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Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to report my experience doing a bit of testing with a shield upgrade prioritization.
One of the things I found was that my 3rd base felt a lot more secure from an early ling assault while setting up. Those extra shields come in super handy, and making the Nexus MUCH more robust as well as helping out the cannons really helped me secure my third base a lot more easily.
Doing this I went forge after nexus started, then when nexus finished and I had 4 gas running (was still producing units and cannons while setting up) I put down the stargate and twilight council and while they were morphing began some of the upgrades (+1 air attack and +1 shields). When the council finished, I started Zealot legs right away and when I had the money to afford it (since once the first stargate finished, I started single void ray + phoenix production) threw down the second stargate.
The second stargate so early on is actually something I'm starting to disagree with. I wasn't able to get my Fleet beacon as quickly as I wanted, because I'm very comfortable getting a Mothership on two base. Having an earlier Mothership would also make it a little easier setting up the third, as well as it makes you impossibly hard to be pushed by the Zerg since they need a crap ton of Overseers to even be able to engage your army... Buying you valuable time to get to your Carriers.
So next time I think my rough post expand build order is going to be something like this:
1 ----> Stargate + Council
2 ----> Begin +1 Air Attack & +1 Shields
3 ----> Begin VoidRay/Phoenix Production + Zealot Legs
4 ----> Build Fleet Beacon + Dark Shrine* (Depends on what I see really... I don't always opt for the Shrine as it really cuts into your Gateway production with the long cooldown, meaning you need more gateways to really help support it)
5 ----> Start Mothership + Add another Stargate + Continue Upgrades
6 ----> Take 3rd
In between this I try and do a bit of poking and prodding, apply a little but not too much pressure as the idea is to stay fairly defensive for quite a while. Once the third base is up Carrier production can begin. It is nice not having to produce excess buildings and it made the build feel a little more lean. I'll post some more later on tomorrow.
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On April 01 2011 15:26 CrAzEdMiKe wrote:
Sorry for the double post but I just wanted to report my experience doing a bit of testing with a shield upgrade prioritization.
One of the things I found was that my 3rd base felt a lot more secure from an early ling assault while setting up. Those extra shields come in super handy, and making the Nexus MUCH more robust as well as helping out the cannons really helped me secure my third base a lot more easily.
Doing this I went forge after nexus started, then when nexus finished and I had 4 gas running (was still producing units and cannons while setting up) I put down the stargate and twilight council and while they were morphing began some of the upgrades (+1 air attack and +1 shields). When the council finished, I started Zealot legs right away and when I had the money to afford it (since once the first stargate finished, I started single void ray + phoenix production) threw down the second stargate.
The second stargate so early on is actually something I'm starting to disagree with. I wasn't able to get my Fleet beacon as quickly as I wanted, because I'm very comfortable getting a Mothership on two base. Having an earlier Mothership would also make it a little easier setting up the third, as well as it makes you impossibly hard to be pushed by the Zerg since they need a crap ton of Overseers to even be able to engage your army... Buying you valuable time to get to your Carriers.
So next time I think my rough post expand build order is going to be something like this:
1 ----> Stargate + Council
2 ----> Begin +1 Air Attack & +1 Shields
3 ----> Begin VoidRay/Phoenix Production + Zealot Legs
4 ----> Build Fleet Beacon + Dark Shrine* (Depends on what I see really... I don't always opt for the Shrine as it really cuts into your Gateway production with the long cooldown, meaning you need more gateways to really help support it)
5 ----> Start Mothership + Add another Stargate + Continue Upgrades
6 ----> Take 3rd
In between this I try and do a bit of poking and prodding, apply a little but not too much pressure as the idea is to stay fairly defensive for quite a while. Once the third base is up Carrier production can begin. It is nice not having to produce excess buildings and it made the build feel a little more lean. I'll post some more later on tomorrow.
You will die from a lot of things if you try to do all that, you'll end up doing too much and not having enough solidity in your army and production.
One thing I've been working on is when I put my 4th base up I usually go up to 8 gateways and 4 stargates. When I max out I end up putting 4 more stargates up. Then when I start losing army I make only zealots out of my gateways and I start making pure air units. a 100% pure army composition of voidray/carrier/mothership on super high upgrades cannot be stopped by zerg, and on 4-5 base this is easily supportable.
