EPTThe Strength of Multi-Pronged Attacks in ZvP - Page 4
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Xanbatou
United States805 Posts
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Oboeman
Canada3980 Posts
I've been trying to get drops in every match-up once the game stabilizes (ie not going to die to a simple timing attack). In my mind, it's like burrow. Get it every game unless you will immediately die by spending that gas. For me, it works wonders, partly because of what you say about protoss army working less efficiently when split. But the number one reason it works for me is that most people I play with on the ladder (high diamond) completely choke when they're multi-dropped by a zerg player. It's almost as if it is just not in the playbook they learned from. Sometimes it's comical just how badly people fall apart if you are in an even game then you drop them in 2 spots while carefully pressuring their front. Presumably better players will respond better, but hey you can probably execute it better as well. My rule of thumb is to drop enough to easily deal with static defense in addition to one round of warp-ins at the target location. This forces them to move their army, and that's when they screw it up. I had a game where I dropped a guy once, and he overreacted, so I sniped his third. I dropped him again, and he underreacted, so my drop took out his double robos and other miscellaneous damage. By giving your opponent opportunities to screw up, you are giving yourself, as the more skilled player, more opportunities to capitalize on his mistake and kill him. Macroing to max is like crossing your fingers and hoping his macro is sufficiently worse than yours. If it works for you, great, but it stopped working for me. It synergizes very well with infestors. In ZvZ if it goes to roach infestor, I drop their main (drops means 2 fewer infestors, so that's the disadvantage I have to catch up from) and most diamonds 1a back to defend, then I can trap them on the ramp with infestors while I kill expansions. Again, just another example of how poorly people react to drops. In ZvT I play muta/ling/bane but with more upgrade focus (fewer mutas I guess), and let me tell you that crackling drops just cut your average diamond terran to pieces. It does not matter how many tanks he has sieged at his PF or how many turrets he has in his main. In terms of tech investment... you should get speed anyway, and drops will pay for itself on its first use if you compare it to what you would lose attacking a fortified position dealing equivalent damage. It also opens up many possibilities. They may not be worth the investment by themselves, but if you have drops anyway, you've got a whole new toolkit at your disposal, and if you've got apm to spare, why not? - baneling bombs - drop on tanks - doom drops - that offensive creep spread queen drop strategy that we all thought of while in bronze league but never executed because we never got drops - air lift micro. Hopping over forcefields, saving hurt units, elevatoring high ground. - fake drops + mind games. Once you've revealed drop tech, they have to respond anytime they see an overlord flying through their airspace. Keep them busy. Keep them paranoid. If they suck at stopping your fake drops, then they will suck at stopping your real drops too. - islands/difficult expos or risky drone transfers - hiding units. Maybe you don't want to reveal your ultralisk count when he scans. Personally I hardly ever use any of those. I get drops for multi-prong harass, and I use it for multi-prong harass. but the other options are available if the time comes. I suggest watching Squirtle vs Moon on shakuras from IEM to see some great zvp drops. Yes moon, had a commanding lead from his opener, but the drops just keep him in the lead. Great demo of relentless multi-pronged harass. I think drops are the future of zerg. | ||
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Grubby
Netherlands318 Posts
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freetgy
1720 Posts
On March 21 2011 09:03 Xapti wrote: How can you say this? (although I don't know what you mean by splitted up) WITHOUT blink and WITH range upgrade, hydras are dead even with stalkers, aside from the slower movement speed off creep, and the fact hydras don't have any bonus damage vs armored. Hydralisks also gain less % of damage bonus per attack upgrade compared to stalkers attacking non-armored. WITH blink, stalkers dominate hydralisks. When it comes to roaches, they can do rather well if they have burrow, speed, and burrow movement/regen upgrades, and are microed very well, but even then I'd say they will loose. Why? well the stalkers can quite easily focus fire down the roaches before they can burrow, while still being able to blink away their own forces. With roach's slower attack, higher damage, and shorter range (and non-instant attack, though stalkers are the same way) they do not focus fire well at all. While vs roaches, stalkers' DPS doesn't gain as much per upgrade compared to roaches', their overall effectiveness in large numbers (mid-late game scenarios) improve over time due to their greater range, and health buffer they have to blink with before dying. That is much more important than a 14% damage boost roaches get over stalker when at level 3 attack. this post is so much wrong on so many things... Hydra/Ling absolutely rapes blinkstalker while Roaches Die to Blinkstalkers also Hydras gain most by upgrade and not less than Stalkers, you fully disregard attack cooldown. sure roaches gain +2 every upgrade but also have a cooldown of 2 making it 1dps while hydras gain +1 every but have a cooldown <1s thus making it >1dps while Stalker gain +1 and have a cooldown >1s thus gaining <1dps | ||
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babysimba
