Tactics discussion - Iron Edge problem solving tool

[Palmar]

hey draconis, sorry I was afk when you whispered me last night, and you were offline when I returned.

[Draconis]

hey draconis, sorry I was afk when you whispered me last night, and you were offline when I returned.

No problem mate I'll catch you tonight or some other time if not.


Sint - on another note, I've seen early blinking stalker working very well vs mmm terran. Most of they time they bulk their buildings in their base having little space for micro and fighting. 2-4 gate blink stalkers with robo for obs works great in harrasing and tearing their army and economy apart, also gives you time to macro up and get more and better units for his blobs ^^
Ofc it depends on map, but for example desert oasis, delta quadrant, lost temple and xel'naga quadrant are good examples. Steppes of war is a big no and metalopolis is very tricky, so is blistering sands. I usually try and hide my gates in the most retarded places so he will only see one, though a good player can scout and spot em on some maps easily.


PS: thx for the zerg starting builds Palmar, they look nice and work well.

[Illusion]

Any (new) suggestions on dealing with the sin on the world that is known as MM, with the occasional extra M. I know I could be complaining about something worse, like Terran Mech (I blame you Mr. Tank!) but that is apparently being solved with the Patch, MM is not so I clearly need to focus on beating this shit now!

I've tried teching, but then I lose due to numbers. (Tried going for High Templars with Storm and Collosus.

I've tried the Day9 approach of just getting more stuff(by relying on good macro and such) but more stuff doesn't work with Protoss, Marauders utterly RAPE Stalkers and having more Zealots doesn't necessarily mean they are better - they get stuck behind eachother and only the front row can attack (where as the entire MM ball can pewpew them).

I have almost lost all hope against fighting Terran, it's just riddiculous!
If I don't win the game in the first 8-12minutes I'm pretty much screwed, because his MM ball can reach critical mass so easily.

Any advice or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

[Palmar]

Any (new) suggestions on dealing with the sin on the world that is known as MM, with the occasional extra M. I know I could be complaining about something worse, like Terran Mech (I blame you Mr. Tank!) but that is apparently being solved with the Patch, MM is not so I clearly need to focus on beating this shit now!

I've tried teching, but then I lose due to numbers. (Tried going for High Templars with Storm and Collosus.

I've tried the Day9 approach of just getting more stuff(by relying on good macro and such) but more stuff doesn't work with Protoss, Marauders utterly RAPE Stalkers and having more Zealots doesn't necessarily mean they are better - they get stuck behind eachother and only the front row can attack (where as the entire MM ball can pewpew them).

I have almost lost all hope against fighting Terran, it's just riddiculous!
If I don't win the game in the first 8-12minutes I'm pretty much screwed, because his MM ball can reach critical mass so easily.

Any advice or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

heya!

Obviously, some replays would help analyse.

I find I only really have problem with the terran ball early in the game. I use sentries to hold them off and split them up, and prevent kiting. if you can get their marauders in a choke and then block behind them, they can't kite and your zealots will take care of them.

If you're doing the day9 stuff, you better have some really fucking solid macro. But it's not a bad way of doing it.

Once chargelots/templars are out, I feel the threat of the mmm ball is no longer a problem.

[Illusion]

heya!

Obviously, some replays would help analyse.

I find I only really have problem with the terran ball early in the game. I use sentries to hold them off and split them up, and prevent kiting. if you can get their marauders in a choke and then block behind them, they can't kite and your zealots will take care of them.

If you're doing the day9 stuff, you better have some really fucking solid macro. But it's not a bad way of doing it.

Once chargelots/templars are out, I feel the threat of the mmm ball is no longer a problem.

Arg I was on a rage streak and was going game after game without saving replays (eager to get into the next game and show that opponent who's boss, I'm missing about 25-30 replays), the only loss I have against MMM is quite some time ago.

I went for chargelots(wow even with charge they just shoot once then run) and some hallucinations(shoulda saved some energy for FF, that dam concussive shell) but I was still facing my early problems in this game (scared to expand and gun-shy to state a few).

