[D] Why should I build tanks anymore? - Page 3
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
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EmilA
Denmark4618 Posts
On March 28 2012 16:22 Reasonable wrote: In masters league TvZ marauders are worthless. You just target marauders with mutas and run ling/bane through marauder wall into marines. In many cases any decent zerg will just ignore marauders completely until there isn't a single marine left. Mutas? Don't remember the last time I saw those in a TvZ. Every Z and his mother goes ling infestor now. | ||
Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
In the rare occurance that this does not outright kill the Terran player (maybe he made 4 bunkers to defend his Nat, I am usually so far ahead that I can double expand and just make about 90 lings knowing full well that the game is already over. If you don't make siege tanks in the early game, you will outright die. As we move into the midgame, you now have to deal with equal/better upgrade lings and infestors. While marauders might sound ideal, they don't actually deal with either of these units beyond being slightly harder to kill. In general, a midgame terran army consisting of purely marine/marauder/medivac is not scary because I know that he cannot attack without charging his full army into my base, taking away one of the key advantages T has in the MU of always having favorable engagements. Simply throwing down a fungal field to block you into my base and bowling with blings will give me absurd cost-efficiency, and I don't even have to invest in bling speed since I'm not racing against siege volleys. We all know how bio ends up against late game broodlord infestor comps. Going for pure bio has a very small window of effectiveness in TvZ, sometime after both nats have been established and before Zerg can adequately saturate his third in order to gain the gas income needed to deal with midgame infantry armies. If you do not deal meaningful damage in this window, you have already thrown the game. Unfortunately, this is blind countered by most hatchery-based aggression (if you're not seeing it now, you will soon). Flip coins if you prefer, but siege tanks are a more standard and safer way to play vs Zerg. | ||
zmansman17
United States2567 Posts
I think Tanks are too weak in TvZ and it always bothers me when I watch replays of Zergs who beat me who only mass lings on even upgrades and trade their army MORE cost efficiently than I do with a healthy swath of Terran units (properly seiged, split, stimmed, etc). I don't understand how Zergs can mass lings all game (refer to Stephano v. Polt where he massed 165 lings at 20 minutes), defend nearly all timings, trade evenly and save gas for any fast tech/upgrades. It just doesn't feel right that a tier 1 unit doesn't have a good counter in the Terran army. Tanks really aren't good against mass lings, but are good for target firing banelings. Then ling run bys actually win games and contain Terran extremely well. I think TvZ is in a sad state of affairs. I agree that something must be done with the tank as its utility just isn't there. As a result, I've opted for strong mid game MM timings. I seem forced to use this comp. at this time. | ||
KimJongChill
United States6429 Posts
On March 29 2012 00:54 zmansman17 wrote: Rank 2 master Terran here and I actually use marauders over tanks. I think Tanks are too weak in TvZ and it always bothers me when I watch replays of Zergs who beat me who only mass lings on even upgrades and trade their army MORE cost efficiently than I do with a healthy swath of Terran units (properly seiged, split, stimmed, etc). I don't understand how Zergs can mass lings all game (refer to Stephano v. Polt where he massed 165 lings at 20 minutes), defend nearly all timings, trade evenly and save gas for any fast tech/upgrades. It just doesn't feel right that a tier 1 unit doesn't have a good counter in the Terran army. Tanks really aren't good against mass lings, but are good for target firing banelings. Then ling run bys actually win games and contain Terran extremely well. I think TvZ is in a sad state of affairs. I agree that something must be done with the tank as its utility just isn't there. As a result, I've opted for strong mid game MM timings. I seem forced to use this comp. at this time. Aren't hellions the counter to zerglings? | ||
Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
On March 29 2012 00:57 KimJongChill wrote: Aren't hellions the counter to zerglings? Lol, and marines, and tanks. Hell, even marauders and thors can kill lings cost-effectively. No counter to lings... LMAO | ||
Unwardil
Canada188 Posts
I reject the idea that you can't counter mass lings, you just need to use a lot of the things that are generally NOT good to do when going marine tank. Such as clumping your units up. If you don't see infestors or banelings you SHOULD pack your army into a tight little ball and fight back to back. Or better yet, don't fight at all. Pick up into medivacs and fly to where the zerglings are not, do what damage you can, then fly away again. You should invest in building armor and planetary fortresses beyond your natural because of how fast zerglings are. (For this I mean hold the location with a planetary fortress but then use macro ccs from your main to mass mule drop at the planetary. If the pf gets focused down by a mass of banelings, just fly one of your macro orbitals in to replace it and accept that zerg has actually screwed themselves by doing that.) As for hellions being a good counter... Yes and no. Often you find yourself wishing that a few of your marines were hellions, but the trouble with hellions is that while they do indeed have a very powerful anti ling attack, it's painfully slow and the firing AI is not such that they will try to deal maximum damage with each shot so once they're actually pinned and cornered they actually end up doing less overall damage than a marine because of how slowly they fire. I generally find this, that given an open field to micro, hellions are very cost effective vs pure ling, but the second they get pinned by terrain or by fungals, they become dead weight. That's