EPTA sharp Zerg will notice that your Sentries don't have much energy and will conclude that the Zealots are halluciations.
[D] PvZ 2g-forge Expand, Hallu first - Page 5
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10382 Posts
A sharp Zerg will notice that your Sentries don't have much energy and will conclude that the Zealots are halluciations. | ||
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Ravomat
Germany422 Posts
The increase in warpgate research time doesn't affect your sentry count. A warpgate builds a unit 5 seconds faster than a gateway but it also takes 5 seconds for the unit to be available. A unit does not regenerate energy until it is warped in. The patch only gives you slightly more energy with the faster sentry build time. You didn't mention you can get a very fast +1 attack and be constantly upgrading unless you tech to colossi. Also if you get cheesed (3 roach rush+speedlings) your hallucination will be useless. | ||
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junemermaid
United States981 Posts
On May 15 2011 09:46 Whiplash wrote: I like this concept of getting a real fast halluc + putting fake pressure on your opponent and being able to react to what he is doing a lot sooner then usual. My teammate Azz was thinking about this same concept (minus the pressure) in PvP and I think it could be even more useful in PvZ. This and that new 2 gate expo build will be going under ruthless testing from me :D nice post Travis. Once zerg's get wise to the build however, wouldn't its effectiveness drop off substantially? Basically, the phoenix scout is a huge tell, and after a few games zerg players won't flinch at the hallc-zealot/sentry pressure, since its not real pressure. I guess you can always do a REAL 3 warpgate/expand with hallucination to keep the zerg in the dark as to whether the zealots are real or fake. Not sure how viable that is. | ||
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Kovaz
Canada233 Posts
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inpacktt
Macedonia20 Posts
Btw i didn't read the full thread and all comments but if there are already some replays like this i would like them to be added into the first post. | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
On May 16 2011 06:33 CanucksJC wrote: Hmm, so say you did this and scout the zerg going 2 base roach ling all-in, I guess you would just put down mass cannons...? Then aren't you way behind, zerg can pick off whatever outside the range, you don't even have wg research done... no you aren't way behind you are ahead. you underestimate how big of a hit making units instead of drones is for the zerg when you've been constantly chronoboosting probes WG research not being done doesn't matter. units cost money anyways, and u have cannons for the extra defense if necessary. instead of spending more money on stalkers or w/e, you can invest in quicker tech. | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
On May 16 2011 07:44 freetgy wrote: i also think watching your replay, that this build gives zerg the option of just double expanding cause your no where in shape of pressuring your opponent if he can force cannons out of you. umm... if he's totally insane, yeah. and u can actually safely pressure faster than you can with 3gate sentry expand, since u can scout him quicker. you also can't afford to constantly scout with phoenixes cause you need the Energy for forcefield defence, while i don't say it has no advantages. i am not sure if it is worth it. the entire point of constantly scouting with phoenixes is so you know how much he has and of what.... | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
On May 16 2011 08:57 Ravomat wrote: You don't need hallucination this quickly. What makes you safe against early attacks is a cannon combined with a good simcity. Defend the cannon and you will be safe. With a cannon you can also pressure a hatch first and be safe. 1 cannon does not make you safe vs roach/ling allin if u only have 2 gates. you do need the hallucination that quickly to be safe. I don't even know what you are saying in the last sentence The increase in warpgate research time doesn't affect your sentry count. A warpgate builds a unit 5 seconds faster than a gateway but it also takes 5 seconds for the unit to be available. A unit does not regenerate energy until it is warped in. The patch only gives you slightly more energy with the faster sentry build time. ok....? You didn't mention you can get a very fast +1 attack and be constantly upgrading unless you tech to colossi. Also if you get cheesed (3 roach rush+speedlings) your hallucination will be useless. It's not worth getting +1 before teching to collossi imo, you need to start your tech first. if you get cheesed (3 roach rush+speedlings) then you are going to die if you aren't prepared regardless of what build you are doing - that has nothing to do with this build. faster sentry makes it easier to stop this cheese anyways. | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
On May 16 2011 09:21 Kovaz wrote: Isn't it really risky to use all of your energy on halluc? I could understand 2-3, but if you give away that there are hallucinations, now the zerg isn't as scared to engage you AND you're low on energy, meaning you might lose all of your sentries and that could be gg right there. Especially if you scout with a phoenix, and a good zerg will likely see that you have an expo, and there's no way you'd be able to afford expand + stargate + huge gateway army. As I said in the original post, all of your energy on hallucination IS only 2-3. Most of your sentries won't even have enough energy to make hallucinations. Most sentries will be between 60-100 energy, and this is also why it's very unlikely the zerg can even read that all the zealots are hallucinations. | ||