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Definitely worth the shot. Although a good Z player would shoot your air force out the sky with a gazillion corruptors once spire tech kicks in (around 1 min after your mommaship pops if it were rushed out). Also zealots are weak to roaches (a staple Z force due to its high hp to cost ratio). I think it's too much building 4 gates (making zealots) THEN 2 stargates. I'm not sure how the money distribution works out, but maybe rushing for air is better especially against Z. I could see 1 stargate making void, phoenix x 4 taking on zerg. I think I remember white-Ra mentioning this type of build back in the beta. All Z have early on is queens; the air control would be that much more effective early on. For base control... i would double wall with cannons and sentries after an FE.
What would be very cool would be to warp in zealots as you harrass with phoenix and voids. I wonder if this build could translate over to PvP or PvT with some adjustments.
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On April 02 2011 01:27 IzieBoy wrote:
Definitely worth the shot. Although a good Z player would shoot your air force out the sky with a gazillion corruptors once spire tech kicks in (around 1 min after your mommaship pops if it were rushed out). Also zealots are weak to roaches (a staple Z force due to its high hp to cost ratio). I think it's too much building 4 gates (making zealots) THEN 2 stargates. I'm not sure how the money distribution works out, but maybe rushing for air is better especially against Z. I could see 1 stargate making void, phoenix x 4 taking on zerg. I think I remember white-Ra mentioning this type of build back in the beta. All Z have early on is queens; the air control would be that much more effective early on. For base control... i would double wall with cannons and sentries after an FE.
What would be very cool would be to warp in zealots as you harrass with phoenix and voids. I wonder if this build could translate over to PvP or PvT with some adjustments.
It will never see the light of day in PvP as it dies 100% to 4 gate, and in PvT marines and vikings are way better vs air than corrupters and hydras are. Corrupters get absolutely decimated by voidrays. You can make your roaches all you want to kill my zealots, the zealots are jus there to stall while my air owns everything. It's been tested numerous times, mass corrupter cannot beat carrier/voidray
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On April 02 2011 01:12 Hierarch wrote:
You will die from a lot of things if you try to do all that, you'll end up doing too much and not having enough solidity in your army and production.
One thing I've been working on is when I put my 4th base up I usually go up to 8 gateways and 4 stargates. When I max out I end up putting 4 more stargates up. Then when I start losing army I make only zealots out of my gateways and I start making pure air units. a 100% pure army composition of voidray/carrier/mothership on super high upgrades cannot be stopped by zerg, and on 4-5 base this is easily supportable.
I don't feel like I'm doing too too much as I try my absolute best to always be producing units out of my structures (duh) AND in most of my games I don't opt to go for the Dark Shrine. Dark Templar are a HUUUUGE investment, and even though they provide excellent harass and the ability to morph into archons (which btw now that I think about it benefit hugely from shield upgrades as well xD) I feel like Dark Templar are not all THAT effective when you're still on two bases.
I do get a delayed Stargate which slows my Void/Phoenix production substantially, but its a sacrifice to make the rest of my army as a whole stronger. Zealot Legs are such a huge huge upgrade for Protoss in any matchup, as it basically shuts down ANY kiting shenanigans and makes Zealots sooooooooo much more potent against ranged attackers (in this matchup those would be namely Roaches and Hydras).
Zealots are obviously not a counter to either of these combinations, but that being said, a single Zealot if he's wailing on a roach will actually still fare pretty well... But once you start revealing your air play, Zerg players tend to focus on more gas heavy solutions (Hydras, Corrupters, Infestors) to deal with the fleet in the sky, which reduces the Roach count significantly. That leaves it to Zealots vs usually Hydras on the ground, and Zealots in sufficient numbers can wreak some serious havoc on Hydras if there's nothing to block them.
It's been my experience that the build works similarly to the Colossus ball in that the units kind of have to stick together a little bit. The heavy Zealot composition doesn't really work against the Zerg on it's own, and the air fleet can get melted away rather quickly without ground support... Making me feel like the two need to build smoothly together. Upgrades are also a very personal style of mine, as a lot of my builds focus around getting key upgrades for certain units vs specific races (such as against Terran, I sometimes will go for a VERY early +1 armor upgrade and move out with a heavy Sentry army).
