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I have long learnt that asking for help on TL is the quickest way to lose your dignity...
BUT if you can swallow your own pride and sift through the more useless pieces of advice, it's also the quickest way to fix up your mistakes and start pwning noobs again.
Which is why I beseech you TLer's, help me fix my PvZ, for it is still crappier than my toilet after a long friday night of old gsl vods, beer and extra hot chicken vindaloo.
And this is after reading countless posts on how to defeat muta-ling. Changing my build order completely to better deal with it (without leaving myself open to other bad strats) and valiantly trying to mimic col.rsvp's proposed way of dealing with it, AND practicing with my masters zerg buddy.
Yup I still die to muta ling. So obviously whatever I am doing wrong, it's not something that a good read of "how to deal with muta ling" is going to fix. It's also why I'm not polluting the strategy forum with this post; there are enough protoss QQ posts in the Strat Forum regarding mutas as it is.
So may I present to you my replay of my latest struggle against the zerg swarm:
The Death of an Honest Tosser
I personally thought these were my problems:
-Couldn't get my third up in any reasonable amount of time
-wasted units on silly attacks that came too late anyway
-had observers but not enough of them in the time I needed them and bad placement (seriously how do I place these fellas where they will give me good intel on the next muta attack?)
-didn't plant any killer storms.
-in general lacked the multitasking do deal with them
Am I right? Am I wrong? And how do I fix these mistakes?
Now before you go giving good advice, I have a few requests:
-No BO's please, I like the one I have at the moment, and I don't want to go through the process of learning a new one and dying on the ladder as I try to not get supply blocked etc as I learn
-Don't just tell me to macro better. Before his mutas hit I had more workers than him. As for money expenditure... well that is a legitimate piece of advice but be specific please
-No I'm not 7gating, not until every zerg on the ladder goes muta ling, THEN I'll start allining.
Thank you very much in advance!
 
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- Don't build tech buildings on the fringe of your base. You lost the templar tech because the mutas could snipe it with ease. Why place it there when it's highly vulnerable to a build you're struggling with anyway?
- Either commit to static defense or don't, but don't build two cannons somewhere and then neglect the path completely. It was until halfway into the game that you started actually investing into cannons at your mineral lines (especially in your main) - you could have done so much earlier and saved a lot of probes
- Probe micro. you have two cannons and stalkers at your wall and when the mutas fly into your natural, you proceed to send the probe train ... on the unprotected path to your main, getting another half dozen killed. Why not send them to your wall?
- Consider getting archons if you admit your storms weren't good anyway. Very effective against mutas and much easier to handle
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Canada5155 Posts
So you want us to... fix... your PvZ by insulting you huh? That's a bit of a sensational way to put it
In life, they say sometimes when one door closes, another is opened.
Sure, you might feel that you want to switch races or something. But I say grab that door.
Grab that door by the knob hard and confront it head on.
Don't ask others to do it for you. Just keep at it and you'll improve lickety split.
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I see a couple of major problems here:
1) You made absolutely no attempt to scout him after your initial probe died. Try sending a second probe out and hiding it to try and get a scout off. In this case, you'd have noticed has has absolutely _nothing_ to defend with from scouting the front, and if you'd managed to get into his main, you'd have seen the spire. This isn't 100% reliable, as good zergs will try and hunt the probe, but at least if you send out the probe, you have a chance of scouting something useful. If you don't, you're guaranteed not to. Alternatively/Also, you could send your first zealot out.
With a probe scout, you can almost certainly confirm if he's trying to take a third. If he's not vs. forge fe/nexus first, you can be pretty sure he's attacking with something.
He hasn't got a single spine, and he didn't make any additional lings. This brings me to point 2):
2) He's basically allining you with those mutas, although it doesn't really seem like it to look at. His build is designed to sacrifice econ (i.e. the 3rd base zerg so desperately needs) and army (he's got nothing to defend any kind of push) to get really fast tech for mutas, and then rely on those mutas to do damage. If the mutas do no damage, he'll lose, but they're pretty likely to do damage if they get out unhindered because they're so fast. This means you need to attack him when or before the spire is building, and brings me to another key weakness in your build.
