Hello and good evening TL!! Today was the second time I've encountered this build, first time i encountered it was around 2 months ago when steppes was still in the ladder map pool, i beat it because i went phoenix and just ran away with my army until the overlords were dead.
However, this time it was just too much for me to handle because of the multi-place attacks on both my main and natural mineral line + front of my base! please watch the replay before you put your thoughts in the thread or bash me for playing terribly! looking forward to see your thoughts on how to counter this efficiently without losing your entire freakin' mineral line!.
Very interesting strategy... I was also O.O, As to dealing with it, scout more with the hallucinations you had, get real phoenix like you said you did last time you had a game with it (the strategy) and just spread your units like how terran players do it. Also I think you didn't have the best fighting angle in that game, try engaging in a better big spread part of the map. Good luck dealing with it!!! :D Hope this helps you a bit!!
The attack came at like the 10th minute mark, even 6 gate wouldn't be that early! i did scout it, and i knew it was coming, i just don't know how to stop it! spreading my units will only save some, watch the replay again and see how many banelings he had, even if i spread my units my probes will die! don't know where i can run my probes so that they can't get dropped...!
Not sitting in your base the entire game would have helped tremendously. Normally map control kind of goes back and forth at different stages during PvZ. You seemed content just sitting on 2 bases, pushing out only once with a few sentries/zealots. I watched the rep from your opponents perspective. He saw your army exactly one time, had vision of most of the map all the time, and was droning even while you went sharking with your zealot/sentry. As you probably already know at 3600 zergs get pretty good at knowing when an attack is actually coming and when you are feinting pressure.
I see most protoss including myself now opting to get a fast stargate -> VR after your expand goes down, sometimes 2 though I cant decide whats best as 2 star is powerful but feels difficult to transition out of. Have you tried going star before robo and just using the cannons for burrow while you get up a decent force. The star lets you contest their third and get some map control back so that when you fight its not 100% of the time after theyre already in your natural and dropping on your main. The obvious drawback to star before robo is that its a little more challenging to slow their creep spread.
Yeah but think about it, it was still the 10 minute mark, when you do a 3gate expand you usually have to get your probe count up! as you saw i was also teching to colossi so i can't really pressure him all that much after i saw his zillion zerglings! one surround and i lose the entire game... i know i should have pressured him but there was no possible way for me to do so unless i went for blind stargate!.
@Jayrod the point is, even if he pressured with his 1st immortal he would get overrun with zerglings in the middle of the map. It's not like he really could push out.
Also 3rd wasn't really a problem in this particular game.
On March 14 2011 04:13 PaPoolee wrote: Yeah but think about it, it was still the 10 minute mark, when you do a 3gate expand you usually have to get your probe count up! as you saw i was also teching to colossi so i can't really pressure him all that much after i saw his zillion zerglings! one surround and i lose the entire game... i know i should have pressured him but there was no possible way for me to do so unless i went for blind stargate!.
Thanks for you comment though appreciate it .
Ya I mean, I can see myself losing to this very attack with the exact build you used. I'm thinking maybe its not best given the situation. The real question then is... when do you deviate from the very standard version of this to combat the baneling nest that you scouted with halluc? As a separate question, was it possible to get hallucinate earlier? I didn't check that part of the rep out, but maybe getting it a little earlier would open you up to other options.
IMO don't think of star before robo as blind. Star will fulfill a purpose of its own. It forces the pace of the game and demands a response from them. It also gets the scouting information a robo could get you as well as gives you some map control options. So rather than seeing star as a counter to this build, consider it a way to force them to deviate from the build or at least delay it in favor of survivability. I used to go 3 gate ->expo - > gate/forge/robo, but then i started to think about it more and... roach/ling all ins will be tough either way. The cannon will protect you from burrow defensively without the need for the faster observer. Void ray or Immortal vs. roach is a wash, but VR opens up some other aggression options that immortal does not. When you go voids I find that there's like one timing that is hard to hold and that is hydra timing pushes, but id much rather deal with a hydra timing than baneling drops as im more used to it and comfortable with it.
Dont listen to "Jayrod", he totally missed the state of the game. Your execution of the standard build is really good, keep it going. You just miss a little on scouting. Flying over the bases with your hallucinated phoenix, you should've noticed some important things:
No evo chambers. While you are already on your way to 1/1. No third base yet. No hydra den, no roaches out on the map.
What does that mean? He is not going for the late game. You are already ahead regarding the late game. So if you see this kind of things next time, through up additional cannons. And dont get an immortal (instead get 2 stalkers). Make the forcefields a little bit earlier so that no lings enter your base and spread your units. Snipe the overlords. Maybe even make 2 cannons at your main. You can afford to do all that, because you just have to survive that loss with minimal probe losses and you are ahead.
Its hard, but a lot of all-ins are quite difficult to deal with, especially when u plan for the late game. But you can do it! May the force be with you.
On March 14 2011 04:13 DrGreen wrote: @Jayrod the point is, even if he pressured with his 1st immortal he would get overrun with zerglings in the middle of the map. It's not like he really could push out.
Also 3rd wasn't really a problem in this particular game.
pressuring with first immortal after a sentry expand is pretty much suicide. My post was meant to imply that the super defensive style of playing protoss is probably not the best way to compete with this newly popular zerg style. Its like this zerg took that new bling ling mass expansion style thats coming to the forefront and turned it into a sick timing attack. I gotta believe the spawn positions also had a big effect on how this one played out. Its really tough to get to the zergs base but it would have been prime for some stargate pressure.
On March 14 2011 04:22 moonylo wrote: Dont listen to "Jayrod", he totally missed the state of the game. Your execution of the standard build is really good, keep it going. You just miss a little on scouting. Flying over the bases with your hallucinated phoenix, you should've noticed some important things:
No evo chambers. While you are already on your way to 1/1. No third base yet. No hydra den, no roaches out on the map.
What does that mean? He is not going for the late game. You are already ahead regarding the late game. So if you see this kind of things next time, through up additional cannons. And dont get an immortal (instead get 2 stalkers). Make the forcefields a little bit earlier so that no lings enter your base and spread your units. Snipe the overlords. Maybe even make 2 cannons at your main. You can afford to do all that, because you just have to survive that loss with minimal probe losses and you are ahead.
Its hard, but a lot of all-ins are quite difficult to deal with, especially when u plan for the late game. But you can do it! May the force be with you.
I have to argue this because this new baneling style is not drone dependent. Ive never actually seen anyone try this build and not do severe damage with their drops. I can tell you if the zergs attack failed he would have been more than fine to transition into a macro game. No one is questioning that his build is overall solid. Its the best standard build for the MU, but that might not always end up being the case as new threats come up
I couldn't have possibly pushed out in this game, if you say so then just stop posting in the strategy section! too many paths to counterattack and too many zerglings! about the extra cannons, i don't believe it is a viable option to put 2-3 cannons in main and 2-3 cannons in my natural!.
Beside the fact that it is a total waste of money it won't help much, look at the amount of overlords he had, cannons do NOT one shot overlords and my probes would have died anyways, sure my cannons might have killed 3-4 banelings, but in the end it would have ended the same way, because if i had to put 3-4 more cannons up i would not have the tech i was going for!.
And for whoever is saying that i should have scouted earlier, I am not asking you to tell me how to scout, i DID scout it and i knew it was coming, oh and i also started hallucination as soon as my warp-gate upgrade finished! i could not have scouted any sooner imo! and pushing out like i said is out of the question.
Colossi seemed like a perfectly good counter to ling/bling but apparently not... keep the replies coming guys <3.
Oh and it wasn't really an all-in because you saw the amount of roaches he had after the attack... he could always throw an expansion after the attack and throw a hydra den as well! think about it, ovie speed + drops upgrades are around 200/200 and the overall investment of the army would have been around 1500-2000 resources i'd imagine, and for the damage it will inevitably do is certainly a great investment, i don't see a way out of this strategy without getting behind in economy or have a HUGE disadvantage in tech, that is of course if its possible to beat it without tech!.
ling/bling is hard to stop whether they drop your mineral line or not, i've been having a terrible time with that style of play. It's crazy how upgraded lings just tear through a protoss ball.
In masters level games where I have seen protoss be successful against it (on streams) they scouted with hallucinate at 8-9 minutes and then go for more gates (making sure to sim your base to make it harder for banes to get through), head to HT tech and try to apply some pressure.
I haven't seen anyone get dropped that early though. Purely speculating, i'd I guess maybe you would need some cannons and gateways blocking your mineral lines, and maybe some stalkers patrolling drop lanes. Blink would probably be a priority so you can get your stalkers to the front lines in case of an assault.
I'm not too sure about stargates vs this until you scout a cavern going up. Typically zerg get a lot of queens so you need a fair # of phoenix/VR to do any sort of base harass. Once you reveal that tech they can throw up a couple of spores with the extra money they have since they can pretty much expand at will while you are turtling.
From personal experience every expo I take requires a lot more cannons to defend and a lot of gates to sim. A sentry or two wouldn't be a bad idea to leave there either.
I'm starting to think also that double forge might work for this since zerg is doing the same with their upgrades.
Edit: one last thought. Have any of you had zerg carpet bomb your ball of units while using this strat? NOt sure how to deal with that either.
On March 14 2011 04:43 Khaladas wrote: ling/bling is hard to stop whether they drop your mineral line or not, i've been having a terrible time with that style of play. It's crazy how upgraded lings just tear through a protoss ball.
In masters level games where I have seen protoss be successful against it (on streams) they scouted with hallucinate at 8-9 minutes and then go for more gates (making sure to sim your base to make it harder for banes to get through), head to HT tech and try to apply some pressure.
I haven't seen anyone get dropped that early though. Purely speculating, i'd I guess maybe you would need some cannons and gateways blocking your mineral lines, and maybe some stalkers patrolling drop lanes. Blink would probably be a priority so you can get your stalkers to the front lines in case of an assault.
I'm not too sure about stargates vs this until you scout a cavern going up. Typically zerg get a lot of queens so you need a fair # of phoenix/VR to do any sort of base harass. Once you reveal that tech they can throw up a couple of spores with the extra money they have since they can pretty much expand at will while you are turtling.
From personal experience every expo I take requires a lot more cannons to defend and a lot of gates to sim. A sentry or two wouldn't be a bad idea to leave there either.
I'm starting to think also that double forge might work for this since zerg is doing the same with their upgrades.
Yeah but sim-city only works when you are trying to stop baneling busts and whatnot, when you are dealing with baneling DROPS its terrible to sim-city your base because you are blocking your own way to save your mineral line, i might have been able to add more gateways, but please take in consideration that the attack came SO early that i couldn't have possibly had that big of an army until two more minutes or something had i put additional gateways, and blink is out of the question in my opinion because i would have to fully commit to it, and it's hard to tech to blink that fast because i scouted around 3 minutes before the attack came! thanks for posting your opinion, looking forward to see any top players comment on what to do!.
I would say the only way is 5-6 gates. I think you have to block the front so zerglings wont get in this way while trying to tank banelings on gateway units + snipe overlordsa.
If you focused only on drops and didnt need to care about front then it could go way better. However its impossible to sim city natural on most of the maps.
Damn, that looked brutal. Not sure what exactly sure what you could have done.
I guess being more active with your observer could have helped, but it is very hard to pick up on these sort of things. From now on I'm going to make two observers before Immo/Colossus, so one can patrol around looking for drop play
I think what you should have done, when you saw no spire and a TON of lings + Baneling nest, was just wall off the front of your base completely, that is what I do against regular ling/baneling.
Running away with the sentries seemed futile, maybe just split them next time, it was a bit hard for you because those initial lings got in and pinned you from moving back, if you did a complete wall off it would have been much harder for the Zerg to do what he just did. All it took was two banelings though to wipe out like 10 probes, he knew exactly where to drop them.
Also, what I just noticed, You teched too quickly, when you scouted around 9mins~ you saw no Hydraden or Roach Warren, yet he had lair and baneling nest, so I don't think there was a need to tech to Colossus ASAP, if you delayed it and just got more stalkers out + a complete wall off at the front it might have worked out much better for you
So I guess just play it out like regular ling/baneling, but even more turtly, more gateways, delayed tech, complete wall offs.
I can see this being a massive bitch on Typhon though
On March 14 2011 04:55 Dommk wrote: Damn, that looked brutal. Not sure what exactly sure what you could have done.
