EPThttp://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=173615
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PvZ struggles
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=173615 Thanks! | ||
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LazyMacro
976 Posts
The thing with zerg is that they can replenish an entire army in no time. You, as I'm sure you know by this point, as a protoss player can't replenish an army quite so fast. So, they may show up with a maxed army, and you may destroy it, and then while you work on replenishing your losses they replenish all of theirs. You say that you show up at their main/nat only to find yet another army; if you're late game on multiple bases, you shouldn't be at their main/nat with your army. You should be at their expansions trying to kill those instead. You may initially crush their army in a fight, but they'll replenish and continue to fight your army, and eventually they'll overrun you. So, aim to use your army to prevent their army from killing your expansions, or use it to kill theirs. Simultaneously be harassing with DTs. Using a speed prism to drop DTs or just warp stuff in is going to help significantly. Rarely can I win a late game PvZ in a macro fight without simultaneously harassing their econ and hitting someplace else with my army. | ||
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SubtleArt
2710 Posts
Yea Zerg is almost guaranteed to lose the first fight vs a protoss army so Zerg strategy revolves around getting in a position where you can replenish that army quickly. It's not anything broken with late game Zerg, its just thats the way Zerg has to play cause there's no way you can get a zerg army more cost effective than a sentry/ stalker / zlot / collosus blob of death. And yea, Collosus are pretty ridiculous vs a hydra roach army so definitely try to build up large collosus numbers if you see Zerg powering on extended lair tech. One piece of advice I can give you without watching the replay is that playing v Zerg is a lot about timings, trying to catch him while he's making drones and not an army. One thing I find always is to look at the army graph after your game. Vs Zerg you should find that theres periods of time where your army is growing but his isn't, and you end up with a much bigger army. Then all of a sudden Zerg's army value just spikes over yours (which is when he's switched over to army production). That's a pretty basic concept of a timing window....during the time your army is bigger you have to attack him, and if you attacked after that then you were too late. I'll actually watch the rep in a few minutes and comment | ||
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Monk___
United States123 Posts
Eventually when your army is close to 200/200 its time to fight with zealot/stalker/sentry/collosus. Your 200 army should own his cause of the higher tech units. From here usually the zerg begins to make corrupters, which prompts me to change to immortal/stalker. The key here is I now tech to templar/storm so I can still hold off hydras/lings. Eventually I can over run the zerg as I am slowly taking bases each time I have an advantage. | ||
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
1) at early mid game you were quite sloppy with probe production. Watch the replay with only your nexus selected, youll se what I'm talking about. After a moment it seems like you sorta remember that and you start doing a good job at probe production. By far the biggest mistakes was imo the force fields Force fields force fields force fields use them, imo its the most powerfull spell Protoss has against Zerg. Yes , better than psyonic storm. At your first ground encounter you couldve completely raped him with force fields. but instead you just throw down 2 psy storm, he backs off, he comes back, you throw down storms, he backs off again. I'm not sure you even really killed anythign at all. now imagine those storms if he had had no room to back out. There was one proper use of force fields the entire game (at about 17 min), and that one was way too late The psy storm issue leads throughout the whole game, theyre just not doing much damage. And maybe some more experienced tosses will disagree with me on this but I think templar first is just generally a pretty bad idea. If he is going mutas, ok... but not against roach hydra. Colossi are fucking strong. If you have templars and he has roaches that can burrow its like storm is not even doing anythign at all. Especially when you have no obs, which is the next big mistake. At some point you build 2 robos but you dont really use them at all. Observers are important. A) for knowing what zerg is doing and B) for spotting burrowed units/buildings. like I said, storm vs roaches that can burrow -> storm useless if you dont have anything to spot. But really, burrowed roaches >>> ALL if you dont have observers. Also just look at the creep man It is spread to the entire freaking map, the entire map except the part right at your bases (and except for one little part in the smoke where you have a proxy pylon) That just makes him so so so much more mobile. And makes it a lot easier to snipe those nexi like he did. And you might as well give him maphack at that point because its pretty much what he has anyways with all those creep tumors. So yeah, get observers, kill those tumors. Of course there were some flaws with your whole void ray execution etc. as well but I wont talk about that since thats not what youre asking. I hope that helped, I think colossi+ good force fields + trying to not engage at wide places (making forcefields stronger) should help a lot. Btw im not saying you shouldnt go HTs ever, theyre great vs hydras and air units, just dont do it before the colossi imo. | ||
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