not a problem by it's self, the trouble is that's the opposite to how a marine tank army operates. Ignoring the fact that a reactor hellion factory is a factory that is not producing tanks, a marine tank army wants to establish a position and hold it. Hellions want to do almost the exact opposite. They want to fire off their attack and then run away for a little while as their weapons cooldown and then swoop back in and fire again. In the time it takes for the hellions to fire twice, all your siege tanks are dead so you have to buffer against the lings with your hellions and your other stuff. Then the siege splash kills your hellions. So that's why they don't work with a marine tank composition, the reason they don't work with a pure bio composition is because every hellion you build is 2 marines you didn't build. You're going for mass bio upgrades and you really can't afford to spend gas upgrading your mech as well, so you have a bunch of 0/0 hangers on with your 3/3 bio army. I would rather have 2 3/3 marines than 1 0/0 hellion. It's pretty much that simple. Oh, also in response zmansman... If that really IS your name... No I really can't remember your exact name and I'm too lazy to look, anyways, rather than going for mid-game bio timings, have you tried simply waiting until the late game to go into aggression? I've always thought the main advantages that bio has over marine/tank is mobility and raw damage output. My own experience has been that Bio is fairly weak in the mid game, often I'll remain turtled on 2 base for what would feel like an uncomfortable amount of time, only sending out drops to harras and trying to deny zerg's third and fourth for as long as possible, but once I planetary my third and fourth (to replace my depleted main and natural) and zerg is on 5+ bases, that's when I find bio really hits it's stride. Suddenly it's easy to send out 3 or 4 small attacks at least 2 of which are bound to do damage. You hardly even need to micro, you can do it with shift cues and if you can deny zerg the ability to mine minerals then infestor ling gets crushed in about 2 waves of lings. Plus with zerg defending all their far flung expos, you can drop into their main and snipe tech buildings to further deny their ability to instantly remax. All the apm will tax zerg's ability to keep on top of larva injects too, another thing that you need for a heavy ling style to be effective. Just a thought is all based on my own Diamond level experience. | ||
itkovian
United States1763 Posts
On March 29 2012 01:14 Jermstuddog wrote: Lol, and marines, and tanks. Hell, even marauders and thors can kill lings cost-effectively. No counter to lings... LMAO Marauders and Thors? Seriously... Thors do not kill lings efficiently at all Some of my most frustrating games against zerg are when they just mass lings hardcore. It makes it really hard to move out early-mid game with your marine/tank/medivac army since you're afraid of being jumped or countered at any moment. The most frustrating part of playing TvZ is the immobility of tanks in my opinion, but that being said, I would not feel safe leaving them out of my army at any point in the game unless I had godly bio control. | ||
Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
On March 29 2012 02:41 itkovian wrote: Marauders and Thors? Seriously... Thors do not kill lings efficiently at all Some of my most frustrating games against zerg are when they just mass lings hardcore. It makes it really hard to move out early-mid game with your marine/tank/medivac army since you're afraid of being jumped or countered at any moment. The most frustrating part of playing TvZ is the immobility of tanks in my opinion, but that being said, I would not feel safe leaving them out of my army at any point in the game unless I had godly bio control. Thors are terrible vs lings yes, but put them in a favorable choke and they become disgustingly cost-effective, costing the Zerg player 25 minerals per shot. The reason I am laughing about the whole "no counter to lings" and suggesting such an absurdly stupid unit in that situation is because this is the opposite side of the issue Zerg has been dealing with for the past year: the best unit Zerg has vs Terran is the ling, but they die so damn fast they don't even get more than 1 hit off. Terran has several units that shit all over lings: the marine, hellion, and banshee all are pretty much guaranteed to get their money back vs lings, even when other units are present. But then you take the less good traders like thors and marauders and even they can usually break even too... I would give you that maybe Terran doesn't have a counter to lings, but they do... And they work quite well... the fact still remains though, Terran doesn't need a counter to lings because even the bad units can hold their own. | ||
decaf
Austria1797 Posts
On March 28 2012 16:22 Reasonable wrote: In masters league TvZ marauders are worthless. You just target marauders with mutas and run ling/bane through marauder wall into marines. In many cases any decent zerg will just ignore marauders completely until there isn't a single marine left. What kind of ridiculous statement is that? First off marineking would beat you 100/100 times using marauders even though they're "useless" to you, and secondly, so many zergs go for ling inf into ultra now on ladder and you need marauders against or you're dead (if you're not meching anyways). Mutas simply aren't as good as infestors are. I do think the usefulness of tanks has declined over the past couple of months, they're just ridiculousy bad vs the mass ling style. They're still essential for certain kinds of builds like double expand and I do think they're the best choice vs muta ling bling. Vs ling infestors they really are bad though (unless you have a lot of marauders to back them up and are approaching +3 attacks and have 3 facs going). | ||
Forikorder
Canada8840 Posts
do you have the skill to perfectly split and pick up your thors while macroing back home? is your opponent DRG? if you answered no to the questions above, then tanks can still be for you | ||
CarelessPride
United States146 Posts
