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NOTE! When I use the words 'imbalanced' or 'overpowered' in this blog, I am using it to refer to the public's opinion, not what I believe to be fact. So when I say "PvZ is imbalanced", I mean "the public opinion is that PvZ is imbalanced."
This is my very first blog on TL. I just wanted to pose a question to the TL public that's been bothering me quite a bit recently, and I thought a blog would be a good place to do it.
There will, obviously, be balance discussion in this blog and the replies to it. I only ask you to please try and keep it civil.
My thoughts are in the spoiler tags. However if you want a TL:DR,
Why has Protoss suddenly become so grossly overpowered vZ, when they've had few buffs and even an entire strategy (VR/Colossi deathball) nerfed?
+ Show Spoiler +The overwhelming opinion of PvZ at the moment is that Protoss is overpowered. One just has to look ... well, anywhere really to find countless people vehemently declaring the matchup completely broken.
My question is why? What has caused this imbalance? I know the reasons Zerg players give, that Colossi are OP, force fields are too effective, zerg is too weak early game etc etc, but why has the shouting of "Protoss OP!" reached such a crescendo lately?
If we look at the last two patches and their changes to Zerg and Protoss, we see:
Patch 1.2
Protoss:
Hallucination research time decreased from 110 to 80.
Observer cost decreased from 50/100 to 25/75.
Phoenix build time decreased from 45 to 35.
Void Ray now deals 20% more damage to massive targets.
Flux Vanes speed upgrade removed.
Some fairly strong buffs there. However I have not heard any complaints, at all, that protoss scouting is too good.
The void ray got a decent buff against ultralisks and broodlords. The pheonix got a pretty massive buff, and with it we've seen a big rise in early pheonix/void ray play.
There were no changes to Zerg in 1.2. It was after patch 1.2 that the Void Ray/Colossi deathball became a hot topic. General consensus among Zerg players was that it was overpowered, and something needed to be buffed/nerfed desperately.
Let's look at patch 1.3
Protoss:
Archon toilet was removed. A nerf, but not one that really had any great effect on the matchup.
Warp-in storms were removed.
Charging zealots now hit their target at least once. As far as I am aware, this really had no effect on PvZ.
Zerg:
Fungal growth duration halved (From 8 seconds to 4 seconds)
DPS of Fungal doubled to compensate for the reduced duration
+30% damage to armoured.
With this change, at least from what I've seen/heard, the Colossi/Voidray deathball fell out of favour - fungal was just too good against it. In an interview, the zerg player IdrA even said that protosses are favouring more gateway centric armies in a response to the fungal buff.
So doesn't that just leave the pheonix as a unit that got buffed without a counter-buff to Zerg? And yet I see and hear no-one saying that the pheonix is the unit making Protoss overpowered.
I should mention the new maps here as well. Are they contributing to the PvZ imbalance? As far as I am aware, Shattered Temple is considered good for Z, are the other three additions P favoured?
From what I've seen, (and I stress that this is just my opinion) there are really only two things people believe are breaking PvZ.
The first are Colossi. The second are force fields.
And since neither of those things have gotten any kind of buff recently, why has protoss suddenly become so imbalanced? The way the community is reacting to PvZ at the moment is insane.
I guess I kinda rambled a bit there, haha. I apologise if my thoughts were hard to follow!
Whether they were or not, please, respond with your own! If you thought PvZ was always imbalanced, why has there been such an explosion in "Protoss OP!" opinions recently?
If you think they only recently became OP, why do you think that is?
And if you DON'T think they're OP at all, why do you think people believe they are?
I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys think about the whole thing. Because I have absolutely no idea.
  
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the main reason is because when you make 2 stargates when you have forge FE'd, he needs to go hydras because you can pump a rediculous amount of phoenixes in no time. When you are getting hydras, the toss is alrdy getting his robo facility down and pumping colossus and void rays. This makes it rly hard to survive the initial pushes without any severe losses.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Has to do with maps, larger maps encourage Protoss to Macro, and there is no way to stop it as Zerg has little to no aggression save from huge investements(such as drop play). Mutalisks aggresive gets shut down by phoenixes ezmode. Because Protoss is able to Macro up to a certain point their deathball becomes unstoppable.
It has more to do with maps in my opinion then patch changes, that is not to say that maps should revert or whatever, but it is a possible explanation.
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It's just the fact that the Protoss ball is so hard to beat head on. It's so easy to win a PvZ if you just go for the deathball mix and a-move. There is no counter to colossus, which is kind of a big deal (and no, corruptors aren't a counter to colossus).