On December 14 2010 05:52 LazyMacro wrote: You say that you show up at their main/nat only to find yet another army; if you're late game on multiple bases, you shouldn't be at their main/nat with your army. You should be at their expansions trying to kill those instead. You may initially crush their army in a fight, but they'll replenish and continue to fight your army, and eventually they'll overrun you. So, aim to use your army to prevent their army from killing your expansions, or use it to kill theirs. You say that I should use my army to take out expos, but what with the protoss' ball's limited mobility often times it seems that I get intercepted, surrounded, etc by the zerg mass. Sometimes they will just ignore my army's aggression and backdoor me and snipe my expos. In this case I usually have to pull back because the zerg knows that his expansions are far more inexpensive to replace than mine are. If I'm not pulling my whole army to take out his expos and instead I'm warping some proxy units in at their expo, their army's mobility lets them stop my attacks with relative ease depending on how much $ I invest in the expo snipe. It is difficult to decide whether or not 6 zealot warp-ins is worth taking out a 300mineral expo that might not even be fully saturated = / If anyone gets a chance to glance at the replay, you'll see me do some harass with zealot warp ins but I think that threw off my army size back at my bases, so I'm not sure how effective the warp in attacks were. One more question: is building 5 or so cannons at all my expos worth the investment? Sometimes it feels like the cannons don't even slow them down enough to give me a chance of stopping the attack on a far-off expo. Thanks again guys. | ||
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
On December 14 2010 07:44 Freeheals wrote: Thanks for the feedback, some interesting things to think about. You say that I should use my army to take out expos, but what with the protoss' ball's limited mobility often times it seems that I get intercepted, surrounded, etc by the zerg mass. Sometimes they will just ignore my army's aggression and backdoor me and snipe my expos. In this case I usually have to pull back because the zerg knows that his expansions are far more inexpensive to replace than mine are. Of course he can do that when he's got the whole map covered in creep :p a) hes way faster b) he sees where your army is In my experience yea 6 zealots should always be worth taking out a hatchery, theyre not the most important part of your army anyways. One more thing about obsevers: if you had done good use of them you woulda seen ultras coming and could have gotten immortals out in time. | ||
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
go to 24:50 and lock the camera on your opponent to see the game from his point of view. That will show you his abuse of creep tumors. (note that he also couldve saved all those roaches had he just burrowed because you for some strange reason still didnt have observers after he has been killing you with burrow roaches the entire game) Man the more i rewatch it the crazier is to me that you didnt build observers this game ^^ | ||
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
On December 14 2010 07:57 7mk wrote: Another thing: go to 24:50 and lock the camera on your opponent to see the game from his point of view. That will show you his abuse of creep tumors. (note that he also couldve saved all those roaches had he just burrowed because you for some strange reason still didnt have observers after he has been killing you with burrow roaches the entire game) Man the more i rewatch it the crazier is to me that you didnt build observers this game ^^ Yeah my head was all over the place it didn't occur to me to make obs even though I dropped those two robos. I was thinking of switching over to immortal/stalker/templar but his endless attacks kept me pretty preoccupied. = / I'll see what I can do about all of that creep next time around. xP | ||
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Kenny
United States678 Posts
Keep in mind that as Protoss it is really important to have enough income for those high cost units (since Protoss has such powerful units). I know my advice isn't too in depth, however I hope it helps a bit. I'm a 2k+ Zerg. Good luck man! | ||
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
On December 14 2010 08:08 Kenny wrote: If he is going purely Roach/Hydra then you need to focus on taking an early expo/3rd if you can and getting that extra gas so you can double robo. If they are adding hydra collosus is the proper follow up. I can't watch the replay because I'm at work but generally Zerg when going Hydra/Roach can be taken out with proper force fields and good collosus micro to kill the hydra quickly. If he switches to Roach/Corruptor right away, that will be a bigger problem IMO. Hydra/ Roach is honestly easy to counter..Roach/Corruptor not so much. Keep in mind that as Protoss it is really important to have enough income for those high cost units (since Protoss has such powerful units). I know my advice isn't too in depth, however I hope it helps a bit. I'm a 2k+ Zerg. Good luck man! Thanks for the advice. My thought process was that because as soon as i went for colossi he would counter with corruptors, so I decided to tech directly to high templars instead of having to deal with teching up both trees. Is this generally a bad idea? As high templars have no direct counter that I can think of for zerg, I figured I was on to something. I think I heard somewhere that colossi are the go-to vs. zerg. Can anyone confirm this? Maybe I'm hearing things.. I'm laddering at the moment so I will try some colossi play if I get the chance vs zerg. Thanks again guys. | ||
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