I guess my biggest problem is surviving the initial push, if I try to rush for Templars I get outnumbered and if I try go for numbers I get clustered, slowed and shot at, and lose most of my units just trying to get to him (why the heck do we have to tech to tier2-3 to beat dam tier1(and argueably tier1.5).

[Narw]

Im not protoss player but you were very passive that game you linked here, and if you were playing so passivly couse you expected some push early front push you didnt invested enough to defend it. You made forge and put 4 cannons at your back while you saw that there wont be any banshee play (woudl't + 1 weapons or armor be more beneficient?). It's 400 minerals, aka 4 zealots. Also if you are passive isnt it better to get Robo bay instead of 4 gate play? Halucinations are cool but splitting and trapping his army with force fields so you could actually get some hits on him would be more effective i think.

Take what i wrote about micro with a bit of distance as im not a protoss, but general problem to me here was passive play with offensive build (when you use 4 gate you need to make something when it kicks in - push and some dmg, take control of map and get expo, contain him in his base etc).

[Destro]

Im still a massive noob at SC2 but i find that stalkers with blink fuck up MM. Just blink on the opposite side of them and then u have them trapped between 2 lines. Maybe this doesnt work on the better players as they will run out of range before you can get the blink off, im not sure. But i havent had any trouble blocking in micro'in terrans.

[Illusion]

Im not protoss player but you were very passive that game you linked here, and if you were playing so passivly couse you expected some push early front push you didnt invested enough to defend it. You made forge and put 4 cannons at your back while you saw that there wont be any banshee play (woudl't + 1 weapons or armor be more beneficient?). It's 400 minerals, aka 4 zealots. Also if you are passive isnt it better to get Robo bay instead of 4 gate play? Halucinations are cool but splitting and trapping his army with force fields so you could actually get some hits on him would be more effective i think.

Take what i wrote about micro with a bit of distance as im not a protoss, but general problem to me here was passive play with offensive build (when you use 4 gate you need to make something when it kicks in - push and some dmg, take control of map and get expo, contain him in his base etc).

I did state that the replay I posted was quite old (about 2 weeks I'd predict, and 30ish games ago) but it was the only one I could find that was a loss to MM that I had saved, I was still trying to get over my initial problems, one of them being banshee rush and I was probably doing that as a precaution on such a small fight distance map where they could get in so easily.

I'd like to say that I am a hella of a ton better than that now. I've beaten Terrans but thats because I beat them before they get the critical mass of MM and roflstomp me, if they somehow defend themselves against the 4-gate push (with a quick siegetank or something) I'm usually in for some trouble.


((Off topic but something that is really bugging me. Whenever I'm making a  post here and the text is longer than the textbox and thus needs to use the scroll bar, each time I type out a character the scroll bar bounces up and down, making it quite difficult to type. I have no idea why it is doing this. Is this normal, is there a solution? It's hella annoying and actually hurts my eyes after awhile. Windows 7 with IE8 if that matters))

[Draconis]

Hey Illu
I haven't encountered your problem with IE 6,7,8 so I wouldnt know but you can always download mozilla or chrome, opera or some other good free browser. I personally have all of them and use chrome 99% of the time.

Now back to the topic... 

What I wanted to write somewhere (on this forum, maybe) is that Starcraft is an RTS. I know that everyone knows RTS stands for Real Time Strategy, but I'd like to split and analyse the expression a bit.
I'll start with 'Strategy'. We are discussing about units and tactics, and that's what the thread is about, so no mistake there. But where in the hell are the strategies? You cant have tactics and strategy apart. What do I understand by strategy? It's the way you choose to win, its the way you figure out your game. And to be more specific, its the way you chose to expand, planning your long term map campaign, resources, troops, positioning, splitting troops apart, using multiple armies etc. Constantly send 1-2 units to harass, expand while he is waiting, expand if you attack, make more gates so you can dump minerals faster, get observers on the map so you have map awareness. All this is strategy and its very important. Knowing when to fight the enemy is the most important in a game.
Where am I getting? To figure out what to do vs a MM depends on how that MM is used. People are generally complaining about imbalances when they make a good army and lose vs a similar army when they attack+move behind it. Some races, at some levels are harder to play. You have plenty of useful things you can do with a mixed stalker, sentry, zealot army vs a MM/MMM army. For a start you require a bit of micro.
You have the charge on a zealot, you have the sentry illusions (your namesake), shields, force fields, blink on stalkers. Those alone can get a big MMM ball on the run.
Go divide et impera, split with force fields, block the exit, make some colosus illusions (they will get focused first ^^), split the sentries so they can cover the whole army with shields, AND DO NOT FIGHT in tight places (choose wider places so you can spread your army and micro it easyer). Your army has shields, so you need to try and pull back units with low shields and low hp so they can regen their shields. In a stalker vs marauder fight the 'blink back a stalker' tactic makes the difference between losing all your units and losing none.

