is that making these video's is incredibly time consuming. The first 2 video's took 30 hours each and the latest one took 40 hours. I also have a full time job so these REALLY cuts into my ability to practice on the ladder and keep my mechanics as good as they need to be. There's no point showing sloppy replays
4. I go hellbats because they're easier to control and when you combine them with medivacs and boost them over their army they really mess with the AI of their units, often leading to lost collossus shots that are only hitting 1 or 2 hellbats at a time. Now if you take in mind the way i play with both the robo and blink video's i'm only getting a handful of tanks and then transitioning to air. I dont continually make tanks throughout the game because it's my plan to trade with the tanks before he gets the critical mass of things like immortals, collossi, pheonix ect After that i dont make tanks at all
5. Well if it's 1 or 2 base's, chances are i'm still at home with my army, not to mention i only like to get about 4-6 medivacs before i start building double viking! What time are you scanning his main? I dont assume i'm playing vs twilight or robo. i know in 95% of my games and then tailor my build to that so i'm a bit confused with this question
6. What are the upgrades of your BC's? Keep in mind i like to get at a MINIMUM 6 with 2/2 upgrades and 3/3 on the way before i even do anything aggressive. I Think you need to load up the unit tester and really test how good BC's are. A 200 energy BC (should never happen) will deal 200 damage to a BC. A BC still has 350 health left. A storm will do 80 damage which means they literally have to have hit 5 storms on top of them in a row, with no overlap, to kill them. Not to mention that they have an incredible amount of armor, vs a stalkers relatively low in comparison DPS.
In fights i dont even try to repair BC's, i just do it after the fights over with mules, They're THAT good
Wow. At first I thought this series would be kind of a waste like mech in TvP has been classically considered.
After watching the videos though I've been really blown away by it, and the possible high-level relevance. Great content and I'm excited to see what comes out of this.
We already saw a mech game recently in proleague (I think it was Reality vs Yongwha)
Looking over Huk's replay i can see some pretty big mistakes on his part.
He opened blink robo and tried to use it to pressure you which meant he severely delayed his tech. it was 14minutes into the game before his first immortal came out, which is just TOO late. The opening that he has just doesn't transition into a counter pressure play, because your timing window for that amount of units at their best has already passed.
The chargelot immortal composition was good, but then to go into phoenix instead of archons or HT is just baffling to me.
I think indecision with which is the best way to play against this REALLY hampered him, It's almost like he tried to play phoenix/collossi and chargelot immortal archon at the same time, which is just not possible. You just end up with 2 half compositions.
After seeing this, if i had to play him in a tournament, i'd Mech every time
I think he tackled playing vs mech incorrectly as well. Although his mechanics were alright, i think the lack of terrans that do a double starport opener vs protoss or even mech for that matter means he never actually gave mech any thpught about how it should be countered.
I believe mech currently offers a very diverse way of playing vs protoss that is not bip and will be further explored and enchanced in the future
It functions similar to TvP bio in the sense it's marines vs zealots, maruders vs stalkers, vikings vs collossi ect, but just on a much grander and varied scale.
Instead of every advantage being "great, now i can have slightly more stuff!" it gives you the ability truly capitalize on compositional advantages on a much grander scale we havn't previously been able to do.
It's a shame the mine buff and tempest nerf which really helped mech be an actual viable composition came so late into Hots. Imagine if we had like 2 years of this..... we'd be so much more advanced.
I think terran if those 2 changes didn't exist, it would simply crumble like a house of cards.
On June 23 2015 12:38 EJK wrote: I think he tackled playing vs mech incorrectly as well. Although his mechanics were alright, i think the lack of terrans that do a double starport opener vs protoss or even mech for that matter means he never actually gave mech any thpught about how it should be countered.
I believe mech currently offers a very diverse way of playing vs protoss that is not bip and will be further explored and enchanced in the future
Did you see the Yoda/herO game from proleague this morning?
I'm very interested in Mech in the MU but I have a feeling we haven't seen all the vulnerabilities of the build yet (because it hasn't been used very much in Korea).
On June 23 2015 14:46 Bodzilla wrote: The koreans dont know everything. It's important to remember infestor broodlord and mass SH where a foreign zerg invention
Certainly true. I'm still hoping to see this in Proleague/Korean leagues so we can see some potential weaknesses at the highest level of play
On June 23 2015 14:46 Bodzilla wrote: The koreans dont know everything. It's important to remember infestor broodlord and mass SH where a foreign zerg invention
Certainly true. I'm still hoping to see this in Proleague/Korean leagues so we can see some potential weaknesses at the highest level of play
herO kinda killed the mech in TvP movement in SPL yesterday
e: sorry, just saw that there was already talk about that game
On June 23 2015 19:23 Alucen-Will- wrote: I think these Korean progamers browse Team Liquid..GuMiho is meching against zest as we speak :d
gumiho is an idiot, his build
timing wasnt good, opener wasnt good, unit comp wasnèt good...
hero vs yoda was cool game, hero played extremely well. Yoda was kind of fukt though from his opener and hero was just ahead from the opener and capitalized on the situation. I think the build that i do with double starport is effective at dealing vs warp prism harass and immortal drops because of the daunting viking banshee fleet you get, but yoda just had siege tanks and widow mines were too late rip
I wish some Korean pro would use aggressive mine play supported by tanks and vikings. In my experience there is no Protoss hard-counter to the mine/tank/viking style as long as you trade armies regularly. Plus it works just as good in the mid game as it does in the late game, massing immortals, tempest or carriers simply does not work.
You can of course be out-multi tasked our out-positioned but I have never lost against a Protoss that did not outplay me, something I can not say for traditional mech where it is very easy to lose even if you are better then your opponent.
One thing that i've noticed even at very high levels (korean pros) in regard to the chargelot/immortal/archon composition is that many protoss players seem to neglect splitting up their army and taking engagements from multiple angles. You posted a screenshot of a protoss player locked into their base behind infinity defensive buildings and tanks, but in my own humble experience (i am a diamond player) taking your army into your base against this kind of style is effectively suicide. Have you had a lot of experiences with protoss players who spread out with their more mobile army and collapse in from multiple directions? How well does your tank hellbat timing hold up against it?
Additionally, I agree 100% that protoss armies are very underequipped to fight head on against an ultra-late game BC composition. How do you handle a protoss player who does a remax on blink stalkers and aggressively tries to base trade you?
Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Ok but what if you make mines instead of hellbats? The bonus damage vs shields synergize so well with tanks splash. Hellbat/tank need ghost in this situation, but you cannot afford ghost. 3 mines cost less than 1 ghost and mass mines make it really cost-inefficient to charge into tanks.
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
my double port banshee opener seems to shut down warp prism harass relatively easily because banshees well....are awesome haha
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
my double port banshee opener seems to shut down warp prism harass relatively easily because banshees well....are awesome haha
I always felt Banshee openers were very weak in TvP for obvious reasons (2/3 of the protoss tech openings have detection). Furthermore, can a protoss not just respond with phoenix/colossus/immortal w/maybe warp prism zealot harass support?
As is it, Blink Stalkers are pretty good against banshee's I thought.
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
my double port banshee opener seems to shut down warp prism harass relatively easily because banshees well....are awesome haha
Modern TvT/TvZ in Korea would tell you that banshee's are an amazing unit. Almost too cost-efficient sometimes
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
my double port banshee opener seems to shut down warp prism harass relatively easily because banshees well....are awesome haha
I always felt Banshee openers were very weak in TvP for obvious reasons (2/3 of the protoss tech openings have detection). Furthermore, can a protoss not just respond with phoenix/colossus/immortal w/maybe warp prism zealot harass support?
As is it, Blink Stalkers are pretty good against banshee's I thought.
Stalkers are extremely mediocre against banshees. There's just usually a lot more stalkers than banshees when they meet.
On June 25 2015 00:03 Bodzilla wrote: Well the reason i didn't make the blink video with that aggressive contain was because it worked SUPER good on ladder, but after about 10 hours of practice with protoss players who became more and more confortable in that position it became less and less effective. You may think that immortal chargelot archon attacking into THAT many tanks and bunkers is suicide, but protoss players that literally just maxed out on 2 base where able to build an army strong enough to bust through. It has to be one of the dumbest things in the game when you watch it happen.
It's basically why the blink vid took longer then the others to come out, because i had to re-write the strategy in the mid and the late game. I dont wanna promote bad strategy's if i can help it
Anyway so theres some confusion among the vids. The tank hellbat timing is only for robo openings, where vs blink you do a massive amount of hellions and take map control, each scenario has it's own tailored response to each opening, mid game and lategame. If you tried to do a tank push into a twilight opening where they go into immortals and chargelot unless your INSANELY far ahead you can just lose everything. The next vid will show how we can go toe to toe with that army though so you'll love it~
Protoss should never base trade vs terran, because our buildings can fly If it comes to it, i'll literally float my buildings with my army and just keep a moving around the map, nothing induce's tears quite like doing that to someone
Regarding potential vulnerabilities, does a mech opening provide enough gas off 2 base to prevent things like immortal drops or even wackier things like a colossus drop?
I'm just trying to find holes in this composition..hm.
my double port banshee opener seems to shut down warp prism harass relatively easily because banshees well....are awesome haha
I always felt Banshee openers were very weak in TvP for obvious reasons (2/3 of the protoss tech openings have detection). Furthermore, can a protoss not just respond with phoenix/colossus/immortal w/maybe warp prism zealot harass support?
As is it, Blink Stalkers are pretty good against banshee's I thought.
Stalkers are extremely mediocre against banshees. There's just usually a lot more stalkers than banshees when they meet.
Hm. I would think the warpgate mechanic + blink + split army/ground upgrades for terran would make them fairly good in the macro game against banshee based compositions. Banshee's are quite fragile and not all that fast
The reason i dont build Banshees and EJK does is because we aproach the matchup slightly differently.
I like to get a compositional advantage and use it to hit timings, counter openings and then transition into the ultimate deathball army.
EJK instead likes to get economical advantage and take trades with fast 4 base's. In this scenario the banshee's are much more powerful because the protoss isn't getting as established and the more pressure he puts on them delays storm and other good ways of dealing with banshees.
Hi loving this guide, I've been looking for a strong "catch all opener" to lead into mech in tvp for a while, i feel like this has a lot of potential. Just a couple of short questions:
1) When your scouting with your first scv, you pull off the ebay block and you scout one gas, do you ever steal the other gas? I've done it a few times and its nice because it really restricts the toss players options, often he just goes into a 4gate which is not too hard to hold off if you see it coming.
2) a lot of the responsiveness of the build comes down to the scan at the 6 minute mark, but what the toss player puts his tech in a sneaky location and you don't catch it in the scan? I feel like if this style ever hypothetically picked up steam and toss players got more used to seeing it they would eventually adapt by just hiding their tech, because there's a lot riding on the 6 minute scan.
there are other ways to supplement scouting for the matchup. a favourite of mine is to use the scouting SCV to do a runby while they're attacking the ebay.
But using the SCV to scout you should be able to locate all of their pylons anyway
On June 25 2015 10:44 Bodzilla wrote: there are other ways to supplement scouting for the matchup. a favourite of mine is to use the scouting SCV to do a runby while they're attacking the ebay.
But using the SCV to scout you should be able to locate all of their pylons anyway
fair enough, thanks for the quick response. What are your thoughts on the gas steal? Is that something you've ever experimented with?
couldn't deal with bc templar carrier army when the game was forced into the late game...i kept making thor wm viking but that didn't work. I guess i need some bcs or at least a larger air army?
Either ay I am still afraid of the templar, how do i engage into a templar army like that?
couldn't deal with bc templar carrier army when the game was forced into the late game...i kept making thor wm viking but that didn't work. I guess i need some bcs or at least a larger air army?
Either ay I am still afraid of the templar, how do i engage into a templar army like that?
You can use a few tanks to zone them out since they instant KO HTs and forces him to split them, ghosts on the ready, and/or hellions (hard and unreliable but high potential and 0 gas)
Also thor wm viking is a pretty solid composition (fast to make, decently flexible, good as a rebound/remax), but when they mix in carriers believe it or not, you should get a stronger composition with BCs for yamato'ing the carriers down. Burst defeats burst. Have a few PDDs to nullify the tempests, stop the HTs from storming everything for free, and it should be gg. Ofc a few WMs are great too, because it's very easy for the interceptors to all launch at once and bunch up and they can lose 50-80 interceptors to 3 WMs.
couldn't deal with bc templar carrier army when the game was forced into the late game...i kept making thor wm viking but that didn't work. I guess i need some bcs or at least a larger air army?
Either ay I am still afraid of the templar, how do i engage into a templar army like that?
You can use a few tanks to zone them out since they instant KO HTs and forces him to split them, ghosts on the ready, and/or hellions (hard and unreliable but high potential and 0 gas)
Also thor wm viking is a pretty solid composition (fast to make, decently flexible, good as a rebound/remax), but when they mix in carriers believe it or not, you should get a stronger composition with BCs for yamato'ing the carriers down. Burst defeats burst. Have a few PDDs to nullify the tempests, stop the HTs from storming everything for free, and it should be gg. Ofc a few WMs are great too, because it's very easy for the interceptors to all launch at once and bunch up and they can lose 50-80 interceptors to 3 WMs.
