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On March 11 2012 13:53 ][Primarch][ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2012 12:01 Lyyna wrote: As a high master T meching every single game : -I keep producing marine out of 1 reactored barracks (i open 111 exp) until ~~10 min, then i put my 2nd fact on the reactor to get hellion -Uppgrading marines isn't needed for a mech army. Uppgrade them if you're going for a biomech army
-Usually on 2 bases,the best things to get is thor/hellion/banshee in my opinion
-On 3 bases,add tanks and ghosts. On 4 bases,i'll start to add BC and raven
-My ideal army lategame is a good number of tanks (8 being a minimum, 15 is good), some ravens (4-5, maybe more if he's going mass air) for PDD/HSM, a few thors (always good to have these guys in your armys), good number of BC (10 BC with tank and raven support is stupidly insane), ghosts (8-10 usually. Too much is overkill, but too few can kill you if he can get too much feedbacks before you can EMP, or any stupid thing like that), and then fill remaining supply with hellions/vikings/banshees You open 111 exp in TvP? In high masters...? I presume you do put on a lot of pressure maybe taking out protoss second base, killing probes or something, because 111 opening into expand should be terrible vs a decent protoss. I would love to see some replays of this. also in this website there is a guy on gm ranked 30 or around that, that still opens 1-1-1 and go into bio, I wonder who gave you the info that going 1-1-1 will make you go behind
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What's your stream info Lyyna? Would love to get the first person view of someone going all mech besides Goody.
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Didnt GoOdy abandon mech TvP? If he given up mech TvP, what right can you guy say about mech being viable. He probably plays mech TvP to death with every possibility and tried to make it work but couldnt. I think the blue flame nerf was pretty much the nail in the coffin. Of course if yall can show atleast Grand Master lvl replay of mech based TvP as evidences then that be good enough.
I think I heard that he abandon mech TvP a while ago in an interview maybe a little bit after that BF nerf if i remember correctly.
EDIT: Will be keeping eye on lyyna stream and replays.
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I think Mech is "viable" in the sense that it's good for a curveball to throw in during a series. Part of the fun of the game is trying things that shouldn't work and attempting to make them work anyway.
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On March 12 2012 07:34 Lyyna wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 12 2012 07:28 SnowCat wrote: Mech is TvP is my favorite strategy in ladder game, cause in late game it is quite strong against protoss army, even the protoss player have some void rays and carriers.
But my opening is different to you, I'd like to make 6-8 marines and 2 siege tank first if protoss didn't make a expansion, and I don't build a stargate in the early game. And I don't understand why you want a raven so early, because I think that the immortals and void rays ( if protoss uses a 3 gate 1 robo or starport all-in rush ) are the greatest threat to a Mech terran in the early game.
Anyway, it's a good guide!
Early raven is great to deflect DT, sniping obs to avoid blink in base, helps a lots defending vs stalkers and banshees too . . .and auto turret also does a lot of damage
Thanks for your reminding! I nearly forget Dts, perhaps I rarely see a protoss using them. And sniping protoss obs is quite good, a thor and a raven can make up a team to stop protoss player's scout. In ladder maps like Antiga Shipyard, protoss can't even see anything in terran main base!
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On March 12 2012 09:25 SheaR619 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Didnt GoOdy abandon mech TvP? If he given up mech TvP, what right can you guy say about mech being viable. He probably plays mech TvP to death with every possibility and tried to make it work but couldnt. I think the blue flame nerf was pretty much the nail in the coffin. Of course if yall can show atleast Grand Master lvl replay of mech based TvP as evidences then that be good enough.
I think I heard that he abandon mech TvP a while ago in an interview maybe a little bit after that BF nerf if i remember correctly.
EDIT: Will be keeping eye on lyyna stream and replays. Yes goody stopped TvP mech, but in my opinion (he might come here and say i'm totally wrong) his mech style was relying a lot of BFH, for harassing, killing chargelots, and 'buffering' immortals/colossi shots, so the BFH nerf basically kiled this. I personnally use more like a mech/air style, relying on the huge synergy between BC/raven and tank/ghost in lategame, and in midgame chargelots litterraly melt to banshees and few hellions,and tanks/thors can clean the rest
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GoOdy style resembled how sc1 mech. He played mech how it has always and has been suppose to be traditionally played based on sc1. Your unit combination seems like it very gas heavy. From what I know is that Thor + BC+Ghost has always made the ultimate death ball that terran can make but getting there is extremely hard. Maxing out on these 3 units completely over powers protoss. The only problems is is that banshee does 2 attack, so if toss get +armor upgrade, which they usually favor over attack upgrade anyways, then your banshee do signicantly less damage. This mean to make banshee efficient, you need +attack air upgrade if you want them to be effective in your unit composition. Overall, it seems like a very gas heavy build your trying to go for. I am not saying it bad because if you can show cased (replay) a way how to get into that sort of death then it would be pretty good.
