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What do you mean you’re taking away my flux vanes?
Disclaimer: It works against 2.6k diamond at least, probably much higher if they try an all in bust. I make no claim that this will beat a 3k diamond player, though I've seen others do it. And yes, you might look like a 3v3 BGH nr20 noob if you use this strategy.
Introduction Ever seen mass speedrays dominate some silver league team game? It’s one of the least skilled looking things you’ll ever see, but there are a few reasons why it’s so effective. First let’s look at the properties of a void ray… -Very expensive -Not too much health -Not too much damage either
Doesn’t look like such a good deal, does it? Instead looking at one void ray, let’s look at the properties of mass void rays -Ridiculously expensive -Incredibly supply-efficient -Attack mechanic avoids overkill, giving it much more DPS than its stats suggest -Scale very well with upgrades -Stack on top of each other, thus never lose DPS from blocking each other -Has no counters that don’t melt to colossus
What all of these things mean is that while void rays are merely a form of harassment in the early- and mid-game, once you get closer to 200 supply they also become incredibly powerful main army units! I’m writing this guide to show you guys how to create the void ray/colossus “death ball” in a PvZ. It started off as a joke build, when I was trying to break a spine crawler contain that my practice partner did to me. I quickly noticed that if I executed well and my opponents didn’t play perfect ZvP, I would slowly build up the 200/200 fleet and barely lose any units while wiping the Zerg off the map. After a few weeks, GuineaPig used a similar build to defeat Junwi in the GSL, confirming that Stargates are viable at the highest level of play. I continued to work on my build to adapt to what Zerg players were throwing at me. Now that Blizzard is planning to remove speedrays from the game, there’s no point in me hiding my strategy so I might as well let you guys abuse it while it still exists!
To demonstrate how cost effective the army composition is, I’ll just show you a screenshot:
Day[9] warned that this Zerg had a 300 food army. It didn't intimidate us any more than a 200 food army, really.
What maps should you use this build on? My general rule is that if the map is good for fast expanding, then this build works on it. Lost Temple, Shakuras Plateau, and Jungle Basin are the best maps for it because those maps are the best ones for going nexus before gateway.
Early game 9 pylon in a suitable spot for walling, then go scout with that probe
Your goal in the early game is to get a very quick nexus, with cannons finishing in time to deny the earliest zergling rush your opponent’s build can throw at you. If your probe doesn’t find the Zerg at the first base it checks, try to guess where he started by noting the timing of his scouting overlord. Here are some guidelines on how you can respond to what your probe finds.
14 hatch or 15 hatch – this opening has a really late spawning pool, so you can afford to be extra greedy with probes. Make a second pylon while chrono boosting out constant probes, then get a nexus on 18 or 19 supply, then get a forge right after.
14 extractor 14 pool or 14 pool 16 hatch – cut probes at 15, then go 15 nexus 15 forge 16 pylon. The second pylon should go below your ramp so that you can place cannons and gateways.
Pool earlier than 14 – Get a forge asap, cutting probes if you don’t have 150 minerals the instant you see their pool.
Follow up with a gateway and a core in “sim city” positions to protect your cannons. Two assimilators should be built somewhere around 24 supply. Meanwhile, your scouting probe should check for a fast third base to determine whether you need to get multiple cannons to defend against a possible all-in bust with roaches or banelings. If they manage to kill your probe or you feel unsafe for any other reason, just spam cannons. The best maps for this build allow for high ground cannons, which should definitely shut down any rush. Don’t forget about Nydus worms! Uncover the dark spots in your main with a combination of pylons and a patrolling probe (hotkey all of your main probes to something so you can respond instantly). Once you have the resources, make two Stargates and take both assimilators in your expansion.
Baneling bust this!
Why is this opening so safe? I’ll make my point by comparing it to a more standard 15 nexus opening. That build needs cannons to hold off early rushes, but wants to make as few cannons as possible against anything else. Every cannon delays the warpgates you need against a greedy Zerg. With my Stargate-centered play, the unit composition you want is extremely gas-heavy! You will not be making zealots, stalkers, or even gateways so making excess cannons to be safe will have practically no impact on your later army. They will also help to hold off any hydra busts that can arrive before you can make a Colossus. It’s not uncommon for me to put 5 cannons at my front and 2 in my main (in case I run into the fastest muta rush ever).
Mid game Once your two Stargates are done, your immediate goal will be to harass and scout. Start chronoing out void rays and phoenixes. Also begin +1 air weapons. Your first void ray should start clearing out overlords near your base and looking for expansions, while your first phoenix needs to fly over to the Zerg’s main base as soon as possible to see how they respond to your Stargate tech. Here are some common things you might find:
Fast third base – try to go kill it with void rays and phoenixes. The worst case scenario is that you force spores and extra queens at every base, best case scenario is you kill a hatchery. Their lair tech is too delayed to respond with anything other than queens and spores. It should be easy to get a third base as they have no mobile anti-air yet.
Spire or mutas – if you didn’t already make two cannons in your main, do so now. Cancel any void rays in production and start pumping out phoenixes! Once mutas are out, add a third stargate and fleet beacon. The Zerg will try to challenge you for air dominance using corruptors, and you will need the third stargate to keep up with his production. This can be hard to deal with because you won’t be able to take a third base until you have map control from air units.
BGH noob confirmed
Hydra den – if you see any sign that hydras are coming, make a robo and start teching towards colossus. Also get a fleet beacon anyways since you’ll want flux vanes to abuse hydras’ lack of mobility. Harass as much as you can and get ready to take a third base.
Production-wise, you’ll want to be on either 3 stargates or 2 stargates and a robo depending on what you scout. During the mid-game, your main goal should be to secure a third base. Secondary objectives include harassment, map control by killing speedlings/overlords, and +2 air weapons. Expanding is done by the following steps, not all of which may be necessary: 1. Clear out any lings near the expo. 2. Distract the Zerg by harassing with a few air units. 3. Make pylons, a nexus, and start spamming cannons!
Every time you expand, there is a short vulnerable period between the time you start a pylon and the time your mass cannons finish. Thanks to the gas-heaviness of your army, you will have a ton of excess minerals to spam cannons with. Once you have the third base running with assimilators, you should have 3 stargates and 2 robos. The most difficult thing to deal with when expanding is probably someone persistent with speedling harass. To get a third base up, here are some tricks you can use: -Harassing with air units to tax their multitask, while building pylons and cannons -Building pylons and cannons at multiple spots at once, since you have so many excess minerals anyways. Then you make a nexus at whichever place gets cannons up successfully -Using a warp prism to build cannons before the pylon is done warping in, to decrease the expansion’s vulnerable timing window -Any combination of the above should basically guarantee your expansion goes up against players with less than 300 apm
Here’s what a safe expansion looks like
Who do you think you are? Nal_rA?
Aside from the scouting you got from your first phoenix, there are a few dangerous things to watch out for in the mid-game:
Hydra drops – if you see any sign that the other guy researched overlord drops, you should spend some of your minerals on main base cannons, get colossi with range even faster than you would normally, and be ready to shoot down overlords with void rays. Infestors – this is why you can’t be greedy when harassing. The instant you see one appear, you need to right click far away from whatever base you’re harassing. Preferably over a cliff.
Once you have the third base up and running, as well as 3 stargates and 2 robos (or 4 stargates and 1 robo if that guy is still trying to win the air battle!), you’re entering the late-game.
Scouting: your first phoenix(es) need to stay alive and fly around constantly to scout where the Zerg is. Overlords need to be hunted to make it easier to expand.
Optional: when you have more than 6 void rays and the speed upgrade is done, you can try to snipe their hydra den or hive. In such numbers, speedrays are incredibly potent harassment. I wouldn’t try sniping the hive with less than 12 void rays though.
Watching your minimap isn't enough, bro. You're gonna need map hack to prevent this.
Late game You put your third base in a smart spot, right? If so, the cannons there should be able to defend a fourth base as well so build that when you have the resources. This section of the guide might not even be necessary since if you made it this far, there’s not much Zerg can do to stop you. 4 bases is around the stage of the game where you will max out with anywhere from 25-30 void rays supported by 6 colossi. +3 air weapons should be done by now, and you should have started air armor. Push out with all of your units and watch everything melt to your lasers! At 200/200, your army is so ridiculously powerful that you are unlikely to drop below 170 supply against any army. Expand and spam cannons as usual behind your push just in case it fails, but I have never seen it fail yet. Still, Day[9] wouldn’t be pleased to see you launch an attack and not expand with 3k minerals in the bank!
Update 1/1/11: some high level European zergs pointed out that fully upgraded corruptors are good vs void rays. So if your opponent knows about this, it is absolutely crucial to get a mothership and then snipe his spire(s), possibly multiple times, before his 3-3 air upgrades are done. You may even send a few void rays to the other side of the map as a diversion while your main fleet flies into their main base to kill the spire. A good zerg will almost certainly fungal growth you, so recall out, preferably to a spot with cannons.
Before
After
If for some inexplicable reason your Zerg opponent has an army that you can’t attack move to death (I’ve never encountered this but it might exist!), then you can always turtle behind cannons and get a mothership. Mass recall guarantees that your void rays can harass with impunity, regardless of infestors, the threat of a counterattack, hydras showing up out of nowhere, etc. On 5-6 bases, you might as well spam tech buildings and gates just in case you vortex a huge army and want to archon toilet it.
Threats This section is for opponents’ strategies that can be difficult to deal with, or things you might lose to when still learning the build.
6 pool, 10 pool, etc – you built your pylon in the wrong spot, or scouted your opponent last. Building your first pylon below the ramp is risky, and not necessary for a sim city, so don’t do it! You should get used to overlord timings so that you don’t scout their base last.
Roach or baneling bust – either you don’t have enough cannons (remember these are practically free since your units are so gas-heavy) or you picked the wrong map for this build.
Backdoor bust – not playing safe enough. Remember that you can afford to spam cannons if you see no third base.
Fast nydus – you forgot to patrol a probe, or you underestimated how many probes you need to kill it before it finishes building.
Surprise tech switch – don’t commit to colossi until you actually see a hydralisk! If you see a hydra den and they actually went muta/corruptor, you can easily get overpowered in the air without a third stargate.
Drops – see midgame
Extremely fast hydras – you need to see this coming and get enough cannons to hold it off, while getting a robo.
Constant speedling harass to deny your third – this is probably the hardest thing to deal with. See midgame for tips on getting your third base up.
Fungal growth – outrange it with extended thermal lances.
Losing a lot of void rays in general – if this happens, you are probably overrating the value of harass. Remember that the ultimate goal of this build is not to harass the guy to death but to make the 200/200 death ball! Harassment is great if you have the apm to do it constantly, but its main purpose is really to gain map control and distract the guy while you set up another expo.
Hydras with meatshields - believe it or not, this is the strongest mid-game bust you can go up against, and significantly deadlier than pure hydras. Colossi Without +2 weapons take forever to burn through speedlings, and even longer to kill roaches. Fortunately, most players who do this tend to suicide into your cannons, and you can punish low hydra counts by simply not making colossi. You will probably have to use a few of the tricks I mentioned for getting a third base.
Mass corruptor/muta/infestor with 3/3 air upgrades: believe it or not, this can defeat your fleet! Now that I know about this threat, sniping spires is more important than sniping hives/lairs.
Replays
Fungal growth and 7 bases? No problem.
Mass hydras
Early roach pressure
This isn't the map you want to do this build on. Nevertheless, this game had a little bit of everything, considering the guy got 6 bases. You get to see how I deal with mass air, mass ground, speedling harass, nydus, fungal growth. Notice the time stamp showing that I was using this build before GuineaPig's games.
attempted roach bust followed by baneling bust http://www.cstarleague.com/league/matches/957/replays (It's set 5)
Kiwikaki vs Machine, different opening build but similar concept http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=3461
Update 1/1/11: you can transition to this from a standard 3 gate build. I knew this when I wrote the guide, but I didn't have time to test out how to do it yet. Here are two replays that demonstrate how it can be done. I start with phoenix harass to gain map control and set up my third, then start adding void rays and colossi to the stalker/sentry backbone of Protoss armies. 2.9k zerg
NvMacSed vs Seekers (MacSed practices with Huk so he must be really good) http://www.sc2rep.com/replays/download?id=3987
Will it still work in the next patch? The loss of flux vanes hurts, but I'm not really sure if that kills this strategy completely. The only thing certain is that I'll have to rename it to something other than "Speedray PvZ"! I played one game with it on the test server yesterday (if any of you were spectating, I was using the name NeXWarped) and I won, but that doesn't say too much. Does the new fungal growth make up for the loss of flux vanes? Maybe, maybe not. I'll definitely be testing it on the PTR though!