I guess being more active with your observer could have helped, but it is very hard to pick up on these sort of things. From now on I'm going to make two observers before Immo/Colossus, so one can patrol around looking for drop play
I think what you should have done, when you saw no spire and a TON of lings + Baneling nest, was just wall off the front of your base completely, that is what I do against regular ling/baneling.
Running away with the sentries seemed futile, maybe just split them next time, it was a bit hard for you because those initial lings got in and pinned you from moving back, if you did a complete wall off it would have been much harder for the Zerg to do what he just did. All it took was two banelings though to wipe out like 10 probes, he knew exactly where to drop them.
Also, what I just noticed, You teched too quickly, when you scouted around 9mins~ you saw no Hydraden or Roach Warren, yet he had lair and baneling nest, so I don't think there was a need to tech to Colossus ASAP, if you delayed it and just got more stalkers out + a complete wall off at the front it might have worked out much better for you
So I guess just play it out like regular ling/baneling, but even more turtly, more gateways, delayed tech, complete wall offs.
I can see this being a massive bitch on Typhon though
I agree with the full wall-off, but then again i thought the counter to mass ling/bling would be colossi! think about it i have to split my units + watch for the drop in my main + the drop in my natural! and i need to tech! i definitely NEED to tech or i would lose, look at the amount of roaches he had 2 minutes after the attack, its definitely NOT an all-in!
I mean sure i could tell you how to beat this! i would just put cannons all over the place and run my probes away for 2 minutes until hes done with the attack, but i would lose to the follow up! oh and where would i run my probes to is the issue, i have ovies following my main expansion's probes and ovies following my army + ovies following the probes at my natural! ONE misclick and you lose the game !.
Same here, baneling drops are so deadly, and anti-air isn't very effective because they can bring a ton of overlords and it takes forever to kill overlords.
I faced something similar but he wasn't really dropping my mineral lines, but just moving all of his overlords over my army and dropping banelings. I completely forcefielded off all of his ground forces prior to the engagement, but my army just evaporated to the baneling drops -- I'm talking losing 50-60 food worth of units in about 3-5 seconds.
In my game, I did put some early 6-gate pressure on him, killed some drones and almost broke him, but missed some FF's and let some baneling through which shut it down, so I do think it is possible to pressure a ling/baneling build early.
However, once overlord speed and drops were researched, everything just evaporated. The dropped baneling would take out all of my sentries as well as most of my other units. IAnything that survived would be cleaned up by his mass speedling ground force. I don't even think my guy did it particularly well, but the only way I knew how to respond was to basically stop building ground units. I managed to hide a few stargates and build some voidrays, but then a flood of zerglings and banelings flooded into my base and just wiped out everythign faster than my air could kill them. I attacked with the 10 or so void rays I was able to build, but he built a hydra den at another expansion and built a round of hydras to clean them up. I just don't think an all air switch against zerg is viable as they can react to it so quickly -- unless you are somehow able to get a near max army of void rays and/or carriers.
On March 14 2011 05:05 moonylo wrote: The follow up? Which is what? The same attack again? Or the unupgraded Zerglings/Roaches? When You have a or maybe even two colossus out?
Edith says:
By the way. Make Stalker illusions or other illusions as you please to decrease the damage on your army. You wont need that much forcefields anyway!
You just stated two very different things, you said that i should put cannons in my main AND natural, now you're saying that i should do that by the time the attack comes and have my army that big + have one-two colossi out? our income was even it's not like the end of the word for the zerg to be on two base against a two basing protoss mid-game! mind if i ask how high up the ladder are you? i think the hallucination is a good idea, then again he is not walking the banelings into my army he is dropping them ONTOP of my army! and how much more apm would i need to hallucinate + run both my expo probes away and micro them so that they don't die to the overlords following them with banelings inside! you don't get it, sorry but putting 4-5 extra cannons is definitely not viable.
On March 14 2011 04:55 Dommk wrote: Damn, that looked brutal. Not sure what exactly sure what you could have done.
I guess being more active with your observer could have helped, but it is very hard to pick up on these sort of things. From now on I'm going to make two observers before Immo/Colossus, so one can patrol around looking for drop play
I think what you should have done, when you saw no spire and a TON of lings + Baneling nest, was just wall off the front of your base completely, that is what I do against regular ling/baneling.
Running away with the sentries seemed futile, maybe just split them next time, it was a bit hard for you because those initial lings got in and pinned you from moving back, if you did a complete wall off it would have been much harder for the Zerg to do what he just did. All it took was two banelings though to wipe out like 10 probes, he knew exactly where to drop them.
Also, what I just noticed, You teched too quickly, when you scouted around 9mins~ you saw no Hydraden or Roach Warren, yet he had lair and baneling nest, so I don't think there was a need to tech to Colossus ASAP, if you delayed it and just got more stalkers out + a complete wall off at the front it might have worked out much better for you
So I guess just play it out like regular ling/baneling, but even more turtly, more gateways, delayed tech, complete wall offs.
I can see this being a massive bitch on Typhon though
I agree with the full wall-off, but then again i thought the counter to mass ling/bling would be colossi! think about it i have to split my units + watch for the drop in my main + the drop in my natural! and i need to tech! i definitely NEED to tech or i would lose, look at the amount of roaches he had 2 minutes after the attack, its definitely NOT an all-in!
I mean sure i could tell you how to beat this! i would just put cannons all over the place and run my probes away for 2 minutes until hes done with the attack, but i would lose to the follow up! oh and where would i run my probes to is the issue, i have ovies following my main expansion's probes and ovies following my army + ovies following the probes at my natural! ONE misclick and you lose the game !.
I'm not disagreeing with you, that looks absolutely nightmarish to defend and I think I would lose to that 99% of the time if I had no idea it was coming. But I think if you made 2 more observers to scout around his base after you noticed lair but no Hydra/Roach/Spire you could have picked up on the drop that was heading to your main (and followed it with an observer) and had some Stalkers over there for defense.
Immortal Archon Templar DT works much better against Ling/Baneling than Colossus. Storms are amazing against huge ling forces and it allows you to engage in the open without worrying too much. If you get surrounded whilst going Colossus then it is game over, but with Archom/Immo/Tempalr, they really can't engage you because a few good storms and all their army dies without doing a single thing to the Protoss. DT's give you some form of harass and also much better to make Archons with than High Temps
EDIT:
Colossus also relies heavily on force fields against Ling/Banelings, Archon/Templar/Immo doesn't and I don't know about you 70% if the Zergs I face doing this do some kind of muta switch later on, if you go Colossus you have to then tech to Templar to handle it, but if you have Templar already they usually just go mass roach, which I find easier to deal with
On March 14 2011 04:55 Dommk wrote: Damn, that looked brutal. Not sure what exactly sure what you could have done.
I guess being more active with your observer could have helped, but it is very hard to pick up on these sort of things. From now on I'm going to make two observers before Immo/Colossus, so one can patrol around looking for drop play
I think what you should have done, when you saw no spire and a TON of lings + Baneling nest, was just wall off the front of your base completely, that is what I do against regular ling/baneling.
Running away with the sentries seemed futile, maybe just split them next time, it was a bit hard for you because those initial lings got in and pinned you from moving back, if you did a complete wall off it would have been much harder for the Zerg to do what he just did. All it took was two banelings though to wipe out like 10 probes, he knew exactly where to drop them.
Also, what I just noticed, You teched too quickly, when you scouted around 9mins~ you saw no Hydraden or Roach Warren, yet he had lair and baneling nest, so I don't think there was a need to tech to Colossus ASAP, if you delayed it and just got more stalkers out + a complete wall off at the front it might have worked out much better for you
So I guess just play it out like regular ling/baneling, but even more turtly, more gateways, delayed tech, complete wall offs.
I can see this being a massive bitch on Typhon though
I agree with the full wall-off, but then again i thought the counter to mass ling/bling would be colossi! think about it i have to split my units + watch for the drop in my main + the drop in my natural! and i need to tech! i definitely NEED to tech or i would lose, look at the amount of roaches he had 2 minutes after the attack, its definitely NOT an all-in!
I mean sure i could tell you how to beat this! i would just put cannons all over the place and run my probes away for 2 minutes until hes done with the attack, but i would lose to the follow up! oh and where would i run my probes to is the issue, i have ovies following my main expansion's probes and ovies following my army + ovies following the probes at my natural! ONE misclick and you lose the game !.
I'm not disagreeing with you, that looks absolutely nightmarish to defend and I think I would lose to that 99% of the time if I had no idea it was coming. But I think if you made 2 more observers to scout around his base after you noticed lair but no Hydra/Roach/Spire you could have picked up on the drop that was heading to your main (and followed it with an observer) and had some Stalkers over there for defense.
Immortal Archon Templar DT works much better against Ling/Baneling than Colossus. Storms are amazing against huge ling forces and it allows you to engage in the open without worrying too much. If you get surrounded whilst going Colossus then it is game over, but with Archom/Immo/Tempalr, they really can't engage you because a few good storms and all their army dies without doing a single thing to the Protoss. DT's give you some form of harass and also much better to make Archons with than High Temps
Watch the replay again, he expanded as soon as the attack was moving out and had a LOT of spare cash, his macro was terrible! he could have easily transitioned into mass roach and broke me while i was teching to storm i needed that robo tech! it's THAT easy for zerg to tech switch, you guys don't get it! that attack was not an all-in! sure i could have sent my stalkers to stop those overlords coming to my main, but then my army at my natural would be so much weaker and i wouldn't be able to save my probes in the main! and he could have always dropped lings from ovies since all of them were empty but he was an idiot and he didn't >_>.
Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
On March 14 2011 05:05 moonylo wrote: The follow up? Which is what? The same attack again? Or the unupgraded Zerglings/Roaches? When You have a or maybe even two colossus out?
Edith says:
By the way. Make Stalker illusions or other illusions as you please to decrease the damage on your army. You wont need that much forcefields anyway!
You just stated two very different things, you said that i should put cannons in my main AND natural, now you're saying that i should do that by the time the attack comes and have my army that big + have one-two colossi out? our income was even it's not like the end of the word for the zerg to be on two base against a two basing protoss mid-game! mind if i ask how high up the ladder are you? i think the hallucination is a good idea, then again he is not walking the banelings into my army he is dropping them ONTOP of my army! and how much more apm would i need to hallucinate + run both my expo probes away and micro them so that they don't die to the overlords following them with banelings inside! you don't get it, sorry but putting 4-5 extra cannons is definitely not viable.
Sorry if I wasnt explicit enough, throwing ideas out there. As soon as you scout him not taking a 3rd and not having any evo chambers (especially the last), you should start adding additional cannons. That of course means, that the colossus has to wait some time. But you're not getting the colossus to face that push (because it will never be out in time anyway), but for the time after the push.
I agree on the "APM" part though. Its really hard to deal with it, but the zerg also has to handle multiple parts. So chances are he's not doing it perfect, too. And especially in that situation cannons and illusions help you a lot, because everything will run into them if not manually microed.
On March 14 2011 05:37 SaroVati wrote: Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling! he also had 3 spine crawlers so i could not have done any damage even if i did go to his base! i did move out and i went to like his side of the map and he still knew he was safe and droned up, i could not have possibly known that he was droning up when i was going to do some aggression on him! watch the replay again and tell me what you think, the things you said in this post are absolutely useless, no offense mate!.
You don't understand the match up if you're saying things like this, you're supposed to be aggressive when he is expanding early and taking his 3rd and droning up, he merely got enough drones for two bases and just massed units, you can't put aggression on somebody in this situation and force him to make units because he is ALREADY making units and ALREADY has spine crawlers!.
On March 14 2011 05:05 moonylo wrote: The follow up? Which is what? The same attack again? Or the unupgraded Zerglings/Roaches? When You have a or maybe even two colossus out?
Edith says:
By the way. Make Stalker illusions or other illusions as you please to decrease the damage on your army. You wont need that much forcefields anyway!
You just stated two very different things, you said that i should put cannons in my main AND natural, now you're saying that i should do that by the time the attack comes and have my army that big + have one-two colossi out? our income was even it's not like the end of the word for the zerg to be on two base against a two basing protoss mid-game! mind if i ask how high up the ladder are you? i think the hallucination is a good idea, then again he is not walking the banelings into my army he is dropping them ONTOP of my army! and how much more apm would i need to hallucinate + run both my expo probes away and micro them so that they don't die to the overlords following them with banelings inside! you don't get it, sorry but putting 4-5 extra cannons is definitely not viable.
