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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2010 00:56 Synk wrote:
As a zerg player the late game of this writeup concerns me. It seems like voidrays just win the game at the late stage for the reasons you state, hydra's do well against voidrays but not if they are mixed into the two standard mid game army comps your listing. Also it appears to completely counter our tier3 answers to the toss ball of death that starts to form around 150-160 supply ( for the toss ). I guess I'm a little curious what a zerg player could do against a 160 supply CSS army with 40 supply worth of speedrays, do we just deserve to lose because the toss player reaches 200/200? or am I missing something here.
Hmmmm. This is pure Theorycraft with minimal testing, but Jimdiddy threw around the idea of a lategame baneling transition. Not that it counters the VRs but they are a supply effective answer to masses of Chargelots and anything else on the ground. Typically after a wave of banes my precious T3 Colossus are exposed and follow up waves can do significantly better. He abandoned that style lately... so maybe its not so good after all 
If he goes Mothership - make it a liability - use Neural Parasite followed by Vortex to eliminate half his army and stomp him into the ground (stroggos did this to me once in a friendly match  ).
What is probably more solid is Muta/something (probably ultra) as a first wave of attack, and hope that you are able to focus down all his voidrays with the mutalisks. You might lose them all, you might not. I'm not sure, but as long as you dont lose too many ultra (VRs/Colo take a while to kill them), you should be able to retreat, rebuild an army of ultra/ling/bane and use that drop trick on the colossus to kill off any left over ones. idk. That's theorycraft, but it seems plausible. Oh, and don't forget that queens can heal up your injured ultra 
On November 13 2010 01:52 Firebolt145 wrote:Amazing read. Regarding using DT's - most of the time you'll be running with HT's as well at this point. Most zerg players might bring 1-2 overseers and they are usually brimming with energy (changeling/that other ability aren't used very often in the current metagame) so a single Feedback can 1-shot each overseer, leaving your DT's free to wreak havoc. Other than that, extremely interesting read. I hadn't considered how lousy Stalkers were in the end-game, though by that point I'm too busy spamming chargelots + HT's anyway. DTs are great in this matchup, really underused. But the only problem with them is is that you are so trapped for gas that you either need to commit to Colossus or commit to DT (or HT). Tester ran around for a while with blinkstalker/DT play. I dabbled with that for a while and it's quite effective against an unsuspecting Zerg but you really need to do damage with that DT harass (and by that, i mean kill drones - killing hatches doesn't cut it unfortunately).
On November 13 2010 02:40 MinD_KonTroL wrote:Very instructional guide. I'm a 1700 Diamond and have been playing 15 Nexus over and over again and since the latest patch i've benn losing a lot more than winning. Any chance you could include some replays where we can watch some of that early game ( especially ) you are talking about ? Thank you and congrats on keeping up answering after 10 pages Thanks! Replays.... let me jump onto my other comp and go through some good replays from the last week or so (I hateeeee switching patches, so I'll only use older games if they're really exemplary).
On November 13 2010 02:13 iloahz wrote:
in the recent gomtv game tester vs fruitdealer, tester went for the late game void ray build. Which even was this? I'm curious to see it since I missed it
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I don't have the time to throw in my entire two cents here, so I'll put in my half-penny. The bottom line is, as a Zerg, I have the hardest time with a Phoenix opening by far. I find myself losing most of those games, especially against large numbers of Phoenix. Protoss that are having trouble with Zerg, definitely give it a shot.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2010 01:21 Markwerf wrote:
The easiest way to stop muta imo is to either do a timing attack into 2 stargates or just start off with a blind stargate to scout and then transition to 2 stargate play.
On small maps there is a very good timing window to attack with mass gateway and a robo against spire play. He will usually have to make roaches, a shitload of spine crawlers or use his muta to defend if he can at all vs a timing push. In either case this will reveal and/or severely limit the number of muta's he gets. Sentry, stalker owns muta quite hard as long as you can force him to fight near a guardian shield, this is quite easy to do on offense but not on defense. Mass gateway + a robo is also very good vs any other form of play as it allows to tech to colossi quite fast if he doesn't play spire.