Enjoy it while it lasts! David Kim if you happen to ever read this, please don't remove flux vanes!
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Too bad we don't see more Skytoss and air supremacy games, hilarious to watch and it forces zerg into an unusual position since zerg loses many map controls ;o/
Watching zerg armies erased by collossus and voids must feel like watching zerg armies erased by siege tank lines... Nothing so beautiful lol.
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Great guide, nice pics lol. I've been doing something similar, and I can confirm that the general concept (massing to 200/200 colossi void ray death ball and mass cannon/expo) works even at the 3k diamond level.
The biggest threat is a weak mid-game, when you're trying to secure your 3rd. Pure hydras can be stopped, but a roach/hydra mix can be deadly when you don't have the critical mass of voids or collossi.
What I end up doing is to start with void rays to help defend against roaches, and to harass a bit. Then I'll go the normal stalker/colossi route for mid-game to try to secure my 3rd. Heading towards late game though, I do add additional stargates and try to get that 200/200 colossi/void ball.
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Yeah I think I'm gonna edit that in. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, hydra/roach or hydra/ling/bling does way better than pure hydra because colossi take forever to kill all the meatshields. I'll add a section for gateway units when I have more experience with the transition, in case someone's speedling harass is actually good enough to get past all the "tricks" I use to get my third base up.
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This was a very thorough writeup- well done iamke55. I was going to post the KiwiKaki vs. Machine game, but then I saw it tagged onto the bottom of your post.
Don't get me wrong, because I love Colossi against hydras, but I rather like the notion KiwiKaki had of using a small gateway force to complement the speed Void Ray fleet. If you're combining Void Rays with Colossi, you have two expensive units that take forever to make. If the Zerg player catches you out of position on creep one time and executes a good flank, that can easily turn out to be a very costly mistake.
The Gateway units can be quickly and cheaply replenished. I know hydras chew through gateway units like buttah, but they can be thought of as meatshields. I've played around with this build a few times and I rather like the Chargelot/Sentry ground army with the speed Void Rays. Rather than damage dealers, the Chargelots go in first to disrupt the concave of the hydras. The Sentries lay down a line of forcefields behind the Chargelots (a la KiwiKaki's play) to further prevent the hydras from getting a concave on your Void Rays in a direct engagement. Only one row of hydras can ever hit the Void Rays with good control, thus minimizing the hydras' silly DPS.
This is, of course, only viable if the Z counters the speed Void Rays with hydras. By no means am I trying to contradict the OP here, rather I'm just putting in my two cents based on what I saw and liked in the KiwiKaki vs. Machine example.
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On December 07 2010 16:25 iamke55 wrote: Yeah I think I'm gonna edit that in. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, hydra/roach or hydra/ling/bling does way better than pure hydra because colossi take forever to kill all the meatshields. I'll add a section for gateway units when I have more experience with the transition, in case someone's speedling harass is actually good enough to get past all the "tricks" I use to get my third base up.
Hydra/roach also rip through cannons much easier, besides faring better against colossus. And actually if they mix in banelings in mid-game, it's even more scary for your sim city cannons. Fortunately, zergs are currently too stupid to use banelings past early game all-ins. I think I've only seen banelings used on my cannons during mid-late game only once in about 100 games (I think it was ViBE? He ezpzed my cannons with a few banelings then rolled over me).
The third base timing is actually kinda tricky. Just because you get your 3rd base up with 10 cannons doesn't mean it's safe - if you get it up too fast and you don't have any/enough colossus to defend it, it can still get run over pretty easily. If you see that the zerg stays on 2 bases for longer than normal, you don't really want to rush your 3rd. Of course, it also depends on how successful your harass is (if you do a lot of damage early then you can get your 3rd up earlier).
I also want to emphasize the threat of zerg tech switches. If the zerg starts out with spire, you should still tech up to colossus even if you don't get any/many. It doesn't take long for the zerg to plop down a hydra den and macro up 20 hydra, and you don't want to face a mass of hydra without colossus. The reverse is probably even more dangerous, since mutas are also a counter to voids, and if your voids get caught by 15 mutas out of nowhere and you have no phoenix support, you're going to lose most if not all your voids and that's a game-changing loss for you. Note that mutas are still faster than speedrays.
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Wow between this and the terran 4OC build, dark dark times for zergs are coming :'(
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On December 07 2010 16:52 Douillos wrote: Wow between this and the terran 4OC build, dark dark times for zergs are coming :'(
VR speed is gone
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iamke55 and a few others are the only reason why i don't just think Stragedy section should be removed =) great thread
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I had someone go 2 stargate Voids vs me on Meta (close position via air) vs my fast expo. I scouted with a scan, held it off with 2 turrets, and upgraded auto-sec. He barely held off my first push towards his late nat, losing at least 3/4 voids in the process. He eventually got flux vanes, and I could NOT STOP HIM OMG. He would fly around with 8 void rays, and just rape everything, despite me having like 4 turrets wtih autosec at each expo. I had 5 rax, 2 reactor starport pumping vikings, but my vikings couldn't catch him. Not being able to kill him, I mass expoed with turrets and PForts, and just denied his expos with drops. I had 5 base fully running saturated with at least 70 harvesters by the time he secured his 3rd (which was gold).
Once he got templar tech as well, I couldn't do shit.
3/3 upgrades on my bio 2/2 on ground and air 21 rax, 11 reactored, 10 tech lab 3 factory, 2 reactored, 1 tech lab to pump blue flame hellions 2 starport reactor viking medivac
could not stop massive camping by
2/0 voids with flux 0/0/0 gateway army mass chargelot/hightemplar
High templar carpet stormed my bio army, voids incinerated marauders to the point they were useless building, voids could avoid vikings infinitely and when i finally could engage, they got stormed. I couldn't evne use hellions without being stormed.
Even doom dropped his main. No avail.
In retrospect, when I had 5k/5k, should have teched to EMP ghosts. No storms ==> roll him. Was so annoyed that I lost that when I had 5 base vs 3 base. UGHHHH. Just could not stop the mass voids (he had like 12-15 at points)
/rant
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what if the zerg like refrains from building lings and goes like.. all muta?
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Nice writeup, very entertaining. Harass won't be nearly as easy without flux vanes, but the Void/Colossus deathball is still gonna be a deathball. I hadn't thought about going BGH cannon-spam style though, sounds fun.
btw, I think they got fungal growth back.
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On December 07 2010 17:46 BenKen wrote: Nice writeup, very entertaining. Harass won't be nearly as easy without flux vanes, but the Void/Colossus deathball is still gonna be a deathball. I hadn't thought about going BGH cannon-spam style though, sounds fun.
btw, I think they got fungal growth back.
how do you know that?
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On December 07 2010 17:30 Tical3000 wrote: what if the zerg like refrains from building lings and goes like.. all muta?
Was in the OP, he said to stop building voids and build phoenixes.
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On December 07 2010 16:54 eth3n wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2010 16:52 Douillos wrote: Wow between this and the terran 4OC build, dark dark times for zergs are coming :'( VR speed is gone
And? does that make voids les scary?
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StarGasm ahhhhhhhh yeeeaaaaaaaaa
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On December 07 2010 18:21 Douillos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2010 16:54 eth3n wrote:On December 07 2010 16:52 Douillos wrote: Wow between this and the terran 4OC build, dark dark times for zergs are coming :'( VR speed is gone And? does that make voids les scary?
seems like it... it makes VRs incredibly less useful for harass (and easier to fungal) and will prevent P from letting the VRs stray too far from his base at all before reaching critical mass, allowing much easier 2 base contain (which is what OP mentions as the most annoying weakness of this strat anyway). I mean at least thats what comes to mind...
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On December 07 2010 17:30 Tical3000 wrote: what if the zerg like refrains from building lings and goes like.. all muta?
If you scout properly, my guess would be to cannon up in the main not as much and get a lot of Phoenixes out instead.
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Voids with gateway army containing DTs on the ground is GG for zerg. DTs rip through hydras and voids rip through detection.
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I just watched to last replay but was kinda bothered about all the mistakes the zerg kept doing. Etc he was on 3base with 36~ workers in his main on minirals and 3 on minirals at his 3'rd for a long time, when he was nowhere near capped he was sitting at 3k minirals and about 100gas on 3 bases and still he expands very late. When he lost his 200 army he then makes mutas with 0 upgrades when he has been upgrading hydras all game long (even tho very slowly)? He then decides to tech brood lords for all his gas vs mass air, sends in his broods, loses them all and then he retreats without mutas even engaging.
However I can see the potential in this build if they allow it to go to lategame, very deadly indeed. Curious tho how it would do vs hydra ling/infestor, my tech choice if I was to come up against it (or I would probably aim for a early bust).
Glhf
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So it's obvious zerg has a hard time dealing with this. iamke55 do you have a rep where zerg actually wins using a hydra timing push or something similar ?
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On December 07 2010 18:25 eth3n wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2010 18:21 Douillos wrote:On December 07 2010 16:54 eth3n wrote:On December 07 2010 16:52 Douillos wrote: Wow between this and the terran 4OC build, dark dark times for zergs are coming :'( VR speed is gone And? does that make voids les scary? seems like it... it makes VRs incredibly less useful for harass (and easier to fungal) and will prevent P from letting the VRs stray too far from his base at all before reaching critical mass, allowing much easier 2 base contain (which is what OP mentions as the most annoying weakness of this strat anyway). I mean at least thats what comes to mind...
IMO voids are useless for harass, phenix's just give much more of a hard time... VR for me has to be incorporated for maximum efficiency...
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i just did this build, and i have to say, that it... is... awesome!!! i will really miss flux vanes.... :\
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Yes this strategy is very nice but only good on maps with a easy forge FE, which are LT (not close spawn), shakuras and jungle. Meta cross spawn and scrap station are also somewhat possible, on other maps this is just suicide.
The actual proper counter to this strat is simply mass corruptors. Corruptors ARE slightly cost effective against voidrays with the use of corruption (and having equal armor upgrades to voidray attack upgrades) and are actually even easier to mass then corruptors. They are also fast enough to deal with voidray harass and also deal with the colossi. Hydra, corruptors, with roach or ling as mineral outlet can beat a voidray colossus combo quite well. As zerg the proper counter to this is simply to get fast lair skipping ling speed(which is the best option against a forge FE anyways except for a garanteed bust) and then getting super quick hydra with perhaps 1 extra queen to defend against the first 2 voids. Then zerg can push or threaten to push while getting a third. IF you went 2 stargate voidrays it's actually quite difficult to stop a hydra push especially if they threaten overlord drop as well.
I actually think that zealot/templar/voidray is a better combo then voidray/colossi. Voidray colossi is easier to start early on but can simply be countered by hydra/corruptor especially as zerg has a less gas heavy army so has a much more efficient economy. By using zealots+templar instead of colossi you are actually reintroducing minerals as a effective resource AND you get to use your super fast forge and council to get quick upgrades. 1-1 chargelots do great against hydra as well (+1 attack lets zealots 5 shot a hydra instead of 6 shot and +1 armor is good to survive a bit longer). Adding in templar then helps vs the critical hydra/roach masses (when zealots start to bump in to eachother).
Either way I think speedrays are actually a bit OP lategame vs zerg now (as it's near impossible to defend and they are great main army units as well) and taking team games into consideration it's a fine choice they actually removed the tech. I do think they could have lowered the fleet beacon cost as well though since that's even more useless now and it would definately be nice to see carriers/motherships a bit more instead of being used as a mere insult unit.
After the patch mass voidray will die out in favor of phoenix harass imo. Phoenixes are slightly better at harass vs a good player imo (lower damage potential but much faster) and they are also slightly better to hold off hydra. The nail in the coffin for this strategy though is that phoenix will be building much faster soon so phoenix harass will probably be possible from 1 stargate whereas voidray balls definately need 2.
Also fungal change is probably being reverted, but i don't think it matters as much for air harass strategies without fungal hitting air these kind of strategies would simply be OP with the state of hydra's. (hydra's need a buff).
