[D]Evolving the ZvP Matchup - Page 2

Samhax

1054 Posts

January 30 2011 04:34 GMT

#21

Actually, i think no one has a real idea about how the late game must be play with zerg and i would say with all the races aswell. We don't have enough pro games and experience in this specific part of the game because of the map pool (most of games end up with 1 or 2 basis).

- Like op said i think masse spine crawler+creep speed are underused (free supply)
-Nydus are also underused in the late game (you can be everywhere and force the protoss to constantly defend if you have the map control i.e he has no phoenix)
-We have to remember that Ultralisk are quite good against sentry/colossi (underused in my opinion)

In conclusion we have to explore all the possibilities when the new maps pool comme in play.

Logo

United States7542 Posts

January 30 2011 04:36 GMT

#22

Drop play->Banelings works the best for me against any type of deathball Protoss strategy personally. Delay his deathball pushes for as long as possible while also trying to hammer away at his tech options like his cyber and his stargates. If he splits his army up to deal with your drops then he's weaker by more than you are. Each drop needs to be just large enough to fend off 1 wave of warp-ins so it actually forces a reaction and/or does damage without over-investing in the drop leaving your defenses weak.

If he's making phoenixes to pick off your overlords, then he's not making void rays or has too many Stargates and you should be able to take his army.

With drop aggression super late game you can also back it up with nydus play (Drop then use the units to secure a nydus). The aggression from drops should keep you from being in a 200/200 situation anyways ideally, or at least should be able to prevent one of void rays, stalkers, or colossi for a while.

dc302

Australia576 Posts

January 30 2011 04:47 GMT

#23

completely untested but what about mass neural parasite on the colossi whilst the corrupts take down down the VRs first, and then ur roach/corruptor army can go in for the kill after?

redoxx

United States333 Posts

January 30 2011 04:58 GMT

#24

How about something like infestor/Ultra/corruptor? It seems to me that ultras are incredibly effective against stalkers and colossi. the corruptors of course are incredibly effective at taking out void rays and colossi as well. that leaves the infestors to use fungal growth to eliminate blink play and even turn the tide of battle with a few good NP on colossi or immortals. of course this composition is very expensive, but in the late game, does it really matter all that much? what do you guys think?

Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

January 30 2011 05:02 GMT

#25

Why you Zergs refuse to use Hive Tech I'll never know. The only time I ever have trouble with a deathball is when the Zerg plays good solid hive tech. In particular;
- Using Fungal to screw up my army positioning
- Using Fungal to pick off my expensive Tech units
- Using Ultralisks to break my forcefields
- Using Ultralisks to smash through my ground army
- When I don't have a massive stalker blob, raping my tech units with Corruptors

BL used to be the best option PvZ, but with us Protoss realising how awesome VRs are, BLs should be taking a back seat to Ultras as the preferred late game option. Let's face it, Roaches are not supply effective when the Protoss is in death ball mode. Replace the Roaches in your army with Ultralisks (so you're running a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/Infestor mix) and viola! You are now supply effective. I swear you Zergs vastly underrate just how effective ultras are =/. Yes immortals hard counter them, but who masses immortals these days? If they're massing immortals it's not hard to tech switch to BL (Assuming you still have corruptors) or mass ling/bling =/

valheru

Australia966 Posts

January 30 2011 05:13 GMT

#26

On January 30 2011 14:02 Plexa wrote:
Why you Zergs refuse to use Hive Tech I'll never know. The only time I ever have trouble with a deathball is when the Zerg plays good solid hive tech. In particular;
- Using Fungal to screw up my army positioning
- Using Fungal to pick off my expensive Tech units
- Using Ultralisks to break my forcefields
- Using Ultralisks to smash through my ground army
- When I don't have a massive stalker blob, raping my tech units with Corruptors

BL used to be the best option PvZ, but with us Protoss realising how awesome VRs are, BLs should be taking a back seat to Ultras as the preferred late game option. Let's face it, Roaches are not supply effective when the Protoss is in death ball mode. Replace the Roaches in your army with Ultralisks (so you're running a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/Infestor mix) and viola! You are now supply effective. I swear you Zergs vastly underrate just how effective ultras are =/. Yes immortals hard counter them, but who masses immortals these days? If they're massing immortals it's not hard to tech switch to BL (Assuming you still have corruptors) or mass ling/bling =/

You would have to still remax on roaches though right? Ultras take like 70 seconds to build and Zerg pretty much has to 300 food push, unless ultras nullify that need?

happyness

United States2400 Posts

January 30 2011 05:33 GMT

#27

I agree with plexa, considering how important forcefields are and the fact that ultras are very very good against both stalkers and collossi.

Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

January 30 2011 05:40 GMT

#28

On January 30 2011 14:13 valheru wrote:

Show nested quote +

You would have to still remax on roaches though right? Ultras take like 70 seconds to build and Zerg pretty much has to 300 food push, unless ultras nullify that need?

There's no reason why a remax on Roach (or Roach/Hydra) is necessarily bad. The problems lair tech zerg face against deathball protoss is that
- Forcefield rape you
- Roaches are not supply efficient

After a solid ultralisk attack the Protoss should be low sentry/low sentry energy and no longer maxed. In particular, worse case scenario he's left just with tech units. Roaches are dirt cheap, and combined with Hydra (+infestor if need be), they can take down the remaining tech units efficiently because it will be more like a 180 vs 140 supply fight rather than 200 vs 180-200 fight which you are definitely going to lose with lair tech. If the game continues to go long, then you can add a handful of ultras (you don't need to add 12 ultras every time... treat them like protoss do colossi - 3-4 can make a world of difference) in addition to your remax on roach/hydra.

betaflame

175 Posts

January 30 2011 05:43 GMT

#29

At the mid game area, you just need mass corrupters, like 15-25 (depending on how many vrays and collosus) with heavy roach and a light amount of hydras if any and then targetting collosus first with your corrupters. You should be on at least 3 bases usually at this point in the game. You also gotta make sure you dont engage in some terrible location that can get you force fielded really badly.

Then in the late game, you need like 30 corrupters with some broodlords and a lot of roaches and hydras and if you are getting forcefielded, you should throw in just a couple ultras so that in the intial engagement they can break them down. Use the corrupters to target/one-shot the collosus first and then your roach-hydra-remainingcorrupter mix can deal with the rest of the army.
Remax with roaches (and some hydras, amount depends on how strong their remaining stargate army is).

But what's important is that you get your ground upgrades as well as air upgrades (mainly attack) and always target fire collosus first since your roach hydra army can prob kill their ground army+vrays and you'll be remaxing with roaches and hydras anyways (assuming you have a good mix ratio of roaches to hydras).

dc302

Australia576 Posts

January 30 2011 06:19 GMT

#30

The problem is usually by hive tech you will have 2-2 range/armour for ur roaches, so to make a sudden tech switch to melee units may not be AS effective as you may think. Not saying its not effective though, but a well upgraded protoss is hard to defeat without upgraded zerg units.

roymarthyup

1442 Posts

January 30 2011 06:39 GMT

#31

i think the problem is zergs need to find a reliable EFFECTIVE way to get to 200/200 army with at least 7 broodlords at the same time your enemy gets 200/200 of VR/collossi/stalker/sentry/zealot

i believe a 200/200 zerg army with brood lords can definitely compete with the protoss deathball. Because broodlord fire essentially makes the collossi and immortals waste their shots on weak broodlings while the roaches and hydras tear apart all zealots and start taking shots at collossi

Lets say each side has 58 workers. that leaves 142 food for both sides

8 broodlords = 32 food
10 queens = 20 food
30 roaches = 60 food
15 hydras = 30 food
total = 142 food
2400 2000
1500
2250 750
1500 750
total cost = 7650 / 3500

now for toss. toss gets 142 food

10 collossi = 60 food
20 void rays = 60 food
11 stalkers = 22food
3000 2000
5000 3000
1375 550
total cost = 9375 / 5550

So the truth is the protoss army is much more expensive and the honest truth is broodlord fire + all those roaches will shred those collossi pretty quickly, and the queens/hydras will put a good dent into the VR numbers. I dont think the protoss army will fiar that much better against the zerg army and it is so costly. After the battle is over the zerg can pump out nonstop muta/ling/queens which should beat the void rays since mutas kill collossi and then queen/muta can fight the void rays and after the collossi are dead the lings can come in and ravage stalkers

Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

January 30 2011 06:50 GMT

#32

On January 30 2011 15:39 roymarthyup wrote:
i think the problem is zergs need to find a reliable EFFECTIVE way to get to 200/200 army with at least 7 broodlords at the same time your enemy gets 200/200 of VR/collossi/stalker/sentry/zealot

i believe a 200/200 zerg army with brood lords can definitely compete with the protoss deathball. Because broodlord fire essentially makes the collossi and immortals waste their shots on weak broodlings while the roaches and hydras tear apart all zealots and start taking shots at collossi

