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So I'm currently a gold level zerg but I'm climbing the ladder extremely fast ever since I fixed my ZvZ issues.
But I'm beginning to think about Diamond league and how I'll have to think outside of just having more units. Clearly I have to think about ways of dealing with particular unit compositions.
I've already thought of all sorts of different builds depending on the build my protoss opponent will go for except for one: Late game high templar.
I have to stop right here and say that unless you play high level diamond as either Protoss or Zerg, your opinion really doesn't mean a whole lot to me. I'm not trying to be mean or insulting but I really need opinions from people who can offer useful advice instead of "Just counter it with X".
The way I see it a 200 max army of protoss with High Templar will kill any 200 food zerg unit composition I can think of. If you divide your forces so storm doesn't kill everything you have you'll be drawn to thin and die. Bunch 'em up, you die. Terran players tend to make a few ghosts and EMP does a pretty good job of evening the odds but zerg?
This has me worried because I tend to go for the macro oriented games when I play. Sure the protoss I play against now are awful, but this can change fast as I continue to move up.
If any high level protoss or zerg have experience with this please share it as I really feel as though that one unit makes protoss unstoppable in the late game.
p.s For the record, I have never seen a ZvP replay where protoss goes for HT and loses with a 200/200 army.
EDIT: Sorry to mods for forgetting to put [H] in title. 
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Storm is not effective against roaches because of burrow, but the problem going roaches is that you then let yourself become vulnerable to the death-ball and the forcefields themselves.
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You need to push before he gets enough templars, and a good amount of roaches are effective against them-they have beefy health which can be regenerated, and they have 2.95 speed so they rarely take the full 80.
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Roach appears to be the closest thing to a solution but storm can still really hurt unless the only other units he's making is zealot. Stalkers and immortals can take serious advantage of storms.
The burrow is something I hadn't considered though. It's just that storm always seems to crush zerg when they try to form a concave. Hydraliks get flattened, same with mutas.
Thanks.
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It really comes down to having strong macro.
Your unit composition should be roach heavy, but you need to be sure that after a battle you have enough income/larva to make another round of roaches.
One tactic that worked well vs me as a Toss player is getting a group of speedlings and flanking the army from behind. You can target the templars, forcing them to storm themselves or just dying.
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Roaches with burrow and tunneling claws works well until he gets to 200/200. Ultralisks work if he happens to not have immortals or void rays (not likely). According to Liquid`Ret, once it gets to the 200/200 high templar army, you can't beat it, you have to run around denying expansions and win by starving him of resources. Only engage the army if it's a perfect spot to engage, otherwise just use drops and nydus worm and speedlings and anything you can to deny expansions and split his army up and stuff.
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As a P, I can say that the way you win at that stage is to out macro him. For all practical purposes you MUST be 1 base ahead of the toss at all times. At the very least you need an extra hatch in your main. you have to beat his 200/200 with a "300" food army by being able to reinforce really quickly.
In my experience Toss is typically weak in the window between when he gets Templar tech and when the 2nd base macro kicks in full (around 10 - 12 min). He will have maybe 100 food if he hasn't lost too much. If you let him get to 200/200 then yes you will be at quite a disadvantage in this situation. However if you stayed on roach tech and he didn't get immortals (quite likely if he went for templar tech) you should be able to just roll him or at least get the natural.
As another option, consider having 2 control groups of 12 slings or so sitting around the edges of the map so that when you engage him in the open you can send in speedling groups to his expos mineral lines. This is tough even for most diamond players to compensate for and requires little micro on your part. Even if he crushes your main force (you should also consider retreating before letting that happen) you will have done some damage to his econ and be able to macro up more quickly than he can.
Lastly... Ultras. If you can bring them out in any kind of numbers they will force him to use his templar for archons. At that point unless he already has a couple on the field you can typically take out an expo before he can marshall enough to stop 3-4 ultras with lings backing them up.