The thing is is that upgrades lose their effectiveness as your opponents begin to match you upgrade for upgrade. As Protoss, we have a distinct advantage in that we can Chronoboost our upgrades to get them much much more quickly than a Terran or a Zerg could which means in theory up until the late late game, we should pretty much be ahead in upgrades. Like I mentioned before, upgrades are something that are really important to me as part of my playstyle and most of my builds focus around heavy upgrading. There was a game I played against a Terran where he went for a 1 Racks FE and bunkered up hard... I managed to do some decent damage with a not all in 4 gate attack (I planted an expo during the attack and kept building probes)... But after the attack was over the Terran did what a lot of Terrans will do which is expand all over the map.
Granted, he didn't upgrade at ALL which allowed me to win, because his army was about 60 food higher than mine (though admittedly, a lot of the food was SCVs) and his production was through the roof... But my units were so hard to individually kill and were killing his units so quickly that eventually when I reached his production sites it didn't matter how quickly he could pump them.
Read this if you want to find out a scary fact about if you upgrade hard.
+ Show Spoiler +
Consider my Hydralisk example from not my last post but the post before, and this time we will take it from a Stalker vs Marauder standpoint. A Stalker will normally do 13 damage to a Marauder (taking into effect the base 1 armor) and the Marauder will do 19 to the stalker after his shields are depleted (again, factoring in the armor).
In a 1v1 scenario without any upgrades or stim (I'll get to that in a bit) it will take the Marauder 9 shots to take down the stalker and the stalker takes 10 shots to kill the Marauder. So already in a basic basic Marauder vs Stalker with no upgrades at all (and they shoot at almost the same speed) the marauder will kill the Stalker in 13.5 seconds vs the Stalker's 14.4 seconds.
Now, lets say that the Marauder now has stim but no other upgrades and the stalker has +3 Weapons and +3 armor & shields. The stalker is now doing 16 damage to the Marauder and the marauder is doing 16 to the Stalkers hp and 17 to the shields. Now stimming basically halves the time it takes for the Marauder to do the killing damage so it obviously makes sense that the Marauder would stim (duhhhhhhh). Marauders lost 20hp when they stim, so they drop down to 105hp which means it takes the stalker 7 shots to kill a Marauder, whereas the Marauder now takes 10 shots to kill a stalker. It will take the Marauder 7.5 seconds to kill a Stalker and the stalker 10.08 seconds to kill the Marauder. Now you might be thinking "Well the Stalker still loses." Consider if the Marauder just had stim and no upgrades vs an unupgraded stalker. The Stalker would now only needs 9 shots to kill the marauder at weapon speed of 1.44 and the Marauder still needs to do his whole 9 shots but at double speed. The Stalker would in theory take down the Marauder in 12.96 seconds and the Marauder would take down the Stalker in 6.75 seconds.
Consider the gap between the two examples. In a just stim scenario with no other upgrades in the picture, the difference between the Stalker losing to the Marauder is 6.21 seconds. When the stalker is fully upgraded, there is a 2.58 second difference. That is a LOT of additional damage being dealt to that Marauder, a unit that COUNTERS the Stalker. Also if you were super duper fancy, you could in theory blink away from the Marauder and let his stim deplete and your shields recharge a little bit and a Stalker could actually beat the Marauder in a 1v1 scenario.
The point of that breakdown is to truly illustrate the power of upgrades. With upgrades, you can actually give the "counter unit" a run for it's money if you are upgraded and it is not. In the Stalker vs. Marauder example, we brought down the difference in "death time" from 6.21 seconds to 2.58 seconds which is an extra 2 shots worth of damage. You multiply that across your whole army and the results are incredible. Now obviously being 3 upgrades ahead of your opponent is super super drastic... But that example is a one unit vs one unit situation. The bigger the battles become, the more important upgrades start to matter.
Like I said, I'm an upgrade freak and I have won many games where I would have lost were it not for the fact that I love upgrading my shit. Although I might not be producing my initial air force as quickly, but by the time they tend to move out I usually have a second stargate up and running already. Like I said, that was just more of a "general guide" to how I proceed in my build order. We get pretty much the same stuff, just in a slightly different order and a few changes (I opt for earlier upgrades than the early DT harass).
