EPTPvP, Collosus's Demise. New and Original Strategy. - Page 4
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RedChaos
United States36 Posts
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SichuanPanda
Canada1542 Posts
On November 22 2010 04:08 RedChaos wrote: at first i thought the build might be decent at best, but after watching the 3 replays that you edited in, and think about it some more i really actually like it and it seems to have potential. i also like the idea where someone posted about getting DTs instead of HTs, doing as much dmg as possible, then morphing them into archons if they get detection or become less useful. about forcefields, i think that its not too bad against them if you use this unit comp of speedlots and archons simply for containing and getting an expo up instead of trying to run up a ramp (like in some of the replays), and if he tries to move out with forcefields, you could just back up and try again engaging a few seconds later. transitioning from this seems like it would work well too, since the HTs and DTs continue to be useful, and you could even transition into robo play if you want. the only problems i see would be someone who rushes dts to break the contain, since you dont have a robo and only would have cannons to defend your own base. anyways i like the build and will definitely try something like this out It definitely cannot be the killing-blow at least if we talk about top level Diamond, but perhaps as a timing push (before lance/critical mass Colossi come out) this could actually be pretty solid. I will give Spek credit it is an intriguing build, but I think it needs some refinement before we see any notable or top level players adopting a style similar to this. | ||
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Blisse
Canada3710 Posts
On November 22 2010 03:28 Proto_Protoss wrote: This feels like a really early abased type of play if you dont do some serious economic damage with your first few archons your going to be in trouble because once 3-4 collosus or just Immortals pop out your going to be in some trouble as none of them are biological units. You might own Zealots but the ranged units will probably own you. So you didn't read any of the comments or watch any of the replays, or notice when he said he attacks with his first Archon, which is before he gets 3-4 Colossi out? C'mon now. I want to see this strategy against more competent opponents. I think any build would have worked for you in many cases. Massive units break Force Fields yes? Maybe Archons will be buffed, but it seems unlikely to buff a build that already counters another build. We'll see. | ||
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Jayrod
1820 Posts
On November 21 2010 18:47 Darksoldierr wrote: Force fields tear appart this strat i would say ive been doing a charge rush pressure into expand into collossus as my staple, but tbh even with forcefields the charge rush usually GGs them. I havent lost with it yet to anyone, even DTs, though that game wasnt a DT rush. Charge lots rape blink stalkers actually and ive also had many games where they try to hold the ramp with forcefield by trapping a few of my zealots.. its just that chargelots are so fast and powerful that they are forced to run and its damn near impossible to chain forcefield the ramp since zealots take so long to kill with speed and micro. Normtall what happens is if they are trying to hold the ramp, half my army gets cut at the bottom, and the other half takes barely any damage while dealing tons because they are trying to kite the whole time. TBH even if they chain FF'd the ramp you're fine, because you expand when you push and its impossible for them to get a meaningful amount of collossus to beat chargelots, which are actually quite good against collossus until they get a ton because they wrap around the protoss ball and take very little splash. I also havent lost to mass zoning to sentries and have even broken a sentry with cannons turtle at an expansion. The reason it still works against FF and blink is that protoss' only answer for the chargelot is the chargelot. Zealots are okay, but they will never match your zealot count without sacrificing their entire gameplay in which case you have charge and a safe expansion and they dont. Even if you go sentry/stalker with good zoning it will take such an eternity to kill the zealots that they can just walk away. Stalkers/sentry do pitiful damage to zealots. If you havent tried it yet. Just try, it will absoultely change your perspective if your micro isnt abysmal. Just do something like gate/cyber/gate/twilight/gate/gate push out once charge finishes and go straight at them. I do this off of one gas as it allows you to still 4 gate it AND expand, due to the fact that you arent really getting stalkers. I normally only build 1 stalker all game except the couple times they tried to switch to VR in desperation. When that happens I just grab some stalkers and grab blink. honestly chargelots are a really good way to secure an expansion because they are so fast that even if somehow you dont win with your initial push... you can just run and still have a great army that can defend an expo. I recommend if your first push fails and theyre going robo (which one happen because chargelots absolutely crush fast tech robo 1 base builds) that you add some stalkers sooner as their dps is nice on their collossus with the zealots tanking. Dont hate on it till you tried it, ive been doing it, with great success against high level opponents. Edit: to clarify, i dont personally get the archon, i just push out with charge, expand, and transition if i need to. | ||
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Gooey
United States944 Posts
