Pretty much everyone has seen Boxer's use of Valkyries against Baxter on gomtv. Being entirely inspired by his brilliant performance, I took it upon myself to give the unit a careful examination. I realize that there are other Valkyrie topics on TL but I made this one to offer a little bit more than simply theory crafting.
I decided to give it a go against Iccup but instead of just trying 1-base builds like Boxer, I also tried standard 1rax FE into 2port valk with early +1.
I Recorded both games and edited them into 1 commentated FPvod, where I discuss a bit about my build, and show the highlights/results they got. For those who don't watch, I can write about them aswell.
Interesting points:
It's pretty much PvZ but as Terran.
Spore defense does very little because of Valkyries high life. Just ignore them.
They kill overlords MUCH faster than 2port wraith.
They are very expensive, but +1 attack makes them much more cost effective.
Most Zerg players will have NO idea what to do.
A fun way to abuse D through C rank iccuppers. >
<Game 1> The first game I show is a standard 1-rax FE into 2port valk with early +1. The general idea of this build is to pretty much just go Valk/Tank. The opponent tried to counter my valks with Hydra, which my tanks quite rightly countered. The overlord harass coupled with the Siege tank abuse made it incredibly convincing.
Conclusion of Game 1: Siege tanks on Blue storm are just insane, especially when you have about 40 of them. Everyone already knows this. But when the zerg is spending so much minerals on replacing overlords, I can't imagine a zerg producing enough lings to ever pose a problem to the tanks. Air units are out of the question when valks get going with upgrades. Dark swarm does NOTHING. Ultralisks did nothing.
Clearly if the Zerg player was better and didn't get flustered and confused by what he was seeing, he could have played it a lot better. Never the less, he was C- and was too confused to react appropriately.
<Game 2> Game 2 was against a better opponent who started spire and tried to counter with Scourge. Through my experimentation, Scourge are a decent counter to valks because their damage isn't instant. What I DID find though, is that once you get a good group going (With +1), like Corsair critical mass, Scourge do very little, if any damage at all. This game was my first game doing Valkyries so I Was unprepared on how I should follow the Valkyrie Harass. I ended up stumbling upon Dropships with MnM with Valkyrie escort. Honestly, It sounds retarded. If I wasn't me, and read what I just wrote, I'd be lolling pretty hard. But.. It actually worked. He was a C Zerg, and much like my other opponent, he just didn't know HOW to react. It's very difficult to gauge just what is necessary to counter such an obscure strategy.
Conclusion of Game 2: It's absolutely ridiculous. He had total map control with 4 gas and hive tech, but he was just really unprepared. In reality, The first half of this game was total shit for me, as I was still trying to figure out how to make this work. I came to the conclusion that through practice and precision, I could refine the build to be cleaner and more realistic.
I was told "It's the kind of build that only works against somebody once." which isn't all that untrue. It's the sort of strategy that just forces the opponent to play in an uncomfortable place. I can't imagine any Zerg having experience against these kind of builds which is your initial advantage with this sort of build. Though I know better Zerg players would have destroyed me and my attempts, I still felt like it was an entertaining and interesting experience.
I'm fully prepared for the negative comments I will probably receive. I know you think that if you were the Zerg, you would have played better and reacted more appropriately. I'm just curious to see if anybody else has made attempts at builds like this.
Also, I hope people find the video entertaining. =D
*I'm NOT saying that this is some super perfect, super effective build that somehow eluded all progamers for years as I discovered it. One of the best parts about this build is simply that nobody will have practice against it so they don't know how to react. I wanna hear about other Valkyrie stories, Link progamers using them, and discuss modern viability. I don't have faith in the build, or feel passionately about it, I just enjoyed doing it and am curious about it's viability.*
Wow you actually made a video. That is awesome thanks. I don't see why you think the dropship with marines and valk escort was so crazy. That is sort of what boxer was going for in game 1. Anyway, I'm glad you had fun with it.
The sprite limit will never come into play in a real 1v1.
I experimented with valks a bit a few months ago and one of the main things I noticed is that they're REALLY frustrating to control. Half the time you'll spam right click to try and get them to move and they refuse to do it. Half your group will go and the other half will sit there getting wrecked by hydras/spores/scourge while firing at an overlord and you've just lost a massive investment
i think valkyries are good as addition to your army. but i don't think they're worth the price they cost if you want to use them as your "main unit" (like corsairs e.g). that's just my opinion. but when you watch boxers games against this zerg player at gom, you will notice that the valks don't really do too much (beside the fact that the zerg player seems pretty confused). it's always nice to see units rarely used in games that matter. but often you just realize why they are almost never used
I tryed this same strategy by myself (I actually thought I invented it but whatever..) in standard maps like othello and blue storm. If opponent doesn't know what you're going to do is good but pay attention to a couple of things:
1)the bunker you make must be protected with a a good buildings disposition, remember that you don't have anything beside that for a long time. In fact i've lost tons of times to mass speedlings, but as I said, if you study some ling proof walls in front of the building, or not necessarily ling proof but then be ready with scvs, you should be safe, remember also to place your bunker so that it covers the mineral line of your nat.
2)Versus a 2 hatch muta your valkyries should pop out some seconds later than mutas, so a couple of turrets on each mineral line should be enough, since as soon as 2 valkys are out, with turret support you should be safe.
3)Versus a 3 hach muta you have 2 valkys out sooner than Z mutas, but I suggest you NOT to lead towards Z bases, not before you have 4 valkys at least, because 9 mutas are still to much for 2 valkys, if you try to hit and run i've experienced that valkys freeze for a second before moving back, I dunno why, so you really risk to lose them both.
4)While you mass valkys you should also develop siege tech and mass tanks, you should have the gas for this. The best follow up i've experienced is to tank-bunker your way to the 3rd expansion without adding producion facilities, then mass whatever you like.
On October 04 2008 18:03 UbRi wrote: I tryed this same strategy by myself (I actually thought I invented it but whatever..) in standard maps like othello and blue storm. If opponent doesn't know what you're going to do is good but pay attention to a couple of things:
1)the bunker you make must be protected with a a good buildings disposition, remember that you don't have anything beside that for a long time. In fact i've lost tons of times to mass speedlings, but as I said, if you study some ling proof walls in front of the building, or not necessarily ling proof but then be ready with scvs, you should be safe, remember also to place your bunker so that it covers the mineral line of your nat.
2)Versus a 2 hatch muta your valkyries should pop out some seconds later than mutas, so a couple of turrets on each mineral line should be enough, since as soon as 2 valkys are out, with turret support you should be safe.
3)Versus a 3 hach muta you have 2 valkys out sooner than Z mutas, but I suggest you NOT to lead towards Z bases, not before you have 4 valkys at least, because 9 mutas are still to much for 2 valkys, if you try to hit and run i've experienced that valkys freeze for a second before moving back, I dunno why, so you really risk to lose them both.
4)While you mass valkys you should also develop siege tech and mass tanks, you should have the gas for this. The best follow up i've experienced is to tank-bunker your way to the 3rd expansion without adding producion facilities, then mass whatever you like.
1)Minerals aren't the problem. You easily have enough to make tons of rines and bunkers, unless you mean really early on speedlings. Inwhich case, all FE builds are susceptable to that.
2)completely agree.
3)Agree completely. In the video I did scout with one of my first ones just to see whats up. But you're right, you need a good group of them before they can handle themselves out there agaisnt muts and scourge.
4) That's exactly what I did in the first game shown in my video. =D
something else I just remembered. I have a friend who used to do valk/vult in TvZ play/obs games for fun, and generally unless they did something really early to shut him down it'd just brutalize everything (I mean, play/obs games so probably like D to C- level so not that high and he was probably about B- or so). It requires really careful watch from the Zerg because they have to make sure they dont stumble into mines and that they don't overextend their overlords away from their hydras. And you end up with like 80 billion vultures so you can suicide groups of them to kill his overlords and limit his map control, you can raid expansions and shit so easily and you already have starports so you can drop them all over his expos. Absolutely hilarious to watch people struggle against it. So yeah, I'd recommend mixing vults into your build.
Very awesome clip, very well done and well commented. Obv Valk are interesting. I tried similar build myself a couple of times but limited the no. of Valk to like 2 or 3 to fend off muta harass, see how that works. The thing, I guess though, is that this maybe only works because the Z doesn't know what to do. This strategy may evolve and develop and Z will figure out what is the best counter and than the question that remains is will this build still be effective. For instance, in early Sair vs Hydra games, Z often protects his Ovies with a hyrda group under/near it. I hardly saw that happen in the games you demonstrated (it was ridiculous how you got to snipe a clump of liek 8+ ovies without losing a single valk at times), So yer, definitely intreresting, thanks for sharing, but I guess only time will tell how effective this will prove
On October 04 2008 18:25 Pholon wrote: Very awesome clip, very well done and well commented. Obv Valk are interesting. I tried similar build myself a couple of times but limited the no. of Valk to like 2 or 3 to fend off muta harass, see how that works. The thing, I guess though, is that this maybe only works because the Z doesn't know what to do. This strategy may evolve and develop and Z will figure out what is the best counter and than the question that remains is will this build still be effective. For instance, in early Sair vs Hydra games, Z often protects his Ovies with a hyrda group under/near it. I hardly saw that happen in the games you demonstrated (it was ridiculous how you got to snipe a clump of liek 8+ ovies without losing a single valk at times), So yer, definitely intreresting, thanks for sharing, but I guess only time will tell how effective this will prove
Yeah, that's part of the problem. The issue for zerg is whether to spread or clump. If you clump you can protect with hydras as you say, but once I get like 8 valks, It takes about 2 seconds to kill every single one of them, then fly away. If they spread, they have no chance of defending them with units though, so I don't know. Perhaps +1 air carapace with hydra/ling? Fast plague would be really good vs tanks and valks too. =D
It's a fun strat but 2 port valk after a 1 rax FE is just gonna get completely raped by a competent zerg, they are too slow and too expensive
Wraiths are much better due to mobility, speed, and cloak. Once a valk starts firing, you can't pull back either.
It's true that tanks + valks can own the zerg but you really need to catch the zerg 1000000% off guard and get a massive lead for it to work. If you don't get a huge lead hydras will still pwn your tank valk army alone, throw in a few lings, that's fine too. Even spire play with good scourge cloning can own valks, especially with good micro when you scourge from behind due to valks not being able to cancel their long and drawn out attack animation
On October 04 2008 17:51 sqwert wrote: pros dont use it becuase theres a pixel limit thing on sc that limits the valkyrie's potentials.
right?
That only matters if you play on fastest maps.
This is incorrect when it comes to valks. They use a ton of sprites, it doesn't require anywhere near the amount of crap that's on a FPM to stop them from firing
Zergs should be well prepared, since it's like u said countering Corsairs in PvZ, except easier. Cosair are more agile, don't suffer from delays, and since they are medium sized they can take almost the same amount of damage from hydras. If you go 2 port valks how do you exactly want to deal with mass lurkers+hydras? You'll be low on tanks + no gols to support. Mines work only if your opponent is stupid and does not know how to suicide ling, hell even mass hydras with attack move do the job right. Tank + vulture doesn't work in TvZ, mostly because of mutas, although hydra + ling are good enough.
On October 04 2008 18:35 NoobsOfWrath wrote: It's a fun strat but 2 port valk after a 1 rax FE is just gonna get completely raped by a competent zerg, they are too slow and too expensive
Wraiths are much better due to mobility, speed, and cloak. Once a valk starts firing, you can't pull back either.
It's true that tanks + valks can own the zerg but you really need to catch the zerg 1000000% off guard and get a massive lead for it to work. If you don't get a huge lead hydras will still pwn your tank valk army alone, throw in a few lings, that's fine too. Even spire play with good scourge cloning can own valks, especially with good micro when you scourge from behind due to valks not being able to cancel their long and drawn out attack animation
On October 04 2008 17:51 sqwert wrote: pros dont use it becuase theres a pixel limit thing on sc that limits the valkyrie's potentials.
right?
That only matters if you play on fastest maps.
This is incorrect when it comes to valks. They use a ton of sprites, it doesn't require anywhere near the amount of crap that's on a FPM to stop them from firing
I've never seen valks fail to fire on a non-UMS or BGH/FMP map. And that game was a 200 supply vs 1?? supply endgame in the video.
Both Zerg's scouted it and "prepared" for it. They weren't terrible players, just off-guard. You can say the same about corsairs, it just takes micro to come at all angles against corsairs too. Valks are a little weaker vs scourge than corsairs, but protoss doesn't have 100 supply of siege tanks and 30 supply of MnM beneath them.
On October 04 2008 18:47 LastWish wrote: Zergs should be well prepared, since it's like u said countering Corsairs in PvZ, except easier. Cosair are more agile, don't suffer from delays, and since they are medium sized they can take almost the same amount of damage from hydras. If you go 2 port valks how do you exactly want to deal with mass lurkers+hydras? You'll be low on tanks + no gols to support. Mines work only if your opponent is stupid and does not know how to suicide ling, hell even mass hydras with attack move do the job right. Tank + vulture doesn't work in TvZ, mostly because of mutas, although hydra + ling are good enough.
Corsairs don't have siege tanks and marines beneath them. Marines with instant damage rather than goon's delayed damage makes protecting them quite easy. Plus, when you get a lot, they just destroy scourge. Valks have a lot of life aswell for vs spore or hydra. Tanks rape lurkers ezmode, are you kidding? Attack-move hydras does not work against siege tanks. I'm sorry.
Tank+Vulture doesn't work because of mutas? That's sorta what valkyries are there for. :o
As for Wraiths. Wraiths die in like 2 hits. Valkyries have MUCH more life, do much more damage to air (in AoE aswell) and take MUCH less micro than cloak/wraith micro. Wraiths have their own style in TvZ. Valks fulfill a different role in this video/concept and they do it much better than wraiths would.
I remember years ago when i was quite noob and did fast expo build before it was really the standart, i used to do some early 2 port valkyries and i could own badly some guys who had about my level , guys that i had more difficulties to win against when i played more standart. If u can make like 10 valk +1 it becomes a nightmare for ovis. Now i was thinking theses days , after having seen many vods on that imba map ( i dont remember the name but it s the map shared with zerg eggs) : terran fe into wraith then valk support , what about making standart fe + 1 starport valk ( + the usual mm) to totally cancel the muta harrass?
My post wasn't meant to comment on your clips, in fact I admit i didn't even whatch them, I was just sharing my personal experiences while doing this strategy
Great video! The only counter for zerg I can think of is teching fast and go for devourers+hydras (and swarm+cracklings vs tanks). Queens just might be viable vs this strat as ensnare would basically stop them dead (very dead indeed).
I really liked the Sair/reaver style in game 2, it was hilarious when he rofl'd at scourge getting owned, haha.
What is the god damn limit thingy? I was playing PvZ and I had like 6 reavers and none of them shot any carapace even they tho they were full! I lost becouse of that, ultras raped them for free.
omg that video is awesome, cant wait to try this tac
i was wondering though, why not go for heavy MnM use instead of focusing on tanks? i always thought mnm ripped hydra to shreds and you'll severely outnumber him since he'll be having to share his larvae between producing hydras and overlords, and mnm are very quick to mass
On October 04 2008 21:32 GrandInquisitor wrote: The problem with comparing this to PvZ corsair is that Zergs don't have to fear cloaked DT's running around in ZvT.
On October 04 2008 21:32 GrandInquisitor wrote: The problem with comparing this to PvZ corsair is that Zergs don't have to fear cloaked DT's running around in ZvT.
On October 04 2008 21:32 GrandInquisitor wrote: The problem with comparing this to PvZ corsair is that Zergs don't have to fear cloaked DT's running around in ZvT.
What about ghosts + nukes ? ;D
Defiler plague? Queens (if Zerg actually made them) ensnare? Besides ghosts are pretty easy to kill and i think even one ovie can survive long enough to let a small group of hydras or lings to kill one
I've given this build some thought and I do agree with writer on the counters to this build.
If we apply theorycraft mechanics, I'd say that terran is really at a disadvantage early on due to the massive amount of resources that this build demands so bunker placement is really, really key. I'd say this build requires around 3 gas bases for it to be sustained if you're going to go tanks and valks with upgrades(yikes). So a possible counter would be to stop a third gas. But in your video I noticed you pulled off quite alot of damage with just 2 gas.
I think scouting on zerg's part is key and if he scouts for valks, all mutas and scourges would pose almost no threat if valks number builds up. Maybe a fast lurkers would be viable due to a later academy hence later scans and detection.
In terms of macro however, I think terran would be at a massive advantage when valks number builds. Hydras with speed may prove worthy though. I think queens, as writer had pointed out, with ensnare may prove to be useful as well considering the mix with speed hydras to counter. Plague can also be a really good effective counter provided the amount of zerglings required can be produced since ovies are popping like balloons.
These are just my thoughts and I'd say it can actually prove to be a very effective build to add on with marines and medics since there's a surplus of minerals.
EDIT: Its also a real nice surprise and a refreshing experience to see BoxeR back in the scene and even revolutionising SC yet again with just a one-day appearance.
Haha this is so awesome man, props to you Nintu! If I ever get time to play again I want to try this. Keep us updated on your refinements, your commentaries are great. Do you plan to release some reps eventually?
sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
On October 04 2008 21:32 GrandInquisitor wrote: The problem with comparing this to PvZ corsair is that Zergs don't have to fear cloaked DT's running around in ZvT.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
On October 04 2008 21:32 GrandInquisitor wrote: The problem with comparing this to PvZ corsair is that Zergs don't have to fear cloaked DT's running around in ZvT.
What about ghosts + nukes ? ;D
My thoughts exactly.
someone please please do this
It would make my day
Oh my god!
Slayers Boxer the Emperor and the Revolutionist. This has to become mainstream, lololo.
I think the most deadly thing about this build is execution. Of course all builds require good execution but to pull off something like this in the long run is probably going to take an exceptional level of control as well as game-sense. Failing to do so however, will set you behind really, really far if you lose your first few valks and getting swarmed by zerg guys. While it was nice seeing in the video how the ovies died(dead ovies are cooler than live ones), I guess once this build gets to be more familiar with the zergs out there, perhaps it won't be as effective.
With that being said, this build has just been conceived. Maybe through more refining and certain clarfication and other things, I think it will be a build to fear and mech terrans vs zerg would probably be more common.
But still, I'd really want to see what BoxeR is going to do with this build. Maybe he has something up his sleeves.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
On October 05 2008 01:18 JMave wrote: I think the most deadly thing about this build is execution. Of course all builds require good execution but to pull off something like this in the long run is probably going to take an exceptional level of control as well as game-sense. Failing to do so however, will set you behind really, really far if you lose your first few valks and getting swarmed by zerg guys. While it was nice seeing in the video how the ovies died(dead ovies are cooler than live ones), I guess once this build gets to be more familiar with the zergs out there, perhaps it won't be as effective.
With that being said, this build has just been conceived. Maybe through more refining and certain clarfication and other things, I think it will be a build to fear and mech terrans vs zerg would probably be more common.
But still, I'd really want to see what BoxeR is going to do with this build. Maybe he has something up his sleeves.
I think the build is extremely map dependent. Maps like Katrina, Plasma, Colosseum, and Blue Storm where your natural gas-expo is virtually guaranteed would make this build more effective as opposed to maps like Python, Andromeda, and Return of the King, where there's a bit of a separation from your main and natural gas-expo. You are able to both get gas up early on both and protecting them both is a bit easier.
If you can further establish a 2nd expo with gas, then Valkyrie/Tank, Valkyrie/Vult, Valkyrie/MnM becomes fatal.
