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So started trying this build last night, as luck would have it I played 6 PvP's and 5 were against 4Gaters O.o ( wtf has happened to this matchup? )
I'm at work now so I cannot include replays but I was only really successful once. It seems that word of this build might have spread to the 4gate crowd as the only standard 5S 1z up your ramp at 5:45 was the one I crushed.
What have you guys been doing against someone who moves out with a large enough force, obviously a little later than the standard 1S 1Z push to establish the proxy pylon, and then builds proxy pylons close enough to warp into your base; and then builds up an army of mostly Zealots waiting for your FF's to end?
At a certain point I had to miss a Sentry and it was all over. His force of 80% Zealots made my Robo and Immortal wasted minerals. Was this just mis-macro / micro on my point? What are you guys doing in this situation, can you get enough Sentries to keep them out forever? When it's 3gate production vs 4gate, and you have to keep producing Sentries, at a certain point it becomes impossible.
I'm at my wit's end with PvP, I hoped that first xkcd's build and then this were the 4gate hard counter I've been waiting for but I feel like I still have to play 100 times better than a 4gater to survive and I'm starting to get frustrated giving wins away.
After thinking about this more, could the answer be still being semi-aggressive even after delaying the initial proxy pylon and warp in? My problem is them pyloning in my nat and just building army waiting for my FF's to fail. Would less Sentries and more aggression to keep their numbers low be a better answer?
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At above;
Sounds like by "miss a Sentry" you're constantly forcefielding the ramp pre-emptively and making more Sentries to cover your tracks. This isn't how you do it! In almost any FF situation in PvP, you wait for him to run up the ramp, then split a piece of his army off with a forcefield and duckshoot what's come up the ramp with your ranged units.
You only need one Sentry initially, because one Forcefield should net you three-four units at very little cost, provided you microed well. If he stands outside your ramp building up Zealots, then you sit at your ramp building up energy on your Sentry and if he runs up the ramp you break a piece off and kill it. Rinse and repeat while teching to Colossi.
The biggest problem my 3.2k Master friend and I have found is simply executing the build well. This is absolutely an exercise in "doing it right". If you scout well with your Stalkers and force him to warp in the first Stalker round in his base then it's an instant win against a ramp-break provided you didn't mess anything up in your own build. Would not recommend doing this build if you're in Platinum or even Diamond.
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On February 23 2011 23:32 oweng wrote:
So started trying this build last night, as luck would have it I played 6 PvP's and 5 were against 4Gaters O.o ( wtf has happened to this matchup? )
I'm at work now so I cannot include replays but I was only really successful once. It seems that word of this build might have spread to the 4gate crowd as the only standard 5S 1z up your ramp at 5:45 was the one I crushed.
What have you guys been doing against someone who moves out with a large enough force, obviously a little later than the standard 1S 1Z push to establish the proxy pylon, and then builds proxy pylons close enough to warp into your base; and then builds up an army of mostly Zealots waiting for your FF's to end?
At a certain point I had to miss a Sentry and it was all over. His force of 80% Zealots made my Robo and Immortal wasted minerals. Was this just mis-macro / micro on my point? What are you guys doing in this situation, can you get enough Sentries to keep them out forever? When it's 3gate production vs 4gate, and you have to keep producing Sentries, at a certain point it becomes impossible.
I'm at my wit's end with PvP, I hoped that first xkcd's build and then this were the 4gate hard counter I've been waiting for but I feel like I still have to play 100 times better than a 4gater to survive and I'm starting to get frustrated giving wins away.
After thinking about this more, could the answer be still being semi-aggressive even after delaying the initial proxy pylon and warp in? My problem is them pyloning in my nat and just building army waiting for my FF's to fail. Would less Sentries and more aggression to keep their numbers low be a better answer?
I believe 3 sentries recharge energy fast enough to perma FF the ramp, so I don't know what you mean by "miss a sentry," unless you mean you messed up your FFs (but that's player error). Usually how I go about it is I warp-in 1 sentry after warpgate tech is done, then warp-in additional sentries as needed (and as noted above, you never need more than 3 to protect your ramp).
If you get contained just make a warp prism and ferry 4 zealots + 1 round of warp-ins (so he can't counter it with 1 round of his own warp-ins) at his base (target probes, then pylons powering their gateways). Most of the time they will call gg right then and there. If not, they'll probably send at least some of their forces back to defend, allowing you to break the contain (send the warp prism back to your base to elevator your units down if needed).
