So I've faced this build twice on ladder since it was shown in the Iron Squid tournament JJajki vs Mana.
The build is essentially a 1-1-1 Cloak banshee opening, followed by an expansion, and +1 and +2 armor plating for Thor, Raven and Mass marine cloak banshee, and an all in with SCVs at 16 Minutes.
Skip to 14 minutes, Mana assumes its a 1 base all in so he doesnt take a fast third, (which I try in one replay.)
Ive been told by terrans, that since it obvious what they are doing, the answer is to take a very fast third, and get templar Collosus stalker.
My questions are 1.)Is fast third the correct choice since as soon as you spot the thors its safe to say the Terran is going for a big timing push, in which toss needs sick economy? 2.) Is Templar Collosus Stalker the correct unit comp, considering Pdd nullifies stalker, Banshees shred collosus, and templars are very gas heavy to tech to, as well as mass up before the fight 3.) Assuming templar is the correct choice, is storm better than feedback, and what should be feedbacked (fedback?)
My play in the games is not that great, the Metal game was the first time i encountered it and after the failed 2 base attack I went for it was pretty much over. The Day break game I knew it was coming and went for the fast third, but didnt get enough units out.
I'm not asking people to judge my play, although you can tell me what i did wrong if you think it will be helpful. the replays are more just to show the build, and avoid people's natural response of "replays or it didnt happen"
I'm not too sure about unit composition but this has been shown in high level play earlier too (in GSL).
Anyways one thing that you can definitely abuse is the fact that (especially on daybreak) the terran will move out before maxing out, because they need to walk and break those rocks. So they will move out roughly at 160 or so. You can take this to your advantage and attack/chase his army down before it is maxed, giving you more time to rebuild more, and possibly pull back and just regen some shields. If he sees this coming somehow, it means his push will be delayed by another minute or so, giving you more time to max out on a better army composition (since protoss should be going really tech heavy to get a really good composition).
You can see MC vs Supernova in GSL doing this, he stopped Supernova easily that way. You can maybe analyze it yourself, since I'm not a protoss. Take note of his unit composition, etc. etc. Nada has used it as well, but failed (on cloud tho, forget the protoss).
Jjakji used it vs Puzzle in the semifinals a couple seasons back on daybreak, the one where he won first place.
Hopefully this can at least give you some examples of games so you can learn why the protoss in those won or lost and incorporate that improved game sense the next time you play vs this strategy.
Note: MC was (pretty sure) only on 2 base when Supernova was pushing out, so no you do not "need" to take a third. Same with the guy who beat Nada. Also, in all of the games where I've seen this 2 base all-in, the protoss has both colossus and templar tech.
Obviously, storm the marines/thors (they should be clumped up), though if the banshees are stacked then I would storm those as well, but feedback is a bit more tricky. It depends on what upgrades he's going for (only thor armor? or also banshee attack?), and also the method you're going about trying to stop the push. It's really hard to just say "feedback the banshees" or "feedback the thors".
For example: if he brings lots of SCVs, it's better to make sure all the scv is dead with storm than to feedback the thors, because pulling a lot of SCVs is a great way to make up for all the feedbacks (and usually helps the terran a lot more since he can repair back up while archons don't do too well against thor marine banshee). If he happens to do the strike canon version where he strike canons some random object to get rid of energy, it's probably better to just use storm, and only use feedback for cloak banshees. If there's a Raven and you're stalker heavy, it would be smart to feedback any PDDs since Stalkers have low DPS while thor marine banshee has really high DPS. There's maaany different situations.
IIRC, Puzzle used colossus, gate units, and a few cannons. He may or may not have thrown in a few phoenix. I think he did use phoenix...I'm at work and can't access the VOD atm, but that's what I remember. The cannons helped to protect the colossi from air units.
It's hard to say what upgrades to go for...armor will be very useful against the marines, but weapons would help you a lot against the thors. This is especially true if you're using robo units.
A fellow in there explains how to beat this, with a replay provided. Enjoy!
EDIT: If I was to refine this build from a T perspective I'd, as opposed to building a Reactor, build more barracks sooner as it seems a waste of precious Vespene...
I've run into this on ladder as well. I had trouble with it partly because I thought it was a 1-1-1 and kept preparing for the all in. I stayed on two base and went collosus. The terran kept pulling scvs and sent waves of 2-3 cloacked banshees + 1-2 thors + marine and scvs. I held out the first couple waves but eventually lost because I couldn't produce obs and collosus fast enough. (thors target obs and banshees target collosus) Maybe templar were the answer, but i always felt a little gas starved with the quick collosus.