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On January 16 2011 10:31 Cambam wrote:
Roaches with burrow and tunneling claws works well until he gets to 200/200. Ultralisks work if he happens to not have immortals or void rays (not likely). According to Liquid`Ret, once it gets to the 200/200 high templar army, you can't beat it, you have to run around denying expansions and win by starving him of resources. Only engage the army if it's a perfect spot to engage, otherwise just use drops and nydus worm and speedlings and anything you can to deny expansions and split his army up and stuff.
Know what? I'm inclined to believe that since neither IdrA or Ret have shown any solution to that problem. Which, again, I find dumb because terran has such a direct way to deal with it and zerg does not.
I'm pretty much getting the same message from all you guys which makes me kind of glad, conflicting info is a pain in the ass. Thanks again.
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Roaches and hydras fall quickly to HTs late so if you're commited to them you really have to end the game earlier.
Ultras are okay on paper, but then you have to consider that they are terrible against archons which any protoss player that reaches 200/200 HTs is going to eventually transition into.
I find that broodlords spread out to some extent work fine, they take 3 storms to kill and are pretty strong against Protoss in general. In terms of brute force they'd be your best option. Archons can't easily get in range either.
In most of my ZvPs i tend to get infestors early with NP. Sometimes when the toss goes for HTs, he pushes in the mid game with some colossi, a standard gateway army, and 4/5 HTs. What I like to do is send a lone infestor out, hide it, and try to flank and surprise from the side where the HTs are most vulnerable. If the infestor has close to full mana you can fungal, NP a HT then storm them which guarantees all of them dying. Otherwise you can just NP a HT straightaway and either storm them, or feedback other HTs (which is what i tend to do without fungal). cross your fingers and hope he doesn't feedback your infestor before you can pull this off.
tl;dr, broodlords, some infestors, hydras
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you're right that going head to head with sizable armies, the added damage from storms can be very devastating to zerg. it was the same issue in bw, so think outside the box. first and foremost, storm dodging. let the templar spend their energy and retreat out of storms. they have ridiculously small radius compared to what they were in bw. also consider that your units can easily regain their hp whereas the protoss cannot.
you can also gain advantage in the game aside from [trying] to kill their army. muta econ harass and sniping buidings is the most effective way to deal with many protoss players. if protoss invest heavily in cannons its puts them far behind in unit count. you can get mutas out far faster than they can get a sizable force with HTs+storm so use that to your advantage.
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Storm is extremely strong vs Zerg as all our units die to powerful AOE splash like Colossus and Psi Storm. I've found that roaches with burrow and burrowed movement can help because if you dodge the storm, you can burrow and regen all your health. Obviously, when they get tonnes of high temps and start spamming storm it's hard to dodge, but you still have the ability to reload with a 200/200 army again. Try to engage protoss as much as you can and this will cause the energy to run out. Remember, they can either go high templar or sentry, they can't go both because of how much gas both the units require.
At the moment I don't think that ZvP is balanced at all. Protoss is having an easy time crushing zerg with their maxed army. I feel that Ultra Infestor Queen is an army composition that, while it requires tonnes of micro, will really crush any protoss ball. The infestors lock down the army, the ultras surround and start chewing through the units, and the queens heal the ultras. Getting to this composition is probably the hardest part, but I definitely think this is near unbeatable.
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On January 16 2011 10:47 ratMortar wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2011 10:31 Cambam wrote:
Roaches with burrow and tunneling claws works well until he gets to 200/200. Ultralisks work if he happens to not have immortals or void rays (not likely). According to Liquid`Ret, once it gets to the 200/200 high templar army, you can't beat it, you have to run around denying expansions and win by starving him of resources. Only engage the army if it's a perfect spot to engage, otherwise just use drops and nydus worm and speedlings and anything you can to deny expansions and split his army up and stuff. Know what? I'm inclined to believe that since neither IdrA or Ret have shown any solution to that problem. Which, again, I find dumb because terran has such a direct way to deal with it and zerg does not. I'm pretty much getting the same message from all you guys which makes me kind of glad, conflicting info is a pain in the ass. Thanks again.