All this being said, I'll get to the 'Real Time' part of the game. What does it mean? Well it means no-focking-body will wait for you to do your stuff, so neither should you. Harass all the time and be aggressive. Aggressiveness gives you time and space to expand and build.

Last but not least - make use of your lvl 1 upgrades for weapons and plating early mid game. Vs a zerg a +1 weapon upgrade on a zealot means the zerglin dies in 2 hits rather than 3, on a marine I think its 3 hits rather than 4. A colossus with lvl 1 ground upg clears 1 row of zerglins from one swipe and marines from 2 (again not abs sure on terran).

Vs tanks a good use of phoenixes should help you out a bit. The way I see it, if they have tanks and try to protect them they cant focus your other units, if they focus your other units, their tanks fly for a while ^^

Let us know how your experiments work out 

Cheers, Drac

[Illusion]

Thanks for the very well written reply Draconis, it was a enjoyable read and definitely gave me some things to think about.

I have been looking at a few of my other replays and noticing I don't use Force Field nearly enough, I've got Hallucinations down fine and Guardian Shield when I encounter low-damage fast-fire rate enemies. Infact I've only really used Force Fields to block the enemy coming up my ramp or down his(while I raid his natural ). This I definitely must fix and have been revisiting some Day9 vids and I definitely need to use it more offensively (stop retreating or reinforcements).

Also I must say I am a big fan of upgrades(I know the replay shows nothing of the sort, but like I've said before it is really old and I'd like to say that I've really evolved past that ), I know I managed to get a full 1/1/1 upgrade for ground units vs a Zerg the other day and my troops really felt tougher and stronger, lasting much longer and killing things much quicker (I've known the Zergling 2 hit instead of 3 hit for awhile now, the Collosus is a new one which I definitely must invest in ).

Day9 also did a special episode entirely about trying to counter Terran Mech and he also mentioned Phoenix's and it proved useful, I'm just always weary of going air-units, it's my personal feelings and I just really don't like air-units (unless it's a hallucinated air unit for scouting). I think in general though once patch 1.1 goes live everyone will feel better about tanks.


Anyway thank you again, I will definitely be remembering to use the awesome Force Fields. It really sucks though that Terran can attack-move and occasionally hit the stim button and win and Protoss (and especially Zerg) have to micro to beat their ball of death. It's not that I hate micro, infact I do like it, but I just feel that both sides should have to put in equal effort - I really hope Blizzard fixes this.

[Draconis]

Well Illusion I wouldn't bet on fixing effort ratio, if I remember well, in scbw even though you had the 'triangle' for the average-decent players (terran > zerg > protoss > terran), terran was harder to master than zerg or protoss cause of the micro. For nabtards it was the 'easiest' cause of the blockade and battlecruiser build, even though any decent rush was taking that out easy and so did the 3 zealot canon build.

So it seems fair now that terran is easier to master by the average player, not to mention that you get to 'learn' tricks and get used to it from the campaign.

[Illusion]

Well Illusion I wouldn't bet on fixing effort ratio, if I remember well, in scbw even though you had the 'triangle' for the average-decent players (terran > zerg > protoss > terran), terran was harder to master than zerg or protoss cause of the micro. For nabtards it was the 'easiest' cause of the blockade and battlecruiser build, even though any decent rush was taking that out easy and so did the 3 zealot canon build.

So it seems fair now that terran is easier to master by the average player, not to mention that you get to 'learn' tricks and get used to it from the campaign.