On big maps it is much harder to do a timing push and they can generally tech to muta quite safely. On the other hand there is no risk of a hydra push from them so it's completely safe to throw down a blind stargate. Worst case scenario they went hydra really fast and you simply make 1 phoenix to use for overlord hunting and scouting and go to colossi asap. If they started off with roach/ling you can either make a voidray (if they are pressuring) or go with 4 phoenix which is imo the ideal number for harass (you can kill a queen with 1 lift and drones with 1 volley). If they went with spire you throw down a 2nd stargate and make some phoenix while gearing up for a phoenix, stalker, zealot timing attack.
By this approach you also eliminate the need for hallucination. On small maps you're observer will tell their tech path really quickly and a timing push buys more then enough time to get stargates going (or just kills them). On big maps a phoenix scout tells you everything you need to know and will never be useless either.
In general I just find hallucination a bit overcosted. The fact you HAVE to get warpgate tech first and then spend 100m 100g on a fairly lengthy tech to get hallucinated phoenix scouts is not worth it to me. I generally throw down my stargate/robo while i'm still getting warpgate thus it's actually faster for scouting to just not get hallucination. I find that everything you need to know about their tech options can be accounted for by either just being aggresive or taking a very versatile build While we have argued throughout this thread, I would just like to say that this advice is a valid alternative to playing PvZ. Part of the beauty of this matchup is the options a Protoss has, and being able to switch between styles is going to become more and more important for us as things drag on. So while we disagree on what is most effective for a Protoss to do in the matchup, neither of us is drastically wrong and we are both sending the same underlying messages - if you leave a Zerg to his own devices chances are you are going to get crushed.
On November 13 2010 00:17 sleepingdog wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 23:54 Plexa wrote:
@sleepingdog - yet another good post. I suspect in a few weeks the 5gate push, that you describe, won't work as well anymore since Zergs will begin to expect it. And then us Protoss have to change it up yet again (maybe a 6gate push, or playing more greedy, idk!) Tbh what I expect is, that either zergs will stop playing it so greedily on the tech-paths, meaning they won't go for mutas as fast as they used to / want to. I think we will see the hydras much more often, much earlier, but not used as a general attack-unit but as a transition-unit that defends against protoss-timing-attacks. The other possibility is, that more zergs will play it like dimaga recently and will build tons and TONS of spine-crawlers to lol at any gateway-ball that tries to break through. I'm much more afraid of this style because mutas are so gas-heavy which means zerg has excess-minerals anyways. All zergs have to do is stop getting a third so fast but sink all their minerals into lots of spines and the muta/ling could still be perfectly valid, even against 5-6 gate pushes. This is how Australian Zergs played before I made the switch to NA permanently. Seeing as their flagship good player (mOOnGlade) is an amazing Zerg that's not surprising. Australian Zergs do everything I've outlined in this thread well - they upgrade (usually double evo), they drone hard, they place plenty of Crawler to null aggression and they have some of the scariest muta/ling players around. Its a really tricky style to play against and has influenced my own game a lot meaning I play Protoss wayyy more passive than I should (since I'm use to running into 10spines). This was another reason why I struggled for a long time after the most recent patch
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Awesome guide. Very helpful!
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
inNirvana vs bly
- Despite the dubious P opening (it would crumble to roach pressure) he moves out at an unorthodox time and is able to pressure the Zerg
- Zerg builds a lot of spines which delay muta and is a massive tell that he is going muta
- P's pressure tells him that mutas are coming (without using hallu) and double stargates and forces the zerg to commit drones to static defense
- As a result, the Zerg isn't able to get a decent muta count up and the Phoenix overpower him
- The Protoss isn't afraid to expand - the expansion to 12 was perfect seeing as he knew the Zerg wouldn't be able to pressure him any time soon
The whole Idra vs Tyler series
- Tyler's builds were beautifully constructed to apply pressure at times that Idra didn't expect
- Anyone of these builds is great stand alone
- Tyler used a 5Warpgate push after expand, a 3 Warpgate push after expand, 4 gate blink stalker etc all designed to hit idra mid-droning.
- Most of Tylers builds were timed to hit around the time Idra wanted to take his third, which make them midgame pushes but still, the concept is still the same
Macseed vs Some Zerg
- One thing to note about this game is that the Taiwanese metagame is such that Zerg like to play really aggressive openings. This means, automatically, that they are not droning as hard as NA/EU/KR Zergs are. Pressure as a Protoss on this server is often not necessary. As long as you're not losing units to his Zerglings (or roaches) - you're okay.