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Ahhhhhh I forgot about the maps! Thanks for bringing that up Kipsate. I will add that to the OP, to make sure nobody misses it.
And disco, why do you think people are so vocal about it now? Considering that Colossi haven't been buffed or anything.
Falcon, thank you for your input. That's one of the kinds of things I want to see - builds or tactics that have been influenced by the latest patches or metagame shifts
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On April 13 2011 18:38 Sarang wrote:
[...]
And disco, why do you think people are so vocal about it now? Considering that Colossi haven't been buffed or anything.
Probably because protosses only recently started macroing more (and figuring out unit mixes). It's the reason why I (as a Zerg) started to play more agressive instead of trying to outmacro the P.
It could ofcourse be that zergs are not doing it right. For instance dealing with the Stalker + 3 to 4 colossus mix. Pure hydra/ling would take care of the stalkers no problem but they would get demolished by the colossus. So people decide to put some roaches in there to take some damage and use corruptors to kill the colossus. The problem is that even if your corruptors manage to take out the colossus in time (before they've already done significant damage) you will have still wasted tons of resources (and food) on now useless corruptors.
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Possibly silly question, but why do zerg players try to fight 200/200 with protoss armies? surely since the dawn of starcraft, protoss has been expensive strong units while zerg has been cheaper massable units?
I very rarely see zerg players load up 50 supply and nydus into the protoss main then remax quickly. Even if lost completely, wouldn't that 50 supply of units be better spent killing a few gateways, pylons and possibly tech structures, than lost for the price of a few collosus and stalkers?
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On April 13 2011 18:35 disco wrote:
(and no, corruptors aren't a counter to colossus).
Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out.
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Idra had 20 corruptors against void ray + colossus and got wrecked in the TSL. They arent a terribly efficient unit unfortunately.
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Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out.
I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile.
I guess to some degree I do understand though, one could argue that the deathball is harder to prevent from ever happening than it is to make it.
But then again there's a lot of easy to execute strats which you need to take time to figure out how to deal with them.
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On April 13 2011 19:30 Linkirvana wrote:Show nested quote +Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out. I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile. I guess to some degree I do understand though, one could argue that the deathball is harder to prevent from ever happening than it is to make it. But then again there's a lot of easy to execute strats which you need to take time to figure out how to deal with them.
No they haven't. Terran was always the main target for complaints. Protoss was rarely complained about, and before patch 1.2 Protoss was considered underpowered even. After Patch 1.2, Zergs started acting as if protoss were too powerful (the voidray buff was a bit too much but nvm), and Terran players just joined in because they wanted to attack protoss as payback for all the Protoss QQ about Terran. Now with Patch 1.4 all of a sudden Zerg QQ increased at a rate of x^4, with the amulet nerf, saying protoss needed more nerfs....
Protoss is difficult to play against as Zerg in early-midgame, but late game it becomes easy. Masses of Ultralisk, lings, and banelings annihilate ground no question. The problem I have is with the voidrays. I think this is really the main problem with most players. A lot of them think it is the collosus, but if it really was, then mass mutalisk would pwn (mutalisks do destroy stalkers at equal upgrades so those are not a problem). Mass corruptor would also be another solution, but voidrays do too well vs those. Also in PvP mass voidray is a massive problem. People say it is collosi, but reall once the enemy has 15 voidrays, gl with your stalkers LOLOLOLOL. A bit off topic but really voidrays are the problem in this case.
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On April 13 2011 19:30 Linkirvana wrote:Show nested quote +Thats ridiculous, since when can colossi attack air units? therefore corrupter's are a counter. Anyway... in PvZ, most zerg are contempt with letting the protoss get 3-4 base nowa-days, which is kinda bad. This allows the protoss' macro to be very good and achieve the goal of 200/200. If a zerg puts pressure on and stops the toss getting maxed out he will most likely win.. but then it will come down to toss' forcefields and if he can micro effectively. In my opinion Protoss is not over powered and i play Zerg, people just QQ because they don't realize how important it is to deny the toss' expansions and stop him getting maxed out. I completely agree, I don't get why this blog was made. A lot of people whine about Protoss being overpowered. And they have for quite awhile.
Eh, you can't really deny that the 'whine' has increased dramatically lately though, can you? That's why I made this blog, I want to know what has happened to the metagame to fuel the storm of "Protoss is OP!"
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Lalush made a really cetailed post about it a while back, called "on macro mechanics" or something
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Eh, you can't really deny that the 'whine' has increased dramatically lately though, can you? That's why I made this blog, I want to know what has happened to the metagame to fuel the storm of "Protoss is OP!"
