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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 11:14. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
Feel free to post Questions and Suggestions! :D
+ Show Spoiler [Changelog] +June 27: Added a new section. Uploaded two replays where my macro is not terrible. June 14: Refined the Why Marine/Tank is Bad section. June 13: Added a Replay section. Added timings to the Positioning and expanding section. Edited some sections for bb code mistakes and missing content. Edit: I forgot replays.  Silly me. Replay section on the way guys! Edit2: Replay section under construction. :D Edit3: 2 Replays are now up, adding more soon guys!~
Index
Introduction
Why Marine/Tank is Bad
An Overview
Hotkeys and Micro
Infrastructure and Upgrades
Positioning and Expanding
Discussion topics
Replays
Conclusion
Introduction top
Hi, you may have noticed that in the last MLG, whenever a Terran versus Zerg comes up, the Terran loses whenever he goes Marine/Tank and the Zerg goes for Ultralisk/Infestor/Zergling, but when someone, for example MKP, goes for a composition based on either Bio or Mech, they do far better and often win, for example Stephano vs MKP G3 where MKP gets a large amount of Marine/Marauder/Medivac and just crushes Stephano with cost-efficiency.
However, the majority of us do not have MKP level control, and as such have relied on tanks as a 'crutch' to kill the Zerg's splash damage units before they do too much damage to our Marines. This has worked well since the early days of SC2, until now, with Zerg players getting better and better at catching us un-sieged, getting huge flanks, droning when we're not pressuring, getting Hive tech just as the Tank count reaches critical mass, etc. This ultimately has led to the demise of Marine/Tank in TvZ, further detailed in the next section.
As such, with inspiration from QuanticIllusion and Day[9], I have created this thread, hoping to help evolve TvZ.
Why Marine/Tank is Bad top
I can see the replies now, shining through my monitor. "But Marines kill the Zerglings and Infested Terrans, and the Tanks kill the Ultralisks, Banelings, Roaches, and Infestors. Why would you ever forsake such a strong composition?!"
Because, simply, Zerg has figured it out.
Ultralisks and Zerglings are just too good when used in a large concave with Infestor support against Marine/Tank/Medivac, as shown by the recent MLG Spring Championships and the Kespa invitationals. During the tournament, Zerg always won unless the Terran went for a heavy Bio, or heavy Mech composition, excluding the games where there were extremely obvious mistakes, and the Zerg lost.
During the games, a few things were extremely obvious.
First, Ultralisks just never died. Siege Tanks only do 49 damage with +1 Attack against fully upgraded Ultralisks and take 3 seconds to attack again. This means that it takes 10 Siege Tank shots to kill a single Ultralisk. Even at +3 Attack, Siege Tanks only do 59 damage against fully upgraded Ultralisks, which combined with lack of splash damage when Siege Tanks attack Ultralisks as well as the whopping 2 damage that +2 Marines do against Ultralisks, makes double Engineering Bay 14-16 minute pushes obsolete against Stephano Style Ultralisk/Zergling/Infestor. Guess who opens into an eventual double Engineering Bay? Almost every Terran player who still goes Reactor Hellion(At least, that's what I learned when I was watching MLG).
Don't say Drops, because this composition only takes 3-4 bases to get up. A good Zerg player can easily defend with Zerglings, Spores, and Spines.
The Banshees that the mentioned style gets do okay for killing a few Drones, but Zerg players are getting 2-4 extra Queens anyway, so the most that they do is force a couple spores, kill a couple drones, force some overseers. In the meantime, you lose time back at home, delaying your Upgrades, delaying your Siege Tanks, and delaying the crucial Marines and Marine Upgrades.
This is all further weakened by Infestors, Banelings, and Zerglings.
Zerglings are underrated units. They take a ton of damage(namely Siege Tank shells), are really cheap for Zerg to mass produce, and they can clean up small armies remaining after battles, as well as drops if you simply have more units, extremely easily.
The Infestors are also extremely potent in this. They can and will:
Throw Infested Terran eggs onto your Siege Tanks to force an unsiege or have your Siege Tanks kill themselves, and as a side effect force the cooldown on their attack, letting the Zerg player run in with his army. Alternatively if you have a Raven or Turrets, an unburrowed one can throw some eggs into Siege Tank range and it will force the cooldown on several of the Siege Tanks' attacks.