On July 01 2015 14:53 Bodzilla wrote: Nope, and it's a good thing too. For some reason interceptors attacks are considered a lazer like a voidray,
If they were any other way, 1-2 carriers would render tempests as SO OP it wouldnt matter what you did.
Damn am I glad they count as lazers LOL. I remember first finding out that PDDs didn't stop interceptors, and I was like fuck what did i build these ravens for (in WoL I mean). But it all works out now!
The biggest thing with templers is they're EXTREMELY hard to deal with. One way is to actually do nukes and use them to zone them away, or try to get the money emp.
But if you build BC's HT mean literally nothing. They just dont do shit vs BC's.
Thats why i kept recommending you try them instead of banshee's, because if it's not storm, it's feedback and both absolutely rekt the flying paperweight that is a Banshee.
Besides, you can use the BC's to tank, yamoto down immortals which makes your thors live forever and they'll never get the chance to build that air army. They'll just die before hand
Plus BCs are fucking bad ass. I mean come the fuck on it's a battle cruiser. And it's got a giant charging lazer beam. Also you can mass repair a BC and in small numbers it's hilarious to see 1-3 BCs take down the 10-20 stalker warpin
I guess another way to approach HTs, from a non-composition standpoint, is to simply only attack if due to some position plays or such you were able to get out far on the map without any encounters, which would severely reduce the amount of distance he has to kite you with storms/feedback before you actually get to attack his base. AKA get as much ground as you can before the fight. I love using nukes for this to pull him out of position / distract him.
On July 01 2015 15:07 Bodzilla wrote: The biggest thing with templers is they're EXTREMELY hard to deal with. One way is to actually do nukes and use them to zone them away, or try to get the money emp.
But if you build BC's HT mean literally nothing. They just dont do shit vs BC's.
Thats why i kept recommending you try them instead of banshee's, because if it's not storm, it's feedback and both absolutely rekt the flying paperweight that is a Banshee.
Besides, you can use the BC's to tank, yamoto down immortals which makes your thors live forever and they'll never get the chance to build that air army. They'll just die before hand
when you say ht do literally nothign to bc, wouldn't a combination of storm, feedback, and multiple tempest volleys bring down a bc relatively fast even with all that hp before a bc can actually do any damage? It feels like it is just an excessive amount of tankiness that is too slow to do much more except to yamoto perhaps
best case scenario for feedback it does 200 damage. A BC still has 350 health left over from that. Thats about the same as a collossus thats full health unless it has sheilds upgrades.
They're insanely tanky, and with storm only doing 80 damage thats literally 4 storms back to back to get it into a point where other units will finish it off, which is 16 seconds of ingame time before the storms will get it down to 30 health.
Throw in a few PDD's and you take out stalkers and tempests out of the equation and then yamoto the robo units or carriers and tempests and you'll not only allow your ground army to be 5 times as strong, you'll drain your energy so that feedback is half as good
Battle cruisers are literally broken if you get them vs protoss.
Not to mention once you take collossi and immortals out of the game INSTANTLY and FOR FREE with yamoto, they have NOTHING to deal with a thor hellbat army.
Now you may think that a tempest army can just kite backwards while doing damage... and your right. Except they got nerfed into the ground with the SH re-design. They're literally half as good, and if they have to keep retreating while fighting, theres no way they can hold a position such as an expansion on the map.
Reading this post and looking at your play... I'm just wondering if there is another opener like bio like opener available that could get into this end game comp comfortably.
I actually tried transitioning to BCz in a game vs a GM P I almost pulled it off. I felt the support army wasn't good enough to fight with the BCz.
I honestly like the idea of mech vs Protoss but I like to be aggressive in my games like REALLY aggressive but probably to my detriment. I want to figure out a way to get to lategame with protoss and transition into bcz which I'm thinking i'm going to need atleast 2 PFs at my rally before I could make that transition what do you think bodzilla? Also would you think a bio army would compliment BCz enough to be effective in trades or should I only go with the mech army?
On July 02 2015 00:54 Pirfiktshon wrote: Reading this post and looking at your play... I'm just wondering if there is another opener like bio like opener available that could get into this end game comp comfortably.
I actually tried transitioning to BCz in a game vs a GM P I almost pulled it off. I felt the support army wasn't good enough to fight with the BCz.
I honestly like the idea of mech vs Protoss but I like to be aggressive in my games like REALLY aggressive but probably to my detriment. I want to figure out a way to get to lategame with protoss and transition into bcz which I'm thinking i'm going to need atleast 2 PFs at my rally before I could make that transition what do you think bodzilla? Also would you think a bio army would compliment BCz enough to be effective in trades or should I only go with the mech army?
You gotta remember that BC's shoot alot of little projectiles very fast. This means that they're heavily affected by armor for the protoss player.
It's going to be insanely hard to get to them off a bio opening with no upgrades
carrier/tempest immortal compositions with gateway support are hard to deal with
I think best way to go mech in tvp is going heavy banshee/starport off 2 reactor factory+1/2 tech lab factory so you can have enough AA in time when it happens. Shame about the tank- I'd love to have tank-centric tvp but they are made of paper and immortals soak so much damage
I personally prefer going ghost mech off triple rax ghost production with 5 factory+1 starport but it gets hard countered by air based composition too much because I only add in more starports after my initial tank/hellbat/ghost/thor/mine push. But by then, my AA option comes far too late and limited- and I spent alot of gas on the triple ghost for initial push so my starport transition is even more delayed. Would love to have cheap AA option in factory like goliath. Meh.
Yea sure battlecruisers do a lot of damage but feedback/tempest make a bit of mincemeat out of them while you get overrun on the ground. Not to mention they take a lot of resource to get to.
Guys, don't forget if you're that afraid of HTs feedbacking your BCs (it really doesn't matter when you have ghosts/yamato though) you can literally stack all your BCs on top of each other, and use 1-2 EMPs to completely drain their energy. Although if they have high carrier count you will want to yamato them even if some get feedbacked, because then everything else will get owned by the BCs.
On July 02 2015 00:54 Pirfiktshon wrote: Reading this post and looking at your play... I'm just wondering if there is another opener like bio like opener available that could get into this end game comp comfortably.
I actually tried transitioning to BCz in a game vs a GM P I almost pulled it off. I felt the support army wasn't good enough to fight with the BCz.
I honestly like the idea of mech vs Protoss but I like to be aggressive in my games like REALLY aggressive but probably to my detriment. I want to figure out a way to get to lategame with protoss and transition into bcz which I'm thinking i'm going to need atleast 2 PFs at my rally before I could make that transition what do you think bodzilla? Also would you think a bio army would compliment BCz enough to be effective in trades or should I only go with the mech army?
You gotta remember that BC's shoot alot of little projectiles very fast. This means that they're heavily affected by armor for the protoss player.
It's going to be insanely hard to get to them off a bio opening with no upgrades
Being burst damage doesn't mean that BCs are weak. Void Rays are also burst damage units, and guess what: they tear heavily armored units apart. a BC has 36 DPS vs everything and a full charged voidray has max 32DPS vs armor.
When playing BCs, you also have to remember that:
1- Ground protoss unit have max 1 armor, which means that the DPS of the battlecruiser will be "only" 32 DPS instead of 36.
2- mech now consists on only 2 weapon /armor upgrades, while the Protoss army to deal with pure mech needs both ground and air upgrades (5 upgrades).
3- Protoss shield upgrade are almost a luxury, specially when builiding heavy tech armies, so half the HP will possibly be 0-1 armor vs +2/+3 weapons of mech.
BCs are not that weak at all, except vs Corrupters or Tempest/Carrier. Yamato 'em all and focus fire against capital ships. BC's will tear Protoss appart.
Hey, EJK, as far as I've seen, you have played against 3 protoss (Startails, State and HuK) in the 3 Qualifiers for WCS Premier, did you get to use any of the builds and strategies from this thread? I'm curious D: Unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to watch them.
On July 09 2015 23:26 PowerOfOne wrote: Hey, EJK, as far as I've seen, you have played against 3 protoss (Startails, State and HuK) in the 3 Qualifiers for WCS Premier, did you get to use any of the builds and strategies from this thread? I'm curious D: Unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to watch them.
i won mech vs huk in a different lan a couple weeks ago, and i won a macro mech game vs state as well
This thread is the best, I finally took the time to read through it all and can't wait to go home and try to play some mech. Thanks to Bodzilla and EJK for the very enlightening discussions and replays.
On July 09 2015 23:26 PowerOfOne wrote: Hey, EJK, as far as I've seen, you have played against 3 protoss (Startails, State and HuK) in the 3 Qualifiers for WCS Premier, did you get to use any of the builds and strategies from this thread? I'm curious D: Unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to watch them.
i won mech vs huk in a different lan a couple weeks ago, and i won a macro mech game vs state as well
I have seen the game vs State (map: terraform) (casted by theWalrusSC2) , it was fantastic to watch and so well executed
On July 09 2015 23:26 PowerOfOne wrote: Hey, EJK, as far as I've seen, you have played against 3 protoss (Startails, State and HuK) in the 3 Qualifiers for WCS Premier, did you get to use any of the builds and strategies from this thread? I'm curious D: Unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to watch them.
i won mech vs huk in a different lan a couple weeks ago, and i won a macro mech game vs state as well
I have seen the game vs State (map: terraform) (casted by theWalrusSC2) , it was fantastic to watch and so well executed
oo link? I have only really seen HTOmario mech vs protoss in macro game
On July 09 2015 23:26 PowerOfOne wrote: Hey, EJK, as far as I've seen, you have played against 3 protoss (Startails, State and HuK) in the 3 Qualifiers for WCS Premier, did you get to use any of the builds and strategies from this thread? I'm curious D: Unfortunately I wasn't able to tune in to watch them.
i won mech vs huk in a different lan a couple weeks ago, and i won a macro mech game vs state as well
I have seen the game vs State (map: terraform) (casted by theWalrusSC2) , it was fantastic to watch and so well executed
oo link? I have only really seen HTOmario mech vs protoss in macro game
the next part deals with all twilight openings, so HT (very rare these days ;__;) DT, blink and chargelot timings. it goes into a mech ghost viking style army where you rely on nukes to split a protoss players attention in the mid and lategame.
unfortunently i'm just not getting the right builds on ladder often enough to do it.
when you consider that protoss is 1/3rd of the player base and then they have like 20 different openings, and i'm looking at the specifics of 3-4 of them it's very hard to get good replays.
i ultimately dont wanna provide shit vids that arn't backed up by tonnes of practice with the player in a closed enviroment. because sometimes builds only work on ladder because they're not familiar with it. I want to showcase builds that work every time.
On July 22 2015 09:19 Bodzilla wrote: i'm looking for protoss practice partners.
the next part deals with all twilight openings, so HT (very rare these days ;__;) DT, blink and chargelot timings. it goes into a mech ghost viking style army where you rely on nukes to split a protoss players attention in the mid and lategame.
unfortunently i'm just not getting the right builds on ladder often enough to do it.
when you consider that protoss is 1/3rd of the player base and then they have like 20 different openings, and i'm looking at the specifics of 3-4 of them it's very hard to get good replays.
i ultimately dont wanna provide shit vids that arn't backed up by tonnes of practice with the player in a closed enviroment. because sometimes builds only work on ladder because they're not familiar with it. I want to showcase builds that work every time.
How are we guys! now i know this isn't the new TvP mech vod, but i thought i'd share my feelings on the TvZ mech that innovation and other terrans are starting to use to dismantle zergs enjoy!
i've put in this one as well for you guys to peruse on. It's a vlog talking about the TvZ mech thats going to win every game forever and ever amen in the future! Hope ya like it~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go_J9LYYQ8Q @10:04 i propose a change to buff zerg that would fix the matchup (imo)
I just had a game where I saw double gas, missing pylone and ebay blocked his expansion. I finished the ebay and built one turret in the main mineral line, one turret in my natural mineral line and another turret by my production.
In a case like this, when do you build your 2 factories (since you need minerals for your turrets). Also he did not take his expansion so I knew some kind of all-in was coming. Do I get tech labs or reactors on my factories? I built double bunkers at my natural and another bunker in my main in case he would blink in.
He ran me over with mass oracles and few sentries but I think it all comes down to me botching the build.
Basically what is the build order in this situation where he goes double gas, missing pylon, Oracle attacks on time, he takes no expansion so you know some kind of all-in is coming?
Also when you upgrade you main and natural to Orbital Commands in this situation?
I tried this build against a late robo with the hellbat medivac attack. My attack at his natural did not do any damage and it all went downhill from there. Please check the replay and tell me what I should have done differently.
I tried this build against a late robo with the hellbat medivac attack. My attack at his natural did not do any damage and it all went downhill from there. Please check the replay and tell me what I should have done differently.
