EPTMuta's are just not smart to mass as they are a bad combat unit. Muta's are a good harass / map control weapon that can help a bit in battle, but really focussing on muta/ling as your army is a bit weak as that means mass ling + a few muta which can be countered quite well.
[D] PvZ Muta/Ling - Page 5
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Markwerf
Netherlands3728 Posts
Muta's are just not smart to mass as they are a bad combat unit. Muta's are a good harass / map control weapon that can help a bit in battle, but really focussing on muta/ling as your army is a bit weak as that means mass ling + a few muta which can be countered quite well. | ||
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fwaaahh
26 Posts
Zealots rip apart zerglings, that's the counter to this whole debate. =/ if you see a Zerg seriously massing lings, why don't you just keep massing zealots and kill them? Throw in stalkers to kill the 3 mutalisks that pop out after 9 minutes of harass. | ||
Plexa
Aotearoa39261 Posts
On July 19 2010 15:49 Powster wrote: I used to go 1 base phoenix vs zerg to contain him while I expand but that gives him such an economic lead to the zerg if he defends it good.. but now I am liking the 10 gate zealot pressure to forge FE. Wont let him expand before you but gives him map control.. just dont let him macro up by making early attacks with small armies just to keep pressure / checking to make sure he isnt expanding everywhere or something.. My alt PvZ build is the 10gate pressure, but instead of forge FE follow up I go Void Ray. It kills noob zergs something terrible because they overcommit on lings and dont tech up. Getting 2 VR out gives you back map control and harass potential (as well as the ability to scout the zerg) and THEN you can expand. Typically works pretty well. | ||
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Faulteh
Canada48 Posts
On July 19 2010 15:49 Powster wrote: Whynot just go zealot+ blink stalker and attack his base rather than get phoenixes.. works for me. Guy went mutaling vs me last game and unpowered everything in my base but my cannons protecting probes so I went to his base and owned him was an easy win since zealot beat zerglings and stalkers beat mutas. I only watched game 3 but if hwanni wouldve just spent his stargate+phoenix money on gateway units and attacked a little sooner wouldve been an easy win just like mine was. If you get your bases up at same time then protoss will always be ahead till he gets another.. and then if he does just go attack at that time since you will still have your lead for a bit.. I used to go 1 base phoenix vs zerg to contain him while I expand but that gives him such an economic lead to the zerg if he defends it good.. but now I am liking the 10 gate zealot pressure to forge FE. Wont let him expand before you but gives him map control.. just dont let him macro up by making early attacks with small armies just to keep pressure / checking to make sure he isnt expanding everywhere or something.. My response to this, (sinec you always have a huge mineral surplus doing muta/ling) is a lot of crawlers and a lot of speedlings. Kinda takes away the possibility of a base trade. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On July 19 2010 13:07 Bair wrote: You can micro mutalisks to be able to hit a phoenix (and get a single hit, maybe two depending on lag and reflexes) as a way to combat phoenix with mutas. Generally the damage is balanced by the fact that the nix's are outnumbered. But that one or two hits you get go to his shields, which will regenerate very quickly, while every single hit you take stays for a much longer time. You have to have a LOT of mutas for that one hit to really count for anything at all, and if he's keeping up any sort of phoenix production, you'll end up taking more damage than you manage to deal. | ||
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ToxNub
Canada805 Posts
Archons are not the solution to muta. I used to think so too, but that was before I started playing zergs that knew how to harass. Archons are not mobile enough, are easily stuck, and need to be in significant numbers to deal with a muta pack. You need to keep a sentry around too... You simply can't afford to have 3 archons + 1 sentry at every possible angle he could attack at. He will dance around until he catches one alone and obliterate it. He will take out pylons, probes, cannons, and random stalkers... Wherever you are weakest. You might be able to hold on one base, but as soon as you move to two, good luck defending muta harass. You also have to keep both your ramp and your expos mineral line well protected for a speedling surprise. The combination, even if you manage to hold off his harass, is that you give him the entire map. Your army may very well be able to kill his, but if you push, your best case is a base trade (but with less bases!) Mass phoenix is the only thing I've seen that comes close to defending muta, but a tech switch on his part will ruin your whole plan. | ||
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
The biggest misconception is that muta/ling is limited to harassing. This is absolutely not true. It can take a Protoss army head on, the reason being that as long as you play it right, you will have a nice gas advantage. That means the lings will tank a good deal of stalker hits while the mutas clean up all of the ground units. As long as you engage him out in the open (i.e. not inside your base), you kill all of the anti-air attacks with your ling/muta, and then clean up with your remaining mutas, further securing your gas advantage because you just killed all of his anti-air attackers (gas units). At this point, there's pretty much no way the Protoss can come back. That said, please either watch the replays (especially game 2) or post your own, because given the replies in this thread so far, I'm willing to bet that a vast majority of you have not come across a halfway decent muta/ling player yet. | ||