Fungal a large portion of your Marines, forcing them to stay in place and die to Zerglings and Banelings. You can't split your Marines into groups of less than 4-5 while being at least 2 radius apart from other groups of Marines AND tank pushing at the same time. It's just not possible. Likewise, it's physically impossible to escape from Infestor/Ling with Marine/Tank/Medivac.
Last, Zerg players have just gotten better at predicting Marine/Tank pushes and defeating them. We've been doing them since the Beta, after all. It's only natural that they would eventually learn to crush them.
All of this combines to make Marine/Tank in TvZ non-viable past the first 10-12 minutes. Don't believe me, see MLG Spring Championships 2012. Most of the TvZ's there turn out very similarly to what I have just described, with added Broodlords after one or two big engagements.
* Disclaimer: I do not believe Siege Tanks are 100% useless, just that the old style of Marine/Tank is being phased out in favour of more specialized Bio and Mech styles, of which the Mech styles can use as many Siege Tanks as they want!
An Overview top
So, let's do a quick tally on what units we'll be making:
+ Show Spoiler [Marine] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/9/9d/Marine.png) The staple unit. Good against everything, as is expected. Avoid Banelings with your Marines as much as possible, try to make your Marauders tank as much of the damage as possible.
+ Show Spoiler [Marauder] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/f/f2/Marauder.png) This unit is good against anything armoured or splash damage related. You can grab about 5 of these and send them to try and pick off a couple of Infestors before engaging, as 5 Marauders 1-shot Infestors. They're also excellent tanks for Banelings, but don't clump them up too much, as the Banelings still do damage to Marauders.
+ Show Spoiler [Medivac] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/9/9f/Medivac.png) The more of these you have the better, as you can Stim more often, and heal more quickly, and Marines will die far less to Fungals if you have 8 Medivacs than if you have 2. Marauders being healed by Medivacs also tank a lot of damage.
+ Show Spoiler [Hellion] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/c/cf/Hellion.png) Hellions are here to roast Zerglings and Drones. This works because Hellions are mobile, letting them do all sorts of things you wouldn't normally be able to do with just Marines and Marauders, such as scout for expansions without having to pull a worker and not getting cut off by Zerglings. They're also a necessity as we have a lot of Thors and Marauders in our composition, which makes us weaker against Zerglings. Adding Hellions gets rid of that weakness, just don't lose them.
+ Show Spoiler [Thor] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/0/0b/Thor.png) This unit's role is to tank, kill Mutalisks, kill over-eager Infestors, kill Ultralisks, and take pot-shots at Broodlords. These are heavily underrated, as they get +3 damage per attack upgrade for their ground attack x2, which means 66 damage at +1 attack, 72 at +2, and 78 at +3, not including armour from the Zerg's units Just think, seven shots at +3 and you can kill an Ultralisk, plus the benefits of high HP and not having to siege up. You want a lot of these in the late-game as they are amazing units against everything except for things that end with 'ling', which of course die to everything else in your army. 
+ Show Spoiler [Raven] +![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/archive/6/66/20101204084637%21Raven.png) This unit is for dealing with late-game Broodlords, as it will lower the numbers or force the splitting of the Corruptors/Broodlords significantly, allowing your Marines and Thors to clean up. You can also use Auto-Turrets to make chokes, forcing his Zerglings to go through those before they can start attacking your Marines and Marauders. You can also split the map with Auto Turrets if you have enough spare Raven energy. Auto Turrets last a long time. You can also stop using Scans to clear creep once you have these out, and leave Auto Turrets in place to keep it from spreading again.
The Build Order is not crucial, but you want to have a pretty good Bio count early on for a Bio push with Hellions, Medivacs, or both.
A couple of good build orders are from Day9 Daily #466. The second build order starts about halfway through the second part of Day9 Daily #466.
I currently use the second build order, which is by Demuslim. I add Thors after taking my third instead of Siege Tanks, however, and then two more factories, one making Hellions, another making more Thors. I recommend you save your initial 6 Hellions if possible. When you get the Blue-Flame upgrade, they get 50% better against Zerglings. (For those of you that don't know math, Hellions take 3 shots to kill a zergling at first, then with BFH 1 less shot. That's 33% less shots, but 50% more effectiveness.)
Remember to add a ton of Barracks with your spare minerals. Around 8 total is good.
