He lost a BC and 12 hellions but the game went on

General Discussion
1

https://imgur.com/a/By7EVRF

So this guy lets me get away with gasless 4 hatch (https://i.imgur.com/Pk3AX92.png) which is literally the most insanely greedy that a zerg can be. He loses a BC (https://i.imgur.com/ual9aiS.png) and 12 hellions for free (https://i.imgur.com/BX024Ho.png). It’s literally impossible to lose a BC but he managed to find a way to do it. My creep spread is immaculate. His third base is denied three times, the first time results in all his SCVs dying (https://i.imgur.com/0fTdgu8.png), which you can clearly see in the resource collection tab. I have an absolutely monstrous upgrade lead.

Despite this, he macroes an army that is sufficiently strong that it trades at such an absurdly high efficiency that he over-takes me in army supply at about the 11 minute mark. Isn’t it nice being terran, where chains of repeated mistakes just don’t matter? If a Protoss or a Zerg lost an entire base of workers, the game would just be over. This guy made mistake after mistake and the siege tank is like “I got you, bro”. If I lost a base of workers, I would just GG right then. Terrans stay in games they’ve already lost because it’s almost impossible to close the game out without hive tech. By the time hive tech arrives, well, the terran has recovered.

They need to retune the defensive capabilities of terran, or this game is nothing but #TerranCraft2. This isn’t even a balance complaint, because terrans are going to lose games like this no matter what. This is a quality of life change that reduces the game duration for scenarios where there is a 0.0% chance the terran will win. Games like this should not take 12+ minutes to resolve. It’s not unusual for games like this to take 20+ minutes to resolve. The siege tank prolongs the duration of the game when there is no hope for the terran to ever win.

You just have to go through the motions, and these have purpose except that you have to do them. It’s like in Risk when someone turtles down in Australia. It’s like, come on man, my army is 10x as big and I control the whole world. We both know how this is going to end. Do we really need to play this out? The answer to that in SC2 is “yes”.

2

It’s hilarious that the evidence of terran dominance is so profound that even the most extreme terran whiners have their lips buttoned up tight. There is literally nothing they can say which won’t sound like a clown honking a horn. Terran is so busted that even when they play like trash it’s still a herculean effort to just get them to leave a game that they’ve lost. Meanwhile a terran can bop a zerg in 3 minutes using a proxy rax.

Did you know Bunny has a 55% win-rate according to Aligulac? Since when is that good enough to get into the GSL semi finals? Since the finals became TvTvTvT, apparently. Has one race ever dominated the semi finals in the history of the GSL? Yes, once before: back in 2011. It’s been over a decade since one race dominated the GSL this hard. :rofl:

3

If only Terran was this strong prior to blizzard withdrawing their financial support for tournaments. Serral chose the perfect time to become predominantly a streamer. Oh well, at least Batz is no longer playing the contrarian and admits the patch was, in fact, a terran patch.

From your photos I’m missing a lot of context, loses hellions at the watchtower? What timing is this? loses a BC near his main? Is batz still going for queen walks?

4

He had a hidden base and the hellions were camping the watchtower to protect that base. I set up a distraction knowing I could get the hellions, but spotted the base as a bonus, and killed all his workers there.

The BC died in the middle of the map because my creep was that far out. He move-clicked it to the middle thinking it was far enough away that it would be safe, and my queens chased it all the way and killed it. He didn’t notice.

If you put the shoe on the other foot, any of these mistakes would be game losing if it were done by the zerg. 12 hellions is 1200 minerals worth of lings. A terran could literally f2 + aclick a mechball at the zerg, and at that point the zerg would just die. A zerg could not defend a push after that kind of loss. He made not just one, not just two, not just three, but FOUR of these mistakes.

It’s absolutely wild just how big of mistakes the siege tank can buffer for.

Nah it’s the map pool. The siege tank issue isn’t a balance issue – it’s a design issue. The siege tank can prolong the game even when the terran can’t win, and that’s an issue. If they nerf the tank, the terran will still lose the same number of games, he’s just not able to mindlessly drag out a game where he’s so far behind.

If they reduced the sight range of the tank by 2, then the peak power of the tank is unchanged but terrans will have to make more of an effort to spot for their tanks. That would be a reasonable change that would help games to resolve a bit quicker.

5

I watched Dark win with roach/ravager after drone pulling to hold off a dedicated push. If you nerf tanks I wonder what games would look like. :wink:

6

That’s a fundamentally different scenario. The terran committed to a trade that was a net negative – even with the drone kills, it was net negative. In this case I committed to multiple trades with zero losses that weren’t just net positive – the trades were drastically in my favor.