Noticed a few things so far, * you dont need that Ebay. Unless it's a 5minute oracle, with a 1rax expand vs a standard oracle opening you'll have 7 marines when it hits. You can put one in your bunker, 6 in your main and defend it. If you then see an oracle thats when you start your ebay and mines. * You also saw a robo, so building turrets is not necessary and will just slow down your build
* As soon as you've scanned his base, and your factory is finished you want to build an armory. You get your armory before your starport because you want to start +1 armor as soon as possible so it's ready for the push! You'll also be starved for money so you dont need your production quite as fast. https://youtu.be/XA1ewNRX8Sw?t=6m31s Theres some text in the video that shows in which order you get which.
* You should move out at 9 minutes to start pressuring, this will let you cancel any early 3rd base
* Most importantly of all. This is the hellbat DROP build, You need to drop them over his army like you do in TvT. The goal of the 11minute timing is that is when +1 armor is finished. and that is when you have 4 medivacs with your army for the attack. You need to load 8 of your hellbats up into the medivacs, boost over his army and use them to kill his units, the extra healing and the +1 armor means they just wont die.
*Finally, as soon as you saturate your natural mineral line, thats when you start building your 3rd and 4th gas. This will allow you to go up to 5 factory's, get +1 attack, get a 2nd armory While still expanding to your third.
The hellbat drop can kill if done right, but on the off chance it doesn't work you want to atleast kill any important units like collossi or immortals while only trading your mineral hellbats to do it. Remember to save whatever medivacs you can, and then play the game out from that position and you should be fine!
Whats the ideal mid game composition when they open pheonixes? normally the P seem to expand behind this and get the right compo based on what he sees. Whats should the meching T do in this situation?
When you spot the twilight, and they somewhat go for a blink timing but back off and macro instead, whats the unit compo one aims for? transition to air or go apply the pressure but do I continue building tanks?
When transitioning to air, having vikings then adding BCs slowly the ideal way? What about the ground compo with the BCs when there is about 3~5 of them? hellbat/thors or tanks?
I like to go thor hellbat viking, and get 2 starports while getting an insane number of vikings.
The best thing you can do is take some scv's with you and do a turret hard contain and use the safety of the turrets to just pick at the protoss player, sniping anything you can. And if you can channel your inner maru, a PF wouldn't go astray either. Heres an example
On August 28 2015 13:04 EJK wrote: ejk is back to meching
How do you deal with a Protoss who trys to limit you to two base? He tried doing the Lilbow Colossus all in but couldnt really break through my seige line, so instead he expanded behind it and just camped outside my base, I tried hellion runbys but of course a cannon and a warp in shut them down.
On August 30 2015 06:19 julyterran wrote: How do you deal with a Protoss who trys to limit you to two base? He tried doing the Lilbow Colossus all in but couldnt really break through my seige line, so instead he expanded behind it and just camped outside my base, I tried hellion runbys but of course a cannon and a warp in shut them down.
macro and wait a couple minutes. If the protoss stays there too long you can just crush his army
Mech in TvP is fun, but there are a couple of things that throw me off. 2 base Blink for instance. I typically open with a standard reaper FE into reactor marine and WM drop, so 1/1/1, normally my WM drop and multiprong attack at the nat hits around... 7:30-8:00 if i am not mistaken, so at that point if i scout 2 base blink, how should i react? I tried to got for the 6 tanks and then Hellions, but i feel like, if i don't open up with your BO Bodzilla everything is way to late. So how should i react instead? Because what happens most of the time is, the P runs to the bunker, blinks on top of my tanks and wins, as i don't have the 6 you like to go, but most likely 2-3 which is not enough. Protoss just blinks on top of them and kills the tanks.
On August 31 2015 03:54 AleXusher wrote: Hi, maybe someone here can help me.
Mech in TvP is fun, but there are a couple of things that throw me off. 2 base Blink for instance. I typically open with a standard reaper FE into reactor marine and WM drop, so 1/1/1, normally my WM drop and multiprong attack at the nat hits around... 7:30-8:00 if i am not mistaken, so at that point if i scout 2 base blink, how should i react? I tried to got for the 6 tanks and then Hellions, but i feel like, if i don't open up with your BO Bodzilla everything is way to late. So how should i react instead? Because what happens most of the time is, the P runs to the bunker, blinks on top of my tanks and wins, as i don't have the 6 you like to go, but most likely 2-3 which is not enough. Protoss just blinks on top of them and kills the tanks.
The OP has a video explaining the proper tank response. Pay close attention to his video on blink and his siege tank positioning.
Your problem is that you are not scouting it fast enough if you only see it as you attack at 7:30. Ideally, you should scout this with your reaper at like the 5-6 minute mark when twilight is down.
If you work on your siege tank positioning, you can make it so that they can't kill all of your tanks in 1 blink.
Um if toss opens robo how can you really pressure them? with any decent shuttle + reaver micro he can delay your push, if not kill a decent amount of units before you get to his base.
Not to mention he could also counter your main with 2 zlots + reavers and kill a lot of SCV's than come back to help defend your attack.
On August 31 2015 11:16 johny23 wrote: Um if toss opens robo how can you really pressure them? with any decent shuttle + reaver micro he can delay your push, if not kill a decent amount of units before you get to his base.
Not to mention he could also counter your main with 2 zlots + reavers and kill a lot of SCV's than come back to help defend your attack.
The OP has a video explaining the proper tank response. Pay close attention to his video on blink and his siege tank positioning.
Your problem is that you are not scouting it fast enough if you only see it as you attack at 7:30. Ideally, you should scout this with your reaper at like the 5-6 minute mark when twilight is down.
If you work on your siege tank positioning, you can make it so that they can't kill all of your tanks in 1 blink.
That helps only to 50%
What if the Twilight is proxied, and my reaper won't be able to scout it? I mean i can assume it is blink, based on the amount of stalker i might see, but this hasn't to be true. Also, how do i position the tanks properly? Srsly, i have them at a position where they can shot barely at the stalker if they attack the bunker, which should be ideal, but still, P can simply walk towards the bunker, and blink past it on top of my tank. I still would like to know, how to react, with the WM drop BO, as this has to work as well.
Edit:
So i rewatched the video, rly great video btw
But having 3 tanks and 2 Bunker vs those stalker, seems never to be enough for me to defend? They dont blink that stupid like that guy in the video, they would to up the main, snipe the tank, destroy the bunker, kill SCVs and get out again, ez. Do you maybe have a replay where you play this against a high Master or even GM and it works? I could need such material.
So if i see 2 gas and go for turrets and there is no oracle hitting, ok, so i know it can be blink proxied, but how do i know, it isn't DTs or proxy immortal?
Edit2:
So i tested a lot with the unit testmap and 2 bunker with marines and 3 tanks in rly good position, is still not enough to rly defend well, i lose always all my tanks to the stalker, is it supposed to be like that? I rly could need some replays, if someone got them
Edit3:
I tried now a lot of stuff with hellions vs Immo and Stalker, i lose every fight, hellions just dont have enough dmg, so i think i need to stick with WM Tank Viking and some hellbats to buffer.
On September 03 2015 08:26 julyterran wrote: Nice game EJK, why do you delay your 2nd and 3rd factories for so long? And what made you switch from 2 Port Banshee?
i have to delay my factories because i dont have the money from the fast 3rd cc. And I am just trying different macro style with double armory and going into sky i nstead of being really aggressive
On September 03 2015 10:58 julyterran wrote: Do you prefer aggressive or sky mech tvp? I've been having a ton of success with 15-16 min +2 pushes at Mid Masters level
uhhh i think sky mech is more solid because pushes usually only work if your opponent isnt doing something optimally such as macro, unit composition, general reaction to mech (and a lot of players because its mech will react imporperly)
I think sky mech beter then aggressive and ive done both in the past
On September 03 2015 10:58 julyterran wrote: Do you prefer aggressive or sky mech tvp? I've been having a ton of success with 15-16 min +2 pushes at Mid Masters level
Can you upload some of this games with this kind of push? I play mech vs protoss since almost my begening in SC2 but all info is always welcome.
Excuse the macro mistakes at the beginning, first game of the day.
His build definitely attributed to his lose which prompted me to rush my attack by a few minutes earlier, but the concepts still the same. I do a build pretty similiar to EJK's except i prefer to go straight into banshee instead of just 2 production buildings for 9 mins.
WAYYYYYY too many tanks man. You should be transitioning out of them way earlier and reinforcing with hellbat thor.
You dont need to rely on tanks lategame, because once you get to 3/3 stalkers do so little, they actually shoot healing laser beams at the BC. They're that bad, and once you yamoto down the robo units they dont have a way to deal with hellbat thor
WAYYYYYY too many tanks man. You should be transitioning out of them way earlier and reinforcing with hellbat thor.
You dont need to rely on tanks lategame, because once you get to 3/3 stalkers do so little, they actually shoot healing laser beams at the BC. They're that bad, and once you yamoto down the robo units they dont have a way to deal with hellbat thor
welll....i do need to survive long enough to get to battlecruisers first man
I think the counter-intuitive thing is that tanks get less effective over time as their composition changes and actually make you more vulnerable.
You really only want tanks for the super early part of the game to deal with gateway units before they get the critical mass of robo units. By the time they get to 4 immortals, your getting next to no return on more tanks. Your actually better off flooding the map with hellions/hellbats while your teching and before they have storm.
It's a composition timing where say off a blink opening it goes like this for map control.
Blink -> tanks -> 4 immortals -> mass hellion -> Storm -> BC
So i guess what you can take away is looking to take some map control and apply pressure after a failed blink attack with your initial tanks. It'll make the rest of the game ALOT easier for you because you'll slow the protoss down
If you're talking about deathball / strongest firepower unit comp, it's bc raven, optional viking support and optional banshees (a combination of banshees / ghosts are needed to deal with HTs). Against carriers use 4-5 WMs.
On September 07 2015 06:03 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: If you're talking about deathball / strongest firepower unit comp, it's bc raven, optional viking support and optional banshees (a combination of banshees / ghosts are needed to deal with HTs). Against carriers use 4-5 WMs.
why are you saying viking support is optional? And yes im talking about deathball/strongest unit comp, what am i aiming towards once i have 5 bases?
On September 07 2015 05:33 EJK wrote: i need some help man i dont know what unit comp to make with sky terran...in tvz mech its bc raven viking in tvt its raven viking but in tvp....wtf
It's 8 BC's and just push into one of their expansions yamoto'ing robo units. After that just go hellbat thor.
A handful of ravens are great vs things like tempests and can give a bit of buffer for your vikings if they do blink forwards to try and snipe things but 9 times out of 10 you wont need the ravens because you'll just kill them.
You should be able to push with BC's once you take your 4th base and attack into their 4th base. By that time you should have about 6-10 tanks a bunch of hellbats and 10 or so vikings
On September 07 2015 05:33 EJK wrote: i need some help man i dont know what unit comp to make with sky terran...in tvz mech its bc raven viking in tvt its raven viking but in tvp....wtf
Righto just watched the replay. I'm not sure what your having trouble with, you handled him perfectly in this game.
The only thing i'dd say is commit to hellbat thor viking earlier once you saw pheonix, because pheonix/collo or carriers/tempest are always what they tech into after it.
With a higher thor viking count ealier you could have just killed him if you took some scv's with your push to support and to just throw down some turrets as well with your army.
Theres really 2 different lategames. and the reason for it is this
Thors are amazing at all facets of TvP mech EXCEPT vs robo units. The BC's with yamoto snipes on robo units allow us to build them with impunity and kill them. If they skip robo units because they're trying to be sneaky with carriers or tempests or something else weird, just build thors and you'll win
I had most succes with Tank, Viking, WM, Banshee, Ghost. If i can get a scan and snipe the observer, he can't see my banshees or Ghosts, i can EMP everything, and if he commits, Tanks shred his army, if he runs i can move forward and siege down one of his expansions.
If i see Phoenix Collossus with my WM drop and Marine poke, i just add instant a 2nd SP with Reactor to get massive amount of Vikings, got for WMs and Tanks and some Hellbats to tank, he can't engage, as he will lose all the Phoenix, so i can push him back, and easily siege his 3rd, from this point i can rally accross the map, as long as he doesn't get a flank or a sandwich move i can safely kill his 3rd and win from there.
tbh, i had NO success using Hellbats, Hellions, lots of Thor or BC, Raven. These Units just seem not to work for me.
OK watching this replay, i'm a bit dubious about your build. You dont start a starport until 9:20, and you get pitte dup against a stargate opening. To try and transition into a comfortable midgame with this opening vs what he did is going to be disgustingly hard.
Now i know you dont like my build, but even with a 1rax expo and 2 fac, i still start a starport at 6minutes. The only time i dont is when i go up against twilight openings, so either DT or blink. I do this because i scan at 6minutes with my nats orbital and i abuse a protoss players lack of information. Protoss has to commit to a tech path, be it robo, stargate, twilight BEFORE they can see what the terran player is doing.
But the terran doesn't have to do this.