Hotkeys and Micro top
First, hotkeys. I highly recommend rebinding the 9 and or 0 hotkeys over to the left side of the keyboard somewhere and using one or two of those for Micro. This allows you to actually micro Marine/Marauder/Hellion/Thor/Medivac/Raven effectively. Otherwise, you have your Ravens on the same hotkey as the MMM, Thors, or Hellions, and we don't want that. Your hotkeys should look like this if you have 4 keys available:
1. Bio+Medivacs
2. Hellions
3. Thors
4. Ravens
The reason you want at least 4 hotkeys is because Thors have the job of focusing down high-HP Zerg units, or clumped up Zerg Air. Putting Marines, Marauders, or both with them on the same hotkey creates a lot of problems, such as movement, inability to kite, inability to focus fire without screwing up movement if you misclick one time, etc.
Ideally you want 5 or 6 hotkeys, but that's usually only for people (like me) who use custom hotkey setups like TheCore or Darkgrid. (Darkgrid is slightly older, not quite as good) It should look something like this with 5-6 hotkeys:
1. Bio
2. Medivacs (Yes it is ideal to control these separately.)
3. Hellions
4. Thors
5. Ravens
6. Marauders OR Marines (optional, definitely not required. Only for focus firing and pullback micro.)
To Micro with Marines and Marauders:
Marines will be taking as little damage as possible. Spread these out in a concave behind your Marauders, while the Marauders tank as much damage as possible.
Versus Roaches, a-move, preferably with the Marauders in front.
Versus Banelings, splitting and kiting with ONLY your Marines. Your Marauders should be in front in something like a line formation. Don't clump them into a ball, Banelings still do damage against Marauders.
Versus Infestors spread out your Marine/Marauder as much as possible, and keep your Medivacs spread out as well if you have the APM. Medivacs are so important against Infestor/Ling. Send small groups of around 6-10 supply of units ahead to make sure you won't get jumped while just starting to split up your units.
Against Mutalisks your Marines are extremely important, lose as few of them as possible. You really want Thors against Mutalisks though, since they have so much HP and don't die to two Banelings if you mis-clicked.
Hellions are very simple to micro, just clump them and kite with them, keeping them away from Banelings. Their splash damage should clean up plenty of Zerglings so that your Marine/Marauder/Thor can focus on the Ultralisks, Banelings, Broodlords, and Mutalisks. Alternatively, keep them on follow command on one of your Thors.
Thors are even easier to micro than the Hellions! Just focus fire the biggest and baddest units from the Zerg. Listed from least to most priority:
Roaches
Queens
Mutalisks
Broodlords
Ultralisks
Don't bother focusing down anything else. The Ultralisks are at the highest priority because they take so much damage from Marines, wasting shots that could be on Zerglings, Banelings, Broodlords, etc. Ultralisks also do splash damage.
Broodlords are next because their effectiveness increases the longer the battle goes on since Broodlings last longer than 5 seconds.
Mutalisks next. You do actually have to focus fire these if the Ling/Baneling rolls in first.
Queens and Roaches are just harder targets than Zerglings and Banelings.
Ravens are one of the trickier units to micro, since Zerg will always be building Corruptors to go with his Broodlords, and of course, those only hit air, and we're only building two air units: Medivacs, and of course, Ravens. This leaves us in a tricky position, since if we go in to try and get some Hunter Seeker Missiles off, we almost always die to the Corruptors, and we don't want that. Luckily HSM's are faster than Corruptors and Broodlords alike, so we only need to get a couple of these off and then... Bleep... Bleep... Boom! Taking out a lot of Corruptor/Broodlord, allowing our Thors and Marines to clean them up. The question is how?
I'm not sure the ideal way to do this, but I would presume that this would be after getting a large concave/flank on the Zerg's army, and attacking into it and then putting down a couple of PDD's to absorb Corruptor shots, then going in for some HSM's, hopefully getting at least 3-5 of them off, although it is a lot like an archon toilet since Zerg can always split his Broodlord/Corruptor forces.
Against a large ground-based Zerg army you can also use Auto Turrets to create artificial choke points around the map that you can use to delay or engage the Zerg army. This works best when you have the building upgrades from the Engineering Bay, letting your Auto-Turrets take more damage and have more of them shoot at once, and preferably Durable Materials from the Techlab, letting your Turrets last 3 minutes.
