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Hello, I have some problems dealing with protoss going colossus along with stalkers/zealots. When I expect 4gate (or stalker/zealot/sentry in general) I go for hydraling (or roachhydra if he is heavy on zealots). I can manage to defend his push and get my expo up most of the time. But I have a hard time winning when the enemy goes for colossus or storm. So if I can't win the game before his robo bay finishes, I've often already lost.
Stalker/zealot/colossus counters all zerg ground T1 and T2 units, so I have to add mutas/corruptors. They don't do enough damage to the colossi, so when I've killed the colossi (if i succeed), my ground army is already dead (the P player won't micro his colossi away from my air forces but kill my hydra/roach/lings) and my mutas will be killed by the remaining stalkers (or if I went for corruptors they can't obviously do a lot).
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/23921502/Metalopolis_5_.SC2Replay
I got a replay here where I was really unsure about how to do. I had more upgrades than he did, but I guess the only way to deal with this P was to tech faster to T3 and then get some ultras out? Or what did I do wrong? (Yes I admit being outmacroed but if we look on the army compositions he would still have won even if I would have played better)
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Muta/Ling destroys stalker colossi, you just have to make sure the mutas target down the colossi and that he doesn't get a critical mass of them, if the game goes longer, like 3-4 bases, you can switch over to ultra/ling
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I would like some hints on this too. This seems to be the most glaring problem of my game at the moment. I can kill of their collosi, usually, but not before they wreak the havoc they were intended to do. I can only retreat so far without exposing my bases, and if I play that game, my air will die fast.
Infestors?
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@DracuL
The problem is that his zealots will keep my zerglings from doing damage to the stalkers (mostly) and the mutas will be killed by the stalkers. If the P notices me going mutaling he will simply stop making colossi and go for zealot/stalker instead, and then I'm totally countered. AND if he goes for storm he will use it to kill my zerglings (one tick takes 1/2 of the zerglings HP) and he will also force me to park my mutas on top of his stalkers (instant death)
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Yeah it is a very strong build. The key is to get a SH!T load of zerglings; so many his zealots can't attack them all. Get off a good flank too, maybe with fungal growth on the frontal zealots.. Always upgrade ling carapace because with +1 zealots can 2 shot lings instead of 3 shot.
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On August 23 2010 07:35 skirmisheR wrote:
@DracuL
The problem is that his zealots will keep my zerglings from doing damage to the stalkers (mostly) and the mutas will be killed by the stalkers. If the P notices me going mutaling he will simply stop making colossi and go for zealot/stalker instead, and then I'm totally countered. AND if he goes for storm he will use it to kill my zerglings (one tick takes 1/2 of the zerglings HP) and he will also force me to park my mutas on top of his stalkers (instant death)
that's all fine. you'll lose units. but you'll have way more units than your opponent. if you're letting your opponent get a massive force of stalker, colossi, and even templar, you're not applying enough early game pressure. passive zerg is bad zerg. just run in with zerglings first, followed by muta to snipe colossi and/or templar. focus fire stalkers with muta for maximum efficiency.
i usually dont bother prioritizing templar because storm also damages their own units and i can replace zerglings en masse, ezpz. its not like the templar are going to be able to run away from either ling or muta anyways.
even with the zealot/stalker army, i find you can easily outnumber the protoss with little issue. you can always tech switch to roaches if need be - when i do go mutaling, i always build a roach warren when lair finishes, just incase.
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On August 23 2010 07:35 skirmisheR wrote:
@DracuL
The problem is that his zealots will keep my zerglings from doing damage to the stalkers (mostly) and the mutas will be killed by the stalkers. If the P notices me going mutaling he will simply stop making colossi and go for zealot/stalker instead, and then I'm totally countered. AND if he goes for storm he will use it to kill my zerglings (one tick takes 1/2 of the zerglings HP) and he will also force me to park my mutas on top of his stalkers (instant death)
He won't storm your lings since they're in meleerange to his units aswell. Lings are fast, you can just try to avoid some damage and kite his units into his storms.
Try Roach/Ling/Corruptor to fight Stalker/Zealot/Colossi. Be sure to get a good flank on his army so your zerglings attack from behind while your roaches tank the dmg from the zealots and some dmg of the colossi.
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On August 23 2010 07:35 skirmisheR wrote:
@DracuL
The problem is that his zealots will keep my zerglings from doing damage to the stalkers (mostly) and the mutas will be killed by the stalkers. If the P notices me going mutaling he will simply stop making colossi and go for zealot/stalker instead, and then I'm totally countered. AND if he goes for storm he will use it to kill my zerglings (one tick takes 1/2 of the zerglings HP) and he will also force me to park my mutas on top of his stalkers (instant death)
if he stops making collossi, then just go back to hydra/ling
also, it's not like the mutas you made become useless
tbh, it sounds like your problem has more to do with unit quantities than composition
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Muta/ling is the way to go. You can pump out so many mutas off 2-3 bases that it's ridiculous. Use them to snipe buildings, stray units, and force your opponent to burn money on cannons. A critical mass of microd mutas with some speedlings will generally rip toss up, because there's no way for them to cover enough ground to protect both their main and expansion at the same time. Muta/ling is ultimate map control against toss and lets you take a lot of expansions. Get ground armor and air weapons upgrades and you will own.
Keep the pressure on Toss and make him afraid to move out of his base while you take as much of the map as you want.
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1. Get your creep spread. You lost that fight at "his" gold expansion totally unneccessarly. With creepspread you would have been able to retreat easily, back up your forces and fight him with a lot more units. In fact you did almost nothing to spread creep. Just a get a second Queen earlier, maybe even a third. Paint that map purple like you're supposed to.
