Owned by MMM

Naz_st

I play Protoss and I finally managed to climb out of Bronze league and into Silver, but now that my decent early game econ is being matched, I find that I'm constantly losing to Terran. And it's almost always the same strategy with minor variations:
1) Early reaper harass + Mass Marines Marauders / + Medevac

Now sometimes I'll try to tech up to Colossi early, but often that means I'll lose to a lame 15-20 marine push early. Or else I'll have plenty of early gateway units and lose to the MMM. It just seems that there's no ready early counter to the Mass MMM ball as protoss? If you tech towards Psi Storm, then long before you get there you'll have been overrun by MM. The more gateway units you build to defend early MM, the longer the High Templars take to get and the more likely you'll be steamrolled by MMM. And for good measure, if you do get your HT before the MMM push, then there'll be ghosts or siege tanks. And walling off the base is next to useless as the Medivac will drop the units in at the back anyway.

It seems a little unfair that the basic Protoss unit (Zealot) is completely owned by MM (with concussive shells). So the only counter I can think is really good Sentry / Stalker micro. I'll obviously have to work on that, but at this level, it seems unfair that the terran doesn't have to do any micro (auto-healing Medivacs?!) while the Protoss is the opposite. Wouldn't it be fairer if the medivac had to "cast" healing on an area instead of auto-healing or something?



So now that that moaning is out of the way - any Protoss players out there with some advice on this?

The_Keeper

Platinum Terran here.

I suggest you start practising specific build orders. Early zealot pressure from a quick 2-gate can really mess with Terran's early game.

Learn and practice the build order for the 4-warpgate push and there will be a window of having a significantly greater number of units than the Terran.

Naz_st

The_Keeper wrote: »

Platinum Terran here.

I suggest you start practising specific build orders. Early zealot pressure from a quick 2-gate can really mess with Terran's early game.

Learn and practice the build order for the 4-warpgate push and there will be a window of having a significantly greater number of units than the Terran.

Thanks for that. Yeah I figured half my problem was being too defensive because I'm trying to defeat the eventual MMM without trying to stop it's development in the first place. But I do find that early Zealot pressure is easily handled by a well placed bunker behind the supply depot wall in?

Cuddlesworth

Naz_st wrote: »

Thanks for that. Yeah I figured half my problem was being too defensive because I'm trying to defeat the eventual MMM without trying to stop it's development in the first place. But I do find that early Zealot pressure is easily handled by a well placed bunker behind the supply depot wall in?

The second you go on the defensive you are behind. Learn to be offensive, to pressure and push. He won't be likley to drop 4-8 guys into your base if your army is sitting outside of his.

Grimebox

I'm only silver myself but haven't had this problem recently as much as I used to.

I try to pressure him earlyish. Maybe around 8 min mark, only guessing here though.

This gives me map control and prevents him from expanding. (Sometimes you can even just go and ****ing kill him at this stage, if things are going well.)

Then you expand while keeping him contained to go miles ahead in eco. You will then be able to afford a much bigger army thus crushing any MMM ball he may have. Having a decent macro helps in all situations. Basically prevent him from ever building a large MMM.

If he doesn't do what he's told and you can't contain him then throw in a few collosi in your army coupled with mostly stalkers, 3+ sentries and some charge-lots to act as meat shields and you can take down the MMM. I wouldn't bother focus firing the medivacs (well I don't anyway). You can kite him a bit with collosi range too since they can walk over your army.

Also use a lot of the sentries shields things against his MMM. Marines do 6 damage I think and shield reduces damage by 2. This effectively cuts his damage by a third. Thats huge. I haven't really gotten the hang of using the force fields very much so I can't comment.

You will begin to get a feel for which army sizes can beat which. Always fall back if his is too big.

NeoSlicerZ

8 min is pretty late, if you want to early pressure best to 8pylon/10gate (based on latest TL thread on it). Chrono a zealot out and start whacking SCVs. 8mins is late for a 4G push even. If you see that he isn't fast expanding, go for colossi, you won't get HTs with storm in time, skip the range upgrade till you have 1 at least. A 50 supply MM push is definately beatable at your ramp, use forcefields. After you defend that, expo immediately and tech to colossi. There's a variety of builds to use vs terran and each response is different based on that.... If you get a robo early, you won't have many sentries your best bet is to micro really well, you need about a 1:2 zealot:stalker ratio (this is only when you have a handful of units since zealots >> stalkers in LARGE numbers). Use FF to keep his bio from runnning away (crucial if you are on the attack). I highly suggest you get a terran to practice with, it's the best way to learn, or post a replay and let people rip you to shreds on your play. Guardian shield DOES reduce dps from marines by 1/3 but honestly, once you get zealot dps in they're giong to fall really fast. GS if you need to crack a wall but often FFing SCVs away from repair is better. Focus marauders with stalker/sentry.