Essentially, against a competent zerg player:
- You cannot let him scout you - You must have an easy-to-defend natural gas-expo because your ground army is going to be substantially smaller than normal until late game.
edit: the scouting part may not be as important *currently*, as zerg players still don't know what to do really. But we already know that valks aren't used because of their numerous disadvantages, the key here is the element of surprise. It won't be long before zerg figures out a hard counter to valks (I think devourer/plague is it [except it's extremely tech heavy], but that comes from my very limited understanding of zerg)
Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
Well that's true but I'd beg to differ. With a decent amount of valks, they should actually be able to absorb some fire but manage to kill off quite alot of ovies due to the gay AoE damage. Maybe not the perfect hit-and-run unit but its still going to be ass-annoying.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
this is theorycraft isnt it?
holy crap its a strategy forum, what do you expect people to do? And dont say the videos mean anything, as he said himself, people just lost cus they probably have bad gamesense and never played against such a strategy. I am 100% certain this strategy will never become a "standard" strat among progamers. Why? Cus its just weak and unreliable against an opponent of equal calibre and strategical understanding.
So, you add 3 facts, and make your tanks plus mass vulture, and mine everywhere. And, well, he is pretty fucked I guess. That's perfect counter if he goes lings.
Starcraft is so rich. It's umbelievable. And well... Boxer is Boxer, as influent as ever.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
this is theorycraft isnt it?
holy crap its a strategy forum, what do you expect people to do? And dont say the videos mean anything, as he said himself, people just lost cus they probably have bad gamesense and never played against such a strategy. I am 100% certain this strategy will never become a "standard" strat among progamers. Why? Cus its just weak and unreliable against an opponent of equal calibre and strategical understanding.
If sair in ZvP was invented today, you would say the same.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
this is theorycraft isnt it?
holy crap its a strategy forum, what do you expect people to do? And dont say the videos mean anything, as he said himself, people just lost cus they probably have bad gamesense and never played against such a strategy. I am 100% certain this strategy will never become a "standard" strat among progamers. Why? Cus its just weak and unreliable against an opponent of equal calibre and strategical understanding.
If sair in ZvP was invented today, you would say the same.
This is what I was thinking too, the OP is not saying that this will because the big thing with progamers. he's saying it's an build to use once in a while to spice things up. (I think)
The people in those games did not have TERRIBLE game sense they just didn't know what to do. They aren't looking at it from the same view as you what they see is overlord dieing and scourge becoming ineffective.
It definitely looks like it could be a great build especially for around d+/C-/C level.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Just out of curiosity, wouldn't loading up big portions of your army into overlords be a bad idea if he's killing most of your overlords?
Well of cus it wont work if he has perfect gamesense and u are an idiot which shows ovi-speed to him and load up ur entire army in front of his nat. If he is really good (he wont do that build unless he thinks he is far superior to you but lets just assume hes really good and does) you have to get sneaky and do stuff like 2 small sized drops simultaneously or fake drop -> he pulls some tanks back/unsieges -> rape front. Of course if you just load up everything and fly ur overlords straight into his 4+ valks ur a retard and lost the game. Protecting those overlords in the first place should be no problem at all since he cant do much with 2 valks (scourge own him in case of spire opening, hydras own him in case of den opening). By the time he has 4+ valks u should have at least 10 hydras ready to be able to protect most of ur lords.
That just doesn't make sense in practice. Valks with +1 armor, and an already high HP pool, make hydras do very little damage. Plus valkyrie range is already longer than hydra range, making cliff abuse and micro very easy. When +1 attack is done for air, and eventually +2, overlords die in less than 2 seconds, (in an AoE.)
Yes, 2 hatch lurker is strong against this build I can imagine, but it's also strong against a lot of Terran openings. That doesn't really bring anything interesting to the conversation.
Tanks do rape lurker/hydra and the fact that you even suggest dropping and queens vs this valkyrie build, reveals to me that maybe you don't quite know what you're talking about.
The only thing you argued was that a Lurker drop in their main is very effective if you don't let them scout it.
What build ISN'T that true for? That's like saying "Hey, as it turns out, if they don't have observers, it makes it difficult for them to see mines!"
Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
EDIT: Also, wtf at "haha you suck my dick i'm supposed to go devs wtf" at the end by that guy.
On October 05 2008 03:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: Actually... I would have gone vultures.
You said you have too much money.
So, you add 3 facts, and make your tanks plus mass vulture, and mine everywhere. And, well, he is pretty fucked I guess. That's perfect counter if he goes lings.
Starcraft is so rich. It's umbelievable. And well... Boxer is Boxer, as influent as ever.
If they go spire and do scourge, it's good to have marines to run to. Plus lings and all that. I like rax because they're entirely minerals so all my gas can go to upgrades, valks and tanks. But yeah, vultures definitely could work.
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
If this zerg did this it is still very easy for the terran to transition into gols/tanks
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
If this zerg did this it is still very easy for the terran to transition into gols/tanks
After spending all that gas on Valkyries and original Tanks? It'd be pretty difficult to muster that up, even with 2/3 gas.
Also, Zerg could just potentially make Guard/Dev.
A caveat, though: I'm totally not qualified to speak on this subject, though...this is just massive theorycrafting.
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
Devs are so far up the tech tree. After hive, needing greater spire. In the meantime I'm ripping everything to shit. You need a counter before greater spire, hydras, spores, scourge, something. Scourge are alright until he get's mnm or like 7 valks. By then you're just screwed unless you've invested in some sort've defense. It also means you'd be playing very defensively and passively, while you wait for your counter to kick in.
Also, my valkyrie upgrades and production would start long before zerg upgrades and devourers. By the time devourers are up, my numbers and upgrades would just totally rape, in my opinion.
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
If this zerg did this it is still very easy for the terran to transition into gols/tanks
Not really. Starting goliath production would take so many factories. A lot more than you'd realistically have if you went 2 port valk. You would never get enough of an army to fight off gaurd/muta. You pretty much have to stick with valks if they went gaurd/muta. MAYBE transition into cloaked wraiths...
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
Devs are so far up the tech tree. After hive, needing greater spire. In the meantime I'm ripping everything to shit. You need a counter before greater spire, hydras, spores, scourge, something. Scourge are alright until he get's mnm or like 7 valks. By then you're just screwed unless you've invested in some sort've defense. It also means you'd be playing very defensively and passively, while you wait for your counter to kick in.
Also, my valkyrie upgrades and production would start long before zerg upgrades and devourers. By the time devourers are up, my numbers and upgrades would just totally rape, in my opinion.
True, I suppose. Greater Spire is the highest point on the Zerg tech tree :/
How do you react to the Zergs who suicide an Overlord in to scout, catch your fast 2 port and realize you're going valks, and instantly ramp up Hydra/Ling production in just one overwhelming attack at your natural while sacrificing all his Overlords in the process?
(more theorycraft).
I'm really looking forward to someone like, say, Chill comment on how he'd react.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
What I think I'm going for here is that before your Valkyrie production reaches an overwhelming point, the Zerg player has an absolute advantage in economy and units, since you're sacrificing those for tech. If the Zerg is smart and has constant observation of your base, say, with random Zergling scouts realizing your nat doesn't show evidence of lots of MM/Tank or even with a random suicide Overlord, he'll realize you're going for massive tech and can react accordingly.
If the Zerg decides to suicide in an Overlord and catches two Starports, both with a Control Tower along with an armory somewhere in the base upgrading but only one Factory, he'll likely deduce Valkyries.
What happens if the Zerg realizes you're gambling on an expensive high tech unit and starts massive production of basic units in an attempt to overwhelm your defenses with his greater economy and unit count before your Valkyries can be effective? Even if your few Valkyries manage to kill his Overlords and he's at, say, 70/23 supply or something, there's still a chance that he can risk everything in just one "hanbang" attack before your own economy and unit production surpasses his.
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
Devs are so far up the tech tree. After hive, needing greater spire. In the meantime I'm ripping everything to shit. You need a counter before greater spire, hydras, spores, scourge, something. Scourge are alright until he get's mnm or like 7 valks. By then you're just screwed unless you've invested in some sort've defense. It also means you'd be playing very defensively and passively, while you wait for your counter to kick in.
Also, my valkyrie upgrades and production would start long before zerg upgrades and devourers. By the time devourers are up, my numbers and upgrades would just totally rape, in my opinion.
True, I suppose. Greater Spire is the highest point on the Zerg tech tree :/
How do you react to the Zergs who suicide an Overlord in to scout, catch your fast 2 port and realize you're going valks, and instantly ramp up Hydra/Ling production in just one overwhelming attack at your natural while sacrificing all his Overlords in the process?
(more theorycraft).
I'm really looking forward to someone like, say, Chill comment on how he'd react.
In both games the build was scouted... ;;; So Ionno. Obviously in retrospect, they'd be better at defending, especially if they put a lot of thought into it like we are. But reversely, If I sit down and refine the build, I could make it better aswell. Hard to say how it would develop.
Chill is a better Zerg than my players in this video(he's like B, right?), and probably has more experience under his belt. If it was him on the other-end of these builds, he'd probably destroy it. But I wonder if this build was played by a stronger Terran than myself, refined nicely.. Who knows?
On October 05 2008 06:44 Empyrean wrote: What I think I'm going for here is that before your Valkyrie production reaches an overwhelming point, the Zerg player has an absolute advantage in economy and units, since you're sacrificing those for tech. If the Zerg is smart and has constant observation of your base, say, with random Zergling scouts realizing your nat doesn't show evidence of lots of MM/Tank or even with a random suicide Overlord, he'll realize you're going for massive tech and can react accordingly.
If the Zerg decides to suicide in an Overlord and catches two Starports, both with a Control Tower along with an armory somewhere in the base upgrading but only one Factory, he'll likely deduce Valkyries.
What happens if the Zerg realizes you're gambling on an expensive high tech unit and starts massive production of basic units in an attempt to overwhelm your defenses with his greater economy and unit count before your Valkyries can be effective? Even if your few Valkyries manage to kill his Overlords and he's at, say, 70/23 supply or something, there's still a chance that he can risk everything in just one "hanbang" attack before your own economy and unit production surpasses his.
Well then you have the option to turtle behind bunkers and Bio. His army will remain stagnant at 70 and be unable to make new units to defend his overlords as they pop. You'll catch up quickly. What I noticed was that Zerg pretty much has to stay in his base to defend his overlords.
Also, 2port add-ons off 2base, which is all they're likely to scout before you kill the overlord, usually means SK Terran. once valks are out, which is pretty freaking early, I can't imagine an overlord making it to my base to suicide in.. ;;;;
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
Dude... If you just made ZvT imbalanced.... You just wait.. SOMETHING will *mysteriously* happen to you and every record of this build ever being created.
Besides that: This made me wish I played T for a few minutes... I wish I offraced well =\.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
so you are offering him a game knowing his build before the start & u r trying to proof the ineffectiveness of the build in THAT style of game?
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
so you are offering him a game knowing his build before the start & u r trying to proof the ineffectiveness of the build in THAT style of game?
P.D: Sorry for my english.
ok im going standard 3 hatch muta and add a den as soon as i send in a ling and see hes not going m&m. now we are on even terms.
On October 05 2008 07:11 Zoler wrote: Valkyries in big numbers rape devourers in big numbers
Some people doesnt seem to understand this. Zerg CAN NOT beat terran air with their own air.
Well, that's not entirely true - it maybe a surprise, but if both have all upgrades devourers will win, although it will be close (unless valks are nicely spread out and devourers are very clumped of course).
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
You didn't answer how you can get enough gas to sustain HydraLurk upgrades, or any of his other questions.
On October 05 2008 06:24 Empyrean wrote: Haha, I've tried this a long time ago when I still attempted to play Terran. Obviously I didn't have the execution you did so I failed miserably ;D
Anyway, will you be releasing these replays anytime soon?
One thing that you may wish to address is the potential use of Devs+Hydras+Lings against your build. Devourers and a few Mutalisks pretty much wreck enemy air, but it really isn't used much because of the huge opportunity cost for teching Devs and actually spending money on them. But hey, it might end up saving the Zerg money by having a relatively lower cost in replacing the Overlords and the fact that the Terran spent lots of money getting upgrades and a large number of Valks. So perhaps in this case, Devs/Mutas could be effective? Perhaps even Guards? It'd take a massive amount of economy to support it, though...it's all just random theorycraft. Just throwing things out there.
If this zerg did this it is still very easy for the terran to transition into gols/tanks
Not really. Starting goliath production would take so many factories. A lot more than you'd realistically have if you went 2 port valk. You would never get enough of an army to fight off gaurd/muta. You pretty much have to stick with valks if they went gaurd/muta. MAYBE transition into cloaked wraiths...
I still don't think it's an issue.
Yeah but I'm assuming the valks would scout the greater spire morphing and off 3-6 facts you should have at least 12 gols to support your valks by the time they have devs. Not to mention by the time they've made critical mass zerg air you could easily have the required amount of goliaths.
I have been using this build a long time ago and appart from the general lack of timing, my biggest problem was the lack of good way to attack. This build is a great mindfuck, especially if the zerg goes muta and you manage to kill his initial force + score some overlord hits. The problem starts when they switch to hydra and or if they initially started with hydra - attacking might be very hard, because they can easily flank your army.
I usually used this build on LT, so I followed with a tank drop at the hill near the natural, as well as firebat drops. On other maps I had the problem that they could accumulate hydra/ling/lurker and not allow me to go out of my base. Basically I would be slowly building up my tank numbers; while they would be playing from 2-3 bases (not counting the expo).
Usually I tried to take the islands on LT to increase my money, but it was too slow to start mass tanks (or gollies) - good zergs could just secure their overlords and prepare some flank, while slowly taking the map. I would be dropping of course, but it doesnt work that great vs lurker-hydra-ling for example. Perhaps mnm would do it though.
come to think of it you would probably even get raped by a lousy 3 hatchling allin, provided u are denied scouting. expo -> 2 port is very very vulnerable to this unless u get acad first.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
You didn't answer how you can get enough gas to sustain HydraLurk upgrades, or any of his other questions.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
STX_SouL_July the ONLY b- German.
Which leads me to believe you aren't truly a b-.
duh i have been b- the past 3 or 4 seasons now, last season on 2 accounts. No im not B- this season yet cus i didnt play more than 30-40 games till now. Im confident I will hit B- again though, since its relatively easy to get there. I wont get further though without ridiculous mass gaming since the change of -100 points per loss on B levels makes it pretty tough to keep advancing.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
On October 05 2008 10:57 meegrean wrote: The big problem is that they still die to just two scourges.
When you get enough, the scourge die pretty much instantly, as you can see in game2 in my video. You can also use your surplus of minerals to keep MnM nearby to shoot down scourge. Valks are pretty fast. =)
Nintu wrote:. Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
This is kind of what I was going for in my later posts >_>...an early-mid game hanbang attack once they have the proper intelligence would very hard to defend against.
Nintu wrote:. Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
This is kind of what I was going for in my later posts >_>...an early-mid game hanbang attack once they have the proper intelligence would very hard to defend against.
Terran can adapt to this aswell. Terran can prepare for this if their build is scouted or if they scout this sort of play coming from Z. Most 1rax FE builds are susceptible to this stuff though.
On October 05 2008 11:52 LegendaryDreams wrote: I would say this is only viable against D to D+, nothing higher. The build order isn't efficient and there are so many holes to it.
Please elaborate as to not make this a terrible post?
Sorry, to be on topic: Valkyries are only effective if your opponent is going mass mutas (3 hatch muta) instead of the traditional lurker / ling. If zergs gain a slightly advantage and takes some extra expos, their muta count will be way too intimidating for a terran mnm army, which is when the viability of a valkyrie actually takes part in.
On October 05 2008 12:00 LegendaryDreams wrote: Sorry, to be on topic: Valkyries are only effective if your opponent is going mass mutas (3 hatch muta) instead of the traditional lurker / ling. If zergs gain a slightly advantage and takes some extra expos, their muta count will be way too intimidating for a terran mnm army, which is when the viability of a valkyrie actually takes part in.
Watch the videos and read the OP. THEN you can post again in this thread.
On October 05 2008 12:00 LegendaryDreams wrote: Sorry, to be on topic: Valkyries are only effective if your opponent is going mass mutas (3 hatch muta) instead of the traditional lurker / ling. If zergs gain a slightly advantage and takes some extra expos, their muta count will be way too intimidating for a terran mnm army, which is when the viability of a valkyrie actually takes part in.
Watch the videos and read the OP. THEN you can post again in this thread.
Yeah i would like to see the results of this vs muta but i feel that with the zerg constantly having to worry about ovi production that the results would be similar. Need day[9] in on this imo.
On October 05 2008 12:33 Kennigit wrote: Yeah i would like to see the results of this vs muta but i feel that with the zerg constantly having to worry about ovi production that the results would be similar. Need day[9] in on this imo.
Valks vs Muta are just rape, even with spread. Better than sair vs muta because you can't surround valkyries. Their attack AoE is just a giant wide range.
On October 05 2008 12:33 Kennigit wrote: Yeah i would like to see the results of this vs muta but i feel that with the zerg constantly having to worry about ovi production that the results would be similar. Need day[9] in on this imo.
Valks vs Muta are just rape, even with spread. Better than sair vs muta because you can't surround valkyries. Their attack AoE is just a giant wide range.
We need everyone involved in this discussion. =D
A minor issue is that if you stand right on top of the valks they glitch up and fire weird/slow but yeah i beat a friend using the tank version vs. his 2hatch muta... though he's an IRL friend who is like D-
The way i see it going valkyries is a counter to mutas and thats it, it is a timing thing and if you do it right you can just destroy their mutas+ovies and gain an advantage enough to win easily.
Okay well with some messing around this seems to lose pretty bad to a multi-hatch speedling all-in of one sort or another. I'm going to need to fool around and see if you can get cracklings in time. This is kind of a ridiculous bullshit thing though as it's designed to counter this and only this and nobody ever does this.
Hey Nintu, dont worry about all these people saying it wont work all of the time. No strat works all the time thats just hilarious to even point out. As always, if the build is decent then it will always be down to execution by both players that decides the outcome. So i say you are right o try unusual things if you want. Youre doing a good thing here by trying.
If you need to edit the audio within a video you can always go to reaper.fm and get their free audio recording and editing software. Youll be able to use splits to pull down the peaks or even easier would be to use one of the built in compressor or limiter plug-ins that come free with the program to bring up the overall volume and reduce the peaks in audio. Small download, and its made by the same people who created winamp i think. Thats IF you need something like that. See ya.
On October 05 2008 14:11 ForVengeance wrote: Hey Nintu, dont worry about all these people saying it wont work all of the time. No strat works all the time thats just hilarious to even point out. As always, if the build is decent then it will always be down to execution by both players that decides the outcome. So i say you are right o try unusual things if you want. Youre doing a good thing here by trying.
If you need to edit the audio within a video you can always go to reaper.fm and get their free audio recording and editing software. Youll be able to use splits to pull down the peaks or even easier would be to use one of the built in compressor or limiter plug-ins that come free with the program to bring up the overall volume and reduce the peaks in audio. Small download, and its made by the same people who created winamp i think. Thats IF you need something like that. See ya.
Thanks for the sound tip. I don't mind some of the naysayers because they have points and reasoning. It just bugs me when people go "Valks suck, you suck, your build sucks."
the best counter against mass valks is the follows..
a) Scourge flank during the valks cooldown. It takes skill on the zerg's part to "bait" the valks to fire and then flank with scourge. Obviously this is hard to do so the next best counter...
b) Queen and hydras. Ensnare is your friend. omg a underused unit to counter another underused unit Just more proof that SC is greater than God.
And dont waste money on spores, they will not help against valks..
On October 05 2008 13:39 Hypnosis wrote: The way i see it going valkyries is a counter to mutas and thats it, it is a timing thing and if you do it right you can just destroy their mutas+ovies and gain an advantage enough to win easily.