Sorry if I wasnt explicit enough, throwing ideas out there. As soon as you scout him not taking a 3rd and not having any evo chambers (especially the last), you should start adding additional cannons. That of course means, that the colossus has to wait some time. But you're not getting the colossus to face that push (because it will never be out in time anyway), but for the time after the push.
I agree on the "APM" part though. Its really hard to deal with it, but the zerg also has to handle multiple parts. So chances are he's not doing it perfect, too. And especially in that situation cannons and illusions help you a lot, because everything will run into them if not manually microed.
the Zerg pretty much a-moved his zerglings like you saw and just handled two drops, i have to handle my army, forcefields AND splitting my army + hallucination apparently + pull and micro BOTH groups of my probes away! it was just too much, and i couldn't have possibly known when he was going to attack until the attack was coming, so i didn't know my colossi wouldn't have been out in time! thanks for your suggestions!.
On March 14 2011 05:37 SaroVati wrote: Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
Not sure if that is a good idea considering this is Ling/Baneling, not your standard Hydra/Ling or Roach/Ling. You aren't "forcing" Lings with ling/Baneling, at no point can you ever break them with any early pressure, most people just wait till you are at their door and then make a ton of lings, at that point it is over as your sentries won't be able to run back before getting surrounded.
Watch the replay again, he expanded as soon as the attack was moving out and had a LOT of spare cash, his macro was terrible! he could have easily transitioned into mass roach and broke me while i was teching to storm i needed that robo tech! it's THAT easy for zerg to tech switch, you guys don't get it! that attack was not an all-in! sure i could have sent my stalkers to stop those overlords coming to my main, but then my army at my natural would be so much weaker and i wouldn't be able to save my probes in the main! and he could have always dropped lings from ovies since all of them were empty but he was an idiot and he didn't >_>.
Well that is ling baneling for you, you can't exactly out macro them, I mean what are you going to do? Even with Colossus tech you can't push out against Ling/Baneling, the goal is to survive without taking heavy losses. Your only real options for dealing with macro is DT's.
But anyway, you didn't have very many units at 9mins into the game I usually have like 9 sentries, a Zealot and a few Stalkers and I have my robo starting shortly after. I mean, with such few units, how do you even stop any roach timing? I'm fairly sure with the unit count you had, any burrowed roach timing with claws would walk all over you..
Also, you don't need to send many Stalkers to defend the main, if you catch it with ab observer, 2 Stalkers should be all you need to force him back.
That and you can also get Immortals whilst teching to storm, or even Archons. Immortals will deal with any Roaches better than Colossus would at that stage
On March 14 2011 05:37 SaroVati wrote: Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
Not sure if that is a good idea considering this is Ling/Baneling, not your standard Hydra/Ling or Roach/Ling. You aren't "forcing" Lings with ling/Baneling, at no point can you ever break them with any early pressure, most people just wait till you are at their door and then make a ton of lings, at that point it is over as your sentries won't be able to run back before getting surrounded.
Watch the replay again, he expanded as soon as the attack was moving out and had a LOT of spare cash, his macro was terrible! he could have easily transitioned into mass roach and broke me while i was teching to storm i needed that robo tech! it's THAT easy for zerg to tech switch, you guys don't get it! that attack was not an all-in! sure i could have sent my stalkers to stop those overlords coming to my main, but then my army at my natural would be so much weaker and i wouldn't be able to save my probes in the main! and he could have always dropped lings from ovies since all of them were empty but he was an idiot and he didn't >_>.
Well that is ling baneling for you, you can't exactly out macro them, I mean what are you going to do? Even with Colossus tech you can't push out against Ling/Baneling, the goal is to survive without taking heavy losses. Your only real options for dealing with macro is DT's.
But anyway, you didn't have very many units at 9mins into the game I usually have like 9 sentries, a Zealot and a few Stalkers and I have my robo starting shortly after. I mean, with such few units, how do you even stop any roach timing? I'm fairly sure with the unit count you had, any burrowed roach timing with claws would walk all over you..
Also, you don't need to send many Stalkers to defend the main, if you catch it with ab observer, 2 Stalkers should be all you need to force him back.
That and you can also get Immortals whilst teching to storm, or even Archons. Immortals will deal with any Roaches better than Colossus would at that stage
Two stalkers definitely would not have pushed two overlords back, takes like 15 seconds to kill the overlords and at the speed they were going i would have lost all my probes by then, MAYBE in a perfect world with perfect micro and macro i might have had a chance to save my main, but lets face it I'm not sSks or Huk!.
also that army was more than enough to beat roach timings, i was teching hard so i decided to put two cannons instead of the usual one, and make an immortal while i tech to colossi! forcefields are the key, shattered temple has a pretty nice choke to your natural which can easily be force fielded to half the roach numbers and kill them in groups! something you will see in higher level play i suppose =/.
On March 14 2011 05:37 SaroVati wrote: Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
Not sure if that is a good idea considering this is Ling/Baneling, not your standard Hydra/Ling or Roach/Ling. You aren't "forcing" Lings with ling/Baneling, at no point can you ever break them with any early pressure, most people just wait till you are at their door and then make a ton of lings, at that point it is over as your sentries won't be able to run back before getting surrounded.
Watch the replay again, he expanded as soon as the attack was moving out and had a LOT of spare cash, his macro was terrible! he could have easily transitioned into mass roach and broke me while i was teching to storm i needed that robo tech! it's THAT easy for zerg to tech switch, you guys don't get it! that attack was not an all-in! sure i could have sent my stalkers to stop those overlords coming to my main, but then my army at my natural would be so much weaker and i wouldn't be able to save my probes in the main! and he could have always dropped lings from ovies since all of them were empty but he was an idiot and he didn't >_>.
Well that is ling baneling for you, you can't exactly out macro them, I mean what are you going to do? Even with Colossus tech you can't push out against Ling/Baneling, the goal is to survive without taking heavy losses. Your only real options for dealing with macro is DT's.
But anyway, you didn't have very many units at 9mins into the game I usually have like 9 sentries, a Zealot and a few Stalkers and I have my robo starting shortly after. I mean, with such few units, how do you even stop any roach timing? I'm fairly sure with the unit count you had, any burrowed roach timing with claws would walk all over you..
Also, you don't need to send many Stalkers to defend the main, if you catch it with ab observer, 2 Stalkers should be all you need to force him back.
That and you can also get Immortals whilst teching to storm, or even Archons. Immortals will deal with any Roaches better than Colossus would at that stage
Two stalkers definitely would not have pushed two overlords back, takes like 15 seconds to kill the overlords and at the speed they were going i would have lost all my probes by then, MAYBE in a perfect world with perfect micro and macro i might have had a chance to save my main, but lets face it I'm not sSks or Huk!.
also that army was more than enough to beat roach timings, i was teching hard so i decided to put two cannons instead of the usual one, and make an immortal while i tech to colossi! forcefields are the key, shattered temple has a pretty nice choke to your natural which can easily be force fielded to half the roach numbers and kill them in groups! something you will see in higher level play i suppose =/.
Well I'm not sure what you want me to say then, you seem pretty convinced that you can't beat this so why even bother posting a thread about it?
Your only real option is cutting back on tech and surviving, if you are going to tech hard then you will die to this every time, you don't have the units to defend it
If there was a burrowed roach timing coming, you have the option to add more cannons and units. He had hallucinated phoenix scouting constantly. So why consider that
ZvP bannelings is a strategy to punish a protoss going colossus every single game. It is much weaker against other tech paths.
You scout the banneling nest, no roach warren, no hydra den, and that's when you start your robo... When you scouted the banneling nest morphing, he had10 lings, 2 spine, no upgrade, no tech, no map vision because you've just cleared the Xel'naga tower.
At this point you have 4 gate, you can probably make 2 more and go kill him. And even if you don't kill him, you are not all-in. What would you have done if you had scouted a spire instead ?
Also I think you shouldn't make those 2 cannons at your entrance. You've just scouted that the zerg had no army and no tech, you should put pressure instead of turtling. And even if you decide to play passive, there are no roaches/hydra/muta coming, all you have to worry is nydius and drop. In both cases cannons at your entrance is not the answer.
Finally, you can scout 30s earlier with hallucination, when your army is at the Xel-naga tower. you might miss the banneling nest with the first hallucination but you would have scouted that there were only drones and you can 6 gate.
On March 14 2011 05:37 SaroVati wrote: Lol I think your main problem is the fact that you let the zerg get too many drones without contesting him. I don't understand. Just because a high level player tells you to shark, doesn't mean you have to shark. Leave 1 zealot at your natural choke if you wall off, and just go pressure him... It'll force lings instead of drones, and at the very least disrupt his timings and macro more...
Another thing I noticed. You STOPPED producing outta your warpgates after the 6 sentries + 1 zealot. Why....? Just to tech more? Imo the 2 cannons you dropped could've been avoided and spent into 3 stalkers, which definitely would've helped you apply even "fake" pressure to the zerg.
Although I admit, zerg doesn't utilize half the things it can (terran as well), toss needs to just scout a bit more.
I'm not too much higher than you (about 3700+ masters), but you NEED to pressure with your early sentries..... sure getting surrounded might lose you the game, but sitting back and letting a zerg macro is also going to lose you the game. You need to just hug walls, sit in front of his base, and it'll force the zerg to do things he doesn't normally do.
Not sure if that is a good idea considering this is Ling/Baneling, not your standard Hydra/Ling or Roach/Ling. You aren't "forcing" Lings with ling/Baneling, at no point can you ever break them with any early pressure, most people just wait till you are at their door and then make a ton of lings, at that point it is over as your sentries won't be able to run back before getting surrounded.
Watch the replay again, he expanded as soon as the attack was moving out and had a LOT of spare cash, his macro was terrible! he could have easily transitioned into mass roach and broke me while i was teching to storm i needed that robo tech! it's THAT easy for zerg to tech switch, you guys don't get it! that attack was not an all-in! sure i could have sent my stalkers to stop those overlords coming to my main, but then my army at my natural would be so much weaker and i wouldn't be able to save my probes in the main! and he could have always dropped lings from ovies since all of them were empty but he was an idiot and he didn't >_>.
Well that is ling baneling for you, you can't exactly out macro them, I mean what are you going to do? Even with Colossus tech you can't push out against Ling/Baneling, the goal is to survive without taking heavy losses. Your only real options for dealing with macro is DT's.
But anyway, you didn't have very many units at 9mins into the game I usually have like 9 sentries, a Zealot and a few Stalkers and I have my robo starting shortly after. I mean, with such few units, how do you even stop any roach timing? I'm fairly sure with the unit count you had, any burrowed roach timing with claws would walk all over you..
Also, you don't need to send many Stalkers to defend the main, if you catch it with ab observer, 2 Stalkers should be all you need to force him back.
That and you can also get Immortals whilst teching to storm, or even Archons. Immortals will deal with any Roaches better than Colossus would at that stage
Two stalkers definitely would not have pushed two overlords back, takes like 15 seconds to kill the overlords and at the speed they were going i would have lost all my probes by then, MAYBE in a perfect world with perfect micro and macro i might have had a chance to save my main, but lets face it I'm not sSks or Huk!.
also that army was more than enough to beat roach timings, i was teching hard so i decided to put two cannons instead of the usual one, and make an immortal while i tech to colossi! forcefields are the key, shattered temple has a pretty nice choke to your natural which can easily be force fielded to half the roach numbers and kill them in groups! something you will see in higher level play i suppose =/.
Well I'm not sure what you want me to say then, you seem pretty convinced that you can't beat this so why even bother posting a thread about it?
Your only real option is cutting back on tech and surviving, if you are going to tech hard then you will die to this every time, you don't have the units to defend it
I'm not convinced that there is no way to beat this, but what I'm convinced of is that a lot of people post in the strategy section without actually thinking about what they are going to post, and/or do not have anything to back it up with! I.E: High ladder ranking and such.
I'm not saying you can't post if you aren't high up in the ladder, but atl east provide something that actually helps! thanks for posting anyway .
On March 14 2011 06:13 Elean wrote: ZvP bannelings is a strategy to punish a protoss going colossus every single game. It is much weaker against other tech paths.
You scout the banneling nest, no roach warren, no hydra den, and that's when you start your robo... When you scouted the banneling nest morphing, he had10 lings, 2 spine, no upgrade, no tech, no map vision because you've just cleared the Xel'naga tower.