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HinagikUx
United States178 Posts
Been trying to think of a way to get cannons up faster and be able to scout for the all in faster, because if u hallu and see all in coming and try to throw up stalkers/cannons its usually too late (for 3gate expo timing). But yeah, main problem is safely getting expo up and knowing how many cannons to make...glad other people are having similar problems expanding with pvz. >_<; Im just not comfortable doing other riskier expo builds like stargate -> expo, or DT -> expo...just cuz spores counter both of those builds :\ | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
On May 16 2011 01:34 W2 wrote: It's not a game. You always gotta consider the "what ifs" when making a build! Especially a build that shows its hand right at the start with the phoenix. Also you cannot rush voids/dts properly with this build because you wg is delayed and you are spending gas on sentries/hallucinate. So the zerg will breathe a sigh of relief when he sees your early hallucinated phoenix, knowing 1) void/dt/blink rush out of the question 2) safe from 4gate. Can you please address my biggest worry: a zerg who realizes this, saturates his two bases, and streams roaches/lings at you? Note: I am a very stubborn and evidence-based person. Well on a very basic level this is a game xD But to cut semantics, what I meant to say is that every action will prompt a reaction, and then another reaction and it bounces back and forth. You can play the what if scenarios only for so long, because you could say "What if he makes 20 Zerglings" and then I say "I make 5 sim city Cannons" and then you say "Then I expand" then I say "Then I push with X"... You can go on forever playing a hypothetical game and it only leads you so far before you can no longer accurately predict what can happen. Like I said, this is largely semantics, but I don't disagree that you have to account for possible reactions from the Zerg as it is absolutely necessary to try and figure out a build to improve it. That being said, there are so many factors in each individual game that it's not just clear-cut and simple. As to your points about the Zerg knowing that super fast DTs or 4gtates aren't coming... Well of course they know that. And naturally you won't be able to accomplish a 7 minute DT rush with this build... But this build isn't designed to do that. The idea is to take an early safe expansion, and from there you can do whatever you want. As said, the timings won't be as aggressive for a dedicated Void/DT/Blink push, but once you get that Nexus rolling you aren't really delaying your tech all that much. Consider a 3gate sentry expand which is quite common in PvZ. You are spending approximately the same amount of gas (most 3gate Sentry expands will opt to get Hallucination to get that scouting in) as this build. The main difference is the ordering... Warp Gate comes later (which again, is more relevant when trying to attack the opponent than it is to defend against). I guess I should ask, do you feel that a competent 3-gate sentry expanding Protoss can hold against a Zerg who goes for early expo and then goes into ling/roach aggression? The answer should be obvious as the 3-gate sentry expand is so widely used for a reason: It is very good for getting that expansion up and holding it while you get your economy up and running. While obviously not the same, it works on the same basic principle. Just because Warp Gate isn't up doesn't mean those gateways are sitting around doing nothing =P. And while units WILL come out faster and in position with Warp gate (which is one of the obvious reasons it is such a good upgrade to get), you can still churn out units at a reasonable pace with regular gateways. Once you have the expansion up and running, you're able to do whatever it is you want. Like I said, flat out DT rushes and super fast Void pushes are not possible with this build, but they are equally impossible with a standard 3-gate expand. You can still start to tech to those goals at the same pace of a 3-gate expand (as like I said, you will be spending approximately the same amount of gas as the former), but it won't be a "rush" as you put it. But that being said, this build is not looking to "rush" to DTs or Voidrays. It's rushing to an expansion instead of tech. A good example of something like this happening was in the HD World Tournament, and it was Sen vs. Strelok and Strelok opened up with a fast expand and then went for slightly delayed cloaked banshees. It's a similar principle, you may not get it at the super amazing speed and crush face with it, but you can still tech towards it and utilize it. Since you haven't delayed your Cyber Core (which a forge fast expand for instance WILL do) you can still persue the tech path of your choice relatively quickly. | ||
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Kraelog
Belgium194 Posts