I don't see how you can stand by this statement after all the conversation and the video. Valks can work very well against hydra builds, as was displayed. Spores do little, as killing overlords only takes a second and valkyries are fast and have a lot of HP. How does a zerg handle the total domination of every overlord they make? Grouping up and the zerg can defend, but the Terran can also kill them all in 1 attack. If he splits them up, the terran clones his valks and takes them all out. Scourge do very little if there is a lot of valks and if there are MnM near by.
Obviously the build is stoppable, and we've come up with many ideas on the build's weaknesses. I think we just need to think and play some games out to try and come up with a conclusion on the effectiveness of this build. Please add more to your comments than simply "The way I see it, no" with no evidence or logic to support your claim.
On October 05 2008 14:20 Tiamat wrote: the best counter against mass valks is the follows..
a) Scourge flank during the valks cooldown. It takes skill on the zerg's part to "bait" the valks to fire and then flank with scourge. Obviously this is hard to do so the next best counter...
b) Queen and hydras. Ensnare is your friend. omg a underused unit to counter another underused unit Just more proof that SC is greater than God.
And dont waste money on spores, they will not help against valks..
This is very true. It's a skill that Zerg has never had to use before, but it's a type of micro where you clone them to attack during the attack cooldown. This can work, but in practice is very difficult since the Valkyrie AoE is rather... all-consuming.. And as they get close, just obliterate.
LOL. If I played a game where I went valks, they ensnared, and I used medic restore.. I'm pretty sure My life could be complete and I could die happy.
How map dependent is this build? I see that your two but very successful trials are both on Blue Storm. How viable is this build against a Z on a map like, lets say, Python 1.3?
On October 05 2008 14:49 SilveR.sKy)ChoseN wrote: How map dependent is this build? I see that your two but very successful trials are both on Blue Storm. How viable is this build against a Z on a map like, lets say, Python 1.3?
Well certainly, the effectiveness of Tanks would be reduced drastically, and Zerg would have more freedom for more flanking maneuvers. The larger size of the map would also, I believe, contribute to a more overwhelming Zerg economical advantage.
And yeah, Queens would be pretty effective. Parasite would allow you to know where the Valkball is, and Ensnare would drastically reduce their effectiveness, as they'd be much more vulnerable to hydras and also, Valks just have inherently high cooldown to begin with.
Still waiting on some "expert" commentary, though :D
A better counter I found to this seems to be a proxy-hatchery in the nat with sunkens supported with lings, but on blue storm proxy hatchery sucks ass because of the ramp, but on python it seems like proxy hatch would be much stronger
I thought some sort of Valk strat is giving auto-wins to Terrans on plasma? I think the weakness of the Valks lies not in the units themselves, but the inability to combine with MnM/Biomech as effectively as vessels, so the ground army is significantly weakened. After all, vessels mean effective air superiority as well as valks, but vessels can do other things.
When a Zerg spots a valk build, he can just defend/hide/run his ovies for a while and use ling-lurk for a contain as the Terran would have less ground army than say massing barracks. In the mean time he should try to get 3~4 gas and get defilers. Alternatively he can just push an near all in and kill the nat if the defenses aren't that strong.
Defilers counters this build quite well, as plague can kill masses of valks and darkswarm + lurkers CANNOT be broken with MnM + Tanks. (Tank splash do not hit burrowed units, go figure) With no vessels to snipe defilers and lurkers, a single defiler with steady ling feed and a few lurkers can hold a choke to the end of time. If the Zerg had the map before, it can simply play for starvation while camping ovies above hydras. ----------- If there is a critical timing issue to the build, imo it would be to push out with just before defiler tech (or when the zerg overexpo/suffer supply choke) come into play and do massive unrecoverable damage and win the game. On maps where flanking is difficult and the Zerg ground army is ineffective, this gives terrans the win.
---------- Now with that in mind, perhaps a queen build would be whats needed to save Zergs on plasma....
As a side note, paranoid zerg players can protect ovies by spreading them out in bases connected by nydus and use "info lings" to keep track of the valks. Between the plagues, the "teleporting hydralisk burrow traps" and the spread out ovies, ovie hunting probably will never become that profitable even after critical mass gets obtained.
As a side note, paranoid zerg players can protect ovies by spreading them out in bases connected by nydus and use "info lings" to keep track of the valks. Between the plagues, the "teleporting hydralisk burrow traps" and the spread out ovies, ovie hunting probably will never become that profitable even after critical mass gets obtained.
If you're spending that much time trying to keep your overlords away from Valkyries, it's distracting your micro/macro and will cause you to weaken elsewhere.
I keep checking in on this thread in hopes of commentary from some "reputable" source on the viability of this strategy, proper counters, and the level of play that it is best used at.
On October 05 2008 18:14 Rayzorblade wrote: I keep checking in on this thread in hopes of commentary from some "reputable" source on the viability of this strategy, proper counters, and the level of play that it is best used at.
LOL. Reputable source.
I never claimed I had an S-class strategy here. Just that it HAS worked in the occasions I tried it, against C- and C level players. I'm not claiming otherwise, but I am asking for opinions, comments and experiences.
Though if a really good player decided to try these builds and post results, that would be badass.-
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
wow basically all I said was u get owned by a timing ground attack in the early mid and u agree with me right in the third paragraph. By now, not only I have said it, nevake said it too and he has probably seen 20 times the pro matches each one of us has seen. Empyrean and some others went along the same argument. also u asked about viability and all I told u was it will work exponentially less the higher the level u play on. on C levels it may work around the 50% mark, on B level that percentage will drop to 20-30% and on A level u basically are just gonna pull one win outta 10 games using this strat. (all assuming u and ur opponent are of near equal skill). Of cus thats just an educated guess and no more than theorycrafting, but as u try it against C level players u cant do more than theorycrafting urself about the viability on higher levels. There IS a reason though why this unit is extremely underused on the highest level of play (progaming).
From a zerg perspective I think its like trying to make a solid build out of smth like fast burrow lings + queen. Sure it has the cool factor and can catch people off guard cus they probably have almost never played against it. It still is a very risky build and will never be a solid, safe build. Maybe u should play on an iccup acc until u reach ur skill ceiling (lose 50% or more) and then try this build again. Up to now u are simply the better player. I can make daring Z builds work more than they should as well if i play against lesser players.
anyway I spent like a week to develop a pretty much equal build to the OP's, that means his idea isn't foolish at all. The only difference between mine and his is that I focused a lot on getting those valks as fast as possible, so when possible I started with 14 cc and had little money to spend on bunkers and marines
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
Amen.
Actually, the only way to see about this build is to try it a lot.
Corsair vs zerg seems pretty absurd if you really think about it. It's big investment, you lose time, it will allow to kill a couple of ovi (wooow, amzing...) and maybe to scout. Theorycraft is nice, but you can know starcraft only through experience. The fact is that it works so amazing that everybody does it.
Now, I am surprised that the same who cry and complain all day long about the good old times, and that Starcraft is boring and macro-standart and repetitive etc... etc..., and that it was so much better when people had opportunities to be more creative and so, are so fucking conservative that they flame without even trying when they see something new.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
wow basically all I said was u get owned by a timing ground attack in the early mid and u agree with me right in the third paragraph. By now, not only I have said it, nevake said it too and he has probably seen 20 times the pro matches each one of us has seen. Empyrean and some others went along the same argument. also u asked about viability and all I told u was it will work exponentially less the higher the level u play on. on C levels it may work around the 50% mark, on B level that percentage will drop to 20-30% and on A level u basically are just gonna pull one win outta 10 games using this strat. (all assuming u and ur opponent are of near equal skill). Of cus thats just an educated guess and no more than theorycrafting, but as u try it against C level players u cant do more than theorycrafting urself about the viability on higher levels. There IS a reason though why this unit is extremely underused on the highest level of play (progaming).
From a zerg perspective I think its like trying to make a solid build out of smth like fast burrow lings + queen. Sure it has the cool factor and can catch people off guard cus they probably have almost never played against it. It still is a very risky build and will never be a solid, safe build. Maybe u should play on an iccup acc until u reach ur skill ceiling (lose 50% or more) and then try this build again. Up to now u are simply the better player. I can make daring Z builds work more than they should as well if i play against lesser players.
Again, talk without trying. You pull off statsitic on something you have not done once. That's ridiculous.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
wow basically all I said was u get owned by a timing ground attack in the early mid and u agree with me right in the third paragraph. By now, not only I have said it, nevake said it too and he has probably seen 20 times the pro matches each one of us has seen. Empyrean and some others went along the same argument. also u asked about viability and all I told u was it will work exponentially less the higher the level u play on. on C levels it may work around the 50% mark, on B level that percentage will drop to 20-30% and on A level u basically are just gonna pull one win outta 10 games using this strat. (all assuming u and ur opponent are of near equal skill). Of cus thats just an educated guess and no more than theorycrafting, but as u try it against C level players u cant do more than theorycrafting urself about the viability on higher levels. There IS a reason though why this unit is extremely underused on the highest level of play (progaming).
From a zerg perspective I think its like trying to make a solid build out of smth like fast burrow lings + queen. Sure it has the cool factor and can catch people off guard cus they probably have almost never played against it. It still is a very risky build and will never be a solid, safe build. Maybe u should play on an iccup acc until u reach ur skill ceiling (lose 50% or more) and then try this build again. Up to now u are simply the better player. I can make daring Z builds work more than they should as well if i play against lesser players.
Again, talk without trying. You pull off statsitic on something you have not done once. That's ridiculous.
Play this build and talk afterward.
Since my T is probably around D level it wouldnt make sense for me to play this build and say smth about higher levels of play. I guess we have to wait for a B or A level Terran to try this build on his levels and tell us if its really that effective if u need first hand experience to believe. Why dont U go ahead and try this build on B or A level? Judging from ur constant comparison of corsairs to valks probably cus u are a D player. I mean even in theorycrafting it doesnt take much to see that corsairs are much better than valks.
On October 05 2008 21:14 Biff The Understudy wrote:
On October 05 2008 20:11 damenmofa wrote:
On October 05 2008 11:21 Nintu wrote:
On October 05 2008 07:14 damenmofa wrote:
On October 05 2008 06:41 Nintu wrote:
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
wow basically all I said was u get owned by a timing ground attack in the early mid and u agree with me right in the third paragraph. By now, not only I have said it, nevake said it too and he has probably seen 20 times the pro matches each one of us has seen. Empyrean and some others went along the same argument. also u asked about viability and all I told u was it will work exponentially less the higher the level u play on. on C levels it may work around the 50% mark, on B level that percentage will drop to 20-30% and on A level u basically are just gonna pull one win outta 10 games using this strat. (all assuming u and ur opponent are of near equal skill). Of cus thats just an educated guess and no more than theorycrafting, but as u try it against C level players u cant do more than theorycrafting urself about the viability on higher levels. There IS a reason though why this unit is extremely underused on the highest level of play (progaming).
From a zerg perspective I think its like trying to make a solid build out of smth like fast burrow lings + queen. Sure it has the cool factor and can catch people off guard cus they probably have almost never played against it. It still is a very risky build and will never be a solid, safe build. Maybe u should play on an iccup acc until u reach ur skill ceiling (lose 50% or more) and then try this build again. Up to now u are simply the better player. I can make daring Z builds work more than they should as well if i play against lesser players.
Again, talk without trying. You pull off statsitic on something you have not done once. That's ridiculous.
Play this build and talk afterward.
Since my T is probably around D level it wouldnt make sense for me to play this build and say smth about higher levels of play. I guess we have to wait for a B or A level Terran to try this build on his levels and tell us if its really that effective if u need first hand experience to believe. Why dont U go ahead and try this build on B or A level? Judging from ur constant comparison of corsairs to valks probably cus u are a D player. I mean even in theorycrafting it doesnt take much to see that corsairs are much better than valks.
Valks are much, much more solid than Corsairs, and when you have a certain number of them, they just become pretty invincible in air vs air. On the other hand, they are much slower and more expensive than sairs.
The comparison was about build which can sound weird at first, but that experience prove to be efficient.
Now, man, you are very, very proud of your B- level. Good for you. The problem is that you seem to be thinking that it's enough as an argument in such discussion. Maybe being a little bit less arrogant? :/
This discussion leads nowhere. This build has to be tried, so we see if it's viable, efficient, and at which level. Maybe amazing at D/C level and bad at A level, why not. Maybe the contrary. Cool down with your theorycraft flames.
On October 05 2008 20:24 UbRi wrote: anyway I spent like a week to develop a pretty much equal build to the OP's, that means his idea isn't foolish at all. The only difference between mine and his is that I focused a lot on getting those valks as fast as possible, so when possible I started with 14 cc and had little money to spend on bunkers and marines
14cc in tvz is never possible unless there is some physical barrier between you too like an island or destructible building etc.
You aren't gonna reinvent SC, valkyries just aren't a good unit and will be relegated to cute builds. Doesnt mean you cant win when you use them (obv) or that they aren't really fun to try, but slumming it up in D for a week using vulks isnt going to somehow alter reality
On October 05 2008 20:24 UbRi wrote: anyway I spent like a week to develop a pretty much equal build to the OP's, that means his idea isn't foolish at all. The only difference between mine and his is that I focused a lot on getting those valks as fast as possible, so when possible I started with 14 cc and had little money to spend on bunkers and marines
14cc in tvz is never possible unless there is some physical barrier between you too like an island or destructible building etc.
You aren't gonna reinvent SC, valkyries just aren't a good unit and will be relegated to cute builds. Doesnt mean you cant win when you use them (obv) or that they aren't really fun to try, but slumming it up in D for a week using vulks isnt going to somehow alter reality
The OP is not saying that it's a super ultimate wtfpewpewlazers build.
On October 05 2008 12:05 d(O.o)a wrote:
Watch the videos and read the OP. THEN you can post again in this thread.
On October 05 2008 20:24 UbRi wrote: anyway I spent like a week to develop a pretty much equal build to the OP's, that means his idea isn't foolish at all. The only difference between mine and his is that I focused a lot on getting those valks as fast as possible, so when possible I started with 14 cc and had little money to spend on bunkers and marines
14cc in tvz is never possible unless there is some physical barrier between you too like an island or destructible building etc.
You aren't gonna reinvent SC, valkyries just aren't a good unit and will be relegated to cute builds. Doesnt mean you cant win when you use them (obv) or that they aren't really fun to try, but slumming it up in D for a week using vulks isnt going to somehow alter reality
The OP is not saying that it's a super ultimate wtfpewpewlazers build.
Watch the videos and read the OP. THEN you can post again in this thread.
ya I know the op is being realistic but theres people in the thread talking like they put on their lab coats and crunched the numbers in the D- bracket
On October 05 2008 21:12 Biff The Understudy wrote: Corsair vs zerg seems pretty absurd if you really think about it. It's big investment, you lose time, it will allow to kill a couple of ovi (wooow, amzing...) and maybe to scout. Theorycraft is nice, but you can know starcraft only through experience. The fact is that it works so amazing that everybody does it.
Actually, Corsairs are very useful in PvZ to scout whether or not the Zerg lair tech was Mutalisk or Lurker. Terran don't have to worry about not being able to scout the Zerg because they can just Comsar ;D
Also, Nintu, you say if the Zerg splits up his Overlords you could just clone your Valkyries to destroy them all. But what if the Zerg keeps, say, two Scourge by each one? Then you'd be pretty much forced to use your Valkball to go hunting, which would reduce the efficiency drastically.
Its hard to imagine that I've been trying to get poeple to use Valks for over a year now, and I get banned for mentioning them in the this forum. And now Boxer mysteriously does it and now its okay to talk about it. Incredible
Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
Ok for the scourge. Therefore, when you have hydra (you'll have anyway) and maybe spore, being armoured changes everything.
If you looked the vod of op, you could see that he was destroying groups of 12 lords protected by some hydra during mid-game. Try to do that with corsair (hope for you they are insured).
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
When you get enough valks with +1, they absolutely DESTROY scourge. Scourge work amazingly when there is 3 or 4 valks, but once you get like 8, I've seen it tried many times and almost everytime, my valks came out unscathed.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
The argument "Hydra/Lurk rape the shit out of you" is getting tiresome. Why would you believe that's true? A giant mass of tanks with bio or vulture support would absolutely DESTROY hydra lurk... Tell me why you think this would be different? Why would you think hydra/lurk would work? Do you think you have the gas for this? Getting the hydra upgrades, the lurker upgrade, the Carapace and +1 attack? Keep in mind the fact that your overlords have to be above hydras at ALL times.
Suggesting drops vs valkyries, where you can scout the entire map at all times, and can kill overlords in 2-3 seconds, just shows me how little I should be listening to your comments.
You easily have the ECO off 2-base to go either MnM/Valk or Tank/Valk.
dude maybe i should just stop responding to you but if u really have to throw the "just shows me how little bla" card i cant refrain myself from telling you what I really think. I checked up ur accs on iccup and seen u have a C high. I am a B- player and was the leader of a league 1 bwcl clan and been playing this game for 6 years. I dunno why u are even arguing with people when u think this build is invincible and go on about how ur tank/vult/mass upgrades/mass everything rape the shit out of every suggestion people throw at you. I mean what do YOU think would rape ur build? Oh right if ur honest to urself u just cant think of anything that beats it cus ur so excited about ur newfound gosu strategy. Also u think chill as a B player would rape it, newsflash: most B level players would rape that strat.
To put it in a nutshell: going 2 port is always very risky and unless u do some heavy damage early on ur basically fucked cus u gonna get overwhelmed in midgame (unless its a map like plasma or smth). You wont have those mass tanks/m&m/whatever to hold off a massive Z ground army in the early mid if u went 2 port valks first, if u still doubt it pm me for a 1on1 anytime u like.
I don't think this build is invincible. Read the OP. I quite bluntly said that I'm not sure of it's strength yet. That's why I made this thread.
What do I think would rape my build? I've already said. For Tank/valk, plague. For Valk/Bioship, Plague/darkswarm/lurkers. One of the weaknesses of this build is that it has very little early game presence. Atleast, from my experiments, that's been the case. This allows the zerg to expand quite liberally and allows for fast tech.
The fact that you're a B- means nothing to me. You still present arguments with very little carrying evidence. You're just blindly theory-crafting and throwing flames.
Another weakness of the build is it's susceptability to early timing attacks by Zerg, if they prepare and scout the build. My friend Vyzhis was helping me theorycraft on this build a lot and he is a damn good ZvT player.
Since I've been really busy with work and other things, I've been unable to sit down and do more refining and I probably won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait to try it more. =D
If I find that I am able to refine the build enough to make it safe and practical, I will make another video with some more specific information. Until then, I'd love it if other people tried it aswell, and posted their replays/theories/etc..
Thanks for all the support and comments by the way guys. Check out my other videos aswell guys! I also plan to buy a new mic soon or to somehow find a way to fix that breathing/sound quality problem. =D
So, I'd love to hear more suggestions or problems with the build. Please think it through though! Also, post replays of your attempts and such. =D
Edit: Oh, and I've raped enough B- Zerg's playing standard to not be intimidated by your rank-dropping. Just because your high-rank is higher than mine, doesn't mean I won't ask for evidence and reasoning from your posts. You're not Boxer. You're B-. B- doesn't buy you much so you still have to make sense when you speak.
wow basically all I said was u get owned by a timing ground attack in the early mid and u agree with me right in the third paragraph. By now, not only I have said it, nevake said it too and he has probably seen 20 times the pro matches each one of us has seen. Empyrean and some others went along the same argument. also u asked about viability and all I told u was it will work exponentially less the higher the level u play on. on C levels it may work around the 50% mark, on B level that percentage will drop to 20-30% and on A level u basically are just gonna pull one win outta 10 games using this strat. (all assuming u and ur opponent are of near equal skill). Of cus thats just an educated guess and no more than theorycrafting, but as u try it against C level players u cant do more than theorycrafting urself about the viability on higher levels. There IS a reason though why this unit is extremely underused on the highest level of play (progaming).
