Another 'teach Orizio Starcraft' thread.

Orizio

Back looking for advice again. Last time I made a thread like this I was a bronze noob that sucked at defending cheese and at the game in general - this time I'm a Gold noob that still sucks horribly. Currently I'm stuck at the top of my league with 400 or something points with no promotion in sight (playing mostly plat players). Anyway, if anyone would like to go through the following replay...

TvP - Xel'Naga - Gold

...and give me a general appraisal of my play that would be great. Particularly my build, my macro, what I did wrong, how I could have won etc. Obviously I made loads of mistakes like...

-> no stim
-> no combat shield
-> not attacking when I was maxed
-> not getting enough vikings (I honestly thought he had only a few col)
-> not keeping up in terms of upgrades
-> leaving my entire army to die horribly in a chokepoint

...but I'm sure there are a load of other things I did wrong that I'm not seeing, so...

phisku

I think you saw your mistake yourself so yeah...

For me it's pretty simple.
To much techlab imo.
not enough drop, need more viking.
AND GO ****ING KILL HIM.
you had the game won (50 food ahead at some point) but you let him max and a maxed protoss army is very strong.

edit: also put hotkey on your army.
edit2: Your macro is really good, trust in yourself

Orizio

Much thanks Phisku. My build seems weak against a two base collosus timing push though...?

Anyone else?

seraphimvc

doesnt feel like giving advice now since you are in plat (remember i said so you are defo should be at least in plat once you can handle all those basics/cheese properly?)

so here is something imo can be useful:

1.go poke! you have solid army since early of the game so no harm to go for a small poke(you dont need to die any unit or actually kill his unit, just put some pressure on him)
2.always put a turret at 6-7mins just in case he goes dt.
3.when u see his robo = his obs is probably right at the top watching your army, give it a scan once in awhile/build a turret at the front.
4.no stim/medivac to army ratio is bad if you decided to go mass bio
5.throw down more rax/factory
6.bad choke point encounter - you made those colo like a happy panda

in XvP now, the metagame for the toss is 'please give me time so i can work on my deathball to gg you '. remember your unit is more cost efficient than his and you can rebuild bio faster ->keep trading army with the toss, you need to keep in mind that you need to reduce the size of his deathball.

general tip:
bio is pretty weak after 20mins of the game. if you decided to main bio remember to get upgrades early. 2 ebay start the armor and weapon upgrade at the same time from like 8mins.
12vikings is needed for 1 shot kill colo.

Orizio

Right, I've started to get upgrades quicker and adjusted my build, opening two rax, getting a second base quicker and teching up quicker to get thors and vikings out faster.

However, I've lost too many TvPs to late game DTs. Basically I out-macro my opponent, win the first battle but as I'm not strong enough to finish him off I have to fall back then he goes DT until he can max out. I've started getting a raven out blind and putting up a turret with my PFs but I find that I need 4-5 turrets per base to defend properly. Any other options?

Orizio

Also, third base at 15, fourth at 20 - about right?

seraphimvc

lol the desperate dt attack, i have seen some toss gg out straight away when this desperate attempt fails, so always keep in mind this dt **** can happen late game. ill leave tat for real terrans player answer you the proper response but i really think that raven is a good start (terrans never go raven). if you keep macro(making unit during battle you should have some units in base for that.

phisku

DT in late game is either a desperate move or the toss is hugely ahead.
but if you stay on top of your scouting it's not that hard to spot in late game and more zealots warped.

Orizio

Yeah I find Ravens pretty great, PDD for Vikings and Stalkers, even in TvZ they are good for getting rid of creep and HSM massacres clumped Zerg units.

Khazidhea

I actually think DTs are good late game. Map control, harass and a couple of dts in army can deal quite a lot of damage before the scan goes down.

I try to always get 1 raven in the mix in every matchup. I used to do raven 1st or 1banshee-1raven builds a lot, but the game shifted towards FE styles lately.


Blind countering is bad, so blind turret is kinda bad. But it would be good against dt or void ray in front. So maybe you can get away with 1 turret in front if you see early double gas and low army count later on. I would say dts come at 8 min ... might be wrong, havent played or watched many vods\replays in a while ...

And you definetly dont need turrets if you tech to ravens fast. You need it for FE with CC in your base builds.

Start upgrades when you half-done with your natural. Get +1 weapons first, then +1 armor. When armor is about halfway done get 2nd ebay and armory and get double ups from there.