Infrastructure and Upgrades top
After finishing your 3-3 on your Engineering Bays, get Building armour and Hi-Sec Auto Tracking. Building armour lets your Auto Turrets and Planetary Fortresses stay alive for much longer to Zerglings, and Hi-Sec Auto Tracking acts like +1 Attack for buildings, letting large amounts of them (read: Auto Turrets) shoot more, and earlier.
Your Armoury should always be active. You want to get +3 Vehicle attack as quickly as possible so that Hellions always 2-shot Drones, and Thors do much more damage to everything. After that, get started on Armor upgrades for your Vehicles, then Armor for your ships if somehow the game lasts that long.
You should have a mix of 8-10 Barracks, 3 Factories, and 2 extra Starports coming up once your fourth is established.
You may cut out the Starports if he is going for Ultralisks and you don't have money to spare and need all the Thors you can get.
Barracks should have slightly more Reactors than Techlabs, at something like a 5-3 or 3-2 ratio. You can and should temporarily skew this around 13-15 minutes when you're around 6-8 Barracks against a Muta/Ling/Baneling player towards Reactors, since Marauders will be significantly less useful against a composition lacking Infestors or Ultralisks.
Factories should have around 3-2 ratio of Techlabs>Reactors, except in the case where the opponent is on only a few bases, in which case I recommend a 2-2 ratio since he will not have as much Gas income as he would like, which means more Zerglings that you have to deal with.
Starports should have ONLY techlabs, except for your initial Starport, which is dedicated to Medivac production. Don't build too many of these, 2 techlabbed Starports is good on 8 Gas Geysers. You want to start the extra ones around the time you take a fourth, unless you see Ultralisks and that he's dedicating all his money to those.
You add a lot of Barracks and Factories as you take your third base. I add 2 Factories and between 5-7 Barracks while doing the Demuslim build linked to earlier in the guide.
Positioning and Expanding
You want map control, you don't want to turtle. Your army is far more mobile now that you have gotten rid of Siege Tanks and now have units that benefit far more from in-the-moment Micro, although they don't quite have the range of the Siege Tank.
This means that you can more easily harass his expansions with small groups of Bio without Medivacs, since he has to watch out for your speedy Blue Flame Hellions, which naturally roast Zerglings all day every day. You have to be careful with your Hellions though, since one fungal and some Ling/Baneling ends it for them, and it does take time to rebuild them.
This also means you must be a lot more aggressive as well, since you don't have quite as strong of a staying army composition, you have to keep his base, and more specifically, his gas count low so that he can't make a composition like Ultralisk/Baneling/Broodlord/Infestor and max out on 110 supply of that, it's just too efficient and too strong until you have a large Raven cloud, and even then a few Fungal Growths can end it if you're caught out of position.
Expanding is more aggressive than Marine/Tank or Mech. For example on Cloud Kingdom, the 'obvious' fourth base is right next to your third, and you expand in a line formation after you take your natural. However, with this style, you expand to the fourth far away from your third, and make your fourth a PF, while being extremely aggressive to his fourth base.
You have to be careful, though, because he can scout this and take the same fourth you do except on his side of the map, so keep a Marine at each base to scout when he takes each expansion. Remember that he can take expansions on your side of the map, too, on Tal'Darim Altar for example, he can take bases all over the place and you will be none the wiser. You can shut these down with Marine/Marauder drops fairly easily.
Something else nice is that once you have Ravens out, you can stop spending Scans to keep the Creep down, and just send a couple Ravens ahead of your army with a small group of Marine/Marauder and clean up creep that way. You can also place Auto Turrets to keep it that way, and or make a makeshift static defense line across the map and keep him from creeping to your side.
Attack Timings for the Demuslim build in Part 2 of the Day9 Daily linked earlier are:
10:00 26 or so Marines and 6 Hellions push the front. Try to save Hellions, Marines are sacrificial.
12:00 Marine/Marauder with two Medivac timing. Push the third then drop the main on maps like Cloud Kingdom where the third and main are close by air, but far by ground.
16:00 and every two minutes onwards you push with Marine/Marauder/Thor/Hellion/Medivac, as that's about how long it takes for you to rebuild your army.
Feel free to do all sorts of Hellion run-by's, Drops, and sending small groups of Marine/Marauder to take out some of the Zerg's far flung expansions.
Discussion Topics top
A few things I'm thinking about maybe doing, but haven't had the chance to do enough/forgot to do/have no idea if it will work.