We can figure out what they're doing and taylor our response to it to get greedier, more aggressive an switch our tech into different things in response. Thats how we get our advantage in the early game, and how we carry it into the mid and lategame. By doing a 1 size fit's all build your harming your mid-game.
Vs this style of opening, i would do a mine drop to pressure, using it to see if he's committing to phoenix. If he does, it means i can instantly get my 2nd starport, and make units off 2 fac, 2 starport with an armory and get up for a big push at 14minutes to push him off a 4th base.
16minutes is far to late to put pressure on a protoss. I think in this game, if the protoss wasn't being so insanely greedy he could have had enough units out in time to actually just kill your army before you killed his expansion.
The tank push at the third was far to fast, with such a small viking count, and your turrets not ready to deal with the carriers it was doomed to fail.
The final BC push MAY have still won if you had yamoto and focused down your units, but you where in a very rough position leading up to that fight.
I am very pleased that your trying BC's now though
Same thing happens in this game, only this time he holds the 4th base. He should have counter attacked and won the game after killing your army like that.
If your seeing the pheonix immortal opening that he used, you can just do your old style an go viking banshee + ground support an push before he gets into carriers.
Your lategame comp isn't what you should be going for either, you have no real way to push into his expansions like that. 8 BC's is all you need with hellbat thor, and you got too many ravens.
You have to remember that tempests shoot slower then everything else, as a result they burn through far less PDD energy. You only really need 4 or so to completely take tempests out of the game, provided you dont over use your energy unnecessarily. You basically had no real way to kill his army, your air units just lasted forever.
But it's hard to tell if you where forced into that many ravens, or if you going for some money seeker missles.
Quick question, you know PDD doesn't stop interceptors right?
Same thing happens in this game, only this time he holds the 4th base. He should have counter attacked and won the game after killing your army like that.
If your seeing the pheonix immortal opening that he used, you can just do your old style an go viking banshee + ground support an push before he gets into carriers.
Your lategame comp isn't what you should be going for either, you have no real way to push into his expansions like that. 8 BC's is all you need with hellbat thor, and you got too many ravens.
You have to remember that tempests shoot slower then everything else, as a result they burn through far less PDD energy. You only really need 4 or so to completely take tempests out of the game, provided you dont over use your energy unnecessarily. You basically had no real way to kill his army, your air units just lasted forever.
But it's hard to tell if you where forced into that many ravens, or if you going for some money seeker missles.
Quick question, you know PDD doesn't stop interceptors right?
yes i know pdd doesn't stop interceptors. and against like 20 ravens your telling me i only need 4 ravens...?
Maybe someone can help me, it seems that i have sometimes enourmus trouble to transition and scout my opponent, as well as react and do my own transition in time:
Tbh i have no clue what to go for. BC vs Tempest? I mean you said Tempest dont deal that massive amount of dmg vs BC as they were used to but they still do great damage and Feedback and Storm with Tempest deal with that. So i assume i need Viking Raven Ghost and maybe some BCs against the Immos? When do i need to transition? Tanks are very bad vs Immos, except you get the EMPs down, but still it's not that easy :/
Solid OP, cool that you're trying unconventional builds and going against the grain in TvP, but realistically it's a scouting thing whereby you're operating under the assumption the build goes unscouted and you hit timings before the Protoss has the right pieces in place. In that respect it's a decent ladder build for variety, but doesn't seem consistent at the higher levels where the proper reactions are more inevitable and scouting is more frequent.
Reminds me of a game when Thorzain went mech in a TvP during one of the premiere tournaments, using Thors no less, and everyone went crazy thinking he shifted the meta. All the Protoss player had to do was scout the production and make any meaningful amount of immortals and it's lights out. I don't think mech is viable in TvP as a consistent build, but it's certainly a fun option for variety and it appears you're having fun with it so I guess that's all that matters.
On September 09 2015 03:49 always_winter wrote: Solid OP, cool that you're trying unconventional builds and going against the grain in TvP, but realistically it's a scouting thing whereby you're operating under the assumption the build goes unscouted and you hit timings before the Protoss has the right pieces in place. In that respect it's a decent ladder build for variety, but doesn't seem consistent at the higher levels where the proper reactions are more inevitable and scouting is more frequent.
Reminds me of a game when Thorzain went mech in a TvP during one of the premiere tournaments, using Thors no less, and everyone went crazy thinking he shifted the meta. All the Protoss player had to do was scout the production and make any meaningful amount of immortals and it's lights out. I don't think mech is viable in TvP as a consistent build, but it's certainly a fun option for variety and it appears you're having fun with it so I guess that's all that matters.
On September 09 2015 03:49 always_winter wrote: Solid OP, cool that you're trying unconventional builds and going against the grain in TvP, but realistically it's a scouting thing whereby you're operating under the assumption the build goes unscouted and you hit timings before the Protoss has the right pieces in place. In that respect it's a decent ladder build for variety, but doesn't seem consistent at the higher levels where the proper reactions are more inevitable and scouting is more frequent.
Reminds me of a game when Thorzain went mech in a TvP during one of the premiere tournaments, using Thors no less, and everyone went crazy thinking he shifted the meta. All the Protoss player had to do was scout the production and make any meaningful amount of immortals and it's lights out. I don't think mech is viable in TvP as a consistent build, but it's certainly a fun option for variety and it appears you're having fun with it so I guess that's all that matters.
i will proove you wrong
If you use mech TvP (if you play in Leifeng Cup) and pull it off multiple times then that would be so amazing :O.
On September 09 2015 03:49 always_winter wrote: Solid OP, cool that you're trying unconventional builds and going against the grain in TvP, but realistically it's a scouting thing whereby you're operating under the assumption the build goes unscouted and you hit timings before the Protoss has the right pieces in place. In that respect it's a decent ladder build for variety, but doesn't seem consistent at the higher levels where the proper reactions are more inevitable and scouting is more frequent.
Reminds me of a game when Thorzain went mech in a TvP during one of the premiere tournaments, using Thors no less, and everyone went crazy thinking he shifted the meta. All the Protoss player had to do was scout the production and make any meaningful amount of immortals and it's lights out. I don't think mech is viable in TvP as a consistent build, but it's certainly a fun option for variety and it appears you're having fun with it so I guess that's all that matters.
i will proove you wrong
If you use mech TvP (if you play in Leifeng Cup) and pull it off multiple times then that would be so amazing :O.
well ive won single games with it, but ya goal is to win multiple bo3's with macro mech and HOPEFULLY be allowed to participate in leifeng cup too although no one has given me an answer as to if i actually can or not..
So finally i got a "good" game, where i scouted the transitino into Robo and HTs as well as Chargelots. So as OP said as soon as i got 6-8 Tanks i stop and go straight for Hellions and BC behind. It worked! Somehow, sure you need to scout, but i won without any ghosts! Amazing, i wonder what would have happened if i would have been able to sqeeze in 2-3 Ghosts!
It would be very cool if you Bodzilla could watch through it, and give me some advice, i mean i won, yes, but i feel like i am missing so much stuff in TvP mech, which i could need to be able to go toe to toe with GM Protoss players!
Got a game where i rly had NO Chance what so ever. Any advice? pls
so the reason you won the first game was you were really far ahead from how you opened, and as a result that bought you plenty of time to get your bcs up and running. The problem with this in a game where you don't get extremely fortunate widow mines shots off is that protoss players can hit timing attacks and attack in multiple areas (immortal warp prism drops are a pain to deal with) and if they catch you during the long build time of the bcs, you can outright die.
I've given a good bit of thought of this myself and I think that if you aren't ahead when teching to bcs, you shouldn't tech to bcs and instead just up your ghost count and ground army. That way, you will be able to safely secure a 5th base and tech into air with no threat of dying to multiple warp prism/pylon/army poke attacks
your attack should have outright won but siege tanks out of position in the fight means stalkers dont have any opposition.
in the 2nd game you no longer have a build order advantage and instead, you have a build order disadvantage. And teching into sky on 2 bases....well it just doesn't work. general things that hurt are siege tank positioning, choice of build order, macro, buildnig placement, but those are all small compared to having an in correct game plan of tryign to tech to bcs on 2 bases, it's like trying to buy a sports car when you make 50k a year.
Reinforcing my previous theory of focusing on a large ground army first allows you to secure bases against protoss attacks such as these that can otherwise easily contain you on 2 bases.
After I see my opponent start air production like carriers or something, I know hes going to be investing into air so counter attacks, immortal attacks wont be very strong so I take the time to double expand whenever I see air to power up on economy. Otherwise against non-air rushes I will just max out on a ground mech ghost army so that I can more easily take my 4th and 5th bases (which you need to tech into any form of air, you will not get vrey far if you try to tech onto air with 3 bases either)
in the 3rd game your siege tank positioning is still abysmal, and you pay dearly with that with unnesecary damage taken and also when you take your 3rd base, you have more then half your army not even defending your 3rd base.Also you cant support 5 factories on 2 bases either, its economics it just doesn't work
Hm i thought my Tank position was ok, can you provide me some screenshots where they should have been and why? i tried, most of the time, to spread them, as long as i were on 2 bases, so that he doesnt find an opening to jump into me and kill me.
Do you have maybe some replays where your opponent goes so heavy aggressive with blink on you and you deal with it?
The problem with taking the 3rd for me is, if i use ALL my army, then he can just blink into my main <.< So i HAVE to spread, no?
On September 09 2015 03:49 always_winter wrote: Solid OP, cool that you're trying unconventional builds and going against the grain in TvP, but realistically it's a scouting thing whereby you're operating under the assumption the build goes unscouted and you hit timings before the Protoss has the right pieces in place. In that respect it's a decent ladder build for variety, but doesn't seem consistent at the higher levels where the proper reactions are more inevitable and scouting is more frequent.
I think you can take advantage of those timings in every game, similar to how a terran takes advantage of medivacs.
I dunno if you've watched every vid yet, but they're all taylor made vs practice partners that i grinded out many practice games with. The abuse of scouting i use is part of the inherent design of the game, where protoss dictates the opening and it's up to terran to react and respond.
The only way i can think of a protoss getting the leg up in an opening, is to either somehow deny the scouting scv, get a pylon on the map to hide their tech, as well as me gaining no information or tells from the scan AND i guess which response wrong. It's alot to ask in that situation.
Besides building sentry's (which they'll never do at that stage of the game because their tech will be slowed to a crawl) and getting a hallucination scout, or some random comedy of errors to let a unit runby or probe runby into my base, i dont see a way for them to know what i'm doing, before i know what they're doing.
The beauty of the 1rax expand, and the reason i do it is that it can be anything. You can go either bio or mech from it and they'll just have to guess which one it was.
On September 09 2015 05:07 EJK wrote: i will proove you wrong
Thanks buddy, means alot that your trying this stuff out. I spent years talking to brickwalls who never even tried it before saying it was impossible. Means alot to me. <3
On September 08 2015 20:06 Bodzilla wrote: But it's hard to tell if you where forced into that many ravens, or if you going for some money seeker missles.
Quick question, you know PDD doesn't stop interceptors right?
yes i know pdd doesn't stop interceptors. and against like 20 ravens your telling me i only need 4 ravens...?
If they keep building tempests, keep building ravens, but you should be able to get away with only about 1 raven per 4 tempests. You'll absorb 20 shots with a single PDD, which will be 5 rounds of attacks from them, before you throw down 1 more PDD.
Tempests can be hard to catch and kill, but they cant hold positions. They just dont have any space control once you have PDD. They'll have to fire and retreat to keep them alive from your army. This means you can just kill what ever expansion your pushing into and then pull back.
So yeah, if they're just trying to mass tempests, you can just kill their expansions, virtually for free over and over again.
Ok so i am tempted to try out the build in the video now, as it seems to provide me a more stable transition into the mid game. BUT, how do i deal with oracle on a 4 player map? In the video it says i get the SCV Scout at... 13? and get an ebay block, if i scout 1 pylon missing, lots of chrono safed up and 2 gas, i finish the ebay and get a turret, ez pz. but on a 4 player map the SCV might enter the main base of the P to late to do that, so just go ebay at home? Will i still be able to hold oracle? I still would love some replay packs with play vs Blink, vs Robo, vs Stargate, and ofc late late game. If anyone has such replays and would share them, that would be awesome.
I rewatched your "How to deal with Robo" Video
it explains a lot very good, but one thing i am still missing. After i got the BO from your first video done, and scan the main, i see what he does: Robo, Twilight or Stargate. What i am missing is the followup behind that. I know what i need to do vs Robo for instance. 9:00 min double Mine Drop and 10:00 min double Mine Drop but what is with my base? Do i get TL or Reactor first on the first fax? do i build Reactor on Starport? When do i get the Armory and when the 3rd CC?
Another thing i would like to know is, why are you walling off your mainbase vs P? I lost a couple of Depots to the MSC Stalker Zealot push which is rly annoying, so how do i best deal with that? Or does it never happen as you ebay block him?