This seems a nice build, but isn't there a rather large timing window for the Zerg to kill the FE? Assuming Zerg goes for Losira timing Roach/Ling Assuming Protoss has 8? sentry's. When you go for your fake pressure with hallucinations and the Zerg understands that any seemingly big pressure is in fact a bunch of hallucinations, can't he cut you off from your base and attack the second the phony units dissappear? The Sentry's will have low energy so FF won't be infinite, and aside from a few zealots you only have sentry's which tickle lings. After the fake pressure, if the Zerg immediatly goes for the all-in, can you hold him? Assuming you haven't build 4+ cannons without any scouting it seems hard to fend off the attack, since with sentry's alone (with low energy) you only delay the attack and Zerg should be able to produce army units faster than you. | ||
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Deleted User 3420
24492 Posts
On May 16 2011 15:57 Kraelog wrote: @Travis This seems a nice build, but isn't there a rather large timing window for the Zerg to kill the FE? Assuming Zerg goes for Losira timing Roach/Ling Assuming Protoss has 8? sentry's. When you go for your fake pressure with hallucinations and the Zerg understands that any seemingly big pressure is in fact a bunch of hallucinations, can't he cut you off from your base and attack the second the phony units dissappear? The Sentry's will have low energy so FF won't be infinite, and aside from a few zealots you only have sentry's which tickle lings. the entire reason you pressure is because the zerg has so few units. you have plenty of time to hallucinate another phoenix to find out how he reacts if you need to. you do not actually attack him, you go back to your base with your sentries. I wouldn't recommend going all the way to his base with your units. He won't be able to cut you off. After the fake pressure, if the Zerg immediatly goes for the all-in, can you hold him? Assuming you haven't build 4+ cannons without any scouting it seems hard to fend off the attack, since with sentry's alone (with low energy) you only delay the attack and Zerg should be able to produce army units faster than you. yes you can hold him, and you will be able to scout him. with 8-9 sentries you get literally nonstop phoenix scouting and still have tons of energy for forcefields, so you have time to put up cannons if you need to. the only timing we are worried about is a VERY early roach timing from zerg, like him getting to your base as your hallucination is finishing, and you don't really see that timing much because it hurts the zerg economy so much that it's basically allin. if you did see that though, you would need to stop making probes, hold your ramp with forcefield, and tech to immortal or collossus. | ||
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Markwerf
Netherlands3728 Posts
I'll just recap it as I can't stand to see people actually believing this build is any good: - hallucination before wg is harder to afford, you need to have 100/100 straight when the cyber finishes instead of 50/50 which conflicts with any fast sentry buid, idle time on your cybernetics core is bad.. - wg instantly boosts production (less so for sentries now but still the same for stalkers), this makes it critical for being able to defend a nexus. Making units with normal gateways means you don't get the units straight up and make them less fast. What point is there to scout when you don't have the proper means to defend against what you scout? Sure you can do so with cannons but that is very inefficient as you need a really quick forge that way, i'd rather get the nexus before forge. - wg before hallucination only gets hallucination 2 minutes later then this build while being much more flexible. Hallucination first forces you into scouting & defending as you CANT be aggresive, wg first leaves the zerg much more in the dark and thus less likely to simply outdrone you. Zerg couldnt be more happy to see a super early hallucinated phoenix as it only tells them: "my opponent was an idiot to get hallucination first, i can freely get my third super fast now." Hallucination is good but just get it after WG... Instead of wasting chrono's on your nexus so much simply chrono your WG tech 4 times and then hallucination once, it still gets out quick enough to scout Losira timings. Roach/ling attacks before the Losira timing are inefficient on 2 bases so all you need to do against those is defend on 1 base, you are actually ahead if you just cancel your nexus against them.. If you make the nexus quickly and hallucination finishes while it's making you are completely fine, you are only at risk of losing the full 400 minerals when a timing hits just after the nexus completes... Any time before that you can simply cancel for only 100m loss much less then zerg loses by being so aggresive that early... | ||
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CptHandsome
Denmark95 Posts
Honestly, I can't neither dismiss nor really approve of this build before the patch is more settled and the strategies have been tried out numerous times. I personally find that 3gate expoing followed by a 4th gate instead of a forge is rather capable of keeping zerg pushes at bay. | ||
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Kraelog
Belgium194 Posts
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iChau
United States1210 Posts