At this point you have 4 gate, you can probably make 2 more and go kill him. And even if you don't kill him, you are not all-in. What would you have done if you had scouted a spire instead ?
Also I think you shouldn't make those 2 cannons at your entrance. You've just scouted that the zerg had no army and no tech, you should put pressure instead of turtling. And even if you decide to play passive, there are no roaches/hydra/muta coming, all you have to worry is nydius and drop. In both cases cannons at your entrance is not the answer.
Finally, you can scout 30s earlier with hallucination, when your army is at the Xel-naga tower. you might miss the banneling nest with the first hallucination but you would have scouted that there were only drones and you can 6 gate.
Pretty much this is the only good answer in my opinion, i guess i could have threw in 2 more gateways! i would have 6gated if i scouted a spire building! keep in mind it was 7-8 mins into the game which is very early! i made those two cannons after my expo before i scouted him, since i was teching! i thought colossi would be a good response, will try to contact the guy and play more games, still! the drop is so deadly to deal with if you don't kill him with your 6 gates or do enough damage!.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
When I go heavy ling baneling build into mass expand / something, I usually love when the opponent push me early (before the 10 minute mark) because he have no colossi and I can crush his sentries. Even if the fight is not that cost effectiv for me, killing the sentries is always the good step to victory. Against that kind of tech, I have difficulties against protoss who turtle up, have good army management (you need to split stalker/use sentry well/make a wall of zealot which is good since he did not had any baneling in his army on the ground), and tech up to colossi/templar (I have a lot of difficulties against player that lure me into colossi and switch to templar).
3k2 master zerg on EU.
And yes, you would have killed him if you had pushed before, because he had only 2 hatch, that's not enough larva to pump out a good zergling army.
On March 14 2011 06:30 WhiteDog wrote: When I go heavy ling baneling build into mass expand / something, I usually love when the opponent push me early (before the 10 minute mark) because he have no colossi and I can crush his sentries. Even if the fight is not that cost effectiv for me, killing the sentries is always the good step to victory. Against that kind of tech, I have difficulties against protoss who turtle up.
If you can easily defend early pressure and have difficulties against a turtle, this means you make too many lings/spine and not enough drones. This is the oppost of the replay, where the zerg made no lings at all and only drones. He win against a turtle but would die against any early pressure.
Hi PaPoole, this strat is pretty much a hard counter to sentry expand in to colossus. Basically you had a build order loss because cols take too long. There is a lot of discussion floating around about how to beat this, i think immortal + stalker in to high temps, or dt + archon are two of the strongest options.
edit: it's kind of dumb talking about a build hard countering another because there is always something you can do. But I really do think colossus take too long. May as well pimp my thread again where this has been discussed a bit! http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=192400
As a zerg player I've been thinking about fast baneling drops on mineral lines as a counter to the turtling or four-gate Protoss. In practice the fastest I can get there is about 10 minutes. As a zerg this is the only cost-efficient way to pressure a protoss that masses gateway units or cannons up the front. Forcing a stargate in response to scouting a nest is a "victory" in and of itself IMO. On maps where a pile of spinecrawlers can cover both the natural and the main ramp I think this is a great strategy unless zerg scouts a stargate. So I look for this to really become popular in this MU... at least until we all find something else!
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
On March 14 2011 06:30 WhiteDog wrote: When I go heavy ling baneling build into mass expand / something, I usually love when the opponent push me early (before the 10 minute mark) because he have no colossi and I can crush his sentries. Even if the fight is not that cost effectiv for me, killing the sentries is always the good step to victory. Against that kind of tech, I have difficulties against protoss who turtle up, have good army management (you need to split stalker/use sentry well/make a wall of zealot which is good since he did not had any baneling in his army on the ground), and tech up to colossi/templar (I have a lot of difficulties against player that lure me into colossi and switch to templar).
3k2 master zerg on EU.
And yes, you would have killed him if you had pushed before, because he had only 2 hatch, that's not enough larva to pump out a good zergling army.
It's true i could have maybe done a lot of damage with my 6 gate, but keep in mind that it was the first time i encountered this build like this, i didn't know when the attack was coming, what he was building, whether he was droning or making zerglings! i will try to contact the guy and ask him to do the same thing again, and this time I'll try to do a 6gate or something of that sort, thanks for the post .
On that map, with those positions (close air), I will probably lose to this 99 times out of 100 unless I just blind opened stargate AND caught his overlords in transit to my main. Even then, I'm not sure I would've held off all the baneling/ling at my expo having sunk money and gas into stargate tech.
Lol oh dear you say not to post unless you have certain I guess markers to show you are high in the ladder, and I do, judging from your first post I actually have more points than you in the ladder. But that's not the discussion of this thread.
I agree, if it's the first time you see a strat, you'll be hard-pressed to beat it unless it's some garbage like a 1 baneling 1 roach 1 hydra 1 ling timing push. However, you can still make the best of what you have. Your 6 sentries had enough energy for like 15 forcefields. I'm not going to lie, but when hugging a wall, 3 forcefields is enough (1-3 lings getting in does nothing to your units). That's 5 sets of forcefields (and possibly a 6th considering you'll be under protection for over a minute from the previous sets) The hard counter to sentry-only FF is roaches cause they have range. Lings and Banelings straight up just CAN'T hurt you. Yes, spinecrawlers defend sentries as well, but I'm sure the zerg isn't going to make 99% drones when you are sitting in front of his natural, regardless of if you are going to attack or not. If he does, either he's a gosu player or blind.
Now about the actual 3-pronged attack part. Again, you didn't address the issue of you not making gateway units for about 2 minutes. That's 3 possible warp in cycles (yes it cuts down on your tech, but I'll be honest, that first colo does jack shit against a zerg who you see turtling, cause turtling zerg mostly means mutas). 3 Warp in cycles = 9 stalkers. Yes, you need to react to the drops, but if you have your stalkers positioned right, the zergs entire strat will be rendered useless. Now I know it sounds quite unreasonable, but the first unit coming outta your robo should be an obs anyways. Still, it's quite a random strat so I don't blame you for being caught off guard as you don't have 300 APM and perfect map awareness (not many do).
All in all, the remedy is scouting. I guess now you have to play zerg like you play terran, always on the lookout for drops. If you don't scout a double maurader drop, chances are your nexus is dead. If you don't scout 2 overlords with blings, your mineral line is dead.
What I'm honestly scared for is when zerg decides to drop 4 banelings or 8 lings on all your pylons powering your production buildings, that's one way to get behind in a game Better start spreading your producing structures out vs. zerg preemptively =)
I feel i should probably post in this thread since i'm the zerg here. I've been playing with baneling drop for a couple months now and came up with this strat to mostly counter sentry heavy compositions (3 gate expands). Dont worry papoolee, your not alone. Most protoss who 3 gate vs me die to this. This post probably will help you out as well as frustrate other protosses out there since i will try to give my build to other zergs on how to execute it as well.
The early game isn't particularly important for the zerg, just get ling speed before lair, expand and start your lair around 6 minutes. After you hit lair get your second gas up and drone to around 36-42 drones (16 on both bases + 6 on gas is a good number), after which pump lings till you move out. To be safe from "sharking" just make sure to have 1-2 spines if you feel they might try to harass. You can make this call depending on how many lings you have out on the field and spawn position. Threatening a counterattack with 12 lings can keep you safe quite often. Get drop immediately on lair followed by ovie speed and baneling nest in no paticular order. When drop finishes you should have enough gas for around 12 banelings, Load up 1-3 ovies for a drop in his main, a mixture of ling/bling works well since the banelings will leave the probe 1 hit from death. Load up 10-12 banelings for the frontal assault, and take 2-3 empty ovies to take fire. Aim for sentries and probes or if they ball up there army you can just blow it up and let lings finish up.
The purpose of this attack is to cause economical damage and reduce the count of expensive sentries. It is not all in (but you do have to do damage) since after you move out one round of drones will saturate both bases and you can proceed to transition how you choose, however since lings are larva heavy you will most likely need to throw down a macro hatch or third pretty soon.
6 Gates will counter your aggression, however 6 gates are also reliant on sentries to give them power. If you scout a large amount of gateway, make sure to delay any attack until drop is up ( there is a very small window where they can hit before drop is finished, but threatening a counterattack can negate this), then fight it at your base and crush it and continue the game to your discretion.
Stargates are a tossup. If they catch your ovies moving out you will probably lose, but if your ovies make it to there base before they scout it you'll do fine since stargate tech doesn't kill lings or banelings particularly well
Collosus just wont be out in time to deal with the attack, unless you cut defense, which isnt smart.
The hardest part of dealing with it for the protoss is knowing its coming. But if it is coming make sure to either have a couple stalkers or 1-2 cannons protecting your main. That will shut down alot of the damage. As for the frontal assault Make sure your not skimping on gateway units, forcefield off the lings and micro and split like a madman. +1 on zealots pretty much make lings easy to cleanup once the ovies with banelings are taken care of.
On March 14 2011 17:39 Amandil wrote: I feel i should probably post in this thread since i'm the zerg here. I've been playing with baneling drop for a couple months now and came up with this strat to mostly counter sentry heavy compositions (3 gate expands). Dont worry papoolee, your not alone. Most protoss who 3 gate vs me die to this. This post probably will help you out as well as frustrate other protosses out there since i will try to give my build to other zergs on how to execute it as well.
The early game isn't particularly important for the zerg, just get ling speed before lair, expand and start your lair around 6 minutes. After you hit lair get your second gas up and drone to around 36-42 drones (16 on both bases + 6 on gas is a good number), after which pump lings till you move out. To be safe from "sharking" just make sure to have 1-2 spines if you feel they might try to harass. You can make this call depending on how many lings you have out on the field and spawn position. Threatening a counterattack with 12 lings can keep you safe quite often. Get drop immediately on lair followed by ovie speed and baneling nest in no paticular order. When drop finishes you should have enough gas for around 12 banelings, Load up 1-3 ovies for a drop in his main, a mixture of ling/bling works well since the banelings will leave the probe 1 hit from death. Load up 10-12 banelings for the frontal assault, and take 2-3 empty ovies to take fire. Aim for sentries and probes or if they ball up there army you can just blow it up and let lings finish up.
The purpose of this attack is to cause economical damage and reduce the count of expensive sentries. It is not all in (but you do have to do damage) since after you move out one round of drones will saturate both bases and you can proceed to transition how you choose, however since lings are larva heavy you will most likely need to throw down a macro hatch or third pretty soon.
6 Gates will counter your aggression, however 6 gates are also reliant on sentries to give them power. If you scout a large amount of gateway, make sure to delay any attack until drop is up ( there is a very small window where they can hit before drop is finished, but threatening a counterattack can negate this), then fight it at your base and crush it and continue the game to your discretion.
Stargates are a tossup. If they catch your ovies moving out you will probably lose, but if your ovies make it to there base before they scout it you'll do fine since stargate tech doesn't kill lings or banelings particularly well
Collosus just wont be out in time to deal with the attack, unless you cut defense, which isnt smart.
The hardest part of dealing with it for the protoss is knowing its coming. But if it is coming make sure to either have a couple stalkers or 1-2 cannons protecting your main. That will shut down alot of the damage. As for the frontal assault Make sure your not skimping on gateway units, forcefield off the lings and micro and split like a madman. +1 on zealots pretty much make lings easy to cleanup once the ovies with banelings are taken care of.
There...now my secrets are out.
Thanks for posting here, Amandil! I was so confused by this strategy and how to beat it yesterday that i didn't think it was possible...!
Please add me if you don't mind so i could try stopping it next time see you on the ladder mate!.
A little thing that you can do is preemtively hotkey the drones at your main and nat to 7 and 8 respectively (or to whatever hotkeys you normally don't use), that way you don't have to worry about boxing your probes and stuff. This will help wonders when the time comes to run around dodging banelings (as a zerg, I do this to prepare against a 6 pool all-in or hotkey 3-4 drones against 2 rax bunker rush).
This definately won't solve your problem, but is useful nontheless.
Instead of going robo tech, what would happen if you went star tech and got 6+ Pheonix? You'd be able to get more gateway units out, and if you kept an eye on your scouting, could have cut his overlords off from dropping you. This way, you'd just have to worry about him busting his way through your front gate.
In my opinion, you don't need T3 to counter T1 units. But you do need pheonix to counter T1+Overlord drops.