It really only makes sense that Zerg not have a direct answer to Protoss Death Balls. Protoss are the in-your-face march of the Empire race that walk all over you with a massive army and Zerg are the finesse race that pokes and prods and keeps their opponent off-balance long enough to keep their army size down until the Zerg makes enough to swarm them.
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What kind of army does the P have? Is it mass HT? gate+HT's? HT's/robo units? It's difficult to provide a counter to HT's since they are a support unit and based on what your opponent gets you have to counter based on that. If he doesn't have stargates get broods out and kill him with those. If he has stargates he likely is lacking in immortals/colossi and you should be able to manage with a mix of lots of roaches with some hydras for dealing with the voids/carriers. Now if your toss opponent has a good mix of colossi/immortals/vrays/HT's/gateway units you didn't lose because of his unit composition(well thats part of it), you mostly lost because he outmacroed you or turtled on 2-3 bases massed an army and you didn't bother to take the map while he turtled.
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Zerg doesn't really have a set counter to templar. There are many a "soft counter" if you must, however. Basically, the response has a lot to do with what resources you have at your disposal. Many a situation, in fact, is answered by this kind of play. You don't want to waste that spire tech investing suddenly into roaches. Brood lords would be the best response and possibly dabbling In muta-diving stray Templar since they move quite slower than the rest of the death ball.
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you need infestors then mind control the high templar to storm his own army.
As protoss that would REALLY fuck me up!
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On January 16 2011 12:20 Moriarity wrote:
What kind of army does the P have? Is it mass HT? gate+HT's? HT's/robo units? It's difficult to provide a counter to HT's since they are a support unit and based on what your opponent gets you have to counter based on that. If he doesn't have stargates get broods out and kill him with those. If he has stargates he likely is lacking in immortals/colossi and you should be able to manage with a mix of lots of roaches with some hydras for dealing with the voids/carriers. Now if your toss opponent has a good mix of colossi/immortals/vrays/HT's/gateway units you didn't lose because of his unit composition(well thats part of it), you mostly lost because he outmacroed you or turtled on 2-3 bases massed an army and you didn't bother to take the map while he turtled.
That's fair actually. I was actuallly visualizing a game when I asked myself this question so here goes:
You're playing Shakuras Plateau as zerg. The protoss player goes for a fast expand. Applying initial pressure on your opponent you manage to get your 2nd expansion. Running off 3 bases, you power drones but the protoss player decides to deal with it by expanding himself. Eventually it becomes an all out marcro battle and you hit 200 food but he's already nearing the same count because he powered on 4 bases. Your attempts to harass fail but never cost either of you too much.
From the beginning he had planned on having a massive Stalker force, complemented by a half dozen immortals; everyting else would be devoted to HT. The army may include just a few sentries to block the zerg from retreating when storms are dropped.
That's really just for me, helps me if I need to explain anything. Essentially, he has a Stalker force with Immortals and HT.
Zerglings can't do anything to this: Anyone watch Huk crush a 100 zerglings that surrounded his Stalker army when he played Nestea? Day9 did his most recent daily on it but he basically killed every zergling Nestea had in 5 seconds with good storms.
Brood Lords: A good idea except with a main force of Stalkers, blink would be very easy to get and crush even a large number of BLs.
Utras: Immortal/Stalker with Storms to do a ton of dps; makes them way to costly to use in this case.
Infestors: The idea that you can NP a HT in a death ball with a unit that has 90hp and then manage to storm anything before it dies is silly. I'll believe it when I see it.
Roaches: Vs Stalker/Immortal? The HT wouldn't even need to waste energy. And burrow could be neutralized by Observers.
Hydras: Good against Stalker/Immortal, no contest vs HT.
Banelings: This... I actually consider. Sure, it would take a ton of banelings. But Stalkers with Immortals and HT aren't fast enough to run. The protoss would likely advance carelessly in one big ball. Storms may be unable to kill the banelings fast enough to stop them from dealing the required damage but I think this could go either way. A lot of "ifs" but I think it's worth looking into if it means you can at least push back the protoss and buy yourself time.