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I've played against this quite a few times...
The only ways I know to beat it are muta/ling or all-inning... Its a very solid build.
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MrBitter how do you get rid of the initial phoenixes, get 4-5 corruptors or just micro the hell out of the mutas, like wait for phoenixes to get close and hit them, then as they run back off, and repeat ?
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It's a good strategy, you made VR's look very OP in that game on Xel'Naga vs allowicious. The VR ball literally took 1 second to kill a hatchery o_O Even though the Zerg totally outmacroed you and was on 6 bases, the armies he churned out got burned even faster whilst your army barely took any damage.
Didn't like the blind 15 Nex Forge FE on Xel'Naga Caverns though, you didn't have any unit out until 6:40 lol. You got lucky that the Zerg just took a third base and droned, because he could have run pretty much any attacking unit into your mineral lines and you'd be dead
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I've been doing a similar build but incorporate a late gateway army as well while mostly just using voids to deny early 3rds and defend vs roach pushes and then part of my deathball late game.
It is very clear that gas is the restrictive resource in the build so using gateways and zealots as a mineral dump helps so you can push out a bit earlier.
I also build the an initial robo when resources allow after the 2 stargates just for an observer to stop creep spread and allow for a quicker colossi transition when I scout/suspect hydras.
Early robo also helps in securing your 3rd with a warp prism on island expos which is possible on LT and Scrap Station, two maps which I like to use this build on. It's also safe to expand on the map with the shared expo between backdoor rocks (forgot map name) if the rocks on the other side hasn't been knocked down.
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On December 08 2010 02:46 Skyro wrote: I also build the an initial robo when resources allow after the 2 stargates just for an observer to stop creep spread and allow for a quicker colossi transition when I scout/suspect hydras.
I've been actually going 1 robo 1 stargate after expanding lately and it's been working great. The Phoenix response is a bit slow because you need time to add the second stargate, but next patch that shouldn't be a problem.
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On December 07 2010 22:34 Markwerf wrote: Yes this strategy is very nice but only good on maps with a easy forge FE, which are LT (not close spawn), shakuras and jungle. Meta cross spawn and scrap station are also somewhat possible, on other maps this is just suicide.
The actual proper counter to this strat is simply mass corruptors. Corruptors ARE slightly cost effective against voidrays with the use of corruption (and having equal armor upgrades to voidray attack upgrades) and are actually even easier to mass then corruptors. They are also fast enough to deal with voidray harass and also deal with the colossi. Hydra, corruptors, with roach or ling as mineral outlet can beat a voidray colossus combo quite well. As zerg the proper counter to this is simply to get fast lair skipping ling speed(which is the best option against a forge FE anyways except for a garanteed bust) and then getting super quick hydra with perhaps 1 extra queen to defend against the first 2 voids. Then zerg can push or threaten to push while getting a third. IF you went 2 stargate voidrays it's actually quite difficult to stop a hydra push especially if they threaten overlord drop as well.
I actually think that zealot/templar/voidray is a better combo then voidray/colossi. Voidray colossi is easier to start early on but can simply be countered by hydra/corruptor especially as zerg has a less gas heavy army so has a much more efficient economy. By using zealots+templar instead of colossi you are actually reintroducing minerals as a effective resource AND you get to use your super fast forge and council to get quick upgrades. 1-1 chargelots do great against hydra as well (+1 attack lets zealots 5 shot a hydra instead of 6 shot and +1 armor is good to survive a bit longer). Adding in templar then helps vs the critical hydra/roach masses (when zealots start to bump in to eachother).
Either way I think speedrays are actually a bit OP lategame vs zerg now (as it's near impossible to defend and they are great main army units as well) and taking team games into consideration it's a fine choice they actually removed the tech. I do think they could have lowered the fleet beacon cost as well though since that's even more useless now and it would definately be nice to see carriers/motherships a bit more instead of being used as a mere insult unit.
After the patch mass voidray will die out in favor of phoenix harass imo. Phoenixes are slightly better at harass vs a good player imo (lower damage potential but much faster) and they are also slightly better to hold off hydra. The nail in the coffin for this strategy though is that phoenix will be building much faster soon so phoenix harass will probably be possible from 1 stargate whereas voidray balls definately need 2.
Also fungal change is probably being reverted, but i don't think it matters as much for air harass strategies without fungal hitting air these kind of strategies would simply be OP with the state of hydra's. (hydra's need a buff).
I think you're missing a key concept of this build, which is the fact that you don't need to be aggressive at all with this build. Your goal is to get to 200/200, not to win with some mid-game colossus/void ray combo.
That's why the correct mineral dump are cannons, not zealots. Zealot/templar/void is a good aggressive mid-game combo, but cannon/colossus/void is a much better defensive combo for securing expos and turtling to 200/200.
Likewise, because of those cannons, I don't know if I agree with you that mass corruptors are the best answer to this. If you're going to challenge the void ball with corruptors, you'll need to invest a LOT in corruptors, which don't do very well against cannons. And if your hydras don't have roach backup, they die pretty quickly to colossus. You could say that hydra/roach/corruptor works, and it does, but that's pretty standard....
And again, phoenixes are not going to replace void rays after the patch because this is a late game strategy - whether you're harassing with phoenix or void rays at the beginning of the game has little effect on this build.
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it's a really strong strat and you don't want to make gateway units that just get slaughtered by hydras(waste of money). but the biggest reason you don't want to make gw units is because it eats into your supply and makes your VR collosi deathball weaker by having less collosi/VR when you max out
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On December 08 2010 08:03 dOpa wrote: it's a really strong strat and you don't want to make gateway units that just get slaughtered by hydras(waste of money). but the biggest reason you don't want to make gw units is because it eats into your supply and makes your VR collosi deathball weaker by having less collosi/VR when you max out
What? That's completely wrong. Voids get slaughtered much faster than stalkers do vs hydra. You're actually saving money here. And this build isn't one where you max to 200/200 off of only 2 bases. You're going to have 3-5 bases by then, and you'll have enough income to easily replace stalkers with voids as you're getting to 200/200. You can even sac them if you want, it shouldn't matter.
If you don't make gateway units, it should be for other reasons, such as: you want to maintain air superiority if they go the spire muta/corruptor route, or you want a stronger harass force/more deadly backstab threat to keep Zergs in their base.
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if you fight hydras with VR's you just aren't very bright. i never told you to fight hydras with VRs. the thing about VRs is you get to pick your fights due to their mobility + with flux it's even easier to move around and harass. i also never said you max out on 2 bases. as soon as you begin harassing you should be taking a 3rd
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lol, you can't pick your fight when hydras are knocking at your door (nat or 3rd).
If you understand that your income is pretty high with this build, why should having stalkers in your army be a big deal? Just sac them and replace with voids when you get close to 200/200. You're not going to have that many left by late game anyway.
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Yeah like I said in my above post I just make gateways and mostly zealots as a mineral sink since the build is so gas heavy. They do get owned by roach/hydra but they are simply there to tank those precious seconds for your VR/colossi army to do their thing.
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lol anihc, of course you can pick your battles unless you don't know how to control the map and force your opponent back to their base or make them run around to save expos.
i'm 2500+ diamond and get paired against 2700+ zergs, so up to you to believe me or not
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Here's a replay of this build against a 2500 diamond zerg.
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/113683-1v1-protoss-zerg-metalopolis
I think opening 1 stargate 1 robo after your expansion like this is super flexible and can pretty much deal with anything the zerg tries if you scout appropriately. In this replay you don't really see hallucination use because the zerg tries to roach bust right around when it finishes, but normally right when that finishes researching you can find out exactly what the zerg is doing and respond appropriately (add a second stargate for spire, tech colossus immediately for hydras).
Basically you don't ever have to attack, because once your upgraded stalker+colossus+void ray death ball is finished you can kill entire maxed zerg armies twice over.
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They're removing flux veins because it's impossible to kill voidrays with vikings unless you can kite, and if hydras can't catch them zerg will lose to harass completely. Good guide though ^_^
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After playing against this build a few times, it seems alot like sair/reaver in BW. If you scout the build there's a window where you can punish them with with a hydra doom drop, you just have to catch the phoenix/void out of position. Other than that, I really struggle to find an opening in this build.
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The faster Phoenix has to help this build a bit in the early game, and by the time you'd be getting to Flux Vanes you're likely in a strong position anyway. Voids without speed are just as devastating in a massive 200/200 army of death, they just aren't quite the same when it comes to harassment. On the other hand, those fast Phoenixes will be even better for harassment.
Overall I think Stargate play is probably still very much alive in PvZ.
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sorry but pheonix micro in first game is bad you gotta run away from mutas not fly through them
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I wonder though if a carrier transition instead of colossi would work. Carriers are cost effective vs everything (even corruptors), especially if you are up on attack upgrades over his armor upgrades (not hard considering you have chrono boost).
It definitely would be a smoother transition as you can just toss down a fleet beacon after your 2 stargates, but the problem is the carriers massive build time which is almost 2x as much as colossi. Even still, since you can toss down your fleet beacon right after your stargates that's 70 seconds faster than going robo fac + robo bay, so your first set of carriers (probably 3, since you'd want to toss down a 3rd stargate while your fleet beacon was building).
So you'd have a carrier + whatever left over void ray/phoenix you have + zealots as a mineral sink. It could work.
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On December 08 2010 15:42 Skyro wrote: I wonder though if a carrier transition instead of colossi would work. Carriers are cost effective vs everything (even corruptors), especially if you are up on attack upgrades over his armor upgrades (not hard considering you have chrono boost).
It definitely would be a smoother transition as you can just toss down a fleet beacon after your 2 stargates, but the problem is the carriers massive build time which is almost 2x as much as colossi. Even still, since you can toss down your fleet beacon right after your stargates that's 70 seconds faster than going robo fac + robo bay, so your first set of carriers (probably 3, since you'd want to toss down a 3rd stargate while your fleet beacon was building).
So you'd have a carrier + whatever left over void ray/phoenix you have + zealots as a mineral sink. It could work.
No, it does not work. The reason you need colossus is to counter hydras. Carriers are not very good against hydras.
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On December 08 2010 15:58 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2010 15:42 Skyro wrote: I wonder though if a carrier transition instead of colossi would work. Carriers are cost effective vs everything (even corruptors), especially if you are up on attack upgrades over his armor upgrades (not hard considering you have chrono boost).
It definitely would be a smoother transition as you can just toss down a fleet beacon after your 2 stargates, but the problem is the carriers massive build time which is almost 2x as much as colossi. Even still, since you can toss down your fleet beacon right after your stargates that's 70 seconds faster than going robo fac + robo bay, so your first set of carriers (probably 3, since you'd want to toss down a 3rd stargate while your fleet beacon was building).
So you'd have a carrier + whatever left over void ray/phoenix you have + zealots as a mineral sink. It could work. No, it does not work. The reason you need colossus is to counter hydras. Carriers are not very good against hydras.
Indeed. Carriers alone are a pretty poor choice vs Hydralisks.
Now, Carrier Chargelot? That's a different story Hydralisks will preferentially target interceptors, and zealots do SO much damage if they can get up close. Also a potential composition to switch to if you want to mix it up after getting your 4th or 5th base.
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On December 08 2010 15:58 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2010 15:42 Skyro wrote: I wonder though if a carrier transition instead of colossi would work. Carriers are cost effective vs everything (even corruptors), especially if you are up on attack upgrades over his armor upgrades (not hard considering you have chrono boost).
It definitely would be a smoother transition as you can just toss down a fleet beacon after your 2 stargates, but the problem is the carriers massive build time which is almost 2x as much as colossi. Even still, since you can toss down your fleet beacon right after your stargates that's 70 seconds faster than going robo fac + robo bay, so your first set of carriers (probably 3, since you'd want to toss down a 3rd stargate while your fleet beacon was building).
So you'd have a carrier + whatever left over void ray/phoenix you have + zealots as a mineral sink. It could work. No, it does not work. The reason you need colossus is to counter hydras. Carriers are not very good against hydras.
I tried it once a long time ago and it failed miserably due to them just making a ton of corruptors but the reason why I might give it another chance is if you already have a large void ray army then it would be pretty tough for the zerg player to suddenly catch back up on corruptors.
