When reading through this question, one part of tzenes' answer describing the 4Gate build caught my attention in particular:
This Attack should be at about 6:00
minutes into the game.More than likely your first attack
will not come at the 6 minute mark,
but at the 7:30-8, and this is sort of
the difference between a Silver/Bronze
player and a Diamond player, those 2
minutes; because if you can launch an
attack two minutes earlier, its likely
he'll have half the army and won't be
able to handle you. So you're goal
then becomes: getting that attack down
to the 6 minute mark.
As a Terran player, I've been working on the 3 Rax Stim push for a while(and am still in Bronze league unfortunately, although it seems like that may change soon), but don't have a very good idea as to what sort of target time I should be trying for with my build. Having a target time as a goal seems like a good sort of guideline for fine-tuning my build and, hopefully, eventually steamrolling my Bronze comrades.
So I'm curious: what target time should I be aiming for with my 3 Rax Stim timing push?
Best Answer
So, I think I'll start with the TL;DR: ~6:00
The 6 minute timing window is kind of a new thing that started with Starcraft 2. It grew out of two really nice timing pushes: 3 Rax and 4 Gate.
One of the things Protoss and Terran players realized fairly early on is that if you have 3 Rax or 4 Gate you can make a fairly stable timing push off one base. Initially these pushes came in at around the 8 minute mark. This wasn't because 8 minutes was a necessity, but rather because thats when players had to push or risk running into a fully functioning 2 base economy. These 1 Base pushes were capped by the time it takes to get a 2 Base up and running.
To counter this, many Zerg players moved to a 15 FE build. Additionally, some Protoss started going 2 Gate and Terran 1 Rax Bunker rushes. These builds exploited the weakness of the 15 FE, but also provided good pressure against the much later 8 Minute 3Rax/4Gate builds.
However, 3Rax/4Gate are solid numbers not because of their timing push, but because they allow you to easily monopolize a single base. In response to this earlier pressure or FE builds, people started to tighten up their 3Rax/4Gate, and we started seeing things like the 3Zealot/3Stalker push. It was in this atmosphere that gave birth to bizarre builds like 7Roach Rush and 3 Stalker Rush, because it nicely beat out a 6 minute timing push despite being dismal builds.
Ultimately the 6-6:30 timing mark provides a good balance of pushing FE builds when their economy isn't yet running, while still providing enough troops to actually cause damage.