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aebriol
Norway2066 Posts
2) Do you want to be defended against counterattacks? Answer: Yes, to both questions, and get tanks in ZvT. | ||
DarK[A]
United States217 Posts
I hate tanks because on certain maps they can siege up and use air to get high ground vision to attack the drones at my natural. | ||
GaMeOfFeAr
United States26 Posts
vs Zerg: 3/3 Tanks destroy ground. In small numbers ( <= 6) they are extremely cost efficient vs everything except maybe Ultra/ling/infestor in a good surround/flank. In large numbers, they'll need Brood Lords, which usually tie with 3/3 Thors/Hellions and a few vikings. vs Toss: Tanks and BC's are the only units that scale well into the late game vs Toss (although Terran is at a disadvantage regardless). Since I play heavy macro, I've found that a large number of tanks are essential vs the Protoss Death Ball (as well as every other high tier unit and static defense everywhere). vs Terran: Fully upgrade Bio stands no chance vs 3/3 Tanks, mobility aside. All of the above are particular to my experiences only, as I prefer a slow siege/defend style play, and so I've utilized mass tanks as my core army often. I usually only lose do to being outmacro'd/outplayed, but my tanks always perform when they are out. | ||
Unwardil
Canada188 Posts
On March 29 2012 03:36 aebriol wrote: 1) Do you want to move out on the map before 200 / 200 outside of drops? 2) Do you want to be defended against counterattacks? Answer: Yes, to both questions, and get tanks in ZvT. Generally when I move out and I have tanks, my army get surrounded and dies instantly or I straight up win with a push the zerg wasn't ready for. What I've been finding happens if I go pure bio is that I can move out with a relatively small group of marines and marauders as my first medivacs start to pop, (and when I have 1/1 finished) deny the zerg's third base, then pick up and run along home without taking any serious damage. At the same time, both my bases have reached full saturation and I have a macro orbital for mules, so my 2 bases are mining better than the zerg's two bases. Sure zerg makes a round of units and double expands afterwards so I can't stay out on the map for any length of time, but I'm safe from counter attacks because I'm still only on two bases and my reinforcements are rallied to my natural where I have a fairly impenetrable wall-in. Once I've denied the third to slow down zerg's tech (it's the 5th and 6th gas I want to deny them as long as possible) I dont have any problem with bunkering up hard and restricting my aggression to multi drops if they go ling/infestor or simply turtling and macroing if they go mutas. I LOVE seeing mutas if I'm going bio because they're almost worthless in a straight up engagement. Against ling infestor, I'll use as many groups of drops as the map allows for. Some maps are friggin great for drop play, like cloud kingdom, where you can simultaneously drop the natural with 1 group and dance back and forth between the main and the 3rd with a second group. That right there is a recipe for bm. Anyways, I don't buy the argument that you can't move out with bio because bio is more mobile than a tank centered army. More mobility = the potential for more map presence. I absolutely agree that without tanks you should never be attacking straight up, but there are loads of little things you can do with bio to annoy zergs. You can kill creep tumors, you can drop their expansions, you can hunt overlords spread around the map, all of these things are valid and effective forms of soft aggression you can do while remaining perfectly safe at home, building up a nice wad of bio. Once you're in the late game, you don't have to kill zerg, you just have to keep denying expos and then you eventually win. edit: @Dark[a] I love doing that, especially on shakuras, but what I've found is that you actually get better results with marines and marauders doing the exact same trick. You leave a bunch of MM on the low ground then you elevator in a small number of bio forces into the zerg main. You snipe down the defending queen then go for extractors and drones. If zerg brings in defensive lings, you stim on back to your low ground contingent and THEN pick up into the medivac. @gameoffear I used to mech too and then, obviously you need tanks. Tanks are the hitters in that composition, but my problem in mech in tvz was that I couldn't beat a zerg who went corrupter/broodlord and then followed it up with ultras. Or rather, I could when I could get ghosts, but now that doesn't work so broodlords means I NEED vikings. Thors aren't gonna cut it and without marines to help out I need a LOT of vikings. And I can get a lot of vikings and I can win the air battle with good control, but then I have a lot of flying paper weights which can't fight ultra/ling. There's no good solution to that problem that I've been able to come up with aside from macroing like a beast on 3 base, scanning the zerg like hell to catch the hive timing and then moving out to kill him JUST before broodlords are up. And that's just not my style. | ||
Bajsgrodan
Afghanistan408 Posts
On March 28 2012 15:55 kmh wrote: One big reason to want tanks is speedroaches. The reason why no zerg really wants to go for a big amount of roaches is that any big number of tanks completely shut roaches down. However, with no tanks around, speedroaches actually become very valuable: especially when paired up with lings and infestors. Roaches are good against Marauders? ok... | ||
Jermman
Canada174 Posts
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Tal0n
United States175 Posts
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Niteblade_
Canada292 Posts
On March 28 2012 15:39 Bearwidme wrote: Unless you're going to form a water tight wall with marauders every engagment (that's a lot of marauders) any decent zerg will target fire the marines with banelings and kill the marauders with lings. I donno if this has been pointed out yet, but the best zerg in the world couldn't "target fire" enough to kill the spreads of MKPs bio at MLG this weekend, its alot harder than it sounds. | ||
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