EDIT : Note on FF usage
vT FF bio in
vZ FF lings/roach away, hydra in or divide roaches from hydra.
vP Divide

Jonny7

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

8 min is pretty late, if you want to early pressure best to 8pylon/10gate (based on latest TL thread on it). Chrono a zealot out and start whacking SCVs. 8mins is late for a 4G push even. If you see that he isn't fast expanding, go for colossi, you won't get HTs with storm in time, skip the range upgrade till you have 1 at least. A 50 supply MM push is definately beatable at your ramp, use forcefields. After you defend that, expo immediately and tech to colossi. There's a variety of builds to use vs terran and each response is different based on that.... If you get a robo early, you won't have many sentries your best bet is to micro really well, you need about a 1:2 zealot:stalker ratio (this is only when you have a handful of units since zealots >> stalkers in LARGE numbers). Use FF to keep his bio from runnning away (crucial if you are on the attack). I highly suggest you get a terran to practice with, it's the best way to learn, or post a replay and let people rip you to shreds on your play. Guardian shield DOES reduce dps from marines by 1/3 but honestly, once you get zealot dps in they're giong to fall really fast. GS if you need to crack a wall but often FFing SCVs away from repair is better. Focus marauders with stalker/sentry.

EDIT : Note on FF usage
vT FF bio in
vZ FF lings/roach away, hydra in or divide roaches from hydra.
vP Divide

Dude.. dude.. count the acronyms in that paragraph, even hurts my brain and I understand the game pretty well, no idea how a new player can remotely get any of that.

Jonny7

The_Keeper wrote: »

Platinum Terran here.

I suggest you start practising specific build orders. Early zealot pressure from a quick 2-gate can really mess with Terran's early game.

Learn and practice the build order for the 4-warpgate push and there will be a window of having a significantly greater number of units than the Terran.

Early zealot pressure can really throw a terran player off, especially at silver/gold level where a lot of terrans are actually guys with not much skill,15 apm and have 1 build order on a piece of paper in front of them .. hence.. another suggestion would be that you send an early scout probe and learn to micro it while macroing, you will be surprised how much that little probe can block/attack/harass/disrupt a silver/gold terran.

A completely different suggestion is to play terran yourself - you'll pick them up after 5 games, after 10 games you can use an early reaper/MMM ball build and after 20 games you'll really see all their weaknesses.

NeoSlicerZ

Jonny7 wrote: »

Dude.. dude.. count the acronyms in that paragraph, even hurts my brain and I understand the game pretty well, no idea how a new player can remotely get any of that.

Since he knows the acronym of MMM, the other 3 I used should be no problem, especially if since he plays protoss.

Naz_st

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

Since he knows the acronym of MMM, the other 3 I used should be no problem, especially if since he plays protoss.

Yep. Not a problem for me - thanks for the advice... gonna try a few more games this evening with all this in mind and hopefully do better than my 0/5 win ratio vs Terran on Tuesday!

Grimebox

Jonny7 wrote: »

Dude.. dude.. count the acronyms in that paragraph, even hurts my brain and I understand the game pretty well, no idea how a new player can remotely get any of that.

I had to look up dps and GS you even referred to GS in the previous sentence so thats my own dumb fault.

Cuddlesworth

Grimebox wrote: »

I had to look up dps and GS you even referred to GS in the previous sentence so thats my own dumb fault.

I assumed it was gearscore. To many games, too little time.

NeoSlicerZ

I should add something more. You will NOT beat a MMM army with just zealot/sentry/stalker, you literally need to be 2 upgrades ahead to do enough dps, you MUST have either HTs or Colossi (5+ in 130+ supply battles). Vs on marine marauder, attack the marauders first, without them the marines must kite unefficently. And honestly, marines die so fast to gate way units without marauders to kite.