On May 16 2011 21:50 CptHandsome wrote: My major concern is probably that any zerg with a feel for the game will probably know that those zealots are hallucinated due to the lack of sentry energy. If this should be a core tactic, the fake zealots would also be even easier to see through. Honestly, I can't neither dismiss nor really approve of this build before the patch is more settled and the strategies have been tried out numerous times. I personally find that 3gate expoing followed by a 4th gate instead of a forge is rather capable of keeping zerg pushes at bay. No, you'll die to roach/ling without the forge. Also, does it matter if the zealots are hallucinated if he can't do anything about it except wait a whole minute where Protoss can build up a real army? | ||
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Ravomat
Germany422 Posts
On May 16 2011 10:51 travis wrote: 1 cannon does not make you safe vs roach/ling allin if u only have 2 gates. you do need the hallucination that quickly to be safe. I don't even know what you are saying in the last sentence I said a cannon protected by a good simcity will make you safe if you have forcefields. Even if your sentry count is low because you pressured a hatch first with zealot+stalker. All I tried to say is build the forge and a 3rd gate at the front of your natural to help you defend. It's not worth getting +1 before teching to collossi imo, you need to start your tech first. I disagree but I'm not surprised that you say this. Against pure roach armies I go stalker/immortal all the time and i feel like it's much easier to micro because you don't lose 300/200 every time you are caught out of position but that's just how I like to play. If you don't rush for colossus you can be constantly upgrading. if you get cheesed (3 roach rush+speedlings) then you are going to die if you aren't prepared regardless of what build you are doing - that has nothing to do with this build. faster sentry makes it easier to stop this cheese anyways. I guess I didn't make it clear enough. Let's say someone did this rush to you. You held it off and are in good shape. Now you have an upgrade you don't need. I think getting hallucination first has more drawbacks than benefits. | ||
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Khaladas
United States223 Posts
On May 16 2011 19:39 Markwerf wrote: Ugh I posted why this build is complete nonsense but got casually ignored. I'll just recap it as I can't stand to see people actually believing this build is any good: - hallucination before wg is harder to afford, you need to have 100/100 straight when the cyber finishes instead of 50/50 which conflicts with any fast sentry buid, idle time on your cybernetics core is bad.. - wg instantly boosts production (less so for sentries now but still the same for stalkers), this makes it critical for being able to defend a nexus. Making units with normal gateways means you don't get the units straight up and make them less fast. What point is there to scout when you don't have the proper means to defend against what you scout? Sure you can do so with cannons but that is very inefficient as you need a really quick forge that way, i'd rather get the nexus before forge. - wg before hallucination only gets hallucination 2 minutes later then this build while being much more flexible. Hallucination first forces you into scouting & defending as you CANT be aggresive, wg first leaves the zerg much more in the dark and thus less likely to simply outdrone you. Zerg couldnt be more happy to see a super early hallucinated phoenix as it only tells them: "my opponent was an idiot to get hallucination first, i can freely get my third super fast now." Hallucination is good but just get it after WG... Instead of wasting chrono's on your nexus so much simply chrono your WG tech 4 times and then hallucination once, it still gets out quick enough to scout Losira timings. Roach/ling attacks before the Losira timing are inefficient on 2 bases so all you need to do against those is defend on 1 base, you are actually ahead if you just cancel your nexus against them.. If you make the nexus quickly and hallucination finishes while it's making you are completely fine, you are only at risk of losing the full 400 minerals when a timing hits just after the nexus completes... Any time before that you can simply cancel for only 100m loss much less then zerg loses by being so aggresive that early... I certainly respect travis and his term and contributions as a community member, but I tend to agree with the points you are making here markwerf. Most of the roach/ling timings hit around 7-9 minutes, after the nexus finishes, but before I have any real defense. It's not even that new, i had clan members doing it to me months ago. Other than some kind of one base all in timing that is easily scoutable, once you have some sentries out it doesn't make any sense at all for zerg to attack earlier than when you drop your nexus, as markwerf points out I think it's really important to get warpgate first so you can adjust how many troops you are building on the fly based on your scouting as well. The OP makes some great points about the state of the matchup, and hallucinate first is definitely unique and could catch your opponent off guard, ultimately I don't know if there is any way to convince me that hallucination first is better. Overall feel like if you get WG first then hallucinate you should be able to scout zerg's drone count and/or see that he's planning on aggression and adjust. One solid plan i've seen is to drop 2 more gates, cancel the nexus at the last minute and defend the push ( or push back yourself if zerg becomes passive). (edit, removed whitespace, clarified) | ||
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