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How to counter Stalker Collosus combo as Zerg?

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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DarkSeerTurbo
Profile Joined May 2010
United States105 Posts
August 17 2010 18:54 GMT
#1
I play Zerg. I know the simple answer is Corruptors (and I do get them) but I still find myself losing the battle (and the game) due to this Protoss combo. I can usually take out the collosus but the stalkers finish me off. I do try to separate my ground units to minimize AOE damage. I find this combo very hard to deal with as it destroys all Zerg ground forces very quickly. Any tips?
Scarlan
Profile Joined July 2009
Sweden3 Posts
August 17 2010 18:55 GMT
#2
Ultra-ling should do great. With some curroptor support. Or at least, thats what I would do.
"Ayyyyy!" - Fonz
liaf
Profile Joined April 2009
Norway318 Posts
August 17 2010 18:58 GMT
#3
Ultralisks rape stalker collosus
♥ Snute ♥ Scarlett ♥ Jaedong ♥ KeeN ♥
Oleksandr
Profile Joined July 2010
United States227 Posts
August 17 2010 18:59 GMT
#4
Ultra's come too late. The real question is how do you delay protoss until you get Ultras.
Idra: good sir, you appear to be somewhat lacking in intelligence. please refrain from posting until this is remedied, since it renders your opinions slightly less than correct and has a tendency to irritate more informed forum-goers.
FiWiFaKi
Profile Blog Joined February 2009
Canada9858 Posts
August 17 2010 19:03 GMT
#5
It's important to not go overboard with corruptors, one and a half for each collosis is a good rule of thumb. It's very important to snipe with corruptors before you engage with a ground army.

Collosis are effective s all ground against ultralisk, so the options are:

-make mass muta to kill stalkers and collosis
-hydra/corruptor
-ultraling

these are the main counters, usually stalker/collosis is pretty hard to do since collosis is so gas heavy you can't make enough stalkers.
In life, the journey is more satisfying than the destination. || .::Entrepreneurship::. Living a few years of your life like most people won't, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can't || Mechanical Engineering & Economics Major
fdsdfg
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States1251 Posts
August 17 2010 19:04 GMT
#6
If it's lategame enough for ultras, that's great, but colossi can come way before ultras.

Generally once you hit T2, you need to choose whether to get Hydra, Infestor, or Spire - you can't go for more than one because it's too much gas. I go Hydra if I'm seeing 4gate / starport, or Spire if I see a robo bay. If I see a twilight council I usually go Spire out of familiarity, but that's not common.

Colossi are answered pretty eaisly with corruptors and a whole lot of lings for the stalkers. Either the stalkers shoot the lings or they shoot the corruptors, in either case Protoss is going to lose at cost. If lots of zealots are thrown in there, then micro gets really hard because the lings want to avoid them and the zerglings are not going to survive as long (the zealots don't have to choose what to attack). I've heard banelings works well in this situation, but I haven't tried that.

Neural parasite is good, but it's a lot of gas investment in a really bad gamble. If the stalkers don't move forward and kill your infestor, and the Colossus doesn't happen to kill it during the tether animation, you still have to give the colossus back in 15 seconds - and it's hard to say that was worth all the time and resources put into infestor / NP tech when you could have had a few corruptors or mutas instead.

So basically, corruptors. Mutas are also fine.
aka Siyko
phyre112
Profile Joined August 2009
United States3090 Posts
August 17 2010 19:07 GMT
#7
Ultralisks tank the Collo splash like a champ. If you can survive the game to the point where you have a handful of ultras, his collos are essentially useless. Use whatever you like to clean up the stalkers - roaches, lings, and hydras are all wonderful at that job, as I'm sure you know.

If you can't survive in the game to the point at which you have ultras, you're right in that the correct counter should be corruptors. They'll eat through these things ridiculously quickly due to their bonus against massive units, and the increased damage through the spell contaminate if you have the spare APM. The key here is that you need to get them to attack at a time in which your opponents collo are exposed. Consider it much like attacking a terran army. You don't want to come in when his tanks are all seiged up, but rather when he is moving and exposed. Fortunately, this is easier to do because of the P's inability to leapfrog things like a T does with tanks.

Try your best to snipe the collossi when they are exposed. A P moving into position, going through a choke, or a mismicroed collossi that steps up onto high ground at the wrong time. These are all excellent opportunities that you need to be ready to take advantage of. Corruptors are relatively mobile flying units. Pull a flank. Come around from the back even.

