|
On April 20 2011 21:59 MapleLeafSirup wrote:
Hello all.
I have tried this strategy twice in high masters and one time it worked, one time it did not...
Protoss can beat it with his standard play, they just have to focus fire all the infestors ASAP... i know this is a lot but you need to get these parasited colossi back ! Afterwards they will melt the zerling waves.
But this strategy has a lot of potential and I think there is a lot room for improvements and refinements to make it even better
Employing heavy use of Neural Parasite will lead to many lopsided games. You either win big, or lose big, it depends on a slew of factors, primarily how many NP's you land, for how long, and on which units.
Micro mistakes with infestors are punished severely and will often lose you the game. This unit composition has a high variance in combat effectiveness. I think the only way to reduce this variance is through practice.
I believe this is primarily the reason that pros have shunned Neural Parasite and infestors in general. They want reliability so that they can consistently win games and tournaments, and fear having a huge lead destroyed by a few seconds of bad micro.
|
I tried this out on ladder last night and its surprisingly hard to execute.
I would start the fight out great, but at some point all my lings would evaporate and my infestors would have to high-tail it out of there. None-the-less I managed to at least cripple the death-ball long enough and influence a mass-zealot tech switch, to which i answered with late mutas for map control, broods, infestors, and queens poking at his front, and about 50 lings cleaning up his expos.
It definitely takes a lot of practice to get the ling/infestor control down to a point where you can engage a deathball properly and not lose 2/3 of your army while you're still taking control of the colossi, also those few shots the colossi get off between NPs really cuts down on your ling force at a ridiculous rate. By no means is this an easy fix to the deathball, but it does have some effectiveness to it.
|
|
|
I remember the first time I lost my 200/200 deathball to ling/infestor/ultra/baneling drops. It wasn't even close. Fungal combined with baneling bombs on a toss ball is absolutely retarded strong. Think about it. Toss units get exponentially better the more you have and the tighter they are balled up due to forcefield and the surface area of attackers. You exploit that by bling drops (ya if they have blink they only lose 2.25 speed units if they aren't looking... UNLESS YOU FUNGAL 2X AHHHH) and just cleaving the stalkers to death with ultras.. you only need like 1 or 2 to trample forcefields honestly.
Sure, you have to make sure you're not getting 6gated (and baneling bombs can even be out in time for the 6gate push but you have to wait above a cliff since they won't have an obs to see it coming.
|
On April 19 2011 10:12 Misanthrope wrote:
Go into map editor, create an optimal 200/200 protoss ball and zerg army. Then record it and edit this post.
[url blocked]
100 supply of Ultra/Queen/Hydra kicking the shit out of 150 supply of Stalker/Colossus/Void Ray.
|
Roaches not only cost too much food and a NOT insignificant amount of gas, but also get melted by stalkers and immortals. Also, lings prevent the protoss ball from getting a nice concave AND being able to snipe NPing infestors. When you NP a colossus, if you are using roaches, stalkers can just walk up and boop your infestors.
This needs to be combined with banelings. 2,2 or even 3,3 sling/blings murders Protoss balls. When you fungal so they can't move, all your banes hit, especially if on creep.
Also, as a side comment, if the enemy is going heavy air, mutas can be another option, but it seems that infestors still do quite well.
EDIT: Someone mentioned chargelots. They get melted by banes.
|
On April 21 2011 00:46 Alejandrisha wrote:
I remember the first time I lost my 200/200 deathball to ling/infestor/ultra/baneling drops. It wasn't even close. Fungal combined with baneling bombs on a toss ball is absolutely retarded strong. Think about it. Toss units get exponentially better the more you have and the tighter they are balled up due to forcefield and the surface area of attackers. You exploit that by bling drops (ya if they have blink they only lose 2.25 speed units if they aren't looking... UNLESS YOU FUNGAL 2X AHHHH) and just cleaving the stalkers to death with ultras.. you only need like 1 or 2 to trample forcefields honestly.
Sure, you have to make sure you're not getting 6gated (and baneling bombs can even be out in time for the 6gate push but you have to wait above a cliff since they won't have an obs to see it coming.
This is very accurate.
Also, the youtube clip you have posted looks like you the toss a-clicked moved and left the room while the zerg is microing. In reality, even diamond toss players would micro better than what was shown in that youtube video. Not only that, there would be more sentries and those blings do not just roll in there nor do you get a surround on anything.