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3 sentries is not sufficient to permanently FF a ramp - you need 6. However, in my experience if you get the 3rd sentry sentry out Warpgates will finish in time such that you can get your 6 sentries before you run out of FFs.
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Is this preferred though? I feel if you use too many waprgates on Sentries you will die. They can push up the ramp and get vision to warp in on your main.
I feel like 1 Sentry to try for the original 2 FF's would be good but any after that could be a liability?
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You only need one or two sentries. If you're constructing a colossus while they are trying to push up your ramp you'll need at least one immortal, and since you won't have another immortal out you'll more than likely need another sentry (for a total of two). If you continue immortal production then you'll only need your first initial sentry. The first force field is usually used just to buy you enough time to get your first immortal out and start production on the next.
On February 23 2011 22:10 Dommk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 22:01 gertg wrote:On February 23 2011 21:52 Vexu wrote:
adel build is relying on gw units for a long time, robo tech should be better with proper force field usage before getting critical mass. yes, but on small maps, adel has a fast 4 zealot push, are the stalkers out in time to prevent them from doing to much damage? People know how to stop that now a days :S, you just throw down a faster second gate (usually as soon as you see no gas + 2gateways), defend with only taking like 2/3 probe losses then continuing with the 4gate, your warpgate tech is so late that you won't be able to hold it off
This isn't true... You seem to forget that they Adel opening can opt for 5 wargpates rather than an expo in the case they don't deal much damage. Even if they deal no damage they can get back up their ramp and hold your push, this is because they'll have 3-5 gateways producing units until warpgate is finished. I had a PvP during a clan war where this exact scenario happened, and, my 5 warpgates (with more probes than him) out produced his 4 and I ended up winning, despite my initial push not doing much of anything.
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So Cecil, if you saw they were massing Zealots as opposed to a mixed or Stalker heavy army would you get a 2nd Sentry, concentrate on Zealots and go for a Colossus; otherwise get a 2nd Immortal and then an Obs?
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On February 24 2011 04:52 oweng wrote:
So Cecil, if you saw they were massing Zealots as opposed to a mixed or Stalker heavy army would you get a 2nd Sentry, concentrate on Zealots and go for a Colossus; otherwise get a 2nd Immortal and then an Obs?
If they were getting just zealots I'd get a ton of stalkers and then just win. If they were doing a normal 4 Warpgate rush I'd just continue with immortal production and the standard opening, mixing in a robo support bay when I could afford it.
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LEARN THIS PEOPLE! It works!
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United Kingdom3692 Posts
Love this build, im on like a 80% win rate in PvP with this, tyvm 
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Every Protoss I face on the ladder uses this build now, it's ridiculous. I've started going with a blink stalker build. Well-executed blink stalker counters this build pretty hard, in fact I saw an example of this in some tournament recently. I think it was in the GCPL. Basically just use your blink stalkers to keep them in their base and expand. Half of the time you'll kill them (if they're bad), the rest of the time they end up with 1-2 more colossi than you but you have a massive econ advantage. It works best in certain maps like Metal, LT, etc. where the blink stalkers can get between your bases very quickly. Any thoughts on that?
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I've won against a 4gater who eventually went Blink Stalker, are you talking about someone who goes straight for Blink? Because if I didn't scout the 4gate I wouldn't use this build. Not that it hurts your econ that much, probably just add an earlier gas for the Obs and see your Council.
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On February 25 2011 01:40 oweng wrote:
I've won against a 4gater who eventually went Blink Stalker, are you talking about someone who goes straight for Blink? Because if I didn't scout the 4gate I wouldn't use this build. Not that it hurts your econ that much, probably just add an earlier gas for the Obs and see your Council.
Yeah, I just go straight for blink. It's actually pretty similar to the robo build except you replace the robo with a council. You're right that you don't have to go for the robo build if you scout a 2nd gas, but so far it hasn't deterred anyone I play against. Problem is, if you scout a 2nd gas and choose to 4gate, you might break the blink build but you will lose to the robo (which is more common). The two builds are indistinguishable until your probe dies.