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Skyro
United States1823 Posts
On July 20 2010 02:39 Saracen wrote: Okay, there are a ton of misconceptions in this thread that I want to clear up. The biggest misconception is that muta/ling is limited to harassing. This is absolutely not true. It can take a Protoss army head on, the reason being that as long as you play it right, you will have a nice gas advantage. That means the lings will tank a good deal of stalker hits while the mutas clean up all of the ground units. As long as you engage him out in the open (i.e. not inside your base), you kill all of the anti-air attacks with your ling/muta, and then clean up with your remaining mutas, further securing your gas advantage because you just killed all of his anti-air attackers (gas units). At this point, there's pretty much no way the Protoss can come back. That said, please either watch the replays (especially game 2) or post your own, because given the replies in this thread so far, I'm willing to bet that a vast majority of you have not come across a halfway decent muta/ling player yet. Certainly muta/ling is a decent unit comp in a head-on battle, but I don't think anybody can say its ability to harass isn't its main strength. In a head-on battle an equal food/cost mix of zealot/stalker/sentry would decimate muta/ling. I don't think I've ever seen a zerg player try to attack a protoss ball head-on w/ muta/ling w/o having a sizable army advantage. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On July 20 2010 02:39 Saracen wrote: That said, please either watch the replays (especially game 2) or post your own, because given the replies in this thread so far, I'm willing to bet that a vast majority of you have not come across a halfway decent muta/ling player yet. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case. I played about 100 games during Phase 2, and maybe 10 of those games were against zerg (I really have no idea why the matchmaker decided that I don't get to play PvZ). Of those games, the zerg went for muta/ling once, which was on scrap station. I shut it down pretty easily with 2-stargate phoenixes and heavy zealots. For some reason, the zerg decided to double down on air and transition into corruptors as opposed to making the usual tech switch into hydras. Needless to say, he got trashed pretty badly by my ground troops (which included templar). However, I think I was well-positioned and prepared for a hydra switch anyway, having templar and storm ready to go fairly quickly. Anyway, I guess my ultimate point is that not a lot of zerg are doing muta/ling anymore. Even in phase 1, I stopped seeing much mutalisk play in PvZ after Blizzard gave phoenixes the movable attack. I think a big reason for this is that protoss players figured out how to stop mutalisks cold with good phoenix play. Maybe now that protosses are going heavy ground, we'll see more mutalisk builds. It'd be nice to see something other than hydra/roach again. | ||
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Bair
United States698 Posts
On July 20 2010 00:26 Skrag wrote: But that one or two hits you get go to his shields, which will regenerate very quickly, while every single hit you take stays for a much longer time. You have to have a LOT of mutas for that one hit to really count for anything at all, and if he's keeping up any sort of phoenix production, you'll end up taking more damage than you manage to deal. Phoenixes are fragile, and if you have the lead in unit count, like I said in that bit you just quoted from me, you can afford the trade because you have better macro, production capabilities, and numbers. | ||
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Floophead_III
United States1832 Posts
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:52 Floophead_III wrote: Any zerg's wanna play muta/ling vs my P on ladder before beta goes down? I just want to see someone actually abuse it like it's supposedly possible to do. I'm at work right now, but I'm definitely up for some games when I get home. PM me your info. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:41 Bair wrote: Phoenixes are fragile, and if you have the lead in unit count, like I said in that bit you just quoted from me, you can afford the trade because you have better macro, production capabilities, and numbers. My point is that it's *much* easier to micro phoenixes to not take much damage at all from the mutas than it is to actually deal damage with the mutas. You'll *always* have the lead in unit count, but it simply doesn't matter if you can't do enough damage. My original example was being completely unable to take down a single phoenix with 5 mutas, and losing a muta trying, despite catching him at least somewhat by surprise. The phoenix did take quite a bit of hull damage in that instance, but I got at least one shot off that I wouldn't have if he had been expecting that number of mutas and been able to react faster, and it still got away and was able to regen its shields. Numbers simply don't matter until you have enough mutas to one-shot past the shields, and even if you have that many, they likely have enough phoenix that you're still taking quite a bit more damage than you're dealing, due to the phoenix ability to shoot while scooting. | ||
