Protoss Bitching: Still Having Trouble With Marauders

[DemolitionSquid]

Is there ANY way to counter a well timed Marauder/Ghost push beyond spamming Zealots with Charge? Xecutor, Superkiller and I have been trying out possible methods but a group of 8 Maruders and 2 Ghosts with EMP attacking just as your first Immortal can pop out absolutely shreds anything you try to do as P.

[Alzarath]

And Blizz says they think they over-nerfed the Marauders... They're reducing the research cost and speed next patch. Hope to hell they nerf the Marauder in general somehow that would be beneficial.

[pure.Wasted]

Are you using Force Field?

A lot?

FFing Ghosts as they're coming up on the battle can make it really difficult for them to get EMP's off, or really easy for you to move your units away from the area he was likely going to EMP in the time it's going to now take the Ghost to get into position.

[Hammy]

Are you using Force Field?

A lot?

FFing Ghosts as they're coming up on the battle can make it really difficult for them to get EMP's off, or really easy for you to move your units away from the area he was likely going to EMP in the time it's going to now take the Ghost to get into position.

Have you got a replay/vod of that? Sounds like pretty terrible advice to me....


In your OP you say "besides spamming chargelots". Has that worked for you? Why don't you want to do it?
What builds are you using? Are you doing a one-gate tech, back into 3 warpgate while the robo is warping? That works well from what I've seen.
That way you'll have more immos faster, and as long as you spread them out decently you'll be able to handle the EMPs.
Then you can transition into collo, HT or even DT (+quick expand and photons) depending on the situation.

[AFXFTW]

if he has EIGHT marauders and TWO ghosts at your base by the time your FIRST immortal is popping, then you need to seriously check your buildorder son. Also, forget all this forcefield micro crap. it's not reliable. You need to be getting your robo with with your first 100 gas. Then get your second geyser asap so you can afford warp gate tech + immortal pump, then slowly add the tech for collossi. The immortals will eventually start losing to the marauders on an even number of bases, but then your collossi tech should kick in and terran will have to snipe your collossi with vikings to have ANY chance on the ground.

[DemolitionSquid]

The two strategies we've found to be OK are pure Chargelots into HT's, and trying your Chargelots/Sentries into Immortal suggestion.

The interesting thing about spamming Chargelots is it creates a huge vulnerability to Terran air, which is actually where the HT excels. Feedback can be used on 4/5 of the Terran air units, killing Medevacs and Banshees in one hit. And the Viking can't attack ground unless it lands in which case Chargelots rape it.

Of course, that's all theorycraft. In reality, once you get enough Marauders and the Concussive upgrade you can hold off any number of Chargelots, and shrug off storms with micro and any Medevacs who aren't getting hit with Feedback.

The problem with the second is you need to have fantastic FF positioning and the ability to keep all your Sentries and Immortals separated so they're not all taken out by 1 EMP.

Expanding is also a hard part. To keep the M+G at bay you either need to block your choke or need to spread them with FF, cause confusion. But it gets hard the larger the corridor you grant them. On Lost Temple the entrance takes 4 FF to block... so you gotta be aggressive. You always have to be aggressive with P and it just ain't right. when T can sit behind his wall and do whatever he wants. Racial identity be damned.

@ AFX

I will continue to try strategies which ignore building gas units until Immortal. Its pretty much how the Zlot into HT needs to work anyway.

[AFXFTW]

Honestly, Dsquid, it's perfectly viable (with the exception of defending super-fast reaper rushes) not to build ANY combat units until immortal. The robo can come very quickly, and the immortal build time is really short, especially with chrono boost. Yeah, you can get a zealot as soon as your gateway pops, and yes, you get warp gate technology and start getting stalkers, but keeping a robo working full time will spend around 50% of the cash a base gives you. If you're also teching (warp in, charge/blink, attack upgrades, collossus/range), you're not going to have a lot of money for gateways and gateway units.

So I say start getting the immortals ASAP because if you don't, you will die to a quick immortal push. Once you have some reason to believe the push is not coming (or that you can defend it if it does come), you need to decide what to spend the rest of your money on. This is usually after you are able to scout the terran's tech with an obs or something similar.


The basic reason for all this is that immortals counter marauders in small battles, but marauders are more economical than immortals and scale more easily, and they also take up less space and have faster move speed, so that there is a point at which mass marauder + stim counters continued attempts to mass immortal. On the other hand, marauders counter collossi in small battles, but because of the range and splash of collossi, they scale much better than marauders and will counter any number of them in large battles - so there's an inherent tension in when you stop getting immortals and start getting collossi.

Intensifying this tension is EMP, which affects immortals much more than it affects collossi and can swing large battles dramatically in the terran's favor if there are no collossi. So you need to be gradually transitioning from an early immortal defense to collossus with air defense. (to stop the inevitable viking snipe)

[agentheart]

the probelm sounds like its your macro or economy
8 mara and 2 ghost
require 900 min and 500 gas atleast
add buildings comes out around 1100 min and 575 gas
and assume mara is upgraded maybe stim even even more gas around 700-900 gas
something wrong with your macro to not have an army when they spent that much gas

[DemolitionSquid]

I do have horrible macro. I'm a defensive and micro player by nature.

Also: new patch has added 15 seconds to Immortal build time. Fuck me.

[killias2]

Why did immortal build time get nerfed?

How is toss supposed to respond to fast reaper -> marines and marauders? I don't even understand anymore...