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On November 20 2010 22:40 Monk wrote:
I don't mean any offense by this but I don't think your mechanics are nearly as good as you think. If your mechanics are skilled u should be able to easily dominate any bronze-low diamond zerg with a 4 gate push. What is your apm at? When you win vs protoss and terran oppoents is that off of 1 base timing attacks or cheese?
APM is pretty irrelevant unless you are high diamond/pro.
Mine is around 45-55 and I am 1800 diamond.
not saying i'm great or anything (far from it) but APM isnt everything, some people dont need to click 10 times to move a probe from a to b.
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I will post per-replay I watch, rather than watch all 3 and try to remember.
In your game on Delta Quadrant, you made just a few small mistakes that cost you the game.
1) Right as you start your first stalker, an Ovie flies in your base. You had more than enough time to micro and kill it with that stalker, which would've put a cap on his economy (as he must spend 100 a new overlord instead of for drones).
2) You saw he went early double gas, sim-city'ed his base, went fast lair, and never expanded. This means Mutas. All you need to do is drop a forge, put two cannons by your min line, and 4gate slightly later. Zerg one base will not kill you, and the cannons will protect your mins from any amount of mutas he'd get on one base to counter you. (What I mean, is he will not be able to afford mutas for both harass and base defense. He'll either have to defend or base trade, and with the cannons, you'll win that)
3) You focus fired the Lair. Notice when he sent his mutas to you, he killed all your probes first? That way you couldn't afford to reinforce and were done. You should have done this. Don't bother focus firing a Lair when you could easily kill every drone in the base. Also you lost units killing the EVO instead of the crawler/queen/spawning pool.
4) Bring a probe with your army, and get a closer proxy pylon. Your second wave arrived way too late.
5) If you scout early 1base like this from a zerg, you do NOT need to be aggressive. You can sit back a little more, since he will not produce the economy he needs to build the units to beat you.
6) If you're going to make sentries (which you always should), use them!! Forcefield is the most important spell we Protoss have, and guardian shield is great against Mutas.
You're almost there, and should've won this game. Decision making is where you lost this. Kill econ first. Then, when they can't afford new units, target the Lair. Generally, you will get a GG before you even kill the lair from players like this.
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If you're mechanics were decent, you wouldn't be in silver.
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In the game of 'Xel-Naga, you lost this on scouting.
You sent your early probe over to his base, saw when he pooled, and left.
You should not leave your opponents base with your scout until you have a reason to do so. Had you continued to run around, you'd have seen him drop the fast roach warren, and you'd know you were getting the 7roach rush.
When you see this coming, you must get a sentry immediately. You can use forcefields (you may only need two?) to hold the ramp until your warpgates are done, and you are chronoboosting your immortal. Once that is done, FF BEHIND the roaches and make them run into the zealots you've warped in. Zealots + one immortal + no movement roaches = you destroy him.
In this situation, I would've used your zealots you were walling with to push back the roaches. Yes, you'd have suicided them and probably not killed a roach, but that 5-10 seconds it would've bought you could easily have changed that game- as you'd have gotten warpgate and your robo before he broke your ramp, instead of right after. I wouldn't suggest suiciding your zealots all the time, but this is one of those situation where more games (and thus better game sense) would have helped you realize just how close you were to being able to hold.
You made a good try to hold the rush, but again, some decision making (and lack of sentries) hurt.
TIP: If you scout the 7roach rush (roach warren around 20, fast gas which they don't stop mining, roach warren before expansion/queen), get a chrono boosted sentry before your stalker. Forcefielding ramps buys you SO much time, it's almost imba lol. Then make a couple stalkers and chip away as you get that immortal. Defend his push, get your 2nd immortal, and go kill him. His one base will not hold your counter push
EDIT; I'm going to ladder myself, will post on vT replay if you need help with that matchup as well.
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Thanks a lot guys, I am going to reply to each one of you.
Greentellion, I don't care whether you posted that just because you were bored, but thanks a lot for the analysis. I will look at my wall, I have trouble nailing it most of the time but the grid tactics suggested here to note at the amount of squares remaining will help. I will remember that base trading thought because I thought I had it in that game and obviously didn't.
Second game, I had a lot of money left because I just froze I think. Obviously that was a dire mistake and I definitely hear what you're saying. I also try to make better use of my scouting probe but the point is a few games ago I got it skilled because my control was not good enough, so I end up pulling it back ASAP. Obviously, that is also a mistake, so I will keep it in mind.