Lets say each side has 58 workers. that leaves 142 food for both sides

8 broodlords = 32 food
10 queens = 20 food
30 roaches = 60 food
15 hydras = 30 food
total = 142 food
2400 2000
1500
2250 750
1500 750
total cost = 7650 / 3500

now for toss. toss gets 142 food

10 collossi = 60 food
20 void rays = 60 food
11 stalkers = 22food
3000 2000
5000 3000
1375 550
total cost = 9375 / 5550

So the truth is the protoss army is much more expensive and the honest truth is broodlord fire + all those roaches will shred those collossi pretty quickly, and the queens/hydras will put a good dent into the collossi numbers. I dont think the protoss army will fiar that much better against the zerg army and it is so costly. After the battle is over the zerg can pump out nonstop muta/ling/queens which should beat the void rays since mutas kill collossi and then queen/muta can fight the void rays and after the collossi are dead the lings can come in and ravage stalkers

This is so unrealistic. If a Protoss gets 20 Void Rays the game is over. Further, you're not going to have 58 workers a side. I know you're trying to make an argument here but there is no way that this is a practical real game scenario.

On January 30 2011 15:19 dc302 wrote:

Show nested quote +

I see Zerg and Protoss skip upgrades way too much

Zerg should be at 2-2 but usually they're at 1-2 or something. Nevertheless, that's not important. Ultras are there to tank hits, they don't need the melee upgrades as badly as the roaches/hydra need range upgrades. You see, Ultras are already getting +20 damage vs armoured so a 3-0-3 stalker takes 35 damage on it's shields and 31 damage on it's hitpoints - that's still a lot of damage esp. when you factor in splash and how stalkers LOVE to clump together. Throw in Ultra armour (and eventually +3 armour +3 range) and your ultralisks are taking -6 damage from everything. What does that mean?

- VR's deal 5 damage precharge, 9 damage charged (no upgrades, fairly typical) (20% bonus don't forget)
- Colossus deal 30 damage at +3 weapons (in comparison to 42 damage without any armour or 34 vs +3 armour roaches)
- Stalkers deal 11 damage at +3 weapons (laughable really)
- Sentries deal +3 at +3 weapons (lol)

They tank hits many times better than roaches allowing your hydras to really get stuck in (plus theyre not hopeless at attacking themselves). Yes they are hard countered by Immortals, but if the Protoss is deathballing he's not going to be making those is he

and if he is he isn't making Colossus so pure hydra will destroy him (throw in fungal as well for further rape).

Dysk

Singapore44 Posts

January 30 2011 07:08 GMT

#33

@Plexa: That's all well and good in theory. In practice the critical mass of colossus and stalkers still tear through the ultralisks like paper and they get free pot shots off when you're trying to move your ultralisks around to get more than 2 attacking at a time because their size and pathing is so terrible. You also must have infestors or the ultralisks become near useless with deathball kiting. If the protoss just chooses to swap out 1/2 colossi for immortals upon scouting your army with his observer, ultras become dirt. When the ultralisks engage your army you can also force field behind them to cut off the rest of the zerg army from moving in and forcing the zerg player to micro some ultras back to break force fields, but then you can just do it again because force fields cost 50 energy and last for 15 seconds and all protoss have a million sentries with full energy by that point.

And we haven't even touched on archons yet.

@OP: The counter to the protoss deathball is not letting them get to the deathball. Because there is no way a decent protoss will not crush your ground army if you mass corruptors, not fail to pull his army back while sniping your baneling-carrying overlords when you try to carpet drop them, not use his 9 range colossi to just kill off any spines you have, and not kill you during the huge timing window you have when you are quick teching to broodlords while not trying to harass him, and there is no. way. to directly engage a protoss deathball. As zerg you have to establish and cling onto an absolute advantage throughout the game, and hope for a balance patch.

Plexa

Aotearoa39261 Posts

January 30 2011 07:35 GMT

#34

On January 30 2011 16:08 Dysk wrote:
@Plexa: That's all well and good in theory. In practice the critical mass of colossus and stalkers still tear through the ultralisks like paper and they get free pot shots off when you're trying to move your ultralisks around to get more than 2 attacking at a time because their size and pathing is so terrible. You also must have infestors or the ultralisks become near useless with deathball kiting. If the protoss just chooses to swap out 1/2 colossi for immortals upon scouting your army with his observer, ultras become dirt. When the ultralisks engage your army you can also force field behind them to cut off the rest of the zerg army from moving in and forcing the zerg player to micro some ultras back to break force fields, but then you can just do it again because force fields cost 50 energy and last for 15 seconds and all protoss have a million sentries with full energy by that point.

