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On May 23 2011 01:09 SC2TheDroid wrote:
Im sorry, but at the pro level dropping a 3 gate sentry expand the nexus goes down at 5:48, as I understand it? Warp finishes about the same time (around 6 minutes), and its quite possible to have 5 sentries and a zealot at 6:10.
How is it beneficial to have 2 gates over three, and a nexus no earlier? Am I missing something?
2gate expand gets you all those things and also can afford forge+hallucinate in time to easily defend.
You actually could drop the nexus a little earlier, but 2gate or 3gate, you can't possibly defend it vs even a handful of zerglings until you have enough units. The third sentry pops out around 5:45 with the 4th a few seconds behind. I also wanted to avoid planting the nexus TOO early - if a strong attack with an odd timing hits JUST after the nexus finishes, but when the cannons are still 20s or more away, I wanted to keep the option to just cancel the nexus + cannons and retreat to high ground.
And actually, I have a question for anyone who wants to field it.
How is it beneficial to have 3 gates over 2? 2 gates will keep up with your gas income, with cooldown time to spare, until you add on the assimilators at the nexus. And the 3rd arrives in time to keep up with your mineral income after building the expansion and low ground wall, right around the time you reach your target number of sentries.
The only ways I could see 3gate >> 2gate are: you want to attack quickly!! meaning you've abandoned your plan to build only sentries and expand
or
you skip hallucinate altogether, so you can afford 1 more sentry. (actually this is a terrible reason, since there is spare gateway cooldown with just 2 gates and by chronoing a gate 1 time you'd easily be able to keep up with gas production)
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On May 23 2011 01:20 chaopow wrote:
This is a pretty good and refined build but I feel there is one problem. Its playing very safe, almost too safe. Sure you can always cancel canons and get minerals back, but this build is counting on the losira attack to happen. Any other build the zerg could be going might affect this. If they are macroing or teching, or waiting for burrow roach or hydras, it could hurt you in the end. I still feel 3gate expand is still the best build overall in PvZ. I prefer to do what minigun does which is the blind canon, a good wall and rely on FF and micro to stay alive.
Some players like to play safe and play well at it, but atleast for me personally, I dont really like it and dont like to give up this tiny edge to the opponent. I'm a Masters Toss.
I see what you're saying, but why does this rely on the attack happening? The build is never cutting probes and spending minimum 4 chronos on them. If the attack doesn't happen, you've 'wasted' 37-75 minerals (not a huge deal, that's less than the cost of a suicide probe considering mining time), and spent 100/100 on hallucinate. 100/100 isn't so cheap, but if it's part of your plan anyways that's obviously a non-issue, and personally I like hallucinate. It's really nice that you can scout his buildings and composition any time you want without waiting for and building observers. Hallucinate is also really nice for scouting ahead of your army while in 'shark mode' so you don't get caught by 32648 speedlings, and also keeps him honest - if he just keeps droning and relying on the fact that you're bluffing, your phoenix will spot it every time and you can move in for the kill.
A nice thing about my build is that, if you cancel cannons, you suddenly have an overflow of minerals immediately after scouting him, so you can decide how best to spend those minerals.
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On May 23 2011 02:20 Markwerf wrote:
I use a similar build to this all the time and it works quite well for me.
Your build gets a slightly lower probe count but finishes hallucinate a fair bit quicker so you don't ever need to cancel cannons. Also you'll need to spend a few seconds defending without cannons in the cases where you spot his roaches just as they're moving out (rush time < cannon build time).
Mine gets ~1 extra probe but at the cost of wasted minerals in case he's not attacking, and gets the cannons up a little faster in situations where you spot the roaches after 7:10.
Both approaches are valid IMO.
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On May 23 2011 02:58 lilky wrote:
The roach-ling timing push that zerg players do doesnt follow that strict of a guideline/build. Unlike a 4gate, which will always hit at 6 minutes with 6 protoss units, the zerg can add little nuances that change the timing/strength/speed of the attack.
For example, he zerg player may decide to begin the attack when he has 20 drones. Instead, he may decide to attack at 35 drones.
Yes, I've thought about this quite a bit. Two solutions come to mind:
1- cancel everything on the low ground that hasn't finished warping in and retreat up the ramp.
2- lay down the forge a fair bit sooner, probably by going forge before nexus. Build 1 cannon around 6:50, in time to defend faster versions, and build the 2nd at 7:10 as planned. You'll need to decide to keep or cancel the 1st cannon when your phoenix is only partway across the map, and you'll have to cancel + rebuild it when your phoenix spots roaches just leaving the main. That's OK because the times it happens, Z has hurt his economy far more than you, and you'll handily stop his attack.