It's a different style and admittedly it can be a little more passive at certain points than the DTs... But keep in mind I go for a relatively fast mothership (I always try and get my infrastructure/key components started before I make her) which allows me to move out with a handful of voidrays and focus down an outlying Hatchery and recall when the voids might get into trouble. Mass recall is the ultimate next to 0 risk trump card to have in the arsenal, and I've been an advocate of her since even before I started using this build.
But that is enough for now, I wish to play. =P
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Friday at MLG Kiwi vs Idra on shattered temple. Kiwikaki gets a voidray + 4 phoenix and completely takes out 5-6 queens that idra has for defense. He does this off one stargate. I think a double stargate off 2 base (one being not even fully saturated) is too much, you are sacrificing too much on the ground.
Perhaps 4 gate 1 robo 1 stargate with the robo coming later can be more beneficial. Burrow roach timings are pretty hard to hold, yeah you can tell me FF FF! and cannons but it doesn't always work. This being a reactionary build, I think a robo is kind of a necessity. if he's going mass roach, you are going to want to get a few immortals. just IMHO. Once you're getting your third, throw down more stargates. I just think 1 stargate is enough if you're constantly chronoboosting it. Of course if you see muta/ling, get another one lol.
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I lost to mass banelings and corruptors. So is there any way to counter that ?
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On April 03 2011 01:28 hitman133 wrote:
I lost to mass banelings and corruptors. So is there any way to counter that ?
Archons, lots and lots of archons. The way I've been beating the mass ling/baneling strat is zealot/archon using HT's for the archon warp.
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You said this is highly untested at high level of play. Go download some of White-Ra's special tactics replays from his site. He was using 3 gate expand into carriers a lot lately
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I played against someone who made this (3k4 master on eu). This make for such boring games. It was on shattered temple, he take a fast third and turtled up, since I was so sure he was going for a basic colossi build i made ling baneling infestor in mass expand. Then I saw the carrier and his air army, I made a shitload of baneling and tried to kill his base, I took down two of his 3 nexuss).
Then he came out, I tried to mass corruptors but they suck against void ray, I tried to go for hydra but forget the range.
Then I lost.
If I had scouted earlier, I would have just mass corruptors/mutas or just hydras, you are so passiv for a long long time that it is very easy to adapt in my opinion.
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how does mondragon's roach play work against this? can you stall enough with void/phoenix to be able to get carriers out in time?
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On April 03 2011 01:19 mamuto wrote:
Friday at MLG Kiwi vs Idra on shattered temple. Kiwikaki gets a voidray + 4 phoenix and completely takes out 5-6 queens that idra has for defense. He does this off one stargate. I think a double stargate off 2 base (one being not even fully saturated) is too much, you are sacrificing too much on the ground.
Perhaps 4 gate 1 robo 1 stargate with the robo coming later can be more beneficial. Burrow roach timings are pretty hard to hold, yeah you can tell me FF FF! and cannons but it doesn't always work. This being a reactionary build, I think a robo is kind of a necessity. if he's going mass roach, you are going to want to get a few immortals. just IMHO. Once you're getting your third, throw down more stargates. I just think 1 stargate is enough if you're constantly chronoboosting it. Of course if you see muta/ling, get another one lol.
This basically sums up why I stopped going double stargate, the robo comes too late and holding super aggressive roach timings becomes non cost effective and you fall too far behind.
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This build is ridiculously good against an unprepared Zerg. I played against this build yesterday and I barely won with ling/bling, ultra in a base race against 10-12 carriers. Corruptors suck against carriers when they are massed. It is really weak against hydra/ling drops though, but that is also dependet on map and positions.
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On April 23 2011 20:48 Tef wrote:
This build is ridiculously good against an unprepared Zerg. I played against this build yesterday and I barely won with ling/bling, ultra in a base race against 10-12 carriers. Corruptors suck against carriers when they are massed. It is really weak against hydra/ling drops though, but that is also dependet on map and positions.
heh... I won against it once as well by just racing zerglings to different bases and eliminated him. Won twice in that fashion actually.
If you want to engage this army I think the right composition is corruptor+roach+infestors.
