I’m not having any issues with Raynor on offensive maps. The rapid re-maxing bio-ball works great. But what’s the trick with the defensive maps like dead of night and especially temple of the past?
One bunker for first night with calldowns. Clear clockwise during the second day and your bio is at the top to defend in front of top rocks. Ally and calldowns help at bottom for night two. Then you clear the rest of the map on day 3.
TotP is different since you can’t just finish before the stronger attacks. Unless it’s all air drop loads of spider mines at spawns. Add loads of turrets in the area for any air units.
Missile Turrets are basically free for him, go nuts with them. But don’t worry about using Bunkers beyond that first one on a mission to be honest, they hurt your dps quite a bit.
For Dead of Night, make an incomplete wall of supply depots in a L shape or so for the side. Position some SCVs and a bunch of Marines and Medics behind it. Siege Tanks and Banshees are also very strong with this setup. The trick here is that the ai won’t hurt the depots much as long as they can make it to the units attacking them, so they’ll waste a ton of time walking around the wall you’ve made.
Temple of the Past, the best thing to do is make your army and intercept the enemy as they come to you. Apart from Missile Turrets there’s little use in making structure based defense for him. If you find you’re losing too much troops, just increase your production buildings and OCs, but make sure that you leave ways for your men to quickly move around the base
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Tanks behind bunkers have come in handy. If you’d rather not have to deal with low damage, unmanned bunkers, use supply depots as a wall instead for your tanks.
In lieu of towers, I just use my same bioball for defense as with pushing. Firebats if dealing with a lot of infested and/or swarmy units. Up the Mauraders if there are heavy units.
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If you want to run mostly defense, I use a pair of bunkers with a turret and a siege tank behind it.
On Temple, you don’t need to build defensively. Just build a giant ball of death and win.
What’s the deal with Raynor’s bunkers? In my experience, they are something that just doesn’t work. Even if the attack is repelled, the bunkers often get destroyed so I’m constantly rebuilding. He has tech for them, but in practice they’ve been very underpowered.
They work quite well actually. You can hold off most initial attack waves with just one Bunker and two SCVs repairing (have three if it’s something annoying like mass Reapers or Zerglings). It delays the wave long enough for Dusk Wings to ready up. They’re also much better than depots since they’re tankier and you can salvage them to rebuild basically for “free”.
The Shrike Turret itself could certainly use a little damage buff though. Either increase damage slightly or +1 range so that landed Vikings and cloaked Banshees don’t outrange it.
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Yes and no to that, at least where Don is concerned.
Bunkers do have more health and salvage, but that doesn’t mean they do a better job than Supply Depots all of the time.
Against melee enemies (like in DoN) it’s far better to use a near full wall of Supply Depots as Bunkers are a “threat” due to their auto attack. This means that the melee enemies will attack the Bunkers on sight.
A Supply Depot doesn’t have an attack, so the melee units will actually try to walk around them rather than attacking them to get to the actual threat, the Marines, just as long as a path exists nearby. With enough units you can outright eliminate any damage taken rather than absorb it with the Bunkers.
Against ranged units though, yes, Bunkers would be better.
Repelling the first attack wave isn’t exactly a high bar. I want it to be a powerful defensive structure, not a stop-gap until something else becomes available. It’s really not that.
Bunkers, tanks, and turrets.
I actually like to do both, bunker and depots(not DoN tho), like having my buildings at ramp, mostly to abuse surface area for bunker, also not having lings surrounding the bunker and killing the repairing scvs.
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Delaying attack waves long enough for your army to get back into position is sufficient. They’re not supposed to be comparable to other COs static defences (not empty Bunkers anyway). Especially not without tanks and/or turrets to support them.
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong, Bunkers have their uses. I just wanted to point out that they’re not strictly better than Depots, the other way is true as well.
A small gap leading to a Bunker makes lots of sense too, though outside of RtK I just let them chew on my CC/OC for a bit and Dusk Wing them myself.
Wouldn’t having your bio mix ball pushing the zombies worked on DON? I would drop some tanks if i want to play all defense Raynor when my partner wants to go for offense.
In case you go for offense on day 2 go clear everything on the top of the map that should stop infested to come to your north west entrance.
It is very easy to defend DoN with bunkers and tanks. Just keep one firebat inside if it is on the frontline and one scv for repair.
If you don’t have enough tanks yet use calldown to destroy kaboomers.
For the top right entrance it is better to make a bunker and few tanks behind it on the high ground and one on the low ground. You don’t need firebats in highground bunkers.
If there are spotters you need some vikings to kill them.
I think 5scvs repairing can out heal the damage of a stank but you need some micro to keep them alive. You can also use medics and 2~3 firebats to block a stank.
Siege Tanks kill anything on the ground, just put some depots or bunkers in front to hold the enemy.
Vulture mines are also phenomenal to thin out the enemy wave and safeguard your defensive lines (no friendly fire).
Against air you got multiple choices depending on what kind of enemy it is.
But generally bunkers+marines, missile turrets (dont cost population) and vikings (AOE) do the job great - BCruisers with yamato can be great vs capital targets.
Just make sure you rush at least 4 orbital commands, preferably even more as game goes on.
With a level talent upgrade firebats gain extra range up to 4. Inside the bunker all units gain +1 range, so the firebat can fight the infested marine.
Amon does not attack initially. Only during the 2nd night. Dusk wings are ready during the 1st night. You don’t have to worry for reapers during the 1st night, unless transmutation is active.
Cloaked banshees gain +2 range, so they definitelly outrange it.
What’s wrong with using Marines to defend? They shoot the same on offense and defense.
Having just the Marines with nothing to cover them, like a Bunker or a Tank, means that things like Kaboomers, Chokers, and explosive Infested will all eat them alive.
I’ve never made bunkers and have to disagree. Make OCs, drop mules, make Marines, at 1st night with medics, later just Marines.
It’s not like there is a limit on Marines. The time you would spend making tank/bunker you could spend eating chips and holding A button.