Actually I haven't, people have been whining for quite awhile now about it like I said, ever since I've been active on these forums (Like, since november or so) I've just seen the occasional Protoss OP stuff.
The deathball has been around ever since then as well atleast, if anything the whining should be less since Zergs have kind of figured out how to deal with it.
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
I don't think zvp is imbalanced anymore. I don't know about other players, but I been completely dominating zvp after the infestor buff. Even vs colossus, I just mass roach infestor and not bother with corrupters. I think zerg players just have to learn how to use the new infestor properly. Although, I believe that part of the reason that I'm winning in zvp is because protoss players still think they could autowin with forcefields and colossus. I'm in Grandmaster so I think my opinions are relevant in high level NA starcraft.
zvp is only imbalanced on certain maps nowadays. One such imbalanced map is Typhoon peaks. There's so much small chokes on that map that it's impossible to engage a protoss ball properly.
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I think ultras need to be buffed (..or maybe people just need to use them more) to be actually effective against toss (not not too effective against Terran D so their forcefield crushing ability stops making roach/hydra useless. Because good forcefields just nullify roach hydra.
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Once toss gets a deathball, zerg just has to overkill on corrupters. 2 corrupters for every voidray is about right, then throw that at the toss, and remax on hydras.
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I don't think my skill play is high enough to judge the balance of the game but something has bothered me for quiet some time now about Protoss and this thread opens the chance for me to express my thoughts.
I will state something below and id like to see some opinions on it , in the opposite i hope i am seeing this wrong from my eyes.
"High Templar , sentry , colossus have something in common and that's that they can make the opponent dance his way and its up to the opponent to dance or if he doesn't he dies by forcefields ,storms or colossus hits."
My view is that Protoss has the slight upper hand on that matter and its up to the opponent to do some insane micro.
Anyway that's my point of view and just enlighten me if i am viewing it wrong rather than flame me.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
On April 13 2011 21:47 Knap4life wrote:
I don't think my skill play is high enough to judge the balance of the game but something has bothered me for quiet some time now about Protoss and this thread opens the chance for me to express my thoughts.
I will state something below and id like to see some opinions on it , in the opposite i hope i am seeing this wrong from my eyes.
"High Templar , sentry , colossus have something in common and that's that they can make the opponent dance his way and its up to the opponent to dance or if he doesn't he dies by forcefields ,storms or colossus hits."
My view is that Protoss has the slight upper hand on that matter and its up to the opponent to do some insane micro.
Anyway that's my point of view and just enlighten me if i am viewing it wrong rather than flame me.
Only HTs are efficiently countrable with micro, there is no way you can micro yourself out of forcefields, they are already in place.
Forcefield is onesided micro, sure you can try and outmanaveur and engage the Protoss in open ground as opposed to a choke, but a Protoss can create chokes with forcefield. There is no way to insanely micro yourself out of forcefields(not efficiently anyway). While creating forcefields requires micro on the Protoss his part, a zerg has no way of efficiently nullying these things as they are unbreakable by anything bar ultralisks, which come out at a way too late of a stage.
It is one of the flaws of SC2(in my opinion)
That being said however force field is a neccesary mechanic to the Protoss for early to midgame and can not be changed that easily, it is also an interesting spell, so changing it would be incredibly hard.
All in all, balance discussion is not where something constructive will come out really, you can complain all you want, but nothing is going to change.
Be the change you want to see in Starcraft 2.
I'd say Gandhi said that but he didn't play SC2 :>.
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Just an info
Damage of Fungal wasn't reduced, the duration was, therefore the part where you say "DPS wasn't changed" is wrong, it actually doubled.
//tx
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On April 13 2011 22:54 Tschis wrote:
Just an info
Damage of Fungal wasn't reduced, the duration was, therefore the part where you say "DPS wasn't changed" is wrong, it actually doubled.
//tx
Ahh, thanks for picking that up. I'll change it now.
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I don't know if anyone else feels the same way and I'm sorry if I offend any zerg by saying this but I think they're just looking at the matchup wrong. If a toss is going heavy phoenix/void ray early game it means that they don't have a lot of gateway units and if you just flood lings up their ramp phoenix/void ray is terrible against mass ling and they probably will only have like 5 or so gateway units. In the words of Day[9], sometimes your best option is to just go fuckin kill him.
Mondragon showed an incredibly cool style of zerg play that just ignored the P air army. I think zerg needs to realize the strengths and weaknesses of their race. They are really good at sending massive amounts of cheap units at their enemy that are NOT cost effective. Fighting head on is almost never a good idea in ZvP. Why play into the enemy's strength and ignore your own?