Having done this a fair bit, what you want is either HT's or stalker/colossus (the former off of a 1gate sentry expand). Immortals generally don't fare very well against this from my experience.
I use exclusively this build on ladder since a few months. Basically if you a-click me as you're used to against bio, you'll lose. All the common protoss units are useless against this unit comp.
Why ? You must understand that each of the three units, Marines / Thors / Banshees cover the weaknesses of the two other ones. Counter to Thors ? Immortals. Marines & Banshees are here to cover. Counter to Marines ? Colossi. Thors & Banshees are here to cover. Counter to Banshees ? Phoenix / Stalkers. Marines & Thors are here to cover.
So you have to understand that you need first to kill one of the three before being able to engage the other ones with their proper counter. For this task, you have ONE great unit to deal with the three units type : The High Templar.
• First, you have to Storm the Marines. YOU HAVE TO, or you'll lose. It's the easiest way to get rid of one of the three types of units.
• When the Marines are dead to 2 or 3 Storms, you can then counter the Thors with either zealots or immos. Don't engage with them before, they'll be useless. If the Thors have +1 or +2 armor, you have to feedback them or your zealots won't deal any damage to them. However immos are stil very efficient against Thors when there is no Marines.
• Then you have the Banshees. You need at least two or three obs in the back of your army. You don't want to lose them in the fight to the Marines / Thors or you'll lose the game even if you clean the ground army. If you see the Banshees are clumped up (which is unlikely if the terran player isn't stupid), Storm them, they're very weak. It's the best way to deal huge damage to them. If they're not clumped up, feedback them with your remaning energy. On top of High Templars, you have to get more Stalkers than he has Banshees. I mean really, because one Banshee > one Stalker. If I have 12 Banshees, you must have at least 15/16 Stalkers. As this terran all-in don't allow upgrades, your Stalkers will be FAR more efficient with upgrades than 0-0 against Banshees. I never lost to unupgraded protoss, however 2-2 or even 3-0 Stalker are very dangerous to me.
There you have it. You must get enough High Templars to clean the Marines instantly, then engage, then feedback the remaining ~15 high value units the terran will have. It may sound difficult be not that much. Don't forget the terran must position himself well, target the obs, cloack, pull back Marines if Colossi, launch PDD, split as much as possible. It's really a micro war. But really, skip Colossi and spend your gaz on fast upgrades & templar archive.
I've done this build easily about 15+ times. It's a really easy win vs. high masters and I usually destroy their army after the first attack. Though I've stopped as the build is all-in and the thor may not be in the HotS.
1) Hard to say...I didn't face too many protosses who built a quick 3rd in response to seeing the thor. And even if they did, they got it up too late to benefit from it anyways. If you do get it, get it quite early.
2) I think i lost more times to coloussus than immortal responses, though it may be because i engaged poorly. But for sure I would add templars if i was facing it as a toss.
3) depends if they drained the thor energy. the terran doesnt need to drain the energy on destructible rocks. on maps where the rocks dont exist or arent readily accessible, i could easily use strike cannon on my CC, cancel the animation a second or so after it is casted, and it'll only deal say 50-150 dmg instead of 500. so if thor isnt drained, then do feedback for the immedaite 200 dmg, otherwise, use storm. also you can feedback the raven or PDD, so the raven/pdd isnt an issue anyways.
In my experience when using this build, there's a vulnerable part that none of the protosses I've faced took advantage of. It's when you decide to take your expand and the 2 gases. At this point, the terran will only have a handful of marines and 2 or so banshees, both of which will be busy harassing your base. So if you can somehow defend the banshee harass and delay him leaving the base without losing much, you'll delay the timing for quite a bit.
The build requires a lot of gas, so the quicker the terran can take the 2 expansion gases, the better.
If you can figure out it's coming soon enough, high templar destroy this pretty hard. Both banshees and thors are vulnerable to feedback, and marines die pretty hard to storm. The marines are the majority of the DPS here, and the thors and banshees go down relatively quickly if you can clear out any repairing scv's, which storm also helps with.
Ok, to add to my previous post, I watched your replays to better understand your flaws.
• The terrans played the build really badly, they're not even maxed out at 15:00 while I'm 200/200 at 14:30 when doing it, without harass for sure but I feel much stronger and safer.
• They both used a variation with a hell lot of thors and fewer marines than me or Hammer's build. While it can seems more solid against storm and colossi, it's a lot weaker to upgraded chargelots and immos. In fact 4-5 immos can do the trick if you get rid of the marines with storm first, feedback the thors and focus fire them with your immos. As they have a very few marines, even phoenix might be viable in this case to get rid of the banshees easily. However don't group them to avoid splash damage. Scatter them all around and engage at the last moment when the marines are dead first.