And carriers actually do surprisingly well vs hydras. Even in a scenario where the hydra force is able to move directly under a carrier fleet and focus fire it down, they still roughly break even on equal resources. Now imagine if you have a zealot wall and micro your carriers well. It's really no contest.
In my mind the question is still if you can survive until carriers come out (I believe your first set of carriers will come out around the same time as your first set of colossi if you went robo after double stargate), and how it would fare vs a zerg who switched to producing nothing but corruptors. I think you should be able to do well even vs mass corruptors since you will be able to stay ahead on upgrades but it's hard to gauge how fast a zerg will be able to produce corruptors vs say 3 stargates.
I will try it and report back. I think it would work best vs someone who tech'ed straight to hydras since they won't have the spire to quickly respond to carriers nor will you have to make many phoenixes to deal with mutas.
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As a Zerg player I swear this happened to me and I barely knew what to do Best advice is just mass corruptors =[
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Can you guys who are making gateway units post replays? It would help a lot since finals are coming up and I don't have time to figure out the timings myself.
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What is Blizzard's reasoning for removing Flux vanes?
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On December 09 2010 00:18 craz3d wrote: What is Blizzard's reasoning for removing Flux vanes? Maybe removing slowly the threat of mass noobrays in lower 3v3 4v4 leagues.
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Also interested in replays of gateway unit support. After a few games of coll/ray combos Ive' had several people mass corruptors on me and taking out the coll vulnerability from that is appealing.
Mass chargelots with a few dt or ht thrown in? I'm not sure how it would work but it would negate the mass corruptor response and depending on your templar timing it would free up gas.
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I'll see if I can post a few reps when I get home of gateway support, although my version of this build deviates a bit from the guide. I only get 1 stargate to begin with, then I stop making voids completely in the mid-game and just do standard gateway/robo unit comp. However, my goal isn't to win with that - I use the gateway/robo to secure myself additional expos with mass cannons so I'll have income late game to add in voids again. Also I don't purely mass voids either - I incorporate other high tech units with the voids, including HT, archon, immortal, and colossus - which is really the same idea as this guide - more high supply efficiency units to create a "death ball."
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Have gone up against a few Air Protoss- this can be REALLY hard to deal with!
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I´ve been working on stargate builds as protoss and the removal of flux veins really pissed me off....If the reason for it is teamgames......lets just say there are hundreds of "easy win" builds and they nerf VRs even more???
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I unit tested trying to beat this strategy, the only thing that beats it is ultra + hydra... pretty silly imo, since you have a fleet of base killers that can LOLOLOL over your base while your hydras arrive 10 seconds late to find a destroyed main and all the Voidrays gone. Its pretty silly.
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On December 08 2010 12:02 sixghost wrote: After playing against this build a few times, it seems alot like sair/reaver in BW. If you scout the build there's a window where you can punish them with with a hydra doom drop, you just have to catch the phoenix/void out of position. Other than that, I really struggle to find an opening in this build.
Hey man, just like to say thanks for exposing the drop weakness my build used to have. Every game I lose teaches me how to improve my strategy and write a better guide!
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On December 09 2010 01:59 Anihc wrote: I'll see if I can post a few reps when I get home of gateway support, although my version of this build deviates a bit from the guide. I only get 1 stargate to begin with, then I stop making voids completely in the mid-game and just do standard gateway/robo unit comp. However, my goal isn't to win with that - I use the gateway/robo to secure myself additional expos with mass cannons so I'll have income late game to add in voids again. Also I don't purely mass voids either - I incorporate other high tech units with the voids, including HT, archon, immortal, and colossus - which is really the same idea as this guide - more high supply efficiency units to create a "death ball."
I do it a little bit differently. I find air superiority so important in the matchup since it leads to map control so that is my main priority early on. Once that is secured your colossi will rip through everything else other than hive-tech (broods/ultras), which is then in turn destroyed by voids. This is why the colossi/void combo is so potent, it destroys virtually any zerg army composition possible.
My gateway units for me consists of almost entirely zealots. The gateway and zealots themselves for me is simply a mineral sink to tank damage for my expensive voids and colossi. I have no gas to go for anything else other than perhaps a sentry or 2 for guardian shield.
There are of course times when the battle for air superiority causes a mass corruptor reaction from zerg (this is actually a fairly rare response from my experiences). This is the only case where I don't make colossi and just mass a gateway army of zealot + stalker + sentry with my mass phoenix and push out. They will have invested so much resources in corruptors you should be able to win the ground battle quite handidly and with guardian shield phoenixes actually come out roughly even with corruptors (make sure you get +1 air weapons as well).
edit: Oh and I'm assuming the people asking for replays are looking for the gateway timings. Basically I make the gateways when I start to stockpile extra minerals, which is right around the time your 2 bases starts to become fully saturated. So this is AFTER you toss down your 2 stargates and robo.
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Anyone testing this on PTR and have some input on how it holds up?
My main issue is the midgame, I feel very weak during a point where they have mutas + hydras while I have a few phoniex / voids and either 1 coll or 1 building. Basically they give up the fight for air control and while you get in some harass they pump units for a counter attack to overrun you. What are y'all doing to hold during the mid game?
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hmm, mass corruptors and roaches + hydras can counter this ?
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On December 14 2010 06:26 SethDrone wrote: Anyone testing this on PTR and have some input on how it holds up?
My main issue is the midgame, I feel very weak during a point where they have mutas + hydras while I have a few phoniex / voids and either 1 coll or 1 building. Basically they give up the fight for air control and while you get in some harass they pump units for a counter attack to overrun you. What are y'all doing to hold during the mid game?
IMO going double stargate off a FE is more about getting safely getting into the midgame on an equal economy to the zerg while at the same time denying zerg his 3rd base. The phoenix build time buff will only help that. The loss of VR speed hurts the late game harassment ability of your VRs but the build is flexible to transition into anything late game IMO. The vast majority of my games end before I even think about getting void ray speed.
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I have yet to lose a game with this.
I just dump all my minerals into cannons/probes/pylon/void and no zerg is going to break mass cannons with proper void ray support.
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On December 14 2010 08:12 Abstinence wrote: I have yet to lose a game with this.
I just dump all my minerals into cannons/probes/pylon/void and no zerg is going to break mass cannons with proper void ray support.
Glad it's working for you!
For those of you who are having trouble, post replays so I can see if you're doing anything wrong.
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On December 14 2010 08:12 Abstinence wrote: I have yet to lose a game with this.
I just dump all my minerals into cannons/probes/pylon/void and no zerg is going to break mass cannons with proper void ray support. It sounds as you're not making any collosus???
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Haha hilarious thread, well made, well made!
Such a good point that you can afford to spam cannons (ok who wouldn't want to be able to?!) for such gas heavy builds (which happen to be fun!)
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If you add some carriers? Is it worth it? Or just VRs are good enough?
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I watched your game on the PTR where you did this and forgot to rebuild your only warpgate (lol). It was on Shakuras as I recall.
There were times when you have 2500 minerals. You could have just sunk them all into zealots or or something. You only won because your zerg opponent was terrible... just saying...
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Why would I rebuild my gateway (not warpgate, no point wasting 50/50 on the research) if my strategy doesn't involve making any units from it? Speaking of PTR, muta/corruptor may be too difficult to deal with without flux vanes. But then it becomes a question of whether they can build enough mutas to overcome my cannons if they get corruptors.
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iamke55, what do you think about transitioning into carriers after 3d base is secured in the next patch without flux vaines?
And when I tried this build, even though i got the tech for colossi, i just ended up massing void rays. I felt only void rays would benefit my death ball more since its more mobile and because i found my opponents to always go hydra/ corrupter vs mass void and not only hydra, is that something you have experienced aswell?
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Here's a game I just played vs muta/infestor/corruptor
Note that I forgot to send probes to my 3rd gas, which cut into my air unit count greatly, but also gave me the minerals to fail repeatedly to expand, and then still have enough left over to spam cannons once I finally got the expo up.
His reaction to the game:
Going carriers after a 3rd base is a bad idea because it makes you so vulnerable to corruptors. Void rays and corruptors already break even in same cost or same supply battles, you just dominate them in real games because you're way ahead in upgrades and nobody goes corruptor when they see how many cannons you have. If you make carriers, corruptors start to become cost/supply effective vs your army. You generally don't want to do a real attack until you hit 200/200, at which point you have 2 void rays per 1 carrier you'd have otherwise, and 2 void rays are better than a carrier.
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I watched one game and I kept thinking "corrupters"
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late game speed voidrays are total hell for zerg
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On December 16 2010 16:51 JeanLuc wrote: I watched one game and I kept thinking "corrupters"
Watch another game and you will think "nvm, corruptors suck"
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two things:
1) Seems like this loses to a good 7RR. The "early roach pressure" you mentioned shows roaches attacking you at 8 minutes, not the 5:20-30 of a good 7RR build.
2) It blows my mind that in four pages no one mentioned neural parasite.
Does everyone suck with infestors?
Infestor/hydra would rip the shit out of this build.
Easiest way to turn a 200 food army into an actual 300 food army is neural parasite. Make a ball of hydras, FG then NP half his voids, and your army will melt pretty quick.
Sorry I don't have a replay, as this has never happened to me... but whenever I play against someone who masses an expensive unit, my instinctual reaction is simply tech infestors with NP. There isn't anything you can do about it when I control your units, except hope that my range 9 infestors spamming NP on your ball will die before I reach critical NP mass.
You seem like you've been doing this a while though.... do you have a replay off infestor/hydra (with NP) failing? I'm not talking about 4 infestors, which doesn't count as infestor/anything in a 200 game imo. But if you have 25 void rays and 6 colossi, a reasonable counter army would have at least 15 infestors and maybe 20 hydras ABOVE 0/0.
If that guy with 7 bases had made some infestors and done something other than FG your death ball then right click his units into it, seems to me you'd have lost pretty handily.
p.s. - it's cool that you have this build and to see that it is indeed viable in high levels of play, as it exploits current gaps in good players' skills right now. Hopefully even without flux vanes you'll be able to continue doing it.
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Rage-deleted the rep, but I just wanna say that I can NOT recommend doing this build on scrap station.....the problem I encountered there is, that, once zerg establishes a somewhat "safe" position against harassment, it's literally impossible to deny them the gold without dying when they bust down the shortcut-rocks. Meanwhile you can't really take a 3rd either. The zerg can just camp with hydras outside your cannons, have spotters outside your natural and everytime he sees you flying out he will poke in. Then he gets a quick 4th, trades armies once, replenishes everything with the saved up larvae and stomps you. 15 Nexus is very possible on scrap, but I'd advise against a non-gateway army.
I strongly recommend sticking with the maps mentioned by the OP: shakuras is awsome, on jungle basin it's imo even OP since you can deny 3rds so easy while having such a safe natural, lost temple also good, although I have to admit that 90% of my zerg-opponents try to bust me down, so better be prepared for this. On shakuras I would go for a very quick third if you don't scout any signs of immediate aggression, thirds are so easy to secure on this map if you have air control. If you are cross-pos I think it's best to bust down the backdoor-rocks and put the 3rd onto the happy-face expo, if you put a spotter-pylon on the other side you are practicly untouchable for quite some time.
PTR-question since I'm a poor 2nd class european: What do you think of: a) generally staying on 2 stargate way longer if they play mutas, since phoenixes build so fast now? b) opening with 4 heavily chrono-boosted phoenixes before void rays to quickly kill unprotected queens?
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On December 08 2010 17:09 Heaven. wrote: As a Zerg player I swear this happened to me and I barely knew what to do Best advice is just mass corruptors =[
Nah. Hydra+ Corruptor+ Infestor is the magical trio.
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On December 16 2010 19:13 7mk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 08 2010 17:09 Heaven. wrote: As a Zerg player I swear this happened to me and I barely knew what to do Best advice is just mass corruptors =[ Nah. Hydra+ Corruptor+ Infestor is the magical trio. Yes, If you can actually hold the speedrays down, it is quite beatable. You'll need infestors, hydras, corruptors and good creep spread to get them there in time. All of these are incredibly gas heavy. Just taking your few void rays and snipe the extractors. This easily holds them off on getting enough units fast enough. Not to mention, if you have good map awareness, and you should have map control, you can easily position your army near cliffs and empty spots such that only a few units can attack at a time. The stacking on your void rays makes any engagement near a ledge absolutely winnable.