It just blows me away when I see zergs rage when they lose a 200/200 fight. You're not supposed to win that. Stop QQing and play your race the way it was meant to be played. If you don't like playing that way then chances are zerg isn't for you.
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I think it's a combo of small things and that's why there has been difficulty articulating the issue.
The way I see it the phoenix build time buff creates a small problem for zerg -- you need more anti-air... spores, hydras, but this isn't game breaking in itself (still I feel hydras need to be a bit cheaper and come out on hatch tech).
Warpgate is problematic for zerg, you have to constantly scout around 5-7 minutes for it. It takes away the defender's advantage to a degree. Warpgate is actually similar to Nydus but stronger IMO, as it comes earlier and only costs 100 minerals for a pylon. Making warpgate come later, or harder to tech to would help zerg a bit. Dunno how it would affect pvt...
Void ray + collo + stalkers is still the major problem. Colossus need their splash nerfed and/or need lower health. Every zerg, when they engage the deathball, is really only concerned about the collosus, if they don't your ground army evaporates. If collo were more like reavers then zerg might have a chance. As it stands, void rays charge up while the collo are being killed and zerg loses the DPS battle. Even if Zerg destroyed 95% of the protoss infrastructure, if they can't kill the deathball they will lose.
Zerg tier 3 stinks. 90% of the time blinked stalkers can completely negate both tier 3 units.
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It seems that through a combination of semi-recent patches and shifts in the metagame and map pool, Protoss players have had a much better understanding on how to beat Zerg in a PvZ now compared to several months ago when Protoss players were rarely found in the upper rounds of the GSL.
Firstly, I think the buffs to the phoenix and void ray have really encouraged air-based openers that force hydra, which in turn becomes vulnerable to a tech switch to Colossus if the air play doesn't outright kill the Zerg. We saw GuineaPig blow us away with his brilliant air openers in GSL3, and it seems like his innovation has been adopted by many Protoss players and incorporated into standard builds.
Secondly, although the larger maps were designed to help Zerg macro, they also had the less-than-intended side effect of perhaps aiding Protoss macro a bit too much. Early games on Crevasse brought an air of worry as Protoss players would try to max out a deathball in relative safety with little to no effective pressure from the Zerg. Greedy Forge FEs are much more common on these larger macro maps, and the fact that 3rd bases are easily taken and defended by P in addition to Z means that the "standard" Protoss strat of amassing a deathball off of 3 base is much more popular.
Of course, the pendulum of the metagame can easily swing back in favor of the Zergs if some new revolutionary innovations are made for Zerg play. Honestly, I'm not quite sure about what kind of buffs or nerfs Blizzard can hand out to Protoss and Zerg without unbalancing the other matchups.
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4 things that make the match up annoying in my opinion.
1) The Phoenix opening is amazing for Toss. The only true counter to Phoenix is Corruptors, which are slow and expensive, or Spores, which aren't that great of an investment. Hydras are NOT a counter. You have to invest more in Hydras than a Protoss has to invest into Phoenix to actually defeat the Phoenix. A counter is something that will kill another unit in a cost-effective way. Not only do you have to have more Hydras than Phoenix to kill them, but you also have to keep moving those slow things around from base to base while the Phoenix tear apart your drone line or snipe queens.
2) The Corruptor is an air to air anti-air unit, but it sucks at doing it's job. It can't even defeat Void Rays. How can a ATG/ATA unit destroy an ATA counter so easily? It's ridiculous. The Corruptor should be better against the Void Ray (or better in general). It's quite annoying that Zerg has to invest into 2 Corruptors (4 food) per Void Ray (3 food) the Toss invests into just to destroy the air. In other words, Zerg has to invest 300/200 to kill a 250/150 unit and Zerg will only be left with a 19 HP Corruptor. That again means the Corruptor is not a counter. Blizzard needs to buff the Corruptor and make it 3-food equivalent unit (damage & money wise). In other words, make it actually useful. Even if the Zerg does kill all the air, he still has the Colossus left to deal with and if there are no Colossus, then the Corruptors are dead weight in the army further weakening a Zerg's army.
