Been noticing this a lot in TvP…3x Mine Drops are happening a lot. It used to be 2x Mine drops or 4x…the 3x is throwing me off.
Did a pro use this to pwn a Protoss or something? Where did this come from?
It has always been a thing in diamond league, you start to see less of it in master 3 tho!
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Heromarine
You are making WMs by 1 from factory because build optimization reasons.
Also if playing DC mines drop you’ll make only 3 mines if you screw up with timings even a little.
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Gotcha, thanks!
1st time I saw it I was like ARRRRRRG YOU CAN’T EVEN SPLIT VS THIS.
Only option is to literally not let it happen…by intercepting the drop as it boosts in.
The other option is to get good
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Not really, 3 mines means you can’t split enough to mitigate the damage. No amount of skill can overcome 3 Widow Mines. You can only intercept the drop. Intercept meaning catch it with AA or spot it for an early, preemptive probe pull. If mines get out of the Medivac near your probes, they’re all going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it. Assuming manual targeting of the mines at least.
It is happening a lot because it is HeroMarine’s staple TvP build and he is the most popular Terran streamer. People probably mirroring what he does.
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The best counter I’ve seen his opponents doing to not take damage is having 3 stalkers already in position on the edge of either your main or natural (depending where the Terran is trying to drop).
By having the 3 stalkers (no less) you can kill the Medivac before it drops. Against a competent Terran player though he will just wait with the Medivac and drop later in the game during some other aggression to force you out of position.
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That’s what I’m currently encountering. If they spot enough AA to kill the medivac, they just save it for later - because if you widow mine drop a Protoss enough, eventually you’ll score critical damage.
Not that I have problems with that…it’s just that initial drop which feels hilariously unfair since the only real response is to not let the drop happen.
You can’t split vs it. Hell, I’ve even gone as far as splitting 4x vs it and no dice…you still lose like 12/21 probes and that’s if your splits were good.
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True. It is extremely hard to split vs. it so you really need to pull your Probes very soon to not lose your whole mineral line.
That’s exactly why a lot of good Protosses are opening quick Robo or SG vs. Terran so you can have an Observer or Phoenix out to help/deny with the initial Terran drop and it is extremely helpful to make Terran lose it’s momentum.
Edit: If you are having like huge trouble with this build, don’t open with Blink because you will not have the benefits of the upgrade before the drop.
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To me, that seems fairly imbalanced. Like, if you can force a predictable opener from your opponent because it’s the only real way to handle it…then that leaves massive holes for exploitation without even scouting properly. And it’s not like this it Thor Hellbat, where Protoss HAS to get Disruptors. This is so early that your opneing sets the tone for the entire game.
Reminds me a bit of the whole HotS blink openers being imba because Terran had to get Maraudes and Bunkers or they nearly auto lost. Sure it could be held but the Terran had virtually no build diversity until blink was nerfed.
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All races have their own “imbalanced” stuff to abuse. For example, on the same matchup if Terran do not make a blind Bunker against an aggressive Core before Nexus Stalker/Adept opener he just auto-loses the game.
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Look at the bright side, you can still do any Robo/SG opener versus Terran (with Twilight being worse unless you are a KR god).
It’s not like TvZ or PvZ where you are forced to open Batlecruisers or SG otherwise both T and P fall incredibly behind.
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I was thinking about 1 gas fast charge openers vs Terran with a fast 3rd myself. Terran HATES vsing that. Like, it snowballs the game so fast that Terran has difficulty keeping their nat, let alone expanding and maintaining a healthy core army.
Every race definitely has some imba stuff.
Well, I’m not masters but in D2 I can still do Twilight openers but with this, it looks like I may need to adjust slightly by getting 2 extra Stalkers. No biggie, really, I just need to adapt.
It still seems pretty imba though…but hey, if I get to take a fast 3rd at 3:40 AND get charge with +1 armor…I can’t complain too loudly. As we both stated; every race has some imbalanced nonsense.
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In general is unwise to talk about something “requiring skill” or “no amount of skill can…” when you are in D2. The game is balanced around the highest level, so a lot of things would seem imbalanced in diamond.
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And u need to abuse it. There is no other way around to that.
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In general, yeah, you’re totally right and while this may seem fairly arrogant; I think at this point it’s safe to say that I’m better than a vast majority of Diamond players. I micro fairly well, I macro waaaaaaay beyond a Diamond level and my only major weaknesses are transitioning too slow (sometimes), weird cheese I’ve never seen before or harass that I didn’t anticipate because I screwed up.
You’re probably going to say “then why aren’t you masters?”
Well, because right now on ladder it’s almost pure cheese or massive allins and Protoss have severe issues holding those right now due to the charge redesign basically being toothless without upgrades to offset the significant damage loss. So sometimes, you just lose and there’s nothing you can do about it except remember the name of who cheesed you and next time you vs them, keep in mind they’re a cheeser.
Point being; my splits are fine. The answer is to pull before the drop happens or intercept the drop.
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Yes that is the answer. So what is the point of this thread? Mines vs probe interaction is designed so that to defend a mine drop (regardless of how many mines), you have to act before the mine hits the ground. This is what the pros do, this is what diamonds or any league should do. You don’t see terrans complaining “why can’t I split my marines vs banelings when the banelings are 2 range away” because the game is not designed that way.
Point of the thread was to find out why everyone is doing this.
I already knew that you can’t stop the drop like you can when it’s a 2 Widow Mine drop; by splitting well, sacing 1 Probe per mine and then cleaning up. And that’s kind of frustrating, because that is a reasonable response since it takes good reactions and a good spike in apm to split like that at the last second.
No worries though, as I said before, I’ll just make 2 more early Stalkers, hold off on the +1 armor a little and BAM, problem solved without hurting my general PvT TC opener.