- This replay demonstrates perfect use of sentries. He uses Hallucination religiously to get complete information about the Zergs strategy. And his forcefield and micro during the major fight south of the Zergs gold is sublime - he traps half the army, moves back with his army, then engages again - exactly as described in this guide. It really makes the sentry look broken to be honest!
mOOnGlade vs Lotze
- This replay isn't an example of a Protoss playing well. Lotze, despite being a top 64 GSL Protoss, plays this game completely wrong. Glade on the other hand, does everything right.
- Lotze opens with forge/gateway pressure which is a fair good opening, but isn't able to end the game there so expands (so far so good)
- Lotze doesn't apply pressure and literally just sits there while Glade drones up on three bases
- Lotze doesn't get his third nearly fast enough
- Lotze doesn't focus on upgrades, Glade gets a quick 2-2 and the difference shows
- Lotze's unit composition is completely wrong - you can't counter Roaches with blink stalkers. His VR switch comes far too late.
- Zergs, play like Glade does. Protoss, don't play like lotze.
Some Korean Protoss vs etdrevtime
- This is a perfect game from the Protoss.
- He opens with one of my favourite builds, the double stalker pressure. He's clever about it though. He uses the Stalkers to snipe off wandering overlords while the Zerg sees this and spends larvae on lings/overlords to defend. However, he never actually sends the Stalkers and instead expands safely.
- Zerg tries to get greedy taking the gold, and the Protoss pressures with a good number of sentry and stalker, the zerg has no units, and the expo dies
- The zerg takes a reasonably fast third after that but is unable to saturate it because the Protoss pressure forces him to make units and not drones
- The Protoss expands a little bit after the zerg does meaning he's going to be miles ahead in economy (since he's well saturated at this point)
- He also has great army composition (stalker/immortal/sentry) and has great forcefield micro
- The protoss does exactly what he needs to do, when he needs to do it, and never lets the Zerg play the game he wants to play. It's beautiful.
And of course, there are the SEn vs Socke games that have been mentioned numerous times
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Very interesting read... also completely different from how I play. I'll have to try this switching it up to stalker pressure and see how I fair. In the mean time, here's a brief description of what I do:
I go 1 stargate phoenixes and rely heavily cannons. The photon cannon is a rather significant upgrade over a stalker. Side by side comparison:
Photon Cannon
150hp/shields
7 range
20 damage
1.25 cooldown
Stalker
80 hp/shields
6 range
10 damage (14 vs armored)
1.44 cooldown
Compare that to the difference between a dragoon and a photon cannon in Broodwar- big difference. Nearly twice as many hp/shields, range, damage, and cool down are all quite a bit better for cannons. They also work with sentries a lot better than stalkers, since its easier to abuse their range with force field. Bit more mineral heavy, but sentries suck up gas anyways.
So I don't really have a problem building a ton of them at the natural to survive, while building up phoenixes and then switching to stalker/sentry into collosi. A lot of people don't like to do this due to the fact that cannons are static, but I'm of the opinion that as long as you get economically ahead, why not? If anything it makes it harder to harass you later, so long as you keep the economy edge, who cares? (I will admit sometimes taking a third is somewhat dicey).
If the zerg is just droning up, you can murder masses of drones with impunity (only limited by energy). If that happens, they usually overreact and then you can bulldoze them with your ground army. If they decide they want to apply pressure on you (because they see the expansion cannons going up before the phoenixes) with roaches, the sentry and cannons help you survive, and your phoenixes can still go to town.
Also, do people generally not go 1 stargate phoenix except for scouting purposes (or is the transition to 2 stargate in the late game and I'm just misunderstanding? because I do that)? I find that surprisingly if so... I can't remember being overrun by muta having gone 1 stargate. I suppose I use a lot more cannons than other people are comfortable with, so maybe that's why I don't have as many problems?
~1100 diamond player, so a lot of my opinions might be horribly wrong. I have been encountering a lot of 1500-1600 zergs and having favorable results though. I am curious if my ideas are just not feasible at higher levels of play though.
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Excellent write up! I have a few questions about your seeming exclusion of my Zealot friends though? When discussing possible mineral dumps while going CSS, you didn't mention warp prism harass with zealots. It's an entirely mineral composition(or slight gas investment if you get prism speed) and can really put the pressure on the zerg.
