I'm just going to post some tips that will help you against battlecruiser's in general because my protoss homeboys are getting handled lately, especially since the feature of the month 1 battlecruiser 1 raven timing push was just introduced. Most people keep giving everyone the wrong advice. I noticed this on orb's stream when he got destroyed by the bc timing push and everyone in the stream was trying to tell him what to do and none of it was working. Generally, people say that the counter is to mass voidrays, get high templars for feedback, and use stalkers to pick them off. This never really works. In theory it sounds good, but it just rarely ever works unless you completely outnumber the terran army, which is rarely the case. First of all, void rays die too fast. Usually before they even charge up (unless you pre-charge) - especially since you will be against not only bc's, but marines as well. High templars are decent, you do 50-200 damage with your feedback and storm will handle the marine+marauder ball decently. You can also feedback the pdd's if you need to, or feedback the raven before it drops the pdd. The stalkers are also decent against bc's but the marauders and bc's will usually blast them way faster than the stalkers will blast the marauders/bc's. The real trick is to play standard, surprisingly. Standard PvT: 2gate+robo. You start off with your 2gate+robo and build the variety pack ground army. Many zealots + a few sentries + many stalkers + immortals. This will handle the majority of terran timing pushes and sets you up for an expansion and enough gas/mineral for templar tech. I won't go into the specifics of why that is, because that is not the focus of this topic. Standard play against BC+Raven+Marauder+Marine timing push These numbers are approximated as per what has worked for me, of course it will be slightly different for you because you will be adapting to what you see when you scout the other player with your observer. 1. I generally will build 1 zealot for each stalker I have, these are your meatshields. They will tank for you while your stalkers stay safely behind them. Keep in mind 1 zealot takes 15 hits from a marauder before it dies, a stalker only takes 8 so you need the zealots, even if they do no damage they are worth the money. If he tries to focus fire your stalkers, try to micro them backwards so that he has to run through your zealots. 2. I will build 3 sentries. I will put them in a separate control group, and use them to focus fire pdd's. The pdd's die to 3 sentries in less than 1 second (this is the simplest counter to early game pdds, other than just running out of range of it, sometimes there is no room to run). I will also use guardian shield instead of forcefielding, unless there are obvious forcefield opportunities that will put the other player in a huge deficit. 3. I will not attack the battlecruiser until everything else is dead, guardian shield is HUGE against bc's and marines. BC's attack very fast with very little damage so guardian shield takes away 20% of their damage I believe. It is important to kill the scvs before the battlecruiser, otherwise you may not have enough damage to kill it through the repairs. 4. I will ff marauders with my immortals if my apm allows it. But it is not a big deal if you just a-move them, this is just bonus. Standard play against Late game BC's with supplementary units Against late game bc's, the counter is still similar but with a few high tech units added on. 1. You should have high templar by now to deal with the inevitable marine+marauder balls. Everytime your high templar run out of energy, make them into archons. Feedback or storm the bc's if they are clumped, this won't do that much damage but it all adds up. 2. Guardian shield is still important, you should always have that up for your army, especially your archons. 3. Stalkers w/ blink are very good against bc's, but if you can't handle microing storms+guardianshields+blinking, then there really is little point in getting blink other than it being cheap (late-game) and efficient. I would still get it because it usually pays itself off, even if you only remember to use it in 1 fight, or 1 harass attempt. 4. Warp out a mother ship to vortex some of his bc's, if you get them all then DESTRUCTION ensues [LINK] 5. This last point is just generally how i play against terran so you may have a different experience. But I much prefer to upgrade armor or shields instead of weapon, I usually get all three eventually but I prefer taking less damage over doing more damage. This is for many reasons but mainly just 1. In late game PvT, all my units are more or less meatshields for my templar. The storms will be doing 80 damage with or without weapon+ upgrades and storming is the majority of my late game damage. I believe BC's do 10 damage every 0.25 seconds to ground units. 8 Damage with guardian shield, 7 damage with +1shield/armor. So in the end you can reduce them all the way to 5damage/0.25seconds rather than 10 (this is supposing he doesn't upgrade). Compound that with damage reduced by all the other terran units and it is mineral/gas well spent. I'm sorry that I won't be posting any replays, so you may question my credibility, or the effectiveness of my PvT strats. But I would hope that you at least try it one time before becoming another TERRAN IS OP, or BCS ARE UNBEATABLE protoss player. This post was more or less inspired by Orb's stream from 15 minutes ago when I saw him lose to battlecruisers and claim that they were unbeatable; I'm sure I should have just spend the time to get some replays to back up my words and give examples but I'd rather post this asap so that protoss players who are having lots of trouble with the new fotm strategy will get their heads back in the game. |
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Guides > Protoss guides >
PvT - Beating Battlecruisers |
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