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Hi everyone,
Lately It seems as if most zerg players have learned how to successfully deal with marine mech, and I believe new Terran build orders need to be developed as more and more zerg players adapt to existing terran play.
Thus I recently have been playing around with the use of Ravens into my TvZ play. Ravens from an external and theoretical standpoint seem to be a great tool to use of use against the zerg. A group of say, 4 ravens, can deal some serious damage to the zerg war machine:
1. A group of ravens can patrol the map, drop autoturrets, and control zerg expansion. Much like marine drops can quickly clear an expansion hatch, so too can 4 auto turrets, albeit in a slower fashion.
2. Adding a group of ravens to your unit comp can provide you with enough PDDs to completely eliminate the threat of mutalisks during a crucial battle/push
3. Ravens can be used to hunt creep tumors, or when added to a terran force, can remove creep tumors when pushing
4. Adding a group of ravens to your unit comp eliminates the risk of burrowed banelings or roaches etc.
5. Ravens with HSM upgraded can take out any amount of mutalisks if clustered, banelings if they are morphing / in the backs of the zerg army, or any other clustered zerg composition for that matter.
6. 4 full energy Ravens with PDD eliminate any possibility of Hydras, and virtually any composition of projectile based units.
Therefore it seems to me Ravens have the potential to be incredibly useful. PDD, AutoTurret, and HSM all seem to be incredibly useful against zerg compositions. The units ravens do not effectively limit however are: zerglings, roaches, banelings [to some degree] and ultralisks. Thus I think Mass tanks are necessary to compliment raven play.
What I have had success so far on, is playing a hellion/marine poke into cloaked banshee harass i.e. this http://www.youtube.com/user/ForceSC2strategy#p/c/55B18C1A341FDE9D/4/Ukb_1shhfnQ which then transitions into a raven/marine/tank push. These games are 1100 diamond level in case anyone is wondering.
However, I have heavy gas problems producing both a group of 4 or so ravens, and a critical mass of tanks to deal with any roach/banelings/lings. I also always have minerals to spare. So I ask you guys for a little help and insight here: could a Build Order be developed and optimized which includes heavy raven play to harass zerg bases and protect important terran units during pushes?
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I'm somewhat surprised that there have been so few games with >2 ravens. That said, I don't think it's feasible to do 1base raven because it's so gas intensive and very slow. So I'd probably say Ravens would be the transition after some sort of 3 barracks pressure into expansion. You'd probably want to have a lot of units so that you have a cushion during your tech switch. The tech switch wouldn't be that harsh either because you would probably already have the starport for medivacs.
That said, it would be difficult to make an actual build order for getting to Ravens.
With your extra minerals I'd build extra command centers => orbitals (you can always use the scans, mules, or supply depots), raxes, and marines.
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Ravens are extremely efficient in killing but they are very energy dependent. I tried to use them before but I always find myself having no energy for HSM. PDD works only if mutalisks are still in small numbers.
You definitely need two bases. I'll work on a few more maths for the production capabilities. As for build order, try to refer to the SC1 9 minute push, i think its similar in concept.
Do let me know of your results.
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Simply the gas cost is hard to swallow. 4 ravens doesn't seem like much, but for instance, with a bio army that could instead be 6 medivacs and +1/+1 upgrades. 6 medivacs escorting a +1/+1 marine/marauder force can kill a massive number of mutalisks far more reliably than 4 ravens escorting a 0/0 marine/marauder force.
Plus each raven takes 60 game seconds to build, and needs to wait about 40 game seconds for the energy to cast a PDD.
One or two ravens for support, detecting creep tumors and burrowed units, and PDD is pretty reasonable I think. If you want to harass though, I think it's a much better idea to just use a medivac and do drops rather than ravens with autoturrets, unless you are really short on minerals and swimming in gas for some bizarre reason.
I suppose the nice thing about using autoturrets instead of drops is that you can be reasonably certain that you wont lose your raven even if the autoturrets don't last very long, while you need to pay more attention to your drops. But I'm not sure if that's worth enough to justify the massive gas expenditure, especially considering once the raven is out of energy it can't do anything until it regens, while a drop can pick up and reinforce your main army, or go drop somewhere else immediately.
Seeker Missile is not that great though. Mutalisks can easily outrun the seeker missile, and they are often on top of your army. Seeker Missile will cause friendly fire so it has a chance to do even more damage to your own units than the opponents. The same issue with using it on something like banelings or zerglings, they will charge your line, and then your missile will hit them. The short range to cast it makes it very dangerous to try to use against hydralisks, and roaches have a reasonably big footprint that minimizes the splash and a lot of health so it wont kill them.