And we haven't even touched on archons yet.

Okay let's stop the theorycraft, and turn to some replays. http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/sc2_reps/R4_MorroW_vs_Chi_Game_.sc2replay Here is a game from the 1st TSL qualifier (so it's on the old patch

sorry) but Morrow effectively deals with Chi's death ball. Important points are as follows:
- First engagement he gets horribly destroyed; mostly hydra/corruptor army
- Second engagement, he destroys the deathball; roach/hydra/corruptor/infestor mix - the fungal growths were KEY in winning this battle
- Third engagement, maxed protoss deathball vs maxed Zerg with ultra/fungal - Zerg comes out on top with a commanding lead.

I think the replay demonstrates that ultralisks and fungal growth should not be written off as useless vs the deathball. In fact, I believe they hold the key to solving the deathball problem.

ManOfScience

United States12 Posts

January 30 2011 07:51 GMT

#35

Infestors are quite useful here, as Plexa so clearly illustrates. I have seen this deathball defeated by muta/ling/Infestor, interestingly enough. He used neural parasite on colossi and fungal'd the ball together. Suddenly that deathball is a ball of death! A huge issue with this is positioning. Everything needs to be perfect in terms of positioning, otherwise the mutas which like to eat colossi and voids will be killed by the ground force, the lings can get slaughtered by excellent FFs or slow Neural Parasites, and the infestors need to be kept alive so they can work their dirty deeds.

I also saw the abusable mobility of this army as a huge plus, excluding infestors. You can harass multiple locations with lings and mutas simultaneously without investing in nydus worms and this can form either unfavorable splits to set up an attack using your superior mobility to snipe smaller groups of units or clear the Protoss army out of a very unfavorable position (The close chokes that can make this composition useless)

Honestly, this is not a ideal solution, but I have seen it work between players of equivalent skill.

LWr

60 Posts

January 30 2011 07:52 GMT

#36

On January 30 2011 14:02 Plexa wrote:
Replace the Roaches in your army with Ultralisks (so you're running a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/Infestor mix) and viola! You are now supply effective.

Although I agree that Ultras aren't used enough in ZvP, they are not even cost effective against zealots. 2 ultras (600/400) lose to 7 zealots (700), even without charge.

roymarthyup

1442 Posts

January 30 2011 07:56 GMT

#37

On January 30 2011 16:52 LWr wrote:

Show nested quote +

Although I agree that Ultras aren't used enough in ZvP, they are not even cost effective against zealots. 2 ultras (600/400) lose to 7 zealots (700), even without charge.

you are correct. ultras only really become effective when you consider that zealots get shredded so fricken fast by roaches and hydras which you should have to deal with zealots. you only want 3-4 ultralisks in your lategame army because after the zealots are dead the ultras roll over everything armored

the problem becomes when storm / archons are added into the mix. archons take forever for ultras to kill, storm obliterates everything zerg has

you need broodlords to compete with archons / storm because 8 broodlords throwing their fire will cause the archons to waste their attacks and they have so much range they can be safe from storm to a point

Chaosvuistje

Netherlands2581 Posts

January 30 2011 09:42 GMT

#38

I use baneling drops all the time in mid/late ZvP. I've actually written a guide about it right here in the strategy forum.

My current build revolves around getting a quick +1 melee, +1 range after and +2 melee once lair is finished. It makes the banelings tons more effective and on top of that you can still harrass probelines, since +2 banes 1hit probes.

However, you can only use it to take out the gateway units and sometimes the collosi if the protoss is careless. The voidrays would still be alive, but you could pick those off with corruptors or hydra's.

You can often safely transition into hive once the army has been whittled down reasonably. Although I'll be honest I haven't been using fungal as much as I should in ZvP lategame, they definitely sound amazing when coupled with ultralisks or broodlords.

Schnullerbacke13

Germany1199 Posts

January 30 2011 10:15 GMT

#39

I was somewhat successful being agressive. The standard Zerg passive macro up play fails against P often. 2 base early mid game agression (slings, roach, hydra, drop, maybe some mutas) into late expo works best for me. Basically I focus on not letting the P expand so he cannot build up his dead ball. Once a P gets 3 bases, its hard to beat him..

valheru

Australia966 Posts

January 30 2011 11:11 GMT

#40

On January 30 2011 14:40 Plexa wrote:

Show nested quote +

Oh sorry, I didn't mean to say that remaxing on roaches was bad after engaging just that remaxing with alot of ultras is so slow that you have to remax on mostly roaches unless you do a lot of damage because the protoss deathball will kil you while the ultras are building.

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