EPT! [Q] PvsZ - Understanding this matchup - Page 4
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BaKeRy-BoY
Chile36 Posts
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Slayer91
Ireland23470 Posts
@Blackdevil reavers are awesome imo! I was theorycrafting them before to break sunk/spore/gay/lurk but using them must completly rape lurker/ling contain if you protect them with shuttle/battery (And without hydra its pretty damn hard to kill a reaver. (They were nasty used against me before and i'm a high upgrade hydra/ling oriented zvp player!) I must say i'm a more of a micro player so my hydras in front will storm dodge while trying to pick off temps,(Worst i lose usually is 6 hydra for 1-2 storm) that being said FA is right, i'll start using 4-6 abit more to make it easier to dodge/can leave them unattended mass macroing. @Other posts Reavers /w speedshuttle won't be hard to move around, and if you're defending gas main/nats its obviously efficient. Zealots are great! They act as a shield, they break the waves of ultra/ling, and hold them off well. archons might as well have twice as much hps with zeals in front. Zeals kill off stray craxs that didn't get stormed/archon splashed. and they don't cost gas, what else are you gonna spend that mins on? No point getting too many cannons. | ||
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cuteFayth
Canada1167 Posts
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ChApFoU
France2988 Posts
On May 06 2006 13:41 Patriot.dlk wrote: Posts 14 who cares ? | ||
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Raider
61 Posts
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Raider
61 Posts
Also, having a few goons is not as bad as you make it out to be. 6 goons is 1 archon in gas, and they dogreat damage to ultras before zerg gets dark swarm, which should be after the first couple of engagements. Goon focus fire on ultras really helps toss when z is just rolling out his ultra/crax and does not have insane numbers of them. Finally, in my experience, having several goons with the army allows me to break contain with barely any losses. This simply will not happen with zeal/archon/temp. But as I said, link to a rep where zeal/archon/temp break a decent, but not dedicated zerg contain and does well afterwards. | ||
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Raider
61 Posts
Also, having a few goons is not as bad as you make it out to be. 6 goons is 1 archon in gas, and they dogreat damage to ultras before zerg gets dark swarm, which should be after the first couple of engagements. Goon focus fire on ultras really helps toss when z is just rolling out his ultra/crax and does not have insane numbers of them. Finally, in my experience, having several goons with the army allows me to break contain with barely any losses. This simply will not happen with zeal/archon/temp. But as I said, link to a rep where zeal/archon/temp break a decent, but not dedicated zerg contain and does well afterwards. | ||
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Raider
61 Posts
Also, having a few goons is not as bad as you make it out to be. 6 goons is 1 archon in gas, and they dogreat damage to ultras before zerg gets dark swarm, which should be after the first couple of engagements. Goon focus fire on ultras really helps toss when z is just rolling out his ultra/crax and does not have insane numbers of them. Finally, in my experience, having several goons with the army allows me to break contain with barely any losses. This simply will not happen with zeal/archon/temp. But as I said, link to a rep where zeal/archon/temp break a decent, but not dedicated zerg contain and does well afterwards. | ||
Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33723 Posts
Mm, not the greatest game ever but that's one of the few games which I remembered clearly off the top of my head that I used archon zealot templar vs a relatively dedicated lurker contain ;o I actually like using dragoons tho, and if they make hydras too, I'll definitely make them (unless the contain is very weak/his eco is very weak and I want to pressure it as quickly as possible in which case I'll just be storming morphing non-stop). I was just defending that style of play, as it is valid and in some cases preferable. | ||
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Shallow
United States12 Posts
you make some good points, but pvz is not a very easy/simple match-up and it seems like thats what you're trying to make it. i think the problem with guides in general is that starcraft is like many physical sports where knowing what to do is never enough, you need to be able to execute and thats where most of the trouble comes from. for most pvz players this guide isnt going to be an epiphany for their gameplay and maybe thats what a lot of these disgruntled posters were looking for >.> | ||
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Knickknack
United States1187 Posts
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Cbreaker
United States476 Posts
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CubEdIn