In the "Turning the Tables on Blink" you explain also a ton of good stuff. But what i didn't catch is, do you go for bio, or the hellion Raven transition, if it was a blink soft contain build? Or do you go for that if he rly goes heavy on stalker? Also what to do if he commits and goes up to like 30 Stalker? Do i still just stay on 6 Tanks?
Thx for you help all I rly love playing mech, but i am missing so much information, that i play without a plan as it looks like :/
On September 09 2015 23:02 AleXusher wrote: Hm i thought my Tank position was ok, can you provide me some screenshots where they should have been and why? i tried, most of the time, to spread them, as long as i were on 2 bases, so that he doesnt find an opening to jump into me and kill me.
Do you have maybe some replays where your opponent goes so heavy aggressive with blink on you and you deal with it?
The problem with taking the 3rd for me is, if i use ALL my army, then he can just blink into my main <.< So i HAVE to spread, no?
I will be streaming my mech play tonight after wcs, you should swing by maybe you can catch some tvps going on.
Off the top of my head, on Terraform i'd either wall off with a eng bay+bunker, barracks factory, cc and depot or cc and ebay, I'd have to play games and figure out the best wall though)
Even I haven't worked out the correct positioning for all of my tanks just quite yet, I haven't played any tvp mech games on terraform yet and my general tvp practice has been pretty stagnant. I will say though that I use a 3rd cc + buildinlg wall off (rax with reactor, depot, turret, depends on map) to wall off the spot on coda, cactus, and iron fortress and it probably can work on dash terminal as well. But in general building placement and siege tank placement is super duper important and I am still working on it myself so I don't have much to share unfortunately.
Bodzilla I know what it feels like, talking to brick walls. I've even had it worse where you think these people are your friends, they ask you for your help for wcs and you help them....then afterwords, they dont give 2 shits about you anymore (you ask for prac games, and you get tossed under the rug or ignored). These people exist and make up the majority of the sc2 community, that is a fact.
It's happened to me way too many times, and sometimes I do it too before I catch myself, but I at least try to make a conscious effort to treat each person as a human being through the computer screen.
On September 10 2015 00:14 AleXusher wrote: Ok so i am tempted to try out the build in the video now, as it seems to provide me a more stable transition into the mid game. BUT, how do i deal with oracle on a 4 player map? In the video it says i get the SCV Scout at... 13? and get an ebay block, if i scout 1 pylon missing, lots of chrono safed up and 2 gas, i finish the ebay and get a turret, ez pz. but on a 4 player map the SCV might enter the main base of the P to late to do that, so just go ebay at home? Will i still be able to hold oracle? I still would love some replay packs with play vs Blink, vs Robo, vs Stargate, and ofc late late game. If anyone has such replays and would share them, that would be awesome.
Ebay block isn't essential, i just like to do it to really annoy protoss players, throw them off there game anddd establish early on that i'll dictate the game. Vs 5minute oracle the ebay block is insanely good, because you can just finish it, get your turrets AND block their transition, but thats the only situation where it's really essential.
on 4player maps i scout on 10 with an scv
On September 10 2015 00:14 AleXusher wrote: I rewatched your "How to deal with Robo" Video
it explains a lot very good, but one thing i am still missing. After i got the BO from your first video done, and scan the main, i see what he does: Robo, Twilight or Stargate. What i am missing is the followup behind that. I know what i need to do vs Robo for instance. 9:00 min double Mine Drop and 10:00 min double Mine Drop but what is with my base? Do i get TL or Reactor first on the first fax? do i build Reactor on Starport? When do i get the Armory and when the 3rd CC?
For mine drop you get the order is this. Reactor on first factory, then starport, then reactor on Rax (you switch this as soon as it's finished with the starport) and you get your 3rd and 4th gas at 7minutes in your natural.
You dont get an add on for your 2nd factory, and instead use it to instantly start building mines as soon as it completes. This will time out to you having enough gas for 4 mines and 2 medivacs and to drop after 9 minutes and then another 4 mines and 2 medivacs for your 2nd drop at 10 minutes.
If you watch the video there should be a spot where i show all the production i start building around 10 minutes where i get both armory's and another 3 factory's while taking my third base. You can then quickly power up into a tank timing around 14 minutes where you push with a bunch of vikings, your 4 medivacs filled with hellbats to boost over their army and you cancel any 4th base and put pressure on their 3rd.
On September 10 2015 00:14 AleXusher wrote: Another thing i would like to know is, why are you walling off your mainbase vs P? I lost a couple of Depots to the MSC Stalker Zealot push which is rly annoying, so how do i best deal with that? Or does it never happen as you ebay block him?
I just like to wall off, the only time it's really vulnerable is vs proxy voidray busts which are incredibly rare where they snipe your depots. Theres really not alot of people that play like Has so it's generally a non-issue.
If their getting a msc zealot + stalker to your main ramp, your not getting your bunker in your nat fast enough, OR you've misread that they went for a 10 gate and you tried to get the bunker up at your standard time.
If they ignore your ebay block and push with those units and you have a bunker, their games over because their expansion is so far behind.
On September 10 2015 00:14 AleXusher wrote: In the "Turning the Tables on Blink" you explain also a ton of good stuff. But what i didn't catch is, do you go for bio, or the hellion Raven transition, if it was a blink soft contain build? Or do you go for that if he rly goes heavy on stalker? Also what to do if he commits and goes up to like 30 Stalker? Do i still just stay on 6 Tanks?
Thx for you help all I rly love playing mech, but i am missing so much information, that i play without a plan as it looks like :/
You can do either Bio or Mech whether they commit to the attack or not. Bio is the smarter option because their splash damage is so delayed andd theres no way they'll hold a 3rd base, But you can go raven hellion just fine, so long as you dont let yourself get out of position. Mass hellion > Mass stalker
So do you still do the ebay block on a 4 player map? With the 10 Scout do you send the SCV out when you start the Depot, or is it when the 10th SCV finishes?^^
Another thing i am missing, when do you get a reactor on your rax? Or don't you at all? If i remember right you had... 7 Marines at the 5:30 when normal proxy oracle would happen, is this just because of normal constant Marine production? How do you react vs the Stalker, Zealot MSC push if you have only 1 marine at a time in production?
You also show in your first video, that you build a turret in your nat, where you also have the CC. But when did you get the Bunker? Do you build the Bunker in any game? If so, when do you start it?, maybe that can already deal with the msc zealot and Stalker push, which would be cool, but i doubt it, with only one marine at a time. Or is it the case, that P doesn't do that push vs you, because of your ebay block?^^
So i tried your build now a couple of times, and always lost. The first times i screwed up gas timings, my fault, but lately when i hit the timings i still lose hard...
What happens is i do the ebay block, so far ok, if oracle good finish ebay get turrets alright, if no oracle shows up until 6:00 go double TL and get 2 tanks a time because of blink, but exactly there is my problem!
My opponent goes for one base blink, as my ebay block forces him to do so, most likely, and his attack hits with 9 Stalker and the MSC at 7:15!
At this time i have only 1 Tank barely finishing, and one bunker with 4 marines at my main and one bunker with 4 marines at my natural! Even with pulling 6-8 SCVs at each bunker he is able to kill 3-4 of them, while he is moving around, avoiding the tank, and forces me to pull ALL SCVs and get my marines to help, but it isnt enough, stutterstep and blink wins him every game, no clue how you are able to defend the one base blink if your video, but it never works for me. Tank is to late, Bunker with only marines is to weak. Any advice? Replays would be awesome, of a showmatch, anything i could watch and see and learn
On September 07 2015 06:03 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: If you're talking about deathball / strongest firepower unit comp, it's bc raven, optional viking support and optional banshees (a combination of banshees / ghosts are needed to deal with HTs). Against carriers use 4-5 WMs.
why are you saying viking support is optional? And yes im talking about deathball/strongest unit comp, what am i aiming towards once i have 5 bases?
You might know some of this already but ill be thorough anyway:
Against carriers, their counter is BCs, because yamato. A pretty strong counter, surprisingly. And a few WMs will punish them for making all carriers attack at once / focus firing a BC, because easily 60-100 interceptors can die instantly. (WM positioning isn't a read / prediction, you have enough time to burrow them on reaction >:D). Maybe if its a huge map and it's a long long game and he has a huge bank, you might want some vikings so the carriers can't keep kiting you. But if it's like a 30 min ish game and he tries to mass 24 carriers, 18 BCs will beat that straight up in food and cost. I don't think it's a very good idea for protoss to try to kite the BCs if it means 9 carriers instantly die, turning it into a 15 carrier vs 18 situation, they would need a huge bank and lead to afford that. A smaller number of BCs can go even with carriers or at least be effective at significantly shrinking their numbers thanks to yamato burst, especially considering how strong deathballs in sc2 are and how hard it is to shrink their size. But when you have even numbers, the BCs will destroy the carriers
Against Voids, emp + BCs + yamato + seeker missiles (to force them to spread out so they can't focus fire and cant maximize their dps density) does fine, though vikings can help.
Phoenixes *could* kite you for a while but they can still lose all their mining bases if you just ignore them / one of the reasons why I asked for firepower, but you can just yamato if you have energy or just EMP your BCs to not worry about HTs then you could use a few vikings
Tempests used to be scary across a map of canons and HTs cus you would have to keep your army spread while you slowly march across the map and try to kill him with your slow air deathball, and keep leaping tanks / being ready with ghosts to stop HTs, while also moving fast enough to not be whittled down too much by the tempests. But then they got nerfed so now it's much weaker and mass tempest isn't that good anymore. BC + a few PDDs + some ghosts or tanks really screw over tempests
So I haven't found a situation where vikings over BCs is really any better except for some situational purposes where you might want to slightly adapt.
yoshi and bodzilla. I have been polishing my tvp mech enough and have amassed a decent amount of games in different situations to bring forth the "standard game plan which is based around economy and scouting information.
For exqmple there are certain things protoss players can and cannot afford on 2 bases 3 bases 4 and 5 baaes.
Something i figured out is that if i see a protoss player going sky toss my reaction will vary based on how fast i scout it and how mant bases we are at. If he tries to go sky toss on 3 bases i know he cannot afford both high templar carriers and tempests. So on 3 base economy the most effecient unit at dealing with sky toss is infact the viking.
My reasoning for this is because to successfully amass a sky terran armada filled with battlecruisers and ravens you need to be on 5 bases. Theres no way around it. With that in mind the next best units you can make en mass and accumulate an effective number with is vikings. Vikings in a big enough number can take out carriers more effectively then battlecruisers on a 3*4 base economy can. Also against tempests you simply make a couple of ravens and you can deal with tempests easily.
My game plan involves the denial of protoss 4 and five bases. And to stay a base up against the protoss player and maintain my econ advantage. Vikings jist fit in so perfrctly its somethinf you can build early on for cheap that maintains usefulness until the late gamr when you can afford better air units. Dont even need more then like 4 mines to deal
On September 11 2015 03:01 EJK wrote: yoshi and bodzilla. I have been polishing my tvp mech enough and have amassed a decent amount of games in different situations to bring forth the "standard game plan which is based around economy and scouting information.
For exqmple there are certain things protoss players can and cannot afford on 2 bases 3 bases 4 and 5 baaes.
Something i figured out is that if i see a protoss player going sky toss my reaction will vary based on how fast i scout it and how mant bases we are at. If he tries to go sky toss on 3 bases i know he cannot afford both high templar carriers and tempests. So on 3 base economy the most effecient unit at dealing with sky toss is infact the viking.
My reasoning for this is because to successfully amass a sky terran armada filled with battlecruisers and ravens you need to be on 5 bases. Theres no way around it. With that in mind the next best units you can make en mass and accumulate an effective number with is vikings. Vikings in a big enough number can take out carriers more effectively then battlecruisers on a 3*4 base economy can. Also against tempests you simply make a couple of ravens and you can deal with tempests easily.
My game plan involves the denial of protoss 4 and five bases. And to stay a base up against the protoss player and maintain my econ advantage. Vikings jist fit in so perfrctly its somethinf you can build early on for cheap that maintains usefulness until the late gamr when you can afford better air units. Dont even need more then like 4 mines to deal
I agree with this completely. I dont even look at BC's as an option until my 4th is mining.
You can afford 1 BC per 2 gas of constant production, so if you want to get upgrades and other units, you have to do it first, or you end up with no army or no upgrades. Ravens cost exactly the same on a per minute basis as well
i played now a couple of games, and the more i get used to your Build and the more i play and understand WHY to do stuff you recommend, the more i win. Rly a great way of playing TvP! Thx for sharing. It would be rly nice if you could answer the last questions i had on my last post, but so far i am doing quite good, still need to figure out the perfect timings, when to do what exactly to play as crisp as possible, but... your "shit" works man, gj, i love it
Only problem i have is vs Stargate Opening, as i still dont exactly know what to do against this. I tried Hellbat Viking, Thor, Medivac with some Tanks, didn't work at all.