Let me paint the picture for you. You're in one of those late midgame middle map standoffs that tend to happen where you're constantly poking with your army and the zerg attempts to hold off engaging as long as is possible. Warping a production cycle of zealots into one of his periphery expansions can really force a decision out of the zerg. He'll have to dedicate a decent number of units to defending or risk losing the hatchery. Allowing the Protoss player to perhaps get a opportunity to engage with his main army in some advantageous fashion, or clean up a decent number of drones/maybe deny a expansion with the drop.
Also zealots in the IST composition barely got a footnote which made me a little sad. Yes they definitely do not, "suck" against zerglings, but they also provide some other valuable functions as well. While storm is mostly the ling killer vs a muta linging zerg player. Zealots play a valuable roll of meat shield and escape mechanism. You don't really have any extraneous gas for sentries with force-fields when going any sort of Templar mix. Having the zealots to take hits while you pull back your valuable gas heavy units can usually pay out some sort of dividends.
Obviously against Roach Hydra they certainly aren't as good for the composition, but the still do play the roll of meat shield some what adequately, though cannons/expansion are probably the more valuable choice most of the time. Again though they deserve a mention in the warp prism harass category especially when going templar, as 2 templar and 4/5 zeals warping into a lightly defended zerg expansion can really put the hurt on.
Anyways, just my opinion, but I think warp prisms and zeals can be included a little more than was mentioned in the op. Especially since you already have the robo up and need some way to dump minerals. This seems doubly useful on maps where there is an island expansion, since at some point you'll want to build a warp prism to take advantage of that expo.
Edit: Holy shit I just noticed your icon is waffles damn I never saw that ><.
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On November 13 2010 04:36 zer0das wrote:
Very interesting read... also completely different from how I play. I'll have to try this switching it up to stalker pressure and see how I fair. In the mean time, here's a brief description of what I do:
I go 1 stargate phoenixes and rely heavily cannons. The photon cannon is a rather significant upgrade over a stalker. Side by side comparison:
Photon Cannon
150hp/shields
7 range
20 damage
1.25 cooldown
Stalker
80 hp/shields
6 range
10 damage (14 vs armored)
1.44 cooldown
Compare that to the difference between a dragoon and a photon cannon in Broodwar- big difference. Nearly twice as many hp/shields, range, damage, and cool down are all quite a bit better for cannons. They also work with sentries a lot better than stalkers, since its easier to abuse their range with force field. Bit more mineral heavy, but sentries suck up gas anyways.
So I don't really have a problem building a ton of them at the natural to survive, while building up phoenixes and then switching to stalker/sentry into collosi. A lot of people don't like to do this due to the fact that cannons are static, but I'm of the opinion that as long as you get economically ahead, why not? If anything it makes it harder to harass you later, so long as you keep the economy edge, who cares? (I will admit sometimes taking a third is somewhat dicey).
If the zerg is just droning up, you can murder masses of drones with impunity (only limited by energy). If that happens, they usually overreact and then you can bulldoze them with your ground army. If they decide they want to apply pressure on you (because they see the expansion cannons going up before the phoenixes) with roaches, the sentry and cannons help you survive, and your phoenixes can still go to town.
Also, do people generally not go 1 stargate phoenix except for scouting purposes (or is the transition to 2 stargate in the late game and I'm just misunderstanding? because I do that)? I find that surprisingly if so... I can't remember being overrun by muta having gone 1 stargate. I suppose I use a lot more cannons than other people are comfortable with, so maybe that's why I don't have as many problems?
~1100 diamond player, so a lot of my opinions might be horribly wrong. I have been encountering a lot of 1500-1600 zergs and having favorable results though. I am curious if my ideas are just not feasible at higher levels of play though.
re: cannons.
The problem is getting the economic lead. If you make phoenxies to harass and make enough cannons to survive a counter attack, your phoenixes are going to be useless in the defense while doing damage to zerg economy. 5 phoenixes won't have enough energy to justify to 5 cannons+ you need to defend.
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thx plexa
just smashed 3 zerg in a row since i read your thread
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2010 04:36 zer0das wrote:
snip If you open one gate phoenix, there is no need to put down hundreds of cannons unless you need to do so to survive a timing attack. By adding cannons at the front, you're not making yourself harder to harass - you're wasting minerals. Mutalisks, for instance, don't care how many cannons you have at the front line and neither does a 200/200 roach/hydra army. Just play to what your opponent is doing, and you'll be fine in that case.
