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Queen/Ultra alone, even without the hydras mixed in, sounds like an amazing composition on paper and i think CatZ has shown on the daily that it can indeed work out very, very well, but i think the problem is getting there and surviving long enough on something else to get a meaningful amount of ultras out. so how does one do that?
I think a queen heavy opening with roaches while getting melee upgrades might get you there, but every time i play, its so much easier to just stick to roaches and i never manage to get to the ultras. has anyone worked out a smooth way of getting to the lategame composition?
that being said, i think a spire will still be necessary at some point along the way since colossi will be out earlier then ultras and harder to deal with then ultras. i also think that it might be necessary to spice it up with some infestors for fungal growth, especially if the Ps stalkers are blink-upgraded.
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The main problem with that composition, is that it relies on keeping a couple of ultras alive.
And that just wont happen against a toss deathball.
The protoss player can just box his whole army, and tell it to attack an ultralisk.
The ultralisk, will get one-shot. Thus, no healing from the queens is possible.
Then, once your ultras are dead, the toss deathball rips you appart.
And the other problem is, even if you do somehow manage to keep the ultralisks alive, the void rays will do massive (pun intended) damage to them, and charge up on the ultras getting healed.
Once the void rays charge up, your army gets vaporized pretty much instantly, and once again, all healing becomes useless.
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On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something.
Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball.
Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that.
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I guess the problem here is that Zerg armies are usually spam-unit based, meaning they have large quantities of weak units. The queen's transfuse is meant to keep things alive, which is much better on armies with low unit count but high unit quality. Thus a contrast appears. It is difficult to implement queens in armies with large unit counts, since it would take %$#*%& APM to transfuse each little unit. Low max hp also lowers transfuse efficiency.
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On February 20 2011 18:00 JTouche wrote:
Needs amazing creep spread to have a chance.
Dude, there are a lot of queens for a reason..
On February 20 2011 22:08 Alpina wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something. Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball. Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that.
Were ultralisks supposed to have the same role as colossi?
They. Are. Powerful. Tanks.
The queens and armor upgrades also guarantee that. They're not designed to shoot lasers and kill low hp units like the colossi; they kill armored units.
Now, how do they get in range? They get in range just like how zealots get in range: support.
What is this support for ultralisks? Queens.
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On February 20 2011 23:10 iChau wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 18:00 JTouche wrote:
Needs amazing creep spread to have a chance. Dude, there are a lot of queens for a reason.. Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 22:08 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something. Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball. Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that. Were ultralisks supposed to have the same role as colossi? They. Are. Powerful. Tanks. The queens and armor upgrades also guarantee that. They're not designed to shoot lasers and kill low hp units like the colossi; they kill armored units. Now, how do they get in range? They get in range just like how zealots get in range: support. What is this support for ultralisks? Queens.
Man, read before writing. He tried to compare toss and zerg units by resources, and I said that it's stupid because you need a TON of ultras to be effective, and you don't need TON of collosi to be effective, so 2 base zerg with ultras is not possible.
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On February 20 2011 22:08 Alpina wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something. Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball. Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that.
Didn't you watch the replay? The Ultralisks don't die, that's the whole point of this. Their size reduces Colossus splash, their armour mitigates more damage than any other unit in game (except Hardened Shield in the right circumstance), and their health pool is so big that you have enough time to react with Transfuse. That's not even including their ridiculous splash damage. The only problem with this army composition is surviving long enough to get there, otherwise it's the perfect way of beating the "death ball". And this is not a gas intensive army. You don't need to spam Ultralisks, you just need to keep the ones you have alive.
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On February 20 2011 23:30 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 22:08 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something. Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball. Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that. Didn't you watch the replay? The Ultralisks don't die, that's the whole point of this. Their size reduces Colossus splash, their armour mitigates more damage than any other unit in game (except Hardened Shield in the right circumstance), and their health pool is so big that you have enough time to react with Transfuse. That's not even including their ridiculous splash damage. The only problem with this army composition is surviving long enough to get there, otherwise it's the perfect way of beating the "death ball". And this is not a gas intensive army. You don't need to spam Ultralisks, you just need to keep the ones you have alive.
so you take a replay where an uncontrolled protoss army loses to your composition as a proof that your composition is good? whats next? wanna write strategies and upload replays against the easy AI as a proof for how great it is?
i admittedly dont have a very high opinion of your strategy, but i would actually be very happy to be proven wrong, but so far youre not doing a very good job at that.