So this time i won, but it was a rly weird base trade game, still not feeling the mech... It is almost impossible to tech to BC out of 3 base, so i need the 4th ok, but at that time the P already got his dream composition out of Chargelot, Archon, HT with Storm and Immos, and some Blinkstalker, with Tanks, Medic and Hellbat i have not rly a good chance vs that. Especially if the Medics are full energy and can be sniped with feedback that easily http://ggtracker.com/matches/6176964
How do i scout that he goes proxy Twilight into DT shrine, after my ebay block? I scaned his main at 6:00 as said in the video, BUT all i saw was 1 gate and 1 forge morphing, i checken Nat and Nexus was going up as well, so how do i scout that in time? Or do i have to blind just get turrets for no reason after i cancel my ebay block?
This time i won, but i think it was close when he attacked my natural with his pressure, i hold it, barely, but still not sure about my reaction. I rly have trouble scouting, what i love about your build is the double WM drop, this rly kills SO many probes, even if there is a cannon in each mineral line, it stresses Protoss quite hard, and behind you can fairly good expand. http://ggtracker.com/matches/6177036
When is the best time to push in TvT if you play mech vs bio? a) If you push at 150 food you give up your supply advantage since bio can max out faster then mech (ie your 90 supply army will battle his 130 supply army).
b) When you reach 200 supply? But the problem is that he may have transitioned to viking/banshee/bc by now so your tank advantage does not matter as much.
c) Never? Then the game is decided almost purely by the air battle and your ground investment is almost useless (provided that he transitions to air in time and keep up with the mech upgrades).
On September 11 2015 21:57 AleXusher wrote: How do i scout that he goes proxy Twilight into DT shrine, after my ebay block? I scaned his main at 6:00 as said in the video, BUT all i saw was 1 gate and 1 forge morphing, i checken Nat and Nexus was going up as well, so how do i scout that in time? Or do i have to blind just get turrets for no reason after i cancel my ebay block?
We can hold any build where he's gone for early gas, even if he's proxied it. It's very tight but you can hold 1 base and 2 base blink, even if you commited to turrets so long as you dont miss any of your production cycles and you lean on your tanks for defense.
If it's early gas and you havn't seen an oracle, assume it's either blink or DT and build bunkers to defend.
1 base blink hits around 7minutes, and you should have seen an oracle at the latest by 6minutes. This means you have 1 minute to defend, and get your tank out ready for the attack. It's doable but very difficult. You cannot take your gas at 4:10 or you just die because you dont have the tank in time. The margin for error is very small, but if you nail it you can achieve it and get insurmountably far ahead.
For 2 base blink it should hit around 8:30 and you'll have 3 tanks in time. It's VERY easy to hold and it doesn't hurt having an extra ebay and turrets. Because we lean on gas units as our defense the investment in an ebay, turrets and bunkers dont hurt us anywhere near as much as if we where playing Bio
On September 11 2015 21:57 AleXusher wrote:This time i won, but i think it was close when he attacked my natural with his pressure, i hold it, barely, but still not sure about my reaction. I rly have trouble scouting, what i love about your build is the double WM drop, this rly kills SO many probes, even if there is a cannon in each mineral line, it stresses Protoss quite hard, and behind you can fairly good expand. http://ggtracker.com/matches/6177036
The double mine drop is insanely effective. I use it vs stargate openings as well, (or a slightly tweaked version of it), to see if he's commiting to phoenix or transitioning. It helps you scout what their next move is, and it's just great in general vs greedy protoss or robo protoss
On September 12 2015 15:23 MockHamill wrote: When is the best time to push in TvT if you play mech vs bio? a) If you push at 150 food you give up your supply advantage since bio can max out faster then mech (ie your 90 supply army will battle his 130 supply army).
b) When you reach 200 supply? But the problem is that he may have transitioned to viking/banshee/bc by now so your tank advantage does not matter as much.
c) Never? Then the game is decided almost purely by the air battle and your ground investment is almost useless (provided that he transitions to air in time and keep up with the mech upgrades).
I'd love to help you on this, but because i've spent so much time on my TvP and TvZ, my TvT is kinda dogshit bad.
I'm not a micro player and get by off my strength is strategy, so i prefer to play the positional game in TvT. Turrets in the right places, tanks at home in the right places, scans to look for his army.
Most of my games however go to supreme lategame with BC's and ravens, because i lack the killer instinct to see an opening and then go for it. Your better off watching other terrans for that. Sorry
I still find it hard to deal with all the shit P can do by playing your Build.
One Base blink is holdable, ok, yes, but when do i squeeze in the Ebay and the turrets to be safe vs DTs? Because if i see twilight researching, i assume it is blink, be he could also just trick me and go DTs, which will kill me, if i don't have turrets in time. VS One Base blink, i see no way holding the natural vs 9 Stalker, even with pulling 6-8 SCVs for repair, he will just walk to my bunker, see the tank fire, blink as near as possible to the tank, kill it, and then move away from the bunker, stutter step into my main, or around my nat, killing everything in his way. So i have to evacuate and go back to my main to hold it properly, as you spread yourself to thin try holding one base blink in 2 locations.
I also have problem vs Proxy Tempest, as i don't know how exactly to scout that, i mean i see oracle and Stargate, fine, but behind he puts the fleet becon somewhere on the map and goes for Tempest, with 2 factories i can't do anything, and the one rax is far from being enough. WM doesn't work, he got oracle and so detection to kill them. I rly could need some replays if you got them, and would share them, that would be awesome. So i can see exactly your opening and your reaction. The content shown in the video is not enough for me to understand you movement, positioning, thought process etc.
You know how you finish the ebay at his natural if you think it's proxy oracle? well blink and oracle off 1 base can look almost identical. Even if you get the turrets to defend oracles and they go blink or DT you can still hold it.
Thats how i do it. Just finish the ebay at his nat.
With one base blink, you can hold it and you'll see me do it in the vid. Generally i like to have the tank in the main next to my ramp, but my bunker holding as much of the front as i can and my tank covering the bunker. Even if they blink past it, they still dont have vision of the high ground, and blinks on cooldown so it's hard to get to the tank without significant loss's.
If they try to go into the main, they've already used their blink so they cant close the gap to your tank fast either. You should get about 4 tank shots off in both scenario's and with the other tanks and marines building you should be able to stabalize and take a lead.
It's VERY hard to do, but you can do it, you just have to REALLY pay attention to how your tanks are. In most maps you can cover both bunkers and point of entry's with your first tank.
As for the proxy tempest. When you do the build, you should have a starport building by 6 minutes in all scenario's EXCEPT vs twilight. What i've been doing, but what i need ot grind out in more practice games is getting 2 mines out and a medivac as fast as possible to do a counter drop. This lets me know how he's transitioning from his first oracle and if i need to be scared of proxy tempests.
I've from that point been going into reactor'd vikings, and reactored hellions, and using the hellions to hold back his gateway units ( or counter attack) and just getting as many vikings as i possibly can. off 2 gas you can sustain 2 vikings in constant production and you *should* be able to get out enough vikings to stop the protoss before it snowballs out of control.
Now just remember that this is stuff i'm in the process of grinding out myself, but from what little ladder games i've had vs proxy tempests, i've been able to hold them and transition.
So my solution at this point for you is to practice it yourself, try some different scenario's with practice partners and if you come up with a better way to do it, i'll put it in the video and give full credit for you
So i do the normal BO, 5:00 fax, 5:30 2nd fax 6:00 Scan and Starport? Except vs Twilight? I think you should somehow mention this in your first Video, as i think that Starport timing is missing
I've read through some comments and posts, and some ppl think, it would be good to go double Starport Reactored Viking, as soon as you have enough just kill the Tempest, but that can be quite difficult, i like the Widowmine drop to harras, scout and annoy, so i might try that. What i know for sure is, you have to scout for a 2nd base Protoss might get, as this is normally the followup for Protoss, so check everywhere with a marine or SCV for that. I think, but need to try that, you might be able to get both gases in the nat as well, so you could maybe produce 4 vikings each cycle?
Well the first video only detailed the first 6 minutes and some overall philosophy's of what TvP mech was about. It mentioned some possible cheese's and how to defend them. The other 2 video's detail the next step and more indepth reasons behind them.
I think if i put the starport in the first video alot of people would build starports vs blink and have no money for tanks
We can hold any build where he's gone for early gas, even if he's proxied it. It's very tight but you can hold 1 base and 2 base blink, even if you commited to turrets so long as you dont miss any of your production cycles and you lean on your tanks for defense.
If it's early gas and you havn't seen an oracle, assume it's either blink or DT and build bunkers to defend.
1 base blink hits around 7minutes, and you should have seen an oracle at the latest by 6minutes. This means you have 1 minute to defend, and get your tank out ready for the attack. It's doable but very difficult. You cannot take your gas at 4:10 or you just die because you dont have the tank in time. The margin for error is very small, but if you nail it you can achieve it and get insurmountably far ahead.
I am wondering how i should react if i scout one gas, 13 gateway and attempt to expand, but with my ebay block i screw P off. So... he could take his 2nd gas, and go robo, twilight or Stargate, how do i scout that in time? It could be proxied, i dont have reaper scout, and i think the 6 min Scan is to late to make sure whats going on, and even if i scan i might see nothing, so... how do i react if ebay gets killed/canceld? I mean in time, sure if i scout him going 2 gas early no problem i your build works beautifull, but if i screw his BO of, his early normal nexus 4:00 timing, and he goes crazy adds a gas and goes from there, how do i scout that? I feel like the 6min scan is to late, and an SCV scout at this time is not useful as he just kills the SCV, or proxies stuff.
If i scan at 6:00 and see nothing, oracle will hit to early for another ebay and turret, ok i got marines, but he got stalker as well, so i can hardly pull marines off the bunker to defend both minerallines, lol. also he might just walk pass the bunker with the 2-3 stalker and a MSC, which is horrible for me, it could be blink so i will be able to get a tank out in time, but... what to do vs stargate when my ebay is forced to be cancled at his natural? I got a good gameplan for the midgame, but i have the feeling with the ebay block, vs the 13 gate expand build, i have no way to survive the early, as P goes mad and does anything crazy, which i am unable to scout and react in time. What did you do against such things? What helped you?
double SP Viking vs Proxy Tempest works! But i still have lots of timing issues in the early game, if i have to go Turrets! How do i get all the production in time? Pls help me with that^^
If you can do it, drop like crazy, and macro behind like a pro, i didn't nearly as good as any pro, but watch the replay and imagine, any pro macro like Bomber behind that *___*
So after i ran into a couple of P today i have to say, with the 6 min scan, and see him go late robo, that is literly a freewin :D Your Hellbatfollowup works so nice, even with 2 collossus, lots of FF and stalker i am always able to trade soooooo nice, most of the times i dont kill him, but i get a lot of probes, trade his army and snipe his natural nexus :D AWESOME!
http://ggtracker.com/matches/6183135 Here i lose vs blink, ok why i lost is clear, but what i am asking myself is, HOW do i have crips timings? As you can see i have NO money for Fax, OC etc! I still need to know, when to skip what exactly in order to perform your Build as perfect as possible, only thing i can imagine, which hurts was no cancel on the ebay, but still that was way later, then the natural finishing!
http://ggtracker.com/matches/6183136 Here i lose vs Tempest, yay, as he didnt show up with oracle, so i had NO clue what to expect... How do i scout that? Defense was way to late. The problem i see here is, if there is no blink attack until 7:30 it is most likely NOT Blink stalker, esp when his 2nd base is so late BUT, i can't blindly go for double Starport because it could be also Immortal bust, any ideas?
On September 17 2015 17:15 AleXusher wrote: Heyjo, still got problems,
pls watch those replays:
http://ggtracker.com/matches/6183135 Here i lose vs blink, ok why i lost is clear, but what i am asking myself is, HOW do i have crips timings? As you can see i have NO money for Fax, OC etc! I still need to know, when to skip what exactly in order to perform your Build as perfect as possible, only thing i can imagine, which hurts was no cancel on the ebay, but still that was way later, then the natural finishing!
Watching replay now, First thing i'd do is stagger your ebay back towards his mineral line. It can avoid probe scouts, and it's a longer distance for him to travel to deal with it, plus when you draw units over there to kill it, you can run an scv past while they try to kill it to see what they're up to.
Finishing the ebay was the right call, because it's almost impossible to see the difference between twilight and stargate when the 2nd pylon is missing. You can still hold a 1 base blink even with the investment in turrets because we use gas intensive tanks to defend.
Your gas is 10 seconds late and that slows you down as well. So your Factory is 10 seconds late. 2nd Factory is 25 seconds late as well. Something else to consider is your production building placements as well. Generally the further back in between your main and nat you can go the better, because it forces him to commit further into your base, which is alot more risky with oracle openings. It's not as important on Coda, but on echo it might just be the difference between saving your scv's building your production or not AND it gives you some breathing room if he blinks in, so he's not immediately on your production.
At 6 minutes, we still havn't seen an oracle, use a mule instead of a scan (because we know he hasn't expanded) and start a 2nd bunker in your main. it's time to suspect either blink or DT. While we have a way to deal with oracles AND DT's we're vulnerable to blink.
at 6 minutes when your factory completes we KNOW that he doesn't have a stargate, because we would have already seen an oracle by now, that means you should skip the widow mines, and get your techlab IMMEDIATELY, because blink attacks are VERY hard to deal with.