I do think that chargelots are underused in pvp, though. Early chargelots seem to work very well, so long as you do not see your opponent going for air tech. I would, however, would like to see this as a 4 gate expand build in pvp and not a 5 gate all in. Unless your plan is just to end the game in the first 10 minutes and that is your all in build. You are just using different units. 4 gate expand is a very safe and standard way to transition out of the early game in pvp. I could see this working as a great harass/pressure build if you actually had plans to take it out of the early game. Adding on a robo for warp prism and a couple of observers, plus a DT shrine before you take a 3rd would work wonders, assuming you don't play someone who goes 6 warpgate 1 robo 1 stargate on one base -_-' Gateway heavy play will certainly whittle down a robo-heavy army. You just have to chip away at your opponent. The units themselves are all personal preference, although I do like seeing archons used for once, and I think they are needed for pushing in the later stages of the game. They are psyonic, so immortals don't do any extra to them, nor zealots. Collosi don't really do that great deal of damage to them either. I would like to see some replays of games that get into the 3rd or 4th expansion phase before we can really see how well the heavy chargelot composition works out. I think that later on, unless your HTs manage to snipe sentries, that forcefields would hurt you badly if you were to hit head on. Hitting a robo army with this mix from multiple angles would work wonders, however. I am actually going to go play now and test some aggressive gateway builds. Good luck with your strat! And please get, out of the 1base mindset. You should really try to push for the later stages of the game, because a good protoss player will just shut down your 1 base all in and overwhelm you with economy. | ||
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Spek
Canada37 Posts
On November 22 2010 02:04 dobrzeee wrote: isnt it better to go for dark shrine and try to harass with dts first. When opponent defends you can still go for zeal arch (dark templars can be archons too) to kill his push. This way it cost more minerals instead of gas which is better too. This is definitely something I want to try. The reason I haven't tried this yet is because templar archives doesn't take long to make at all, so you have your archon way earlier, and you have more zealots. And in my opinion, it's the zealots that do the damage, so the more you have in your first push, the better. | ||
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Spek
Canada37 Posts
On November 22 2010 04:51 Gooey wrote: All three of those new videos are of you doing a 5 warpgate all in.... You just do an all in build with a new twist. That is the reason your protoss buddy can't go collosus in pvp, because you just all in... I do think that chargelots are underused in pvp, though. Early chargelots seem to work very well, so long as you do not see your opponent going for air tech. I would, however, would like to see this as a 4 gate expand build in pvp and not a 5 gate all in. Unless your plan is just to end the game in the first 10 minutes and that is your all in build. You are just using different units. 4 gate expand is a very safe and standard way to transition out of the early game in pvp. I could see this working as a great harass/pressure build if you actually had plans to take it out of the early game. Adding on a robo for warp prism and a couple of observers, plus a DT shrine before you take a 3rd would work wonders, assuming you don't play someone who goes 6 warpgate 1 robo 1 stargate on one base -_-' Gateway heavy play will certainly whittle down a robo-heavy army. You just have to chip away at your opponent. The units themselves are all personal preference, although I do like seeing archons used for once, and I think they are needed for pushing in the later stages of the game. They are psyonic, so immortals don't do any extra to them, nor zealots. Collosi don't really do that great deal of damage to them either. I would like to see some replays of games that get into the 3rd or 4th expansion phase before we can really see how well the heavy chargelot composition works out. I think that later on, unless your HTs manage to snipe sentries, that forcefields would hurt you badly if you were to hit head on. Hitting a robo army with this mix from multiple angles would work wonders, however. I am actually going to go play now and test some aggressive gateway builds. Good luck with your strat! And please get, out of the 1base mindset. You should really try to push for the later stages of the game, because a good protoss player will just shut down your 1 base all in and overwhelm you with economy. I pretty much agree with this post. When I was playing those games, I did get 5 gates, but at no point did I ever think I was all in. That extra gateway just always felt necessary to me at the time, because you have to produce so many zealots and archons. To me it feels like a 4 gate build which uses stalkers. I will experiment with going 4 gate, then expanding before I put down any more. With this strategy, I have so much control, it really feels like I can expand at will. And I'd like to see some late game play as well, to see how this strategy works, but I'm not going to purposely not kill them when I have an opportunity. | ||
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GoldenH
1115 Posts
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Antiochus
Canada548 Posts
On November 22 2010 12:41 GoldenH wrote: So I'm not so worried about forcefields with this build, I'll just get a hallucinated colossus to stomp them, but how are you supposed to get up the ramps? That is a very interesting, your theory crafting intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. On a related note when was the last time you did that in an actual game? + Show Spoiler + Protip: Hallucinated colossus don't break forcefields anymore, spend more time playing the game and less time theory crafting. | ||
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tarath
United States377 Posts
