I've been watching a lot of pro replays in an attempt to take my play to the next level and noticed a strat that Nony often uses during PvZ. In the two games I have posted below he goes extremely sentry heavy early on and then slowly adds other gateway units during a 3gate->expo. At one point in the first game (~4:30) his army consists of 1 zealot and 6 sentries.
Nony vz Idra:
Nony vz Moonglade:
When I 3 gate I usually start with a mixture of all 3 units and this got me thinking about the pros and cons of early sentry making. I'm curious to see what some other think about it.
Pros: More energy on the sentries in the long run Less minerals spent on units enables faster expo FF can be used to keep a fairly large Z force at bay
Cons: Delays tech as every bit of gas is going to sentries Low attacking power may make Z comfortable droning hard if he scouts the comp Requires early double gas with all of it going to one unit type Less able to do real damage to an early force of Z without supurb FF micro
I'm most surprised to see this build after the changes which were made to roaches as I'd expect more Stalkers earlier now. So is super sentry heavy a good idea for the average player, or does it work for Nony because he's Nony?
I've seen a lot of pros openeing heavy sentry zealot but all the Zergs I am facing are just opening straight to roach and even with good forcefields roaches are hard to deal with.
I actually did this kind of sentry-heavy opening against a Zerg yesterday. He went ling/roach/muta and the backbone of my army consisted of about 15-17 sentries and 5 immortals. I added some stalkers and zealots for the kicks and I totally owned him...was really surprised how well sentries do against mutas when you constantly have guardian shields up. (Platinum level game)
I have been thinking, (I play protoss btw) this composition can be so easily countered by baneling drops. A few reasons would be, one sentries are VERY weak against banelings, two since you can toss down force fields protoss generally leave all their sentries clumped up, and lastly if you are that heavily invested in sentries you wont have enough anti air to kill overlords with banelings. edit: After killing all the sentries, all the zerg would have to do is just mass lings and win.
i haven't watched these games yet but the reason why he gets so many sentries (imo) Is
-Early protection + energy (sentries deal some damage dont forget) -Minerals to expand quickly and safely, rather than getting a bunch of mineral heavy zealots/stalkers. then he can get more probes, his expo up quicker and have 2x the gas and mineral income faster.
I'm still waiting for my new internet-connection, so I'm stuck in low-diamond, maybe my advice is still helpful:
I found the 3 gate sentry-expand to be extremely viable depending on scouting.
Your scouting-probe (pylon-scout) should determine your opening, if you DO NOT open with 15 nexus, which is definitely viable btw: a) You scout EARLY GAS: open with 3 gate zealot/sentry-expansion. There's a 99% chance zerg goes speedlings, the remaining 1% is some weird stuff like delayed roach rush with hidden expo, there's never 100% certainty obviously. Goal is to get enough zealots to deal with any amount of speedling-pushs and to get lots of sentries which will enable you to put down an expansion quite early. I also like to research hallucination quite early because normally I will have excess on gas if zerg doesn't commit (few do). 2 Gate stalker is bad because early speedlings will just prevent any kind of stalker-aggression. b) You scout early expo or early pool into expo with later gas: open with 2 gate core double chrono stalker (nexgenius vs luffy on blizzcon, if you need a BO). The later ling-speed will enable you to be VERY annoying with two stalkers, you should be able to force lots of lings and should be able to pull back safely. 3 Gate sentry isn't perfect because zerg wants to produce just drones - 3 Gate sentry allows them to do just that.
I've never had problems with roach-openings (~1.4-1.6k zerg opponents) because I can normally get my first 3-stalker-warp in time. Together with non-crappy force-fields you can kill some roaches and force zerg to retreat. Notice that zerg at this point can NOT have roach-speed, their roaches will be super-slow off creep, really easy to force-field - also you'll have tons of sentry-energy to do just that. You can't screw up force-fields "that" bad, even mediocre platinum-players should be able to do that. You basicly have enough energy to cast a whole circle all around you at this point.
Zealot + heavy sentry play easily transitions into a fairly early expo in PvZ, with multiple timings (you can do 1, 2, or 3-gate expand). With good sim-city your expo is easily defended vs speedlings, though you will need cannons and/or stalkers vs most roach aggression. Zealot + sentry armies can also be effective in putting a lot of pressure on zerg players early on if they are relying on only lings as defense.
Zealot + heavy sentry comps in PvZ has been around since beta so it's not some pro-only unit comp or something ridiculous like that. It's just not seen as much nowadays due to the popularity of roaches lately. Good sentry/FF micro is something every protoss player should learn because of how incredibly versatile it is, in all match-ups.