A similar scenario would be if the terran did all that to dark, but kept his army alive with near zero losses. If you think Dark is going to survive that, you’re insane. There is no way. If a terran kills an entire base of drones without losing anything, he wins the game.

I killed his entire standing army AND a base of workers FOR FREE. The siege tank should not be capable of prolonging a game like that. If you make these kinds of mistakes, I should be able to f2+aclick and instantly win the game. If the shoe were on the other foot, that’s exactly how it would work.

When this happens to terran, he just lifts the base and puts tanks on the highground and tries to reland. You then take massive losses for every second you spend trying to deny the base from mining. You have to back off, wait for him to resaturate, then go in and clean house again. You have to do this 3 or 4 times before they finally quit. In the meantime, he gets to roll the dice on hellion runbies and BC counter attacks, which have the potential to get him back in the game if he is lucky. It’s a very real possibility that, even after these mistakes, he could still win. There is a reason why they try to play it out. If it were totally hopeless, they would leave. If a zerg takes a bad fight into some tanks while a BC kills a base of drones, boom, the terran is now winning.

Every honest person who has ever watched a pro level TvZ knows it’s incredibly hard for zerg to close out games vs terran. The siege tank is the issue.

7

When Terran turtle up it’s super annoying and lame - but it allows you to effectively take the map.

That’s how you beat Terran, you don’t kill them unless you catch them sleeping. Instead you make it so pointless for them to play that they rage quit.

Remember Terran is the cheese/griefing/all-in race. They excel at pissing the opponent off so badly that they make big, game-ending mistakes.

Keep your cool and you’ll win, even if they annoy you by making the game last 10 minutes longer than it should.

1 Like
8

It’s literally worthless. If the terran can max, you can throw an infinite amount of money at him and it will all melt. The only time you can beat him is if he actually leaves his base. His goal, when behind, will be to max, then to slowly mine the map out one base at a time. He will even give up his main base if he has to. The amount of fire power that is concentrated to defending 1 base will be so intense that any attack will simply melt.

Uthermal has a video series called “mech drops” that demonstrates this. Even Protoss players with maxed hard-counters to tanks, aka immortal archon zealot, will have their army vaporized at the same time as a widow mine drop decimates their eco.

Translation, terran can mess up your eco with a single widow mine drop, meanwhile even with an entire maxed army you can’t do anything to his. What are you supposed to do – build some cannons? Yeah he will find that one spot where a cannon doesn’t reach and it will kill 8 probes.

I think if you completely abandon map control, it should be an automatic loss. A good way to do that would be to reduce the siege tank sight range. If tanks couldn’t see as far as overseers, the terran would have to send units to the front and spot, where they could be picked off. The terran would actually have to fight to control the map. Similar reasoning applies to the sensor tower. Cut the cost in half but halve the range as well. Now his towers are easy to pick off, and he has to come out of his base and defend them. The range is the issue here. The range of the siege tank allows him to control territory without being committed to that territory. The range of the sensor tower allows him to see a territory without spending any money to go out there and see it with actual units. Really the issue is reward vs risk. He has lots of reward and no risk.

9

can you post the replay at all instead of images? overall, something like even a swarm host harass prob could have paid dividends if he was trapped. Typically situations like this come down to tech or such, not having the right setup of ovies/burrowed lings to deal with the BCs spores etc, if he was stuck 2 base and you had like 80+ worker with corupter brood swarm host or whatever should be fine, but if just the 4 hatch and not a good gasbank or unit comp terran can just cheese it. Like same for protoss let them camp 2-3 base can get invincible colossus carrier BS

10

They can’t max and keep getting bases if you take control of the map.

Who cares if it takes 10 armies? If they’re on 2-3 bases while you have the rest it’s doable.

Just take the map man. Turtle players are annoying but this isn’t a new interaction.

11

That’s straight up incorrect. I can point you to Code S games where the zerg had two gold bases and the terran still managed to outlast the zerg.

12

https://i.imgur.com/t3NrPZt.png

Top 100. I am still not watching replays nor optimizing build orders. What did I change? I simply changed how long I was willing to play. That’s it. I am going to give myself carpel tunnel. I am still doing swarm hosts vs terran, lmao.

Here is the replay you asked for:

https://drop.sc/replay/23629025

13

There are not even 100 actual real life people in NA that play +4k level i believe, top 100 is more like an amalgamation of alt accounts. but at least you got the 400 mmr back

14

Yes, you have to be an international grandmaster to get in. Regional GM doesn’t exist. You could even make the argument that it’s more exclusive than even that. I’d bet you there are only 100 people across all servers who take up all the GM slots via smurf accounts. I’ve got two in GM for crying out loud. Ukko has like 40 but only 15 or so are active. That guy needs to get a life.