Possibly, add a couple of BC's against Broodlord/Infestor at 5+ bases to absorb Corruptor shots and take potshots at the Broodlords, as well as getting Armor upgrades to increase their survivability.
This could go well with:
Getting a second Armory at 5+ bases for double upgrades, eventually getting 3-3/3-3/3-3 on Bio, Mech, AND Air if the game goes on long enough.
Replays top
*Note that a lot of these replays have me macroing poorly/doing the build wrong.
Won games: + Show Spoiler + http://drop.sc/197447 Tal'Darim Altar + Show Spoiler [Description] +I macro poorly at the beginning, which means -10 or so Marines from my push. Somehow it forces a lot of units from the Zerg, though, so we're about even.
I try to push out again at 12:00, but he has Mutalisks out, so I retreat just after pushing out and get ready for a 16:00 push with 2-2 and some Blue Flame Hellions. I do okay with my push and kill a lot of his stuff, but my macro has been poor and I don't have enough stuff to kill his army and mutalisks, and I didn't get extra Factories early enough to have Thors out in time for the push.
I push again at about 18:00, and it goes about the same way as the previous one, but in my favour. The next push two to four minutes later ends it.
Yes, I know his macro was very very bad that game. If he had spent his money I would have died. Ohana + Show Spoiler [Description] +The game starts off normally, though I am forced to pull a couple of SCV's to save the one building my Barracks from his Drone.
I lose my Hellions while they are at the watchtower as I am macroing and not looking at the minimap, luckily I save a couple of them. I push, forcing the cancel on his third base and killing a lot of stuff.
My 12:00 push is stopped as he tries to do some counter attacking with Zerglings, so I just stay at home and prepare for my 16:00 push. Unfortunately it is delayed to 18:00, as I am macroing poorly, and he has continued his counter attacks, keeping me inside my base.
I kill him with my MMMHT push. Daybreak + Show Spoiler [Description] +He turtles on two bases for an extended period of time, taking a third at about 10:00, and a fourth around 11:00. My macro is once again poor, and I lose all my Hellions to his Zerglings while many of his Zerglings are one BFH shot away from dying. The following engagement at aorund 16:00 goes heavily in his favour, and he kills every single unit I had in that army. From then on we poke each other a bit, but nothing really happens until he pushes with only 6 Broodlords and I destroy it with some emergency Vikings, as I don't have enough gas or time to make Ravens with HSM.
I push forward, destroying his fourth base and many of his units. I retreat and get up some Ravens with HSM, and the following push ends the game.
Lost games: + Show Spoiler + http://drop.sc/197440 Shakuras Plateau + Show Spoiler [Description] +This game I micro extremely poorly, and my macro at home isn't extremely solid. This leads to me being extremely cost ineffective and having no units out on the field, allowing him to overwhelm me with Ling/Baneling/Infestor. Korhal Compound + Show Spoiler [Description] +*Note that this is before I started refining the build.
He baneling busts me and kills off a lot of my Marines and Workers, but has cut most of his workers himself in doing so. He hit before I had any of my critical upgrades up, and I had only one bunker. Luckily I had my third CC done, so we were about the same in terms of economy. My micro wasn't good though, and I failed to do very much with my pushes, as well as being very shaken by the bust, and my buildings were very delayed. I did not get very many Hellions, and my micro was very poor, and I was not cost effective.
All these things added up to me eventually losing. Antiga Shipyard + Show Spoiler [Description] +This game was in my favour for a long time, but a long series of bad engagements and poor macro and decision making by me eventually lose it. Condemned Ridge + Show Spoiler [Description] +I hate this map.
No, seriously, I hate it. It's like TDA, but with even harder to reach expansions that the Zerg can take at will and defend even more easily.
A spine wall plus Baneling/Zergling prevents me(mentally) from doing more than engaging and retreating. The game slowly spirals out of control from there, and I do not have enough anti-broodlord units to defeat his BL/Infestor army. GSL Daybreak + Show Spoiler [Description] +I trade okay with my initial push, killing a lot of Ling/Bane and a couple of Drones.
My 12:00 push doesn't do any direct damage, but it does force some more Ling/Bane and kills a couple of Banelings.
He goes Mutalisks and they arrive at my base around 15:00, right before I move out. I manage to defend them, although I lose a few SCV's as well as two techlabs. When I push I kill all of his Mutalisks with my Marines due to his poor positioning, but he has Infestors further up and he defeats my push with Ling/Bane/Infestor.