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The big question is how are you going to stop the 3rd and 4th base from the P? If they get it up, it does not matter that you have some ultras to attack.
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I actually tried it! And i don't think it will work... Without creep you will die to kiting colossus and stalkers because your queens wont get in range for transfuse and your hydras will be slow as hell.
So if they control the creep it will be an easy win for them, and you have no way of stopping them from killing creep tumours.
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This build actually works pretty well as long as you have the APM to:
Keep your creep spreading during the mid game. Hide unused tumors off to the side, keep using those extra queens you are making, and have creep spread along several attack routes so that even if he kills all the tumors along one lane, you can hold him, then counter attack along another.
Keep up your transfuses.
This build also gets demolished once the toss gets up a templar archives. A few feedbacks will wipe out the queens in instants, and he can either pull back to make the used up templar into archons, or make a few extra HTs to storm down the hyrdas.
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Ultra/hydra/queen is very dependent on positioning. If the zerg player engages the deathball out in the open, can get a nice concave and a nice surround with ultras, then the deathball will die. If the zerg player tries to attack up a ramp, or through a choke, the zerg forces will get slaughtered.
Hydras aren't the only dps in this composition, in fact I would argue that against stalker/colo/void, that the ultras will out dps the hydras. Un-upgraded Ultras do 40 dps to stalkers and colo, toss in the splash, and they eat stalkers for breakfast. However, Ultras only do 17.4 dps to non-armored units, kinda pathetic. A protoss player can take advantage of this by having zealots in front of his stalkers. Sure the zealots won't last incredibly long against the hydras, but they will soak up a lot of potential damage from the ultras, giving the toss time to focus fire the ultras down. Better yet, you could use Archons, which are only psionic, do bonus damage to biological, and have 350 shields. They are also large, meaning that the ultra splash will be largely in-effective against them.
In truth hydras are absolutely terrible. Infested terran are so much more cost effective. An infestor with 200 energy can spawn 8 IT's. This means that each IT costs roughly, 12.5/18.75, and 1/4 a supply each. They do only 5.2 less dps than a hydra, but receive the same dps increase from upgrades.
Using infestors, you can much more easily surround the deathball with IT's, than you could with hydras. You can have the infestors burrowed under your army so that they can launch IT's farther. You can NP the void rays and use them to kill the colossi, and you can fungal growth the army to keep it from running away. Infestors allow for superior dps/cost potential, can nullify the ultra's / brood lords counter, and allow you to control when and where you engage.
I don't think hydra/ultra/queen is the answer to the deathball. I am pretty certain that something involving infestors is. (Mostly because of how crappy hydras are)
Edit: I haven't had the opportunity to use infestors against the deathball, but I have used it against a templar heavy army. I can upload a replay if people want.
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Australia8532 Posts
On February 20 2011 19:24 DarKFoRcE wrote:
looks good in theory, will suck most of the time in actual games. In ZvP, in a macrogame, alot comes down to how long you can delay his third and how well you can trade units as early as possible. this doesnt help with it at all.
also, even when you get there, good protoss players wont let you spread creep right until outside their bases, so you cant even use the usual superior mobility on ground.
and then, once protoss gets to his voidray/colo/mothership combination (maybe with some immortals mixed in because of the ultras..) youre not going to heal fast enough to prevent your shit from dying in a couple of seconds.
so overall, i dont really see this working in situations where you havent already won anyway for whatever reason. if you have any actual proof of it working in highlevel games, i'd be thrilled to see replays.
I was typing a replay to this thread and thought i'd scan through for a relevant answer.. and i saw your highlighted post and it pretty much said everything i wanted to say  so basically - thank you TL for highlighted users - and thank you Darkforce for your post
Don't feel like this strategy would work at a high level
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pretty sure catz did this on day9s daily but with only ultra/queen in the lategame. all against 3600+ master protosses too. I think the real problem would be getting the queen number to where you need it to be. The toss can easily engage you several times in the early-midgame to reduce your queen count and then retreat with ff or something, idk.
