Marine - Best Tier 1 unit hands down. Shoots air and ground and has the most versatility of the opening units.
Marauder - Counters everything armored on the ground. Can take out units twice its cost as long as they have an armored tag.
Hellion - The only mineral only splash unit in the game. Counters light units with insane cost efficiency. Has a blue flame upgrade for some reason to make light units useless vs the Terran army.
Banshee - Almost guaranteed damage. Can easily out range static defense. Making a single cloaked banshee means little investment for huge damage across the map.
Battlecruiser - A tier 3 unit that can be made at 5:30. One of the most broken things in the game. Warps across the map for some insane reason. Barely requires any micro. Can take on twice its cost in units easily in the early game.
Widow Mine- A 75/25 unit that counters almost everything in the game. It is basically a ranged reusable burrowed invisible baneling. Imagine if a single Hydra or Stalker could kill 25 units in a single shot and you’d still be paying twice the price with the Hydra and Stalker.
Ghost - Literally the best spell caster in the game, hands down. Every single ghost can Snipe FOUR times at max energy. That is 680 damage PER GHOST. Rapid fire makes the micro for this unit insanely easy. You can snipe most of an army away with a handful of ghosts and a single button press.
Cyclone - A unit that was recently buffed to make Mech even easier to use. Requires next to zero micro to do massive damage. Can also hold early game harassment with ease. Literally only takes a single click to micro considering the unit auto-locks onto enemies.
Liberator - Another recently buffed unit. You don’t even need to look at where you shift queue these. Recently watched Serrals latest Grand Finals and every Lib killed 3 workers before the GOAT notices and pulls his workers. If Serral can barely react, how can anyone else?
Planetary Fortress - The best base defense in the game hands down. Can take on any harassment and sometimes entire armies with a scv repair surround. Only costs 150 minerals and 150 gas! WHAT.
How is any of this balanced? I don’t get it. This combined with the obscenely Terran favored maps and you gotta wonder what the balance team is smoking.
I would agree with Skipper. The art of it being to start with some true elements, and then implement larger and larger chunks of trolling. Here’s the best of
Which means I still agree with the very first point though :
Yet marines by themselves, even massed lose their wind rather quickly. It is their combination with stim, medivacs and marauders that makes them what their are. And that MMM combination is nor tier one nor gaz free.
If you put “in the hands of Buyn, Maru, Clem and couple others” disclaimer than it could be correct, but its definitely not correct statement for everybody else.
Let alone ladder players.
Even with Medevac and Marauders Marines will loose to both ling-banes or Chargelots.
The best of the best pros have some ridiculously good micro and multitasking that allows them to control their units exceptionally AND don’t screw up with macro at home.
Heck, in TvP even Clem and Buyn stop making Marines at a point where they can afford having army of only Ghost-Marauder.
i think it’s the fact that terran has multiple forms of splash combined with high dps per supply as decent frontline too
Zergs being frustrated by the various forms of units terran early on is understandable
BUT, that’s the main point, asymmetric race design
Zergs have great macro and economy to compensate, as well as creep, and free passive regen on everything
Ghost-marauder composition is supposed to be completed with vikings if my memory doesn’t wrongs me.
Anyway, it does takes micro to get good value out of your marines most of the time, yet not Maru/Clem/Olivera’s level of micro. Maintaining a top tier micro level with a perfect macro however, is something only them can do indeed.
Yet, there are situations where marines can be relevant even in late (ultra lategame, no gaz, opponents has some carriers… as a terran you’ll go for marines ; as a Z or a P, no gaz = almost no AA =p).
I’ve come to think that in fact a good part of what makes a match-up easier/favored at least until masters is the efficiency of a race’s splash against another :
Terran by default has tanks, hellions/bats and mines. All of them are effective vs Z, most of them vs T, and some of them vs P. And thus terrans would naturally get favored vs Z, should be 50/50/ wary of other T… and will have trouble vs P.
P has storm, colossus, archons and disruptors. All of them are effective vs T (thus making the matchup even easier for P), but some don’t apply that well vs Z (thus another reason of PvZ being unforgiving at intermediate levels).
As for Z, their splash is mostly effective against terran bio, while mech are extremely effective vs Z. Thus mech being a pain to play against at intermediate levels as a Z. This changes as players become good a using casters though, as Z casters (particularly the Viper) are top tier.
I think that the OP suffers from tunnel (Terran) vision. They would rather complain than get different tactics. Protoss Immortal/Zealot combo wipes Marauders for sure. Ghost can snipe Z army, for sure (all bio), but they do run out of energy. Make them choose between sniping Ravagers or ling/bane bombers. And Banshee does NOT out range static defense, 6 is not greater than 7.
That may be true about the pros, I don’t follow them. I just get tired of you making up false, prejudicial stuff about the game. On a different thread, I suggested a damage adjustment to reduce damage to burrowed units (direct and splash, esp. nukes) to make the Zerg mechanic more fun and unique, even if they are spotted. Don’t know if it could be put in now by the community patchers, but I wish the base game reflected the real-life damage reduction by going underground.
Terran have WM (that are absolutely obnoxious to play against as well as with) and Tanks of course, but unlike what Zerg whiners say both of them have very clear counters and they are not that good to begin with (which is perfectly fine since “different races are different”).
Also in the late game Terran splash units just don’t work and you have things happening like in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/S95dgRS7Zew
Marine - agree
Marauder - they are also designed as a counter to armor.
Hellion - would also add fast and slippy.
Banshee - find Banshee good, clear design. Better than Lib or Wm.
Battlecruiser - I think devs thought otherwise. is a snowball unit.
Widow Mine - agree Wm unnecessary. burrow and forget. exploit as harass.
Ghost - TvZ is completely overloaded and poorly designed. TvP the emp takes energy and shield that affects the dynamics.
Cyclone - Again, this combination of fast and long range.
Liberator - actually zone tool, also works very well as a harass… Should swap Banshee hp with lib. Would suit the rolls better.
Planetary Fortress - the point aoe-dmg and mass repair make pf strong. and PF > worker in prio.
This changes as players become good a using casters though, as Z casters (particularly the Viper) are top tier.