A little later I have an army of about 6 Thors, a handful of Hellions, around 10 Medivacs, and a lot of MM. He starts to push with Broodlord/Infestor, which I should have been able to clean up, but I group up all my Bio together without pulling back my Marines behind my Thors to kill his Infested Terrans and Zerglings. He fungals my MM and it dies to a few Banelings and a lot of Zerglings. My Thors are overwhelmed, and I GG soon after. MLG Shakuras Plateau + Show Spoiler [Description] +I trade well with my initial push, killing off enough Ling/Bane that he has to remake much more to stop my next push, keeping an even worker count, which means that I am at an advantage due to MULEs. I also manage to force the cancel on his fourth base with my second push.
With my 16:00 push, I make a huge blunder as I have about 20 Marines in the back not shooting anything, and the Zerglings overwhelm my Thors and Marauders while my Marines are playing cards. This snowballs into GG.
Conclusion top
Thank you for reading! 
700th Post! :DLast edit: 2012-06-29 22:19:17 |
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| Beezleking Canada. June 14 2012 11:30. Posts 52 | Profile # |
| Bookmarked and waiting for replays. ^_^ |
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| hugoagogo New Zealand. June 14 2012 11:32. Posts 9 | Profile # |
^
Ditto this looks great! I was getting sick of complaining about TvZ anyway. Still hoping to find a decent creep suppression opener though :D |
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| dynwar7 June 14 2012 11:58. Posts 1945 | Profile # | |
| | Regarding the imbalance, hilarious to see Zergs defending themselves.... |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 12:05. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
Both of those are MMM builds, and I don't like that very much simply because any amount of Ultralisks are extremely powerful against it, and Cracklings put a wrench in the late-game plans as well.
I guess I forgot attack timings. You attack at 10:00 with 6 Hellions and around 26 Marines, again at 12:00 with Marine/Marauder and two Medivacs, again at 16:00, and every two minutes after that while you rebuild. You're welcome to do harassment, take the map, etc. while you do this. Your army is not immobile, you have Hellions! :D
Will edit the OP in a few minutes. |
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| Yoshi Kirishima United States. June 14 2012 12:10. Posts 9002 | Profile Blog # |
| Very nice guide fencer, and good timing thanks for making! |
| | Mid-master streaming MECH ONLY + commentary www.twitch.tv/yoshikirishima +++ "If all-in fails, all-in again." | |
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| MetalPanda Canada. June 14 2012 12:49. Posts 1136 | Profile # |
| It's important to note that putting ravens in your composition means automatically reduced creep spread! |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 12:50. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
You're welcome Yoshi! :D
On June 14 2012 11:30 Beezleking wrote:
Bookmarked and waiting for replays. ^_^
Done. Two replays up, though not very good quality unfortunately. My macro is pretty poor in those games. That reminds me I need to practice...
On June 14 2012 11:32 hugoagogo wrote:
^
Ditto this looks great! I was getting sick of complaining about TvZ anyway. Still hoping to find a decent creep suppression opener though :D
Thanks! I make a point of never complaining about any matchup and instead looking at the pros and cons of strategies and variations of strategies, etc. Among other things, it led to my Late-Game TvP Guide, as I explored different things in TvP.
Oh no I missed your question about Banshees!
I don't like Banshees in TvZ later on because they don't do very much damage for the cost without upgrades, take a long time to build, are killed easily and everything they're good against I already have the counter to on the ground. They're great with Mech since they can pick off infestors, but with Bio-Mech they're not nearly as good since you only have a single armory, and that's tied up with Vehicle upgrades.
It comes down to the same reason I don't get vikings. They just don't do much for the cost, and they require upgrades to be effective due the the two attacks that they both have.
On June 14 2012 12:49 MetalPanda wrote:
It's important to note that putting ravens in your composition means automatically reduced creep spread!
OK, I'll note that in the OP ASAP.Last edit: 2012-06-14 12:51:27 |
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| XXXSmOke United States. June 14 2012 12:58. Posts 1132 | Profile Blog # |
How does this fare if they switch back to BL/infest once they see your not going tank?
Other than that good read, I hadn't put much thought into why rine/tank wasn't cutting it anymore. But you really did some good analysis there. |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 13:02. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
On June 14 2012 12:58 XXXSmOke wrote:
How does this fare if they switch back to BL/infest once they see your not going tank?