Here is the replay you asked for:
https://drop.sc/replay/23629025

15

Bah, that one ovie was just short, coulda shut down the proxy CC much sooner, happens sometimes i skim scouting but the proxy seems only come up every 30 games or so. so he was on 2000+ minerals still despite having 4 hatch

When scouted tho, coulda tried to kill it quicker, didn’t touch that base for about 10-13 seconds of free extra mining. Sacrificed lings to blueflame etc. but wasnt toooo big of a deal

the corrupters clear up the air bc and viking eventually at least, and his 10 o clock or whatever, fresh mining but a round of banes will kill everything, by rights he was pretty dead with only 57 drones and only a smattering of tanks , leaving you to tae map go broodlord infestor etc

16

Lmao. Batz is so distraught from watching Solar’s games that he camps on creep until 200 supply after seeing 1 tank on the high ground. You can make roaches, I believe in you.

17

ultimately the guy was kinda boned, but batz coulda done more banes overall, besides that , once the proxy was shut down terran was catastrophically behind so it didn’t matter. like 1k rescources lost difference, but down 30 workers.

18

Batz gave him a chance at a comeback because he played the I’m going to mass ling bane hydra, the safest way to make it to hive, then wonder what to do when you get there so he starts destroying the rocks and not using any hive units. I guess he just wanted to enjoy the one map that is a zerg player’s wet dream.

1 Like
19

he didn’t see the proxy for ages, which gave time and money. Hydras are utter trash vs tank bc without like 7 vipers or something even then gotta run fast to stagger. terran was lightyears behind either way, bane hits and corrupter puke he 3 base forever

20

No, roaches are easily the worst unit in the game. They have limited utility for defense and for hitting allin timings when his tank count is still low. By the time he has multiple BCs and a bunch of tanks, roaches are less than worthless – they have negative value. You always trade your roaches out and try to get value out of them before he does his first big push. You simply can’t defend his 2/2 push if you have roaches in your army. If you can’t get value out of them, just send them to die or manually focus-fire them to kill them. This is, like, the absolute basics of ZvT. We’ve known how this works for almost 10 years now. A roach is useless and takes up 2 supply. That’s equivalent to 4 banelings or 4 zerglings. If you think 20 roaches is better than 80 lings or banelings, then you’re insane. There is no other way to put it.

That’s ignoring all the other issues with the roach, such as their inability to split between locations (supply cost issue) as well as their inability to deal with air units like BCs as well as their absurdly low DPS which means they only work in high numbers (numbers high enough to one-shot marines) otherwise medivac healing completely negates their DPS. There are also upgrade-scaling issues. By the time the terran gets 2/2, his bio can trade with your roaches without the need for tanks. The list of issues with roaches is a mile long. These units are absolute garbage. You make a maximum of 12 to stay alive in the early game and you sack them, ideally get some value out of them as you sack them, the moment you have any other option available.

The reason zergs stay on roaches is because they feel threatened and they feel like they don’t have time to get out other units, so they dump money into the roach.

Ling bane hydra is zerg’s most aggressive unit comp. It’s the “I want to take direct fights with your army” unit comp, and that’s more so since the hydra buffs. When leenock made his deep run in the GSL, only to lose to maru’s proxy 2 rax, it was with ling bane hydra. He’d split his army onto two hotkeys to defend a multi-pronged medivac harassment, and the moment the hydras killed a double medivac drop he would counter attack and win. If the terran did a big push, the second hotkey would set up a flank. He was about 6600 mmr at the time, which was pretty decent compared to Maru’s 6800 at the time.

The hydralisk has a range that can easily kill tanks, they pick off medivacs, and their DPS is high enough that they can kill bio despite medivac healing. Their range is long enough that you can hit bio without the hydras being hit by tanks, meaning they are capable of zoning bio which roaches and ling bane cannot do. You can pressure command centers while out of range of tanks on the high ground. Hydralisks can kill liberators, while roaches cannot. The hydralisk is a pretty decent unit. The roach is literal trash. The only reason to make a roach is because it makes you safe vs hellions / hellbats.

Do you know how easy it is to shut down medivac harass with hydralisks and burrow? You put 4 hydras in your main and burrow them. When the medivacs are about to land, you unburrow them. The hydras will kill both medivacs and they might unload 2 marines. What are some roaches going to do in a scenario like that except give free trades to the terran? 4 roaches won’t have the DPS to punch through the medivac healing. The roaches will be donations to the terran. You have to put so much supply in your main that you become vulnerable elsewhere, and then the terran just backs off and doesn’t lose anything. Roaches=literal trash.