3) Forcefields give the Protoss way too many outs in certain situations and can nullify any mistakes a Protoss makes. I hate how Protoss can just herp derp around a map without any care in the world. If they get into a bad position, they can just create a wall of forcefields and run away to higher ground or a better position for them. Forcefields can effectively negate any stupid mistakes a Protoss makes. What happens if a Zerg engages in a choke or a Terran doesn't siege up his army in time? They get rolled over, but Toss gets this magical unit that can negate doing something stupid. The only way to "fix" this is to make Forcefield a channeling ability, like Graviton beam. This way, if the Protoss makes a stupid mistake, he will have to sacrifice something to save his army. In this case, it would be 600 gas in units, which would be a completely fair trade. Protoss would either have to stop production of their Colossus/VRs/Immortals to get more Sentries out or just not get more Sentries.
4) Forcefields can easily make a 200-food army useless. Forcefields are way too easy to spam. That's really the only thing I hate about Forcefields. They are way, way, way too easy to spam. Why can't Forcefields be a channeling ability and have a cool down? They would still be useful as hell, but not overpowered. You would no longer be able to spam 15+ forcefields (unless you invested into 15 sentries O_O) and trap 5+ roaches in a donut anymore, but you could still separate armies effectively. Make forcefield a channeling ability + have a cooldown of 20 seconds. This would actually make the Protoss player think "Where exactly would the best area to drop the FFs be?" instead of just Forcefielding everywhere.
This is just my opinion. If you don't agree, that's great. I'm not asking you too. I'm not crying imbalanced, but it is quite annoying having to do 3 times the work a Protoss player does just to win. I have to be doing 2 pronged drops, 2 pronged attacks and sneak attacks with Infestors just to beat a Protoss player, while all they have to do is 1a2a3afffffffgg.
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From the Zerg point of view this is what I see...
1. Is the macro effect of workers split between bases. There's no advantage to splitting your workers across bases besides any workers over 20 on a base unlike SC2 where even as little as 19 workers total split between bases (so 9 at each base) would give you an economic boost compared to mining from a single base. If this was the case in SC2 then it'd be easier for zerg to hold early pressure (slightly better economy) and late game they can keep a mineral income advantage by having more bases. On the Protoss side they'd have a better shot surviving mid-game from the mineral boost offered by their 2nd or 3rd bases so it's not something that's just going cause zerg to run away.
2. Along with #1 the gas ratio of zerg units is pretty poor. The best min:gas unit for zerg is infestor and all other zerg units have a min:gas ratio of 3:2 or worse. Even infestors at 10:15 are a worse ratio than other races most gas heavy units. If zerg had some lighter mineral costs it'd help them take advantage of a large # of bases and the associated increased gas income. This is doubly problematic because of the poor performance of hydralisks and the relatively lackluster offensive capabilities of infestors (they're great offensively in an open field, but they aren't really that good at busting ramps or sim cities it would seem).
3. The maps are a big issue. They often allow for easy turtling or reduce the potential effectiveness of drops and nydus worms. This really hinder's Zerg's mid-game ideal strategy of multipronged attacks, drops, and nydus play. If we had more well designed maps that promoted drop and harass play then it'd help a lot.
4. Zerg units are not really cost efficient, even in small-ish numbers. Yet on the other side it takes a while for zerg's macro to pull ahead of a macro oriented Protoss player. What ends up happening is that the window for aggression where P is vulnerable enough and the Zerg has a superior economy to overcome their cost-inefficiency is pretty small. It's doubly so because of the threat of P early attacks and because of the glut of gas upgrades zerg needs mid-game (burrow, drop, tunneling claws, roach speed, etc.) tends to draw away from their ability to get attack/armor upgrades. So even small early game mistakes or misreads can cause the mid-game windows to just evaporate. So combined with #2 promoting turtley or small maps you run into problems where it seems to become almost trivially easy to defend as Protoss. Generally in these situations the cost inefficient trades can't even be covered by a better economy unless again the early game goes just right for zerg with a good read.
5. Tier 3 has a lot of anti-synergy with Zerg mid-game ZvP. Z mid-game is all about aggression, mobility, drops, and multi-pronged harass (generally even with hydralisks), A switch to hive tech basically means abandoning all that and stopping all mobility based play because Broodlords need to be protected at all time. Most of your army composition also becomes somewhat of deadweight as you need to shed roaches/hydras/etc. for more broodlords/corruptors/infestors. Being caught with aggression during this transition when you're getting up broodlord/infestor numbers, but are still primarily roach/ling/etc. is very brutal. This sets up a really difficult transition that's not smooth at all. Also in ZvP the ranged attack upgrade is vital for tier1/2 play, but entirely useless for tier 3 army compositions. The ultralisk is also just generally seems bad with their dependence on fungal and the ability for zealots to shut down ultra dps so hard (if caught without fungal almost every P unit can handle ultralisks). A great example would be if your P defends semi-well on 2-3 bases and you have a super economy and need to transition from your roach heavy army (say 150-200 food size) to a higher tier or more infestor based army. Well it's tough to make use of your roaches via aggression without opening a window for a counter-attack once the roaches are defended. It's 50s for an infestor to build and 74 to morph a broodlord so there's quite a large window before your higher tier reinforcements can be ready and in position even if you do make large batches of them at once.