I think we can all confirm that the sc1 style mech is pretty much unviable from GoOdy experiences.
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Hey, i found some recent games (february/march) of Goody where he still used mech vs Protoss. Maybe he felt his opponent was weak enough (but if you're in a tournament, i don't see why you wouldn't try your hardest) or something, idk. Maybe he's back to mech now? I know that for a while he switched to bio.
Here are just a couple I found, from a relatively small europe tournaments (or rather, a Cup)
http://www.sc2replays.eu/show-replay-17430-0-escgoody_t_-vs-monchi_p.html http://www.sc2replays.eu/show-replay-17432-0-escgoody_t_-vs-laz_p.html
There are many more that are still recent, like from 1.4.2 (when EMP got nerfed again,) of people going mech, if you want to see longer games.
This site is really epic btw, u can look up replays with similar builds and such o.o amazing, didn't know about this til recently.
You can find the tournament website here: http://www.antec-attack.com/en/statics/rules
There is a TSL player in the top 8, so as long as it's GM+ or at semi-pro level, I think knowing that mech works at that level is good enough for almost everyone here. (And if any wants to go pro, i'm sure it'll be fixed by HotS anyways, so it's not like time spent learning mech will be too wasted)
There is a korean mech player who beat slayers_brown (though it was more cus he defended a void proxy well, but still) His name:뽀통령 Old name: 파동몬
There is someone I know komprezzor who is top masters on KR and also plays mech on it, and he showed me some interesting but solid builds.
MarineKingPrime used 뽀통령's build vs MC and beat him. No wonder he used a similar build vs Genius in the GSL, though it hit earlier (not sure why? Did he scout something that made him change? I can not figure this out. If someone can analyze and find out... that would be cool if you can share!) and with only 2 added reactor factories instead of 3 like in the replay where he used it vs MC here http://www.sc2replays.eu/show-replay-14693-0-ogsmc_p_-vs-marineking_t.html
Edit: 뽀통령 usually (always?) got a third base (sometimes hidden just for minerals, like on xel'naga -- though he does it a lot so perhaps it's not hidden, but rather a strategic position) with his build, so that's why he got 3 reactor factories instead of 2. MKP did not; he teched up and then took a later third, seeing the protoss couldn't take a third anyways, and guessing from MKP's choice it is more important to tech to make sure he can't hard counter your army (like get ghosts for immortals) than it is to have a bigger econ (having a better composition is more efficient than having 50% more econ)
IMO, playing mech is easier than Bio as long as it's not a map like tal'darim. Engaging with bio is just so hard for me. You have to kite with marauders, EMP/snipe the HT in advance, kite with viking and make sure they don't split, and while doing this you need to possibly drop protoss somewhere (and ideally, micro it) while also remaking a huge round of bio.
You need more ghosts than before but with a good engage, if you EMP everything, you will win with tanks lategame.
Thors work really well early to mid game.
As someone noted, (and thanks for doing so! I only knew of jjakji using it) there is a strong 2 base 200/200 push with thor marine banshee (i don't know why protoss have trouble defending it though? maybe it was just a new build and protoss didn't practice against it much?). Beastyqt's thor marine ghost banshee build is cool as well. Much easier than bio to micro, and much stronger in engagements.
I find that mech works pretty well on cloud and korhal. I think it worked better on xel'naga and arid, but as long as it works "OK" i'll be satisfied ^^. On korhal the lower ground is dangerous for the opponent. You can easily have the shorter defend distance than protoss on that map. If he tries to go to low ground and come up, he won't have vision anyways and you will have time to siege. Main is also easy to defend.
BFH harass is not as good, sure, but it is still pretty darn good.