1a. If you have more creepspread you can expand much easier. That third was pretty late, since you were high on minerals for quite a while. You could have even double-expanded at that point.
2. Scouting and Mapcontrol were really meh. Control the watchtowers (so easy with speedlings), put overlords over the expansions. You had one Ovi in place close to his base, but you waited till Ovi speed was done. Just sac the Overlord, even slow ones usually can get a pretty decent view of what he's doing.
3. Switching to Mutas after already putting a lot of gas into Hydra/Roach wont help. If you just wanna backup your ground force, get Corruptors over Mutalisk. They are far less versatile, but really Hydra/Roach beats the Protoss gateway ball pretty effectively. Just get 4-5 corruptors and snipe the collosi. Mutas need big numbers to be effective.
4. Muta/Ling would also be my choice in the first place. The Roach defense was good, also the counter agression, but it is always too tempting just to drop the Hydra Den and get the upgrades instead of switching to Air.
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I'm an 815 or so diamond zerg player, in the past I've had a lot of trouble from protoss players, not really knowing what to do to stop their initial push 4-5 gate or a later colossi/stalker ball, but recently I've had a lot of success which I will now share with you. ZvP takes a lot of work and fine tuning, and if you'd like some replays of me doing the following just let me know.
Against Protoss I find that this simple strategy seems to work. Get speedlings asap, fast expand around 20-21 food and from there rush 10-20 hydras to counter whatever gateway timing push he has. Make sure you kill the observer!!! If you see him throw up an expansion or pull back, kill his proxy pylon with your lings, and drone up. Take a third base, throw down a spire and 2 evo chambers. Upgrade melee attack/armor and muta damage (then armor after), make as many mutas as your gas can support and harass anything as long as you don't lose any mutas, be safe, do this while pumping half lings half drones. When you harass you will see his tech path, if he went robo bay you'll win with muta ling, he'll warp in stalkers (50 gas) and you'll either see less colossi (lings get stronger) or lots of colossi (not many stalkers so mutas get stronger). A normal response to your harass will be to warp in stalkers, either way he's not making zealots to counter your lings, he's thinking about your mutas being annoying. At some point when he thinks that you haven't been macroing lings at your base, he'll get fed up and try to make a massive push to stop your muta harass. Since you're good at macro and have been making plenty of lings, this push will fail, your harassment has pushed him into an unfavorable unit composition. Late game, when 3 bases are saturated take a 4th/5th, and start thinking about hive tech (ultras), still making as many mutas as gas can support and continuing ling production along with melee/armor/muta upgrades. This mobile mix of units gives you flexibility for shutting down his third/fourth and doing a muta harass in his main with a ling swarm somewhere else, an attack on two fronts. Usually in the ending battle I'll still have most of my hydras from the beginning, 60 or so lings and 20-30 mutas, not even having to bother with ultras.
If he goes high templar tech, you have to make sure that you snipe down the high templars when they lag behind his army or while in battle, make sure to keep the numbers of high templars as low as possible so he doesn't spam storm then archon up. Keep your mutas moving. Think about going ultra/ling or ultra/roach faster than you would if you saw colossi.
The most effective thing in my opinion a protoss can do to counter muta ling, is open 2 gate FE and produce 6-10 pheonix to shut down overlords/queens. This build forces you to over-produce hydras, puts you at a large disadvantage with larva/economy and your hydras just get stomped by the high templar. I have yet to figure out a unit composition that consistently beats this build mid to late game.
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Here's a replay from yesterday with me going Muta/ling vs. a FE Toss going zealot/stalker/colossus. Accidentally rallied drones to my main towards the end instead of the gold, but the game was pretty much over by that point.
The build that I've found is really good against just about anything toss is
14 pool
13 extractor
15 overlord
Queen and lings to 23 with ling speed
23 hatch
Get an additional queen from the main and morph to lair as resources allow, then move into hydra/roach/ling or muta/ling and pump more lings if he's going 4 gate. Two queens, 4 spinecrawlers and a bunch of lings can hold off just about anything they throw at you in the early/mid-game.
If you sense pressure put down 2-4 spine crawlers at your natural.
I kept pressuring him with the mutas and that kept him in his base while I kept picking off stray units and buildings and massing up.
http://sc2.replayers.com/replays/view/2505
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mutas or infestors, your choice... Roach/Muta can work pretty well, as long as the stalker numbers are not insurmountable, but you'll have to transition out of it before he gets mass stalkers... NP is rly good on collosi, but he can do a push before you have np+multiple infestors that actually have energy...
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Any reasonable mix of muta, ling, hydra, roach, and corruptors should do fine.
I've lost to this before, but its always because I got outmassed.
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anytime zealots are keeping your zerglings from doing damage you know you should have added banelings. banelings RAPE zealots. mainly because zealots are melee so when they kill a bling it hurts but also because zealots especially with charge like to surround units and they like to be in front of the army thus making them vulnerable to banelings.
the same thing apply to HT and sentries, which coincidentally are usually placed right by the zealots. so if you see ht micro your banlings into them. they are expensive and have low hp and are small enough to be vulnerable to splash.
i once took out 8 ht and some zealot/sentry with 8 bling. it was fucking epic!!!!!
banelings into the zealots and lings into the stalkers with mutas or currupters attacking the colossus. ez pz.
im about 500 pt diamond btw
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Colossi are joke because they are no match for my corruptors. Zealots is indeed very strong. Stalker is okay.
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EPT