Aside from the force fields and ability to use all the minerals on more gateways/expo, 6 sentries is a good number to get to because 6 damage x 6 sentries = 36 damage which one-shots a zergling. The 6 sentries + zealots push seems like a very solid way to get your natural up. It's not so good against roaches, but you can just FF them back and retreat.
I've seen Huk do a similar 3 gate sentry push with a forge for +1 attack, which should decrease the sentry critical mass to 5 and lets him throw down cannons if he needs to.
On November 10 2010 02:55 Shlowpoke wrote: Aside from the force fields and ability to use all the minerals on more gateways/expo, 6 sentries is a good number to get to because 6 damage x 6 sentries = 36 damage which one-shots a zergling. The 6 sentries + zealots push seems like a very solid way to get your natural up. It's not so good against roaches, but you can just FF them back and retreat.
I've seen Huk do a similar 3 gate sentry push with a forge for +1 attack, which should decrease the sentry critical mass to 5 and lets him throw down cannons if he needs to.
I really like that style by HuK's, just because it feels more safe against a Roach attack, but still it's tough to defend vs many Roaches on close positions. I really like to play like that on maps like LT and Shakuras with that strategy, as you can FF the whole entrance and be safe for quite a while, while building cannons or stalkers against Roaches.
Im pretty sure those games are before the sentry nerf. At any rate, if you're good enough to micro them, they're pretty stellar. I think hallucinate is vastly underused, if you have a large number of stalkers and sentries, hullucinate a bunch of zealots and a-move for the gg. The zealots were going to die anyway.
I'm trying to incorporate more sentries in early game, I think initially the benefit is it frees up more minerals to expand and gives you a relatively easy get out jail free card to forcefield early aggression out of your base. Sure it delays T3 a little, but then again you really can't get a decent T3 army going without a second base anyway and early sentries allow you to take that 30-35 food expansion safely.
Since the patch, i've had good success with 2/3 gate robo pushes into expand. I get an obs but then immediately get an immortal. Since almost every zerg player i've encountered just gets ridiculous amounts of roaches, incorporating more immortals into my play has punished them pretty hard. Because of this, i find a good mix of zealots, sentries, with only a few stalkers with an immortal or two can really control the pace of an attack, and expanding behind the push usually sets up a strong economy, although half of my games end from my attack.
Thanks for all of the feedback on this. I hadn't realized heavy sentry was as common as it is. I'm probably one of the few protos who often forgets to even include them units in their composition ><
Will try using this build to make me practice with them if nothing else.
I have been thinking, (I play protoss btw) this composition can be so easily countered by baneling drops. A few reasons would be, one sentries are VERY weak against banelings, two since you can toss down force fields protoss generally leave all their sentries clumped up, and lastly if you are that heavily invested in sentries you wont have enough anti air to kill overlords with banelings. edit: After killing all the sentries, all the zerg would have to do is just mass lings and win.
There is not a chance in a million years of having baneling drops ready in time for early sentry pressure. The sentry heavy play is something you transition out of or change the composition by adding stalkers and a higher tech unit or as your economy picks up. By the time banelings could be ready your army will be mostly armored units.
On November 10 2010 02:55 Shlowpoke wrote: Aside from the force fields and ability to use all the minerals on more gateways/expo, 6 sentries is a good number to get to because 6 damage x 6 sentries = 36 damage which one-shots a zergling.
How valid IS data like this, though? Unless you're manually targeting every individual Zergling through an entire engagement, there's a high probability the sentries will fire on separate targets by locking on to the closest unit. It seems like this kind of data is potentially "good to know" but not necessarily that useful all the time.
On November 10 2010 02:55 Shlowpoke wrote: Aside from the force fields and ability to use all the minerals on more gateways/expo, 6 sentries is a good number to get to because 6 damage x 6 sentries = 36 damage which one-shots a zergling.
How valid IS data like this, though? Unless you're manually targeting every individual Zergling through an entire engagement, there's a high probability the sentries will fire on separate targets by locking on to the closest unit. It seems like this kind of data is potentially "good to know" but not necessarily that useful all the time.
In a small scale engagement I imagine it would make an impact. Just leave your zealots to do their thing while you focus fire lings down one at a time w/ the sentries. Course it would be made more difficult by the fact that you also need to force field with those same units.
Its become really difficult to go sentry heavy many zergs favor getting the roach warren and not everyone can throw down FF like huk and make zealots work against roaches
It's not about gettting a shit load of sentrys, just enough of them to make the expo, then you should build stalkers or immortals if you see the zerg going mass roaches. After 2-3 warp cycles you should make 3 more gateways and push.
On November 10 2010 16:38 douglashv wrote: It's not about gettting a shit load of sentrys, just enough of them to make the expo, then you should build stalkers or immortals if you see the zerg going mass roaches. After 2-3 warp cycles you should make 3 more gateways and push.