Tbh, this is basically like a stronger version of roach/hydra. The ultras are like the roaches, usually the ones that should tank the damage and do decent dps themselves while hydras do even more dps but are a bit more squishy. In this case, ultras are great tanks and easy to transfuse (cus they're so huge, so easy to click on em), and do pretty good dps if you get all your ultras in a great concave + forcefields won't work.
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The funniest part about this analogy is how almost no one plays a tank, akin to how almost no one gets Ultralisks.
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United States7483 Posts
Well, if your ultralisks are just there to tank damage and your hydras to deal it, armor upgrades will be all you really need for the ultras. Ranged damage ups and armor ups should be plenty for this composition.
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On February 20 2011 23:30 branflakes14 wrote:Didn't you watch the replay? The Ultralisks don't die, that's the whole point of this. Their size reduces Colossus splash, their armour mitigates more damage than any other unit in game (except Hardened Shield in the right circumstance), and their health pool is so big that you have enough time to react with Transfuse. That's not even including their ridiculous splash damage. The only problem with this army composition is surviving long enough to get there, otherwise it's the perfect way of beating the "death ball". And this is not a gas intensive army. You don't need to spam Ultralisks, you just need to keep the ones you have alive.
hydra queen ultra and max upgrades
definitely not a gas heavy composition.
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This is a good thought, but is going to run into allot of problems vs a good opp. Why?
1) Gas. You're going to need 3-4 base to support this. In combination with the tech heavy build (3/3 fast, fast hive, fast ultras, etc), you're going to have a hell of a time getting your 3rd base secure, not to mention your 4th.
2) Time. Zerg need to slow down Protoss's 3rd base. You're teching AND expanding like crazy early. If you even survive, there's no way you are going to be able to delay your protoss's 3rd unless you invest a ton in roaches with roach speed. If you're investing in this, your tech is delayed, you're using up a ton of gas, and your end game army mix is thrown off.
3) Creep. You're going to have a stugglebear time of protecting your creep tumors, as a good protoss, he's going to use an obs to restrict creep, and until you have ultras out, your queen/hydra mix isn't going to be able to deal with gateway/colo. Without the creep spread to support this composition, your hydras and queens are super immobile.
That being said, if you are significantly outplaying someone, you can make just about anything work. I'm sure there are people you can beat with this, but I feel against a quality protoss, this build just doesn't add up to a win.
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@ Darkforce
There is a double length Day9 daily episode about this. RootCatz was laddering going mass queen + ultra/brood lord. It looked awesome. I can't speak about the value of this build once it's not surprising anymore but it killed some menacing armies. You should check them out if you haven't and get your own impression.
http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4737515/
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On February 21 2011 00:23 DarKFoRcE wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 23:30 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 22:08 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 21:03 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL "Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something. Can't you read what I wrote? If you have, let's say, 4-5 collosus you can kill XX amount of hydra, etc if controlled well, if I have 4-5 ultras then they just die before reaching your huge army. You need much bigger army to fight toss deathball. Thing is some protosses just can't understand no matter how many times you say that. Didn't you watch the replay? The Ultralisks don't die, that's the whole point of this. Their size reduces Colossus splash, their armour mitigates more damage than any other unit in game (except Hardened Shield in the right circumstance), and their health pool is so big that you have enough time to react with Transfuse. That's not even including their ridiculous splash damage. The only problem with this army composition is surviving long enough to get there, otherwise it's the perfect way of beating the "death ball". And this is not a gas intensive army. You don't need to spam Ultralisks, you just need to keep the ones you have alive. so you take a replay where an uncontrolled protoss army loses to your composition as a proof that your composition is good? whats next? wanna write strategies and upload replays against the easy AI as a proof for how great it is? i admittedly dont have a very high opinion of your strategy, but i would actually be very happy to be proven wrong, but so far youre not doing a very good job at that.
[url blocked]
This is a replay done the same way as the first, except this time instead of 100 supply of Ultra/Queen/Hydra, I used 200 supply of Hydra/Roach/Corruptor against the 150 supply of Protoss, and did as much corrupting as I could with the Corruptors and focused Colossi as best I could, and the Protoss wins. Since the Protoss army is attack moved in both replays, lack of micro can be cancelled out as a common factor. If this isn't solid enough evidence that Zergs are tackling the "death ball" wrong in the late game, then nothing ever will be and Zergs should continue to complain about their race being underpowered. The upgrades I used were Roach speed, Hydralisk range and Colossus range.
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EPT