Had the same problem. I saw the overlords flying other my main and my expo and pulled my drones off in time but some minutes later i spend less attention to my main and missed the baneling party... . Key is early scouting. Instant Hallucination after warpgate has finished and try to scout regular. If you see Banelingnest -> instant stargate and go for mass phenix with some VRs. Your expo should be fine because of wall in and sentries. Any drops will be prevented because of air domination and you can snipe queens + ovis and force him to hydras and then the baneling problem will be solved.
Try not to 6 Gate! Even if your forcefields will be perfect (he can back up) it is really a pain to fight against maaassss ling and banelings on ground with creep.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
Wait so basically you could have walked to his base/a xel naga tower, made him make 12-14 lings instead of 6-7 drones, then walked back home safely?
Also, he had 41 drones when you had 5 sentries and 1 zealot? Holy crap? Did he open like 1 set of lings entire game + you got supply blocked or something?
Edit: +2 baneling drops on multiple bases midgame are freaking ridiculous and I have no idea why people complain about storm drops in comparison.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
Wait so basically you could have walked to his base/a xel naga tower, made him make 12-14 lings instead of 6-7 drones, then walked back home safely?
Also, he had 41 drones when you had 5 sentries and 1 zealot? Holy crap? Did he open like 1 set of lings entire game + you got supply blocked or something?
Edit: +2 baneling drops on multiple bases midgame are freaking ridiculous and I have no idea why people complain about storm drops in comparison.
I'm sorry but did i not make it clear enough with the bold letters in the OP that you should watch the replay before posting? stop posting in the strategy forum, your post is terrible and is not helpful in any way!.
On March 14 2011 23:39 PolSC2 wrote: Instead of going robo tech, what would happen if you went star tech and got 6+ Pheonix? You'd be able to get more gateway units out, and if you kept an eye on your scouting, could have cut his overlords off from dropping you. This way, you'd just have to worry about him busting his way through your front gate.
In my opinion, you don't need T3 to counter T1 units. But you do need pheonix to counter T1+Overlord drops.
Watch the replay, the attack came around the 10 minute - 11 minute mark, no way i could have had any ground army AND 4-6 phoenix! the answer to this after testing out for 3-4 games against the same guy is to add additional gateways, and have 3-4 stalkers in your main mineral line! oh and you must not let the lings surround your army else its over!.
On March 15 2011 01:57 Lobber wrote: Archons, 1 hitting banelings and zerglings, takes what? 15 banelings to kill one?
Open heavy sentry zealot with +1, transition into 2 base zealot archon while continuing upgrades.
Oh thanks Lobber, it's all clear now! 3 gate sentry expand into 9 minutes transition into Archons! great thanks mate! why oh why didn't i think of this before!. /sarcasim.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
Wait so basically you could have walked to his base/a xel naga tower, made him make 12-14 lings instead of 6-7 drones, then walked back home safely?
Also, he had 41 drones when you had 5 sentries and 1 zealot? Holy crap? Did he open like 1 set of lings entire game + you got supply blocked or something?
Edit: +2 baneling drops on multiple bases midgame are freaking ridiculous and I have no idea why people complain about storm drops in comparison.
I'm sorry but did i not make it clear enough with the bold letters in the OP that you should watch the replay before posting? stop posting in the strategy forum, your post is terrible and is not helpful in any way!.
When the reason you lost has a lot to do with the fact that the zerg was so far ahead that he was able to completely switch into aggression mode at such an early time and crush you, it is completely relevant to point out gameplay mistakes.
I don't think you're one to tell other people to stop posting in a strategy forum. 3600 masters does not make you superior in a strategy even though it puts a context to your posts (btw i'm playing at a higher level than you on ladder).
If you let a zerg go into midgame with 41 workers at the 8 minute mark because you did not pressure at all and that zerg chooses to play super aggressive then you will have trouble. I've found that ling baneling is very susceptible to early pressure because of how strong FF is against a pure melee composition--even banelings--and the ling baneling player wants to hit a suitable amount of drones as quickly as possible so they can begin to be aggressive without destroying their economy.
Going vr/immortal/gateway while teching to templars works well as VRs kill overlords a lot faster than phoenix (front can be defended fine with proper ff so VR's can defend in main against drops). Although baneling drops on your templars and sentries is a total bitch.
Edit: you're 3600 masters and you think a ling surround on your army midgame is hard to deal with? I'm actually really confused by this. Also you can get the VR's/phoenix to deal with the overlords fine as long as you don't tech straight to colossi. And PvZ can be played fine without colossi.
I've played this style as Zerg, and played against it as Toss. As with anything the key is to scout it out asap. Hallucination after gateway should be standard or your just being greedy and deserve to lose.
3gate stargate is pretty common so grab a void ray or 2, Use sentries to defend your nat, voids will clean up any attack on the main.
Hotkey each base' probes to something you don't use, or maintain good vision and just box w/ quick reactions.
as soon as they have wasted banes against your FF's and lost a couple overlords they will likely just have lings out, and be trying to morph banes for round 2, check any hidden secret hallways with a probe, whilst carefully pushing out of your nat to find the morphing banes.
Once you get to this point its basically an autowin as you add in more stalkers and just use FF to choke any more bane attempts.
- It may be possible to fill your mineral line with FF to stop the banes landing as a worst case scenario. Start the FF's from the outside and work in so you dont propel your probes outside ______
Disclaimer - The above guide assumes you are better than your opponent in terms of multi task and speed, if you aren't just work on that. Macro better react faster, scout better. Note down the timings and be wary of them. If your the sort of toss to use 1 hotkey for army and hover below 100apm all game, your going to have problems with strategies that play on the multitasking of their opponents.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
Wait so basically you could have walked to his base/a xel naga tower, made him make 12-14 lings instead of 6-7 drones, then walked back home safely?
Also, he had 41 drones when you had 5 sentries and 1 zealot? Holy crap? Did he open like 1 set of lings entire game + you got supply blocked or something?
Edit: +2 baneling drops on multiple bases midgame are freaking ridiculous and I have no idea why people complain about storm drops in comparison.
I'm sorry but did i not make it clear enough with the bold letters in the OP that you should watch the replay before posting? stop posting in the strategy forum, your post is terrible and is not helpful in any way!.
When the reason you lost has a lot to do with the fact that the zerg was so far ahead that he was able to completely switch into aggression mode at such an early time and crush you, it is completely relevant to point out gameplay mistakes.
I don't think you're one to tell other people to stop posting in a strategy forum. 3600 masters does not make you superior in a strategy even though it puts a context to your posts (btw i'm playing at a higher level than you on ladder).
If you let a zerg go into midgame with 41 workers at the 8 minute mark because you did not pressure at all and that zerg chooses to play super aggressive then you will have trouble. I've found that ling baneling is very susceptible to early pressure because of how strong FF is against a pure melee composition--even banelings--and the ling baneling player wants to hit a suitable amount of drones as quickly as possible so they can begin to be aggressive without destroying their economy.
Going vr/immortal/gateway while teching to templars works well as VRs kill overlords a lot faster than phoenix (front can be defended fine with proper ff so VR's can defend in main against drops). Although baneling drops on your templars and sentries is a total bitch.
Edit: you're 3600 masters and you think a ling surround on your army midgame is hard to deal with? I'm actually really confused by this. Also you can get the VR's/phoenix to deal with the overlords fine as long as you don't tech straight to colossi. And PvZ can be played fine without colossi.
Voidrays will NOT work against this type of attack, the zerg himself said that he would have killed me if i got to the point where i am outside his base, i did move out to the watch tower and i stayed there for a good 2 minutes or so! the way you posted in your previous post made you look like nothing more than an idiot! Going higher tech against this build won't work unless you knew it was coming before the game started! if you have a Europe account i'll be glad to observe some games of you playing against it! the attack comes too early for you to put down a Stargate after you scout it AND get 2 Voidrays out!.
You said i should have proper FF's to stop my natural from dying while the voids take care of my main, had you seen the replay you would have seen that he had TWO overlords dropping my main and like 7 dropping in my natural! forcefields do not block the path of air units, in case you didn't know Mr. 3700 masters .
On March 15 2011 13:38 Eleaven wrote: I've played this style as Zerg, and played against it as Toss. As with anything the key is to scout it out asap. Hallucination after gateway should be standard or your just being greedy and deserve to lose.
3gate stargate is pretty common so grab a void ray or 2, Use sentries to defend your nat, voids will clean up any attack on the main.
Hotkey each base' probes to something you don't use, or maintain good vision and just box w/ quick reactions.
as soon as they have wasted banes against your FF's and lost a couple overlords they will likely just have lings out, and be trying to morph banes for round 2, check any hidden secret hallways with a probe, whilst carefully pushing out of your nat to find the morphing banes.
Once you get to this point its basically an autowin as you add in more stalkers and just use FF to choke any more bane attempts.
- It may be possible to fill your mineral line with FF to stop the banes landing as a worst case scenario. Start the FF's from the outside and work in so you dont propel your probes outside ______
Disclaimer - The above guide assumes you are better than your opponent in terms of multi task and speed, if you aren't just work on that. Macro better react faster, scout better. Note down the timings and be wary of them. If your the sort of toss to use 1 hotkey for army and hover below 100apm all game, your going to have problems with strategies that play on the multitasking of their opponents.
In short, deal with it. ______
Hallucination scouts come at the 7:30 - 8 minute mark, say you scout his base at the 8 minute mark and notice his baneling nest! you drop down a stargate and make two voidsrays EIGHT minutes into the game when you do not even have you natural saturated yet, let alone having two gas geysers after a 3gate fast expand!.
"As soon as they have wasted banes on the forcefields they will likely have lings out" SERIOUSLY did you even watch the replay? he is NOT walking banes into my natural! he is DROPPING them on top of my army and mineral lines! wow never again am i going to post a thread on the strategy forum, love the way i get bronze league professionals commenting on the game before they have even seen it.
Some Zergs start playing this against me2. What i like to do is, get a lot of Stalker/Sentry and go kill his creep. If you kill his creephighway u can often hold the Z on 2Base whit that tactic, when he runs for you, you can just ff all the lings and with blink stalker micro get the overlords before they even drop.
with the amount of lings he had i would have been instantly KILLED as i mentioned in previous posts, i could not have possibly pushed out without losing my army due to his mass ling!
8min mark, is when you can first scout with hallucination.
army tab : 41 drones, 2 queens, 1 ling at 25health with no upgrade. I know lings are scary they have claws and stuff, but come on.
Please keep your lame "humor" out of the strategy discussion section, i had 5 sentries and a zealot and he could have easily made lings with 6-7 larvae and killed all my sentries which would have led me to my loss, + he had two spinecrawlers, and believe it or not spinecrawlers do very well against sentries!.
Wait so basically you could have walked to his base/a xel naga tower, made him make 12-14 lings instead of 6-7 drones, then walked back home safely?
Also, he had 41 drones when you had 5 sentries and 1 zealot? Holy crap? Did he open like 1 set of lings entire game + you got supply blocked or something?
Edit: +2 baneling drops on multiple bases midgame are freaking ridiculous and I have no idea why people complain about storm drops in comparison.
What can you do? Shattered is a map that most Protoss play very passive on cross position/close by air. Hallucination isn't done in time to really be sure and there is no way to know if the Zerg has got a ton of lings waiting for you or not, you compensate by taking a quicker third as the back alley is pretty safe.
Haven't watched the replay, sorry I'm at work. But it sounds similar to a game I played as a toss a month ago, and badly lost. I also had scouted it coming and didn't know how to react.
That's theorycrafting since I haven't played against this strat since then, but I'm wondering if archons wouldn't be the solution. You said you were just starting the robo at the moment you scouted it. I'm not sure about the timings, but wouldn't you have just enough time to get a couple archons by the time the attack was coming ?
If not, what about.. hallucinated archons ? If it takes 15 bannelings to kill a real archon, 6-7 bans to kill a fake one may be enough to make it cost inefficient for the zerg, and prevent the splash damage of the bans from reaching your main army ? Just an idea.
Papoolee care to post a replay of you holding this specific timing attack off?
Edit: BTW i would highly recommend putting a specific question you want answered in your OP. I think people reading the thread ( who didn't watch the replay as you instructed) got the idea you wanted to know how to stop the timing attack and/or ling/bling in general. Sounds like you were ONLY concerned with the actual timing attack and how to respond if you originally went 3 gate expand.
Just watched ur replay. I didnt believe you were master until i look you up.