Other than that good read, I hadn't put much thought into why rine/tank wasn't cutting it anymore. But you really did some good analysis there.
Thank you.
You:
A. Kill him because of his lack of units.
B. Scout it and make 2-3 Techlab Starports and start Raven production.
C. Don't scout it, make Marauders as if you were going against Ultralisks, and die. |
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| MetalGear Australia. June 14 2012 13:41. Posts 44 | Profile # |
| Nice guide its amazing how cost effective bio with hellions can be once you get that 10+ medivac count. I play so many games were zerg had a much better economy and i won due to the cost effectiveness of bio. Also it sucks with marine tank having to crawl all the way across huge amounts of creep at least with this you can be a lot more aggressive walking on creep. |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 13:42. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
| Well you don't want to stay on creep, but yeah it's great having a ton of Marauders tanking with Medivacs healing them, and Marines, Hellions, and Thors doing a ton of DPS. |
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| HeroMystic United States. June 14 2012 13:50. Posts 894 | Profile # |
| Is there any way to make Ghosts in this build? They're not great against Ultras, but EMP on the Infestors seem like an awesome thing to do since that's really the main reason why Siege tanks still exist in the TvZ match-up. |
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| NiteWatch Indonesia. June 14 2012 13:58. Posts 58 | Profile # |
| This is such an awesome guide!! Just the type of guide i was looking for thanks!! Anyway, does anyone know where i can find the marineking timing attack with blue flame hellions and mm?? |
| | Thorzain & TLO are awesome!! |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 14:07. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
On June 14 2012 13:50 HeroMystic wrote:
Is there any way to make Ghosts in this build? They're not great against Ultras, but EMP on the Infestors seem like an awesome thing to do since that's really the main reason why Siege tanks still exist in the TvZ match-up.
I don't know, it could be possible. I want to refine what I have first, though.
On June 14 2012 13:58 NiteWatch wrote:
This is such an awesome guide!! Just the type of guide i was looking for thanks!! Anyway, does anyone know where i can find the marineking timing attack with blue flame hellions and mm??
You're welcome!
I don't know where to find that. |
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| FinalForm United States. June 14 2012 14:12. Posts 401 | Profile # |
| not sure why ppl are afraid to admit that tanks are hella bad in tvz |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 14:13. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
| It's because they've been such a staple unit in TvZ for so long, that people don't know how to try anything different. |
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| HeroMystic United States. June 14 2012 14:22. Posts 894 | Profile # |
On June 14 2012 14:12 FinalForm wrote:
not sure why ppl are afraid to admit that tanks are hella bad in tvz
Because for the most part unless you're high masters, having a high siege tank count will be better than any of the "non-standard" builds. Siege tanks protect you against multiple all-ins, and despite being terrible against Ultras they are very good against everything else ground-based. Marine/Tank is also the easiest to macro and micro IMO.
But yeah, Tanks are pretty terrible in SC2, and it looks like it'll only get worse in HOTS. |
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| Dark.EX United States. June 14 2012 14:32. Posts 1504 | Profile Blog # |
| They're not even better in the lower leagues. Players would be better off going Thor/Hellion and micro-ing that around with only a few Siege Tanks as insurance against Roaches and Banelings. |
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| oOOoOphidian United States. June 14 2012 16:07. Posts 1235 | Profile # |
Tanks target bane/infestor while marine marauder kills everything else. I'm a huge fan of MMM, but in the late game tanks off 3 factories can give you a lot of utility if you are in a direct engagement.
Pure MMM is way easier for zerg to beat and way harder for terran to do, whereas tanks can be very difficult for zerg players to engage if you use them properly and micro your bio around them. Pretty much the only time when tanks are useless in direct engagements is when you either don't target fire with them or you get caught unsieged.
I would say that the reason MKP and others are winning with bio or other strategies is not because they are doing those strategies necessarily, but rather because they are microing better regardless of what they are doing, which makes their engagements more cost effective every time.
Notice how MKP lost to Stephano on Entombed Valley when he didn't micro at all. It had nothing to do with him going for a mech/bio mix and everything to do with his entire army being balled up and his tanks being unsieged even when he was already out onto creep.Last edit: 2012-06-14 16:10:57 |
| | http://www.twitch.tv/ooooophidian |
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