As others have said, it helps a shit load if you have a wall or choke in the engagement as well! i like to make a wall of barracks before an engagement. If you wanna move or slow push, you can lift it up which gives you vision and can attract stalker fire anyways. PF are good too for key locations, but if I want to advance shortly after I use barracks to save money. I prefer them over ebay. The cost to HP is more efficient, and it takes longer to build yes but at 35 seconds, a barracks doesn't have thaat much less HP. I know 100 or 200 HP can make a big difference, but I think as long as you siege up with a wall, and get a good couple volleys after EMPing everything, you won't lose much.
And finally as others have said, air synergizes really well with mech. Mech/air combinations force protoss to react to your composition, instead of the other way. There is a bit of both I guess, but in a bio PvT, protoss will never really have to think about what they make. But with mech/air, they have to make the right amount of AA for air and make enough chargelots and immortals/colossus or carriers or whatnot for ground. As the mech player, all you need to do is scan or send a hellion into their army once in a while to check for any sudden tech switches (like to mass carrier or such), but you can make good use of factories and starports anyways, unlike in bio where your vikings become shit once you land them and might not be producing out of them if he stops making colossus.
Lastly lastly. Don't expect pure anything to work in SC2 anymore (at least, not efficiently). Terran is just designed differently now, but I say it's better (maybe its not intentional?) In SC2 you can go pure something (bio, mech, air) for a while sure but later on there's more AOE and such and splitting with micro becomes inefficient (think marines vs zerg, tanks make it much more easy unless you're automaton) and so you start adding stuff. Air, you go viking banshee maybe some raven and later BC but ghosts make it much easier when he uses HTs. TvP, you can go MM but you add medivacs and vikings (and ghosts) later to adapt to the protoss. Similarly, mech in TvP with just hellion tank thor -- sure, it works pretty good, but not in the lategame. Early game, thors with repair are really good, and there are some good tank hellion marine pushes before colossi production kicks in with range. However, I think Blizzard forcing terrans to make a larger variety of units isn't making terran really weaker, but just more flexible, making it easier to transition into a different tech tree (TvZ, you add more and more mech, and can max out on mech upgrades later on, in TvP you get ship weapons, and... though perhaps too unexplored, players like Ryung have been adding 3/3 BCs into a bio/air transition).
Edit:
lastly x3
One way to defend blink stalker harass is to build your buildings in the main in a wall (map dependent, but should work to an extent on most maps) such that the buildings form a line parallel to the cliff of the main or base or whatever, and put 1-2 tanks behind that wall. You can put depots in that wall too in case of course you want to actually get to that cliff for something. If he blinks in, surprise! He'll be shot by the 2 tanks 4 times each before the blink cooldown is over and he can blink again! If you had a sensor tower and a raven, idk maybe you can run there and throw a PDD if he tries to kill some buildings. By then you should have your hellions ready for when he blinks back out.
4 hits * 2 tanks = 8 hits... should be able to kill a few stalkers, which is quite an investment to try to harass you. (And if not, he should be left with a lot of stalkers low on HP. He can regenerate sure but as long as you EMP... suddenly they have like 40 HP left. Maybe you could even leave a ghost at home if he is doing it really frequently and/or the situation happens to call for it? You would really shred those Stalkers then. Likewise if it calls for it, you could even put 1 preemptive PDD there.)
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In my opinion the simple problem with TvP is that it is based on a flawed concept: that realistically terran can confront a protoss toe-to-toe in a late-game macro situation. This doesn't work for a variety of reasons, including basic race mechanics. For one part, toss has plenty of options to take on a mech army and the problem is that each and everyone of them can cover a broad spectrum of anything "purely" mech. Such units include archons, immortals, blink stalkers, chargelots (amazingly cost effective against any tank heavy composition which is always the bulk of your dps), HT, void ray (of course very selective in situations they are useful in, but very powerful against "pure" mech) and even colossus. Simply looking at the current pool of units that's almost everything in the protoss arsenal.