From a zerg perspective I think its like trying to make a solid build out of smth like fast burrow lings + queen. Sure it has the cool factor and can catch people off guard cus they probably have almost never played against it. It still is a very risky build and will never be a solid, safe build. Maybe u should play on an iccup acc until u reach ur skill ceiling (lose 50% or more) and then try this build again. Up to now u are simply the better player. I can make daring Z builds work more than they should as well if i play against lesser players.
You're just talking out of your ass. You make about 10 claims in this post but don't give any reason for anyone to believe any of them. Your opinion means very little when you just spew out your opinion as if it were fact.=
On October 05 2008 21:12 Biff The Understudy wrote: Corsair vs zerg seems pretty absurd if you really think about it. It's big investment, you lose time, it will allow to kill a couple of ovi (wooow, amzing...) and maybe to scout. Theorycraft is nice, but you can know starcraft only through experience. The fact is that it works so amazing that everybody does it.
Actually, Corsairs are very useful in PvZ to scout whether or not the Zerg lair tech was Mutalisk or Lurker. Terran don't have to worry about not being able to scout the Zerg because they can just Comsar ;D
Also, Nintu, you say if the Zerg splits up his Overlords you could just clone your Valkyries to destroy them all. But what if the Zerg keeps, say, two Scourge by each one? Then you'd be pretty much forced to use your Valkball to go hunting, which would reduce the efficiency drastically.
I meant that vs Hydra build. If zerg does that you can still just use a huge death-group to destroy all overlords/scourge.
On October 05 2008 20:24 UbRi wrote: anyway I spent like a week to develop a pretty much equal build to the OP's, that means his idea isn't foolish at all. The only difference between mine and his is that I focused a lot on getting those valks as fast as possible, so when possible I started with 14 cc and had little money to spend on bunkers and marines
14cc in tvz is never possible unless there is some physical barrier between you too like an island or destructible building etc.
You aren't gonna reinvent SC, valkyries just aren't a good unit and will be relegated to cute builds. Doesnt mean you cant win when you use them (obv) or that they aren't really fun to try, but slumming it up in D for a week using vulks isnt going to somehow alter reality
This is one of the worst posts I've ever read. This kind of close-minded, conservative bullshit just makes me sick. "Valkyries just aren't a good unit."
For the last time. I'm open to real discussion about the strategies viability, but only from intelligent posters who actually take the time to articulate the reason why.
Maybe Valkyries are bad. Maybe they're easy to play against. Maybe they're totally unviable. But FFS give me a reason why. Stop foaming at the mouth because you've never seen your precious favorite progamer use them. (Oh wait, Boxer has..)
Stop theorycrafting and actually use your intellect to investigate the subject for atleast a moment. Then, post in the thread. If you don't use your head, please don't post in this thread.
Some of you guys need to lighten up, seriously. An earlier poster made a great point when he said someone puts plenty of thought and effort into a neat idea and some of you just shit on it for no reason other than a pro hasn't done it. Odds are, this strategy probably isn't anything special - but don't be so fucking close minded to just assume every unique idea is dumb.
Good thread nintu, I can absolutely understand how you could be getting frustrated at some of these guys, but I appreciate your enthusiasm!
I think this strategy is something special. I always like people trying out new builds, and this sure as hell beats the regular 1Rax expand or standard builds, and from the replays looks like they can be hella effective if executed well. Props Nintu, I'm practicing the build myself right now.
The first game was some kind of weirdass ten minute short game that didn't get up to Valkyrie tech.
The second game wasn't what the topic creator was talking about. Oh wow Boxer made Valkyries! That's about all it has to do with the original poster's strategy of 2port Valk into Tanks with various mm scattered about.
so many pro's have done this. most get raped tho. its so easy to counter it if they suspect any kind of that and do a mass hydra wave, sacrificigin some tech.
Could you link me to some vods of pros doing this build? I wanna see how it's executed on their parts. It seems that the OP counters mass hydras with massing tanks which seems to completely melt Hydras. But I wanna see how the pros do it.
The first game was some kind of weirdass ten minute short game that didn't get up to Valkyrie tech.
The second game wasn't what the topic creator was talking about. Oh wow Boxer made Valkyries! That's about all it has to do with the original poster's strategy of 2port Valk into Tanks with various mm scattered about.
(Not to mention he lost both games)
not to mention he won both games
i can see why nintu is so mad.... ppl throwing out random words without thinking.
haha... and here im talking about ppl throwing out random bullshit and i didn't even give you the right vods...
Nintu; he tried to tell everybody valks can be viable they laughed in his face. But know because Valks are really just hydralisks in halloween costumes why? because overlords are fucking scared of them so on halloween they go to the hive cluster and are like:
*Knock knock*
Trick or treat - hydralisk valk
AAAAAHH VALKS RUNNNNNN MASS BUILD OVERLORDS! ALL OF OUR MINERALS! - Zergling
Nigga it's me - Hydralisk Valk
TAKE OFF TEH COSTUMEZ I DUN BELIEVE YOU! - Ultralisk
what the fuck man settle down it's halloween remember? - hydralisk valk
Valkyrie preparedx12 - medic valk
What the hell was that? - mutalisk
eaueaueau - mutalisks dieing
what the fuck man?! - hydralisk valk
build some fucking hydras to kill these nigs - kerrigan
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
When you get enough valks with +1, they absolutely DESTROY scourge. Scourge work amazingly when there is 3 or 4 valks, but once you get like 8, I've seen it tried many times and almost everytime, my valks came out unscathed.
My point is that you need 8 or so for a critical mass and valks are so expensive that 8 isn't viable for that kind of role. Inefficient mineral cost for the use. This was my point. You're agreeing with me.
Sorry did not read whole thread, I just want to say that you made some great VODs, nintu.
I tried this build and it sort of worked for me, at least on D level... I tried it twice; once I got killed by 2 hatch lurker cheese, but it was mostly due to sloppiness on my part (forgot to put rines in my bunkers at the natural, heh) and the other time I killed the guy as he was going 2hatch muta (what is it with these God damned 2hatch builds ???).
Anyway, if I knew my BOs better, I guess I would have less trouble.
On October 06 2008 08:30 d(O.o)a wrote: Nintu; he tried to tell everybody valks can be viable they laughed in his face. But know because Valks are really just hydralisks in halloween costumes why? because overlords are fucking scared of them so on halloween they go to the hive cluster and are like:
*Knock knock*
Trick or treat - hydralisk valk
AAAAAHH VALKS RUNNNNNN MASS BUILD OVERLORDS! ALL OF OUR MINERALS! - Zergling
Nigga it's me - Hydralisk Valk
TAKE OFF TEH COSTUMEZ I DUN BELIEVE YOU! - Ultralisk
what the fuck man settle down it's halloween remember? - hydralisk valk
Valkyrie preparedx12 - medic valk
What the hell was that? - mutalisk
eaueaueau - mutalisks dieing
what the fuck man?! - hydralisk valk
build some fucking hydras to kill these nigs - kerrigan
We can't they killed all of our overlords - drone
WHAT THE FUCK?! - Zerg race
Do you understand now?
Hahaha! That is brilliant! Where is the movie adaptation? Russel Crowe would be perfect as the Hydralisk Valk, Mel Gibson could direct.
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
When you get enough valks with +1, they absolutely DESTROY scourge. Scourge work amazingly when there is 3 or 4 valks, but once you get like 8, I've seen it tried many times and almost everytime, my valks came out unscathed.
My point is that you need 8 or so for a critical mass and valks are so expensive that 8 isn't viable for that kind of role. Inefficient mineral cost for the use. This was my point. You're agreeing with me.
Their expense is made up for by their synergy with other Terran units. Sure, you can compare them cost effectively with Corsairs, but corsairs don't have groups of MnM for scourge, or mass tanks for hydras. The comparison between PvZ and TvZ is sort've lost because they're just too different. I got 8 or so valkyries in a real game in game 2 of the vid and it worked just as I described. Critical mass. +1. Unstoppable by any sort of realistic means on the zerg part.
We V-Tec players have been doing this for years...
Actually... I was inspired to mess with Valks too, after seeing Perfective's replays (some time last year, maybe 2 years ago?). Definitely loads of fun.... I will never forget this one screen shot though..
It is best to compare this build to FE into sair-reaver, as their concept is the same. I would consider sair reaver the stronger build. The two main issue this this:
Sair Reaver is much, much more mobile than terran metal. Reavers kill hydra well enough and Corsairs can kill scourge by itself so the entire air stack can roam the air and kill expansions left and right while killing any stray overlords without being limited by where seige tanks or marines can travel.
Sairs scale better with tech as Dweb totally bones hydra. Additional tech into D.Archons or Carriers work well with Sairs to counter a teching Zerg. The lowered vulnerability to plague is also very important, as is reaver/storm's much superior ability in breaking lurk/swarm contain. ------------- On the execution side, Valk-MnM-Tank might be a little easier as it doesn't demand reaver shuttle micro that is easy to botch. When the execution requirement is met and the protoss player no longer needlessly lose shuttles and reavers, Sair Reaver's greater scalability IMO makes stronger....
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
When you get enough valks with +1, they absolutely DESTROY scourge. Scourge work amazingly when there is 3 or 4 valks, but once you get like 8, I've seen it tried many times and almost everytime, my valks came out unscathed.
My point is that you need 8 or so for a critical mass and valks are so expensive that 8 isn't viable for that kind of role. Inefficient mineral cost for the use. This was my point. You're agreeing with me.
Their expense is made up for by their synergy with other Terran units. Sure, you can compare them cost effectively with Corsairs, but corsairs don't have groups of MnM for scourge, or mass tanks for hydras. The comparison between PvZ and TvZ is sort've lost because they're just too different. I got 8 or so valkyries in a real game in game 2 of the vid and it worked just as I described. Critical mass. +1. Unstoppable by any sort of realistic means on the zerg part.
holy crap ur reluctant to any sort of criticism. first i come along and tell u its a cute build but wont work consistently against good players, then kwark (B player) comes along and tells u valks are not cost efficient and still u refuse to believe. Do you really need Idra and Inc coming along telling u its a cute build but unfortunately valks still aren't cost efficient and thus this build will never be more than a cute "1-time" build against good opponents? Why dont u go and try make a build focussing on scouts for P or a build focussing on queens for Z? Then when people tell u its cute but worse than all standard (and even almost all not so standard) builds for the respective matchups, u can go on and refuse to accept the most basic principles of starcraft, like cost efficiency.
The main weakness of this strategy, I think, is not that valkyries are so bad or not cost efficient.
When you play zerg against a normal FE terran, you will first of all be focusing on getting up a 3rd gas expo. When a player is not going for a classic FE into marines and medics, he will not be able to mount any pressure on that third base. It also means that there will be very little pressure on the main and natural. So you get the third base for free and you don't have to invest in sunkens. The lair can also be delayed for additional economy.
My opinion is that opening with valks is a cheese build, because it relies on having hidden buildings and the opponent is playing it out as if it was a "normal" game (or inability to revert to a "normal" game when it's time). I do however think that late game valks would be an interesting experiment because at that time, the zerg seldomly runs around with upgraded hydras.
On October 06 2008 01:19 Kwark wrote: Valks are far more heavily armoured than corsairs and much more expensive. This is a completely useless trait because what matters when scourge are the thing you're afraid of is reaching that critical mass of damage where scourge can't get near. Corsairs are cheap, fast to build and relatively low tech. You can get a critical mass of them quickly without huge investment. Valks cannot perform the same role. They're useful for countering muta if unexpected but they're quite simply not an efficient use of minerals.
When you get enough valks with +1, they absolutely DESTROY scourge. Scourge work amazingly when there is 3 or 4 valks, but once you get like 8, I've seen it tried many times and almost everytime, my valks came out unscathed.
My point is that you need 8 or so for a critical mass and valks are so expensive that 8 isn't viable for that kind of role. Inefficient mineral cost for the use. This was my point. You're agreeing with me.
Their expense is made up for by their synergy with other Terran units. Sure, you can compare them cost effectively with Corsairs, but corsairs don't have groups of MnM for scourge, or mass tanks for hydras. The comparison between PvZ and TvZ is sort've lost because they're just too different. I got 8 or so valkyries in a real game in game 2 of the vid and it worked just as I described. Critical mass. +1. Unstoppable by any sort of realistic means on the zerg part.
holy crap ur reluctant to any sort of criticism. first i come along and tell u its a cute build but wont work consistently against good players, then kwark (B player) comes along and tells u valks are not cost efficient and still u refuse to believe. Do you really need Idra and Inc coming along telling u its a cute build but unfortunately valks still aren't cost efficient and thus this build will never be more than a cute "1-time" build against good opponents? Why dont u go and try make a build focussing on scouts for P or a build focussing on queens for Z? Then when people tell u its cute but worse than all standard (and even almost all not so standard) builds for the respective matchups, u can go on and refuse to accept the most basic principles of starcraft, like cost efficiency.
Let me help you out here.
On October 06 2008 14:27 SWPIGWANG wrote: It is best to compare this build to FE into sair-reaver, as their concept is the same. I would consider sair reaver the stronger build. The two main issue this this:
Sair Reaver is much, much more mobile than terran metal. Reavers kill hydra well enough and Corsairs can kill scourge by itself so the entire air stack can roam the air and kill expansions left and right while killing any stray overlords without being limited by where seige tanks or marines can travel.
Sairs scale better with tech as Dweb totally bones hydra. Additional tech into D.Archons or Carriers work well with Sairs to counter a teching Zerg. The lowered vulnerability to plague is also very important, as is reaver/storm's much superior ability in breaking lurk/swarm contain. ------------- On the execution side, Valk-MnM-Tank might be a little easier as it doesn't demand reaver shuttle micro that is easy to botch. When the execution requirement is met and the protoss player no longer needlessly lose shuttles and reavers, Sair Reaver's greater scalability IMO makes stronger....
Good post.
On October 05 2008 00:37 damenmofa wrote: sorry but no, this is crap against a zerg who knows what hes doing. Like others said, hyd/lurk rape the shit out of you, especially when coupled with drops. U say siege tanks rape hyd/lurk, but I say u can NOT have more than 4-5 Siege Tanks and a group of m&m when u go 2 port valks at the time the zerg hits you with like 2 grps of hydras and 5-10 lurks. If he uses drop, things even get more messy for u as u have to turtle like shit while the zerg can keep the pressure up and expo like hell. Damn, even humiliation tactics like throwing in queens with broodling for the tanks work against someone investing that much eco in valks so early on.
Shitty post.
I'm not reluctant to criticism. I'm reluctant to take shitty, opinionated posts as anything more than ignorant bias. Nobody is a larger critic to my own builds than myself, and I have already discussed all the shortcomings that I have discovered so far. This was simply a forum for ideas and applications, which you have contributed NOTHING. Your posts are useless. You bring nothing.
It's blind flames like this that really discourage people from standing up and developing new ideas or strategies. When Boxer decided to produce the unit, he obviously saw that the unit could complete a task that no other unit could have done as efficiently or effectively. Whether it worked or not, in the intended plan or not, progamer level thinking decided that producing the unit was worth it.
This thread was designed to find all the scenarios where that decision can find a place. If people have things to contribute, let it continue. If there is nothing else, let it die. =)
okay if u want something along these lines here is why valks are far less viable than corsairs as some have suggested.
Corsairs - Pros in comparison to valks Cheaper than Valks Faster than Valks More readily available and cheaper prerequisites(gate->core->stargate) compared to (rax->fax->starport and armory->control tower) More useful interaction with other units in the mu (with DTs since they are cloaked and cors kill ovis, with shuttle/reaver play since u can upgrade ur shuttle to speed shuttle to make it a great harassment strategy which has a lot of mobility. U cant upgrade ur Dropships to Speed Dropships, making harassment strategies for terran far less efficient) Higher damage output due to less cooldown.
Also I never flamed, I just told u I dont think its a good strat which obviously u took offense on by telling me u think I have no idea what Im talking about and u should better not listen to my comments. I consider this much more insulting than just directly telling u ur strat is bad. Also u dare to qualify posts by ur own merit, why cant I do the same with strats? To put it in ur own words I would say 1 rax fe -> SK Terran - Good Strat. 1 rax fe -> Dual Port Valks - Shitty strat.
also what I was trying to contribute to this thread was merely taking the illusion from people that playing this strat will make them better at Starcraft. If its fun for you sure u can go ahead and play this strat. If you want fun and dont care about getting better u can also try funmaps or drone/terror only on public bnet. If you want to get better at Starcraft ur better off practicing the standard builds
I like this build and it seems really cool. While corsair reaver and valk MnM or w/e serves the main purpose for an aggressive harrass, they are just different because of game mechanics.
Unlike corsair reaver, terran is really vulnerable at the start of the game unlike how protoss can cover themselves with proper cannon placement, negating most forms of an early rush. Therefore, the costs of corsairs can be compensated with a fast expansion, something terran can never do against a zerg.
If you'd argue about bunker placement for early defense, it also doesn't make up for the early vulnerabilities that terran has due to what is needed for bunkers(150 minerals and 200 minerals for 4 rines). Its this early lack in defense that is probably the main barrier to this build because a second base is key before you can build up valk numbers together with MnM support as you guys have mentioned.
I brought much thought to this over the past 2 days or so and I think maybe the aim of a valk build cannot be played like how corsairs are being used in play now due to the limits in economy as I had mentioned earlier.
Perhaps a valk build can be good somewhere aroud mid-game when zerg starts getting his third and then you'll start valk production since by that time, he should be moving up his tech tree. Since zerg is heavy gas then, the idea of picking off overlords is critical such that he'd have to divert his attention to defending his ovies and building more hydras to fend off the harrass.
Still, I question this build heavily since the way Nintu has showed us reflects alot of similarity to corsair reaver when both builds should be played differently. Just what I think.
I'm curently working on a "semi-valk" build vs the standart 3 hat muta build.
The idea is to completly deny muta harras :
1) u save money because u wont waste a lot of minerals in a lot of turets and loose marines vs a GOOD muta harras. 2) U can push the zerg very early , considering his muta harrass wont work and slow u down ( most important point in my opinion).
I just standart fe, bunk and gas at the same time as soon as i have 2 marines. I build factory asap while pumping constantly marines from 1 rax. I do academy when begin straport/armory and second rax. At this point u should have like 2 valkyries pumped from ONE starport (not 2 like the op does) when first mutas pops out , ( i usually did 4).
The weak points are : u can lose pretty badly to massive gling all in ( a bunker and late academy is sometimes not enough ) I dont know how good it is vs 2 hat mutas . I guess i wont have time to pump enough valkyries turets before mutas comes.
My "build" was about a fast vessel + irradiate = same build but u pump a vessel + irradiate asap ( u need your second gas early on here)
Till now it worked pretty good when i was not all in cheesed. As i said before i dont know how viable is this build vs 2 hat mutas ( maybe i need more and earlier turets ?)
Another short video I made about valkyries. This was against a friend who was offracing. I only made it into a video because in the video he said "I swear, there will be blood if you make this a FPVOD." I thought it was just too funny not to post.
In the short video it clearly shows Zerg in a disadvantageous position but he started strong. As was discussed, an early timing push is very powerful against Valkyries. He did and broke my natural and I just barely defended. I then proceeded off 1 base against like.. 4 base..
The scourge he tried did nothing, even with cloning, and he was just too far behind then.