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On February 25 2011 00:29 Cel.erity wrote:
Every Protoss I face on the ladder uses this build now, it's ridiculous. I've started going with a blink stalker build. Well-executed blink stalker counters this build pretty hard, in fact I saw an example of this in some tournament recently. I think it was in the GCPL. Basically just use your blink stalkers to keep them in their base and expand. Half of the time you'll kill them (if they're bad), the rest of the time they end up with 1-2 more colossi than you but you have a massive econ advantage. It works best in certain maps like Metal, LT, etc. where the blink stalkers can get between your bases very quickly. Any thoughts on that?
Every time I've faced blink stalkers I go for a 2 colossus push and win. They usually try to blink onto my colossus and snipe them, but they take so much damage during the process that I just win with my ground army. Also, when you can tell they are going to blink I try to place FF around my army, so when they do blink there are FFs in the way.
Also YongHwa in the VOD in the OP destroyed FFMon who went for blink stalkers.
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On February 25 2011 02:59 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2011 00:29 Cel.erity wrote:
Every Protoss I face on the ladder uses this build now, it's ridiculous. I've started going with a blink stalker build. Well-executed blink stalker counters this build pretty hard, in fact I saw an example of this in some tournament recently. I think it was in the GCPL. Basically just use your blink stalkers to keep them in their base and expand. Half of the time you'll kill them (if they're bad), the rest of the time they end up with 1-2 more colossi than you but you have a massive econ advantage. It works best in certain maps like Metal, LT, etc. where the blink stalkers can get between your bases very quickly. Any thoughts on that? Every time I've faced blink stalkers I go for a 2 colossus push and win. They usually try to blink onto my colossus and snipe them, but they take so much damage during the process that I just win with my ground army. Also, when you can tell they are going to blink I try to place FF around my army, so when they do blink there are FFs in the way. Also YongHwa in the VOD in the OP destroyed FFMon who went for blink stalkers.
The idea is that if they push out, you can blink into their main and take out their production before they get to your base. by the time they have 2 colossi at my base, I have 1, and they can't reinforce.
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That's really not specific to this particular build just a liability for any robo vs council play.
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I've been thinking about what to do if the other guy fast expands and I think there are a few possible options and pros and cons:
- Switch to a 4 gate and kill him.
- When do you have to scout in order to be able to transition to a 4 gate?
- Will you actually be able to kill him?
- Push with Colossus and kill him.
- Will you actually be able to kill him?
- Expand yourself and be ahead on tech.
- Will you be too far behind?
Anyone have any experience with the above? I'd also love to play a set of practice games testing the above out. PM me if you are interested. You'll need to be able to execute the builds perfectly though, otherwise the testing is not valid.
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When you notice they are going blink stalkers I feel its good to switch over to just imortals and then getting blink your self. Also, expanding while doing this if their base is far because immortals will take 4 days to get acrross the map.
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On February 25 2011 04:58 [Atomic]Peace wrote:I've been thinking about what to do if the other guy fast expands and I think there are a few possible options and pros and cons: - Switch to a 4 gate and kill him.
- When do you have to scout in order to be able to transition to a 4 gate?
- Will you actually be able to kill him?
- Push with Colossus and kill him.
- Will you actually be able to kill him?
- Expand yourself and be ahead on tech.
- Will you be too far behind?
Anyone have any experience with the above? I'd also love to play a set of practice games testing the above out. PM me if you are interested. You'll need to be able to execute the builds perfectly though, otherwise the testing is not valid.
It depends how fast is the fast expansion. If it is off of one gate, you could probably just push out with your 3 gate robo army, maybe colossi or just an immortal or two. I guess it also depends on his composition - if he has mostly stalkers and the number of sentries.
I don't think this applies to your question, but I just played a guy where we both went this build. Once I scouted that he had no expansion with an observer I took my expo. He must have felt desperate and suited up and attacked without expanding. It was close, but my income held out and I won.
My expansion went down right as my observer got to his base (opposite corner positions on shakuras). I don't really think that counts as fast, but it worked out this particular game.
This build has been good to me. If my opponent goes for a 4 gate I can usually hold it and get into the mid game with a slight to moderate advantage. At the worst I will lose to a really good 4 gate once in a while or lose to a colossi battle in the mid-late game. I will take these chances over any other PvP builds I had used before. Thanks for breaking this build down Cecil!
From what I understand about the build, it does not transition into a 4 gate well so that probably won't do well.
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I've added three more PvP matches that I recently had!
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EPT