Cannons later in the game are no more than a stall and a mineral dump. 5-10 cannons at an expansion can really act as a deterrent, and if you've got nothing else to spend the minerals on sometimes it can be worth it. (Much better than spamming zealots - especially if it allows you to secure a fourth).
All in all it sounds like you've got more or less the jist of what to do, but try to play more reactionary since you dont want to be wasting money early on on cannons - although I agree, sentry/cannon is amazingly good at defence.
On November 13 2010 05:21 DminusTerran wrote:
Excellent write up! I have a few questions about your seeming exclusion of my Zealot friends though? When discussing possible mineral dumps while going CSS, you didn't mention warp prism harass with zealots. It's an entirely mineral composition(or slight gas investment if you get prism speed) and can really put the pressure on the zerg.
Let me paint the picture for you. You're in one of those late midgame middle map standoffs that tend to happen where you're constantly poking with your army and the zerg attempts to hold off engaging as long as is possible. Warping a production cycle of zealots into one of his periphery expansions can really force a decision out of the zerg. He'll have to dedicate a decent number of units to defending or risk losing the hatchery. Allowing the Protoss player to perhaps get a opportunity to engage with his main army in some advantageous fashion, or clean up a decent number of drones/maybe deny a expansion with the drop.
Also zealots in the IST composition barely got a footnote which made me a little sad. Yes they definitely do not, "suck" against zerglings, but they also provide some other valuable functions as well. While storm is mostly the ling killer vs a muta linging zerg player. Zealots play a valuable roll of meat shield and escape mechanism. You don't really have any extraneous gas for sentries with force-fields when going any sort of Templar mix. Having the zealots to take hits while you pull back your valuable gas heavy units can usually pay out some sort of dividends.
Obviously against Roach Hydra they certainly aren't as good for the composition, but the still do play the roll of meat shield some what adequately, though cannons/expansion are probably the more valuable choice most of the time. Again though they deserve a mention in the warp prism harass category especially when going templar, as 2 templar and 4/5 zeals warping into a lightly defended zerg expansion can really put the hurt on.
Anyways, just my opinion, but I think warp prisms and zeals can be included a little more than was mentioned in the op. Especially since you already have the robo up and need some way to dump minerals. This seems doubly useful on maps where there is an island expansion, since at some point you'll want to build a warp prism to take advantage of that expo.
Edit: Holy shit I just noticed your icon is waffles damn I never saw that ><.
Well firstly, this is just an overview of the matchup not a complete guide I couldn't include everything. But I dislike warp prism zealot harass, even though I used to use it a lot in this matchup. It really is nothing mother than a minor annoyance. With good creep highways Zergs shouldn't lose anything more than a few tech structures at most (and with the HP buffs recently, don't count your chickens). 4 DTs are significantly better at killing things and doing what you want your warped Zealots to do. But of course, they cost gas... so you're back at square one.
Throwing them into an IST mix is certainly better than CSS, but even then, IST relies on forcefields early on just as CSS does. Typically the mineral surplus starts to accumulate around the time you have 3 bases running and are producing gas intensive units (templar, colossus etc). At this stage of the game you have to make a judgement call on where those minerals are best spent - throwing them into zealots may be just what you need or conversely, it may be better to try and get a 4th up. It completely depends on the situation. I generally try to avoid Zealots since they really are just supply hogs (much like roaches, except worse).
On November 13 2010 05:32 Coraz wrote:
thx plexa
just smashed 3 zerg in a row since i read your thread
I'm interested in knowing how those games unfolded
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What do you think of archons in lategame? If you went for templar tech and hes masing ultras, dont hey seem a good response? or do you use them in any other circumstances?
Great post BTW (hope you dont mind we link it from out site in Latin America sc2la.com)
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United States11390 Posts
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On November 11 2010 00:56 Disda wrote:
Can you elaborate more on knowing when to stop the early pressure against zerg? I have a tendency to over commit to my early pressure and consequently either lose or win very early on. How do I know when I've curtailed his "power-droning" enough?
Also, I'm alittle surprised by the lack of discussion in phoenix's, or air dominance in the early/midgame sections. But I don't know nearly enough to contribute there, only that (at my level) it seems limiting myself to only SSC or IST would feel overly restrictive.
Very nice write up.
::Edit:: I have similar experiences as Shadrak, and tend to open up with Phoenix play to head it off at the pass.