Speedrays are probably the most overpowered unit in the game. They have no air counter and run away from everything on the ground. The best part is as day 9 says, the transition. With void rays being so gas heavy you can cannon as much as you like to get to them.
Think this strategy will still have lots of potential after the flux vanes nerf, but it won't be nearly as OP.
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Hah, I just saw this post, but i've been using a very similar strategy in my PvZ games lately, on shakuras, LT, and jungle basin... I normally pylon block the zerg's expo, go for like a 16 nexus, then get a forge and cannon myself in. Unless he went for a fast pool, I get my wall-in up in time to stop the lings from getting to me... and the fast voids shut down any roach busts, and often kill his third.
I don't actually use flux vanes when I do this, however. I generally just make 6-7 voids, and then switch to colossus + stalker tech, and just take a third at around 14 minutes when I have 6-7 voids, 4-5 colossus, and 15 or so stalkers, while denying zerg thirds with my large colossus / void / stalker ball.
The zerg almost always goes hydra in response to void ray harass and denial of his third, so the blind switch to colossus works very well. if I see him going mutas, like you said in the guide, throw down a third stargate and pump phoenix while making zealots out of my gates to deal with lings. Works like a charm.
The coolest thing about non-speed rays is that they have the same movement speed as colossus... making your colossus / stalker / void ball all stack on top of each other pretty much, and can seriously annihilate anything even close to it, so long as you don't let the zerg surround you.
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Got owned two times by this strategy. First time i was caught off guard. Second time I knew what was coming and defended pretty good with hydras but my hydra, infestor, corruptor mix got BADLY owned a few minutes later by mass voids + colossi from a two base protoss.... No chance of breaking him due to mass building wall and cannons. Im a 2500 diamond zerg
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After seeing GuineaPig's games in the GSL and reading this thread I decided to give this strategy a go in my PvZ. So far I'm 4:3 W:L with it, but every time I've made it to the mid game I've won in a commanding fashion at ~2K diamond level. This strategy really lets you go toe to toe with a zerg in a pure macro game, I've just got to work on the early defense now really.
So thanks for the thread! This is now my go to strategy for PvZ; I like it much more than the ground based pressure builds described in Plexa's PvZ guide. I no longer feel like I'm walking on razer wire trying to get the zerg player to make a mistake so I can win.
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The ground based builds described by plexa (IST composition, specifically) I still find to be much more... stable... than this build. Maybe its a lack of practice with this, but it just feels like its less gimmicky, and therefore harder for the zerg to deal with.
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Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural.
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On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: OK, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by Air. 2) P CANNOT Never scout a Zs gameplan until his First PhoeNix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for Hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, Speed overlords and 20 lings. At this Point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 Air units out (1 PhoeNix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with Hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit Into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your Natural.
Perhaps the build need to be slowed down a bit, but it's definitely viable. If zerg learns how to deal with it we'll see modifications.
I think you're way to negative on this one.
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All those cannons definitely seem wasteful. Maybe a few less voids and a couple more zealot/stalkers would be ideal.
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rofl. i guess i will switch to protoss because this is beyond ridicilous
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On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural.
Replay? I find it hard to believe a Zerg doing a standard opening can switch to a hydra drop that fast if they scout first before deciding.
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On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural.
1) I don't understand what you're saying here. I can't make a stalker or sentry to prevent scouting, or hide my stargates or something? 2) My first stargate is done @ ~7mins, resulting in my first phoenix out a full minute earlier. I highly question your practice partners build order or macro. 3) No way you'll have 10 hydras at my doorstep at that time. Hydras are slow as molasses off creep. It'll take a while for hydras to truck it over to my base and if I scouted it I will have my defenses up. And no, I don't have to make 8 cannons "BLINDLY." Plus if you go double stargate into double robo you will have crazy excess minerals to dump regardless.
Also you need to stop theorycrafting. The protoss player will already have his deathball pushing out before you have the time to go lair -> OL speed -> OL drop.
And if you know your opponent is going FE into double stargate yes, fast hydra push is the best way to bust it w/o relying on luck like nydus. That's obvious. But don't act like there is no risk for the zerg player to cut econ and go fast hydras and push out when they could've easily gone 6 WG's. If they did it's instant loss for the zerg player since you won't be able to retreat with your slow off-creep hydras.
Now I don't actually follow the OP's unit composition as I don't make many initial voids and tech to colossus faster, as well as dump minerals into zealots. But the fact of the matter is FE is solid vs zerg on certain maps and it is wide open on what the protoss player transitions into. Double stargate opener is just one of those transitions, and it is very robust.
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On December 21 2010 01:59 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural. 1) I don't understand what you're saying here. I can't make a stalker or sentry to prevent scouting, or hide my stargates or something? 2) My first stargate is done @ ~7mins, resulting in my first phoenix out a full minute earlier. I highly question your practice partners build order or macro. 3) No way you'll have 10 hydras at my doorstep at that time. Hydras are slow as molasses off creep. It'll take a while for hydras to truck it over to my base and if I scouted it I will have my defenses up. And no, I don't have to make 8 cannons "BLINDLY." Plus if you go double stargate into double robo you will have crazy excess minerals to dump regardless. Also you need to stop theorycrafting. The protoss player will already have his deathball pushing out before you have the time to go lair -> OL speed -> OL drop. And if you know your opponent is going FE into double stargate yes, fast hydra push is the best way to bust it w/o relying on luck like nydus. That's obvious. But don't act like there is no risk for the zerg player to cut econ and go fast hydras and push out when they could've easily gone 6 WG's. If they did it's instant loss for the zerg player since you won't be able to retreat with your slow off-creep hydras. Now I don't actually follow the OP's unit composition as I don't make many initial voids and tech to colossus faster, as well as dump minerals into zealots. But the fact of the matter is FE is solid vs zerg on certain maps and it is wide open on what the protoss player transitions into. Double stargate opener is just one of those transitions, and it is very robust.
I was referring specifically to the OPs strategy and his replays. The way you play a 2 gate build off 2 base I cannot comment as I have no replays to look at.
There's no econ cutting. You go 2 fully saturated bases of hydras and just kill their shit because they have no way to stop the incoming stream of hydras at 9:00. Upload some of your replays and then I will comment on them as your post makes you seem like the theorycrafter.
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On December 21 2010 06:15 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 01:59 Skyro wrote:On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural. 1) I don't understand what you're saying here. I can't make a stalker or sentry to prevent scouting, or hide my stargates or something? 2) My first stargate is done @ ~7mins, resulting in my first phoenix out a full minute earlier. I highly question your practice partners build order or macro. 3) No way you'll have 10 hydras at my doorstep at that time. Hydras are slow as molasses off creep. It'll take a while for hydras to truck it over to my base and if I scouted it I will have my defenses up. And no, I don't have to make 8 cannons "BLINDLY." Plus if you go double stargate into double robo you will have crazy excess minerals to dump regardless. Also you need to stop theorycrafting. The protoss player will already have his deathball pushing out before you have the time to go lair -> OL speed -> OL drop. And if you know your opponent is going FE into double stargate yes, fast hydra push is the best way to bust it w/o relying on luck like nydus. That's obvious. But don't act like there is no risk for the zerg player to cut econ and go fast hydras and push out when they could've easily gone 6 WG's. If they did it's instant loss for the zerg player since you won't be able to retreat with your slow off-creep hydras. Now I don't actually follow the OP's unit composition as I don't make many initial voids and tech to colossus faster, as well as dump minerals into zealots. But the fact of the matter is FE is solid vs zerg on certain maps and it is wide open on what the protoss player transitions into. Double stargate opener is just one of those transitions, and it is very robust. I was referring specifically to the OPs strategy and his replays. The way you play a 2 gate build off 2 base I cannot comment as I have no replays to look at. There's no econ cutting. You go 2 fully saturated bases of hydras and just kill their shit because they have no way to stop the incoming stream of hydras at 9:00. Upload some of your replays and then I will comment on them as your post makes you seem like the theorycrafter.
No theorycraft, FE into double stargate into double robo is my standard build on LT, Scrap, Jungle, and Shakuras. I'm at work ATM but I don't know if I have a saved replay where they tech'ed straight to hydras since it is not a very popular ATM. I probably have a recent one vs roach or muta though since those are the most common responses to protoss FE. But I can assure your first stargate is done ~7mins if you FE correctly (double pylon).
Also FYI you can't "stream" hydras to my base. Phoenixes pick off hydras super fast if at anytime the phoenixes outnumber your hydras. You run this risk unless you keep your hydras protected in your base, which further delays the push.
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On December 21 2010 06:26 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 06:15 ChickenLips wrote:On December 21 2010 01:59 Skyro wrote:On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural. 1) I don't understand what you're saying here. I can't make a stalker or sentry to prevent scouting, or hide my stargates or something? 2) My first stargate is done @ ~7mins, resulting in my first phoenix out a full minute earlier. I highly question your practice partners build order or macro. 3) No way you'll have 10 hydras at my doorstep at that time. Hydras are slow as molasses off creep. It'll take a while for hydras to truck it over to my base and if I scouted it I will have my defenses up. And no, I don't have to make 8 cannons "BLINDLY." Plus if you go double stargate into double robo you will have crazy excess minerals to dump regardless. Also you need to stop theorycrafting. The protoss player will already have his deathball pushing out before you have the time to go lair -> OL speed -> OL drop. And if you know your opponent is going FE into double stargate yes, fast hydra push is the best way to bust it w/o relying on luck like nydus. That's obvious. But don't act like there is no risk for the zerg player to cut econ and go fast hydras and push out when they could've easily gone 6 WG's. If they did it's instant loss for the zerg player since you won't be able to retreat with your slow off-creep hydras. Now I don't actually follow the OP's unit composition as I don't make many initial voids and tech to colossus faster, as well as dump minerals into zealots. But the fact of the matter is FE is solid vs zerg on certain maps and it is wide open on what the protoss player transitions into. Double stargate opener is just one of those transitions, and it is very robust. I was referring specifically to the OPs strategy and his replays. The way you play a 2 gate build off 2 base I cannot comment as I have no replays to look at. There's no econ cutting. You go 2 fully saturated bases of hydras and just kill their shit because they have no way to stop the incoming stream of hydras at 9:00. Upload some of your replays and then I will comment on them as your post makes you seem like the theorycrafter. No theorycraft, FE into double stargate into double robo is my standard build on LT, Scrap, Jungle, and Shakuras. I'm at work ATM but I don't know if I have a saved replay where they tech'ed straight to hydras since it is not a very popular ATM. I probably have a recent one vs roach or muta though since those are the most common responses to protoss FE. But I can assure your first stargate is done ~7mins if you FE correctly (double pylon). Also FYI you can't "stream" hydras to my base. Phoenixes pick off hydras super fast if at anytime the phoenixes outnumber your hydras. You run this risk unless you keep your hydras protected in your base, which further delays the push.
I don't need a specific Z response, any replay will you do as you are essentially blind until your first phoenix reaches his base and your BO should essentially be the same provided the Z is 2 base.
If Phoenixes outnumber the Zs Hydras he is indeed doing something wrong. Looking forward to your replay though.