On December 14 2010 09:39 Freeheals wrote: Thanks for the advice. My thought process was that because as soon as i went for colossi he would counter with corruptors, so I decided to tech directly to high templars instead of having to deal with teching up both trees. Is this generally a bad idea? As high templars have no direct counter that I can think of for zerg, I figured I was on to something. I think I heard somewhere that colossi are the go-to vs. zerg. Can anyone confirm this? Maybe I'm hearing things.. I'm laddering at the moment so I will try some colossi play if I get the chance vs zerg. Thanks again guys. Well if you watch the game youll see that his roaches actually countered your HTs pretty hard  Colossi are part of about every late pro game PvZ I've ever seen, so yeah they are the standard way to go. Recently there has been a trend to go very air heavy, phoenixes, void rays. but that usually ends up in a tech switch to colossi as well. Sure corruptors counter colossi but thats fine if you have enough stalkers. Like imagine this: he has roach hydra corruptors you have stalker sentry colossus. your colossi and stalkers and sentries (force fields!) rape his entire ground army while he kills your colossi with corruptors. At the end of the battle your colossi are dead, his entire ground force is dead and its 10 now useless corruptors vs 20 stalkers and some sentries. He's dead now. Very oversimplified of course and games will be played out very differently all the time but games like that do happen and not even that rarely. | ||
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Froadac
United States6733 Posts
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
Basically, the DT harassment and creep control has helped get me closer but I am still not winning PvZ. When it comes down to macro, It just seems impossible to keep up. | ||
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Froadac
United States6733 Posts
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7mk
Germany10157 Posts
ill go to bed now though | ||
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Hikko
United States1126 Posts
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
My personal suggestion is you go for 4 phoenixes from a single stargate (if you want to go the stargate route)- you can pick up 5-6 drones when your 4th one is finished, without much additional cost over the voidray/2 phoenixes. If you look at your economy compared to the Zerg's at that point in time, you would now be ahead by a few workers. Every 50 energy you can snipe another drone henceforth- you can imagine how this accumulates over the course of the game. Additionally, a single spore can't stop 4 phoenixes from doing damage- at worst you lose a single phoenix if you don't move out quickly enough. Zergs tend to overcompensate because they have to, so even if you do absolutely no damage, you're probably breaking even because they made a ton of spores, hydras, etc. Ignore queens- even if you kill them, you haven't really slowed them down that much (since he'll be producing them to fend you off early on). Also, you built way too many zealots- zealots are trash in PvZ unless they're going very heavy on zerglings, or you have a ton of minerals and nothing to spend them on. Compare a zealot to a roach 80/80 shields/hp and 16 damage vs 145 hp 16 damage... now factor in upgrades and the cost, the fact that roaches are ranged, etc. Zealots are not a cost effective solution to roaches. Zealots in small doses are fine, and in large doses if they're going really ling heavy, but your force should predominantly be stalkers. Furthermore, if they're roach heavy and you go high templar, they're just going to run away and regenerate. Zealot/high templar is perhaps the most cost ineffective way to deal with roaches. The staple of PvZ is stalker/sentry/colossi- mixing in zealots when you have excess minerals is fine. Later in the game, you mix in void rays/high templar/immortals to help swing things and deal with corruptors, ultras, etc. While you didn't post your second replay- the objective of the Protoss ball is not to break even- it is to curb stomp the Zerg into the ground. If you break about even with the Zerg, you've lost the game. The basic objective of the Protoss ball is to do the following: 1. Get a crap ton of stalkers. They're your grunts and keep your collosi safe. 2. Enough sentries so you can throw down forcefields so their roaches can't walk up and to your units do full- also enough for a few guardian shields, since their core units are pretty much all ranged. 3. Collosi to bring the hammer down on their ground force. 4. Attack before the Zerg economy is in full swing and/or they have broodlords or ultras. Usually they'll pick off your colossi with corrupters- however, they will have to sacrifice their corruptors to do so if you micro your collosi back carefully. The trick is to force them into losing more corruptors than the collosi are worth. And once you engage, for it to be completely irrelevant if they kill all your colossi. Furthemore, do not forget you can always run away- you have to sack your sentries, but your stalkers have blink, so if things start getting bad, you can always run away and come back when your next round of colossi/sentries are done (you can also forgo sentries because once the Zerg is on his back foot, they aren't quite as necessary). As long as you're careful about point #4, you can be on an even economy with the Zerg or ahead- the better you do at that, the more likely you just roll them with your ball of death. | ||
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
On December 14 2010 13:21 Froadac wrote: Do you have a replay for that? I"d be more than willign to rip it apart for you Here it is. Let me know if there are any problems with the download. It's against the exact same zerg from last game. http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=173948#/replay_overview I have a hunch that if I kept my army at his 2nd expo that maybe I could've delayed it enough for me to get a decent lead, but who knows how that would have worked out. | ||
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