You should push out first with two stalkers until he makes a few lings to run them off. Then push once more with 6-10 stalkers depending on the map distance and your gut instinct of what you need. The idea is to force your opponent to stop or at the least heavily curtail his droning to make lings. Once the game has passed the 5 minute mark, the zerg players most limiting resource is his larva. If you can get him to spend those larva on lings.(a unit that can defend well versus stalkers, but is terrible at attacking you and your sentries) You have gotten him to use larva on something other than drones. As long as he is making some units, you can keep up with him econ wise.
As for the phoenix air dominance issue. The only way phoenixes are dominant is if you opened with a stargate In which case a sensible zerg player will not persue muta/ling. A good zerg player will gather up his overlords and keep them safe with hydras/spores. There are ways to have successful stargate openings, but since they are genuinely more work for less return with the exception of the most skilled players, they were omitted from the discussion.
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Thanks so much for writing this plexa
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2010 05:54 Ihsahn wrote:
What do you think of archons in lategame? If you went for templar tech and hes masing ultras, dont hey seem a good response? or do you use them in any other circumstances?
Great post BTW (hope you dont mind we link it from out site in Latin America sc2la.com)
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=167992¤tpage=9#174
No feel free to link to it! Translate it if you like haha. The only thing I'm not okay with is selling it for profit (and history tells us that shokz will be adding it to his worthless guide).
@Harem - thanks will check it out
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On November 13 2010 05:26 Tossup wrote:re: cannons.The problem is getting the economic lead. If you make phoenxies to harass and make enough cannons to survive a counter attack, your phoenixes are going to be useless in the defense while doing damage to zerg economy. 5 phoenixes won't have enough energy to justify to 5 cannons+ you need to defend.
The thing is... phoenixes never really die until they get hydra/corrupter, and even then you can skirt around hydras easily enough most of the time. They are a constant drain on the zerg economy, so even if you don't even things up immediately, you can slowly leverage your way into having one. They also force certain unit compositions which make it easier to deal with the Zerg.
The only time a Zerg effectively shut down my harass, he severely overbuilt both hydra and spores, which let me overpower him much later in the game.
On November 13 2010 05:51 Plexa wrote:If you open one gate phoenix, there is no need to put down hundreds of cannons unless you need to do so to survive a timing attack. By adding cannons at the front, you're not making yourself harder to harass - you're wasting minerals. Mutalisks, for instance, don't care how many cannons you have at the front line and neither does a 200/200 roach/hydra army. Just play to what your opponent is doing, and you'll be fine in that case.
I would say it is reactionary in a sense- it plays toward what the Zerg will likely do. Once they see phoenixes, the response I most commonly see is an attempt to bust open the front. Especially since roaches are that much stronger these days. But the cannons can stand up to roaches really well, whereas stalkers get chewed up in small numbers. So the cannons let you much more safely take a quick expansion while maintaining the phoenix harass. If they do try the bust and fail, they just ate up a ton of larva and the phoenixes are eating into them as well.
Really the difficult part of 1 gate phoenix is not dying to the initial roach/hydra break, since there is a rather large lag between when your phoenixes are ready and when your ground army starts getting significant. The cannons mitigate what would otherwise be a rather large window of weakness. I'm not saying build 10 cannons blindly, just that going a little heavier on cannons isn't the worst of ideas. And you're right, it is easy to play to what your opponent is doing- the phoenixes let you have a very good idea of what he is building and when he moves out.
I am rather interested in seeing how effective stalker harass is for me though- I'm not an especially high APM player, so I suspect I may have more problems with it than with phoenixes. :>
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Hey Plexa,
I know you mention some pro replays illustrating these points in later posts. But maybe it would be helpful to link a couple of your replays that you feel represent the IST/CSS style builds w/ or w/out stalker pressure openings? I know there are pleanty of pro replays on youtube etc., but I really think a couple of your own might help illustrate the specific things you are talking about.
Thanks again for doing this and for keeping up with the replies. I'm having a hell of a time trying to switch styles but I'm sticking with it 0% win vz zerg while I transition isn't that much worse than the 25-30% I was getting before!