A basic army composition including a decent gateway mix (or blink stalker heavy) and a bunch of immortals or colossus is good enough to take on any early/mid mech ball, and it's close to impossible to move out because the second you unsiege the toss can just take you out. All the dreamed of unit compositions including ravens, banshees, vikings, tanks, thors - are simply unrealistic (and ridiculously gas heavy) armies to have in bulk on 2 or even 3 base in the mid game. The main problem is terran's need to grab as many expansions as possible to aim for late game, leaving them very susceptible to powerful 2 base timings by protoss. The other option is for toss to simply out expand you, macro up and deflect sad hellion harass attempts with a few blink stalkers, throw out 20 gateways on 4 base and macro up 200/200 on immotal/colossus/chargelot/HT/archon and roll you over. Even if you can get a favourable trade, toss can just immediately re-max and wipe the floor with you especially because it's so hard to reproduce a mech army, as well as walk across large maps and reinforce front lines.
In an absolutely perfect scenario, a toss will get EMP'd, stalker/phoenix deflected by PDDs, chargelots smashed by hellion/tank and everything else possible wiped by tank/thor/air. The only problem with this is that when PDDs and EMPs are out, they are very often in very bad positions where the toss can just walk out, replenish his army with warp-ins and wait it out and the mech army can't do anything to take advantage of it (unless your army is already at his doorstep). Also, mech units alone are terribly weak and can't deflect multipronged attacks the way other races can do (ling/bling/spines/queens/mutalisks against marine drops, extremely efficient; blink stalker sniping medivacs/3-5 chargelots shutting down marines/HT feedback) whilst also unable to split his army and risking significantly weakening the front lines against a push. a few zealots or blink stalkers can't be stopped by mobile hellions, nor can it be efficiently dealt with by tanks (which are slow) or cloak-less banshees. A thor would but that's dedicating 300/200 to protecting your mineral line and can't quickly reinforce your front the way ling/bling can.
Regardless, the very opening is painful to execute and there is only a very limited handful of safe routes to go. One thing for sure is that if you're not going to get a raven, the second the toss spots a weak defense with an obs he will just abuse it.
Right now I honestly think the only realistic mech heavy play is iEchoic's TvP (which is biomech mm+raven/banshee) and cute thor/raven/banshee mixes with marines and scvs where your sole objective is to snipe obs and tear the toss apart with cloaked banshees. Even then these are still very thin strategies which rely heavily on a strong mid-game timing to seal the deal or face unstoppable late game toss compositions.
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On March 11 2012 13:53 ][Primarch][ wrote: You open 111 exp in TvP? In high masters...? I presume you do put on a lot of pressure maybe taking out protoss second base, killing probes or something, because 111 opening into expand should be terrible vs a decent protoss. I would love to see some replays of this.
Empire.Happy opened 1/1/1 expand with cloak almost every single game he played in against Protoss for like six months straight and maintained a winning record with it until his Protoss opponents started blindly opening stargate against him. Of course, he didn't transition into mech from 1/1/1, but the opening it perfectly solid. Remember that with a cloak opening:
- The timing is such that cloak finishes just as his observer reaches your base if he opened gate core nexus gate gate robo. If he failed to make a second observer, he just loses the game. - He has to make three observers if he wants to scout you with one, or you can just kill probes where the observer isn't. - You will still get half a dozen probe kills minimum even if he has observers waiting for you because stalker DPS is so terrible. - You get to take advantage of the uncertainty by just parking your banshees in a corner of the map once it becomes damaged, and he constantly has to leave an observer behind just to deal with that 1 banshee.
All these things together mean it's a solid opening that will put you on equal economic footing with Protoss. Factor in that you will just get a free win maybe 1/5 of the time with your cloak opener and I'd recommend every Terran playing ladder open 1/1/1 cloak every single game.
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The problem with mech is mobility. The problem with bio is lack of power. The soloution is to go marauder banshee midgame into marauder banshee bc ghost medivac late game. You keep most of the mobility of bio and most of the power of mech. Marauder is a much better complement to air units compared to tanks since the gas cost is much lower. It is also easier to remax compared to mech since mass marauder gives you a buffer while you build your air units.
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I always thought Marauder-Tank, but too expensive apparently
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Why is still no one talking about hellion usage in TvP?
Why do people refuse to use hellions?
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On March 12 2012 18:25 Bommes wrote: Why is still no one talking about hellion usage in TvP?
Why do people refuse to use hellions?
Heliions to fight against what exactly? They are a great meatshield for their cost, but against chargelots, they are terrible.
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On March 12 2012 19:06 antilyon wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2012 18:25 Bommes wrote: Why is still no one talking about hellion usage in TvP?
Why do people refuse to use hellions?