I went ling/infestor today and it didn't go too well as they kill infestors too fast. to get the full 6 fungals to kill. You want some form of tank/continuous-dmg like corruptors. So definitely... infestors are awesome thou
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i think collosi, especially after patch 1.4 are going to get out of fashion. Infestor ling deals extremely well with everything on the ground and with a carrier VR phoenix ball, you can just lift them up and tank damage with zealots. Which are more or less throw away units.
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I'm not sure about this making it to the pro-gaming scene and staying, but I'm happy to see it's being used already.
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You can add a tip to the OP: Use vortex to buy time for interceptors production. WhiteRa did it with like 15 carriers and mothership on his stream recently.
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Ok, i started messing with this build as a top player who decided i wanted to put some different strategies to work outside of the usual deathballs/playstyles.
Observations/thoughts: (Wall of text)
+ Show Spoiler +A few things you need to do with this builds: 1. Fast third with cannons, the gas is needed in case they figure out how to counter this build and transition into a heavy immortal/archon followup until you start thinning the corruptor numbers, then you can produce carriers again. 2. *Abandon this build* If you see corruptors to counter your early phoenix play<--MANDATORY If they are producing corruptors to counter ur phoenix, you wont be able to counter the amount they will have by the time you push unless they dont scout that ur continuing to go air (they will assume colossi and continue to make corruptors usually. 3. Do enough econ/hatch damage with ur initial SG units (snipe/deny a third) or you will be in a hairy mess unless you secure a quick third and start macroing to 200/200. I did this 3 times in a row on ladder, my observations: Its a pretty good build when they dont scout it until you have carriers in production, i usually start carriers after 2 VR, 2-3 phoenix and secure a third with cannon when i start that production of first 2 carriers. Faced a problem with people who are good with upgrades, and just do a straight roach/corruptor (with infestor's thrown in later) on 3-4 and arent afraid to expand. Hydras are NOT the answer to this build, adding in lategame charge/DT's (Archons) and immortals/colossi lategame (assuming u are able to thin out the corruptor numbers) is needed past 3 bases. **  O NOT BE AFRAID TO EXPAND***, You will need the gas, keep expanding, keep teching every which way and upgrade both Air Armor* and Ground attack, this was discussed until critical mass of carriers, armor helps your interceptors stay alive longer and inevitably more dps, ground attack obviously helps widdle ling/hydra/roach numbers with your stalker/archon/DT's/immortals/ect. Good guide, will start refining it to fit the playstyle i like. If anyone wants the replays from the 3 games, 2 wins 1 loss let me know, they were all 25+ minute games. (Credentials: I play top 200 all day, including some top 10 players on ladder if im fortunate enough) GLGL
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If I see mutas being made I can outproduce zerg and keep air dominance with 2 chronoboosted stargate phoenix, maybe not worth dismissing entirely, but to be fair like 90% of zergs won't bother with the investment into mutas if they see 4-5 phoenix already. Thanks for the input though, but do you think a zerg could fight for air dominance against phoenix? Even if they did get equal numbers how would zerg hold off a push of zealot/sentry/stalker/phoenix?
If you really attempt to outproduce zerg with Phoenixes for air superiority and he transitions you're going to be left with a lot of worthless phoenix.
This is what anypro tried vs July.
July made spire, immediately made corruptors and smashed him.
Besides when you bring carriers on the field it would be a lot more damaging if you weren't sending a memo to the zerg to get AA for 25 minutes before they reach the field. The whole build relies on air production through out. If you are playing a half decent zerg he is definitely NOT going to neglect Air upgrades if his chosen defense is air.
I also don't understand how you can say corruptors don't fend well against carriers.
They start out doing 20 out of the gate. Carrier is Massive and Armored, which means Corruptor is DEFINITELY viable and infestors would just spank this.
I won't go as far as to declare this completely impractical, but their are many holes in this.
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You have to make those early VRs. I used to try rushing carriers before and never had much success, but it seems that the compositions is WAYYYY more robust once you have those 6-7 VRs. 6Vrs + 2 Carriers is WAYYYYY stronger than 4-5 Carriers. I'm working on a timing with +2 Air Weapons and 2 Carriers, but it seems that its much easier to just take a third (Hydras off creep vs air + FFs is a slaughter, and corruptors can't exactly hit air)
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EPT