Naz_st

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

I should add something more. You will NOT beat a MMM army with just zealot/sentry/stalker, you literally need to be 2 upgrades ahead to do enough dps, you MUST have either HTs or Colossi (5+ in 130+ supply battles). Vs on marine marauder, attack the marauders first, without them the marines must kite unefficently. And honestly, marines die so fast to gate way units without marauders to kite.

Yeah, problem is I don't get as far as 130+ supply battles! Marauder drops in my supply line or early MM when I have neither Colossi or HT is usually GG. My micro isn't good enough to deal with it maybe.

E.g. last night won 3/3 vs zerg 2/3 vs protoss and 1/4 vs terran! And lost to terran with:
1) Marauder drop in back of my base
2) MM + siege tanks outside my base
3) Mass reaper (6) early taking out drones followed by mass marauder shortly after.

and beat terran with an early zealot push when he hadn't built enough early marines.

Doesn't it seem wrong that Protoss need to be 2 upgrades ahead as you say? Or that even with the right army comp (HT, Sentry) you need to pretty much nail the micro (Storm/GS/FF) to have a chance, and all the terran has to do is pump barracks units and attack move...

I'm gonna change tack now and have a go at getting early void rays or DTs or stalker drops and just mess about and see what works - I don't like trying the same things when they aren't working! May as well try something different and see what happens...

Grimebox

Post up some your losing replays and then we can really rip you apart

NeoSlicerZ

Marauder drops are indeed quite imba, you need to use outlying pylons to spot the drops and/or good use of observers and have good reaction times to beat it. Early MM is definitely beatable.

MM + Siege contain, you should not be at this stage but if you are, you need colossi to break out or do warp prism/zealot and/or DT play. If you're good at micro phoenix can do the job too. You shouldn't be losing to mass reaper, really. They may do quite a bit of damage but with good sim city and stalker micro you should be ok...

Protoss has to be 2 upgrades ahead with pure zealot/stalker/sentry vs MMM because they then have medivacs! Contrary to most popular opinion, MMM does require micro and lots of space! since bio requires kiting.

I'd recommend learning to micro/macro decently first before getting caught up in cutesy tricks.

Naz_st

Grimebox wrote: »

Post up some your losing replays and then we can really rip you apart

I'm not quite ready for the mauling I'd get if I did that! I'm happier moaning about it than knowing it's because I suck!

But I probably will do that if I get nowhere anyway, and you'll probably see a bunch of stuff I'm doing badly tbh...

Naz_st

NeoSlicerZ wrote: »

I'd recommend learning to micro/macro decently first before getting caught up in cutesy tricks.

Good advice I know... but macro isn't the issue (If I get as far as 2-base I'm doing well!). Micro is a problem alright... I definitely need some practice. Will post a replay if I'm still getting MM mauled later.

Grimebox

Naz_st wrote: »

I'm not quite ready for the mauling I'd get if I did that! I'm happier moaning about it than knowing it's because I suck!

But I probably will do that if I get nowhere anyway, and you'll probably see a bunch of stuff I'm doing badly tbh...

The reason why I think it would be especially helpful is because I don't think your main problem is simply beating MMM, but how you got into that situation in the first place where your faced with this massive army. I like commenting on peoples replays to be honest!

Naz_st

Grimebox wrote: »

The reason why I think it would be especially helpful is because I don't think your main problem is simply beating MMM, but how you got into that situation in the first place where your faced with this massive army. I like commenting on peoples replays to be honest!

Yeah, you're probably right... I'll probably try and play a few games this evening so if I get mauled again, I'll post up a replay and you can point out the things I'm making a mess of (likely quite a few!)...

Naz_st

Ok, I figure out where I was going wrong...

I only figured it out because I happened to get matched up with a Gold level protoss (in top 10 in gold, so way better than me), and after a certain number of minutes when I had about 5 zealots, 3 stalkers and a sentry (or something) he was coming down to my base with 10 zealots, 6 stalkers, 3 sentries and an immortal! I got pounded, obviously, but I was thinking after about how the hell he had so much more stuff than me after the same amount of time? Turns out it all boils down to the fact that I wasn't building enough probes in the early game, focusing too much on gateway units in anticipation of an early MM rush. Once I started focusing better on building up the econ side earlier, I ended up being able to build more gateway units in the same timeframe and was more likely to be able to defend and attack earlier etc.

With this new approach I upped my win ratio to at least 50%, and I think I can do better again if I cut out the stupid mistakes (e.g. not checking for extra bases, getting caught by early banshees etc)

Thanks guys for all the advice...