You had him down to 7 drones and no queens, and no minerals in the bank. The game is effectively over at this point (or it should be)- you should know how many drones you have killed, roughly how many drones he could possibly have at that point, how many lings he's built, etc. You also know he has 4 spine crawlers and is sitting on his back foot because he's worried about whatever force you're going to followup with- so he's probably building zerglings too. You need to get to the point where thinking about how badly you've hurt him is automatic, and more importantly, where you stand relative to him. After you saw the massive amounts of spine crawlers, I would have immediately withdrawn and expanded, and started pumping out sentries while teching to colossi. You're already ahead economically at this point- not by much, but once the expansion goes down and you've been chronoboosting probes out like a mad man, you will be. It worked out in your favor that you didn't, because the runby did way more damage and would have set you up for the easy win if you knew what to do. However, you kept trying to pressure him after the runby when there wasn't any point in doing so, spending a lot of minerals that could have been spent on teching or more expansions. Your expansion timing was okay given the circumstances- what was not okay was missing a lot of chronoboosts and a few probe building cycles. Also- I suggest maynarding your probes to your expansion (ie, if you have 30 probes on minerals, move 15 to your expansion when the Nexus finishes- the difference in worker saturation means a huge boost income even with the time lost from mining). If you keep up with the chronoboosts, this will generally give you an instant (although transient) income lead on the Zerg in a more normal situation. You built too many zealots again... most of those are going to die to roaches before they even get a hit in... furthermore, the amount of sentries you built considering your zealot numbers was highly excessive. In general, you do not want to get anymore sentries than is necessary (this depends on preference to some extent)- they don't do much damage, and they suck up 100 gas each. Get them early, and then build up energy on them, and then only build more if you need to. To put your army in perspective this is what you both had before the first big fight: 16 zealots 6 colossi 11 stalkers 10 sentries only +1 attack vs 48 roaches 7 corruptors Those 16 zealots are all going to die to roaches pretty much instantly... think about it. 48*16=768 damage. Ignoring armor, your zealots are all dead in roughly 3 roach attacks. How much damage did they do? No where near that, especially if you forcefield to block the roaches from encroaching on your colossi (and given you had 10 sentries, you almost had as many melee prohibiting units as melee units!). You get rid of 5 sentries that frees up 500 gas, which is 10 stalkers. Get rid of 2 colossi and all of your zealots could be stalkers. You now have a force of 27 stalkers, 4 collosi, and 5 sentries- if you forcefield properly and guardian shield, very few of your stalkers are going to die, and they do enough damage to one shot corruptors (pretty big deal, especially if you forcefield well since you can focus fire corruptors). Your forcefields need work- I think you were conflicted between preventing them from getting too close and letting your zealots be able to attack. Don't get zealots, and don't let those roaches anywhere near your army- 48 roaches is a crap ton of roaches. After that, none of it really matters- he's already got a massive lead, even after you sniped the hatchery. Killing drones is waaay more important. You let all but 1 of them escape! So in summary you need to: 1. Have a better handle on the economic situation. 2. Exploit the economic situation when you can- expand! Chronoboost probes! Chronoboost upgrades! +3 attack is absolutely critical! 3. Work on your army composition some more- stalker/colossi/sentry should be the bulk of your army right around when the first massive battle breaks out. Only build zealots if the amount of zerglings forces you to or you have lot of extra minerals (even then- think twice about it, you could be expanding!). 4. Use your sentries more effectively- forcefield to prevent roaches from doing damage to your army, guardian shield to block more damage, and if you have the energy, to cut off his army from retreating (worry about this last, because if you do the other two things well, this probably won't even matter). | ||
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Freeheals
United States488 Posts
I just finished another PvZ with the same zerg on blistering sands which led to a macro battle that I won thanks to some map awareness and army composition as well. Let me know if you or anyone wants to take a look at that. Regarding the no-zealot proposition you had, those zealots are usually reactions to me scouting or being harassed by some speedlings. My question is, how do I know that he won't reinforce his roach/corruptor army with speedlings (possibly in a flank?!)? Unless I want to box my own army in with forcefields rendering my stalkers immobile I feel like zealots in some capacity are a good addition. As you said zer0 I did have 16 which I agree should not be such a large number, but, would having 8 zealots or so in the mix really hurt? They soak up damage and take care of a zergling flank with ease. Zealot / stalker / colossi / ~5 sentries sounds like an excellent composition. Also, when zerg pumps out corruptors to counter my colossi, is it a good idea to switch to immortal temporarily or should I stick it out and keep pumping stalker / colossi? Thanks again | ||
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zer0das
United States8519 Posts
Also keep in mind that colossi/forcefields severely limit what zerglings can do. Once your ball hits a certain size and you have colossi, zerglings are practically useless. You might have to throw down some forcefields, but I can't ever recall a situation where zerglings completely turned a battle on their own once I had the ball of death rolling. Generally I keep rebuilding colossi- the more they snipe your colossi, the more corruptors you are killing. The larger your stalker count gets, the more costly it gets for them to do. It depends on their units composition of course- if they're just going roaches with few or no hydra, I usually start mixing in immortals (from double robos), then restart building colossi again to keep them honest. It is somewhat difficult to kill pure roaches with colossi now, but usually they go hydra/roach so rebuilding your colossi is the best option. | ||
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