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thanks for posting a useless 1 base replay. This is imo even weaker than 2 base stargate play but has absolutely nothing to do with this build. please read the thread before you join a discussion
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On December 21 2010 06:58 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 06:26 Skyro wrote:On December 21 2010 06:15 ChickenLips wrote:On December 21 2010 01:59 Skyro wrote:On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural. 1) I don't understand what you're saying here. I can't make a stalker or sentry to prevent scouting, or hide my stargates or something? 2) My first stargate is done @ ~7mins, resulting in my first phoenix out a full minute earlier. I highly question your practice partners build order or macro. 3) No way you'll have 10 hydras at my doorstep at that time. Hydras are slow as molasses off creep. It'll take a while for hydras to truck it over to my base and if I scouted it I will have my defenses up. And no, I don't have to make 8 cannons "BLINDLY." Plus if you go double stargate into double robo you will have crazy excess minerals to dump regardless. Also you need to stop theorycrafting. The protoss player will already have his deathball pushing out before you have the time to go lair -> OL speed -> OL drop. And if you know your opponent is going FE into double stargate yes, fast hydra push is the best way to bust it w/o relying on luck like nydus. That's obvious. But don't act like there is no risk for the zerg player to cut econ and go fast hydras and push out when they could've easily gone 6 WG's. If they did it's instant loss for the zerg player since you won't be able to retreat with your slow off-creep hydras. Now I don't actually follow the OP's unit composition as I don't make many initial voids and tech to colossus faster, as well as dump minerals into zealots. But the fact of the matter is FE is solid vs zerg on certain maps and it is wide open on what the protoss player transitions into. Double stargate opener is just one of those transitions, and it is very robust. I was referring specifically to the OPs strategy and his replays. The way you play a 2 gate build off 2 base I cannot comment as I have no replays to look at. There's no econ cutting. You go 2 fully saturated bases of hydras and just kill their shit because they have no way to stop the incoming stream of hydras at 9:00. Upload some of your replays and then I will comment on them as your post makes you seem like the theorycrafter. No theorycraft, FE into double stargate into double robo is my standard build on LT, Scrap, Jungle, and Shakuras. I'm at work ATM but I don't know if I have a saved replay where they tech'ed straight to hydras since it is not a very popular ATM. I probably have a recent one vs roach or muta though since those are the most common responses to protoss FE. But I can assure your first stargate is done ~7mins if you FE correctly (double pylon). Also FYI you can't "stream" hydras to my base. Phoenixes pick off hydras super fast if at anytime the phoenixes outnumber your hydras. You run this risk unless you keep your hydras protected in your base, which further delays the push. I don't need a specific Z response, any replay will you do as you are essentially blind until your first phoenix reaches his base and your BO should essentially be the same provided the Z is 2 base. If Phoenixes outnumber the Zs Hydras he is indeed doing something wrong. Looking forward to your replay though.
Hopefully I have something in my recent folder. If I do I will post when I get home. I just hope you realize that any opener you do after a FE is blind and the Phoenix is probably the quickest scout you can get (outside of chrono'ing hallucination out immediately). The zerg can be just as blind. What if your sac OLs don't scout the stargate(s)? You are essentially making a very squishy, very slow army. There's a reason why teching straight to hydras is not very popular in PvZ.
And the point about Phoenixes outnumbering hydras is that the protoss will initially have a number of phoenixes out while you are getting your hydra mass up. So lone/stray hydras can easily get picked off if you're not careful.
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I've been doing something very similar for a few days now. It works well vs most zergs because they're so so roach focused. I've met two zergs in the last two days that put down a third hatch and went for a speedling all in with a bunch of extra queens and it absolutely crushed me though.
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On December 16 2010 16:51 JeanLuc wrote: I watched one game and I kept thinking "corrupters"
Void rays eat corruptors...
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to be fair, hydra bust on most maps pretty much entails you are prepping for the creep highway, I know OLs are vulnerable, but this makes a HUGE difference on the attack timing
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On December 20 2010 18:27 Vaporak wrote: After seeing GuineaPig's games in the GSL and reading this thread I decided to give this strategy a go in my PvZ. So far I'm 4:3 W:L with it, but every time I've made it to the mid game I've won in a commanding fashion at ~2K diamond level. This strategy really lets you go toe to toe with a zerg in a pure macro game, I've just got to work on the early defense now really. Lol when I saw GuineaPig's games I thought "omg does he read teamliquid?" xD The transition into making a bunch of zealots along with the rest of your army seems really smart though. Really you can make as many cannons as you want but if you make zealots instead you can have a maxed out army MUCH faster and it is a lot stronger against hydras and just about anything because zealots can tank so much damage and after charge is researched they can even dish it out too.
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Here is the only recent replay I have:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-station
My stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much.
You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech.
I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army.
Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play.
I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out.
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Highlights from your game v allowicious : most of your battles up until the last battle you had significantly lower supply, yet you rolled over his maxed armies in air to air combat.
Also the part where he sent a changeling zealot in your base after having witnessed only Voidrays and Phoenixes up until that point XD.
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I've been working on a pretty similar build. A couple of things I'm still refining:
When to get beacon and flux vanes (once I have 6ish) when/how many phoenixes to mix in. (one early to scout, one now and then to find stray overloads. Only more if they REALLY are massing mutas) double cybernetics core? ( I like it. You can use it to help wall off your third.) When/why for getting mothership (MOTHERSHIPS ARE AWESOME!!!)
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On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural.
1. unless you are spawning in close air positions (in which case the build will work much more effictevely), zerg wont be able to scout you before its too late. 2. you scout earlygame and you can poke to see how zs defences are, not to mention how many bases he has at all times. 3. i actually agree with this, as long as you are referring to fe and then 2 stargate. i find that against z the best strategy is to get a stargate asap and you can have your first VR at around 5:30. aat this point zerg will have 1 or 2 queens (possibly three), and if you managed to keep his queen count down while keeping your vr alive youll soon reach a critical mass for them. the key in this is using your gateway units to snipe the queens and once they are dead use your vr to just kill everything zerg has. if you ever get to the point where you have more vrs than zerg has queens, victory is guaranteed unless hydras are added for support (which can be easily prevented by continual harass
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what the fuck this build is so ridicilously imbalanced ... if properly executed the zerg has no_fucking_chance to win = o
and they are thinking about removing fungal vs air ... wtf is going on, i don`t understand it
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On December 21 2010 14:38 nick00bot wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2010 18:34 ChickenLips wrote: Ok, i can save all you guys even contemplating this strategy.
1) Z can easily scout it and adapt his BO to his liking since you do not prevent Stargate scouting by air. 2) P CANNOT NEVER scout a Zs gameplan until his first phoenix is out (8:25). 3) Z goes for hydra/ling bust and hits at around 8:30-9:00 with 10 hydras, speed overlords and 20 lings. At this point Protoss has 3 cannons and 2 air units out (1 phoenix, 1 voidray)
instant loss every single time.
I have regularly beaten a practice partner with hydra busts when he went for 2 stargate openings and even crushed someone who did it to me on ladder. It's not viable, period.
To be safe against this kind of 2 base you have to put around 5-8 cannons at your front BLINDLY. Then Z comes 1 min later with OLs and drops all his shit into your main while you still have nothing more than a few stargate units and 8 cannons in your natural. 1. unless you are spawning in close air positions (in which case the build will work much more effictevely), zerg wont be able to scout you before its too late. 2. you scout earlygame and you can poke to see how zs defences are, not to mention how many bases he has at all times. 3. i actually agree with this, as long as you are referring to fe and then 2 stargate. i find that against z the best strategy is to get a stargate asap and you can have your first VR at around 5:30. aat this point zerg will have 1 or 2 queens (possibly three), and if you managed to keep his queen count down while keeping your vr alive youll soon reach a critical mass for them. the key in this is using your gateway units to snipe the queens and once they are dead use your vr to just kill everything zerg has. if you ever get to the point where you have more vrs than zerg has queens, victory is guaranteed unless hydras are added for support (which can be easily prevented by continual harass
How ? When u scout double stargate its about time when u have already 45-50 drones so it should be too late for hydra bust and you CAN afford canon spamming anyways so you defend with ease.
I don`t think hydra bust is an option unless u go for it before you know its dual stargate.
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On December 21 2010 11:13 Skyro wrote:Here is the only recent replay I have: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-stationMy stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much. You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech. I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army. Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play. I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out.
ugh man, your first stargate unit finishes at 8:30. if its a little bit late, post one where you think youve executed it perfectly.
you make exactly 1 zealot with a completely tight walloff. how are you going to prevent roaches killing every single building with their +1 range?
If Z wanted he could have every single inch of your base scouted by OL as you make no units to prevent such scouting.
at 9:00 you have 3 stargate units done and 1 zealot. Please explain to me how you are holding off 10 hydras or can even begin to outnumber them?
I go for lair before ling speed which is a viable response to something like nexus first since it gives me really fast overseer scouting and most nexus first attacks dont happen before 9 to 10 min so im able to respond to those in time (burrow is a quick upgrade and completely shuts down 6gate)
Anways, you see 13 hydras on the way to his base at 8:50 with 6 more making. I am really interested in how you go from 1 zealot + 3 stargate units at 9:00 to defending 13 hydras on creep 30 seconds later.
You need something do defend such simple all-ins, even as P, if you go for such a greedy build. If you blindly make more defenses it weakens your play so much that it becomes bad vs. simple stuff like double expanding etc.
Anyways, I'm done with this discussion, I have better things to do than argue stupid P builds on the internet. Good day sir!
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On December 22 2010 00:03 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2010 11:13 Skyro wrote:Here is the only recent replay I have: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-stationMy stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much. You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech. I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army. Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play. I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out. ugh man, your first stargate unit finishes at 8:30. if its a little bit late, post one where you think youve executed it perfectly. you make exactly 1 zealot with a completely tight walloff. how are you going to prevent roaches killing every single building with their +1 range? If Z wanted he could have every single inch of your base scouted by OL as you make no units to prevent such scouting. at 9:00 you have 3 stargate units done and 1 zealot. Please explain to me how you are holding off 10 hydras or can even begin to outnumber them? I go for lair before ling speed which is a viable response to something like nexus first since it gives me really fast overseer scouting and most nexus first attacks dont happen before 9 to 10 min so im able to respond to those in time (burrow is a quick upgrade and completely shuts down 6gate) Anways, you see 13 hydras on the way to his base at 8:50 with 6 more making. I am really interested in how you go from 1 zealot + 3 stargate units at 9:00 to defending 13 hydras on creep 30 seconds later. You need something do defend such simple all-ins, even as P, if you go for such a greedy build. If you blindly make more defenses it weakens your play so much that it becomes bad vs. simple stuff like double expanding etc. Anyways, I'm done with this discussion, I have better things to do than argue stupid P builds on the internet. Good day sir!
First off your arguement makes absolutely no sense. It's like me seeing a replay you going mass roaches all game and say the protoss player should've went mass immortals. I can literally watch any replay and say if X player did this or made this he would've won beat that composition. Unfortunately games do not work that way.
For example you only note when my first stargate unit comes out. You don't question why it was a void ray (so obviously it takes longer to make)? Well let me explain so you can understand, it is because I scouted the spire earlier with my probe, no immediately threat of hydras. Thus I didn't need to do any additional scouting of his tech, I was more concerned with super early thirds. Hence the void ray. However he did not make an early 3rd, so I pull back.
I've defended roach pushes countless times with that wall-off. The only vulnerability is the cornor of one building, which can fit 2 roaches positioned perfectly. My first void will be out to defend vs any 2-base roach play before he can take down my wall. Void Rays are the same speed as non-upgraded roaches off creep. Once my first void ray pops all your roaches at my base are essentially dead.
And obviously I would react differently if I saw an all-in. Most all-ins are when the zerg player reacts to my FE by 1-basing. But did you not see me scout the spire. I know the muta timing. So I made phoenixes. Then my phoenixes scout hydra, so I make transition into colossi. I don't know about you but I don't do the exact same build order 15 mins into the game.
I could obviously also make a stalker if I wanted to prevent OL scouting. I saw no real need since he didn't scout but moreso the fact I already scouted the spire. If I scout the spire I know I pretty much have the game in the bag.
And I have no freaking idea how your hydras will be on creep while attacking my base. You think I will let you make a creep highway straight to my base with OLs or something when I have phoenixes on the field? And you act as though my phoenixes will not delay hydras by killing drones, queens or picking off stray hydras. If you actually read what I said about which maps I used this build on, you would realize that the rush distance is enormous for all the maps (LT, Shakuras, Jungle, Scrap) outside of close positions on LT, which I don't FE on obviously. The rush distance on LT is actually not great, but the build is still doable because the natural choke is so easy to defend with cannons and sentries.
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This is a 2300 diamond who claims to auto win against an opening created in the TSL house, used by tester and guineapig. Let that sink in.
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Actually.. What could zergs do about this? Mass mutas in response, or mass hydras like the players did. Or just be crazy agressive. Interesting... I'll have to test it out later.