Recently, the only way I've seen to implement blings is to bling drop them, which as the quoted poster said, is very strong.
|
I have been experimenting with the Spanishiwa style of opening without gas and defending with spines+queends. After this I transition into burrowed roaches and drops during the midgame. Meanwhile I tech to Hive for 3/3/3 upgrades and ling attack speed upgrade, which is really good together with roaches.
My endgame composition is 1-2 ultras + slings + blings + roaches + 4-8 queens and 1-3 infestors. I don't think infestors can be handled very effeciently above those numbers and a few infestors with a huge ground army is better than 4-10 infestors with lesser ground units to back them up. It is also less reliant on neural parasite which can be a real coin flip and extremly bad on maps with narrow alleys where the ball can prevent any infestors to reach the collosi.
|
Just tried it for the first time and OMG is it powerful and so much fun. I did a spanishwa style into mass lings and all infestors with some in his mineral line. It's so so so strong even with the awful micro I had
|
I'm beginning to think that in anticipation of going Ling/Infestor, it may be beneficial to focus on armor upgrades instead of ranged attack upgrades even if you are going roach in the midgame, which is often the case. Does anyone have experience with this?
|
On April 21 2011 01:28 Retrospecd wrote:
In reality, even diamond toss players would micro better than what was shown in that youtube video.
I really hate comments like this...
This is the same bullshit argument that I see time and time again to dismiss a strategy and you're just insulting decent players.
Implying that any given strategy sucks because the Master League player on the other side "micro'd like he was in silver" is the stupidest argument that shows up on this forum and I see it over and over.
Shit like this makes discussing tactics on the strategy forum here not fun.
|
I've watched most of the replays and...wow, you really show the potential of ling/infestor -> ling/bane/infestor/ultra.
Almost every game your opponent has more workers, more bases, bigger army supply, higher army cost, and your macro is generally poor (you regularly have 1k/1k resources banked) and yet you still roflstomp them into the ground with pure ling/infestor. Very impressive. I'd like to see this build done in the hands of a more skilled player.
However your protoss opponents aren't as good as they could be. For one, their FFs are not very good. The only opponent I saw who wasn't afraid of using FF was LeafBlower on shakuras, but even then he wasn't able to actually wall off with FF, he just spammed FF to reduce surface area.
Secondly, you never actually fought against a proper maxed deathball. By 'proper' I mean a maxed army with at least 6-8 sentries, 5-6 colossus, lots of void rays (like 8+) and the rest stalker. This is the scariest deathball protoss can make. In the game on scrap & shakuras, protoss did make a maxed army, but it wasn't a void/colo army. I'm interested to see how well mass infestor performs against a maxed void/colo army.
In my opinion against HT, since you already have lots of zerglings and a baneling nest (and melee/carapace upgrades)you should get drop, and morph enough banelings to kill his HT (probably 10-15). Fungal the HT and drop the banes on them.
In fact, any ZvP strategy that uses banelings should also use baneling drops.
|
Infestors are good support units ie against Protoss Death Balls, should teach them to seperate their units out too 
|
This is the way to play zvp. I really enjoy the dynamics between Infestor and HT. Screw boring Colossi and Roaches!
|
Do phoenix gravity beam interrupt infestor while they are NP a target?
|
fungal damage doesnt stack right? (ie casting 2 fungals on top of each other)
|
On April 21 2011 01:12 GosuSheep wrote:
EDIT: Someone mentioned chargelots. They get melted by banes.
Come on, was that incredibly obvious point really worth editing your post over? I think everyone reading the strat forum gains nothing from hearing these obvious counters over and over. You can get the same information from the in-game Help option.
|
On April 21 2011 03:55 TheGreatWhiteHope_ wrote:
Do phoenix gravity beam interrupt infestor while they are NP a target?
This is one of those amazing questions that you wonder why you don't know the answer to, similar to when Protoss players were trying to work out how to crack Siege Tank lines and discovered you could lift them. Allow me to actually go and check this.
Yeah, it interrupts the NP.
|
My main issue trying this stuff out is thee 5 6 gate push stuff where I really feel I needburrowed roaches to defend. You can absolutely melt deathballs I find, especially bling drops, but its getting there that's hard.
|
On April 21 2011 04:22 dave333 wrote:
My main issue trying this stuff out is thee 5 6 gate push stuff where I really feel I needburrowed roaches to defend. You can absolutely melt deathballs I find, especially bling drops, but its getting there that's hard.
i agree with you completely, finding a safe way to get there is the real challenge imo 
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
