Application

hi,

My name's Jimmeh and I'm a PC. Wait, that's not right. Let's start again.

My name's Jimmeh and I'm a 3k Master Terran. So, no, I'm not the best but, hey, at least I'm not the worst right?

My Battle.Net Profile: eu.battle.net/sc2/en/profile/230107/1/Jimmeh/


For my analysis I've chosen to discuss, what I view as, the over use of marauders in Terran vs Protoss and why I believe a larger percentage of marines, instead of marauders, will be used in the future of the matchup.

Or, as I prefer to put it, this is how I learned to stop maraudering and love the 'rine.

The Current State of TvP:
Currently, the "standard" method of playing as Terran vs Protoss is using a bionic style of play. There are several key reasons for this:

1) It has a high damage output; a large number of marines can deal a lot of damage to anything in the game, and marauders are, essentially, bionic unsieged tanks.
2) It's extremely mobile, allowing you to be aggressive at several places at once, thus exploiting the lesser mobility of the average Protoss army
3) It's cheap and easily replacable. If you go mech play vs any race, losing your army is a big deal as it takes a long time to rebuild. Bio, on the other hand, is cheap and replaces quickly. This is key are you are bound to lose a lot of units due to the high amount of damage the average Protoss army can output.

In the current state of play, Terran armies tend to use a lot of marauders with either a slightly higher amount or slightly less amount of marines. Essentially, I'd say the use of marauders/marines is about 50/50 on average.

The reasons marauders are used differ depending on what stage of the game they are currently being used for.

In the early game, marauders are more ideal vs everything the Protoss has than marines. Their concussive shell ability is extremly useful for kiting zealots and the range of stalkers allows stalkers to easily micro against marines without taking any armour damage. Not only that, but marauders are extremely effective against stalkers in terms of damage output.

Late game, the ratio of marauder/marine seems to shift towards marauders for one key reason; they have a lot more health than marines. As the game progresses, the Protoss army's damage output increases almost exponentially as colossi, high templar, void rays etc all get added into the mix. Marines, simply put, are too fragile to survive vs this army and just evaporate under fire. Marauders are viewed as essential because they are simply the only thing that survives versus a Protoss army.

The Problem With Marauders:
There is one, basic problem with marauders; their DPS vs anything not-armoured is pitiful. A pure marauder vs a pure zealot/sentry army should almost always lose assuming the Protoss uses forcefields correctly. Marauders are only good vs armoured units and unsupported zealots.

Why Marines?:
The DPS of a marauder vs un-armoured targets is 6.7. The DPS of a marauder vs armoured targets is 13.4.

Compare this to the DPS of a marine vs all targets: 7. Now at first glance, most people would think "well, that's only a tiny bit more than a marauder vs un-armoured targets, and vs armoured targets marauders are obviously more valuable."

The problem is when you compare the cost. For the cost of 1 marauder, you can get 2 marines (and save 25 extra gas). 2 marines deal almost the exact amount of damage vs armoured as 1 marauder, and vs unarmoured they are a lot more effective. Why wouldn't you build pure marines instead of marauders?

Well, the answer is, as previously stated, that marines have such low health compared to marauders (45 vs 125 hp) that they die almost instantly in any big battle. The question is, how do we solve this?

The Solution:
There are two and only two things that you have to worry about when using marines vs Protoss:
1) Colossi
2) high templar.

To counter these units the Terran is already forced to build vikings and ghosts respectively. This doesn't change when using marines, in fact it's even more essential.

Marines die almost instantly in storm, and die extremely fast to colossi. But, unsupported marauders are no different. The problem is that marauders survive a tiny bit longer than marauders so, even with bad reaction times, they should still live long enough for you to save them if you are attacked without noticing.

The key is, simply, to micro "better". To use pure marine (instead of a marine/marauder mix) you need faster reaction times and better unit control otherwise your units will die instantly. You need perfect EMPs, perfect splitting of marines (as you would vs tanks and banelings), perfect target firing etc. It is a lot, lot harder to go marine heavy.

... but it is possible, and, in my opinion, simply better! By having an army that deals twice your regular army's DPS you have a huge, huge advantage.

The benefits:
As previously stated, marines simply out DPS marauders. Late game, charge zealots are extremely effective vs Terran simply because there are less marines on the field and marauders are just unable to damage them. By swapping marauders for marines, these zealots will die almost instanly. This is true for every gateway unit and immortals.

Not only that, but, in my opinion, the future of Protoss late game will rely on stargate units being added into the "Protoss death ball" in a similar fashion to the current PvZ trend (colossus/void ray). Void rays and carriers deal a huge amount of damage, require less micro than high templar, and are a lot less fragile. Marines will counter this completely.

Further more, it is widely accepted that drops are essential for Terran in the mid/late game vs Terran. In a 200/200 fight, it's almost guaranteed that the Terran will lose so the Terran has to do as much economic harrassment via use of drops. Typically, this can be marauders for building killing or marines for probe killing. But, if you have a pure marine army already then by dropping only marines you will be able to do a lot more damage in the short time they survive (again, due to marine DPS).

here is an example of pure marine (as in instead of marauder/marine, other units are used) vs Protoss by myself. It's not the best example, as it does demonstrate at several points the fragility of marines, but I believe it also shows the benefits: replayfu.com/r/2V0Kgh


My replays:
A game played on my NA account demonstrating my TvZ play. replayfu.com/r/STxPzt

A TvT played in a recent, private, tournament which I went on to win. replayfu.com/r/SVw3Jn

Not sure if we're allowed to comment on people's apps. If not then an admin can delete my post.