Against Terran, I have noted all your points. The big reason why I don't attack is because I am afraid of a mistimed attack and losing all my units because of it. But thanks for all the comments.
Durp, Again thanks for the awesome analysis. Overlord hunting is definitely important and I will keep it in mind. The tip of dropping a later 4-gate in favor of Forge and cannons is also something that really hits right at home with me as something that I should definitely remember when he is one-basing. All the other tips are also duly noted and I will apply them further.
In the second game, the basic point I see here is to make use of the scouting probe properly. And to get the Sentry first in general cases before the Stalker which I think has been noted here to be very important. The tip to scout the 7-roach rush is also helpful because that is something a lot of Zergs have been doing at Silver level.
And I would definitely like any productive replay you could offer me. Better if it is against Zerg but I have no problems with anything at all as everything will be helpful for me.
mrblue, Thanks for the comment. It is because of people like you that lower level players like me are afraid to post our replays for analysis. It is also because of people like Durp and Green that we are able to improve our game with the help of the awesome TL community.
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Hey!
I had some problem with Zerg for a while also, my problem was that the zerg outmacroed me and i was pretty much stuck at 2 bases and couldn't expand.
So i decided to try zerg for i while to get better understanding of it all. What i found out was that everytime the opponent poked at my base i stopped making drones. Just that feeling that you are under pressure stops you from making drones.(I'm not very good at zerg but anyway).
So back to my PvZ, i figured out that i need to make my opponent to feel under pressure and how do i do that? Just poke at his base, Simple as that!
My general idea vs Zerg is like this:
- 3 Gate, Blink stalkers timing push(mix in some sentrys and zealots) while expanding and getting a robo as soon as you feel secure
- If he decides to go mass Roach you have the immortal on the way
- If he decides Hydra, get a robobay --> colossus
- Muta? no way, then he is pretty much dead to you blink stalkers
Tips: Wall in with gate+core+zealot -- Get +1 weapon
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If you have problems with keeping your probe alive, you can put it on shift-patrol to circle around his whole base. It really lets you do other stuff without paying a large amount of your attention to your scout and you can still see everything that they are doing. Even if your opponent sends a worker after you, you won't ever take anything more than shield damage until they get attacking units out in any matchup. Also, make sure you don't send your probe through the mineral line. I've lost countless probes because my opponent trapped my scout as he was walking through the mineral line 
If you are around 14 food and the zerg hasn't made a pool yet pay close attention to any drones leaving the base and try to follow it. Pylon blocking a zerg's expo when they try to hatch first really puts a hitch into their plan.
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On November 21 2010 00:24 Greentellon wrote:
What I'm trying to say is: GO DEFEND when mutalisks come out. Or, at least kill them and go back to attacking. Leaving mutalisks alone is a mistake..
I dont agree with this
Id rather push zerg hard when mutas come out, mutas are most useless in a straight up fight.
Mutas are a harass unit, thats why they run like fuck when you fall back to defend your minerals.
Infact, tryin to defend against a mutaling is a losing battle. You will lose more and more probes and the zerg will comfortably expand over and over and macro the shit out of you
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Attacking when there are unchecked mutalisks about is an all-in. If your attack fails, you will be dead because you have no probes. Unless you manage to pull mutas into defence by attacking zerg base, but in the case of "Zerg Loss 1", mutas did NOT return to defence.
Day[9] recommended "preassure" as one way to deal with mutalisks, but if the map distances are long and you leave probes unattended it IS extremely risky. As far as I know there are 2 sure ways to kill a ball of mutalisks:
-Phoenixes
-High templars
Third option is the stalker/sentry ball supported by other units if you have them, attacking his base, but that's the move that may or may not succeed.
And THAT is why many protoss just HATE mutalisks. Defending gives map control to Zerg (unless you can beat them with Phoenixes/high templars), while attacking without defending leaves your probe lines wide open. Cannons work for small mutalisk numbers, but if the numbers grow mutas will just laugh and bust the cannons in seconds.
