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United States4883 Posts
Hmm...thinking about forcefields today. It's kind of ridiculous how different and 1-sided battles become when you use good FF. In a way, I really like how FF works and it's fun to use, but on the other hand, it really does force protoss into situations where they HAVE to rely on sentries and good FF micro or they lose. This is particularly true in ZvP, where it's just a given that zerg is going to be 50 supply ahead at some point in the game (~13:00-14:00). Kind of ugly :/.
Anyways, looking at some good FF techniques:
1) In conjunction with zealots, to stop retreat. Basically, just sandwiching marine/marauder or immortal/stalker or roach/zergling between zealots and FF. In this situation, not only are the zealots the big damage dealers, but also quite expendable as well.
2) To keep units away/slice the army in half. Generally, this means getting into a choke and FFing the first half of an army, moving back out of range of the other half and then killing the half you sliced off. From what I've learned, the moving back part is SO IMPORTANT. You can also use FF to push away units and keep them out of range (particularly roaches) and use your big damage dealers to kill them off (stalker/immortal/colossus).
3) To clump units up so they either become completely ineffective or colossus/storm fodder. If you block a choke, then place another FF wall behind the first one, you squash a bunch of units in between FF. This is very good in conjunction with colossus because it not only stacks a bunch of units, but also generally stacks them in a perfect line. There are, of course, also FF donuts which can force a bunch of units into a single square.
4) Ramp block. This is obvious, but I think something most players have forgotten about since HotS came out. With a FF or two, you can buy tons of time for yourself without having to fight a big engagement. I think the primary reason why people are generally not throwing down FFs at their natural to slow down attacks and such is that they're relying on photon overcharge to keep them safe and buy them time.
Last note: I'm having a lot of trouble with getting FFs down accurately and quickly, not sure why. It seems like half the time either the sentries are being dumb and trying to walk around my army or somehow the command just doesn't go through on the game. Holding F and clicking quickly in a line SHOULD be the fastest way to FF, but I'm still having trouble. Guess I just need to practice it some more.
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There are some practice maps that are really good for improving FF skill. If I remember correctly there is even a Blizzard made training exercise that focuses on ramp blocks. There are also some videos floating about of MC basically showing people how to FF correctly in different kinds of situations. IE Different shapes you can make with FF, a "Doughnut" FF for clumping units together for more effective AoE attacks (colossus and storm), and leaving spaces in-between your FF for luring units in. Practicing all those on practice maps or with a friend in custom games will really improve your play as a Toss. Being able to spam different types of FF strategies quickly makes a huge difference.
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practicing forcefield micro is probably one of the most important things for a protoss player. it is one of the only micro techniques they use, and it is VERY important. being able to use 3 forcefields instead of 4 or 5 is a huge difference in some situations, especially at the pro level.
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United States4883 Posts
On July 31 2013 11:35 tl2212 wrote:
practicing forcefield micro is probably one of the most important things for a protoss player. it is one of the only micro techniques they use, and it is VERY important. being able to use 3 forcefields instead of 4 or 5 is a huge difference in some situations, especially at the pro level.
Whoa whoa whoa, this is my race we're talking about, don't underestimate the amount of micro required. There seems to be this silly belief that somehow protoss micro is not as demanding or difficult as terran or zerg, and on a high level, this is simply not true. Protoss units in small numbers are very very weak unless micro'd perfectly; forcefield only enforces this idea (which is kind of the idea I'm getting at in this post).
To get at the idea I'm trying to get across, let's look at a maxed PvT engagement. If both players are engaging properly and microing exactly as they should, terran should almost always come out ahead in the engagement. What terran has to do:
1) scan/snipe observers
2) poach with ghosts and try to snipe templar then EMP the main army
3) shift-click vikings on colossus
4) start kiting with MMM(H)
5) split into 3 parts
(6. while doing 4 and 5, avoiding storms and sniping templar)
**NOTE: if you sit in any storm for too long, the entire army will just die**
For protoss, the engagement goes something like this:
1) Make sure your observers stay back and don't get sniped
2) poach with HT/blink stalkers to pick off ghosts
3) try to flank with individual templar
5) Guardian shield/FF (if possible)/time warps must be put down where you plan to engage
4) move command close to the terran army, then attack move
5) blink the stalkers under the vikings (out of the way of zealots) and shift-click the vikings
6) try to flank with templar (still)
7) when vikings are dead, pull everything back together
**NOTE: if you start losing by even a small margin, the entire army will die**
It's pretty even micro skills, to be honest, and it's easy on either side to just mis-control and die. This is especially complicated when you add in some more things like a speed prism with HTs or hellbats/mines in the composition. All this goes to point out that protoss is actually a very micro-intensive and positionally-related race.
But yes, 3 FFs as opposed to 4-5 is a pretty huge deal, I agree. I'm working on fixing my FF control and being able to do perfect walls and positioning.
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12698 Posts
imo PvT only gets difficult when you get to high masters.
i even managed to beat low masters with my diamond toss which only has less than 100 games.
no one really does HT flanking except having some of the HTs at the back, it's almost as rare as terran using a medivac EMP drop
and terran also doesn't just shift click with vikings, they use them to poke and then use some marauders to snipe the stalkers you sent out to snipe the vikings.
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