Once the collossi are down, Pure stalker melts to hydra fire, to enough lings/roaches, or to just about whatever else you want to throw at them with the exception of mutas. I'm a P player, but this is generally the way that my collo are taken out when I lose - through some micro accident of my nub self. Just be ready to capitalize when the opportunity is presented. Perhaps some Z player can come through and give you tips on how exactly to be ready for that.

GL!
Sevaur
Profile Joined April 2003
42 Posts
August 17 2010 19:09 GMT
#8
I think it just depends on their composition, and your corrupter/ground troop ratio. It's tricky micro, for sure, but you have to minimize the time the colossi fire on your ground troops. Try to snipe any time the colossus is out of stalker range, and during battles try to pull your troops back to lure his ground troops away from the colossus. Also, always use corruption and FF an individual colossus. But I don't think there's really an answer to this -- it's just a micro game that requires practice.

I mostly use a roach/hydra/corrupter mix, and try to make sure that separated roaches take the brunt of the colossus damage, hopefully leaving stalkers vs hydras. Also, ultras are great -- you can't have them out for the first big engagement, but even a couple mixed into the second major battle will do wonders unless they micro it really well.
Botwin_ca
Profile Joined August 2010
Canada8 Posts
August 17 2010 19:13 GMT
#9
I usually early expo into fast hydras to defend 4gate then backtrack and add a bunch of speedlings to deal with it when they get their collossi. It will usually be close when I do win but you end up with a bunch of gas from spending all your larvae on lings to get out a pile of mutas to go harass while taking a 4th and teching to hive. Honestly usually though if I manage to hold the stalker colossi push without it killing my 3rd the toss has a huge problem dealing with the mass muta followthrough and the game either ends there or I have the opportunity to take every base on the map.

I still lose to the stalker colossus push sometimes but it's always my fault for not setting up the appropriate hydra concave/ling flank. The second the collossi are down the stalkers just get wrecked soooo hard by hydra ling and they never have the stalkers to deal with a pack of 10-15 mutas after that point
SaikOuLighT
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
Canada742 Posts
August 17 2010 19:27 GMT
#10
An ultraling based army is ideal to counter stalker/collosi, but since P can get collosi faster than ultras then you gotta do something different. Personally i use a roach/hydra/ling mix in the midgame and try my very best to get a perfect flank, and I also try to be ahead or at least even in upgrades with the P. I also always stay one base ahead of the P, which in this case is most likely being 3 base to 2.

In short, i find that if you cannot get ultras out in time, you simply need to macro up a bigger force and try and whittle his push down enough so that the ultras clean up once they get out, as your ultra cavern should be done at the time he attacks you. Or you could try and delay his push if you don't think your army stands a chance with backstabs and nydus. I don't really like getting corrupters against collosi unless I am at a huge economical lead, as they are very costly and your ground army will be a lot weaker.
BlasiuS
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
United States2405 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-17 20:17:15
August 17 2010 19:37 GMT
#11
There's a few ways to beat stalker/colossus:

1. once you get your expo up and running, get muta to contain while you go for 3rd. Then, mass tunneling speedroach + muta

2. if you opened with hydra, get corruptors at least at a 2:1 ratio to colossus. 3:1 ratio is preferable and can be done with equal supply. Better make sure you have a creeproute to your opponent's base otherwise your hydras won't be as effective. Get hive -> greater spire so that once you kill all of the colossus you can turn your leftover corruptors into BLs.