Romania5359 Posts
 And no, there's not much ignorance of plague, since most good players will use it when just army won't cope with the situation. However, most of the times the zerg swarm alone can take down what the toss throws at it because of superior power in late game. If the toss uses too many spells, that's where plague comes in to un-balance it again.  | ||
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nArAnjO
Peru2571 Posts
On May 08 2006 15:22 FrozenArbiter wrote: http://rapidshare.de/files/19975307/PGTourVIIColdPlay2.rep.html Mm, not the greatest game ever but that's one of the few games which I remembered clearly off the top of my head that I used archon zealot templar vs a relatively dedicated lurker contain ;o I actually like using dragoons tho, and if they make hydras too, I'll definitely make them (unless the contain is very weak/his eco is very weak and I want to pressure it as quickly as possible in which case I'll just be storming morphing non-stop). I was just defending that style of play, as it is valid and in some cases preferable. hehe u were such at a disadvantage that game, little things made u behind, luckily stym is bad zvp ^^ | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33723 Posts
But it was the only replay I could think of without having to look through 102313 of them  | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33723 Posts
On May 08 2006 17:51 Knickknack wrote: Hum, I agree with most in that the first post is laregly theorycraft and also with shallows last post. By theorycraft, I mean that my main concern is that when someone reads it, it’s not going to help them play better significantly. I'm very skeptical of any guide/comprehensive advice that does not start with (what I see as) the basis of good play, build efficiency and countering. Both of which your original post had very little of. What good is general advice if they don’t know the little things and how to apply them. For instance, what good is knowing to storm the clumps if someone does not even know basic build efficiency. And picking up things such as storm the clumps is quickly done. The problem with general advice is that its too vague. Ok storm the clumps thats great, now actually tell me how i can win more. Should every post have to include build orders O_o? I don't think that was what he meant by his title (ie I dont think he meant it as a complete PvZ guide, more like a mindset or something). | ||
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Knickknack
United States1187 Posts
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BaKeRy-BoY
Chile36 Posts
Even if the one who started the thread didn't know about timming, placement, orders, tricks, etc.. it was his intention to make a contribution. You may provide for him the knoledge that he lacks, or the one you think that he lacks. That would be a lot more usefull. /**Srry for the subject-change**/ | ||
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Ilintar
Poland794 Posts
First of all, the lurker contain question, which seems to arouse much controversy. The actual problem is, there are quite a few different forms of lurker contain and grouping them all under one or two categories really doesn't do justice. I'll try to enumerate: a) non-commited, delaying hydra/lurker This is basically the situation when our opponent brings a group of hydras, 4-5 lurkers and tries to stop us for as long as he can while securing expansions. This is usually coupled with cliff drops on maps where it's possible and actually for some zergs, it will be an alternative to a contain. Here, massing goons is probably not the way to go because you can't really tell what the zerg is up to and you should attempt to kill the contain using a minimal tech switch. This probably means using zeal/temp for it, since then zeal/archons are quite useful when you break out. One thing worth nothing is that in most cases, the very existence of this type of contain is due to a protoss error - a very late robo. If you get your robo fast enough, this sort of contain will never work. b) commited hydra/lurker This is basically what FA was talking about as the 'special case'. When your opponent is committing to a hydra/lurker contain, he will generally want to starve you out instead of winning by outmacroing you (this is coupled with map control to make sure you don't take islands and other expansions). Now, since when doing this, your zerg opponent is delaying both his power and his tech very much, you don't have to care about the tech switch to goons - it's even required to break out. Actually, if the opponent does a very full commit (you see him making TONS of lurkers and/or a hatchery), I prefer to start a quick templar archives and fight using recalls because it takes less energy. Again, any sort of successful hydra/lurker contain is probably due to not getting robo fast enough, so the best counter is simply to scout well enough. c) half-commited hydra/lurker This is something the better zerg players tend to do, a sort of middle ground. The "half-commitment" basically means this - the zerg will