3) Why is your cyber core so late? Your gate finishes at 4:33, and your core goes down at about 5:50, and in the meantime you're not really doing anything except making probes, which is nice but delaying the cyber core hurts a lot. I'd say either commit to pressure and get a fast second gate and +1 ground attack (there are many replays of builds like this about, kiwikaki does some nice ones) to do a zealot pressure build (will mess with him massively 'cause he's relying on your not attacking, and gives you the chance to do damage vs. players who go for quick third hatch) or get that cyber quicker, and do a timing (not necessarily allin, but could become allin if it has to be) when warp gate finishes. Your build could do a nice immortal/stalker timing which would flatten this one.
If your cyber went down about 4:45, warp gate would start at 5:35 ish and with a couple of chronos you'd hit it at about 8:00. Just take a look at what he has at 8:00, and you'll see how much damage you'd do with a warpgate timing.
When his very first mutas hatch, your warpgate has _just_ finished and you have absolutely no anti-air at all. He even waits about to graciously give you extra time to defend his muta-rush-allin, and you still don't have anywhere near enough. At this point in the game, you're dead and buried. You didn't delay his mutas with a pressure to give you time to get what you want, and you didn't get enough units fast enough. His mutas do heavy damage and completely pin you in your base, and you never recover.
In summary:
You really need to execute your opening better and have a more concrete plan with your first few buildings, along with some additional scouting. Either commit to pressure or commit to getting wg tech, don't hang between the two and do nothing. You had a huuuuge econ lead with nexus first against 14/14 speedling, and you threw it away by doing essentially nothing.
I don't mean any offence by anything above; forgive me if I've been overly blunt in places.
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I giggled when I saw the phrase "Honest Tosser."
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Typing with one hand is very difficult, it becomes very strenuous to do so while holding onto my headset. I do this because of my aspirations to be a professional DJ some day. I think you could apply some of DJ spinbad's philosophies to improve your pvz since you don't want BO's etc
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that's some solid advice guys, I think yours is the most helpful mr codfish. Looking back at it now, late cyber core seems to be an inherent problem in my games.
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I saw this as an opportunity for some fun insults but I'm just sorry for you - many pro's haven't figured out how to handle mutalisks without resorting to 7-gate allins.
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Pretty simple.
1: You don't want BO help, but where in hell is your core? You don't start it until 6:00, long after you've finished a first zealot and left your gateway idle. This slows down everything you might want to do. The ability to poke at Zerg is pretty important in slowing their build down and also determining what they do.
2: You made 1 zealot, nothing else from your first gate. You then didn't use that zealot to do anything - not clear the towers, check for a third (2 bases would be a hint of infestor or muta play), or see what sort of unit production he has (again, that'd help). Poke with 2-3 zealots, find out what zerg is doing, force him to make excess lings. Clear the towers. You'd have died to anything he threw at you.
3: When you finally do move out on the map for the first time, with a tiny group of stalkers blindly - why are you moving out? That group of units can't accomplish anything at that time, and you're moving out without information. Chances are you lose them, which is a loss you can't afford.
4: Crisis management. The moment you see mutas, you need to start getting those cannons up, rather than waiting until you've been attacked repeatedly. You know he went 2 base muta, and that means you can afford to throw a bit of extra money at defending. That frees up your stalkers a little more to help secure the third (which should have cannons going up before the nexus).
5: Overall plan. What is it? I'm pretty sure 'sit on 2 base until 10 minutes before I finally scout the zerg with an observer' isn't a good one. You're playing entirely passive against Zerg and I didn't get a sense you had a plan for the game besides 'sit back and make stuff'. You could do things like +1 zealots to force lings (or see if he's making a lot of them for a tech build) without changing your build.
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No amount of insults could turn that piece of sludge you call stratergy into anything comprehensive. Anyone who watches your replays or hears your ideas on SC will become stupider as a result. Congradulations for infecting the TL forum with such filth and lowering the average IQ 2 whole points.
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Are you the same Selendis from Tichondrius ?
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On January 10 2012 21:09 Dfgj wrote:
Pretty simple.
1: You don't want BO help, but where in hell is your core? You don't start it until 6:00, long after you've finished a first zealot and left your gateway idle. This slows down everything you might want to do. The ability to poke at Zerg is pretty important in slowing their build down and also determining what they do.