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Bair
United States698 Posts
On July 20 2010 06:51 Skrag wrote: My point is that it's *much* easier to micro phoenixes to not take much damage at all from the mutas than it is to actually deal damage with the mutas. You'll *always* have the lead in unit count, but it simply doesn't matter if you can't do enough damage. My original example was being completely unable to take down a single phoenix with 5 mutas, and losing a muta trying, despite catching him at least somewhat by surprise. The phoenix did take quite a bit of hull damage in that instance, but I got at least one shot off that I wouldn't have if he had been expecting that number of mutas and been able to react faster, and it still got away and was able to regen its shields. Numbers simply don't matter until you have enough mutas to one-shot past the shields, and even if you have that many, they likely have enough phoenix that you're still taking quite a bit more damage than you're dealing, due to the phoenix ability to shoot while scooting. In your experience, how often are you able to hit that magic number before the number of phoenixes hit that critical mass? In general, I am able to field enough mutas (if I FE'd) to hit that magic number of mutas, and the micro to hit phoenixes is not hard, especially with latency, and very much so if the P player is trying to maximize damage done. This kind of micro is cake compared to BW muta micro  | ||
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Izzachar
Sweden285 Posts
With same resources spent (bit more gas on zergs part compared to P but I didnt count in cost for lance so I think it was ok) I went all stalker vs muta. The stalkers win. But if you mix in 2-3 colossus the muta can either snipe off all colossus and make it out ok or they can kill off all the stalkers and make it out decently (meaning they can kill off the colossus no problem at all). So going colossus against ling/muta is maybe a bad idea cause it eats into your gas that you really need on air defense? Adding lings to the test I do not think would mean that much as P could have equal resources of zealots and we know how that ends. What about going just stalkers, zealots and a few sentries for both FF to negate lings and shield to negate mutas. All your gas is AA then, spare minerals you dump on zealots as zerg does on lings and you should come out on top in both the air battle and the ground battle. The colossus makes you own the ground battle but it also makes you loose the air battle. In how many of the posted replays did P go colossus? Being at such a huge gas disadvantage in regards to air dominance should put stress on you. I mean lance and 3 colossus in 1100 gas you do not have invested in anti air! Point is gas vs gas P wins vs muta if they spend it equally on anti air no matter if its stalkers or phoenix. I do not think the argument I tried mass blink stalkers and failed to lings is a good argument as you can simply dump as much mins in zealots as he does in lings and then you counter the lings as well. I also think that phoenix is useless as hydras own phoenix is bad. Phoenix will counter mutas in equal cost. So its a good unit, you can also harass with phoenix, not as good as muta but a fair price to be able to win the air battle? Zerg could tech switch to hydras ofc and own ure gate army but then you can add HTs to this mix instead of collo they can even be effective against both mutas and lings wheres collo only helps against lings which might make it a better investment?. You can still add on collo later if needed. The investment in storm and HT tech is about the same as investment in lance and collo tech. If Z wants to switch he needs hydra den (which is cheap) but he also wants range upgrade and maybe +1 range. So this approach might make it more expensive for Z then P? Maybe it is really Ps being so horny about colossus thats the real problem thinking its the all end solution to all Z armies? Maybe you shouldn't expect to get away with your stalker, zealot, sentry mix ball with 3 colossus walking on top off it against all Zs unit compositions? Maybe its smarter to mix in HTs instead? Sure muta harass is still a problem and maybe you need some phoenix on top to stop that? But I think a first step could be letting go of your colossus? This is just an idea I'm having that the P compo might not be well suited to start with. I do not play P. Im as I said only plat and do not consider myself that good. But I think the reasoning makes sense. When I think about it now and that P puts 1000+ gas on colossus in most games I find it totally unreasonable that they should win against muta spam as this essentially should counter 1000+gas not spent on anti air. I also realize how stupid I am for not going pure muta if I see a robo bay. Whats your take on this? | ||
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Saracen
United States5139 Posts
Adding lings to the test I do not think would mean that much as P could have equal resources of zealots and we know how that ends. You absolutely can't count lings out when fighting a Protoss ball. They're crucial to absorbing stalker hits for your mutas, which means that your mutas will be able to survive and kill the anti-air while the lings are busy meatshielding away, as I mentioned in my previous post. Also, please watch the replays. In game 2, I'm pretty sure no gas was spent on colossi. And I have played games where my opponent forced a hatch cancel at my natural with 2 forward gates, got up his expansion uncontested, moved out at around 100 supply with a pure gateway army (zeal/sentry/stalker), and still got completely demolished by muta/ling. | ||