The thing about Valkyries is that there is no room to adapt as Zerg. Once you're behind, you're pretty much stuck there. You can't make any more units once you lose those scourge or devourers or hydras. The only options you have are to wait for enough money to make enough overlords to make units immediately after they're up. This is an entirely unviable way to play. You're just too far behind. Short of making TONS of spore colonies, you have absolutely nothing to do to get back in the game.
A lot of Zerg's prepare a good defense, but simply not enough to defend entirely. This means the Zerg has to play VERY safe, making damn well sure that his initial defense can hold off the Valkyries.
The weakness in the build is very clearly in the early game. It's very hard to defend your natural with standard 1-rax FE because of how much you're investing in 2port valk. If I try this build some more I'll probably try 1-rax FE into 1 port valk, adding additional rax early to defend possible breaks and muta harass, and then adding second port for valks and such. Still much crafting to do on the build.
In the meantime, I'm gonna ladder as standard for now and make more regular commentated FPvods. Feel free to add thoughts, opinions and/or varying success stories or whatever. =)
So anyone tryed his build vs "good" zergs? I mean over C+ /B- ranks. Because personally i had troubles early games because on the new fashion builds ( 2 hatch mutas , opened with lots of early speed gling with 9 pool or 12 pool) and vs all 3 hatch glings cheese / harrass waiting for mutas..
i like your videos! i've read maybe 50% of the posts in this thread skipping over all the flaming and inane comments so excuse me if what i'm saying is just a repeat. i've never tried experimenting with valks so this is just theorycrafting (which i don't often like to participate in!) and suggestions.
the build itself is pretty interesting. i think the most intuitive and effective counter would be some form of 3hatch hydras doing a fast nat break, though the problem is that the timing for when the zerg first sees the valks is after they've committed to lair tech. instead then i suggest (if the zerg went standard 3hatch spire) that they cease muta production and pumps some rounds of scourge while macroing heavily, taking 2-3 more expos to gear up for upgraded hydra production. the scourge will be effective because at this point in the game you'll only have 2 or so valks with 2 more reinforcing every minute or so, and the critical mass for when scourge simply can't hit valks looks to be rather high (from your video, ~6+ +1attack valks).
i suggest the mass expoing and fast upgraded hydras because the terran completely cedes map control and his upgrades for ground will be very delayed because of his heavy gas investment. mid-late game play likely will revolve around zerg stopping you from taking your third gas with hydra/lurk/defiler which should be pretty viable (i don't expect zergs to always react as poorly as the first one in your video, allowing you to mass that kind of tank blob seems like a worst-case scenario). basically, it's a zvp.
from the terran point of view, what i am uncomfortable with is the 2port opening since it makes you extremely passive and basically fucks you over if you lose any of your first few valks. what would you do if he took a few more bases and just made a lot of hydras? there's room here for experimentation with 1port.
i think you really have the right idea though with the very quick third base and dropship escorting. the big things i thought you could add into your game while watching your video was getting quick mines to plant at possible zerg expoes or in the middle of the map so that you could be greedier with your expo attempts (at least taking a third gas before the mineral only), and to switch to vessels faster. everything that counters your valks late game (defilers, queens, mass devourers and zerg air) is in turn very vulnerable to irradiate, so they should be invaluable in an even match. finally, after you take your third base i suggest plopping down a second ebay asap as your infantry upgrades will be way behind.
i haven't played in a while now but i guess boxer has his own way of inspiring people. i think i'll play a few tvzs on iccup myself =] good luck!
only reason corsair is so effective is they apply dark templar due to no vision, whenever there is an opening, nor they dont have a cooldown time when killing things but.....thus adding to this, vulture/valk? spider mine could be effective if placed on ramps correctly due to no detection while harassing drone, downside is if drones run away, vultures are sitting ducks, maybe kill larva or two, unable to destroy buildings fast but still unable to cause that much damage, maybe if there is a second drop of marine/medic, they'd be great, but that would be a heavy amount of apm >_>....but dark templar can destroy buildings much faster so i dont think vulture + overlordharass + marine medic is as great. pretty much wraith is much better for creating a "lead" because they are a natural flying, cloaked, air harassing P.O.S's, but i guess valk can give a surprise :D. ..nice video though.
On October 07 2008 19:44 intrigue wrote: i like your videos! i've read maybe 50% of the posts in this thread skipping over all the flaming and inane comments so excuse me if what i'm saying is just a repeat. i've never tried experimenting with valks so this is just theorycrafting (which i don't often like to participate in!) and suggestions.
the build itself is pretty interesting. i think the most intuitive and effective counter would be some form of 3hatch hydras doing a fast nat break, though the problem is that the timing for when the zerg first sees the valks is after they've committed to lair tech. instead then i suggest (if the zerg went standard 3hatch spire) that they cease muta production and pumps some rounds of scourge while macroing heavily, taking 2-3 more expos to gear up for upgraded hydra production. the scourge will be effective because at this point in the game you'll only have 2 or so valks with 2 more reinforcing every minute or so, and the critical mass for when scourge simply can't hit valks looks to be rather high (from your video, ~6+ +1attack valks).
i suggest the mass expoing and fast upgraded hydras because the terran completely cedes map control and his upgrades for ground will be very delayed because of his heavy gas investment. mid-late game play likely will revolve around zerg stopping you from taking your third gas with hydra/lurk/defiler which should be pretty viable (i don't expect zergs to always react as poorly as the first one in your video, allowing you to mass that kind of tank blob seems like a worst-case scenario). basically, it's a zvp.
from the terran point of view, what i am uncomfortable with is the 2port opening since it makes you extremely passive and basically fucks you over if you lose any of your first few valks. what would you do if he took a few more bases and just made a lot of hydras? there's room here for experimentation with 1port.
i think you really have the right idea though with the very quick third base and dropship escorting. the big things i thought you could add into your game while watching your video was getting quick mines to plant at possible zerg expoes or in the middle of the map so that you could be greedier with your expo attempts (at least taking a third gas before the mineral only), and to switch to vessels faster. everything that counters your valks late game (defilers, queens, mass devourers and zerg air) is in turn very vulnerable to irradiate, so they should be invaluable in an even match. finally, after you take your third base i suggest plopping down a second ebay asap as your infantry upgrades will be way behind.
i haven't played in a while now but i guess boxer has his own way of inspiring people. i think i'll play a few tvzs on iccup myself =] good luck!
See, now this is a post.
The timing nat break seems to be something we can all agree on. The build is definitely susceptible to timing breaks, but I do believe with proper placement and preparation, the Terran can either defend or feign standard play.
It's true that if you lose your first few valks it sets you back immensely. After a few games with valks I've grown to be very careful with them while their numbers are small, like 2-5.
I like 1port after expand aswell because of the versatility. You can add the second port for continued harass or transition into (semi)standard play.
What would Terran do if he didn't apply pressure, opened den and took many bases? Something similar happened to this in the first game of the first video. Quick third, tanks and valk harass. Hydras are locked to defend their overlords. Unlike Wraiths, Valkyries have a lot of life, which means that they can move in, kill all the overlords in an AoE, and leave having only lost 1 or 2, whereas wraths do single-target and you'd lose many more. You cannot clump overlords, but you have to make them defendable aswell.
Spire builds and scourge SOUND logical and effective, but it's simply unreliable. Scourge have shitty AI and even if they're cloned, you don't know how successful it will be, and how many scourge you need. Everytime my opponent has tried spire defense, scourge get raped, then all your overlords fall, then they cannot produce any units whatsoever.
As I mentioned a couple posts ago, this build leaves 0 room for a zerg to make a mistake like that. It's a snowball effect. Once he loses his defense, he loses all his overlords so he can't make more units to defend, etc.. I've noticed that I can start abusing this sort of dynamic. Everytime I killed a group of overlords, I would clone my valks over the map to find more, knowing that scourge cannot be produced in the meantime and that my valkyries are safe to go in packs of 2.
As for scourge in general... Scourge can sneak in and narrowly avoid the AoE damage, but from what I've seen, when you have enough valks, you're pretty close to immune.
Also, you can micro your valkyries to surround overlords and to stay very close to a target they are firing at. If the valkyries are surrounding while firing, they pretty much make a giant bubble of AoE damage that scourge quickly dissipate to. The same effect is gained by simple floating your valkyrie ontop of the overlord it's trying to kill. This sounds like theorycraft but in practice it's really quite realistic. Scourge, even when cloned, haven't given me any issues so far. Not to say they don't work, just that I haven't seen it be too effective yet.
Timing pushes to break the Terran early and den openings are what I think are the most effective plans for Zerg, but this is just my opinion.
Some of the flames discouraged me from investigating further, but a quality post like this just re-ignites my curiosity with the build.
I didn't read the entire thread and I apologise if this point has been made already, but this strat already existed and was actually played frequently by vgundam very long ago
the only different thing boxer did is he got a dropship and used the valks to escort them
gundam used to get 3rax 1fac tanks and refuse to exp for temporary boost in units and he just got the valkyries because they cost high minerals and relatively few gas and it happened to match with the mins/gas he had left over
boxer did the exact same thing except a) he got a dropship, never saw gundam do that b) he actually expanded earlier.. gundam would often forgo expanding altogether and long distance mine when his minerals were out lol
just posting this because i heard tasteless say "never before seen" and no one else may remember
anyway for an old timer this game was the most awesome thing ever to watch it sent a chill down my spine srsly
oh and from what i remember from the zerg's POV counterattacking is the worst response because gundam would always get at least one bunker and the main idea for him was that if you only have to defend 1 base it's much easier to do so and you can play more aggressively because of that not fearing counterattacks and stuff
1 bunker does so much against counterattacks in low eco games
zerg just needs to play as if there's a time clock and "stay in it" until terran wears himself out and falls apart
And Nintu, I absolutely loved the video (the two games combined) - I enjoyed both your commentary and the games themselves, in a game that's becoming increasingly stagnant, things like this add a lot of fire and remind us why it's so spectacular in the first place. Please keep playing this more, refine the build, and post more videos!
I don't see how you can compare mass valks with sairs. Mass sair kills whatever air units you throw at them since their cooling rate and splash damage is insane. But to kill mass valks you just need to throw in one scourge or a few muta to make the valks fire, their cooling rate is so damn slow plus they can't shoot while moving (their acceleration is really slow) so follow that up with a group of cloned scourge and all valks are dead. Too costly imo, but I love valks anyway. Wish Blizzard would have balanced them as well as scouts so they would be more useful.
FE into 3port, Mass Valks with Wraiths works well against D level Zerg, they just try to make hydras, but they can't see the Wraiths and lose their Lair, usually resulting in a gg. The Valks move between the hatcheries to pick of spawning overlords, and wraiths/dropped marines focus fire the Den and Lair.
On October 07 2008 19:58 AltaiR_ wrote: only reason corsair is so effective is they apply dark templar due to no vision, whenever there is an opening, nor they dont have a cooldown time when killing things but.....thus adding to this, vulture/valk? spider mine could be effective if placed on ramps correctly due to no detection while harassing drone, downside is if drones run away, vultures are sitting ducks, maybe kill larva or two, unable to destroy buildings fast but still unable to cause that much damage, maybe if there is a second drop of marine/medic, they'd be great, but that would be a heavy amount of apm >_>....but dark templar can destroy buildings much faster so i dont think vulture + overlordharass + marine medic is as great. pretty much wraith is much better for creating a "lead" because they are a natural flying, cloaked, air harassing P.O.S's, but i guess valk can give a surprise :D. ..nice video though.
The timing break will be more effective than in sair/reaver, just because the valk build time is so long. If the zerg can spot the valk tech, then the zerg could counter in the same way that zerg counters toss (hydra to defend//keep the valk count lower).
Once zerg sees it, I'm thinking that the proper response is going to be something along the lines of mass expand//upgrades- T needs the m/m to do enough dps to fend off an all out counter once zerg sees the first valk.
I'm also curious about the proper response to a 2 hat muta build (or 2 hat lurker for that matter). Detection makes it so that you can't tech as fast, so i'm wondering how the build/supply numbers might end up working out.
On October 08 2008 01:42 neliel wrote: Tried this vs a C+ Zerg and well, it doesnt work at all :p.
that would be my thoughts exactly
a good zerg would simply combine plague + hydras to wipe off valkiryes from the map sure mass tanks > mass hydras but heard of dark swarm + lings? they totally rape tanks and mm can't do crap under swarm
its not very hard to have few hydras / scourges / lings / defiler..add ultra to that and terran can't do anything..the zerg eventually goes hive anyway...the only viable solution for this build is if the terran can somehow mass tanks, m&m, harrass a whole lot of ovies, all before hive tech kicks in..which is unlikely..it takes a lot of time to build that many tanks...
the thing I thought was weak about this build was, if you invest +1 on air attack, you will have slower upgrades for your others. Since you chose to go metal + partial m&m to support your air strategy, it will be even harder to upgrade everything on time
Other than that, I think this build will definately catch lots of lower level zergs off-guard, most will simply mass hydras as a reaction to simply get raped by mass tanks. Defiler is the key counter I believe. Plague is a wonder, simply because it is so effective verse metal. The one thing you should always keep in mind is that metal army takes much longer to reproduce than bionic army..which is what zergs should try to aim for..to counter the metal army with plague and go for a timing push right when the terran is re-making
On October 08 2008 01:42 neliel wrote: Tried this vs a C+ Zerg and well, it doesnt work at all :p.
that would be my thoughts exactly
a good zerg would simply combine plague + hydras to wipe off valkiryes from the map sure mass tanks > mass hydras but heard of dark swarm + lings? they totally rape tanks and mm can't do crap under swarm
its not very hard to have few hydras / scourges / lings / defiler..add ultra to that and terran can't do anything..the zerg eventually goes hive anyway...the only viable solution for this build is if the terran can somehow mass tanks, m&m, harrass a whole lot of ovies, all before hive tech kicks in..which is unlikely..it takes a lot of time to build that many tanks...
the thing I thought was weak about this build was, if you invest +1 on air attack, you will have slower upgrades for your others. Since you chose to go metal + partial m&m to support your air strategy, it will be even harder to upgrade everything on time
Other than that, I think this build will definately catch lots of lower level zergs off-guard, most will simply mass hydras as a reaction to simply get raped by mass tanks. Defiler is the key counter I believe. Plague is a wonder, simply because it is so effective verse metal. The one thing you should always keep in mind is that metal army takes much longer to reproduce than bionic army..which is what zergs should try to aim for..to counter the metal army with plague and go for a timing push right when the terran is re-making
If he scouted mass lings + swarm he could build 4 vessels to kill off filers and build firebats medics.
I think the whole point of this is to cripple the Zerg before Hive tech, and by constantly keeping the OL count down, it prevents the Zerg from macroing up an army. The result is that you can steamroll them with MnM you've been piling up while OL hunting.
On October 08 2008 08:19 Zzoram wrote: I think the whole point of this is to cripple the Zerg before Hive tech, and by constantly keeping the OL count down, it prevents the Zerg from macroing up an army. The result is that you can steamroll them with MnM you've been piling up while OL hunting.
all three games that I featured, the zerg got Hive tech but it didn't matter. No overlords means no units. Once you hit red supply, it snowballs. You get deeper and deeper in the red. You're pretty much screwed if you don't defend the initial harass _perfectly_.
One thing that I think may help this strategy is to play it in sort of the style FA advocates in his old PvZ SimCity RH guide. How I think that applies to your strategy is by not attempting a large offensive until it's virtually guaranteed in your favor. Instead, you just use your Valks and Tanks to massively harass Overlords and hurt his economy while destroying everything he throws at you. Deny him expansion attempts with drops with Valks and just wait for the Zerg to burn out.
So many people comparing this to corsairs. Wraiths are much better for that. Valks are too slow to hunt overlords.
Aren't the whole point of going fast valks only, and absolutely only, to counter 3 hatch muta which has been present in about 90% of korean zvt for some time? If you can have one or two valks with your mnm ball when mutas come you'd do 10x better off. So on that phase when mutas are harassing to keep terran at base, you could scare them off with mnm + valk and have more freedom to move out of base sooner and counter.
But if you scout that he is going anything other than mutas, you just change tech go anything else other valks (you'll proly be building a starport when you find out, so you could change to either double cloak wraith or simply sk terran and you wouldn't be too far behind).
Isn't that the whole point of fast valks? If scout = 3 hatch mutas then go valks else go vessels
On October 08 2008 09:44 VIB wrote: So many people comparing this to corsairs. Wraiths are much better for that. Valks are too slow to hunt overlords.
Aren't the whole point of going fast valks only, and absolutely only, to counter 3 hatch muta which has been present in about 90% of korean zvt for some time? If you can have one or two valks with your mnm ball when mutas come you'd do 10x better off. So on that phase when mutas are harassing to keep terran at base, you could scare them off with mnm + valk and have more freedom to move out of base sooner and counter.
But if you scout that he is going anything other than mutas, you just change tech go anything else other valks (you'll proly be building a starport when you find out, so you could change to either double cloak wraith or simply sk terran and you wouldn't be too far behind).
Isn't that the whole point of fast valks? If scout = 3 hatch mutas then go valks else go vessels
Why are there so many idiots posting in this thread? READ THE OP. If you haven't even read what he's said or watched the videos than you really shouldn't post. GTFO.
Personally I think some good thought and practice should go into this... I think BoxeR had something good in mind, but it just wasn't perfected enough for success in this tournament. Props to him for pioneering something unknown.
On October 08 2008 09:44 VIB wrote: So many people comparing this to corsairs. Wraiths are much better for that. Valks are too slow to hunt overlords.
Aren't the whole point of going fast valks only, and absolutely only, to counter 3 hatch muta which has been present in about 90% of korean zvt for some time? If you can have one or two valks with your mnm ball when mutas come you'd do 10x better off. So on that phase when mutas are harassing to keep terran at base, you could scare them off with mnm + valk and have more freedom to move out of base sooner and counter.
But if you scout that he is going anything other than mutas, you just change tech go anything else other valks (you'll proly be building a starport when you find out, so you could change to either double cloak wraith or simply sk terran and you wouldn't be too far behind).
Isn't that the whole point of fast valks? If scout = 3 hatch mutas then go valks else go vessels
Why are there so many idiots posting in this thread? READ THE OP. If you haven't even read what he's said or watched the videos than you really shouldn't post. GTFO.
What makes you think that? I watched those vods live, read the op and 1/3 of the replies in this thread. Which is exactly why I'm wondering why there are so many people talking about using valks to kill overlords, when it seems to me that 2 port wraith would be much more effective for. Contrary to what most people here seem to think.
Boxer did exactly what I said. Used valks with mnm ball to counter mutas in game 1, then switch to vessels when he scouts hydra den in game 2. (ps.: he lost a game going valks again on last sunday, which I think was - partly - because he took too long to realize it wasn't mutas / change tech)
On October 08 2008 09:54 Quesadilla wrote: Personally I think some good thought and practice should go into this... I think BoxeR had something good in mind, but it just wasn't perfected enough for success in this tournament. Props to him for pioneering something unknown.
...
I respect the guy, but i mean valk came with brood war in 98.
On October 08 2008 09:44 VIB wrote: So many people comparing this to corsairs. Wraiths are much better for that. Valks are too slow to hunt overlords.
Aren't the whole point of going fast valks only, and absolutely only, to counter 3 hatch muta which has been present in about 90% of korean zvt for some time? If you can have one or two valks with your mnm ball when mutas come you'd do 10x better off. So on that phase when mutas are harassing to keep terran at base, you could scare them off with mnm + valk and have more freedom to move out of base sooner and counter.
But if you scout that he is going anything other than mutas, you just change tech go anything else other valks (you'll proly be building a starport when you find out, so you could change to either double cloak wraith or simply sk terran and you wouldn't be too far behind).