No stim, no combat shield sounds like a huge blunder. I mean HUGE. I did not watch the replay but people are saying you went bio. HUUUUGE mistake.

Again just steal one build and master it. Dont get too fancy. Actually day9 did 3 dailies on TvP trying to figure out a new build and there was a couple of dailies on stealing builds. I am pretty sure you can just hit with a timing attack that will just kill your opponents until you are master. And expo behind it.

phisku

If you have the time try to copy the Thorzain build...
i emulated it, not perfectly of course, and i have good result so far.
it's extremely good against a passive protoss and the opening contain an early raven.

Orizio

phisku wrote: »

If you have the time try to copy the Thorzain build...
i emulated it, not perfectly of course, and i have good result so far.
it's extremely good against a passive protoss and the opening contain an early raven.

Rough bo? Or game he used it in? He has played a lot of TvPs lately.

Orizio

phisku wrote: »

If you have the time try to copy the Thorzain build...
i emulated it, not perfectly of course, and i have good result so far.
it's extremely good against a passive protoss and the opening contain an early raven.

? Any help?

Orizio

Another replay:

Link.

What exactly do I do against this kind of get 2-3 and a-move bull****? Should I have assume he was going for this kind of timing attack when I see 3 gate 1 robo opening?

Funky

I think you went too marine heavy. Marines are great and all but vs. colossi if you don't have a decent viking count they're just wasted minerals. You were floating alot of gas which could have been alot more marauders & vikings. You massed quite a good ground army pretty quickly but didn't actually use it. Some early pressure would have been good if only to figure out his army composition. If he's light on sentries(if i recall correct i don't think he made a single sentry, you could have just stimmed in and killed him before colossus) then there's some teching going on, most likely colossus since you saw an early robo. If you don't want to early pressure then I'd say cutting back on units, marines especially, bunkering up and teching quicker is the better route since you can get scouting info/do damage with drops and if they are going colossi abuse the fact that their mobility is horrible.

When it came to the fight his army composition was just much better since he had teched while you had massed tier 1 units with a couple of pretty useless medivacs at that stage.

Orizio

Funky wrote: »

I think you went too marine heavy. Marines are great and all but vs. colossi if you don't have a decent viking count they're just wasted minerals. You were floating alot of gas which could have been alot more marauders & vikings. You massed quite a good ground army pretty quickly but didn't actually use it. Some early pressure would have been good if only to figure out his army composition. If he's light on sentries(if i recall correct i don't think he made a single sentry, you could have just stimmed in and killed him before colossus) then there's some teching going on, most likely colossus since you saw an early robo. If you don't want to early pressure then I'd say cutting back on units, marines especially, bunkering up and teching quicker is the better route since you can get scouting info/do damage with drops and if they are going colossi abuse the fact that their mobility is horrible.

When it came to the fight his army composition was just much better since he had teched while you had massed tier 1 units with a couple of pretty useless medivacs at that stage.

Wasn't aware of the part in bold, thanks.

I basically started opening reactor rax because it got me a lot of units to deal with four gates without sacrificing hugely in terms of econ (of course that may just be bull**** :pac: ). I'm a passive player by nature largely because I can't multitask but also because I have nightmares of my entire army getting trapped by forcefields and dying horrible to a handful of zealots. In future, if I continue to open like this, should I camp my army in his nat to delay his expansion while I expand? Is that sufficent pressure?

Funky

In general with your opening you can send your first few units to the protoss base just to put a little pressure on him. You may or may not be able to delay his expansion it just depends on what build they opened with. If they went 1 gate expand you can usually bunker rush his natural nexus and if he went 3gate or 2gate/robo you should probably just back off.

But in that game he kindly showed you 3g & robo so he'd have no trouble fighting it off. The best time to pressure in this case is probably when your 4 rax were up(and stim is done? I dunno the timing) and your economy was kicking in since he was expanding himself but a bit later than you. If they slack on their sentry production they'll straight up die and if they haven't just don't commit to an attack where they can FF your army up into little pieces. From that pressure you should be able to get a decent idea of what tech he's aiming for.

Keep in mind I'm seeing this from the protoss perspective as to what gives me trouble/how I react to a 2 rax expand build. I'm sure some of the board's terrans might have some finer details on timings etc.

Orizio

Thanks again Funky. I'm not really great on timings and all of that but I'll try and take note.

On a happier note, another much longer TvP against a Diamond:

Link.

Comments on my macro, build, play etc?

Note the Thor is op comment and ragequit even though he was staring at my army for half the game and had ample time to get out a few voidrays. :P