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On November 21 2010 05:46 DavidMcF wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2010 00:24 Greentellon wrote:
What I'm trying to say is: GO DEFEND when mutalisks come out. Or, at least kill them and go back to attacking. Leaving mutalisks alone is a mistake.. I dont agree with this Id rather push zerg hard when mutas come out, mutas are most useless in a straight up fight. Mutas are a harass unit, thats why they run like fuck when you fall back to defend your minerals. Infact, tryin to defend against a mutaling is a losing battle. You will lose more and more probes and the zerg will comfortably expand over and over and macro the shit out of you if he is going muta, his main army will be weaker. if you have a stalker heavy army cost for cost you can easily leave a few stalkers in your base (assuming you havent let him mass up a bunch in which case your problem isn't simply muta harass) and push with the rest of your army and if your economy isnt way worse than his your army will still be stronger.
mutas are a terrible direct combat unit. find ways to force him to directly engage your army and he will be punished for making muta unless his harass is ridiculously successful. if he only has 4-5 mutas even a cannon at your mineral line will defend enough for your push to be fruitful
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[QUOTE]On November 21 2010 00:25 Rarak wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 20 2010 22:40 Monk wrote:
I don't mean any offense by this but I don't think your mechanics are nearly as good as you think. If your mechanics are skilled u should be able to easily dominate any bronze-low diamond zerg with a 4 gate push. What is your apm at? When you win vs protoss and terran oppoents is that off of 1 base timing attacks or cheese? [/QUOTE]
APM is pretty irrelevant unless you are high diamond/pro.
Mine is around 45-55 and I am 1800 diamond.
not saying i'm great or anything (far from it) but APM isnt everything, some people dont need to click 10 times to move a probe from a to b.[/QUOTE
It is true you can get to diamond and get relativley high with low apm but you will hit a skill cap much faster than someone who can click twice as fast as you. Most diamond people with 45-50 apm either do extreme cheese every game, (and thats most of them,) or they happen to just have really good timing attacks and play smart. If your apm is 80-100 (not spam) in the silver divison as long as your macroing and constantly making units and not letting ur money stack you should win almost all of your games.
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Maybe SEA silver is more competitive than NA silver - as your BO looked pretty good and you were doing a very good job on mechanics for silver.
I only watched the first replay - but I would say this was somewhat bad luck for you. I know, its not good to make calls about luck - but those 4 mutas hit your base at a funny bad time - with your army across the map and the moment your money had hit <100.
I guess the question then is how can you force a situation where that exact form of bad luck is less likely to happen - and the answer is pressure.
If you had been knocking at his front door earlier putting pressure on and not letting him breath he wouldn't have had the chance to send those mutas cross map undetected. In one sense, yes it was bad luck, but in another sense we need to try to play in such a way as to minimize the chances for bad luck to happen - and that always means pressure and frequent skirmishing or relentless scouting. You were punished in this game for doing neither.
Once the 4 mutas were in your base, you had 16 minerals or so and an army across the map - going base trade may not have been a bad decision - i honestly don't know -- but the way to avoid losing like this is to figure out how to avoid being in that situation in the first place.
Maybe this is the kind of thing you need to work on to push past silver.
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[QUOTE]On November 21 2010 19:31 Monk wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 21 2010 00:25 Rarak wrote:
[QUOTE]On November 20 2010 22:40 Monk wrote:
I don't mean any offense by this but I don't think your mechanics are nearly as good as you think. If your mechanics are skilled u should be able to easily dominate any bronze-low diamond zerg with a 4 gate push. What is your apm at? When you win vs protoss and terran oppoents is that off of 1 base timing attacks or cheese? [/QUOTE]
APM is pretty irrelevant unless you are high diamond/pro.
Mine is around 45-55 and I am 1800 diamond.
not saying i'm great or anything (far from it) but APM isnt everything, some people dont need to click 10 times to move a probe from a to b.[/QUOTE
It is true you can get to diamond and get relativley high with low apm but you will hit a skill cap much faster than someone who can click twice as fast as you. Most diamond people with 45-50 apm either do extreme cheese every game, (and thats most of them,) or they happen to just have really good timing attacks and play smart. If your apm is 80-100 (not spam) in the silver divison as long as your macroing and constantly making units and not letting ur money stack you should win almost all of your games. [/QUOTE]
I never cheese - aside from cannons vs hatch first zerg on occasion. (which is a solid response).
When i watch replays of my opponents they often click multiple times to moce a scout, i tend to shift click and move on to something else. Back to the op - your biggest flaw if your apm etc is decent could be decision making and game sense. This is what i believe allows me to compete with and beat faster players.
