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If zerg does not defend from recalled army, then it would likely be able to clean the rest of his bases, and losing main with all precious tech really hurts.
And remember that it is late PvZ (not much reason to use arbiters before that), so protoss bases have cannons, storms, reavers. Zerg cannot just overwhelm them without terrible losses.
4 speedlots will not kill much before lings counterattack and murder them. Only big army recall can hold a ramp.
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On February 27 2025 17:12 SiarX wrote: If zerg does not defend from recalled army, then it would likely be able to clean the rest of his bases, and losing main with all precious tech really hurts.
And remember that it is late PvZ (not much reason to use arbiters before that), so protoss bases have cannons, storms, reavers. Zerg cannot just overwhelm them without terrible losses.
4 speedlots will not kill much before lings counterattack and murder them. Only big army recall can hold a ramp.
I agree with everything you said, but then that zerg went afk.
if zerg dont defend recall, they lose a base, but the same happens if they dont defend from a 4 zealot drop. Its a question of how good they are. At the moment when you have an arbiter, zergs usually have defilers. a recalled army is prime plaguuuuuu target. If you recall in his main, he drops the tech buildings instantly in his other main base, nothing is lost, since there are not even minerals there left at that time.
If you recall an expansion, you kill 1 expansion and probably a good number of drones for a stuck army for next 40 seconds that he can plague, block with lurker/swarm, etc; while he kills your entire bases with swarm /lings.
You say protoss has canons and storm to defend at that point? true. Canons do nothing (Swarm), storms run out in 2 zergling groups. If you have storm canons and reavers you can hold it, but if that is the case (lets assume 5 bases, each has at least 1 ht, all naturals have at least 2 reavers) then your recalled army is literally going to give up map control to the zerg. Have fun trying to get that back.
In theory the arbiter thing works. Try in in game, you will learn soon why it does not work. Yes, if you are super far ahead and make an arbiter, it seems its useful. But in normal games I never had the arbiter win me a game (except in fastest possible maps, where they are literal teleporters for your army since you can make 4 at the time).
Against Terrans things are different. They are the ones with the slower army. But here is the worst part about arbiter: it builds super slow and you need to add on top of that the time to build up energy.
PvZ is a very momentum based match up where if we assume both players are of equal skill, a constant search for advantages ahs to be done by the protoss so they dont fall behind in macro. Commiting to an arbiter? lets just say it is usually too later to do that at this point, because you either won already or lost already.
Great for style points and having fun thou, not gonna lie. Kinda like queen green goo.
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Tech buildings cost quite a lot of resources and time. Especially hive. Meanwhile zerg will not be able to produce much... As for "nothing is lost", zerg still would have lost a lot more if he does not try to wipe out recalled army, it is not like it would stop on his main. And if he does try, archons can make it very costly. If he goes for base race instead... Sure, he might break through defended protoss positions, if he goes for counterattack, but would he win base race? Unlikely.
I agree that all those arguments "if it was good, pros would be using them already" and "it is expensive and has very little use" sound solid. But remember that before dark archones and queens were considered useless, too, until pro players started actually using them regularly, and they turned out to be really efficient in their niche. Many units see/saw no use, because pros are in general very conservative.
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What's your ladder rank? Perhaps your argument will be stronger if you show Arbiter play working at a high level. That is about the only way that you can prove that it works, because you are clearly dissatisfied with the arguments made in this thread.
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Arbiters take 2 minutes to charge up for a recall, you know that right? Comparing that to zerg which can make more hive units than it can do hatchery units due to larvae restriction is not comparable. The entire zerg tech tree is faster than an arbiter recall. Generally you don't wait for things with zerg, it is all about running the slowest economy and trying to cut corners in order to scale it up faster than the faster races. Arbiter recall time: gateway+cybernetics core+stargate(templar archives)+arbiter tribunal+100.8s warp time(recall research)+120 seconds mana time=340,8 seconds. I think zerg doesn't have a slower tech tree. PS: ultralisks are 360(444) seconds if you make two caverns to research both upgrades, but who plays with ultralisks against protoss?
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United States10028 Posts
I suggest arbiter only really in giga stalled out late games where protoss needs to find a way to break a zerg base. I do think it's honestly underused for mid-lower level protoss players who cant break a zerg but at high level where they're trading untis constantly, there's never really an opportunity to get arbiter out.
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Unnecessary. You know how I finished the protoss campaign the second time over? Defensive matrixed archons. Zerg has trouble dealing with archons, they are invincible vs zerg. Likewise, that is also how I finished garithos campaign warcraft 3 - attack on a single side with two full supplies of dwarves and frost wryms. If you have a stalemate you have to pull out the big guns - archons in this case. There is a general misunderstood notion of lategame zerg power. Zerg actually gains ground from facing Dragoons with Mutalisks. Protoss should avoid mixed Mutalisk armies. Mutalisks are terribly underutilised in late game zerg. A unit that is a good tank, that flies, that provides cover is either an Overlord, or a Mutalisk. Those are sorely missed in ZvP. I miss the days Jaedong would ninja dark swarm with dropped defilers. Nothing hits home like a good zerg air assault. The way to dismantle this is archons since nothing, but archons can ignore mutalisk fire.
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