6. Z units are almost universally population in-efficient. It's one thing to be cost inefficient, but to be both pop and cost inefficient is a pretty damning blow. Only blings, broodlords, infestors, and hydras seem to be population efficient Z units. Lings and ultras kinda are as well, but they do have diminishing returns being a melee unit and all. When you combine this inefficiency with the problem of queens eating up population and the previous points encouraging zergs to maintain larger drone counts than their opponents you run into a big problem. It's not unlikely for a maxed zerg to only have 110 population in army while a maxxed P/T would have 130 or so.
7. The mobility of Z isn't that far ahead of P. Unlike ZvT Zerg's mobility isn't all that hot ZvP. Stalkers are quite fast (doubly so with blink) and colossi are the same speed as hydras off creep and can take short routes with cliff-walk. Sure the P army isn't super mobile, but it's pretty dang fast. And when you combine that with the ability to turtle up with cannons knowing that 200P > 200Z and the ability for P to warp-in as a stop-gap defense Z's mobility advantage is greatly marginalized.
8. Production capabilities! First off warp-gates produce pretty dang quickly and early game it can be a serious problem for Zerg to handle especially because Zerg's production relies on the queen which is very vulnerable early game and very damning if lost. Beyond that is just the rapid pace at which P can add on production capabilities. It takes 80s from when you toss down a gateway to when you get your first units from it and this can be any number of gateways at once of course. For Zerg, by comparison, it takes 170-200s before the first real production happens from a hatchery (100s for hatch, 40s for inject, 30-70s train time) and for Terran you're looking at 100-150s for real production beyond just having single marines/hellions from a barracks. This gives Protoss a real ability to just suddenly surge in production which can be really difficult for a Zerg to read, react to, and defend. The 2nd part is the strength of small amounts of robo/stargate units. These units train slow, but when 2-3 of them are game changing it gives Protoss a lot of ability to switch their compositions around and muck with the Zerg's ability to react and defend. It's not like what PvT seems like where maintaining colossi is huge because you need to build up to 6+ or whatever. ZvP small colossi counts do wonders if you force corruptors and keep your gateway count good and well upgraded.
Now these aren't things I'm saying need to be patched, but this is what I view as the problem areas a Zerg has in ZvP. Well ok the macro issue should be fixed because that's a deep running issue with the game overall. I'd also roughly order what I'd want to see fixed in the order which I mentioned them (so #1 and #3 would be what I want to see changed while #8 is more of just something to note) if anything was to be fixed.
And sorry if some of the stuff seems a written in kind of a scatterbrained manner, it's a little tough to organize all of the information/reasoning well.
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While creating forcefields requires micro on the Protoss his part, a zerg has no way of efficiently nullying these things as they are unbreakable by anything bar ultralisks, which come out at a way too late of a stage.
Well technically Z has roach burrow, Morrow used it against MC in the game he won.
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I think these conversations always miss two key points about the match-up that strike me as incredibly important:
1) Toss always tell zergs "Don't go head on! Just go around!" And of course, because they can wall off, the answer is always supposed to be drop play and nydus. The problem is that warp gates make nydus play non-viable, because nydus have so little health. Just warp in half a dozen zealots and it's dead before more than a couple units are out. Drop plays suffer the same fate unless you bring huge drops...and whatever you drop is probably not coming back. Also, they have an incredibly high overhead: 300/300 for speed and capacity.
2) Zerg can't wall off the way other races can, which makes it super vulnerable to toss timing pushes and all-ins, and also makes proxy warp-ins from low ground much harder to stop. This combined with Zerg's need to devote its early game production capacity to drones makes it very hard for Zerg to gain the expansion / economy advantage that is supposed to be the race's defining trait.
Now that I write this, it suddenly looks to me like the answer to ZvP balance might be a building armor upgrade at the evo chamber. Spines and worms, baby.
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Just watched Grubby vs Moon NASL;
+ Show Spoiler +really liked Game 3 when Moon dealt with the 3 base toss deathball by taking the map, then countering when Grubby moved out, did economy damage and then after his roach hydra ball inevitably died he used small groups of roaches and lings to keep Grubby on his side of the map while he remaxed to brood lords and mutas.