1. PvZ u either wanna pressure early to avoid massing up probe or possibly deny that expo, or fast expo. Your 3 gate expand at the mark of 6:40 is way too late, considering 4gate push would be at 5:30. U woulda done better with an early pressure. Next time if u plan to expand early, i think a 12 forge opening would be better.
2. I think mass sentries as ur first few units was a bad decision. I notice u had about 7 sentries out, that was already 700 gas right there. That require you to drop early gas and take away probes from the mineral mining. When you fast expand, you wanna keep up ur mineral mining as high as possible till ur nexus is about 60-70%. Early gas + early nexus slow u down on production.
3. Teching way too slow. After 12 mins u only have 3 gates and 1 robo as ur production building. If you expand and dont produce more unit than a 1 base build, u might as well 4gate, or 5 gate all in.
4. Map control. At one point ur hallucinated scout just stand in the middle of the map on top of the ling. U also saw him loading bane and lings with ur scout at the natural on to ovies and didnt react to it. I guess u couldnt really react too much since you didnt have the air tech to counter such drops.
5. This zerg cut drones at 41. Thats something no macro type zerg would do, ever. His build was pretty much an all in. It shouldnt be hard to counter.
On March 16 2011 00:58 Udub wrote: 5. This zerg cut drones at 41. Thats something no macro type zerg would do, ever. His build was pretty much an all in. It shouldnt be hard to counter.
"All in" is thrown around waaay to casually in these forums. Having constructed this timing attack myself the misinformation about how to counter it and what it is for is huge. Yes I do cut drones temporarily, however the resource count of the army i make is usually lower then the protoss that i'm attacking. Its a timing attack meant to damage sentry counts and workers. The resources invested into the lings and banelings for the attack is equivalent to around 10-12 roaches, which is common to make around 10 minutes anyway just to be safe to any warpgate pressure. Yet somehow any time a zerg is agressive, or not "macro type" its called "all in" even though I'm throwing up a third, getting up other techs as well as droning as the attack moves out (at 10 minutes i have 51 drones and a third halfway up).
On March 16 2011 00:58 Udub wrote: Just watched ur replay. I didnt believe you were master until i look you up.
1. PvZ u either wanna pressure early to avoid massing up probe or possibly deny that expo, or fast expo. Your 3 gate expand at the mark of 6:40 is way too late, considering 4gate push would be at 5:30. U woulda done better with an early pressure. Next time if u plan to expand early, i think a 12 forge opening would be better.
2. I think mass sentries as ur first few units was a bad decision. I notice u had about 7 sentries out, that was already 700 gas right there. That require you to drop early gas and take away probes from the mineral mining. When you fast expand, you wanna keep up ur mineral mining as high as possible till ur nexus is about 60-70%. Early gas + early nexus slow u down on production.
3 gate expand is more standard then a 12 forge expand, so claiming its a better opening really doesnt have merit and is a discussion for another thread. 6-7 sentries off of a 3 gate expand is very very standard (even by pros) since they can accumulate energy which will help bolster any kind of push later or defense greatly. Also the sentries will be made before you have any idea what tech path the zerg is making. 6:40 is a bit late for a 3 gate expo, but not that late. The average protoss puts it down between 6:00-6:20 in my experience.
I'm not really sure why i'm bothering to post in this thread any more, 3/4 of the posts didnt watch the replay or understand strategy to any half decent level.
Pull your workers away. Have enough units to protect your workers. a bunch of speedlings/banneling in overlord can be counter by some zealots + a stalker. While leave your main army in front to deal with the frontal attack. It's easy to completely save 100% of your probes but you need to be quick.
What can I say ? Amandil you're a f******* genius. I don't think there is an easy way to counter this, other than reworking P strategy (when to attack and why) and wait for a metagame shift. I awlays found this game would change entirely as soon as zergs understand the power of banelings against Protoss, and more and more use them against P. This unit is just the more powerful unit in the current zerg arsenal and I would not be surprised to see it nerfed eventually.
Personnally I only play ling/bane/corruptor on the ladder now (high diamond) and my P opponents really have a hard time beating me (not bragging or anything, I'm quite bad actually but... we must admit banes (and drop) are _really_ powerful).
Played vs this (bane)ling style as well today and after watching the replay i think it is broken. There are only two things that might stop it (though i haven't tested them yet). Either a fake sentry expand into 4gate where you somehow slide a forge and +1 attack in or playing defensively like hell with cannons until you get archons and some other units. But both approaches would rely on mistakes of your opponent - not scouting properly and an unflexible tech or weak map control.
I liked the fact that he got 2 spines to be safe against sentry pushes, sweet stuff. I'm gonna try this against soe protoss friends and maybe then I can suggest somethign useful they came up with.
Just gonna go out on a attempt to counter this build, assuming that your micro is good and there micro isnt 100% I think immortals or archons would help this out subtantially.
The problem with pure gateway units is the splash/bonus damage is just substantially high against most of the gateway units besides stalkers.
Adding in 2 units, immortals and archons, both of which can tank tons and tons of banelings before they go down, with proper positioning/micro you should be able to take the grunt force of the baneling drop (ASSUMING THERE NOT ATTEMPTING TO MICRO THE EXACT TARGET OF BANELINGS WHILE THERE DROPPED).
Just a thought, my method to beat the mass bling/ling strats on 3 base or aggressive third (Build Incontrol was posting about) was heavy archon play because the splash is just so devastating with any upgrades.
I saw the reply and I was stunned. I don't really know what you can do in the 3 gate sentry regime. It'll take him awhile to get here, though, so I would suggest maybe an air-opener instead of a 3 gate expo? Could be broken if they force you to coin flip with an air opener on close positions.
Hey man, I really like the build you did as toss and strongly advocate the macro toss to end-game but there were definitely some snags in your BO and execution despite having no pressure to contend with early. -first thing i noticed was the small force (1z3s) you moved out of your base at the start with. As a zerg player, this is simply a gift. Eight very cost-effective lings would RUIN those 3 sentries (who cares about the zealot?) or at the very least make you spend all of your energy on a retreat. He had his lings very well spread (as a zerg should against a 3gate FE) and caught u moving out. I'm not sure if he even had 8 lings (i think he had 6) but it's not uncommon to make an extra set or two to pressure the FE (and force FF's). Even if he had consolidated his lings there he could've very well damaged your precious sentries and forced you to build more sentries before teching. -Same thing, only a couple minutes later (right before your first Hallu'). This time 6 sentries 1 z i think, and again, easily and cost-effectively RAPED by speedlings. I would gladly sacrifice my entire army of lings to kill that (or force a TON of FF's with decent micro) because it means you have zero defense against mass ling until lots of cannons are up or z's can be massed. It's simply too cost-effective of a trade for you to be moving out with 1z+sentries. The zerg is either going to straight drone, or straight surround. -Hallucinations.... love them. Great for scouting, even great for warding off an attack by beefing your army. You made at least 3 that i saw, but simply didn't interpret the information they got correctly. As stated by several previous posters, quick lair + no evo + banesnest + no roach/hydra den indicates things by process of elimination. --->No upgrades. The newly introduced zvp with baneling openings gets upgrades started right away and delays the lair until around the time of a quick 3rd, mainly relying on huge masses of lings. What you saw resembled that, but no upgrades and quick lair w/o any gas-tech buildings means only one thing. ---->That gas has to go somewhere. He's upgrading at the hatch (ovies and burrow) and making a shitton of banelings.
I also noticed that despite having no pressure on you until the main rush, your gas was soaring above your minerals. I can understand that you weren't sure exactly how to respond to this so it threw you off and I don't fault you for it at all, unless your BO didn't change at all after scouting it, in which case, your build needs to forego the 4th gas in favour of minerals until it becomes required.
On March 16 2011 00:58 Udub wrote: Just watched ur replay. I didnt believe you were master until i look you up.
1. PvZ u either wanna pressure early to avoid massing up probe or possibly deny that expo, or fast expo. Your 3 gate expand at the mark of 6:40 is way too late, considering 4gate push would be at 5:30. U woulda done better with an early pressure. Next time if u plan to expand early, i think a 12 forge opening would be better.
2. I think mass sentries as ur first few units was a bad decision. I notice u had about 7 sentries out, that was already 700 gas right there. That require you to drop early gas and take away probes from the mineral mining. When you fast expand, you wanna keep up ur mineral mining as high as possible till ur nexus is about 60-70%. Early gas + early nexus slow u down on production.
3. Teching way too slow. After 12 mins u only have 3 gates and 1 robo as ur production building. If you expand and dont produce more unit than a 1 base build, u might as well 4gate, or 5 gate all in.
4. Map control. At one point ur hallucinated scout just stand in the middle of the map on top of the ling. U also saw him loading bane and lings with ur scout at the natural on to ovies and didnt react to it. I guess u couldnt really react too much since you didnt have the air tech to counter such drops.
5. This zerg cut drones at 41. Thats something no macro type zerg would do, ever. His build was pretty much an all in. It shouldnt be hard to counter.
You didn't believe i was masters until you looked me up? i would LOVE to see you play PvZ.
On March 16 2011 04:18 CookieMaker wrote: Hey man, I really like the build you did as toss and strongly advocate the macro toss to end-game but there were definitely some snags in your BO and execution despite having no pressure to contend with early. -first thing i noticed was the small force (1z3s) you moved out of your base at the start with. As a zerg player, this is simply a gift. Eight very cost-effective lings would RUIN those 3 sentries (who cares about the zealot?) or at the very least make you spend all of your energy on a retreat. He had his lings very well spread (as a zerg should against a 3gate FE) and caught u moving out. I'm not sure if he even had 8 lings (i think he had 6) but it's not uncommon to make an extra set or two to pressure the FE (and force FF's). Even if he had consolidated his lings there he could've very well damaged your precious sentries and forced you to build more sentries before teching. -Same thing, only a couple minutes later (right before your first Hallu'). This time 6 sentries 1 z i think, and again, easily and cost-effectively RAPED by speedlings. I would gladly sacrifice my entire army of lings to kill that (or force a TON of FF's with decent micro) because it means you have zero defense against mass ling until lots of cannons are up or z's can be massed. It's simply too cost-effective of a trade for you to be moving out with 1z+sentries. The zerg is either going to straight drone, or straight surround. -Hallucinations.... love them. Great for scouting, even great for warding off an attack by beefing your army. You made at least 3 that i saw, but simply didn't interpret the information they got correctly. As stated by several previous posters, quick lair + no evo + banesnest + no roach/hydra den indicates things by process of elimination. --->No upgrades. The newly introduced zvp with baneling openings gets upgrades started right away and delays the lair until around the time of a quick 3rd, mainly relying on huge masses of lings. What you saw resembled that, but no upgrades and quick lair w/o any gas-tech buildings means only one thing. ---->That gas has to go somewhere. He's upgrading at the hatch (ovies and burrow) and making a shitton of banelings.
I also noticed that despite having no pressure on you until the main rush, your gas was soaring above your minerals. I can understand that you weren't sure exactly how to respond to this so it threw you off and I don't fault you for it at all, unless your BO didn't change at all after scouting it, in which case, your build needs to forego the 4th gas in favour of minerals until it becomes required.
GL with defending this again next time :D
Yeah i didn't know what he was doing, didn't know the most effective response so i decided to tech up to colossi real fast, hence the 4th gas! i know how to stop it now, and i have posted the replay about a couple of posts under page four, people need to stop saying this is an all-in! his army was around 1400 resources only and considering the damage you could do with that much resources, i would say its a pretty good investment!.
Baneling drops are a direct counter to sentries. Really simple game really, he just hard countered your highly predictable build.
A few points however...
1. Ovies with speed are slower than sentries and MUCH slower than Stalkers, so if you suspect baneling drop is coming, it should be possible to get a decent spread on your units. If instead of banes he tricks you and drops lings, they'll be coming out of ovies 1 at a time, and he'll take heavy losses.
2. Protecting probe lines from baneling drops is all about reaction time and micro. If you don't see the ovies well enough ahead of time (via perimeter buildings/scouts) I imagine it is going to be very hard to run/split your workers.
3. It takes 9 banes to kill a stalker, 3 banes to kill a sentry. If you let your 2.25 speed sentries get clumped and bombed by 1.875 speed Overlords, then you micro'ed poorly.
I am fully confident that Protoss will be able to stop this build in the future, after just a small amount of experience dealing with it. The numbers don't lend themselves in zerg's favor, the only way it works is if you catch your opponent off guard or he makes significant micro mistakes.