Isn't that the whole point of fast valks? If scout = 3 hatch mutas then go valks else go vessels
Why are there so many idiots posting in this thread? READ THE OP. If you haven't even read what he's said or watched the videos than you really shouldn't post. GTFO.
What makes you think that? I watched those vods live, read the op and 1/3 of the replies in this thread. Which is exactly why I'm wondering why there are so many people talking about using valks to kill overlords, when it seems to me that 2 port wraith would be much more effective for. Contrary to what most people here seem to think.
Boxer did exactly what I said. Used valks with mnm ball to counter mutas in game 1, then switch to vessels when he scouts hydra den in game 2. (ps.: he lost a game going valks again on last sunday, which I think was - partly - because he took too long to realize it wasn't mutas / change tech)
This alone tells me you haven't watched the videos in this thread THEY ARE NOT THE BOXER VODS FFS. And the OP went over why this is better than 2port wraiths.
On October 08 2008 09:56 VIB wrote: What makes you think that? I watched those vods live, read the op and 1/3 of the replies in this thread. Which is exactly why I'm wondering why there are so many people talking about using valks to kill overlords, when it seems to me that 2 port wraith would be much more effective for. Contrary to what most people here seem to think.
Boxer did exactly what I said. Used valks with mnm ball to counter mutas in game 1, then switch to vessels when he scouts hydra den in game 2. (ps.: he lost a game going valks again on last sunday, which I think was - partly - because he took too long to realize it wasn't mutas / change tech)
On October 08 2008 09:59 ]343[ wrote: well apparently AOE kills ovies faster, because spreading them out makes them harder to defend...?
They do kill ovi faster, but that's not the fundamental point of the strat.
The main difference between wraith build is that they live longer : they have more HP, more armor than wraith, therefore they survive an ovi rush, even if there is a spore defense AND hydralisks.
But that's exactly the point where are disagree. They have more hp/armor but are much slower, this weights too much, they're easy to hunt. I've seen the games where people use mass valks to hunt bunched up ovies, but that is clearly not the point of boxer's build. If you get to that point either the strat already worked and you are already far away, or it failed and you're already far behind. But the initial point of the build isn't that, it's just to counter mutas. Killing overlords is a secondary consequence.
Or isn't it? I mean I'm just asking, I don't know myself. This is just the impression that I had from watching boxer, that he was just trying to counter mutas.
On October 08 2008 09:44 VIB wrote: So many people comparing this to corsairs. Wraiths are much better for that. Valks are too slow to hunt overlords.
Aren't the whole point of going fast valks only, and absolutely only, to counter 3 hatch muta which has been present in about 90% of korean zvt for some time? If you can have one or two valks with your mnm ball when mutas come you'd do 10x better off. So on that phase when mutas are harassing to keep terran at base, you could scare them off with mnm + valk and have more freedom to move out of base sooner and counter.
But if you scout that he is going anything other than mutas, you just change tech go anything else other valks (you'll proly be building a starport when you find out, so you could change to either double cloak wraith or simply sk terran and you wouldn't be too far behind).
Isn't that the whole point of fast valks? If scout = 3 hatch mutas then go valks else go vessels
Why are there so many idiots posting in this thread? READ THE OP. If you haven't even read what he's said or watched the videos than you really shouldn't post. GTFO.
What makes you think that? I watched those vods live, read the op and 1/3 of the replies in this thread. Which is exactly why I'm wondering why there are so many people talking about using valks to kill overlords, when it seems to me that 2 port wraith would be much more effective for. Contrary to what most people here seem to think.
Boxer did exactly what I said. Used valks with mnm ball to counter mutas in game 1, then switch to vessels when he scouts hydra den in game 2. (ps.: he lost a game going valks again on last sunday, which I think was - partly - because he took too long to realize it wasn't mutas / change tech)
2 ports wraith get raped by scourge, raped by muta, and raped by spore.
On October 08 2008 10:18 VIB wrote: But that's exactly the point where are disagree. They have more hp/armor but are much slower, this weights too much, they're easy to hunt. I've seen the games where people use mass valks to hunt bunched up ovies, but that is clearly not the point of boxer's build. If you get to that point either the strat already worked and you are already far away, or it failed and you're already far behind. But the initial point of the build isn't that, it's just to counter mutas. Killing overlords is a secondary consequence.
Or isn't it? I mean I'm just asking, I don't know myself. This is just the impression that I had from watching boxer, that he was just trying to counter mutas.
This build is not Boxer's Build it's simply based off of boxer's choice of building valks.
On October 08 2008 09:56 VIB wrote: What makes you think that? I watched those vods live, read the op and 1/3 of the replies in this thread. Which is exactly why I'm wondering why there are so many people talking about using valks to kill overlords, when it seems to me that 2 port wraith would be much more effective for. Contrary to what most people here seem to think.
Boxer did exactly what I said. Used valks with mnm ball to counter mutas in game 1, then switch to vessels when he scouts hydra den in game 2. (ps.: he lost a game going valks again on last sunday, which I think was - partly - because he took too long to realize it wasn't mutas / change tech)
On October 08 2008 09:59 ]343[ wrote: well apparently AOE kills ovies faster, because spreading them out makes them harder to defend...?
They do kill ovi faster, but that's not the fundamental point of the strat.
The main difference between wraith build is that they live longer : they have more HP, more armor than wraith, therefore they survive an ovi rush, even if there is a spore defense AND hydralisks.
Which is not the case with wraiths.
edit : Nintu, did you ever try a +1 armor build?
+1 weapons buffs the damage SO ridiculously much. Considering how many rockets they fire, going from 6 to 7 damage per rocket is huge. They take less damage with +1 attack because they're exposed for a shorter period of time.
On October 08 2008 10:18 VIB wrote: But that's exactly the point where are disagree. They have more hp/armor but are much slower, this weights too much, they're easy to hunt. I've seen the games where people use mass valks to hunt bunched up ovies, but that is clearly not the point of boxer's build. If you get to that point either the strat already worked and you are already far away, or it failed and you're already far behind. But the initial point of the build isn't that, it's just to counter mutas. Killing overlords is a secondary consequence.
Or isn't it? I mean I'm just asking, I don't know myself. This is just the impression that I had from watching boxer, that he was just trying to counter mutas.
This build is not Boxer's Build it's simply based off of boxer's choice of building valks.
That's right. The actual execution of the build is ENTIRELY different. I was simply inspired by Boxer's creativity.
Do you have to treat this like a mech build and make your BO so? Or do you treat it like a standard TVZ opening like 1Rax FE and then go into a fast tech?
I tried this build today vs a bad and a good zerg.
The bad one was playing offrace, and must be more or less D. It was an epic win.
We played on Blue Storm, and I told him I would go valk, so he builded 4 spores and put his ovies there. Big mistake, cuz everytime he would do so, I was coming in with my valks and killing all the ovi in a few shots. Valkyries are FUCKING solid.
He went lurkerlings and tried several times to rape my expo but failed as I had like 4 bunker and 2 tanks. I didn't go mass tank, but rather mm as I am not confortable enough with the build to multitask a tank push and 3 bases, so I stayed on 2 bases and went mm dropship.
He never made a consequent army as he never had the supply needed. I dropped both his expos ate the same time, and he typed out.
I played a good player twice. Twice, it was a horrible rape, but I believe that my bo is bad.
Basically the first time, he went mass lings while denying scouting, and killed me while I was teching. Stupid enough to not go firebat... Second time, he went to hatch muta, and somehow his muta showed up before I my first valk poped up. Got raped as he has good muta micro and I didn't have any turret.
On October 08 2008 10:18 VIB wrote: But that's exactly the point where are disagree. They have more hp/armor but are much slower, this weights too much, they're easy to hunt. I've seen the games where people use mass valks to hunt bunched up ovies, but that is clearly not the point of boxer's build. If you get to that point either the strat already worked and you are already far away, or it failed and you're already far behind. But the initial point of the build isn't that, it's just to counter mutas. Killing overlords is a secondary consequence.
Or isn't it? I mean I'm just asking, I don't know myself. This is just the impression that I had from watching boxer, that he was just trying to counter mutas.
This build is not Boxer's Build it's simply based off of boxer's choice of building valks.
That's right. The actual execution of the build is ENTIRELY different. I was simply inspired by Boxer's creativity.
Ah sorry then. I thought you were trying to do like boxer which got me confused. Your version looks funny when it works lol ^^
the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
I remember iloveoov using valks on Neo Arkonoid, but Neo Arkonoid is like a island/hybrid map so it wasn't as crazy. But Boxer in his game with his second game with Baxter and more recently with by.hero boxer went 1 fast wraith before going for a valk. Fast wraith to makes it look like 2 port wraith harassment, when your really going valks +1 would throw the opponent off. The practical counter to wraiths are hydras, which makes a mass valk+mass tank build more viable.
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
Nintu, i suggest making a BO outline for this, so that other people (like me) can try this out. That way, you'll have multiple people testing and refining this build
On October 09 2008 11:10 ArvickHero wrote: Nintu, i suggest making a BO outline for this, so that other people (like me) can try this out. That way, you'll have multiple people testing and refining this build
ya, i think the whole stigma against using valkyries came from defense maps with too many units on screens and units locking up and not firing. early-mid game, they should be great (and entertaining) though
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
Think about what you just suggested.
Firebats/Valkyries/Turrets.
THE ULTIMATE UNIT COMBO!!
I believe this is assuming he went standard 3hatch muta before he scouted your build. After his harass is denied, and lings are ineffective, then the tank or mnm tech can start up. The first phase it to slow down the Z enough by killing overlords and camping until you have a formidable army. Tank valkyrie or mnm is a much more effective unit combination to transition into, well, I believe that is the point he is trying to make.
I played 2on2 with a friend of mine, both of us terran. Normally this is a horrible combination in 2on2, but at LT we had quite a lot of success. He went 1base, bunker 4 marines, 1 vult with mines to fake tech and keep protoss inside, then +1 valks from 1 port and hide them until you have 4. With turrets, of course. I went the basic tvz build, m&m, tanks and vessels. Usually we had to turtle a lot, but you can easily take their cliffs and islands because of the valks. And zerg is fucked in 2on2 if they can't go muta nor expand with a second gas. However, on maps like Luna, Python etc, it's a pretty bad strategy and most good p/z or z/z's kill you early on.
On October 04 2008 18:47 LastWish wrote: Zergs should be well prepared, since it's like u said countering Corsairs in PvZ, except easier. Cosair are more agile, don't suffer from delays, and since they are medium sized they can take almost the same amount of damage from hydras. If you go 2 port valks how do you exactly want to deal with mass lurkers+hydras? You'll be low on tanks + no gols to support. Mines work only if your opponent is stupid and does not know how to suicide ling, hell even mass hydras with attack move do the job right. Tank + vulture doesn't work in TvZ, mostly because of mutas, although hydra + ling are good enough.
Corsairs don't have siege tanks and marines beneath them. Marines with instant damage rather than goon's delayed damage makes protecting them quite easy. Plus, when you get a lot, they just destroy scourge. Valks have a lot of life aswell for vs spore or hydra. Tanks rape lurkers ezmode, are you kidding? Attack-move hydras does not work against siege tanks. I'm sorry.
Tank+Vulture doesn't work because of mutas? That's sorta what valkyries are there for. :o
As for Wraiths. Wraiths die in like 2 hits. Valkyries have MUCH more life, do much more damage to air (in AoE aswell) and take MUCH less micro than cloak/wraith micro. Wraiths have their own style in TvZ. Valks fulfill a different role in this video/concept and they do it much better than wraiths would.
I guess you're right, that's why it's the dominant strategy in tvz right? It's good in theory, it will get raped by a competent zerg. You gonna sit in your base making 2 port 250/125 valks until you have enough to not get raped by scourge? Good luck beating a Z with the whole map. Let's see, you have 3 valks, you go to shoot an ol. It takes several shots from each. You can't move while that's happening. You get scourged from behind, or 5 hydralisks have enough time to kill you, or the spore underneath kills you. With a sair you can micro while attacking. Not with a valk. Oh I see, you go valks and then you park your army right outside his base so the "marines can protect them from below." Or maybe you mean you have your regular army and you're attacking and your valks are there too? That's crap, your army will be tiny. Valks are slow and expensive. Yes they kill ols fast. Yes it works vs people totally unprepared for it. No, it doesn't work vs people who are experienced enough to recognize it's coming or who are good. Yes, it might work on certain maps better than others as a high level strategy, but these maps are few and far between. No it's not some sort of auto-win super easy rape strategy like you make it sound here.
Of course it's a fun strategy and when it works it works well and is cool to see. But it's not anywhere near as good as you suggest it is in your rebuttal to my original post.
On October 04 2008 18:47 LastWish wrote: Zergs should be well prepared, since it's like u said countering Corsairs in PvZ, except easier. Cosair are more agile, don't suffer from delays, and since they are medium sized they can take almost the same amount of damage from hydras. If you go 2 port valks how do you exactly want to deal with mass lurkers+hydras? You'll be low on tanks + no gols to support. Mines work only if your opponent is stupid and does not know how to suicide ling, hell even mass hydras with attack move do the job right. Tank + vulture doesn't work in TvZ, mostly because of mutas, although hydra + ling are good enough.
Corsairs don't have siege tanks and marines beneath them. Marines with instant damage rather than goon's delayed damage makes protecting them quite easy. Plus, when you get a lot, they just destroy scourge. Valks have a lot of life aswell for vs spore or hydra. Tanks rape lurkers ezmode, are you kidding? Attack-move hydras does not work against siege tanks. I'm sorry.
Tank+Vulture doesn't work because of mutas? That's sorta what valkyries are there for. :o
As for Wraiths. Wraiths die in like 2 hits. Valkyries have MUCH more life, do much more damage to air (in AoE aswell) and take MUCH less micro than cloak/wraith micro. Wraiths have their own style in TvZ. Valks fulfill a different role in this video/concept and they do it much better than wraiths would.
I guess you're right, that's why it's the dominant strategy in tvz right? It's good in theory, it will get raped by a competent zerg. You gonna sit in your base making 2 port 250/125 valks until you have enough to not get raped by scourge? Good luck beating a Z with the whole map. Let's see, you have 3 valks, you go to shoot an ol. It takes several shots from each. You can't move while that's happening. You get scourged from behind, or 5 hydralisks have enough time to kill you, or the spore underneath kills you. With a sair you can micro while attacking. Not with a valk. Oh I see, you go valks and then you park your army right outside his base so the "marines can protect them from below." Or maybe you mean you have your regular army and you're attacking and your valks are there too? That's crap, your army will be tiny. Valks are slow and expensive. Yes they kill ols fast. Yes it works vs people totally unprepared for it. No, it doesn't work vs people who are experienced enough to recognize it's coming or who are good. Yes, it might work on certain maps better than others as a high level strategy, but these maps are few and far between. No it's not some sort of auto-win super easy rape strategy like you make it sound here.
Of course it's a fun strategy and when it works it works well and is cool to see. But it's not anywhere near as good as you suggest it is in your rebuttal to my original post.
Yet another poster who has not watched the videos nor read the entirety of the OP. Watch the videos read the OP then post again.
On October 04 2008 18:47 LastWish wrote: Zergs should be well prepared, since it's like u said countering Corsairs in PvZ, except easier. Cosair are more agile, don't suffer from delays, and since they are medium sized they can take almost the same amount of damage from hydras. If you go 2 port valks how do you exactly want to deal with mass lurkers+hydras? You'll be low on tanks + no gols to support. Mines work only if your opponent is stupid and does not know how to suicide ling, hell even mass hydras with attack move do the job right. Tank + vulture doesn't work in TvZ, mostly because of mutas, although hydra + ling are good enough.
Corsairs don't have siege tanks and marines beneath them. Marines with instant damage rather than goon's delayed damage makes protecting them quite easy. Plus, when you get a lot, they just destroy scourge. Valks have a lot of life aswell for vs spore or hydra. Tanks rape lurkers ezmode, are you kidding? Attack-move hydras does not work against siege tanks. I'm sorry.
Tank+Vulture doesn't work because of mutas? That's sorta what valkyries are there for. :o
As for Wraiths. Wraiths die in like 2 hits. Valkyries have MUCH more life, do much more damage to air (in AoE aswell) and take MUCH less micro than cloak/wraith micro. Wraiths have their own style in TvZ. Valks fulfill a different role in this video/concept and they do it much better than wraiths would.
I guess you're right, that's why it's the dominant strategy in tvz right? It's good in theory, it will get raped by a competent zerg. You gonna sit in your base making 2 port 250/125 valks until you have enough to not get raped by scourge? Good luck beating a Z with the whole map. Let's see, you have 3 valks, you go to shoot an ol. It takes several shots from each. You can't move while that's happening. You get scourged from behind, or 5 hydralisks have enough time to kill you, or the spore underneath kills you. With a sair you can micro while attacking. Not with a valk. Oh I see, you go valks and then you park your army right outside his base so the "marines can protect them from below." Or maybe you mean you have your regular army and you're attacking and your valks are there too? That's crap, your army will be tiny. Valks are slow and expensive. Yes they kill ols fast. Yes it works vs people totally unprepared for it. No, it doesn't work vs people who are experienced enough to recognize it's coming or who are good. Yes, it might work on certain maps better than others as a high level strategy, but these maps are few and far between. No it's not some sort of auto-win super easy rape strategy like you make it sound here.
Of course it's a fun strategy and when it works it works well and is cool to see. But it's not anywhere near as good as you suggest it is in your rebuttal to my original post.
There is no dominant strategy in TvZ. Why do some pros use mech, it relies on the element of surprise and Zergs won't practice against this strategy. Valks are very tough and won't die from 5 hydralisks in the time it takes for them to fire and scourges have a hard time touching them when they reach a mass of around six. These points are demostrated in the video. All strategies work better on some maps, but we don't know which maps this strategy will work on, since it's relatively untested. Valks are not slow, dropships are slow. Their army will be small as well because of all the overlords dying. All these points are shown in the video.
That was freaking amazing, especially since TheZerg WAS expecting valks, which seem to be Boxer's new trademark.
Boxer's strategy seemed to rely a lot on valks, and TheZerg probably made a big big mistake by going muta scourge anyway.
What you learn from this game is that 3 valks completely negate mutas and give you opportunities in middle game that you wouldn't have normally. For example, a big ugly bunker tank push at your ennemy's natural.
Therefore, I'm not quite sure a "standart" valks opening is more efficient than playing a more orthodox way.
Something else I learnt tonight: Boxer is imo still the best player in the world. He doesn't win all the time, he doesn't have best macro etc etc etc... but well, "best" doesn't necessarly means you win all your games playing like everybody, a bit better.
im d+ and tried this strategy out several times to varying effect
against a d- nub it raped him and made him cry. i did mass a mass tank and valk build.
against a d player i won, but i had trouble building up a fleet of valks cus he kept scourging them. in the end, my macro won the day.
against a d+ player, it was very back and forth, and my valks scored a ton of kills, but he started hiding them and i couldnt find them and his army ran over me
against a c- player i never got a chance to use them cus he broke my nat with lurkling just before my valks popped T.T
The thing that's making me most curious is: Do you treat this BO like a 2 port wraith build but with an armory right after the fac? Or do you open up with a 1Rax FE like a standard TVZ opening and just tech up faster from there?
Hydra + Scourge should work against it. The idea is to send in the scourge when the valks are being fired at by the hydra but not shooting anything else. (eg. just finish killing a overlord) If the valks stops to shoot, they eat even more hydra shots, while if they try to run they get scourged.
If this is done well enough, it might be tons of near free hits.
On October 15 2008 23:13 SWPIGWANG wrote: I'm just thinking about this.....