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2010 06:22 Shadrak wrote:Hey Plexa, I know you mention some pro replays illustrating these points in later posts. But maybe it would be helpful to link a couple of your replays that you feel represent the IST/CSS style builds w/ or w/out stalker pressure openings? I know there are pleanty of pro replays on youtube etc., but I really think a couple of your own might help illustrate the specific things you are talking about. Thanks again for doing this and for keeping up with the replies. I'm having a hell of a time trying to switch styles but I'm sticking with it 0% win vz zerg while I transition isn't that much worse than the 25-30% I was getting before! http://home.tlplexa.operaunite.com/file_sharing/ pw: tl123
Take your pick of PvZs The series I just played against Megalisk is quite good in terms of being strategically sound (except the game where I went zealots....)
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The other risk I've seen to a 1 gate pheonix is it gives your zerg opponent the signal to go drone and expansion crazy. They can use low larva options (queens, small #s of hydras or spore crawlers) to minimize damage and just focus larva on drones, more drones, and even more drones.
Great guide though. I learned more about how I want to play zerg ZvP from this post than most posts aimed at helping zerg out.
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On November 13 2010 04:36 zer0das wrote:
Very interesting read... also completely different from how I play. I'll have to try this switching it up to stalker pressure and see how I fair. In the mean time, here's a brief description of what I do:
I go 1 stargate phoenixes and rely heavily cannons. The photon cannon is a rather significant upgrade over a stalker. Side by side comparison:
Photon Cannon
150hp/shields
7 range
20 damage
1.25 cooldown
Stalker
80 hp/shields
6 range
10 damage (14 vs armored)
1.44 cooldown
Compare that to the difference between a dragoon and a photon cannon in Broodwar- big difference. Nearly twice as many hp/shields, range, damage, and cool down are all quite a bit better for cannons. They also work with sentries a lot better than stalkers, since its easier to abuse their range with force field. Bit more mineral heavy, but sentries suck up gas anyways.
So I don't really have a problem building a ton of them at the natural to survive, while building up phoenixes and then switching to stalker/sentry into collosi. A lot of people don't like to do this due to the fact that cannons are static, but I'm of the opinion that as long as you get economically ahead, why not? If anything it makes it harder to harass you later, so long as you keep the economy edge, who cares? (I will admit sometimes taking a third is somewhat dicey).
If the zerg is just droning up, you can murder masses of drones with impunity (only limited by energy). If that happens, they usually overreact and then you can bulldoze them with your ground army. If they decide they want to apply pressure on you (because they see the expansion cannons going up before the phoenixes) with roaches, the sentry and cannons help you survive, and your phoenixes can still go to town.
Also, do people generally not go 1 stargate phoenix except for scouting purposes (or is the transition to 2 stargate in the late game and I'm just misunderstanding? because I do that)? I find that surprisingly if so... I can't remember being overrun by muta having gone 1 stargate. I suppose I use a lot more cannons than other people are comfortable with, so maybe that's why I don't have as many problems?
~1100 diamond player, so a lot of my opinions might be horribly wrong. I have been encountering a lot of 1500-1600 zergs and having favorable results though. I am curious if my ideas are just not feasible at higher levels of play though.
The stalker is a rather significant upgrade over the photon cannon if you look at it.
Photon Cannon
150hp/shields
7 range
20 damage
1.25 cooldown
Can't Move
Stalker
80 hp/shields
6 range
10 damage (14 vs armored)
1.44 cooldown
Can move
The problem with photon cannons is twofold. As you may have read in this forum (OP) if you leave the zerg to their own devices they will out macro you and destroy you. So cannons dont exactly help you prevent this. Now, if you choose to 15 nexus, it is possible to achieve similar economy to the zerg player, but this will leave you open to problem number two.
Cannons aren't ideal defensively. Yes they have 1 more range, yes they do more damage and dont cost gas. A few problems though. cannons rely on a power field. This means, that while a cannon has 7 range, if it is not withing 3 range of the pylon powering it, it will have trouble protecting it from roaches. Also, you have to spread out your cannons, which means they will not all be participating in combat at once. If you are on two bases, you cannot build enough cannons at both bases to stop a full force assault. Also, you are surrendering map control.
As for the phoenixes, they are good, but a higer level zerg player will know how to deal with them. They certainly wont be running around uncontested. Aslo, if you are building cannons to defend and phoenixes to harass, you have no ground army to speak of, and have effectively surrendered map control to any zerg player smart enough to make 20 speedlings.
While many of your opinions are right, keep in mind that Plexa made this as a discussion of where the game is for high level (2100 +) protoss players. Most good zerg wont let you get away with cannons and phoenixes.
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