I personally don't believe the campaign helps that much. I mean I got that super-tech-reactor combo upgrade and literally won every game by going battlecruisers attack move across the map. I really dislike the terran so I wanted to steamroll through the entire campaign ASAP, really looking forward to the Zerg and Protoss campaigns however.


I'm facing another problem however, my nerves.

I made mistake after mistake in tonights game all because I was so fricken nervous. It started small, forgetting to get my gas up which delayed my first push/harass and then lead off into forgetting to build workers, forgetting to expand, forgetting production cycles, forgetting chronoboost, even forgetting to scout with my hallucinated phoenixes and so on...

I guess I don't really work that well under pressure when I've got people counting on me (if I'm playing for myself I don't stress at all and don't make such retarded mistakes). Any tips on trying to keep calm? 

[Narw]

   Ok i watched your game vs Killi. Forget about halucinations. Just do it. They are cool and etc but you dont use em correctly and they are hard to use. Get robo bay, vs terran, even if its gonna be just for that one observer (shitload of protoss player's i play get that robo bay just for observer). Dont lose your forces when you push, if you see terran is at good position just back off, protect your retreat with fields. (if you see him having force big enough to defend at choke but not overhelming feel free to expand that moment). Get more probes, a lot more. Scout with observers, half of match you played blind. As long as you are equal to terran in number of bases you are fine. You can do nice storms with templars, why not get em earlier?

[Yathezai]

I guess I don't really work that well under pressure when I've got people counting on me (if I'm playing for myself I don't stress at all and don't make such retarded mistakes). Any tips on trying to keep calm? 

It's a good sign that you're nervous. It means you actually care and are serious about what you have to do. I know exactly how you feel, I had the same feeling the moment I started playing with better PvPers than myself (to prove that I was worth playing with).

There are a few things that might help. It usually helps if you practise a few games before you have to play, as "warming-up". If you do your starting build a couple of times you will do things - on automatic pilot - faster.
Something else that might work is talking out loud what you're doing, even if there's nobody listening. It sounds crazy but it helps a lot to realise what you're doing and you will notice errors in your play faster.
And the obvious "it's a game, relax". It's not the end of the world if you lose and the more you play the less nerves you will have. I'm sure you'll feel way more comfortable the more you play, just don't let it stop you. 

[Illusion]

You can do nice storms with templars, why not get em earlier?

I love Templars, problem is if I try go for them too soon I lack an army to back them up. Also I got my expansion so late it was hard to support them (I personally feel you need a minimum of 2 bases to support em).

Forget about halucinations. Just do it. They are cool and etc but you dont use em correctly and they are hard to use.

100/100 isn't exactly expensive, I know I didn't use it well THAT specific game but I've used it well multiple times in other games - Even outright winning completely thanks to the opponent focus firing the hallucinations, or calling straight GG from seeing such a huge force (hallucinates 2 zealots/stalkers per cast).

Even if I couldn't in those other games 100/100 to be able to fake tech trees, and scout with fake phoenixes or get higher ground vision thanks to fake phoenixes is golden.

I can upload replays to prove this if you'd like... Like I said I couldn't focus at all, and forgot retarded basics I shouldn't have.

It's a good sign that you're nervous. It means you actually care and are serious about what you have to do. I know exactly how you feel, I had the same feeling the moment I started playing with better PvPers than myself (to prove that I was worth playing with).

Glad to know it isn't just me 

If you do your starting build a couple of times you will do things - on automatic pilot - faster.

That's what bugs me, I've practiced 4-gate so dam much I can pretty much do it blindfolded, but the pressure made me completely blank!

Something else that might work is talking out loud what you're doing, even if there's nobody listening. It sounds crazy but it helps a lot to realise what you're doing and you will notice errors in your play faster.

Will definitely try that 

And the obvious "it's a game, relax". It's not the end of the world if you lose and the more you play the less nerves you will have. I'm sure you'll feel way more comfortable the more you play, just don't let it stop you. 

Wish it didn't dam feel that way, hearing the way my teammates commented really made me feel like total trash. T.T