• You need to macro better. You were at 120 / 130 food at 15:00 for the two engagements, and you can't beat this build if you don't macro a lot harder. You need to be at least at 150/160. Practice more =)
• Skip colossi. They cost you the two games. Colossi = Efficient against marines, useless against thors and banshees. Produced slowly one by one. High templar = Efficient against all the units of this build. Produced quickly using all your gates. Counter both PDD & cloack.
• Make more gates. This build can't remax easily, but you will be able to after defeating the push.
As a Terran, I'm hesitant to go Marine/Thor/Banshee in TvP because both Thors and Banshees take a loooooong time to build. I'm always afraid of a pre-planned timing attack hitting me in the 150 seconds it takes to build a production facility, build an addon, start a big unit, and finally watch the first big unit pop. I'm also afraid of trading armies with a Protoss and then watching my base get flooded with Zealots because everything takes so long to rebuild.
I think its a mistake to be asking yourself "which is the right counter unit?" because the Marine/Thor/Banshee mix has no obvious solution to it. At first glance HTs might look good, however if you take the time to get storm then you risk letting the Banshee count get too ridiculous. Any good terran worth their salt will pre-drain Banshee energy with Cloak so feedback won't work, and magic box so Storm is minimized.
I think the best solution to Marine/Thor/Banshee is double forge. Take maximum advantage of the fact that Marines are quite crappy without upgrades+medivacs, and Marine/Thor/Banshee cannot afford any upgrades or medivacs at all. Stalkers are kinda terrible vs Banshees, however having an upgrade advantages help alot. Double forge also lends itself well to Gateway+Robo play, which is particularly effective against Terran compositions that are light on infantry.
Another possibility is to power to 200, stockpile up a big bank, and then go for a 300 food Gateway+Templar push. Using Templar tech instead of Robo tech. Marine/Thor/Banshee is an incredibly powerful and cost efficient army, but it's almost impossible to rebuild. Exploit your opponent's weaknesses...don't play to their strengths.
On April 19 2012 10:02 pimsc2 wrote: Ok, to add to my previous post, I watched your replays to better understand your flaws.
• The terrans played the build really badly, they're not even maxed out at 15:00 while I'm 200/200 at 14:30 when doing it, without harass for sure but I feel much stronger and safer.
• They both used a variation with a hell lot of thors and fewer marines than me or Hammer's build. While it can seems more solid against storm and colossi, it's a lot weaker to upgraded chargelots and immos. In fact 4-5 immos can do the trick if you get rid of the marines with storm first, feedback the thors and focus fire them with your immos. As they have a very few marines, even phoenix might be viable in this case to get rid of the banshees easily. However don't group them to avoid splash damage. Scatter them all around and engage at the last moment when the marines are dead first.
• You need to macro better. You were at 120 / 130 food at 15:00 for the two engagements, and you can't beat this build if you don't macro a lot harder. You need to be at least at 150/160. Practice more =)
• Skip colossi. They cost you the two games. Colossi = Efficient against marines, useless against thors and banshees. Produced slowly one by one. High templar = Efficient against all the units of this build. Produced quickly using all your gates. Counter both PDD & cloack.
• Make more gates. This build can't remax easily, but you will be able to after defeating the push.
Ive wondered whehter immortals would be better than collosus considering I'll have templars for the marines, but the first terran I played pointed out that the thors will out-dps the immortals, which arent worth their money or supply. As for the macro issue, i realize i didnt play well, the replays were merely to show me attempting different styles but i appreciate the advice regardless. Would you suggest constant immortal production from the robo after getting 2-3 obs? Any thoughts on warp prism since i KNOW the push is coming between 14-16 minutes. I find it tough to decide what to produce since robo units are slow producing, and expensive.
Warp prism play is definitely a solution, it usually screw up my timings and you can get 2-3 additional minutes before the push. However, it's only viable if you macro hard at home. I see too many protoss harass me to delay my push, but don't take advantage of the additional time because they're too focused on the harassement and not on their macro at home. So yes, you delayed me 3 minutes, but you delayed yourself 3 minutes too. Be cautious with this.
A better solution to me is using warp prism to draw attention early, when the Terran can't really split their small army. You warp 2 zealots + 2 stalker in the main while your main focus is to attack the expand with your main army as soon as the terran moves his thors / marines to reboot the warp prism drop. I died a few times to this when it's well executed, because the thors / marines without stim are so slow…