The reason I like Ravens against zerg is for creep tumor janitorial service, and point defense drones against hydras or mutas. However, after the first PDD is down, I find additional ones have diminishing returns. Once you've exhausted the energy of the first PDD or two, you've likely already swung the battle in your favor, and additional medivacs can be a lot more useful in the fight, especially if there's zerglings mixed in.
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Hmm good answers - most of this is concurrent with my findings. The biggest problem it seems is that medium amounts of ravens are too gas intensive to use during midgame. I think I i'll incorporate 2 into my play and see if I can develop any solid BO with it.
Also, I'm wondering if Ravens could be used to develop some kind of late game BC strategy. Currently late game Ultralisk + infestor + etc.. is pretty damn hard to beat lategame with terran with terran ground. Maybe 5-6 Yamato BCs + 4 Ravens + a couple other miscellaneous units could be used instead of massing thors against zerg? Seems to me that zerg would be forced into corrupters, which have a high cost and slow rate of fire, thus easily being dealt with by utilizing yamato and pdd. Someone should try to do a Raven BC late game, I would be curious to see what happens - BC raven is literally unstoppable, just like the late game zerg ground army is, late game.
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I'm feeling marine/hellion/raven and can anyone confirm if Roaches acid spit no longer is absorbed by PDD? Regardless I will try a 1-1-1 raven/hellion/marine timing push in my next TvZ.
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Ravens are amazing against hydras, but I think I don't think any zerg has gone hydras against me yet.
Otherwise, they're too gas intensive, and are just a 'cute-sy unit' using day9 terms >_> when you could be strengthening your main death ball with more core units. They're also absolutely useless when they are first produced since they start with just enough energy for 1 auto-turret... unless you need the detection.
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On October 08 2010 09:17 Lina wrote: Hmm good answers - most of this is concurrent with my findings. The biggest problem it seems is that medium amounts of ravens are too gas intensive to use during midgame. I think I i'll incorporate 2 into my play and see if I can develop any solid BO with it.
Also, I'm wondering if Ravens could be used to develop some kind of late game BC strategy. Currently late game Ultralisk + infestor + etc.. is pretty damn hard to beat lategame with terran with terran ground. Maybe 5-6 Yamato BCs + 4 Ravens + a couple other miscellaneous units could be used instead of massing thors against zerg? Seems to me that zerg would be forced into corrupters, which have a high cost and slow rate of fire, thus easily being dealt with by utilizing yamato and pdd. Someone should try to do a Raven BC late game, I would be curious to see what happens - BC raven is literally unstoppable, just like the late game zerg ground army is, late game. Considering that hydras are pretty awful against bcs, raven bc sounds pretty scary. What makes it scary to me is the thought of seeker missile versus corruptors. Even neural parasite seems unlikely seeing as how seeker missile can snipe the infestors.
Then again it seems like it'd be impossiblee to buy that much time for the bcs and ravens in the first place.
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It's not a gimmicky unit. It's actually a really good unit that hardly any T uses because they are caught up with doing 1 base thor + any other unit pushes. I'm a 1600 zerg and I've lost to ravens before. They are extremely versatile and really.. if we saw more of them I think we'd see even more imbalances. The auto turrets do a lot of damage, have decent hp, last for ages. The raven itself spots creep tumors and if you get hunter seeker missles, well.. bye to all those slings/blings. There just really isn't much of a counter unless I myself go infestors and catch them while they're trying to harass or something. But good players won't suicide their ravens that way. They'll just mix them into their thor composition and just totally demolish my units. I for one, commend you OP for not streamlining your play and trying to think of other ways to dominate the mu.
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The question is, why do you really want ravens? The detection is good, but you only need 1-2 for that. The turrets are ok, but not better than making an actual combat unit instead of the ravens. The PDD is only really good against hydras, and they are not awesome against terran anyway. The HSM is ok aoe, but thors and tank already provide good aoe, and more of it.
Ghosts would be a more appropriate caster to add if you are swimming in gas for some reason, since they will decimate pretty much anything zerg can use, appart from roach-hydra where they only do decently, and its already easy to counter roach-hydra as terran.
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51134 Posts
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Ravens cost 200 gas which is ridiculous for TvZ.
You'll be needing medivacs, thors and maybe tanks which cost a ton of gas.
You'll never get one raven until you already have 2 bases.
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PDD doesn't work against roaches do they?
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