[TvP - Masters] Is building one raven bad? (mid to late game)

NoseKnowsAll · 3 months

If you're in the late game then yes you can build whatever you want. However, let me only consider mid game where actual timings and unit comps are important.

1) What's going to kill you in big engages is HTs, archons, chargelots, and/or collosi. None of these are solved with a raven.

2) Detection isn't (or at least shouldn't) be a problem once you're on 3 bases because hopefully your first 3 ccs become OCs. Also nobody's ever lost their ARMY due to DTs. They only have lost their mineral line to DTs, and unfortunately your raven's not going to be there anyway so it doesn't even solve the DT problem.

3) Because you NEED to have a reactored starport (and sometimes 2) in order to keep up on your medivac and viking count, you can't actually afford to build a raven due to its build time. You more or less lose 4 vikings on a reactored starport if you decide to switch off and get a raven. 4 vikings will mean you live or die to 2 collosi.

4) Lastly, the raven is only good once you've accumulated energy on it (auto-turrets aren't gonna win you games). However, this leaves it ridiculously susceptible to feedback, so what ultimately happens is the toss opponent will see the raven and then target it first with a feedback->Insta-dead raven.

DON'T WORRY THERE ARE PROS TO A RAVEN!

The best thing I've ever seen a raven used for is PDD+double medivac droppage in the mid to late-mid game. No longer can zealots+stalkers just be warped in to deal with a drop because none of the stalkers will be able to shoot the medivacs down, so you can drop, kite the zealots, kill a building or two, and the gtfo without losing a single HP to the medivacs.

The second best thing I've seen them used for is observer snipe-age just before engages->cloaked ghosts. Most masters+ toss players, however don't just use one observer on their army in order to see if the opponent has ghosts; they use them near the engages to find out where the battles will happen. Thus, this doesn't happen too often, but you might get lucky.

Overall - I really don't think the raven ends up paying for itself based on how fragile it is and how much you have to commit in order to get one. Plus it's such a pain to have it in your army due to it always getting priority whenever you select units. That being said - it does have its uses, but I think it's too situational to commit too much for it.

NauticalInsanity · 3 months

As a protoss player, a viking and a raven are annoying to deal with because it's almost an instant snipe of observers. It makes ghost cloaking so much more effective as a way to set up EMPs.

xaviiUT · 3 months

They are useful in certain situations. Many toss like to throw down a DT shrine around 3-4 bases to harass expos and drop. If you have 2 starports (which i usually do on 3 base, especially if he goes colo) it's totally worth it to throw a TL on it for a raven. PDD is nice, anyway.

Giantorange · 3 months

No one gets motherships in TvP because lategame TvP you have a million scans and vikings rape everything and the archon toilet doesn't really work on ground units since the nerf.

If an obs can see your army that's because you made a mistake and should have scanned it. Raven's cost a ton of gas and can be fedback and you have to go out of your way to make a tech lab starport to make it.

Raven's are not particularly useful when you have so many scans(which are generally free since mass orbitals lategame tvp are almost the norm at this point) available. Better to spend your money on another ghost or more nukes.

Stooben · 3 months

It's a very situational unit. It's necessary if there's a mothership on the field. If they toss is stalker heavy it's extremely useful. The toss should always have several obs around the map. It's a general rule of thumb to have one outside their base, one outside yours and one scouting for tech. Sniping obs is very nice, but late game you can probably afford to spend a scan on sniping an obs rather than a mobile 200 gas unit. It's sometimes useful to throw down turrets if the pdd won't be useful... but rarely. The turrets are even a means to shut down mineral lines of poorly defended expos.

All in all I don't think they're worth much late game.

measuredinyears · 3 months

Yeah, it probably is bad. For one thing, it fucks up control groups. You can't just ignore this fact. Before the raven dies, it'll take first priority and you have to hit tab once, after it dies and you hit tab you won't stim your units. And it'll die a lot since it moves at a different speed from your other units. Unless you dedicate an entire hotkey to that one raven or something...

Late game TvP scans should be pretty plentiful, anyway.

sheerstress · 3 months

I love making ravens earlier on, of course I ve been opening cloak banshee every game so its very convienient anyways. If you can fit it in its definitely worth it to protect your vikings/banshees but with typical bio TvPs you will probably need a certain number or vikings/medivacs to be safe first. You typically need to build more than 1 starport by late game anyways though so you may as well get a raven on the 2nd one

ThirdEyedea · 3 months

There's so many advantages to having a Raven in mid-late game for Terran especially vs. Zerg. They serve similar purposes to the Science Vessel in a way.

•I've seen players do marine drops with raven support to fend off mutalisks with seeker when the medivacs were being chased down by a muta-ball.

•No scans necessary for burrowed banelings, infestor hit-squads, etc.

•I've seen players send a seeker missile to one of their own marines and stim run it into Zerg's army with great results.

•Point-defense drones are fucking amazing vs. mutalisks...like to the point where thors/ravens would completely render mutalisks useless even more.

•Terran needs air anyways, so why the fuck not?

bakemonoda · 3 months

put the raven in the control group with the vikings, your vikings comeout unscathed usually when sniping collusus with a PDD

Raven is a key unit in 111 as it negates stalkers, so you can kite zealots without taking much damage

I usually get 1 at the start, i.e. after banshees then swapping over to a reactored starport, it usually survives the whole game, as it gets rid of observers early game, and pdd so helpful against early stalker engagements

cubeofsoup · 3 months

Late game if you scout a fleet beacon, absolutely should get one or two up to negate the cloak of the mothership. Most P will have numerous observers up scouting, raven could help deny vision. Similarly for TvZ you could use the raven to kill creep spread instead of using CC energy on scans.

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