10466 Posts
However if toss deathball is large enough (roughly equal food), they will usually be dancing near your 3rd and 4th bases, trying to pounce on any opportunities to kill you off. If you do anything funny with drops, they will just kill off your mining bases and weaken your ability to reinforce, then go back and kill off your scattered forces with ease. Zerg drops are slight different from Terran's. Zerg drops need to come in a huge wave to deal any damage. 1-2 OL drops doesn't work at all, it does not have the dps of 8 stimmed marines. What i like to do is when i'm nearing 200 food, i will make a big drop into protoss' main, while the rest of the army that are still spawning will proceed to attack the 3rd or natural. Prevent their forces from coming up by engaging at their ramp. (Finally zerg can use a choke to their advantage. WOO!) Unlike during usual situations where your army got cut by FFs and your remaining army could not attack anything, here the rest of army is at least attacking some buildings or probes. Tip: If your so ahead in macro, include infestors in your drops to fungal armies on the ramp. When making multiple drops, make use of burrow micro after killing their cannons. They will not have observers in every bases. Please snipe any robo, robo bay, twilight council, cyber core (impt! this delays their rebuilding of tech) and forges. | ||
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Hybris
United States185 Posts
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Neverplay
Austria532 Posts
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j3cht
United States86 Posts
I am a lowly diamond player who has two issues with the proposed methods of engagement. #1 my hotkey setup makes it difficult for me to split up my army (at least as far as I can see). I have roach hydra on ` (right next to 1), lings/ultras on 1,infestors on 2, muta/corruptor on 3, broodlords on 4. While I feel competent in splitting up my forces by type so sending Lings to one spot and roaches to another, I am limited by this in that I can not split my roaches. Should I rethink my hotkey set up? I know Day[9] says that he has always used hotkeys for armies from left to right, but that seems like a lot of rehotkeying and I feel like I would be constantly losing units around the map. #2 I have been trying to incorporate drop play into my ZvP games. Often I have found that when I drop in the toss base while their main army is out in front of their second or third, or when I split a force and attack elsewhere, the Protoss decides instead of defending to do an all in push while my forces are split. My problem here is that engaging that force is already difficult with a full army, so if I have just a part of my army, I get crushed trying to defend against the push and I never win the base race that ensues. Any advice for either of these issues would be wonderfully appreciated. Much thanks and respect ~J3cht | ||
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Stiluz
Norway688 Posts
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NB
Netherlands12045 Posts
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moonylo
Germany68 Posts
 ).For defeating Muta/Ling with a 200 supply army of 2 base: No matter how big your army is, as soon as you leave your base you will be counterattacked. And there is now way you will kill all the zerg buildings (Dont forget, Zerg has the map control!) before he kills yours, even if you add only cannons when your "deathball" finishes. And as Mrbitter statet correctly, Protoss needs a 3rd base to get the deathball (and reinforce it fast enough). I had lots of situations where I didnt get my 3rd up, got my deathball up but zergs economy was just too strong by then, just killing my ball piece by piece, because I wasnt able to reinforce enough. So if its not close position on Meta for example, you should really be able to outmacro a Toss on 2 base. And as soon as you get your 3rd base up (or try to..) multipronged attacks become insanely difficult to deal with. What I would like is to see is a Funday Monday with "You only are allowed to counterattack/You have to counterattack". Of course in many circumstances that would lead to some wierd basetrades (but thats a part of Funday Monday anyways.. Fun!) - but eventually many zergs will figure out how strong that type of play is. But to be honest I like many of those posts here, because they tell me: Not too many ppl are going to do those things soon, so I dont have to worry about that big black hole I dont know how to fill anytime soon and can concentrate on other things like mechanics | ||
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Alphasquad
Austria505 Posts
On March 22 2011 03:17 babysimba wrote: I have been experimenting a lot with drops in ZvP. It only works well in situation if you are ahead in macro like in a standard ZvP ( > 1 additional base, 200 zerg food ~ 160 toss food). Usually toss' 3rd base is just up and its death ball isn't that lethal yet. However if toss deathball is large enough (roughly equal food), they will usually be dancing near your 3rd and 4th bases, trying to pounce on any opportunities to kill you off. If you do anything funny with drops, they will just kill off your mining bases and weaken your ability to reinforce, then go back and kill off your scattered forces with ease. Zerg drops are slight different from Terran's. Zerg drops need to come in a huge wave to deal any damage. 1-2 OL drops doesn't work at all, it does not have the dps of 8 stimmed marines. What i like to do is when i'm nearing 200 food, i will make a big drop into protoss' main, while the rest of the army that are still spawning will proceed to attack the 3rd or natural. Prevent their forces from coming up by engaging at their ramp. (Finally zerg can use a choke to their advantage. WOO!) Unlike during usual situations where your army got cut by FFs and your remaining army could not attack anything, here the rest of army is at least attacking some buildings or probes. Tip: If your so ahead in macro, include infestors in your drops to fungal armies on the ramp. When making multiple drops, make use of burrow micro after killing their cannons. They will not have observers in every bases. Please snipe any robo, robo bay, twilight council, cyber core (impt! this delays their rebuilding of tech) and forges. just watch the game i posted on the page before - i havent been ahead in any way before i dropped but after by far | ||