Heliions to fight against what exactly? They are a great meatshield for their cost, but against chargelots, they are terrible.
On small maps they are terrible. On big maps hellions are pretty much cost efficient against very gateway unit except the archon as long as you micro them correctly, and as you can poke and drop them everywhere you pin the protoss back long enough to secure more bases than him with tank/ghost/viking, until you push out with a better economy.
Tell me again that they are terrible when I roast 10 Zealots in 1 shot the next time
The only downside of hellions is that you lack a good base of marines when your opponent decides to sneak in some VRs from somewhere. But thats nothing you can't overcome with turrets and some reactored star ports just in case, every VR or star gate in general that comes before the 10-13 minute mark is very obvious in the army count so you can prepare for it.
Hellions were considered a terrible unit in TvT (apart from the old BFH opening), and now they are one of the most stable choices in the matchup. I don't see why it shouldn't happen in TvP, because Hellions are imbalanced against HT/Sentry and pretty good against Zealot/Stalker (considering their cost), while having imba speed and being able to sneak into the eco lines very fast. I don't see how they are terrible.
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@Bommes : do you mean hellions with mech or a classic bioball with some hellions mixed in? in that second case hellions are kind of terrible,you need to uppgrade air on ur armory for ur vikings and medivacs, so you'll end up with 0/0 hellions vs 3/3/3 chargelots . . add that to the fact they can't hit&run like the bioball . .
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On March 12 2012 21:14 Lyyna wrote: @Bommes : do you mean hellions with mech or a classic bioball with some hellions mixed in? in that second case hellions are kind of terrible,you need to uppgrade air on ur armory for ur vikings and medivacs, so you'll end up with 0/0 hellions vs 3/3/3 chargelots . . add that to the fact they can't hit&run like the bioball . .
Hellion/Tank/Ghost/Viking is the army composition I go for with Thors mixed in if he goes low on Templar tech or if he mixes in Stargate stuff.
3/3 hellions are pretty good, even against 3/3/3 zealots (but usually you only see 3/0/3 upgrades anyway, 3/1/3 at max if the game is not 40+ minutes long).
edit: I'm not a huge fan of uploading replays to show how a strategy works if its not a replay vs. a top 20 grandmaster player or something, because replays are always situational and you are always cutting corners which you can't cut vs other/better players etc. Still, to give you an idea of my overall playstyle and how it can work out I linked a replay of one of my last TvP below. My TvPs turn surprisingly often out similar to this, although because I'm a horrible player there are still many random elements to it and as I can't play as much as I'd like to I don't know about all the exploits a Protoss can use against it (which probably exist in high numbers, after all mech in TvP is always a little bit cheesy, because so few people do it and Protosses are not used to it). There is so much to improve that I just think Hellions in TvP should be a topic, just because you can force the Protoss into a lot of unwanted army movement and you will always get probes if you constantly make Hellions, also because they are a lot better if positioned correctly than people say they are.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9962/CK TvP.SC2Replay (~700 Masters EU, which equals about 1000-1100 Masters at the end of the season)
Again, the replay is no evidence or anything that it works, its just a clarification on how I use the hellions. Don't discuss about how the game was won or why, there were some shitty engagements from both players and overall its just bad play a lot of times. I just want to discuss why no one uses Hellions.
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On March 12 2012 19:14 Bommes wrote: On small maps they are terrible. On big maps hellions are pretty much cost efficient against very gateway unit except the archon as long as you micro them correctly.
No, they are actually terribly cost inefficient against almost anything in the protoss ground arsenal. Not to mention against templar tech, one storm catching your hellions will slowly tear them apart if you don't haul scvs to mass repair. They are also more or less equivalent to marines as meat shields as they get ripped apart by colossi and chargelots with good forcefields (hence why lategame TvP is almost always pure marauder comp).
In terms of harassment, hellions are a lot worse than the standard bio comp too. In most cases when T is dropping, it will be multipronged harass with the basic goal of sniping pylons and not hitting the mineral line as it is far too easy to shut down with decent army splits and leaving a sentry and/or some stalkers back home. Hellions can't do anything except hit probes, not to mention 4 hellions will lose to 2 lone stalkers, unlike 8 marines or 4 marauders.
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The biggest advantage of playing mech is the fact that Protoss for the first 15 minutes of the game wont know WTF is going on.
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