I would ignore the people saying it will never work (most of whom didn't try or watch the replays). If you look at the first few pages of replies to builds that are now standards (like the kcdc build) they are full of people saying its a retarded idea that will never work. I'm pretty impressed at how efficient chargelot/archon seems to be against small numbers of collosi + gateway units. I'd like to see more replays that are on bigger maps (not steppes of war). Anyways I'm psyched to give this a shot  | ||
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Kiarip
United States1835 Posts
the main problem with this is that the colossus-going player can just camp up at his main or nat depending on how many bases you two have, and accumulate colossis and sentry/energy, then he'll push out and stomp all over your stuff. It's basically just a mass-gateway unit style which has less sentries and stalkers in favor of archons. The right response to it is camp with forcefields until you have a lot of colossi and then roll him over. | ||
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yarkO
Canada810 Posts
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Enervate
United States1769 Posts
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5ahj4g
72 Posts
or maybe build some unit that can smash forcefields.... oh wait  | ||
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ShamTao
United States419 Posts
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jacosajh
2919 Posts
The pro of an Archon hitting air is irrelevant as rarely anyone will go air in PvP. I can see this working more in PvZ and PvT along with forcefields, but definitely not in PvP. Even without forcefields, I would think that pure blink stalkers + colossus would destroy this build. And you would require more micro to use this strategy than stalkers + colossus. And that's giving credit to your build that it will even hold up. I can't see Zealots holding up very well vs even 2-3 Colossus that are controlled well. Any good protoss will force you to Charge, then back up so your Archons fall behind, and then destroy all your Zealots. Stalkers will just focus the Archons, and it's GG. Also, unit tests are good to get a general idea of what units beat what, but take a lot of factors out of the game. The guy who got temp banned for saying that was pretty much right. Anyone who bases a strategy off unit tests, I usually don't take very seriously. | ||
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MalVortex
United States119 Posts
As others have pointed out, your composition is essentially all melee based. Forcefields would prevent a huuuge amount of your army from doing damage, while the colossus just AoE down the zealots with impunity. Charge would prevent the zealots from getting split initially, but the protoss player is very much free to just forcefield himself and force the zealots back (it doesn't matter if a stalker or two is scarified, the core army is protected with this action). Archons are not particularly weak to colossus, but colossus/stalker/sentry isn't weak to archon either. The archon would not get into firing range against extended lance colossus, and just float and sputter until it dies. What you have shown is that rushing to charge and then just pounding the other guy into oblivion with them works. Using archons as a gas sponge is a cool idea, given you are dumping essentially all your minerals into the zealots, preventing higher tech stuff like stalkers or colossus of your own from being produced. As an early midgame push, this seems decent. As an answer to colossus, this doesn't. Honestly, I would be more interested in seeing replays against blink stalker builds, or people who know how to 4gate properly (the one in your replay was... not good), or 3 gate robo builds that actually scout and respond to unit compositions. | ||
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JoeSchmoe
Canada2058 Posts
1st game: you already won after the initial encounter. guy doesn't micro his stalkers. you were 130 supply to 98 at time of engagement and his FF were horrible and he moves his colossus to the front. 2nd game: your opponent goes FE on steppes, and he goes mass zealots + sentries? this is pretty much the antibuild against chargelots + archons. prolly thought he was playing against zerg. 3rd game: guy made like 4 immortals despite knowing you were going lots + archons, loses 4 stalkers to no micro, runs into your base, loses all units, then in panic he throws up 2 additional gates (like 6 total?) to make up for his poor macro. Plus he added another stargate. This guy had 8 production buildings on one base. Please post a replays where the opponent actually knows what he's doing or involves late game colossus vs your strat | ||
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Spek
Canada37 Posts
On November 22 2010 14:11 Enervate wrote: Doesn't blink stalkers beat this build pretty easily? Blink stalkers are becoming a pretty popular opening. Zealot archon are both melee (kinda) units while stalkers are ranged. Mass ranged units typically beat mass melee simply because ranged units can all attack at the same time. Blink would also make mass stalkers even more powerful against zealot archon. I played a game against a great player (easily better than I am). He went mass blink stalker, into a timed expansion. My build failed. Turns out the correct counter to zealot/archon is indeed blink stalker. I still believe this build is great though, because if you notice him going blink stalker, you can just get a dark shrine instead of a templar archives. The zealot/archon build still destroys any robo build. Collosi are needed in great numbers to start being effective against zealot/archon, but by the time that happens (if it does) zealot/archon already has map control, and therefore can really hammer out the economy. | ||
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Cryosin
United States182 Posts
But yes, once you have a ton of Archons its basically unstoppable because you can reinforce so fast. | ||
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