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dAko
Switzerland18 Posts
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Johnny_Vegas
United States239 Posts
On March 22 2011 03:58 j3cht wrote: #2 I have been trying to incorporate drop play into my ZvP games. Often I have found that when I drop in the toss base while their main army is out in front of their second or third, or when I split a force and attack elsewhere, the Protoss decides instead of defending to do an all in push while my forces are split. I'm not an expert but here are some general guidelines I follow during base trade scenarios aka "What if I drop the Protoss and he just decides to come kill my main"
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Jotoco
Brazil1342 Posts
On March 22 2011 01:57 Jotoco wrote: Nah. I think he is too bitter. (Bah-dun-tish!) I want to comment on something, but I first need to read the whole text. Sad I can't. Now I can. I agree. Multi-pronged attacks CAN be good. But as someone has posted, it can lead to base trades. And as far as base trades go: T >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> P >>>> Z I might be exaggerating, T's advantage might be bigger there. What I think is better, and I don't see often enough is flanking. And not just front-back flanks. But FULL ON 4-way flanks. In a game WAY back in patch 1.0 I managed to RAPE a colo/stalker/sentry ball with as few as 4~5 ultras and 20~lings. Ended losing about 5~10 lings and NO ultras to like, 5 colo + 20 Stalkers and a few sentries. I was 3/3 and he was like, 1/1, but still. It was one HELL of a 3-way flank one JUNGLE BASIN (crazy, huh?) Either way great and informative post. Keep 'em coming. And a bit of Off Topic, would you care to update your Losira's analysis with today's GSTL play? not to spoil anything but: + Show Spoiler + warning GSTL spoilers+ Show Spoiler + Losira fucking OWNED and All-Killed Zenex | ||
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fire_brand
Canada1123 Posts
The drops/mutas totally negates FFs, while the constant pressure stops the toss from ever having a scary enough ball to move across the map, or get any kind of strong tech out. I've also noticed that he makes a uniquely large amount of spine crawlers, that I have to say have looked absolutely clutch. I think this is a style that we should see come to prevalence to deal with what is seen as a heavily toss favored matchup right now. That and the infestor changes of course ^_^. | ||
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SpaceYeti
United States723 Posts
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MrBitter
United States2940 Posts
If Toss just picks up and goes and attacks the second we split him up, then we're essentially forcing him to 1.) go all-in 2.) attack sooner than he would otherwise like to The reason Protoss sits back and waits to make that big, death-ball attack is so that he can be, more or less, unkillable when it finally comes. By forcing him to push earlier, his army is much less uber, and is far more punishable. Just load up, flank from behind with your drop forces, and attack from the front with your reinforcements. At least, this has been my experience since I've started really delving deeply into this style of play. | ||
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Igaryu85
Germany195 Posts
I read both of your Blog entries and obviously you are right with everything you wrote;) like allways;). But what I wonder is infestors, I would think that investing in infestors instead of more and more and more banelings like losira does wouldnt that actually be more efficient?. I havent been able to play many 1v1s lately but in team games I often had the problem of getting cut down in bases and as we know zerg is pretty weak if it lacks tons of bases. So out of frustration I went for infestor ling and yea my ally was ussually the one pitting the army to kill the opponent but infestors against terran seem so incredibly powerfull allready. 1 or 2 fungal growths wear a terran army down so much that its not even funny. Now with the next patch the duration of the spell will be reduced which will in my opinion make it even easier to get multiple fungals off on opponents in general. Wont this be allmost game breaking? It seems to me that having like 2-4 infestors will allmost be enough to annihilate the main of a terran force or not? in addition to that I just love to have 2 infestors with alot of energy sitting at opponents expansions or if possible even main and then when he moves out you just spit infested terrans and let them tear down the command center or if he is slow to react even the SCVs. To the multiprong attack theme I can only say that I have started doing that myself lately (in team games) and it definetly is a great thing to exploit;). | ||
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AnxiousHippo
Australia1451 Posts
Edit: I read your other blog entry though, and how would you deal with medivac play? Terrans obviously love their harassment drops but mutas are there to shut those things down. | ||
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