I've had games where I've attempted to baneling drop toss deathballs, and had them simply run away and kite my overlords, forcing me to abandon the "bombing run". If overlords were faster baneling bombs would be near unstoppable, unfortunately for zerg the only unit a speed ovie can catch are Thors and off creep Queens!
On March 14 2011 05:05 moonylo wrote: The follow up? Which is what? The same attack again? Or the unupgraded Zerglings/Roaches? When You have a or maybe even two colossus out?
Edith says:
By the way. Make Stalker illusions or other illusions as you please to decrease the damage on your army. You wont need that much forcefields anyway!
You just stated two very different things, you said that i should put cannons in my main AND natural, now you're saying that i should do that by the time the attack comes and have my army that big + have one-two colossi out? our income was even it's not like the end of the word for the zerg to be on two base against a two basing protoss mid-game! mind if i ask how high up the ladder are you? i think the hallucination is a good idea, then again he is not walking the banelings into my army he is dropping them ONTOP of my army! and how much more apm would i need to hallucinate + run both my expo probes away and micro them so that they don't die to the overlords following them with banelings inside! you don't get it, sorry but putting 4-5 extra cannons is definitely not viable.
Well mid-game it's gameover if they went roachhydra and it's 2base vs 2base, just thought I'd point that out. I lose ALL THE TIME with 5 base vs 2 base toss.
so i watched the replay and basically your problem can be dumbed down to 1a. i could point out how you scouted only lings and banelings so you would want either air, or faster colossus but your army was equipped to deal with his attack. your probe dodging is very poor. your army is grouped to 1 hotkey and is balled up which is perfect for banelings. if you simply spread your forces the banelings dont get multiple hits off, you counter and win. you can see after the attack he had vitually no roaches up leaving him vulnerable to attack. next time you see banelings ff and spread everything.
3500 masters if it means anything
edit: sigh for everyone saying you have the wrong unit composition. he could have made the colossus faster since there was absolutely no threat of air, but other than that his units were fine. the whole problem is dumbed down the the fact that amandil overmade on banelings. the protoss clumped everything together and lost his army. if his army were spread the few lings left over would easily be cleaned up and the zerg would instantly lose to a counter attack. ive played amandil a few times so if he tries this on me ill be sure to post the replay of how to not clump and show you how bad banelings are vs stalker, colossus.
I've faced this strat as a P yesterday and i lost horribly, ive been theorycrafting alot about this strat and this is what ive come up with,mass hallucinate probes. One hallucination makes up 4 probes if you have 8-16 surrounding your army im sure it'll help soften the damage by the banelings.
The second I see the bling nest, I start teching to HT's, cboost straight to +3. +3 archons/zealots with storm tear this apart. I add on gates afterwards up to six. Until storm is done, I use mostly sentry/stalker and rely on perfect forcefields/blink micro, but then transition into pure zealot/HT.
I've stopped this -almost- every time, mostly low-mid master league zergs. It really comes down to pristine forcefields. Scouting is a non-issue unless he drops.
This strategy is becoming alarmingly popular. Banelings are arguably as good against toss as they are against terran since we don't have units that can kill them fast enough, or ways to get map control
On March 16 2011 09:16 Tyrant0 wrote: The second I see the bling nest, I start teching to HT's, cboost straight to +3. +3 archons/zealots with storm tear this apart. I add on gates afterwards up to six. Until storm is done, I use mostly sentry/stalker and rely on perfect forcefields/blink micro, but then transition into pure zealot/HT.
I've stopped this -almost- every time, mostly low-mid master league zergs. It really comes down to pristine forcefields. Scouting is a non-issue unless he drops.
I tried doing this, but then the zerg switched to mass roaches ( and had a ton of spine crawlers to prevent attacks.) It's incredibly frustrating.
For all you people too lazy to read the OP, this thread has nothing to do with the newly popular mass ling bling with upgrades strat and everything to do with a specific timing attack zerg does that can transition into any midgame the zerg wants. If your too lazy to read the OP much less the rest of the thread you should probably stop posting. Reading the title alone is not enough information for you to inject your two cents on your counter to a strat the thread isnt even about.
Voidrays will NOT work against this type of attack, the zerg himself said that he would have killed me if i got to the point where i am outside his base, i did move out to the watch tower and i stayed there for a good 2 minutes or so! the way you posted in your previous post made you look like nothing more than an idiot! Going higher tech against this build won't work unless you knew it was coming before the game started! if you have a Europe account i'll be glad to observe some games of you playing against it! the attack comes too early for you to put down a Stargate after you scout it AND get 2 Voidrays out!.
You said i should have proper FF's to stop my natural from dying while the voids take care of my main, had you seen the replay you would have seen that he had TWO overlords dropping my main and like 7 dropping in my natural! forcefields do not block the path of air units, in case you didn't know Mr. 3700 masters .
Oh I'm playing against people much higher than 3700 due to mmr but thanks.
You're saying that it comes way before voidrays but the speed of the attack was completely dependant on your lack of agression and letting him get to 41 drones (read: 2 drones on every mineral patch, 6 on gas + some to spare) before he had to do anything. The attack hit at 11 minutes. That's really easy to a couple immortals/VR's off a 3 gate expand.
Oh and you had 6 sentries 2 cannons and 1 zealot at 10 minutes. I wonder why an attack killed you. You didn't have pylons around your base either. I thought that was basic for a super pro 3600 masters who can decide that everyone else who posts are "bronze league professionals." He could have ling roach dropped you and had the exact same effect (his timing was off too as a roach ling drop can hit at 10 minutes, provided he gets to drone for free at start).
Also yes, FF's would have kept your nat safe because your obs saw the lings running in (didn't react till your stalker shot them though), which would have let you FF all of the out/prep units/spread since you see overlords + baneling nest). Maybe not using 1 control group for all your army would help too (yes, you have like each individual unit on a diff hotkey but really, you just used 5 to select all of them), ie stalkers on 1 and zealot sentry on 2.
Btw 8 minute scout of bling nest > drop stargate lets you get 2 voidrays out fine for an 11 minute attack. And getting a stargate following an expand is great regardless in pvz because VRs can be mixed into any army composition/make pre hydra aggression painful for z and being able to mix in phoenix if he suicides by going muta is great too.
Your thread really seems like "oh hey i let a terran a rax no gas fe to a gold and then he did a 7 rax stim shield +1 timing attack and it destroyed me, what can i do against this imba strat," and when people tell you not to let him fe to the gold off 1 rax no gas you call them incompetant.
oh hey lookie being aggressive = both hitting 45 workers at a similar time! No, he didn't go blings but if he did then it would have been with a much lower economy/later.
On March 16 2011 05:33 KillerPlague wrote: so i watched the replay and basically your problem can be dumbed down to 1a. i could point out how you scouted only lings and banelings so you would want either air, or faster colossus but your army was equipped to deal with his attack. your probe dodging is very poor. your army is grouped to 1 hotkey and is balled up which is perfect for banelings. if you simply spread your forces the banelings dont get multiple hits off, you counter and win. you can see after the attack he had vitually no roaches up leaving him vulnerable to attack. next time you see banelings ff and spread everything.
3500 masters if it means anything
edit: sigh for everyone saying you have the wrong unit composition. he could have made the colossus faster since there was absolutely no threat of air, but other than that his units were fine. the whole problem is dumbed down the the fact that amandil overmade on banelings. the protoss clumped everything together and lost his army. if his army were spread the few lings left over would easily be cleaned up and the zerg would instantly lose to a counter attack. ive played amandil a few times so if he tries this on me ill be sure to post the replay of how to not clump and show you how bad banelings are vs stalker, colossus.
I'm sorry you are wrong, there is absolutely no way that you could build colossi by the time the drops come unless you did some sort of risky all-in to get a colossi asap! the easiest way to deal with it is just to add 1-2 more gateways when you scout the bane nest and just spam stalkers, 3 in your main should be enough and the rest with your army, you FF the lings off and just leave the stalkers spread out to deal with the ovies! it's all about building and army placement!.
Oh and by the way, my army is not hot-keyed to one group, i have 1-2-3-5-6-8 dedicated to army control, i honestly haven't seen anyone who uses as much hot keys as me for their army, all pros and other protoss players have their army binded to number 1!.
Thanks for your post, please check the replay properly next time before saying things like that, i also posted the replay on how to beat it in the posts above .
Voidrays will NOT work against this type of attack, the zerg himself said that he would have killed me if i got to the point where i am outside his base, i did move out to the watch tower and i stayed there for a good 2 minutes or so! the way you posted in your previous post made you look like nothing more than an idiot! Going higher tech against this build won't work unless you knew it was coming before the game started! if you have a Europe account i'll be glad to observe some games of you playing against it! the attack comes too early for you to put down a Stargate after you scout it AND get 2 Voidrays out!.
You said i should have proper FF's to stop my natural from dying while the voids take care of my main, had you seen the replay you would have seen that he had TWO overlords dropping my main and like 7 dropping in my natural! forcefields do not block the path of air units, in case you didn't know Mr. 3700 masters .
Oh I'm playing against people much higher than 3700 due to mmr but thanks.
You're saying that it comes way before voidrays but the speed of the attack was completely dependant on your lack of agression and letting him get to 41 drones (read: 2 drones on every mineral patch, 6 on gas + some to spare) before he had to do anything. The attack hit at 11 minutes. That's really easy to a couple immortals/VR's off a 3 gate expand.
Oh and you had 6 sentries 2 cannons and 1 zealot at 10 minutes. I wonder why an attack killed you. You didn't have pylons around your base either. I thought that was basic for a super pro 3600 masters who can decide that everyone else who posts are "bronze league professionals." He could have ling roach dropped you and had the exact same effect (his timing was off too as a roach ling drop can hit at 10 minutes, provided he gets to drone for free at start).
Also yes, FF's would have kept your nat safe because your obs saw the lings running in (didn't react till your stalker shot them though), which would have let you FF all of the out/prep units/spread since you see overlords + baneling nest). Maybe not using 1 control group for all your army would help too (yes, you have like each individual unit on a diff hotkey but really, you just used 5 to select all of them), ie stalkers on 1 and zealot sentry on 2.
Btw 8 minute scout of bling nest > drop stargate lets you get 2 voidrays out fine for an 11 minute attack. And getting a stargate following an expand is great regardless in pvz because VRs can be mixed into any army composition/make pre hydra aggression painful for z and being able to mix in phoenix if he suicides by going muta is great too.
Your thread really seems like "oh hey i let a terran a rax no gas fe to a gold and then he did a 7 rax stim shield +1 timing attack and it destroyed me, what can i do against this imba strat," and when people tell you not to let him fe to the gold off 1 rax no gas you call them incompetant.
oh hey lookie being aggressive = both hitting 45 workers at a similar time! No, he didn't go blings but if he did then it would have been with a much lower economy/later.
Voidrays are not the answer, you are wrong.
Here is the Zerg that CREATED this build telling you how to beat it, and you are arguing with me that by the 11th minute mark, i should have teched to void rays AND immortals AND have harassed him, cool story bro!.
Please stop posting in this thread Validity, your posts are not helpful and you are very stubborn =/ thanks.
i think phoenix/voidray play would beat this, also zealot/archon with high weapon upgrade would be good too. Preventing bane drops on ur mineral line (by scouting) is the most important thing imo
I tried doing this, but then the zerg switched to mass roaches ( and had a ton of spine crawlers to prevent attacks.) It's incredibly frustrating.
You should be scouting non-stop for it with hallucination. If theres a roach warren before or after the aggression at any point, you have to have a robo facility prepared for it.
why would you get immortals and voids?they are filling the same role (kill armor), a void opening should delay this strategy while teching to HT
it will also be useful to get some cannons and spread them to make killing them with banelings costly (4 banes aka 200min and 100 gas to kill one cannon for 150)
I played this build very ofthen the last 3 days against toss. I could do a lot of practice, maybe because 80% of all ladder opponents are toss.
So the only strat wich really countering me hard was voidrays. Leave one in the main and he will destroy the 2-3 ovis flying into your main before they reach your mineral fields. with the other 1-2 voids you support your main army. Voids kill ovis so fast!
3000 masters zerg, and hoooooly crap is that strong. I'm doing this all the time now.
How is protoss supposed to stop that? Seems like they have to severely delay teching and mass up zealot/stalker and keep on the lookout for overlords flying into the main.
Unless I'm mistaken, 9-10 minute zerg drops against protoss are going to be a gamechanger. Can't wait to see this used in tournaments.