Oh I want BO help, jut don't want to learn a new one. Tweaks, additions and removals are fine. In this case I think I need to ditch the second cannon so I can get my cyber quicker.
3: When you finally do move out on the map for the first time, with a tiny group of stalkers blindly - why are you moving out? That group of units can't accomplish anything at that time, and you're moving out without information. Chances are you lose them, which is a loss you can't afford.
I wanted map control, but clearly this wasn't the right way of doing it.
4: Crisis management. The moment you see mutas, you need to start getting those cannons up, rather than waiting until you've been attacked repeatedly. You know he went 2 base muta, and that means you can afford to throw a bit of extra money at defending. That frees up your stalkers a little more to help secure the third (which should have cannons going up before the nexus).
I don't know about this. I delayed getting cannons so I could spend all my money on mobile defense (stalkers), when I did get cannons it was to spend the minerals I freed up by building templar.
5: Overall plan. What is it? I'm pretty sure 'sit on 2 base until 10 minutes before I finally scout the zerg with an observer' isn't a good one. You're playing entirely passive against Zerg and I didn't get a sense you had a plan for the game besides 'sit back and make stuff'. You could do things like +1 zealots to force lings (or see if he's making a lot of them for a tech build) without changing your build.
Overall plan is to quickly develop a core of blink stalkers and upgrades and then adding either collosi/immortals (if i see only ground) or templar (vs mutaling) whilst getting a third real quick. It looks nice on paper, but terrible on ladder, when I'm too scared of early pressure to get a cyber up (it sounds counter-intuitive I know), too scared that I will lose my zealots by applying early pressure and too scared that my third will get sniped to start making it.
Thanks for the advice, I'm going to go drink some concrete now and get my cyber quicker and use my first zealot to scout for the early third and the gas timings of the zerg next ladder pvz.
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Well here's what I'd do since we've gotten past the 'ARRR U BAD' phase:
2 cannons is fine, especially on ladder - I pretty much always make two because you're going to win a lot more games from deflecting aggression than you'll lose for spending the 150 minerals. I'd get the cybercore before zealot, and only take the gasses at my natural a bit later, because I'd prefer getting some more gateways before tech, letting me have the unit count to pressure early.
I think your build would be more solid in general if you used that fast +1 to poke him with some zealots on the way to getting your blink and more gates, simply to keep Z reacting and not let them run away with the game. You don't have to heavily commit, even 2-3 zealots that you make from your first gateway are going to force at least some lings (and be a resilient scouting force to either check his third or his ling count). It doesn't require you to deviate from your plan - if you wanted to commit harder, you could add 3 gates around 6:30 and when warptech/+1 finish, use 4 gates to pressure zerg while blink/robo/other gates go up.
I would not move out your stalkers without knowing what the Zerg is going for - you're at the stage of the game that you're not going to really punish him (either his economy is up, or his tech is up), so you risk losing them. If they had been at home from the start, you would have had a much stronger defense and been able to get cannons up more comfortably.
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On January 10 2012 17:57 Divinek wrote:
Typing with one hand is very difficult, it becomes very strenuous to do so while holding onto my headset. I do this because of my aspirations to be a professional DJ some day. I think you could apply some of DJ spinbad's philosophies to improve your pvz since you don't want BO's etc
You just had to didn't you 
Forgive and forget my friend.
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Scout more, and scout better. Your over all build and micro were fine... I mean, the biggest mistakes were just you not doing things that would enable you to scout. Slow robo? Make Hallu. Forge expanding? 9 scout AND 13(assuming 13 forge) scout.
You seem like a player who would LIKE to be reactive but just lacks the tools to do it. Use the tools you're given and only pressure when you need to (i.e. pressure when you've a clear path to pressure)
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I had to log in just to comment on the awesomess of this thread. 5 stars for excellent entertainment value. The way you phrased it just makes me happy!
Selendis, you are a gentleman and a scholar. You inspire me to create my own thread soon, that will pretty much look like this one, only for another matchup.
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Advice Assimilated.
I'm now on a PvZ winning streak and against my own league and higher too. Thanks again TL. <3
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EPT
