[ASL9] Ro8 Day 4 - Page 24

On April 10 2020 01:21 Uldridge wrote:
This entire discussion is based on the fact that P opts into having the pressure put on him because he plays this strategy. He gives himself as much of an economic edge as possible with the forge expand. Shoud he go 1 base 3 gate goon with legs behind it or something he'd put the pressure on Z.
You basically have 3 zealots and 2 cannons on 2 base when you could have like 5 goons and 6 zealots on 1 base. And you could have that comp earlier because your gateway count is higher earlier. It's just the choice of strategies that puts the pressure to "out-play" on the P. Just that simple.

On April 09 2020 20:40 Barneyk wrote:


This was maybe true before the 9734 build was popularized.

Even if you as Zerg put so many larva and resources into hydras and upgrades, if you see the protoss make a lot of cannons so a hydra bust is to risky to try you can start to drone up because Protoss won't be able to push out fast enough to punish you since they put so much minerals into cannons and not gateways.

The hydras you built and upgrades is enough to defend against what protoss can push out with.

Of course I am oversimplifying the game a lot here, but saying there is no "make lots of hydras before first corsair and then do nothing and drone up to an equal economy" is weird when that is pretty much what the 9734 build is about.

If they don't build enough cannons, bust it. If they do build enough cannons, drone up. There is a lot more to it of course, but I think you are just flat out wrong.

EDIT: And to add a comment about balance, how the meta shifts and depending on maps etc. I don't see a balance problem per se, but Zerg is a tricky and narrow matchup for protoss. Especially since cracklings and dark swarm makes the lategame something you want to avoid as well.

On April 09 2020 12:24 Moopower wrote:


No, Game 3 when Soma went for an all in type build, that was a high risk high reward play. 3 Hatch hydra in particular is where I'm saying there's relatively low risk high reward. If your all in build gets scouted you should be expected to lose or at least be in a huge disadvantage. We don't see much of a margin of opportunity for Protoss to scout 3 hatch hydra busts in time consistently where the Zerg zones out probe/zealot scouts perfectly. 3 hatch hydra isn't an all -in type of build anymore like it used to be because of how precise zerg progamers have been with droning and sniping cannons quickly and forcing protoss to sacrifice probes just to defend.

Game 5 where it was pretty close, was due to a blunder by soma. He did not anticipate dt drop and let bisu massacre his drones. That's why it was closer than it should've been. However I will say if Bisu decided to play it safer and just defend the hydra bust by getting storm instead of spreading himself too thin with both robo and templar tech, the game would've been different. Bisu made some crucial mistakes that cost him the game ultimately but that's not the point. The argument is the margin of error on the Protoss side is small and disadvantaged in PvZ.

I don't see any TvZ game where having hydra upgrades researched a few seconds later would've made a huge difference against mech strategies. There aren't vulture harassments that can be abused if hydras don't get ranged atk or speed faster because of sim city. So having hydra upgrades taking a little bit longer would not affect any other match up other than PvZ. By the time Zerg in ZvT against mech gets OL speed, having hydra upgrade take slightly longer would not affect moving out on the map at all.

Also for arguments saying that Protoss should hide probes around the map to sneak a scout in, is basically saying you're hoping the Zerg plays inoptimally or has to make a mistake for Protoss to get a chance. If they are determined to deny your probe/zealot scouting, a high caliber zerg will not let you see their hydras until it is time. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, speedlings are so much faster than probes/zealots that the margin for zerg to find your scouting probe is very large and they can catch up fast enough to deny. A watchful zerg would've seen you try to sneak out probes from your natural anyways and would be on the lookout for the missing probe. We saw this before in KSL I think season 2 or 3. It was Rain vs JD. Rain was trying to push out with some zealots to try to get some scouting intel. The critical mistake that Rain did in that game was that he left his cannon wall open and didn't plug in with probes to replace after the zealots left. Rain didn't anticipate a large speedling group to sneak back but it cost him the game because by the time he warped in new cannons the speedlings bought JD enough time for his hydras to do serious economic dmg so even Rain held barely he was severely behind. And even if Rain used his zealots to try to scout and blocked wall with probes, if JD decided to mop up those 5-6 zealots moving out on the map he could've done so easily or Rain would've had to back off and retreat and be denied any scouting intel. Until +1 atk, or splash dmg with a better army composition, zealots trade inefficiently against cheap zerglings. Which is why Protoss scouting options are limited until corsair.

Zerg has a lot of choices while Protoss has a critical lack of intel that often cost them games. Terran units all have range so they will always be able to defend normally even if caught off guard initially. But Protoss units don't, dragoons suck vs every zerg unit unless supported by a good mix of zealots and hts. Corsairs don't come fast enough to scout zerg if Protoss opens zealot pressure. There are so many holes in Protoss's arsenal that can be abused by zerg because they need time to tech up for obs, against lurkers, or cannons in main and sairs against muta play or cannons at the front against hydra bust. I'm not saying anything other than hydra busting is hard to stop because unlike hydra busts, they are all high risk/ high reward strategies. Meaning if Protoss defends successfully, they are significantly ahead. 3 hatch hydra is the only build in my opinion that can be between an all in build and a transition into a long macro game depending on how much Zerg forced Protoss to spend on cannons and sacrificing probes.

Should Protoss players be punished for a small micro mistake where their 1st few zealots took one too many hits that they are denied scouting and map control until they get up to corsair and risk losing to a hydra bust? This is the slim margin of error of Protoss. They have to play near perfectly in order to have a chance if Zerg is determined to play mind games with hydra busting.

I don't agree, however, with delaying hydra upgrades as a solution. A slightly faster cannon warp-in could affect the balance even less and work quite well.

On April 10 2020 22:49 Rainalcar wrote:


How do you think PvP would change? What comes to mind is some DT timings and scrambling defense vs Dragoons. As far as I am concerned, I could live with both, I don't mind actually.

vZ yes, there will be more chance to pull of a cannon rush, but Z definitely can play against this and it is very map dependent.

Hydra upgrades also don't affect things much, true. Perhaps slightly in hydra breaks vT. But I would rather the weaker race helped as long as the change doesn't affect at all the other non-mirror matchup, and PvT is practically not affected at all.

On April 10 2020 07:16 ppp87 wrote:
Can someone post the soma's afreeca stream url please, I cant find it by myself, thanks.

On April 10 2020 19:15 Uldridge wrote:
If Protoss needs to get ahead from one base he should go 3 gate robo (obs -> reaver) then get the expansion with your first reaver while it shoots lurkers (this is the most likely contain to face imo) from the ramp, edging down, while playing the micro minigame of keeping your ramp blocked. I'm sure you can keep pumping reavers and while they're super vulnerable if you have a decent meat shield of zealots you can mount a massive defense with 2/3 early reavers defending.. much better than cannons could imo.

Does a reaver die faster than a cannon?