Mutas: Another thought was the idea of magic boxing directly over the army. The HT can't use storm anymore! The only problem with this is mutas would need to kill every single stalker and that's really unlikely.
Some posted that as zerg you should be able to rebuild your army fast enough in the event that the protoss attacks and crushes it. That only works if you deal enough damage to push him back and I've seen pro gamers face this type of unit composition and end up killing maybe 5-6 Stalkers before losing 3/4 of their army. You can't come back from that no matter how fast zerg replenishes it's units.
This is simply a scenario in my head but I'd like to think of this as an oppurtunity to brainstorm ZvP in general.
Good players: Share your thoughts.
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On January 16 2011 11:36 Dysk wrote:
Roaches and hydras fall quickly to HTs late so if you're commited to them you really have to end the game earlier.
Ultras are okay on paper, but then you have to consider that they are terrible against archons which any protoss player that reaches 200/200 HTs is going to eventually transition into.
I find that broodlords spread out to some extent work fine, they take 3 storms to kill and are pretty strong against Protoss in general. In terms of brute force they'd be your best option. Archons can't easily get in range either.
In most of my ZvPs i tend to get infestors early with NP. Sometimes when the toss goes for HTs, he pushes in the mid game with some colossi, a standard gateway army, and 4/5 HTs. What I like to do is send a lone infestor out, hide it, and try to flank and surprise from the side where the HTs are most vulnerable. If the infestor has close to full mana you can fungal, NP a HT then storm them which guarantees all of them dying. Otherwise you can just NP a HT straightaway and either storm them, or feedback other HTs (which is what i tend to do without fungal). cross your fingers and hope he doesn't feedback your infestor before you can pull this off.
tl;dr, broodlords, some infestors, hydras
..... Morphing archons when ht runs out of energy isnt called "transitioning".
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Whats the composition you are talking about because agaisnt Hydra/roach/corruptors i keep getting ownd in late game (my comp is colossus +stalekrs+zealots + some phoenix)
HT + what?
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Micro and macro. just play the game. if you can keep up your macro as you play you can resupply your army amazingly fast considering if on 2 base you can make 14 units at once. If you seem a storm try to move outa the way-move in not away becuase you army will get insta raped as it moves out.
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Examining each unit one by one against the stalker/immortal/HT ball isn't practical because you're going to have a mix of units on your own. Infestors fungal the stalkers and hts, possibly NPing them as a bonus. Broodlords pick away at them from afar. Hydras dance around sniping stalkers and dodging storms.
Also against this strategy you could just try to deny the protoss his third base, by setting up a contain with roach hydra + speedlords pooping creep or just good use of OL drops / nydus. With the gas that stalker/immortal/hts require it should be reasonably effective.
On January 16 2011 16:52 Digamma wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2011 11:36 Dysk wrote:
Roaches and hydras fall quickly to HTs late so if you're commited to them you really have to end the game earlier.
Ultras are okay on paper, but then you have to consider that they are terrible against archons which any protoss player that reaches 200/200 HTs is going to eventually transition into.
I find that broodlords spread out to some extent work fine, they take 3 storms to kill and are pretty strong against Protoss in general. In terms of brute force they'd be your best option. Archons can't easily get in range either.
In most of my ZvPs i tend to get infestors early with NP. Sometimes when the toss goes for HTs, he pushes in the mid game with some colossi, a standard gateway army, and 4/5 HTs. What I like to do is send a lone infestor out, hide it, and try to flank and surprise from the side where the HTs are most vulnerable. If the infestor has close to full mana you can fungal, NP a HT then storm them which guarantees all of them dying. Otherwise you can just NP a HT straightaway and either storm them, or feedback other HTs (which is what i tend to do without fungal). cross your fingers and hope he doesn't feedback your infestor before you can pull this off.
tl;dr, broodlords, some infestors, hydras ..... Morphing archons when ht runs out of energy isnt called "transitioning".
Sheesh, lighten up a bit. I don't really care what it's called, but any protoss that goes HTs eventually ends up with lots of archons.
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EPT