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On November 21 2010 00:25 Rarak wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2010 22:40 Monk wrote:
I don't mean any offense by this but I don't think your mechanics are nearly as good as you think. If your mechanics are skilled u should be able to easily dominate any bronze-low diamond zerg with a 4 gate push. What is your apm at? When you win vs protoss and terran opponents is that off of 1 base timing attacks or cheese? APM is pretty irrelevant unless you are high diamond/pro. Mine is around 45-55 and I am 1800 diamond. not saying i'm great or anything (far from it) but APM isnt everything, some people dont need to click 10 times to move a probe from a to b.
I completely agree. I get my ass kicked by 2k diamonds sometimes with 60 apm. I go back and watch the replay and I go HUH? He's missing timings, he's not macroing nearly as well as I am, HOW DID I LOSE TO HIM? And then I realize that he countered everything I did...
For the OP: since you already have decent mechanics, I would highly recommend you do as Idra says and 'play one build over and over and over.' It really teaches you important timings and transitions. I play zerg so I'll start with how I improved and then relate it to protoss.
The first build that I used against protoss was the 5 roach rush. I did it every single game for a while. A lot of people may think this is cheese or a terrible economic opener. But the fact of the matter is, it allowed me to play a aggressive opener that can transition into a lot of other builds. The games where my roach rush didn't do damage, I would transition into 2-base mutalisk.
As I advanced through the ladder, I wasn't winning as many ZvP games with my roach rush. I started playing muta-ling and it was much easier because I was forced to play muta-ling in all the games where my roach rush failed. Eventually, I switched to the speedling expand because that's what muta-ling opens with. And now I am now comfortable playing any unit composition against protoss. I have no strategy going in... (besides 14 pool, 16 hatch) I simply scout and react. Most of this was learned from my original 5RR.
If I were a protoss player, the 1 build I would choose against zerg would be undoubtedly the 4-gate. If you 4-gate every single game, you will have a great opener on any map which can transition into a macro game. Most people seem to think that if a 4-gate fails you will be behind economically, but this is not the case until you reach diamond league at the very least.
Just make sure to practice a build that goes up to 40+ supply. Don't vary it at all. The same thing every game... Eventually work your way down to the standard 13 gate 18 core and you'll see how smooth it feels when you're playing.
I think it's important for players anywhere below high plat to use the same opener against race x every single game. You shouldn't have to think about the build, you should be like a robot when you're doing it. Once you're able to do that, you can focus your attention on countering what the other player is doing while still being able to execute your opener/macro.
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vsportsguy (his post is too long for me to comfortably quote) is pretty much all right. I played toss all through the beta and for about a month after release. I started out just 4 gating every match-up until I hit a ceiling in PvT, at which point I started using 2-gate robo if I scouted any bio play.
What this did was solidify my sense for timings, an essential skill for any race. The only way you can really develop this sense is by having some sort of consistency between your games. Because it is impossible to force your opponents to do the same build over and over, the only feasible way to incorporate consistency is to be consistent in your own play. I have a friend who jumped from bronze all the way to plat over the course of two weeks because he 4 gated every game until he was at the top of his gold division, wherein he started to add some more variety to his play book.
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I highly suggest not listening to anyone saying anything along the lines of "don try to play smart, just 4gate"
While adding a solid 4gate rush to your arsenal of build orders is a great idea as toss, you should not attempt to climb the ladders by crushing your opponents with these "easy" strats.
When i was climbing bronze to gold I did however choose to commit to always doing one build (short of me scouting something cheesy) to focus more on my mechanics then my builds. Instead of choosing 4 gate however i would 3gate robo every game. I began to change the build around as i got better and eventually i started branching out.
Tl:dr Dont just 4gate to higher ranks, although choosing another solid not so cheesy strat may be a good way to learn basic mechanics.
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@Anomalist, I am the same guy as OP using a different account. And my goto build in every match up is a 3-Gate Robo with slight variations in whether I get Gates 2 and 3 first or the Robo first. I only 4-gate if I see something insane from my opponent like one-base Lair or something. The 3-Gate Robo expand is just an amazingly diverse build for anyone looking to climb up the ranks in my opinion. You can transition into pretty much any standard build using that.
Not saying 4-gate is not amazingly awesome. I <3 All the people who suggested my mechanics are good and I should 4-gate. But I do get the Robo for fast observer and just getting to know what the opponent is doing which I find essential to my style of play which is reactive by seeing what the opponent is going for.
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EPT