Exactly this, about 6 sentries (good number!), few zealots and go heavily for stalkers afterwards. The sentries are really to be able to get early two gas for tech later while allowing a pretty safe expansion early. I'd say 3 gate zealot/sentry-expand is pretty much the safest opening right now vs zerg. If you one-base too long you are "doomed" to do damage with some sort of immortal+gateway-push otherwise zerg will be way too far ahead economicly. 3 gate expand allows you to keep up pretty nicely if zerg didn't do 15 hatch and produced "just" drones (but this you should scout anyways and punish him by moving out and infinitely force-fielding his own ramp while killing natural-expo-drones).
I'm just a crappy gold player (rank 3) so take this for what it's worth:
I love going 2gate robo into 4gate robo, pushing out with 2-3 immortals, several zealots, stalkers and a few sentries and attacking around 60 food. I get +1 weapon and move out when I've got +1 armor halfway done. As long as I attack before Mutas are out, I have around an 80% win rate.
The immortals just demolish queens, roaches, and spine crawlers so I think they're necessary regardless of the opposition's army composition. If I can worst case kill off his expo, I feel like I'm in terrific shape because I'm setting up my expo while attacking and I've got 4 gates and a robo to regroup if my push fails. Depending on the map (especially like shakuras plateau), I like to expand around 40 food but if it's a map that I don't feel I can protect my expo then I'll wait to expand while attacking.
Like I said, I'm just a crappy gold player so take it for what it's worth.
You get so many sentries so quickly so that they have more energy by the time you need to use them for their abilities.
I get about a half dozen sentries while expanding, and then add in other units, usually stalkers. It works well because if the Z pushes, I can cut their army in half and kill off some of it with my sentry/stalker mix.
1800 diamond here: I always use the 3 gate sentry opening, esp. after patch 1.1.2 You worry about roaches but really this build is a great way to counter early roaches. When you make you're first push after warp gates have finished, the zerg will likely be doing one of two things: FE with Speedlings with Roach den mutating 7 Roach Rush. If he 7 RR then you can FF your ramp, wait for warpgate -> stalkers. You'll should be able to counter pressure + expo into -> gg. If he FEs, then a 3 gate: 1 zealot, 5 sentry, 2 stalker push should hit him right before his roaches spawn. You should be able to FF his main ramp and at the very least snipe a Queen / workers even without "without supurb FF micro". Of course you'll be expanding, so don't commit. The early pressure will make the Zerg cautious allowing you to even up economy and dedicate all you gas toward tech. (1+ colossi is my personal standard). Just to clarify, this strat turned PvZ from my worst to best matchup, and I have always considered myself more of a micro player who lacks "supurb FF micro."
The framework of this build is viable against every zerg opener out there. The delay in tech that you describe is not necessarily a bad thing because in addition to the safety this build brings, it also brings more options to be aggressive than most of the other protoss openings. Sentries are the key to safe aggression against the zerg because you can always just retreat with force fields. The unit combination is safe against roaches, forcefields pending, and can rape lings. The excess minerals you get from building all zeals and sentries (both cheaper minerals than stalkers, duh) leads to a fast +1 and cannons as well, which can deter muta harass for quite a long time while you choose the best response.
Zeals are one of the highest DPS units in the game so with proper forcefielding you can really do some heavy damage... even if you dont, you wont lose your army unless you blew all your forcefields in bad places or overlapped them alot.
Artosis, annoying as he may be at times, said for a zerg player, the best build you can learn is in a ZvZ baneling opener. He claims mastering that build will make you a better zerg player. PvZ 3 gate sentry expanding really allows you to improve upon your entire game while you practice it. You can pressure in any timing window you want and learn from it, you can transition and respond or even use forcing methods like adding double stargate when youve got enough sentries. The framework of this basic build will make you a better play and will do just fine against any zerg player of any style... it takes some mastery, but its easier than it looks. Building layout is important, but if you dont make the same mistakes twice you'll get it down in no time. Its very powerful and versatile. If you are super far positions you can 15 nexus safely if they get a pool after 14, but even then 3 gate sentry expand is fine and wont put you much behind the 15 nexus build in econmy.
mass sentry/zealot is extremely hard for zerg to counter. The obvious mid game counter is mass burrow move roach, and late game counter is ultras. The problem, however, is in the early game when you have to rely on zerglings.
Fighting in the choke is a bad idea, so always engage in OPEN ground for best surrounds. I would say morph a roach warren anyway, because roaches are simply too valuable to discard vs. protoss. If you see he is going heavy zealot, throw in a dash of roaches, but not too many since they can be easily cut off using force fields.
Make sure your creep spread is good because you cannot afford to fight close to your hatchery, where there are usually narrow chokes. Also, they can block off your ramp.
EPT