The timing you pulled SCV's was fantastic though, and the extra bunkers as well where really well done, it's just that at that point you where already so far behind with your tanks that you where always going to have a bad time ;(
1 last thing i'd tweak is the bunker at your natural. Rather have it in the middle of the ramp, have it orientated closer to your main ramp. While this allows for units to get a better run by, you can still run your scv's and be fine, while trapping any units that ran by. But the most important thing this does is this, if you put your seige tank on the edge of the cliff near your main base, with that bunker a little closer to your ramp you could cover both bunkers in your main AND nat with 1 siege tank. It may not sound like much, but it can make a big difference!
also i cant believe that one base blink lasted until 17minutes! Dirty bloody protoss! you did well to last as long as you did though.
On September 17 2015 17:15 AleXusher wrote: http://ggtracker.com/matches/6183136 Here i lose vs Tempest, yay, as he didnt show up with oracle, so i had NO clue what to expect... How do i scout that? Defense was way to late. The problem i see here is, if there is no blink attack until 7:30 it is most likely NOT Blink stalker, esp when his 2nd base is so late BUT, i can't blindly go for double Starport because it could be also Immortal bust, any ideas?
One thing i noticed in both games if your getting the turrets a little bit late as well, there is the potential if he hits his timings right, that he could kill the SCV's building it and cause some serious headaches.
Again in this game both your factory's are slightly delayed, Cut SCV's if you have to.
at 6 minutes you where SOOOOO unlucky with the probes killing your SCV, i believe you could have just seen the fleet beacon and countered him, but such is life ;(
Also why no orbital at your natural?
Your bunker in the main to deflect a blink all in was very late as well. it needed to be done like 40 seconds earlier because if he did a blink build off one base, it'd hit alot faster then that. This is where the mule minerals are really coming back to bite you.
This map i'd keep the tank on the high ground as well to defend your opening. If they blink passed your bunker they would still need to get high ground vision OR run up the ramp to see it to shoot it, this buys valuble time and can make your tank 3 times as effective. The same effect applies if they blink into the main because they'll have to walk passed that bunker to get to your tank as well.
Final thing to note before we get to the stargate stuff is this, dont take your 3rd and 4th gas until you have your 3rd CC being made. It will slow down your build too much otherwise.
OK so at 8:50 you see the tempest for the first time, Your scv reaction is good, however i'd make the starports behind your main mineral line.
I think the biggest thing thats hurt you is losing that bunker at the front. Everything is pinned on holding that, so pull more SCV's and build more bunkers behind. You could have got your vikings up 10 seconds faster too, but thats incredibly hard to do under that much pressure.
Besides that It's hard to say what else could have been done better. The hardest thing here is the protoss played REALLY suboptimally which gave you the wrong reads. To get a stargate and go into tempest WITHOUT an oracle is just bad because it's a 1 base all in where you have idle production. Also to pool 3 tempests before attacking is bad, because the build rely's on the massive amount of pressure they create to start a snowball effect that leads to a victory for protoss.
These 2 things kinda fucked you, and it's because he played like shit. :/ A widow mine drop or a 3 rax opening just straight up win you this game instantly. So i wouldn't take too much stock in this loss because he'll get rekt by bio terrans and learn the build properly so you can read him, or just not do it at all. Dirty protoss cant even play the game properly ;(
That is the point, what do i skip in order to get what building at what time? If i finish the ebay, all your sweet timings doesn't fit any more, so on what do i focus? Do i skip Marines in order to get SCVs and Orbital working? Or do i delay the factories for the economy? If i finish the ebay and get the turrets, i dont have enough minerals to do everything at the normal timing. So that was the main question, when do i skip what in order to finish which task first?^^
So far thx for you help, i am still pwning Toss with the Hellbat Attack if i see late Robo, so THAT build is super awesome^^
1 last thing i'd tweak is the bunker at your natural. Rather have it in the middle of the ramp, have it orientated closer to your main ramp. While this allows for units to get a better run by, you can still run your scv's and be fine, while trapping any units that ran by. But the most important thing this does is this, if you put your seige tank on the edge of the cliff near your main base, with that bunker a little closer to your ramp you could cover both bunkers in your main AND nat with 1 siege tank. It may not sound like much, but it can make a big difference!
So that tip is really helpful, although most people would say, get the highground vision advantage, but yeah he got MSC overall so i think that is rly a smart way to improve my defense vs Blink.
If you have to cut SCV's to get your production and units on time do it. The important thing is that we're expecting a 1 base all in because he hasn't dealt with the ebay and if it's not an 5 min oracle it'll be a blink or DT build. It's more important to have more units, then SCV's because we're already ahead massively economically.
If you see him throwing up extra cannons like that just start doing hellbat harrass instead of playing into his hands and attacking into him.
If you attack into him It is possible for protoss to hold the push, however if you can snipe 2 or more collossi you bring yourself back into the game. Or just start doom dropping his main and just running whenever he comes to defend. Use that map control to safely take your third.
Also your 3rd 4th and 5th Fac where a little late which really helped him with the counter attack, also after a max of 6 medivacs start transitioning to vikings. The medivacs wont scale late game very well, especially when templer come onto the field, but you can use them for a very scary timing in the midgame.
Ok first thing is your bunker was too far forward again which let things snow ball a little bit but you stabalized and should have been able to hold out. Now remember i like to have 6 tanks vs blink, because at that point everything protoss just evaporates.
Everything else was just positional mistakes like tanks too far forward and i think you just got flustered and fell apart.
If you check out that replay you'll see your in a REALLY good position but you just drop the ball positionaly and he punish's you for it. With the position you where in, theres no way you should have lost that game. You just need to practice a bit more mate
I have 1 more vid i wanna get done, it'll be an accumulation of the last parts together in one before i move onto LotV.
It'll be stargate openings, pheonix collossi and a few other mini things thrown in to wrap everything up.
With the hellbat timing as soon as you can afford it with gas you get another 3 fac's all with techlabs and go into tanks and vikings. Keep some of your medivacs alive and you'll be able to contest the protoss army on the ground.
Push when you think you have an advantage, so like around 14 minutes with the mine drop opening and around 15-16 with the hellbat opening
1. I cant ebay block, because he has 2 options for a natural expansion on moonlight madness.
2. His 2nd pylon is proxied and he has 2 gas with 2 probes in each geyser. Most of the time this means Oracle or blink so i prepare for both, delaying my Nat and turtling in my base. And when no attack comes i prepare for blink.
3. He cancels any early aggression he had planned and goes robo with upgrades while i have tanks with a late nat and a later 3rd. This is the worst possible place for me in compositions vs compositions.
4. Moonlights incredibly hard to defend both your nat and 3rd safely, so i grab my 3rd and 4th gas before i get my 3rd CC, to get sensor towers for both areas.
5. When i'm pressuring with my hellions i see he has mass immortal chargelot, so i create chokes with depot's to funnel his zealots in front of my hellions and tanks, severely crippling any chance he has of attacking into me.
6. Knowing how far behind i am in my normal pace of the game, i know i cant get to BC's without dieing, so i use banshee's as a transition point.
7. i slowly take my 4th before taking the first major engagement in the game. I trade fairly well, and use the time to remax to get extra BC's.
8. Knowing i am very far behind in economy, i do some hellion runby's to scout what he's transitioning to. I manage to get some probe damage and scout he's transitioned to mass tempests. I tech back into vikings and ravens and sack some SCV's for thors.
9. Knowing i have the perfect composition to fight him, i move out on the map and kill his 5th base and take an engagement vs mass tempest carrier, yamotoing as many units as i can until i demolish his army and take the game.
I thought you guys would like to see my thoughts and process's on what happens when everything goes wrong initially, and how you can adapt in bad situations to make the most of it and comeback for a win. ZizLah~
Watching your series and checking out some of your streams has made me want to play again. I have not done anything since WoL and I'm interested in Legacy. My intent is to use your 1 rax FE into double Factory in all three matchups until I develop my play again. It appears that you are focusing on an air style in most matchups
What general compositions do you suggest I aim for in the mid-late game? The question is purposefully vague because I feel like have other things to work on before I nail down timings and transitions. I am looking to develop a framework to build upon less the exact specifics.
I got one move i would like to share. Do you think, something like that might work vs a Archon, Chargelot, HT, Immo composition? I am speaking of Drillingclaw WM drop on top of the army.
ahem. so I have been a bit inactive with this thread as of late, because I had been trying to get good replays to show you guys, FINALLY i have a very good macro game tvp that i can be proud to share :D
On September 25 2015 23:33 EJK wrote: ahem. so I have been a bit inactive with this thread as of late, because I had been trying to get good replays to show you guys, FINALLY i have a very good macro game tvp that i can be proud to share :D
i thought that 2, but that's just not true, in my case, i lose so horribly, because he deals SO much dmg. With Reaper FE i got Reaper to spot the zealot, enough time for bunker gg, sure, but with your BO this is not the case, i don't spot the zealot, i don't see the pushout, and he is able to easily kill a lot of stuff, the 3-4 marines i got at that time, isn't enough to deal with that, so i have to pull 6-8 SCVs, and he only needs to kill the marines to win, as he can run past the bunker, and the MSC wins, as i have just single Marine production.
but when do i get the bunker? I placed it down at 4:10 and it is TO late, so i have to skip SCV or Marine in order to get the bunker earlier <.< So... what do i skip? I would say dont skip the marine, you need at least 3 marines to deal with the MSC, but still, that is... so uncool.
The tip with, if they dont attack the ebay they go for you is great, but how do i know, that he didn't cancel the zealot, if i don't see it? That would be the most important intel. Also if i place the ebay near to the minerals i dont see the ramp so i won't see any units moving out of Protoss mainbase There is a way the SCV misses the zealot, depending on timings and buildings placement. Would you say i should place the CC on the highground? If the Bunker isn't finished, he hits with 1 zealot, 1 msc and 1 stalker vs my 3 marines, so on the lowground they are dead, on the highground... just pull SCVs and micro your heart out and focus MSC? Your Build and Plan of the TvP mech is awesome, but i have to admit, your timings are SO incredible hard to hit, as every second matters in the early game and decides if you lose or survive.
You shouldn't need me to point out some of these obvious mistakes your making in your replays.
Terraform You got the order for your buildings wrong which meant you hit 20 seconds late, that meant he had 3 collossi instead of 2. You then didn't drop on the collossi at all, and instead dropped them in front of them to just evaporate. You wouldn't drop marines like that, so why would you with hellbats.
Coda You scout high energy on nexus, obviously chrono is not being used on nexus to build probes and he has only 1 gas, gateway attack on the way. You need to respond by just making widow mines for factory's with no addons, repair your bunkers and prepare for a big attack and tech to medivacs.
Do you look at these replays yourself before asking me?
Yes i watch the replays, but i am not genius, for knowing what to do and when and why in TvT only for Taejas Autoturret Doomdrop it took me 3 months of practice. TvP Mech is super new for me and the early super stressful, as Protoss has SO much stuff they can do. And with the ebay block they start to throw stuff at me, i almost never encoutered so far.
Is 42 Energy on nexus rly "high energy" ? For me it is just one chrono not used, which doesn't need to be gateway attack, also it's warpprism attack, which i have no clue how to defend properly with 1 rax production. If it would have been almost 70 ok sure, but 42 isn't that much, i think.
thx again for your help Bodzilla i really appreciate that. You don't need to go through the replays if you don't feel like, i won't be angry or anything and even if, who cares? The mistakes you point out as obvious, aren't obvious for me, otherwise i wouldn't ask :/
pretty good games. I also think, if you hit Skyterran you almost won, imagine sneaking in some ghost as well for EMP and Nuke, would be sure awesome^^
Edit:
I played a TvP on cactus valley today, and yeah i lost due to stupidnes. I would like to know, how exactly i defend the Voidray allin. As it was a 4 player map i had no Ebay block, just regular ebay to defend the oracle, which is fine. But then i lost the game, WMs get sniped by oracle detection and voidray, the bunker at the ramp at my main, dies so fast and the turret as well, from that point on i lost ground and the game. What exaclty do i need to defend? I got 1 rax and 2 fax all without addon, but matched all timings this time, so fax was on 5:00 and 5:30 all super duper fine. But the Protoss simply doesnt engage like that Protoss in your video :D mine was a bit smarter and didn't lose the oracle, so he was able to snipe the WMs.
Also i lost the scouting SCV at roughly 5:15, so i saw no nexus there, but wasn't able to scout if there was a base or not, as the protss had the oracle and one stalker at my nat, so nothing could move out.
I think i might need 2-3 bunker and WMs very close to the bunker as well as pull 12 SCVs? Try to focus fire the voids? Tanks would be helpful vs stalker, but ... i don't rly wanna go for them as i think there is no need. So... can i blindly go for a Starport? If so at what time?