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On December 22 2010 01:41 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 00:03 ChickenLips wrote:On December 21 2010 11:13 Skyro wrote:Here is the only recent replay I have: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-stationMy stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much. You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech. I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army. Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play. I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out. ugh man, your first stargate unit finishes at 8:30. if its a little bit late, post one where you think youve executed it perfectly. you make exactly 1 zealot with a completely tight walloff. how are you going to prevent roaches killing every single building with their +1 range? If Z wanted he could have every single inch of your base scouted by OL as you make no units to prevent such scouting. at 9:00 you have 3 stargate units done and 1 zealot. Please explain to me how you are holding off 10 hydras or can even begin to outnumber them? I go for lair before ling speed which is a viable response to something like nexus first since it gives me really fast overseer scouting and most nexus first attacks dont happen before 9 to 10 min so im able to respond to those in time (burrow is a quick upgrade and completely shuts down 6gate) Anways, you see 13 hydras on the way to his base at 8:50 with 6 more making. I am really interested in how you go from 1 zealot + 3 stargate units at 9:00 to defending 13 hydras on creep 30 seconds later. You need something do defend such simple all-ins, even as P, if you go for such a greedy build. If you blindly make more defenses it weakens your play so much that it becomes bad vs. simple stuff like double expanding etc. Anyways, I'm done with this discussion, I have better things to do than argue stupid P builds on the internet. Good day sir! First off your arguement makes absolutely no sense. It's like me seeing a replay you going mass roaches all game and say the protoss player should've went mass immortals. I can literally watch any replay and say if X player did this or made this he would've won beat that composition. Unfortunately games do not work that way. For example you only note when my first stargate unit comes out. You don't question why it was a void ray (so obviously it takes longer to make)? Well let me explain so you can understand, it is because I scouted the spire earlier with my probe, no immediately threat of hydras. Thus I didn't need to do any additional scouting of his tech, I was more concerned with super early thirds. Hence the void ray. However he did not make an early 3rd, so I pull back. I've defended roach pushes countless times with that wall-off. The only vulnerability is the cornor of one building, which can fit 2 roaches positioned perfectly. My first void will be out to defend vs any 2-base roach play before he can take down my wall. Void Rays are the same speed as non-upgraded roaches off creep. Once my first void ray pops all your roaches at my base are essentially dead. And obviously I would react differently if I saw an all-in. Most all-ins are when the zerg player reacts to my FE by 1-basing. But did you not see me scout the spire. I know the muta timing. So I made phoenixes. Then my phoenixes scout hydra, so I make transition into colossi. I don't know about you but I don't do the exact same build order 15 mins into the game. I could obviously also make a stalker if I wanted to prevent OL scouting. I saw no real need since he didn't scout but moreso the fact I already scouted the spire. If I scout the spire I know I pretty much have the game in the bag. And I have no freaking idea how your hydras will be on creep while attacking my base. You think I will let you make a creep highway straight to my base with OLs or something when I have phoenixes on the field? And you act as though my phoenixes will not delay hydras by killing drones, queens or picking off stray hydras. If you actually read what I said about which maps I used this build on, you would realize that the rush distance is enormous for all the maps (LT, Shakuras, Jungle, Scrap) outside of close positions on LT, which I don't FE on obviously. The rush distance on LT is actually not great, but the build is still doable because the natural choke is so easy to defend with cannons and sentries.
Your post shows that you 1. have not watched the replay 2. dont understand Z timings 3. dont understand how quickly Z can build up if left unharassed
glhf with your strategy though, i hope you have as much success as you can before people start insta-winning against it.
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On December 22 2010 02:13 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 01:41 Skyro wrote:On December 22 2010 00:03 ChickenLips wrote:On December 21 2010 11:13 Skyro wrote:Here is the only recent replay I have: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-stationMy stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much. You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech. I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army. Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play. I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out. ugh man, your first stargate unit finishes at 8:30. if its a little bit late, post one where you think youve executed it perfectly. you make exactly 1 zealot with a completely tight walloff. how are you going to prevent roaches killing every single building with their +1 range? If Z wanted he could have every single inch of your base scouted by OL as you make no units to prevent such scouting. at 9:00 you have 3 stargate units done and 1 zealot. Please explain to me how you are holding off 10 hydras or can even begin to outnumber them? I go for lair before ling speed which is a viable response to something like nexus first since it gives me really fast overseer scouting and most nexus first attacks dont happen before 9 to 10 min so im able to respond to those in time (burrow is a quick upgrade and completely shuts down 6gate) Anways, you see 13 hydras on the way to his base at 8:50 with 6 more making. I am really interested in how you go from 1 zealot + 3 stargate units at 9:00 to defending 13 hydras on creep 30 seconds later. You need something do defend such simple all-ins, even as P, if you go for such a greedy build. If you blindly make more defenses it weakens your play so much that it becomes bad vs. simple stuff like double expanding etc. Anyways, I'm done with this discussion, I have better things to do than argue stupid P builds on the internet. Good day sir! First off your arguement makes absolutely no sense. It's like me seeing a replay you going mass roaches all game and say the protoss player should've went mass immortals. I can literally watch any replay and say if X player did this or made this he would've won beat that composition. Unfortunately games do not work that way. For example you only note when my first stargate unit comes out. You don't question why it was a void ray (so obviously it takes longer to make)? Well let me explain so you can understand, it is because I scouted the spire earlier with my probe, no immediately threat of hydras. Thus I didn't need to do any additional scouting of his tech, I was more concerned with super early thirds. Hence the void ray. However he did not make an early 3rd, so I pull back. I've defended roach pushes countless times with that wall-off. The only vulnerability is the cornor of one building, which can fit 2 roaches positioned perfectly. My first void will be out to defend vs any 2-base roach play before he can take down my wall. Void Rays are the same speed as non-upgraded roaches off creep. Once my first void ray pops all your roaches at my base are essentially dead. And obviously I would react differently if I saw an all-in. Most all-ins are when the zerg player reacts to my FE by 1-basing. But did you not see me scout the spire. I know the muta timing. So I made phoenixes. Then my phoenixes scout hydra, so I make transition into colossi. I don't know about you but I don't do the exact same build order 15 mins into the game. I could obviously also make a stalker if I wanted to prevent OL scouting. I saw no real need since he didn't scout but moreso the fact I already scouted the spire. If I scout the spire I know I pretty much have the game in the bag. And I have no freaking idea how your hydras will be on creep while attacking my base. You think I will let you make a creep highway straight to my base with OLs or something when I have phoenixes on the field? And you act as though my phoenixes will not delay hydras by killing drones, queens or picking off stray hydras. If you actually read what I said about which maps I used this build on, you would realize that the rush distance is enormous for all the maps (LT, Shakuras, Jungle, Scrap) outside of close positions on LT, which I don't FE on obviously. The rush distance on LT is actually not great, but the build is still doable because the natural choke is so easy to defend with cannons and sentries. Your post shows that you 1. have not watched the replay 2. dont understand Z timings 3. dont understand how quickly Z can build up if left unharassed glhf with your strategy though, i hope you have as much success as you can before people start insta-winning against it.
1) You are questioning if I don't know what happened in my own replay? ok bud 2) Yes I don't know the timing of mutas when I spot the spire is ~9-10 mins. Yes I don't know hydras will be delayed when I spot his small muta army. Yes I don't know 2 base roach will be at my door ~7-8 mins depending on map, around the time my first void pops out and I own all your roaches. Yes I don't know the vulnerable spots in my wall-off, even though I spelled out exactly where they were in my post above. 3) What you don't seem to understand is how quickly a P can build if left unharassed. Protoss can easily keep up macro-wise via CB on equal bases.
And yes the strategy is fun and at least at my (and your) level there is nobody insta-winning vs me. Oh and btw there are actually quite a few pro replays of protoss players going FE into double stargate. It's actually starting to become a pretty popular opener after FE, but you wouldn't know that since you don't need to worry about it, you just hit your insta-win button.
edit: I just got back and watched your replay. Seems you are testing fast tech hydra vs fast tech HT, so ok (I agree with you fast tech HT isn't really viable). I don't see how this tells much considering he is testing something completely different (he doesn't even use his stargate for anything to scout half-assed, he could've just used hallucination), but some things to note:
-Your practice partner's initial FE is fine, but I hope in a real game he would scout with a probe to check army composition ~7 mins in (this is where you will decide to pump a void or phoenix initially). -You actually did not make any lings to stop a scouting which I assume isn't what you do in a real game because that would be ridiculous. You also did not research ling speed. I somehow doubt you do this in a real game either. These are things that, you know, would delay your hydras. -Also you do cut drones completely once your den so if he holds w/ cannons, he will be ahead. -Your practice partner only made 2 cannons to simply to strictly test fast HT vs fast hydra, because 2 cannons cannot even hold a 2 base roach rush (you can get a void out in time, but they will do significant damage to you if you don't have at least 3+ cannons). If you go through my past posts I have stated time and time again that yes, if they fast tech hydras you need to make quite a few cannons but that it is still scoutable/defendable and you don't have to make them blind. Just know the timings and scout with a probe and then initial phoenix if necessary.
Essentially your build is optimized to get hydras out ASAP. I understand that was the purpose of your testing. I hope you don't really believe you can extrapolate that into a real game scenario, where you will actually have to make lings and decide on things like ling speed and/or roach warren before lair or not. See if I were you, I could've just said that build is insta-loss vs 6-gate, but I know things can play out different in a real game. A protoss' build order is wide open after he FE's, and I was simply pointing out that a double stargate opener after FE is a very solid opener. If you react correctly to fast hydras you come about even (depends on a ton of factors here obviously) going into the late game, which I think most agree favors the protoss player. But not only that, but stargate opener completely shuts down all other common zerg responses HARD if played correctly (void stops early 3rds and roaches, phoenix shut down muta).
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On December 22 2010 02:13 ChickenLips wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 01:41 Skyro wrote:On December 22 2010 00:03 ChickenLips wrote:On December 21 2010 11:13 Skyro wrote:Here is the only recent replay I have: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/118692-1v1-protoss-zerg-scrap-stationMy stargate is a little bit late, but you can see the rough timing. My opponent is like a 2400-2500 rated zerg player, so mid-diamond. He has a weird reaction to my FE though, going for both spire and hydra den at the same time and not really focusing on his economy much. You can see I scout the spire but not the den with my suicide probe, so I spend some time pumping phoenix a bit before transitioning into robo tech. I pump out an initial void ray to deny any potential 3rd hatch but he didn't make a fast 3rd so it just became part of my army. Like I said I deviate a lot from the OP's unit composition as I only really make multiple voids if corruptors come into play. I've practiced many iterations of this FE into stargate opener and right now you seem to have to toss down 2 stargates in case of mutas, but with the patch with reduced phoenix build time I may be able to get away with 1 stargate but I will need to test it out. ugh man, your first stargate unit finishes at 8:30. if its a little bit late, post one where you think youve executed it perfectly. you make exactly 1 zealot with a completely tight walloff. how are you going to prevent roaches killing every single building with their +1 range? If Z wanted he could have every single inch of your base scouted by OL as you make no units to prevent such scouting. at 9:00 you have 3 stargate units done and 1 zealot. Please explain to me how you are holding off 10 hydras or can even begin to outnumber them? I go for lair before ling speed which is a viable response to something like nexus first since it gives me really fast overseer scouting and most nexus first attacks dont happen before 9 to 10 min so im able to respond to those in time (burrow is a quick upgrade and completely shuts down 6gate) Anways, you see 13 hydras on the way to his base at 8:50 with 6 more making. I am really interested in how you go from 1 zealot + 3 stargate units at 9:00 to defending 13 hydras on creep 30 seconds later. You need something do defend such simple all-ins, even as P, if you go for such a greedy build. If you blindly make more defenses it weakens your play so much that it becomes bad vs. simple stuff like double expanding etc. Anyways, I'm done with this discussion, I have better things to do than argue stupid P builds on the internet. Good day sir! First off your arguement makes absolutely no sense. It's like me seeing a replay you going mass roaches all game and say the protoss player should've went mass immortals. I can literally watch any replay and say if X player did this or made this he would've won beat that composition. Unfortunately games do not work that way. For example you only note when my first stargate unit comes out. You don't question why it was a void ray (so obviously it takes longer to make)? Well let me explain so you can understand, it is because I scouted the spire earlier with my probe, no immediately threat of hydras. Thus I didn't need to do any additional scouting of his tech, I was more concerned with super early thirds. Hence the void ray. However he did not make an early 3rd, so I pull back. I've defended roach pushes countless times with that wall-off. The only vulnerability is the cornor of one building, which can fit 2 roaches positioned perfectly. My first void will be out to defend vs any 2-base roach play before he can take down my wall. Void Rays are the same speed as non-upgraded roaches off creep. Once my first void ray pops all your roaches at my base are essentially dead. And obviously I would react differently if I saw an all-in. Most all-ins are when the zerg player reacts to my FE by 1-basing. But did you not see me scout the spire. I know the muta timing. So I made phoenixes. Then my phoenixes scout hydra, so I make transition into colossi. I don't know about you but I don't do the exact same build order 15 mins into the game. I could obviously also make a stalker if I wanted to prevent OL scouting. I saw no real need since he didn't scout but moreso the fact I already scouted the spire. If I scout the spire I know I pretty much have the game in the bag. And I have no freaking idea how your hydras will be on creep while attacking my base. You think I will let you make a creep highway straight to my base with OLs or something when I have phoenixes on the field? And you act as though my phoenixes will not delay hydras by killing drones, queens or picking off stray hydras. If you actually read what I said about which maps I used this build on, you would realize that the rush distance is enormous for all the maps (LT, Shakuras, Jungle, Scrap) outside of close positions on LT, which I don't FE on obviously. The rush distance on LT is actually not great, but the build is still doable because the natural choke is so easy to defend with cannons and sentries. Your post shows that you 1. have not watched the replay 2. dont understand Z timings 3. dont understand how quickly Z can build up if left unharassed glhf with your strategy though, i hope you have as much success as you can before people start insta-winning against it.