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On April 14 2011 02:22 The KY wrote:Just watched Grubby vs Moon NASL; + Show Spoiler +really liked Game 3 when Moon dealt with the 3 base toss deathball by taking the map, then countering when Grubby moved out, did economy damage and then after his roach hydra ball inevitably died he used small groups of roaches and lings to keep Grubby on his side of the map while he remaxed to brood lords and mutas.
Lol you're from the eu battle.net forums. Anyway, mutalisks + broodlord work vs deathball? I really need to know lol.
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Logo, I think you're looking at this matchup the wrong way. I'll address all of your points in the order that you presented them.
1. I'm not even sure thats a problem. Its not like the other races don't also have to deal with that. Zergs can saturate bases faster than any other race too giving the lowest downtime between a naked base and a completely saturated base.
2. You're wrong about the ratios. In ZvP the most popular combo seems to be Roach/Hydra. A Roach's mineral:gas ratio is 3:1 (75/25) and the hydra is 2:1 (100/50). I understand that they aren't cost efficient but that doesn't mean you need to lie about how much they really cost. It also sounds like you're not using the units you're supposed to for the tasks at hand. The ramp busters of Z are the broodlord and the ultra. If you don't want to wait until T3 to get ramp busters, switch races.
3. If your opponent is turtling just take more bases. The Nydus doesn't have to be used offensively. You can use it to move your whole army from wherever it is to the other side of the map in very short time making spreading yourself out more beneficial than not.
4. To get a lair, burrow, and tunneling claws costs a little less than 3 sentries, a stalker, and a zealot. I'd say having your units not get rocked by FF is worth it early game. Plus roaches regen 10hp/s while burrowed.
5. I don't play zerg but I'd imagine being up in bases makes it very easy to get really fast upgrades. Also, if you're armies don't synergize, why use them together? Split them up and hit the Protoss from as many angles as you can. Don't play to the enemies strengths. Also, get better with infestors. They're the mid game equivalent of the sentry and you know how awesome sentries are I'm sure.
6. Not a real issue. The race was designed that way. Its supposed to be fast to max out but the easiest to replace. If you don't like how that works find a different race to play.
7. Infestors. They solve all of that.
8. Also not a real issue. The race was designed that way. Rather than having smooth production like P or T zerg is supposed to swell up in resources between production cycles and then make everything all at once. Watching the daily where he goes over Idra's econ management is a great example of how zerg needs to manage their money. Getting macro hatches and/or expanding more will also solve that.
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4. Your army will be extremely weak if you try getting all those upgrades.
5. Very easy to negate with warp-ins and the Protoss splitting up his army, but that really is the way to beat a Protoss. And Infestors are not the mid-game equivalent of a Sentry. I'm sorry, but Infestors are not that hard to stop as a Toss. Get some HTs with Feedback and they are very easy to stop. 4 seconds hold versus a 15 second FF is nowhere near as good as FF.
7. How do Infestors stop mobility? Maybe with the 8 second hold they did. Now, they really don't. And again, if the Toss decides to actually get HTs, then Feedback will own you. <- We don't see anywhere near enough Feedback usage, but it is great against Infestors. You're also not going to just send in an Infestor, fungal an army and then Nydus. That's a waste of an Infestor. And again, the 4 seconds isn't going to do much if you had a drop ready. Chances are, the P will use a warp-in cycle and will have 1-2 cannons to hold everything off until FG ends.
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Personally I find ZvP to be the easiest matchup after early game, and the difficulty early game is from uncertainty of information.
I invite zergs who are least mid masters to look at their overall zvp record via sc2gears. Some zergs I know have been qq'ing about zvp, then checked and found out they have a very favorable record vs p despite feeling like they lose horribly all the time. It could just be a side effect of the fact that when a protoss ball rolls a zerg army, it is very dramatic, and so might stick out more in memory and blot out other things.
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On April 14 2011 03:04 TreDawg wrote:
Logo, I think you're looking at this matchup the wrong way. I'll address all of your points in the order that you presented them.
1. I'm not even sure thats a problem. Its not like the other races don't also have to deal with that. Zergs can saturate bases faster than any other race too giving the lowest downtime between a naked base and a completely saturated base.
2. You're wrong about the ratios. In ZvP the most popular combo seems to be Roach/Hydra. A Roach's mineral:gas ratio is 3:1 (75/25) and the hydra is 2:1 (100/50). I understand that they aren't cost efficient but that doesn't mean you need to lie about how much they really cost. It also sounds like you're not using the units you're supposed to for the tasks at hand. The ramp busters of Z are the broodlord and the ultra. If you don't want to wait until T3 to get ramp busters, switch races.