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Klive5ive
United Kingdom6056 Posts
You can't seriously say that "Muta/Ling" is unstoppable. If you started a game saying "I'll go just Muta/Ling" you would get hideous rolled. OK, I'll open cannon-wall infront of my expo into 2 then 3 stargate Pheonix. Once my expo kicks in I'll add a bunch of gateways and use the minerals to mass a load of Zealots. Pheonixes hard counter Mutas making them useless and all my minerals goes into Zealots which stomp your Lings. Obviously you didn't mean a rigid MUST GO MUTA/LING build, but then you're effectively talking about the whole of PvZ; which comes back to my point that it's too varied a concept. If you want advice on mid-game PvZ... it's remarkably like Broodwar :The Protoss ball vs the maneuverable Zerg. You of course need to utilise the AoE units to become cost effective in big battles. Storm is actually very good against mutalisks and coupled with Stalkers/Zealot/Sentry you have your mid-game ball. If Zerg goes Hydras then you use Collosus instead. If you opened with Stargates (which I believe to be strongest) then you have the option of adding Voidrays and Pheonixes too; especially good against Roaches of course. | ||
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xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On July 20 2010 09:20 Klive5ive wrote: If you want advice on mid-game PvZ... it's remarkably like Broodwar :The Protoss ball vs the maneuverable Zerg. Actually, I think that SC2 will eventually be very different from Brood War in this respect. Off creep, zerg are nowhere near as fast as they were in Brood War. On the flip side, protoss can play a VERY fast game by fully leveraging warp in. Probably my favorite PvZ game that I played during the beta was on metalopolis where I went phoenix => templar tech. Sneaking pylons and phase prisms around the map, I found that I could be all over the map almost simultaneously, with the only limitations being resources and my own limited APM. In short, the zerg wasn't really able to keep up with my constant attacks and whittling of his expansion. I think some pro protosses will eventually adopt a similar style of play, particularly on larger maps. It should be a helluva lot of fun to watch if nothing else. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On July 20 2010 09:20 Klive5ive wrote: Storm is actually very good against mutalisks and coupled with Stalkers/Zealot/Sentry you have your mid-game ball. I'm not so sure I agree with this. The storm seems to be too small to really be effective against mutas. Like I said, I've been doing a 1-base mutaling build quite a bit lately, and it seems like every time protoss has come at me with templars, I easily dodge, take very minimal damage, snipe the super-easy kills, and giggle like a little girl a little bit as the massive control group of zerglings comes in. | ||
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Skrag
United States643 Posts
On July 20 2010 07:07 Bair wrote: In your experience, how often are you able to hit that magic number before the number of phoenixes hit that critical mass? In general, I am able to field enough mutas (if I FE'd) to hit that magic number of mutas, and the micro to hit phoenixes is not hard, especially with latency, and very much so if the P player is trying to maximize damage done. This kind of micro is cake compared to BW muta micro I have no clue what that number even is, and I'm certainly not hitting in anywhere near as quickly as somebody who fast expands into mutas. All I know is that I've been doing very well on 1-base mutaling vs protoss, but ran into a game where the protoss started with very small numbers of phoenix, and eventually moved to 2 stargates worth, and it didn't feel like there was a damn thing I could do against them with mutas. And yes, I suck, so I kept building them, thinking I was bound to start overwhelming him at some point, but it never happened. Even as I hit upwards of 24 mutas (I never got more than that because his phoenix were simply doing so much damage), I came out a *massive* loser in every single exchange, because he wouldn't engage directly, and rarely took more than one volley of muta fire. So yeah, some fights I might get a phoenix, but he was killing mutas a whole hell of a lot faster than I was, and he was in perma-disengage mode, making it hard to get any kills at all, but still taking damage from the shoot-n-scoot. So my experience is mostly limited to that one game, but I did watch the replay a number of times to figure out what the hell was going on, because I felt like I should have had air control by miles and miles (pretty sure I had at least 3x as many mutas as he had phoenix at every point of the game), but was getting wasted by that far inferior number of phoenix. Of course, the game actually came down to a massive fuckup on my part, running my mutas into his army on attack-move searching for expansions, but before that point I was losing way more than him anyway. I was watching the units lost tab, and with losses being mainly mutas and phoenix, I was at 5k resources worth of units lost when he was barely touching 1500. | ||
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