Unless it's a twilight opening such as HT, blink or DT you always get a starport at 6 minutes. Use some widow mines to do a pressure with a medivac to scout what they're aiming for, and hopefully get some damage. After that point you taylor your units to what they're making.
The reason he attacks into me in the vod is because i have his nat blocked so he cant expand so thats the main difference.
The stargate stuff is tough, and it's what i'm working on at the moment so the best response i have is to rush a medivac, do a mine drop and get a reactor on your rax, swap it with your starport and start making tank viking.
The cool thing about vikings is that they're actually pretty good vs gateway units, so even if you over make vikings to defend his air attack, you can just land them and use some SCV's to repair them. They'll deal with zealots and stalkers in even numbers and with some tanks in support you should be able to stabalize.
The vikings function pretty similar to how they do in TvT at the start of the game.
Ok thx, that is very good to know, so 6 min Starport unless twilight, good.
I got another game, where i blocked the nat and saw the late robo. easy stuff, the attack did deal a lot of dmg. I dropped on top of his army, killed a bunch of probes, killed even his natural nexus, but, how do i setup behind that? Because what most of the time happens is, that he counter attacks. So i know behind that i get the 3rd CC, take the gases and go for additional factories, but what do i do with the 2 reactor fax and the reactor SP in the meantime? Do i keep producing medivac hellbat? Vs stalker colossus, which is the most common counterattack, i feel like i need tank viking, but i am not sure. So what do i produce out of the 2 fax and the starport i got, after, or while, the attack? The counterattack can be quite strong, and WMs seem not too good, as he got Observer^^
Another thing^^ sry... what do i do, if i scan and see NOTHING :D i got a game where i scaned and missed all his structures^^'
All i saw was 2 gas, nexus with 25% energy, Cyber core researching and 3 pylons and an pylon being constructed. Also i didn't know for sure if it was a 2nd nexus or not, i only knew he attacked my ebay and i had to cancel it. Behind that he went for blink, i was able to defend but... vs a decent Protoss, i think i might have died.
after hellbat timing you should have 3 factory's with techlabs on the way. You only want to make about 6 medivacs before starting viking production. So combined with the medivacs you manage to save, the vikings and hellbats your building and the tanks that your about to start building you can hold any feeble counter attack pretty easily.
Just remember to not miss your production cycles and it'll be very easy to hold
as for your second thing you have a 2nd scan available about 10 seconds later, if your super paranoid about some early aggression you can scan again, but generally if they're doing things like that it's because they're hiding their tech at a proxy pylon.
If you see their first 3 pylons, you scan those pylons and theres no tech, it means he's played his build out sub optimally and got way more supply available then he needed and his push will be much weaker as a result.
Sometimes when they do things like this it can be all sorts of stuff however DT and blink are the most common though.
interesting tvp, i dont think pure sky protoss army is viable unless you are ahead. I think you need to stick toa mix of ground/air to win vs terran mech
That goes for both parties though. If you go pure air as a terran you'll lose to a protoss ground army.
The trick is to try and take out each other's important units to make your's better. So if you can take care of immortals, tempests and collossi, Thors become godtier.
And if protoss can take care of BC's, or attack before you have enough, immortal and archons become amazing
Not to mention the fact you played a blatant hacker and still won as well in that last replay; good job. Sadly, this game is no longer what it used to be due to hackers/cheaters...or maybe it's just me.
On October 05 2015 13:52 Phattyasmo wrote: Not to mention the fact you played a blatant hacker and still won as well in that last replay; good job. Sadly, this game is no longer what it used to be due to hackers/cheaters...or maybe it's just me.
he helped me out, he could have won if he wanted to. But he chose to teach me something from that game and I think thats more important then winning or losing
blame it on bad micro, but still, no clue. What i think could work is, like 4 tanks to zone HTs and kill canons, use Ghosts for EMP and nuke, and raven for PDD so tempest cant snipe ghost, but i could imagine that is rly difficult to pull off^^ I also think that Thor would be nice vs canons, but are super weak vs tempest, Tempest are designed to take out big units.
On the other hand mech CAN beat rank 25 GM :D Sure i made tons of mistakes, but it is funny how strong mech is vs a poor unit comp out of toss. And that double WM drop still hits strong
I tried now the hellion raven after blink, didnt work at all for me. OK i went in one by one, but... what do you think, how many hellions do i need to take out his army? 40? 50? When should i attack?
Also i should have not thrown away all those hellbats at his 3rd but i thought that counter attack could kill a lot of stuff, i was so wrong.
Most trouble i have is not dying to a P who keeps hitting left and right the whole time, also stalker are SO good in picking off units!
On October 05 2015 13:52 Phattyasmo wrote: Not to mention the fact you played a blatant hacker and still won as well in that last replay; good job. Sadly, this game is no longer what it used to be due to hackers/cheaters...or maybe it's just me.
he helped me out, he could have won if he wanted to. But he chose to teach me something from that game and I think thats more important then winning or losing
True; point taken. I'm pretty hard on people who hack (He is 75-13, 85%) in general.
On October 05 2015 13:52 Phattyasmo wrote: Not to mention the fact you played a blatant hacker and still won as well in that last replay; good job. Sadly, this game is no longer what it used to be due to hackers/cheaters...or maybe it's just me.
he helped me out, he could have won if he wanted to. But he chose to teach me something from that game and I think thats more important then winning or losing
True; point taken. I'm pretty hard on people who hack (He is 75-13, 85%) in general.
I don't mind people hacking. I just see it as a small handicap to an otherwise normal game
ok so i mistakenly played a TvP where i played the Hellion Marine Elevator BO for TvT <.< i rly thought it was a TvT, as i realized a probe in my main for scouting i was like "sh*t" i went for 2 hellions 1 WM and 6-8 Marines with one medivac out of 1 base, vs a protoss with an early expand, and it worked so well!
So now i wonder, is there a possibility, to safely go for that kind of aggression? Is there a BO for that? You still need to scout for oracle, blink, gateway pressure etc, but if you could pull that one of it could be a very cool opening, no?
On October 07 2015 21:53 AleXusher wrote: ok so i mistakenly played a TvP where i played the Hellion Marine Elevator BO for TvT <.< i rly thought it was a TvT, as i realized a probe in my main for scouting i was like "sh*t" i went for 2 hellions 1 WM and 6-8 Marines with one medivac out of 1 base, vs a protoss with an early expand, and it worked so well!
So now i wonder, is there a possibility, to safely go for that kind of aggression? Is there a BO for that? You still need to scout for oracle, blink, gateway pressure etc, but if you could pull that one of it could be a very cool opening, no?
Well this is basically how I open my mech games vs toss with a gas first into widow mine marine drop. I then do follow up drops with drilling claws. I stole a build order from Innovation which he used against Zest. I like the scouting this provides as well as forcing early units from the protoss - units that he often doesnt want to make.
I asked this question once, but still, what do i do if i scan and see nothing? i only know it was 13 gate, one gas and he wanted to expand. So i have ebay block and he kills the ebay, or i cancel in time tbh^^
Srsly, the 2nd scan can miss as well, and then? How do i react? I mean sure DT and blink might be the most common thing, but it's not 100% sure. So how do i react if i see nothing at 6:00 min with my scan? I mean i basically have to be prepared for anything! <.<
On October 08 2015 05:08 AleXusher wrote: I asked this question once, but still, what do i do if i scan and see nothing? i only know it was 13 gate, one gas and he wanted to expand. So i have ebay block and he kills the ebay, or i cancel in time tbh^^
Srsly, the 2nd scan can miss as well, and then? How do i react? I mean sure DT and blink might be the most common thing, but it's not 100% sure. So how do i react if i see nothing at 6:00 min with my scan? I mean i basically have to be prepared for anything! <.<
On October 08 2015 14:21 AleXusher wrote: That rly sucks :D But ok, i get it^^ thx again^^
it doesn't suck. that is the reason why macro is generally accepted as the strongest style to play. A good macro build is able to hold all these different timings with limited scouting information without falling behind
In my opinion it does suck, i mean ok, i don't get the information, i am screwed that is SC2. Still feels bad. And yet i am not able to prepare for anything, without scratching my eco, which means, i won't have perfect macro, which i already don't have, so yeah, it does suck imo^^
I simply can't get a SP at min 6 as well as bunker, tanks, wms and safetyturrets, just in case this or that might come along.
On October 09 2015 03:38 AleXusher wrote: In my opinion it does suck, i mean ok, i don't get the information, i am screwed that is SC2. Still feels bad. And yet i am not able to prepare for anything, without scratching my eco, which means, i won't have perfect macro, which i already don't have, so yeah, it does suck imo^^
I simply can't get a SP at min 6 as well as bunker, tanks, wms and safetyturrets, just in case this or that might come along.
if you notice in my replays, i pretty much do the same build over and over again. The reason being because it is flexible enough to hold vs every allin and offers basically a gauranteed way to get onto 3 bases. But that was over the course of a couple hundred games of doing the same build over and over over a period of almost 2 months before I got to where I am with the build today.
How do you drain energy from your medivacs? I tried to drop hellbats on top of immo HT Archon Zealot, which would be awesome, as well as frontal attack with hellbat Thor Tank, but Feedback killed all Medivacs... I tried to lower energy with hellbat attacking each other but that didnt rly work
So what do you think would be the best way to trade the medics away? Hellbat drops are awesome vs Zealot Archon Immortal, but as soon as HTs are with the army, it is very dangerous to try that. So instead of searching the big fight with Tank, Medic, Hellbat, i think i might try to just drop the Hellbats and replace them with BCs. Or i could just attack, dont drop on top of the army and get 2-3 Ghosts for EMP, need to test that i think.
is there a way to punish a protoss who goes for 3 base very early?
another question. if he goes blink and i do the hellion raven followup, how many raven should i get? how many hellions? Should i ever attack with the hellions? Or just buy myself time to go into BCs? I tried to attack his 3rd in a game, but lost horribly after he defended, his counter killed me...
How do i defend Voidray allin on moonlight madness?
He didnt show up with oracle so i only know about it when it hits. I had to evac the nat and bunker in my main, but those backdoor rocks... also i lost quite some marines. with my scan i only saw gateways so i first produced tanks before he attacked i didnt know about his choice...
Oh and how far are you already with "how to deal with the stargate at 6:00 scan"? If i scan after ebay block or at all at 6:00 and see stargate i open with WM and get SP for drops, but i feel that doesn't deal that dmg i need. P still gets fairly fast to Immo Chargelot Archon HT with storm. Vs this composition Tank Hellbat isn't the greatest, Thor aren't good as well. The problem i see is, i can't super fast go into BC with only 3 bases, and most likely i can't hold the 3rd at all, because his attack is rly strong. Only chance i had was going for ghosts as soon as i took my 3rd to be able to EMP his Immortal and HTs. So, do you think i need Ghost no matter what vs Immo Chargelot Archon HT, if i am not able to get to BCs "in time"?
If someone is interested that would be the replay with the ghosts. I know i did many many mistakes, i just don't feel comfortable taking my 3rd <.< http://ggtracker.com/matches/6213603
So i tried the hellion again, and it seems like, if i lose them i die instantly, so i think i need to keep them alive no matter what. But what if the Protoss attacks before BCs are out? Even with 8 Tanks and 6 raven and 30 Hellions i lose hard, should i transform them in a fight? But hellbats die also to storm, not as fast as hellions but still...
how many tanks do i need vs mass stalker? I lost hard vs this GM, he massed stalker and my tanks did litterly nothing, to few hellbats? Did the upgrades cut in that heavily? http://ggtracker.com/matches/6215021
Hellions nor Hellbats do work vs Stalker Immo HT... it is sad but it simply doesnt work...
After a ton of more games it looks like i have rly trouble with scouting and reacting to asure i get safely into the midgame. I dont know how to react with unclear scouting. If i miss the DT shrine, i am dead. Warpprism Allin, very hard to deal with even if you see it comming. DT expand, very strong. I know if i see the forge with the scan it is most likely DTs, but you can never be sure. Robo and 2 gates in produciton but you know a nexus was taken? DTs most likely. But what do you do against those DTs? Protoss could followup with Blink Stalker, so i guess you go for tanks? Problem with that is, DTs find dmg no matter what. Also i see no chance punishing a Protoss who goes for a fast 3rd behind his DT harrass. You can not leave your base as mech production is to slow.
On October 22 2015 21:28 AleXusher wrote: After a ton of more games it looks like i have rly trouble with scouting and reacting to asure i get safely into the midgame. I dont know how to react with unclear scouting. If i miss the DT shrine, i am dead. Warpprism Allin, very hard to deal with even if you see it comming. DT expand, very strong. I know if i see the forge with the scan it is most likely DTs, but you can never be sure. Robo and 2 gates in produciton but you know a nexus was taken? DTs most likely. But what do you do against those DTs? Protoss could followup with Blink Stalker, so i guess you go for tanks? Problem with that is, DTs find dmg no matter what. Also i see no chance punishing a Protoss who goes for a fast 3rd behind his DT harrass. You can not leave your base as mech production is to slow.