Hydra + Scourge should work against it. The idea is to send in the scourge when the valks are being fired at by the hydra but not shooting anything else. (eg. just finish killing a overlord) If the valks stops to shoot, they eat even more hydra shots, while if they try to run they get scourged.
If this is done well enough, it might be tons of near free hits.
i think the point is to force zerg to go hydras so that your mech can run over them
valks are pretty good i think vs zerg but as we've seen pro's found ways of preventing it (kind if like limiting the numbers collected b4 they mass up too much, as with carriers)
i think it could become a kind of sair for ter's? that being said that only reason it hasnt' been used so much is cus of it's picky tech requirements
but once ppl start using them more i think zerg will come up with a good way to counter
On October 09 2008 09:04 alphafuzard wrote: the mass ling strat seems to be a strong counter for this, so maybe going firebat heavy early game, and depending on valk/turret to hold off mutas would be a stronger version?
bats take up some gas tho, and valks are gas heavy.... also defending against lurks might be harder with fewer marines
Think about what you just suggested.
Firebats/Valkyries/Turrets.
vs hydras? gg?
I think that you could pull this off if you kept the valks hidden for quite a long time (and the zerg went muta first). Firebat+valk has been thought about before- the problem is that it's really really gas heavy, and you need tanks fairly quickly, becuase you don't have enough marines to fight off hydra+lurk. Tank+firebat+valk is so gas heavy that it's almost not worth thinking about.
The reason why everyone goes m/m is because marines do a high enough dps so they can fight off muta and lurkers equally effectively with micro. Also, you don't need much gas to do mnm, so you can 1 base 2 rax. If you're planning on going valks/firebat, you need to go 1 rax cc, because you need the second gas. Since you went fast valk, you might not even have the dps to prevent the first two scourge from killing your first valk.
No one goes hydra anymore against T because 1marine+1medic >> 2 hydra (I don't think that the hydra ever kill off the marine- the medic heals the marine too quickly). So I suppose if you spotted the hydra fast enough, T might be able to tech switch fast enough by throwing down a few bunkers+raxes to defend pretty easily.
Focus fire hydra can kill marines, but it is never cost efficient. It could work in a pinch while tech switching into killing marines, but no zerg wants to be in this position. That said, if it is 4base vs 1, it would work well enough.
Bat/Tank/Valk would get hardcore contained by hydra however...so there is that....
Well, I'm just theorycrafting here, so feel free to criticize, but if the Zerg manages to tech up to late game, big air with hydras could counter this. With upgraded hydras, that you hopefully have while the valks were attacking you, you could probably be able to delay a push with proper micro and defend your overlords. If you can manage to take 3-4 gas, and manage to get greater spire tech, then it should work fine. Hydras, devourers, and the inevitable scourge can take a valkyrie army, I believe. The guardians that you have destroy the marines and tanks horribly. The micro would go something like, camp & tech.
One problem though would it is very hard to camp as Z vs terran, especially with constant valkyrie raids. With the valkyries around the map, then your expos will almost always get scouted. I guess time will tell how to use/counter this build.
RE : the boxer game talked about here he used valks but he was going to lose no matter what he did , it's inconsequential
the videos posted with the american guy doing a voiceover were good vids , the strategy has some merit i think but seems weak against an early hydra/lurk or lurk/ling push
I think the main conclusion is ... after all these years .. after all those pros/trainers that think about strategys in this game ... Boxer comes with an ideea and wins some ... ofc he doesn't have the speed/macro as many other younger players. He can't test it that much either since he is still in the army. But he never stops to amaze us. I think there is only one thing to say about this: Incredible ...welcome to Boxer land ...
that was some insane marine micro at the hive. i thought he had you, too. what i didn't understand was why he KEPT making mutas despite you having valks.....
hm, since valks take extra gas and stuff, would it be viable to get them after FE?
On October 18 2008 15:48 SilveR.sKy)ChoseN wrote: Yo Nintu, do you have some sort of finalized BO that you've been able to make work really well?
No. The time I get to play SC, I just play standard to try and improve. I haven't gotten to experiment with valks as much as people might think. I still think they have a place, and that they can be used to great effect. Sitting down and creating a build order takes a lot of effort.
The games I played with valks I had to play very adaptively, not structured at all. I scouted profusely to see how much defense I would need to prevent any all-ins or pushes from Zerg. When I knew I was safe from any sort of 2 hatch or all-in rushes, I just put a bunker at my natural, stopped marines when I have "enough" to defend from any possible threats, and went 2 port valks. It's as simple as it sounds. The zerg has to be CRAZY about scouting to figure things out in time, it just looks like standard FE terran. Treat it as 2port wraith after FE, but with valks instead. You should have 1-2 when muta's arrive. You can rely on the valks + marines to defend until your 3rd and 4th valk pops, then you're fine. You can completely avoid the e-bay aswell if you're confident you can get them out in time. You surrender map control until 8-10 valks are out with +1 attack, then you can contest it with escorted drops, like Sair reaver, Harass while you grab a third and play very defensively, or depending on how the Zerg reacts, forge a timing push with mech.
Honestly, I have no special build that exists. Just 1-rax FE, get enough marines/bunkers to defend any scouted threats, and the rest you invest in fast 2port with +1 air attack. Skip the e-bay if you plan to go Mech and are confident if you can get your valks before the opponent can destroy you with muts.
Just Theorycrafting here, but wouldn't going Valkyrie + Metal army require a lot of gas? I really doubt T will have enough gas left over for Vessels which is essential for TvZ in a standard 2 base scenario. If they choose to go for a 3rd gas, I think T will have a hell of a time doing that and since Metal army is so slow, Z can constantly attack multiple bases, drop on main, to take advantage of T mobility correct?
Well, this is all assuming that T followed up with Metal units instead of bionic units with Valkirye
yeah i don't think it's possible to pull off valks+tanks against competent zerg players. you just won't have enough gas. i think some early valks are great for countering muta harass and may be a better choice than building turrets. i do like valks a lot and use them occasionally myself, but i think if you're expecting to do more than fight off muta harass and pick off the occasional overlords, you probably won't get that unless you're playing a weak zerg. hydras and scourges can still take them down easily if you overcommit. and i don't think tanks are a good option along side valks. they are just simply not that good against zerg because they're slow and can easily get flanked.
On October 18 2008 15:48 SilveR.sKy)ChoseN wrote: Yo Nintu, do you have some sort of finalized BO that you've been able to make work really well?
No. The time I get to play SC, I just play standard to try and improve. I haven't gotten to experiment with valks as much as people might think. I still think they have a place, and that they can be used to great effect. Sitting down and creating a build order takes a lot of effort.
The games I played with valks I had to play very adaptively, not structured at all. I scouted profusely to see how much defense I would need to prevent any all-ins or pushes from Zerg. When I knew I was safe from any sort of 2 hatch or all-in rushes, I just put a bunker at my natural, stopped marines when I have "enough" to defend from any possible threats, and went 2 port valks. It's as simple as it sounds. The zerg has to be CRAZY about scouting to figure things out in time, it just looks like standard FE terran. Treat it as 2port wraith after FE, but with valks instead. You should have 1-2 when muta's arrive. You can rely on the valks + marines to defend until your 3rd and 4th valk pops, then you're fine. You can completely avoid the e-bay aswell if you're confident you can get them out in time. You surrender map control until 8-10 valks are out with +1 attack, then you can contest it with escorted drops, like Sair reaver, Harass while you grab a third and play very defensively, or depending on how the Zerg reacts, forge a timing push with mech.
Honestly, I have no special build that exists. Just 1-rax FE, get enough marines/bunkers to defend any scouted threats, and the rest you invest in fast 2port with +1 air attack. Skip the e-bay if you plan to go Mech and are confident if you can get your valks before the opponent can destroy you with muts.
On October 19 2008 01:24 c_dog wrote: yeah i don't think it's possible to pull off valks+tanks against competent zerg players. you just won't have enough gas. i think some early valks are great for countering muta harass and may be a better choice than building turrets. i do like valks a lot and use them occasionally myself, but i think if you're expecting to do more than fight off muta harass and pick off the occasional overlords, you probably won't get that unless you're playing a weak zerg. hydras and scourges can still take them down easily if you overcommit. and i don't think tanks are a good option along side valks. they are just simply not that good against zerg because they're slow and can easily get flanked.
Theorycrafting my ass and you haven't read the whole thing (have you read anything else than the title, btw?) and, OBVIOUSLY, you haven't watch Fantasy games vs GGPlay, which are the reason why this thread has been resurrected.
On October 19 2008 00:47 Februarys wrote: Just Theorycrafting here, but wouldn't going Valkyrie + Metal army require a lot of gas? I really doubt T will have enough gas left over for Vessels which is essential for TvZ in a standard 2 base scenario. If they choose to go for a 3rd gas, I think T will have a hell of a time doing that and since Metal army is so slow, Z can constantly attack multiple bases, drop on main, to take advantage of T mobility correct?
Well, this is all assuming that T followed up with Metal units instead of bionic units with Valkirye
Watch the video, game 1. I do tanks and Valkyries and some bio off 2 gas.
On October 19 2008 07:53 Biff The Understudy wrote: blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla
Theorycrafting my ass and you haven't read the whole thing (have you read anything else than the title, btw?) and, OBVIOUSLY, you haven't watch Fantasy games vs GGPlay, which are the reason why this thread has been resurrected.
Epic fail is epic.
i did read the whole thing and even watched the videos before i posted. he had literally 100 supply of seige tanks. i just don't see how the zerg player managed to let him build up that many seige tanks unless the zerg was incompetent. it takes a lot of time and a lot of gas/expos to build up that many, so the zerg player could have easily attacked the terran's expo instead of staying home trying to defend overlords, and this build would have been broken. the drop ship build is more viable. the tank build is just disaster considering a few zerglings would have quite easily destroyed the terran's economy. and did anyone notice how the zerg in the video was on the defensive against FE terran... zergs defensive against FE terran=fail. and i believe i watched fantasy's games vs ggplay, as i recall seeing some valks,but not valk+tanks. maybe my memory's failing me.
I was like WTF the first time I saw a scourge land on a corsair after chasing it for a good thirty seconds, I always assumed they were equal speed. But yeah.
Someone tried valks on me the other day. Easiest ZvT of my life. Scourge are just a KILLER counter to small groups of valkyries, I dunno how you can expect to build a critical mass of valks against a competent zerg player, and even then scourge can still work if he flanks with them and times it well.
On October 20 2008 16:34 Luddite wrote: Someone tried valks on me the other day. Easiest ZvT of my life. Scourge are just a KILLER counter to small groups of valkyries, I dunno how you can expect to build a critical mass of valks against a competent zerg player, and even then scourge can still work if he flanks with them and times it well.
I think scourges work best right after the initial volley of missiles. But if it's just head on with valkyries (suitable # of them wiith maybe +1?) and scourges, scourges usually get annihilated.
On October 19 2008 07:53 Biff The Understudy wrote: blablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablablabla
Theorycrafting my ass and you haven't read the whole thing (have you read anything else than the title, btw?) and, OBVIOUSLY, you haven't watch Fantasy games vs GGPlay, which are the reason why this thread has been resurrected.
Epic fail is epic.
i did read the whole thing and even watched the videos before i posted. he had literally 100 supply of seige tanks. i just don't see how the zerg player managed to let him build up that many seige tanks unless the zerg was incompetent. it takes a lot of time and a lot of gas/expos to build up that many, so the zerg player could have easily attacked the terran's expo instead of staying home trying to defend overlords, and this build would have been broken. the drop ship build is more viable. the tank build is just disaster considering a few zerglings would have quite easily destroyed the terran's economy. and did anyone notice how the zerg in the video was on the defensive against FE terran... zergs defensive against FE terran=fail. and i believe i watched fantasy's games vs ggplay, as i recall seeing some valks,but not valk+tanks. maybe my memory's failing me.
A lot depends on how you can force the Zerg to react. Realistically speaking, if they know it's coming, like say, if they maphacked, then I do agree that Zerg can EASILY defend it. Scourge can be micro'd to kill them if you have constant vision of them. Though it's true that in a lot of encounters, Scourge get raped by a critical mass of Valks, there are many ways you can sneak in a few scourge to destroy valks, especially in low numbers.
Valks need escorts, but also make great escorts. Coupled with bio for scourge, valks can be insanely effective. Instant damage with short range make marines PERFECT. If they had longer range, then their auto-attack would hit buildings, overlords or Mutalisks. If you fly your valks above marines while scourge are chasing, the scourge are gone, unless the zerg can effectively micro mutalisks to absorb marine hits.
Valks are hit and miss and they rely a lot on how the opponent reacts. You can see this at D through C ranks on iccup. A protoss will go DT's, the Terran will over-react, play too defensively, get too many turrets, etc, and the protoss will simply expand and play a standard macro game. In Starcraft, over-reacting can be just as bad as under-reacting. If the Zerg under-reacts, valks rape all his overlords and he can nolonger produce units. If he over-reacts, you transition into standard play after obtaining only 1-3 valks. There are too many factors to say that the unit or strategy itself is good or bad.
If you really want to incorporate valkyries at a cost efficient way, you should watch ggplay vs fantasy @ medusa. It's mainly used for muta defense, but at least you get to use some valks
I've started to exclusively use this SKTmetal (if that's what we're calling it) build/strat every tvz, it's been working out VERY well.
A thing I noticed is that the valkries act just like corsairs (obvious) except they fit that role 20x better than sairs do. Valkries are sheer air domination, especially a control group of 8-12.
The initial vulture/dropship also has a huge role, as day[9] described in his Terran Revolutionist article. It hits that timing window vs 3 hatch b4 mutalisks are out, allowing you to be on equal terms economically with zerg, and vs 2 hatch the vult drop hits just as mutas are popping or starting their way to your base. The dropship forces zerg to chase it down, allowing for you to be 100% safe with x2 valks/gol at home vs 2 hatch muta, or if they do not stop the dship, you hurt them while still being able to defend very well.
Note: The initial vulture/dropship harrass is not necessary or advised vs a Zerg that is attempting to adapt to your fast tech with a 2hat/3hat hydra break build. The pre-emptive T counter to the Z counter of quick hydras is to begin bunkers/marines and siegetank/siegemode rather than vulture/dship harrass off the bat (or at all).
What the valkries allow you to do are multiple things: 1) Nullify muta harrass. 2) Harrass overlords/scout+stop incoming drops like you would with reaver/sair in pvz. 3) Allow Terran to transition into TvP style.
The third thing is just what I've seen developing from my own games that I've played, but it seems like SKTmetal transitions VERY well into a Terran dominated late game.
The initial valkries nullify and stop muta harrass, meaning T now has air superiority, ability to harrass overlords, but more importantly the Zerg is now forced into a ground based hydra/ling/lurker army ala ZvP style.
Economically and in the metagame of the late game, what this means is now instead of having to pump a fuckton of goliaths with tanks, Terran are now able to get additional factory add-ons and use that goliath gas exclusively for tanks, while spending the rest in vultures for mines, just like a T would play TvP. Why is this so good for the Terran lategame?
The reason is now with a fully metal TvP army in a TvZ metagame, you can EASILY fight late-game ultra/ling tech switches. The increased tank mass is favorable vs mass ultras + swarm, and vulture mobility + mass mines make T late game even more solidified, as most Zerg will transition into a fuck ton of ultras when they see you going metal.
Along the same lines in the late game, now that you have a metagame TvP army vs Zerg ultra/ling/swarm+whatever, it also means your valkries are now free to poach as many overlords as you want due to lack of hydra presence. The valkries serve as appropriate AA, and are able to stop scouting (ala corsair pvz scout denial), and the valkries allow your mines to be that much more effective.
By mid-late game, even if your opponent does commit to massive mutalisk numbers+devourers, you simply constantly produce valkries from your starport and will win that battle as well. Not to mention there is nothing stopping you from adapting a couple science vessels into this metal play style.
I'll link two replays for further strategy analysis on this TvZ style. Here's two games, first game the SKTmetal style is used and opponent goes for standard spire opening and then transitions very quickly into hydra. As many people have mentioned, when a Z plays the SKTmetal style the first time, it can catch them off guard.
So, I re-matched the same player with the intention of using the same style, because I was interested to see how the Zerg guy would adapt a counter, and the game turned out to be interesting!
The second game has a counter opening to the counter that the Z did. The game felt a lot like a TvP game when I was playing it, and in some aspects like a PvZ
ah, and nice thread nintu too many people are underestimating this T revolution !
I don't think Devourers could be the best viable option. If the Z is cornered so severely if the build is executed well, I don't think you'll have the freedom to tech up so high and have that many resources to spend on mass devourers.
To expand on this, it should be very easy to ensnare a sitting duck valk after it fires, and then hydras can pick em off.
If the terran tries metal, you broodling any clumps of tanks, so they fire on each other and attack with hydras and lings with any left over minerals.. Sure Broodling is overpriced, but it does have a use for the tanks wasting a shot killing the broodlings and makes the tanks damage each other.
You can say that a valk mob will rape a queen, which this is true but the key to the valk harass strat is their high armor and life. They go in, rape all the overlords and escape with their speed. Ensnare negates this and then that valk mob becomes a liability to one single ensnare, not to mention parasite help keep overlords away from the mob.
On October 23 2008 02:07 avilo wrote: eh, are you guys smoking crack? queens aren't viable vs this...
care to elaborate? what hes saying does make sense, and im not getting what all this hype is about, playing mech in tvz isnt new, when i play mech i never lose to early mutas or hydras or whatever, if i lose its because the zergplayer is better then me and knows to play mech, meaning mass expand and knowing the right unit counters. If people know what your doing theres gaps in the build. the superfunky Fantasy build vs ggplay is very map dependable and its about the vultharras, which nobody seems to be mentioning here. and those valks only serve a defensive purpose early on.
walks are to expensive every new strategy wins you games on d-c level
On October 23 2008 02:07 avilo wrote: eh, are you guys smoking crack? queens aren't viable vs this...
care to elaborate? what hes saying does make sense, and im not getting what all this hype is about, playing mech in tvz isnt new, when i play mech i never lose to early mutas or hydras or whatever, if i lose its because the zergplayer is better then me and knows to play mech, meaning mass expand and knowing the right unit counters. If people know what your doing theres gaps in the build. the superfunky Fantasy build vs ggplay is very map dependable and its about the vultharras, which nobody seems to be mentioning here. and those valks only serve a defensive purpose early on.
walks are to expensive every new strategy wins you games on d-c level
good post ^^ id like to add that, on maps where fantasy build isn't so good, normal mech builds are. for example, look at katrina compared to medusa. vult+dropship harass on medusa is a hell of a lot more effective than on katrina and normal mech sucks on medusa. normal mech is actually (imo) stronger than M&M on katrina. i think if you learn normal mech and fantasy build, and know what maps which build is intended for, you could theoretically mech every game vs zerg. what do you think about that? edit: the valks are meant to Stop harass, not be used To harass, though im sure there's timing windows you can snipe 2-3 ovies. i think you already said this though.
On October 23 2008 05:27 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: the valks are meant to Stop harass, not be used To harass, though im sure there's timing windows you can snipe 2-3 ovies. i think you already said this though.
And who knighted the Valkyries with such roles? The OP clearly showed the player not just harrassing but completely obliterating ovies in several matches. It all just depends on the match.
On October 23 2008 05:27 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: the valks are meant to Stop harass, not be used To harass, though im sure there's timing windows you can snipe 2-3 ovies. i think you already said this though.