On March 17 2011 10:59 Chocobo wrote: 3000 masters zerg, and hoooooly crap is that strong. I'm doing this all the time now.
How is protoss supposed to stop that? Seems like they have to severely delay teching and mass up zealot/stalker and keep on the lookout for overlords flying into the main.
Unless I'm mistaken, 9-10 minute zerg drops against protoss are going to be a gamechanger. Can't wait to see this used in tournaments.
im almost sure protoss has no other choice to go void/phoenix unless they try some one base play (4 gate or blink stalker)
atm its definitely a gamechanger that was really necessary to stop going sentry/stalker/colossi no matter what zerg is throwing at them
Baneling dropped, ling pushed, ling's + blings dropped at my natural. I was in the open, and thought of the most obscure thing ever. Forcefield your own army. Guess what happened. His first baneling bust just crumbled.
This replay shows just about everything. If you engage this drop in the open without FF's over your army, my huge army got massacred by banelings. However if you engage with semi-decent micro and some FF's his banelings are useless. And once you get a few VR's out and 2-3 colo's, banelings just lose period.
Gl hf, an awful game to be honest (first of the day) but hey no excuses!
Ling + Baneling is super strong. As protoss you basically have to play super turtle and rely on harass units like DT/Phenoix to control the zerg. It's a completely different style than playing against roach/hydra.
Baneling dropped, ling pushed, ling's + blings dropped at my natural. I was in the open, and thought of the most obscure thing ever. Forcefield your own army. Guess what happened. His first baneling bust just crumbled.
This replay shows just about everything. If you engage this drop in the open without FF's over your army, my huge army got massacred by banelings. However if you engage with semi-decent micro and some FF's his banelings are useless. And once you get a few VR's out and 2-3 colo's, banelings just lose period.
Gl hf, an awful game to be honest (first of the day) but hey no excuses!
That was a pretty awful game to showcase for how to defeat the strat when that last push would've beaten you easily if:
a) He dropped the majority of his banelings on your collossus not the stalkers. Simple mis-micro
and more importantly
b) Didnt accidentally right click your assimilator with ALL of his roaches while all of your units freely attacked units not defending themselves.
That game was decided by him messing up the end, although you did showcase how to effectively spread your units and protect them from mass carpet bombing (at least, in the beginning). More importantly it goes to show why I believe the build should be used more defensively. Simply splitting your army up and force fielding as you did in the first timing attack handily counters the attack (although the mineral line drop made the whole attack worth it).
However, had he been expanding instead, and chose to attack you in the open, getting the spread in time AND lining up your force fields in the open ground is going to be next to impossible. That's still where the build shines, and had he been macroing up well it would have been a stomping, imo.
As a 3k diamond toss who has played against baneling drops -once-, I dealt with them by running probes and running stalkers back to kill the ovies. Since it wasn't as well executed as in your replay (nothing hitting my front), I'm not sure it would have worked, but here is the replay of the game I'm referring to: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/141756-1v1-protoss-zerg-metalopolis
I am well aware this is not the same situation that you faced in your replay, and I'm not completely sure how I'd deal with it.
So yeah that was an awful game sarovati. I did the worst misclick ever on the last battle and attacked a 200 food army of roaches/banelings into an assimilator and got massacred cause i didnt notice till my roaches were dead. I should definately have won that battle or barely lost it such that you couldnt counter attack. One of those awful awful misclicks. But to go back to the timing attack, it wasnt so much the forcefields as just the fact that you had 13 stalkers on the field when this hit. If your not skimping on gateway its not that hard to hold off. Also the attack wasn't a failure as I did kill a number of probes which evened up the worker count and still got my third up.
First of all, Mr PaPoolee,i am not a master toss,so u can take my advice with a grain of salt. I'm 1500+ diamond,if that is worth anything to u master folks .
Ok,my toughts.First of all u scouted him with hallu phoenix,u didn't scouted roach warren and no T2 buildings (spire or hidra den),but u scouted a baneling nest building.That automatically means mass lings +banes.
This is similar to Aquanda's mass ling/bane build,except that Amandil went for fast drops and then transitioned into mass roaches.
The problem is that u didn't made any big mistakes.The only one is that (like all tosses,from pro to bronze) kept your sentries bunched up and considering they're light and have like 40 hp/40 shields,they got eaten by the banes.The major dmg wasn't the sentries (which technically is the baddest thing that can happen to a toss),but the loss of the majority of your mineral line.
Strats like this ussually work because of they're novelty factor.By being new ,people don't know exactly how to react to them. If this gets too popular,tosses might leave 2-3 stalkers per base to guard the mineral line and quickly tech to stargate if they only scout a bane nest.
The only viable answer i see to this is trying to intercept the ovies before they drop the banes or just try to split your workers/sentries to limit casualties.
If the dmg was a little smaller,like only killing half your probes,u might had counter-atacked and either kill him or bust his natural.
So in a word,u did almost to no mistakes,except for keeping the sentries bunched.
Terrible move to let some of his lings in like that, if you'd just cleanly FF'd his army out and then step-shot backwards with your Stalkers you wouldn't have lost so much. You should've killed the ovie that went for your probes by targeting it with cannons+stakers. And if you watched the minmap you could've easily saved your probes from the drop on your main.
This is really allin too because he's getting drop and speed upgrades as well as a ton of ling/baneling which costs a lot of larva so he's going to have very few drones. It's fine losing a handful of probes/stalkers to fend it off cleanly. You also ought to be more active with your hallu-phoenix, it's pretty easy to spot this kind of stuff
Voidrays will NOT work against this type of attack, the zerg himself said that he would have killed me if i got to the point where i am outside his base, i did move out to the watch tower and i stayed there for a good 2 minutes or so! the way you posted in your previous post made you look like nothing more than an idiot! Going higher tech against this build won't work unless you knew it was coming before the game started! if you have a Europe account i'll be glad to observe some games of you playing against it! the attack comes too early for you to put down a Stargate after you scout it AND get 2 Voidrays out!.
You said i should have proper FF's to stop my natural from dying while the voids take care of my main, had you seen the replay you would have seen that he had TWO overlords dropping my main and like 7 dropping in my natural! forcefields do not block the path of air units, in case you didn't know Mr. 3700 masters .
Oh I'm playing against people much higher than 3700 due to mmr but thanks.
You're saying that it comes way before voidrays but the speed of the attack was completely dependant on your lack of agression and letting him get to 41 drones (read: 2 drones on every mineral patch, 6 on gas + some to spare) before he had to do anything. The attack hit at 11 minutes. That's really easy to a couple immortals/VR's off a 3 gate expand.
Oh and you had 6 sentries 2 cannons and 1 zealot at 10 minutes. I wonder why an attack killed you. You didn't have pylons around your base either. I thought that was basic for a super pro 3600 masters who can decide that everyone else who posts are "bronze league professionals." He could have ling roach dropped you and had the exact same effect (his timing was off too as a roach ling drop can hit at 10 minutes, provided he gets to drone for free at start).
Also yes, FF's would have kept your nat safe because your obs saw the lings running in (didn't react till your stalker shot them though), which would have let you FF all of the out/prep units/spread since you see overlords + baneling nest). Maybe not using 1 control group for all your army would help too (yes, you have like each individual unit on a diff hotkey but really, you just used 5 to select all of them), ie stalkers on 1 and zealot sentry on 2.
Btw 8 minute scout of bling nest > drop stargate lets you get 2 voidrays out fine for an 11 minute attack. And getting a stargate following an expand is great regardless in pvz because VRs can be mixed into any army composition/make pre hydra aggression painful for z and being able to mix in phoenix if he suicides by going muta is great too.
Your thread really seems like "oh hey i let a terran a rax no gas fe to a gold and then he did a 7 rax stim shield +1 timing attack and it destroyed me, what can i do against this imba strat," and when people tell you not to let him fe to the gold off 1 rax no gas you call them incompetant.
oh hey lookie being aggressive = both hitting 45 workers at a similar time! No, he didn't go blings but if he did then it would have been with a much lower economy/later.
A lowly master toss here, but have to say that I agree with Validity 100% and both his analysis of the OP's replay, and of using VR to counter.
Oh Amandil I agree, it was an awful game on my part as well. Rocking the solid like 100APM isn't my norm, and the 2 seconds of mis-micro when I pushed you cost me 6 sentries and my colossus + a couple stalkers. However again, I am not completely ready to play against this build. This was mostly improv'd so if I actually ran into this again, I would've warped 3 stalkers in my mineral line, and then the push would've just crumbled period. The mis-micro was indeed a problem, but my mis-macro was god awful this game as well, and it easily could've been my game.
My main problem is that zerg now just transitions into more speedlings with +1/+1, blings, and corrupters..... I'm thinking sentries are the answer but that cuts lots of gas for tier 3 units necessary to crush a zerg...
I engaged today with a 200/200 army with stalker colossus void ray, against baneling in overlords/speedlings/roach speed. Bascally either you stand and fight and you get the banelings up your a.. (cause if he sac enough dummy overlords he'll get the drop done), or you fallback and lose troops to en the main army.
Seriously i had 10 void ray, but that just wasn't enough. I lost my whole army in a couple of second... And here in 1.3, they're removing the archon toilet ! It's exactly the same !! But with t1.5/t2 tech...
Serously, this is imbalanced and totally broken, i really can't figure what to do against this flying ball of doom...
On March 20 2011 02:46 Fushin wrote: I engaged today with a 200/200 army with stalker colossus void ray, against baneling in overlords/speedlings/roach speed. Bascally either you stand and fight and you get the banelings up your a.. (cause if he sac enough dummy overlords he'll get the drop done), or you fallback and lose troops to en the main army.
Seriously i had 10 void ray, but that just wasn't enough. I lost my whole army in a couple of second... And here in 1.3, they're removing the archon toilet ! It's exactly the same !! But with t1.5/t2 tech...
Serously, this is imbalanced and totally broken, i really can't figure what to do against this flying ball of doom...
you really shouldn't say something is imbalanced b/c you lost to a strat and can't figure out a decent answer to how to beat it. you lost to it because you did something wrong or because you don't have the proper mechanics to deal with it.
I just lost twice in a row to the carpet bomb strat and just wanted to see what other people were doing to deal with this. my mistake in both games were bad FF. you're supposed to FF the zerglings and move back your main army while kiting the overlords with your stalkers. derp derp have to use multiple hotkeys for army control click works too i guess... i've been told that the 6 gate push works well or throwing down double stargate phoenix after you scout the nest and prob the double evo. I know incontrol talked about this on his stream but couldn't find a thread about him talking about it
any other suggestions on how to deal with carpet bombing zergs? and i'm not talking about baneling bombs on your mineral line
As a zerg main i know for a fact that a toss getting an early stargate creates immediate problems for me as i am forced to spend unneeded larvae on spores hydras or more queens to stop the income voids and or pheonixes if you let a zerg have his way like you did in that video hes gonna poopie all over you to be honest an early 3 gate would have made him waste his economy while you teched from pheonix to vr im obviously not at m your level of play but i know my races weakness and its early aggression try to stay away from zealots as most zerg enjoy crushing zealots with roaches/banelings..hope this helps brah
Without needing to deviate from your build, I offer that the best solution is to spread your stalkers out. When you scout Roachless Hydraless Zerg, then the front can immediately be defended easily with Zealot/Sentry, good control, and building walls. Forcefields deny any frontal attack, which is why so many Zergs doing speedling/baneling opt to use overdrop.
When you consider that only zealot/sentry is required to defend the front, and that stalkers are fast enough to rush to the front if an attack does come, it would be wise to spread your stalkers around as you would against a terran MMM drop, just to deny those overlords. Then get cannons at your mineral line (since speedling/baneling transitions smoothly into muta or infestor harass and you need cannons to thwart either)
Hope this helps ^^ Master Random 50% zerg 25% terran 25% toss for what it's worth x,x
I played vs. this style yesterday! I couldn't break the zerg, but I noticed that he didn't have much in the way of AA... Perhaps a tech switch to void rays could of helped. But in general, this kind of play seems to shut down alot of agression, I tried to 3gate pressure, zerglings came in, and I made an FFbox around myself, and got banelings dropped all over my sentries... This happened multiple times during the game. Also, the zerg baneling dropped my third that had cannons and still killed all my probes!
Interesting what will evolve to combat this style...
EPT
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Better start spreading your producing structures out vs. zerg preemptively =)![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-194921.jpg)