scout us intensely and will only commit to the containment if there's a real risk you will break out. If he builds a macro advantage over you, he will stop committing to the contain, making you face a powered-out zerg when you break out. This is the tricky part because around here, goons won't work, apart from maybe a few. They require you to tech-switch and worst of all, killing lurkers with goons is a very systematic process. This means the zerg will know long in advance when to reinforce his containment. If you're going zeal/archon/templar, he probably won't expect it since with good micro, you will kill enough lurkers with storm/single zeal, then just burst out. The benefit is, templars are reusable while goons are not, and goons cost gas. This means, if he's semi-committing, you're facing a loss of a lot of gas just to break out of the contain, only to find yourself unable to properly fight his tier 3 troops when you do. Instead, when using templars you don't use up any gas (just the single zeals used to finish off lurks) and you still get archons later on which are good for fighting his hive tech. d) non-commited lurker/ling to fast hive This is quite popular out there on PGT nowadays (I tend to run into opponents playing this, maybe because it's so simple - I tried playing it out as zerg, no skill required ). The general idea is, this sort of lurker tech is very fast because you don't need hydras. So, even if a protoss scouts well, he might not have mobile detection fast enough. When fighting this, not only you shouldn't get goons, you're forbidden to. The reason is, goons cost gas and goons completely suck vs cracklings. The moment you SHOULD get goons is later on when he establishes his hive tech, as a support troop vs ultralisks. Here though, archon/zeal/temp should be quite enough to break out, the faster, the better.e) non-commited lurker/ling/scourge to hydra switch This is rare but dangerous. Basically, remember that a lurker/ling player will not spend all of his gas on the lurkers, unlike the hydra/lurker player. This means he still can afford getting upped hydras. Now, the main danger is that upped hydras with lurkers own zeal/arch in a normal fight and when facing a 'hardcore' lurker/ling contain, the protoss player will tend to morph most of his HTs to archons when breaking out. Then you have 2.5 groups of zeal/arch with 2 hts and you're flanked by 5 hydra groups, bye bye. The good counter is scouting - actually, the zerg that does this is dead if you mix enough templars with your troops and just keep securing bases instead of running headlong into his flank - hydras are very bad for breaking protoss positional play. f) commited lurker/ling/scourge Now, this is not as funny as it looks. Remember, a zerg who plays hydra/lurk needs to spend a lot of gas on the hydras. If he plays a commited lurker/ling, he can spend all the gas on the lurkers... this is not a laughable issue. Here, the lurkers start being dangerous not only because of their properties, but because of the sheer amounts. I once faced a contain of ~40 lurkers on Luna - it's virtually impossible to kill. The right way here is systematically killing the lurkers with templar/zeal (you might be tempted to use goons, but remember point d - these two are virtually indistinguishable) and possibly dropping the zerg if he doesn't have scourges. Breaking out with sair/dt/obs is also a good option here if he doesn't mix hydras in. Using recall is yet another option. Now, on the starting post main issue, or "group your troops and force zerg to pack". This sounds nice in theory, but is pretty hard to obtain in practice. The main reason is, you have to make it worthwile for the zerg to run into your grouped troops in a pack, instead of picking a place when he can run over you with a flank. Generally, having a zerg mass flank you nullifies all the benefits of "a large zerg group attacking at once" - he's having neither a small group nor packed units, just a good spread. Therefore, a smart zerg will _always_ flank - you need to give him a good reason to do otherwise. The main 'good reason' is securing expansions. If you can chase away his overlords (possibly with sairs) and secure some expo, he'll have to run over to it quickly or face 10+ cannons later on (in this, protoss expansions are even better than zerg since zerg has to sacrifice drones for the sunkens and storm stops masses). So, you actually have to have _two_ factors: you have to make zerg attack with his troops in one place _and_ be it a place of your chosing, for you to get a clear victory. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33723 Posts
On May 09 2006 07:52 Knickknack wrote: No i dont think so. As you can see from my guide there is certainly a place for general strategy. Indeed, FA you probably post some of the best general pvz advice. I posted that to show my main concerns about his advice overall. I could have gone over everything point for point, but thats been covered ok already, plus i did not want to take the time. =] Fair enough! | ||
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