And who knighted the Valkyries with such roles? The OP clearly showed the player not just harrassing but completely obliterating ovies in several matches. It all just depends on the match.
im by no means a zerg player and i still think zerg would have an easy time raping that build. i have seen both videos. perhaps if he played players at his own rank midway through season? he even said in 2nd video that he way playing his C ranked friend and he was even off racing.
or maybe you guys did read and are still underestimating sktmetal viability on a variety of maps -.-
This is not just a "1 time build" but the build can be viable as more of a standard strat. tho nintu is doing something diff which may not be as standard for this specific style(aka two starport valks/mm instead of metal).
or maybe you guys did read and are still underestimating sktmetal viability on a variety of maps -.-
This is not just a "1 time build" but the build can be viable as more of a standard strat. tho nintu is doing something diff which may not be as standard for this specific style(aka two starport valks/mm instead of metal).
u didnt read my post, nor days post properly.. Day himself wrote that FANTASYS build is map dependable. valks serve a defensive purpose in that build. u make 2-4 of em. from 1 port-.-
this build is suggesting 2fac2port from 2gas.(yeah my ass 2fax tanks 2port valk off of 2gases) and what ur doing is saying queens suck with no explanation. showing replays from a few games on iccup against players who never playd against that build and arent even his rank, isnt gonna convince me.
i played this build against a player better than me, first game he DID use queens i had 6 of em flying around looking for ovies he ensnared em hydras came, lots of lings>tanks. 2nd game he just massed lings in the beginning, cant see how this build can win against mass lings
well, money into queens usually is money that could have been spent in your econ/tech or massing more muta/hydra/upgrades. Queens are just something you use when you have the macro and army to support yourself already. And by that time, they are inefficient attention-span wise, and money wise. queens obviously can be really good in stalemates where the map is dried out tho, since they are energy based.
vs valks, most T will not commit valkries to attacking you and they won't go "pawn hunting" for overlords with expensive valks, making queens pointless there too. If they put there units in constant danger of being killed over and over, then they aren't playing the build right and of course queens could beat them - cause they aren't good -.- just like mass DA can beat n00bs too.
On October 24 2008 00:06 avilo wrote: well, money into queens usually is money that could have been spent in your econ/tech or massing more muta/hydra/upgrades. Queens are just something you use when you have the macro and army to support yourself already. And by that time, they are inefficient attention-span wise, and money wise. queens obviously can be really good in stalemates where the map is dried out tho, since they are energy based.
vs valks, most T will not commit valkries to attacking you and they won't go "pawn hunting" for overlords with expensive valks, making queens pointless there too. If they put there units in constant danger of being killed over and over, then they aren't playing the build right and of course queens could beat them - cause they aren't good -.- just like mass DA can beat n00bs too.
you just wrote the reasons why queens are *generally* not a good idea, but im talking about this specific scenario versus valks. and well if the valks arent good for killing overlords then lol i dont see the point theres 1 dangerous timespan when valks could be usefull vs air and thats right when the mutas pop. u dont need 12 valks and u certainly dont need 2ports for that
Sorry for the bump, but for thoses who were not convinced valks could be used a very efficient way in tvz, fantasy proved that, even when highly expected, valks work against hydras:
and mutas scourge
fairly well...
I don't know what to think about it. Fantasy seems to like them so much that they really became his trademark.
The advantage of valks compared to vessels is clearly that they are very very very strong against scourges. More vessels you have, harder it is to micro them against scourge. More valks you have and harder it gets to snipe them. Therefore, a control group of valks, if you survive to get it is fucking scary for a zerg player...
Luxury failed to micro his mutalisks properly at key points in the game, which cost him air control in game 2. Not to say that valkryies aren't viable, but the apparent strength of valkyries in this set was far stronger than it could've been if luxury adapted more accordingly.
Really though, I don't see why luxury is getting like 100 mutalisks vs a mnm valkyrie combination (game 3), seeing as you don't get pure mutalisks vs just mnm and you definitely don't get pure mutalisks vs just valkyries. I know luxury's trying to pin fantasy in his base, but it still doesn't seem to make too much sense, as he at no point transitioned into hydralurker, which it seems, would counter this build far more accordingly (especially since fantasy will have little gas for science vessels, and lurkers can hold the cliffs on sin chunpung ryeong quite nicely). Can someone enlighten me?
On March 16 2009 01:50 SerpentFlame wrote: Luxury failed to micro his mutalisks properly at key points in the game, which cost him air control in game 2. Not to say that valkryies aren't viable, but the apparent strength of valkyries in this set was far stronger than it could've been if luxury adapted more accordingly.
Really though, I don't see why luxury is getting like 100 mutalisks vs a mnm valkyrie combination (game 3), seeing as you don't get pure mutalisks vs just mnm and you definitely don't get pure mutalisks vs just valkyries. I know luxury's trying to pin fantasy in his base, but it still doesn't seem to make too much sense, as he at no point transitioned into hydralurker, which it seems, would counter this build far more accordingly (especially since fantasy will have little gas for science vessels, and lurkers can hold the cliffs on sin chunpung ryeong quite nicely). Can someone enlighten me?
I get he didn't know what to do after being raped in game 2 by lurkerlings... He probably thought he could abuse Fantasy's inferior mobility?
I guess the best answer would be to go third thier and then defilers. As Fantasy had no vessels, I don't see how he would have stoped that. But Luxury didn't get defilers in the whole serie.
because of the valks slow time to shoot again the only counter i can think of is snare. once snared a few scourges can take care of valks. im sure good players will find a way to counter the resources needed to make the number of valks.
On March 16 2009 06:50 Mykill wrote: because of the valks slow time to shoot again the only counter i can think of is snare. once snared a few scourges can take care of valks. im sure good players will find a way to counter the resources needed to make the number of valks.
they could abuse the fact that iirc valks cant move nor turn when in the attack animation
hi guys, i am new to this forum, i was just wondering. how you can find what rank you are? because i've been looking through a few posts and they said i am a b ranked toss player or whatever. can someone give me some light here?
hydra/lurk? If the terran invests in 5+ valks, i don't think he's going to be able to get enough gas to support tanks w/ seige. By the time he does, The zerg should be on hive tech and deflier tech should be kicking in soon. Zerg could always just build like 20 hydras for defensive purposes and use a lurker/ling army to face the mnm. idk if this would work though =p
entertaining vods! Not sure if i would work on really great players though, but in your defense your bo isnt totally refined yet. Who knows. Good work overall
I can't say I experimented with it too much after making these vods. I think valkyries are great for supplimenting mech and such, but overall at higher ranks, I'd say it would be difficult to make it an effective strategy. (mass valks that is.)
i know i'm replying to an old post, but i really think you had something here. iloveoov fake mech build is a fantastic build and is very similar to this. the valks pwn ovies, if he masses lurks then u can switch between bio or mech mid/late game, and i guess as long as u don't get ur valks pwnt by bad micro or get rushed my early speedlings then u r set (also, it's important to get that 3rd gas going but stopping a contain shouldn't be a problem). not only are they confused about the valks, but it's almost impossible to read your late game build, seeing as you continally switch it. sure it's a FE but perhaps with proper walling and micro, this new (similar) build will work well.
i just want to say, i LOVE your build.. its super fun to play on iccup against those funny D players haha
but just one question... can you give a more detailed discription about how to follow up with it? like, when to build the rax and/or facts and when to push out..
i seem to always win by basically shutting their unit count down to below 80.. and then i just mass up to 150 and push.. however, those games take 20+ minutes.. are there anyway to shorten it?
This was a recent rep where I tried valks. If my macro was half-decent, I would have won.
We are both low D level players (NOT D-), and I had a lot of fun playing with valks.
What I did was, instead of tanks or M&M, I went for vultures. Mines take down a lot of shit (as the replay shows, 7 vultures ended up killing several lurkers during a single drop), but they can also backfire (at one point, I lost nearly half of my ground army to a single mine drag.....).
I am definitely going to do this a little more often.
As for shortening the game - I doubt it. The only thing this build has going for it is the ability to shut down production for the Z player. You still need to keep your production up to be able to kill them.
Hi all, Zerg should be able to counter Valkyries with Queen (Ensare) + Hydras. And using Ensare With Lurkers Lings can work very well. Queens also can come in handy to kill Tanks with Spawn.
On August 14 2009 05:50 larryhoo wrote: Hi all, Zerg should be able to counter Valkyries with Queen (Ensare) + Hydras. And using Ensare With Lurkers Lings can work very well. Queens also can come in handy to kill Tanks with Spawn.
What do you all think?
No. Any time you need to rely on queens is almost a guaranteed lose unless you are jaedong or significantly better than your opponent (ensare comes out ridiculously slow and really hard to aim well).
Hydra/lurk fast bust works. If later game, just hydra/ling/defiler vs valk/tank.
On August 14 2009 05:50 larryhoo wrote: Hi all, Zerg should be able to counter Valkyries with Queen (Ensare) + Hydras. And using Ensare With Lurkers Lings can work very well. Queens also can come in handy to kill Tanks with Spawn.
What do you all think?
No. Any time you need to rely on queens is almost a guaranteed lose unless you are jaedong or significantly better than your opponent (ensare comes out ridiculously slow and really hard to aim well).
Hydra/lurk fast bust works. If later game, just hydra/ling/defiler vs valk/tank.
Or unless you're ZerO and you're not as good as your opponent...
It would truely be fascinating if Queens were used as a counter to valks, and it's not entirely farfetched, Valks are not stunningly fast units, and nobody has really ever been able to micro-manage them that attentively- thus I could see the Queen timing being pushed up as a counter. The bigger problem is that Valks are a better counter to mutalisks (which the OP did not anticipate) and production of queens would come at the end of any window for muta harass.
On August 14 2009 05:50 larryhoo wrote: Hi all, Zerg should be able to counter Valkyries with Queen (Ensare) + Hydras. And using Ensare With Lurkers Lings can work very well. Queens also can come in handy to kill Tanks with Spawn.
What do you all think?
No. Any time you need to rely on queens is almost a guaranteed lose unless you are jaedong or significantly better than your opponent (ensare comes out ridiculously slow and really hard to aim well).
Hydra/lurk fast bust works. If later game, just hydra/ling/defiler vs valk/tank.
Or unless you're ZerO and you're not as good as your opponent...
It would truely be fascinating if Queens were used as a counter to valks, and it's not entirely farfetched, Valks are not stunningly fast units, and nobody has really ever been able to micro-manage them that attentively- thus I could see the Queen timing being pushed up as a counter. The bigger problem is that Valks are a better counter to mutalisks (which the OP did not anticipate) and production of queens would come at the end of any window for muta harass.
I always think Queens should be used more though.
I think you could use queen ensnare to either: 1. run overlords away, either to hydras or just spread them across the map to buy time 2. counterattack with mutas while valks are being fat somewhere else
Besides that, alot of plague should be useful in countering valk/biomech
On October 04 2008 17:51 sqwert wrote: pros dont use it becuase theres a pixel limit thing on sc that limits the valkyrie's potentials.
right?
That only matters if you play on fastest maps.
TBH this is a lie, this pixel limit thing happened to me on BGH not so long ago. Usually any map with stacked minerals = limit or if 8 players gets 100-150 supply.
I aplogize for the bump, but on the first page of discussion a few people were talking about "The sprite limit". Could someone explain this sprite limit to me thanks!
On October 04 2008 18:00 Tropics wrote: The sprite limit will never come into play in a real 1v1.
I experimented with valks a bit a few months ago and one of the main things I noticed is that they're REALLY frustrating to control. Half the time you'll spam right click to try and get them to move and they refuse to do it. Half your group will go and the other half will sit there getting wrecked by hydras/spores/scourge while firing at an overlord and you've just lost a massive investment
Pretty sure you know this but it is because Valikyries need to fire off all their missiles before moving. So only engage when you know there aren't any Hydras or spores.
Yes, the missiles do not come out when the sprite limit is reached. In my experience the Valkyrie the most from this and to the lesser extent goliaths. I've seen in fastest play even Battlecruisers and scouts (when using air to air weapons) not shoot when a there is a certain number of sprites in the game. I am not sure why those units are affected the most though.
On October 04 2008 18:00 Tropics wrote: The sprite limit will never come into play in a real 1v1.
I experimented with valks a bit a few months ago and one of the main things I noticed is that they're REALLY frustrating to control. Half the time you'll spam right click to try and get them to move and they refuse to do it. Half your group will go and the other half will sit there getting wrecked by hydras/spores/scourge while firing at an overlord and you've just lost a massive investment
Pretty sure you know this but it is because Valikyries need to fire off all their missiles before moving. So only engage when you know there aren't any Hydras or spores.
You can stack the valkries and pull them back while they shoot though using patrol.
On October 30 2012 10:05 Pucca wrote: I'm assuming this would not happened in a 1v1 TvZ?
it shouldn't in any realistic situation i think the sprite limit is 1000 or 2000, i don't really remember any unit/building is a sprite and any ranged projectile is a sprite fun fact: if the sprite limit is reached, buildings and units at the top (topleft i think, might be top right though) have priority, so if you spawn on the top half of the map in zero clutter or fastest you can actually force your opponents to stop building if you build enough overlords. once units start trading you get larvae but they still can't build anything lol
It's not realistic for it to happen in TvZ because zerg never goes for a 200/200 that is a significant percentage air units. It does come up in TvT though.
On October 30 2012 10:05 Pucca wrote: I'm assuming this would not happened in a 1v1 TvZ?
it shouldn't in any realistic situation i think the sprite limit is 1000 or 2000, i don't really remember any unit/building is a sprite and any ranged projectile is a sprite fun fact: if the sprite limit is reached, buildings and units at the top (topleft i think, might be top right though) have priority, so if you spawn on the top half of the map in zero clutter or fastest you can actually force your opponents to stop building if you build enough overlords. once units start trading you get larvae but they still can't build anything lol
On October 30 2012 10:05 Pucca wrote: I'm assuming this would not happened in a 1v1 TvZ?
it shouldn't in any realistic situation i think the sprite limit is 1000 or 2000, i don't really remember any unit/building is a sprite and any ranged projectile is a sprite fun fact: if the sprite limit is reached, buildings and units at the top (topleft i think, might be top right though) have priority, so if you spawn on the top half of the map in zero clutter or fastest you can actually force your opponents to stop building if you build enough overlords. once units start trading you get larvae but they still can't build anything lol
WHAT REALLY You never told me this?
lol, i love bw. so many little and proly alot of unknow facts about the coding^^
On October 30 2012 10:05 Pucca wrote: I'm assuming this would not happened in a 1v1 TvZ?
it shouldn't in any realistic situation i think the sprite limit is 1000 or 2000, i don't really remember any unit/building is a sprite and any ranged projectile is a sprite fun fact: if the sprite limit is reached, buildings and units at the top (topleft i think, might be top right though) have priority, so if you spawn on the top half of the map in zero clutter or fastest you can actually force your opponents to stop building if you build enough overlords. once units start trading you get larvae but they still can't build anything lol
When your playing a zerg who went 3 hatch mutalisk and noticed that he saved up around 5 or more mutas while transitioning into late game, he might even go for the greater spire and harass your expo on fighting spirit. I think having 2 valks or even more might fend this off pretty economically, and it gives you less to stress about.
On November 03 2012 06:18 Dead9 wrote: or u could just get 2 wraiths
Valkyries are much better against mutas, they're far more durable. Splash damage, 200 hp, and especially the base 2 armor makes it easy for a group of valkyries to deal with a greater number of mutas.
On November 03 2012 07:30 Dead9 wrote: but we're talking about guardians here
Guardians can't shoot up anyway. Valks will kill them somewhat slower than Wraiths, but will be more economical, as well as being stronger against mutas in the midgame, and you'll still be able to get science vessels easily after a just a handful of valks to irradiate guardians as the main counter anyway.
if you're going bio and you're up against guardians without a huge vessel count you're better off going wraiths versus guardians more or less all the time wraiths don't require an armory, don't require an addon, are a lot cheaper, deal more damage (single target but still), move faster, are microable, can dodge scourge
Amory is needed for upgrades anyway, and Valkyries are actually cheaper in the gas for supply, though equally more expensive in minerals for supply, and move just as fast as wraiths, they just need patrol micro while shooting to keep from stopping. If you get to critical mass they can deal with scourge too, but usually having some marines cover them can be enough, and you usually don't need to mass too many of them, much less than you do wraiths. They do require the addon, but it's easy to transition to vessels after getting a handful of valkyries. You don't need to keep making valkyries to counter guardians, you get them to counter the 3 hatch muta, and then those leftover can help while you build up vessel count. They may not do quite as much damage and require some micro to keep from stopping and addons, but the extra utility vs midgame/leftover mutas, less overall gas cost, and smaller amount you actually need than wraiths is useful. Both wraiths and valkyries have their usefulness, it's just a stylistic choice.
yes, you can go valkonic or biomech and use valks to counter guardians, but if you're opening bio there's never any reason to go valks versus guards it's not a stylistic choice, wraiths are just flat out better if you're opening standard bio
On November 03 2012 13:07 Dead9 wrote: yes, you can go valkonic or biomech and use valks to counter guardians, but if you're opening bio there's never any reason to go valks versus guards it's not a stylistic choice, wraiths are just flat out better if you're opening standard bio
It's using valks to counter 3 hatch muta, and then using leftover valks to help, like I said you don't keep building valks if he does decide to go into guardians. You can get wraiths early to harass zerg too, but the mutas will wipe the floor with them. The wraiths are more offensive early, the valks are more defensive early. You don't decide to start building valkyries when you scout guardians. You just have some left over. If you want to suddenly build something you didn't already have to counter them, obviously wraiths are better. But getting a few valkyries defend against 3 hatch mutalisk harass(pretty standard actually), and then transitioning into vessels works just fine.
i guess it wasn't that clear, i meant you can open with valkyries to kill mutas early on and reuse them later to clear out guardians, but otherwise you're better off using wraiths getting a few valkyries to defend against 3 muta harass isn't very standard with a bio opening, it cuts into vessel production pretty bad
The first guy you responded too never mentioned bio, but it does cut a little into vessel production, it's a setback but it's not too bad. Depending on timings I can squeeze out 2-5 valks while I'm securing another base, building science facility, researching vessel abilities, and getting more starports. Vessel cloud is slightly delayed, but it works out. If I didn't already have valks for other situations would definitely go for wraiths, they are better for that specific situation.
On November 03 2012 23:27 Fyrewolf wrote: The first guy you responded too never mentioned bio, but it does cut a little into vessel production, it's a setback but it's not too bad. Depending on timings I can squeeze out 2-5 valks while I'm securing another base, building science facility, researching vessel abilities, and getting more starports. Vessel cloud is slightly delayed, but it works out. If I didn't already have valks for other situations would definitely go for wraiths, they are better for that specific situation.
Have you experimented with this do you have any replays?
On November 03 2012 23:27 Fyrewolf wrote: The first guy you responded too never mentioned bio, but it does cut a little into vessel production, it's a setback but it's not too bad. Depending on timings I can squeeze out 2-5 valks while I'm securing another base, building science facility, researching vessel abilities, and getting more starports. Vessel cloud is slightly delayed, but it works out. If I didn't already have valks for other situations would definitely go for wraiths, they are better for that specific situation.
it's really, really rare to see guardians versus mech. it works on some specific maps (katrina), but goliaths are pretty good against guardians so zerg is generally better off just massing units
if you're squeezing out valks, teching up, and grabbing more starports, then by the time you leave your base you're up against 4 hatch hive tech, which is really hard deal with unless you have a large vessel count. valkonic pushes out for the kill early on because valks cut into vessel production so bad
also you can't just pop out valks; if you even want valks in time for 3 hatch muta you have to tech pretty early. mutas arrive around when the starport finishes with a standard fe > 2rax tech build, and 2rax tech already gets you a relatively early starport
EPT
![[image loading]](http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/1174/beautifulmomentjx9.jpg)
and ETT too of course