Post a replay of your autowins vs that practice partner, I would like to see that because for now - I don`t fucking believe you.
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In my experience doing this build.. many corruptors with some ground forces mixed in shut it down pretty easily.
Am I wrong?
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aaaand how exactly do you keep your Collosous alive when theres nothing to block lings form surrounding? They die awefully(should I say awesomely?) fast when that happens.
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Why are you posting this? The only similarity Kiwikaki's strategy has to the one presented in the OP is that they both have Voidrays...
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I cannot anyone to use such a lame strat^^ Voidrays are just the pure essence of evilness. It's like "Oh I cant win a normal game...I should cheese my way up...!"
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without reading full post - I can testify that col/stalker/void/zealot army absolutely melted roach/hydra/corruptor when someone used it against me - I believe its a powerful combination if you have a chance to pull it off
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On December 22 2010 20:08 Igaryu85 wrote: I cannot anyone to use such a lame strat^^ Voidrays are just the pure essence of evilness. It's like "Oh I cant win a normal game...I should cheese my way up...!"
I hope this is a joke. If not, you need to rethink what cheese is. Teching up to speedrays and collossus while taking three bases is not cheese. If harassing with rays is cheese, so is muta harass. So what do you want , toss to go templar or collassus every game against zerg?
I tried this last night (am only gold) and it was so much fun to play. The opponent even got a nydus worm in my base and after I fended it off abd I was still able to win. I wish i could have seen the look on his face when I attacked with 10 rays, 6 collassus and 2 carriers.
In short thanks for posting. I have to reread the OP to get more nuances.
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Can you rate my play? Didn't have a specific buildorder as this just came into my mind "hey let's try that speedrays build posted in TL for the lulz."
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Hey there! Just wanted to add my approval to this thread in general. I saw this go up in the Strategy Forum originally and - don't judge me! - kinda discounted it as a fad.
I saw GuineaPig's games and while I was impressed with them, up until two days ago I much preferred MC's Void Ray build. It's a similar concept (first VR denies scouts, Phoenix into base to see how he reacts) but it's a 1-gate Stargate --> 3-gate Stargate expo and after the Colossus tech-switch the Stargate goes largely unused unless Mutas come into play.
On Monday I was in a bit of a rut - Zergs at a ~2.6k level seemed to have learnt how to Roach/Hydra push me in the window between the expo and the Colossus transition and I was always playing on the back foot, so I gave this a go. By-and-large I followed Kiwi's build and skipped Colossi, using Sentries to minimise Hydra DPS against Voids and Hallucination instead of an early Phoenix to scout the response; I feel like the 3-gate Sentry expo allows you to rely on Voids a lot more and reduce the windows in which your tech-switches and expansions can be punished by eg. Roach/Hydra.
The long and short of it is that 2-Stargate Voids with a heavy Sentry count and light Zealot/Stalker is a 2-base army I feel cannot be denied a third at some point and if you delayed his third with Gateway mix/early Voids then you're in a ridiculously strong position until Infestors come out. Sadly although I've played a good few games with this now I don't feel like I've played the strategy to its fullest yet (slow on upgrades and forgetting cannons) so I'll hold off on posting any replays.
Very, very impressed. Excellent writeup of a solid, logical gameplan. Thanks very much!
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the only way to beat mass speed rays is fully upgraded hydras. but the problem is with the colossi that the toss player adds. Only chance to win is breaking his early forge expand cus when he gets his death ball, there is no chance in hell with any unit composition to beat the protoss even if you have 8 bases to 3.
nerf this bullshit or buff zerg anti air.
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It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
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On December 22 2010 22:45 yrag89 wrote:Can you rate my play? Didn't have a specific buildorder as this just came into my mind "hey let's try that speedrays build posted in TL for the lulz."
Pretty well played overall, though I have to question the quality of your opponent. 2 spine crawlers early on?
I think you should go 1 void ray + 1 phoenix as your first units instead of 2 phoenixes, so that you can put even more pressure on his third base. Later on, I think that against a roach/hydra opening, you should be aiming for 3 stargates and 1 robo on 3 bases, instead of 2/2. I've never felt the need for more than 6 colossi, and you can get overpowered by corruptors if you only have 2 stargates. You also could've upgraded air weapons more. To give you a benchmark, my 200/200 supply, +3 air weapons, 6 colossus 30 void ray push usually comes at around 21 minutes. Because you maxed out with stalkers instead of void rays, your supply dropped to 140 at the large battle, which I feel is dangerously low when your units are so expensive. I've never went below 170 after hitting 200.
Other than that, looked great!
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Great guide works realy good at my level (2400)
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On December 23 2010 10:47 iamke55 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2010 22:45 yrag89 wrote:Can you rate my play? Didn't have a specific buildorder as this just came into my mind "hey let's try that speedrays build posted in TL for the lulz." Pretty well played overall, though I have to question the quality of your opponent. 2 spine crawlers early on? I think you should go 1 void ray + 1 phoenix as your first units instead of 2 phoenixes, so that you can put even more pressure on his third base. Later on, I think that against a roach/hydra opening, you should be aiming for 3 stargates and 1 robo on 3 bases, instead of 2/2. I've never felt the need for more than 6 colossi, and you can get overpowered by corruptors if you only have 2 stargates. You also could've upgraded air weapons more. To give you a benchmark, my 200/200 supply, +3 air weapons, 6 colossus 30 void ray push usually comes at around 21 minutes. Because you maxed out with stalkers instead of void rays, your supply dropped to 140 at the large battle, which I feel is dangerously low when your units are so expensive. I've never went below 170 after hitting 200. Other than that, looked great!
Looking at your reply, I think i'm actualy loosing to mass corruptor trying this build for the only reason I make to much colossi...
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On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about
User was temp banned for this post.
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On December 24 2010 07:17 UFO wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about And who are you?
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That's one example of it. I have more.
Another counter if you're good at micro and can keep them alive, infestors are awesome as well.
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On December 24 2010 07:17 UFO wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about
You're actually looking like the fucking ignorant bullshitter here. Keep such language out of the forums, if you cannot argue your point without resorting to such immature behavior, don't even try participating in a discussion. Take a look at the replay and try to argue against that, just insulting people that try to point out potential flaws is the best way to 1. get warned and 2. deteriorate the quality of this thread.
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On December 24 2010 08:07 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2010 07:17 UFO wrote:On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about And who are you? [url blocked] That's one example of it. I have more. Another counter if you're good at micro and can keep them alive, infestors are awesome as well.
Consider reading the post before blindly claiming to beat this easily and submitting a replay.
What exactly is the difference between you and all of the other people claiming a competent player will easily win vs any build?
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On December 24 2010 08:07 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2010 07:17 UFO wrote:On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about And who are you? [url blocked] That's one example of it. I have more. Another counter if you're good at micro and can keep them alive, infestors are awesome as well.
Why do people keep posting replays of people losing while not doing this threads strategy as a reason why this threads strategy won't work? The Protoss in that replay made 1 cannon and you were able to just walk up and kill him. Ya, we knew that could happen already. You obviously can't be THAT greedy or you die to roach busts.
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On December 24 2010 08:07 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2010 07:17 UFO wrote:On December 23 2010 07:08 usethis2 wrote: It is a strong strategy for sure, but competent zergs will beat it handily with:
1. Mass roaches (you will have 2~3 VRs at most when he knock on your doorstep with 20 Roaches + reinforcement) 2. Fast hydras (close distance or drops) 3. Out-macro like crazy (like Ret showed in his RO64 game), lots of everything including corruptors
another terrible bullshit incompetent ignorant post of someone who doesn`t know what the fuck he is talking about And who are you? [url blocked] That's one example of it. I have more. Another counter if you're good at micro and can keep them alive, infestors are awesome as well.
Dude. What are you going to use to kill void rays once you've fungaled them? Hydralisks which will die to colossi, or corrupters, which voidrays kill easily, or the short-ranged mutalisks, which the protoss player will inevitably have phoenix to deal with also?
Oh, and please.. tell me how you're going to break MASS cannons with roaches and hydras. I'm not talking one wimpy cannon. I mean like... ten cannons+. About the same amount of money put into cannons as you did army.
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Keep posting replays? I only posted one. OK, well here is another one, arguably a closer game. I am not going to post any more replays because I am quite disappointed by the responses so far. (People seem to come up with some nonsense nitpicks, forget about personal attacks and their appeasers) 10 cannons? Seriously? Then you will not have ANY unit when the roaches arrive. (though you will see close to 10 in this replay)
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Imagine there were no rocks, that game could have been much shorter.
BTW these are 2.5K+ Koreans. I've posted replays because well, duh, I've learned the first thing people say when someone says something is "replays!" here. Just like someone (furtively) demanding replays with 10 cannons.
I did say the Stargate strategy is strong. It's indeed what everyone including myself does/tries to do these days. It is not fool-proof, obviously, and that's all I wanted to say. (nothing is)
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This guide is freakin' amazing. You sir are a gentleman and a scholar XD I used your strategy, had a really fun game (no sitting in base, plenty of action), got out a mothership, AND got BM from the zerg :D
In this game, zerg wen't early roaches, then, transitioned to hydra roach, then transitioned to mass corruptor http://www.mediafire.com/?hd49ygcekrik47y Opponent was 2600+ diamond
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MK4512: hope you enjoyed using it! A mothership is something I definitely need to add to my play. Once you have recalls, you're pretty much guaranteed to snipe their hive and hopefully upgrading spires, now that someone in another thread showed that 3-3 corruptors are decent vs this. Keep making speedrays until the patch hits in a few days...
edit: a few pointers as I watch the replay. Make sure you send a probe to check for a third base. This is the method for you to determine whether a baneling bust or mass speedling or roach all in is coming. Also you should patrol a probe in the dark spot of your main in case of a nydus. I might've forgotten to mention it in the guide, but you need to get 1 phoenix early on to scout which anti-air tech they're going and then keep it alive for the rest of the game to continue scouting. I loved the spire snipe! Preventing 3-3 air upgrades is another key to making this work, maybe I'll add that in to the guide. The complaints at the end were very typical. I get balance complaints almost every time I win with this.
I've started experimenting with variations of kiwikaki's build to open up with a standard 3 gate sentry expo and then transition into void rays. With Shakuras Plateau removed from the ladder map pool and flux vanes being removed in the next patch, this will probably become superior to the build in the OP. I had good results for the most part, especially once I started harassing with phoenixes to darken the Zerg's map vision. Here's a replay vs a very good player:
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Iamke any chance you'll remake the guide post-patch including more 3gate replays? That replay is good but the zerg was behind you almost the whole game, even at 14min with few prior engagements he's behind you. Generally at that point, without any large battles, they are pretty far ahead of the toss and not far from reaching 200/200.
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Just curious, but since these will be long games and u can spread creep like mad as Zerg, how do u think corruptor/Queen would do against it? Queens kind of deal with both the colossi and the void rays if transfuse micro is ok, their ground to air damage is amazing and since you are going corruptors which are a heavy gas unit, the queens can be a mineral sink + creep can be everywhere. Havn't had the chance to try it out though so if anyone feels up to it. ^^
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