After looking at your replay it looks to me like in every encounter you would have been better off with marauders + marines instead of pure marines. Your marines got melted by colossi every time you didn't have obvious viking superiority, and you basically won because 1. you FE'd and your opponent had an awful push, giving you a huge lead (and you could have just rolled him if you didn't get supply blocked so much) and 2. you killed off tons of his stuff with drops and attacking his bases while he was distracted (which you can also do with an MM composition).

So I learned that marines are still good before colossus tech and pretty awful afterwards. That said, your replay is a good stepping stone in to thinking about things like 2 rax no gas expand against protoss, or how you can use marines as a mineral sink while getting gas-heavy tech. It would have been nice if you focused on things like that rather than direct army conflicts.

(also, no combat shield in 27 min of pure marines? wtf?)

The point I failed to make in my original post, largely due to writing it at 4am in the morning, is that, as skill level and thus micro ability increases, marines will replace marauders as superior micro will negate a lot of the splash damage (think of pure marine vs marine tank, or pure marine vs banelings) and marines are a more cost effective unit in terms of damage output. Admittedly, as you said, my replay's a really bad example of it as, again as you said, there are a lot of fights I lost were I would have won if I had just had some marauders in the mix instead of marines.

Regarding 2 rax (gasless) expand vs Protoss, I find it's extremely, extremely effective. That little timing poke I do near the beginning (7 marines/2scvs) can outright kill certain builds and, if it doesn't, it can give you a fairly large advantage by allowing you to kill key units (i.e. sentries) as well as a fair amount of probes. The push itself was designed to exploit the inherent weakness of 4gate/3gate robo, that being the lack of units the average Protoss tends to build until they get the proxy pylon up. Even if you don't do the initial poke if you follow up with 2 more rax and then double gas, not only can you produce a ton of marines at a time when nothing can really kill them (unless Protoss is rushing for 1base colossus/high templar) allowing you to easily defend any early allin and then tech to whatever you need. The "using marines as a mineral sink whilst getting gas heavy units" is also something me and a friend have been experimenting with; he's had a lot of success of going marine/thor whilst I've been experimenting with marine/siege tank (to varying success).

Also, I didn't realise I'd forgotten combat shield that game. Whoops

Sorry about double post but I can't edit old posts due to guest.

I realised that in my last post I mention a push with my build that I never actually do in that game due the scouting information I get. Instead, here is an example of the same build but with the push:

Triple post -_-;; Forgot that it edits out urls. replayfu.com/r/XcN2Kh

Assuming you're going pure marines then you're going to end up with a large surplus of gas which should be accounted for in this build.

Possible gas sinks

fast double upgrades
ghosts
medivacs
vikings
ravens

upgrades are a must. Ghosts will be useful in general and absolutely necessary vs. storm. Medivacs will be great for drops and keeping the army healed although not as useful with a more marauder heavy army. Vikings are a no brainer vs. colossus.

Auto turret seems like an extremely strong way to potentially divert colossus fire to reduce splash. Additionally I've been playing around with hsm + emp as a way to quickly eliminate the protoss army.

With mass marine play, I don't feel that the armour upgrades are that important. The main things you need to worry about are colossi and high templar which, I feel, armour upgrades are useless against. The attack upgrades however are extremely important, as even just +1 attack gives an extra 20% damage output for your marines. In fact I feel that, if the stim timing nerf goes through, researching +1 attack instead of stim first will be more useful.

I agree with what you said about ghosts, they're completely essential vs high templar and, even if they don't have templar, one decent EMP can change the tide of a battle.

What you said about auto turrets vs colossus is an extremely interesting idea which I never considered. As ravens are already extremely useful for PDD against stalkers, and there will be a huge amount of gas spare due to the nature of mass marines, it sounds like a really plausible idea. Seeker missile + EMP combination also sounds effective, but I'm curious as to how effective seeker missile would be if the Protoss player has decent reaction times and is able to run away. At the very least, the ability to force the Protoss to run away whilst you remacro your bionic army sounds extremely useful. Also, if you are able to get a group of, say, 5-6 ravens (which should be fairly easy if you're using marines as a mineral sink) then you'd be able to split them up into multiple groups to harass mineral lines using autoturret without fear of them dying as PDD negates nearly all Protoss anti-air (except sentries, voidrays, carriers and the mothership I believe?).

Yeah marines are sick. I have a friend who had a game recently where he went pure marine vs a protoss who got up to t3 tech- pretty cool game if you're interested.
sc2replayed.com/replays/146746-1v1-terran-protoss-metalopolis

Also, your name came up in our recent meeting. So far your posting looks good, but we noticed you had only posted in this one thread. Feel free to start posting on the other threads in this section, we'll be sure to talk about you next meeting and posting on more threads will only increase your chances.

Ah I see. Sorry, I wasn't really aware of the etiquette involved in the applications and I thought posting in someone else's thread might be viewed as bad-mannered.

After that post though I'll definitely start replying to others