3. If your opponent is turtling just take more bases. The Nydus doesn't have to be used offensively. You can use it to move your whole army from wherever it is to the other side of the map in very short time making spreading yourself out more beneficial than not.
4. To get a lair, burrow, and tunneling claws costs a little less than 3 sentries, a stalker, and a zealot. I'd say having your units not get rocked by FF is worth it early game. Plus roaches regen 10hp/s while burrowed.
5. I don't play zerg but I'd imagine being up in bases makes it very easy to get really fast upgrades. Also, if you're armies don't synergize, why use them together? Split them up and hit the Protoss from as many angles as you can. Don't play to the enemies strengths. Also, get better with infestors. They're the mid game equivalent of the sentry and you know how awesome sentries are I'm sure.
6. Not a real issue. The race was designed that way. Its supposed to be fast to max out but the easiest to replace. If you don't like how that works find a different race to play.
7. Infestors. They solve all of that.
8. Also not a real issue. The race was designed that way. Rather than having smooth production like P or T zerg is supposed to swell up in resources between production cycles and then make everything all at once. Watching the daily where he goes over Idra's econ management is a great example of how zerg needs to manage their money. Getting macro hatches and/or expanding more will also solve that.
1. It is an issue that affects everyone, but one of the advantages of Zerg is the ease at which they can expand. When you have a 2 base to 1 base Protoss or a 6 base zerg to 3 base Protoss if the macro issue didn't exist then the Zerg could have an economic advantage even on equal workers which is really important early game in defending pressure and late game in keeping an economic advantage when you max out on workers.
2. I'm not wrong? Roaches are 3:1, Hydras 2:1, Infestors 10:15, Ultras 3:2, mutas 1:1. The point is that a late game strength of zerg is increased gas income compared to P due to having more bases, but with overall poor mineral:gas ratios on units it's hard to really make use of that as Zerg without being mineral capped. By comparison a P player who has access to lots of geysers can make sentries and templar to really strengthen their army and sentries at the very least are pretty immediate. Maybe by saying poor it seems confusing as usually it's in reference to units being gas heavy, but in this case I'm thinking the opposite way since I can gain access to a wealth of gas mid/late game and it's minerals. This ties into the point brought up on SotG where Zerg should try to expand more and go a more gas heavy composition. The issue is that there's not necessarily a lot of room there for that to happen given the gas ratios of current zerg units and the inaccessibility of an early tier 3.
3. Turtling by Protoss is an issue because of 1 and 2 (as well as the pop inefficiency of Zerg). More bases does very little when it just gives you extra gas you don't necessarily need.
4 & 5. The point is getting all those ups comes at the trade-off of stuff like +1 attack or +1 armor. They're great ups and more important, but say in the case of stalkers with detection vs roaches burrow isn't going to help your cost-efficiency. It's really not easy to just throw down for the ups given that having more bases means nothing until you have more drones.
5 (again). You can't use Broodlords naked. You just can't, they're super expensive and vulnerable and losing them can cost you the game. Broodlords act a lot like colossi in that you want everything balled up around them because of how they work. Ultra ZvP I'd like to explore more, but generally they seem rather weak in this matchup. It'd be interesting to see how well they could be used with Nydus play though.
7, Nothing here is solved by infestors so I don't know what you're even getting at and don't know how to respond to it.
8. Doesn't even address anything I mentioned because it's about how quickly P can ramp up production, not about the style of zerg production. The way P can ramp up their gateway count and production is very hard for zerg to manage overall.
Plus for 6 & 8 saying, "That's the way the race is designed" doesn't solve or show anything. 6 especially is one of the big problem points for Zerg and a big concern as they enter the end game. I never said it had to be changed, just pointing out why it's so difficult for Zerg to deal with Protoss.
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The big thing with protoss and the phoenix/void combo forceing you into hydras that get smashed by collosus is that you need to apply pressure to the toss player make them build 4 cannons by going roach to try to break the wall in then get like 5 queens on two bases and build up some infestors to fungal the air harassment if he keeps building up phoe/void and get broods if he goes collosus. The biggest point is that you cant just see a forge wall and go "oh i guess i shouldnt attack" make like 20 lings and nyduc his backdoor while sending your main army to his front you are bound to kill probes and the biggest nerf collosus has had from the beginning is 300min/200gas thats a fortune!! another option is to get mutas to harass and corruptors to deal with void phoe and collos!!! there are many many ways to stop the protoss player and the pro's do it all the time.
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EPT