3. tech up to hive and get cracklings/ultra. Crackling/ultra just destroys stalker/colossus.
next week on Everybody Loves HypnoToad:
Markwerf
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands3728 Posts
August 17 2010 19:53 GMT
#12
Ultra's are not really a good answer, if the P is going colossi (presumeably from 2 robo's as is often the case against zerg) then P can easily switch to immortal stalker. Immortal, stalker with some leftover colossi absolutely rapes ultraling. Stalkers do quite well against ultra as long as there is a other unit to soak damage for them and immortals + zealots do that quite well.
The only good answer is corruptors and that works fairly well.
When you do have corruptors ultraling gets really good again but without it ultraling just dies to stalker/colossi/immortal
Kpyolysis32
Profile Joined April 2010
553 Posts
August 17 2010 19:58 GMT
#13
Either Tier 3 tech will work well, but holding it off until then is waaay hard. I think that MutaLing is actually the way to go, because Stalker/Colossus can't really split up into small groups, and ends up having mobility problems despite the fact that both Stalkers and Collossi are fairly mobile. You can use it to poke at him and keep him in his base until Tier 3, from what I've seen.
Man, do I not keep this up to date, or what?
NB
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Netherlands12045 Posts
August 17 2010 19:59 GMT
#14
learn from idra, he got the corruptors really fast to snipe the colossi when they still at 2 or 3 counts and roll over stalkers with hydras after. mostly you have to know the timing and ratio corruptor/hydra realtive to timing
Im daed. Follow me @TL_NB
Arrian
Profile Blog Joined February 2008
United States889 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-17 20:08:38
August 17 2010 20:04 GMT
#15
If you played BW, sniping colossus with corrupters is a turkey shoot compared to sniping templar. Just control your corrupters well, poke in and out, catch the colossus exposed as they rumble toward the rally point etc., pick off one at a time or a couple if you can. Remember it's okay to lose a few corrupters here and there because corrupters are so much easier to replace than colossus. His army lives and dies on the colossus, yours doesn't on the corrupter. He needs to keep spacing and protect his colossus with the stalkers, so engaging on edges or ledges (not out in the open field unless you absolutely have to) where he can't blink his stalkers to get a good number trained on your corrupters is key. Keep about 6-8 corrupters if the colossus numbers are ~3-5, and add on about 2 per extra colossus after that. Don't engage his army unless he has 3 (and you have to be mighty confident if you're engaging an army with even 3) or fewer colossus if you don't want to get burnt to a yummy zerg crisp. Then move in with upgraded hydra or hydra/roach or even hydra/ling and watch the sparks fly.

for what it's worth, to back up what I've said, I'm ~400 pt Diamond on US server and I haven't lost to stalker/colossus since phase 1 of the beta using this strategy
Writersator arepo tenet opera rotas
Markwerf
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands3728 Posts
August 17 2010 20:06 GMT
#16
Ultra's are not really a good answer, if the P is going colossi (presumeably from 2 robo's as is often the case against zerg) then P can easily switch to immortal stalker. Immortal, stalker with some leftover colossi absolutely rapes ultraling. Stalkers do quite well against ultra as long as there is a other unit to soak damage for them and immortals + zealots do that quite well.
The only good answer is corruptors and that works fairly well.
When you do have corruptors ultraling gets really good again but without it ultraling just dies to stalker/colossi/immortal
Deleted User 3420
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
24492 Posts
August 17 2010 20:14 GMT
#17
I think you actually can go slightly overboard with corruptors, and then clean everything up with ling + roach or hydra. Stalkers kill corruptors REALLY slowly.

And yeah if u get to them, ultras own collossus/stalker. And brood lords just own protoss in general.
PrinceXizor
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States17713 Posts
August 17 2010 20:19 GMT
#18
On August 18 2010 05:06 Markwerf wrote:
Ultra's are not really a good answer, if the P is going colossi (presumeably from 2 robo's as is often the case against zerg) then P can easily switch to immortal stalker. Immortal, stalker with some leftover colossi absolutely rapes ultraling. Stalkers do quite well against ultra as long as there is a other unit to soak damage for them and immortals + zealots do that quite well.
The only good answer is corruptors and that works fairly well.
When you do have corruptors ultraling gets really good again but without it ultraling just dies to stalker/colossi/immortal

this is only true in theory craft. zerg can produce ultralisks faster than protoss can make immortal out of 2 robo, and ultraling beats immortals as long as you don't just 1a into eachother and let the immortals deal damage without being hit. ultralisks also beat immortals alone in numbers of 3v3 or more.
Craton
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United States17246 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-17 20:22:36
August 17 2010 20:22 GMT
#19
Don't forget to use corruption. You can get free hits on the colossi with proper flanks before engaging with your main hydra army.
twitch.tv/cratonz
Fistdantilus
Profile Joined August 2010
United States136 Posts
August 17 2010 20:22 GMT
#20
Ultras suck vs Protoss for a single reason: zealots. Ultras can't get through zealots fast enough to get to the gooey-stalker-center, and they're not quick enough to run around (and that's even before mentioning pathing problems). So they often kill a zealot or two and then promptly die. I'll still get 1-2 if I somehow make it to hive and my opponent loves sentries, but I wouldn't spam ultras like I do vs terran.

Roach/Corruptor/ling all the way. Make roaches/corruptors and fill with lings when you run out of gas. Roaches have enough HP to where they can survive until the corruptors take 1-2 down and make the fight more even.
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