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On May 23 2011 02:17 Minigun wrote:
Usually the players are just doing something wrong if they are getting all in'd and losing.
I actually do a fair amount of coaching on this roach/ling subject, and every person asking for help on this subject, has been able to leave the coaching session being able to stop it, but this could work too I guess.
Care to explain more? Is it just down to FF's and sim city? Do you 2 gate expand or 3 gate? Are there specific maps where there's too much space between your ramp and natural that you cant hold with 3 gate expand?
I have moderate success if its a map where you can do like 1-2 ff between your wall and nexus, 1 ff on mineral line and 1 ff behind mineral line where zlings cant get through (or putting my 2nd pylon on low ground there) while having 1 cannon, but sometimes i just muck up. I honestly feel like it relies on perfect or near perfect play to hold which I just lose at least half the time because i can't do it perfectly every game.
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I'm not saying this is or is not a good build as all you're doing is cutting corners to get a faster expansion down.
However, you're third gate is coming out WAY later and you'll have far fewer units than a 3 gate expand. How this makes it safer build vs early zerg pressure is beyond me. Not only that, you will have a heck of a time defending until your cannons do get up, since you have far fewer forcefields/units, and they don't get up until around 7:30.
Imagine I have speedlings camped out at your expansion and waiting for you to push out. How are you going to push out safely with 2 gates to get your expansion down at 5:30?
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On May 23 2011 08:43 murkk wrote:
I'm not saying this is or is not a good build as all you're doing is cutting corners to get a faster expansion down.
However, you're third gate is coming out WAY later and you'll have far fewer units than a 3 gate expand. How this makes it safer build vs early zerg pressure is beyond me. Not only that, you will have a heck of a time defending until your cannons do get up, since you have far fewer forcefields/units, and they don't get up until around 7:30.
Imagine I have speedlings camped out at your expansion and waiting for you to push out. How are you going to push out safely with 2 gates to get your expansion down at 5:30?
Bold part is false. Until approx 6:00 when warpgate tech completes, 2gate has the exact same units as a 3gate sentry expand. At 6:10 when the first warpin round occurs, 2gate will have exactly 1 less sentry because of the 100 gas spent on hallucinate. After that, the 2 gates more than keep up with income until the third gate completes.
If a 3gate sentry expand researches hallucinate at any time, it will have the exact same number of units as a 2gate sentry expand. Normal 3gate gets 1 sentry a little earlier than my build by delaying hallucinate.
By the way, I said to expand at 5:50 not 5:30.
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On May 23 2011 04:03 Minigun wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 03:43 MrCon wrote:On May 22 2011 19:28 done wrote:On May 22 2011 18:33 FataLe wrote:On May 22 2011 18:25 done wrote:
I absolutely hate how every low player just asumes 3gate expand is not good anymore... In fact it holds this losira push off just fine every single time the protoss is not greedy as hell, and it sets the zerg really far behind in tech and economy.
FFS just build a wall and force field the holes for 2 times while building stalker/zealots and you just got an easy win... dunno why people whine about it, its not even that strong a timing imo Oh you just ooze knowledge on the matter, don't you.. If it were that easy, which it's not.. you wouldn't be seeing this many threads revolving around a single build order this long after it was introduced mainstream now would you. And then again in every single one of those threads some decent protoss player comes in and tells everyone how easy it is to hold this off with just decent building, some micro and not beeing too greedy... Just listen to Minigun for example, he served the last one of these threads >.< Edit: for everyone who is not getting it, building a forge and a cannon is not beeing greedy and reqired to be save vs this. Also not getting a nexus before 6min is. But in none of these threads the"decent protoss" gives a replay or a vod, which hint to total theorycraft when the same thing ("I hold it all the time, oops sorry I have no replay") happens in all threads. Even in this thread, OP claims his build works but can't post a replay because of a strange reason. I don't save replays. If this was such a good strat why isn't it ALL YOU SEE at high level play? Because it's easily stoppable, if you don't cut corners.
Well, I'd say we see this in 33% of pro games,, perhaps 25%. And it's succesful every time up to today.
edit : 25% is an exageration. Let's say we still see this very often, the point being, it still haven't been defended on TV. I'm sure it's defendable and actually I agree with your posts on howto defend it. Perhaps op build works too. But the fact that we still have zero replay of this when everyone ask for replays since 2 weeks hint us that it's not that easy.
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On May 23 2011 09:27 MrCon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 04:03 Minigun wrote:On May 23 2011 03:43 MrCon wrote:On May 22 2011 19:28 done wrote:On May 22 2011 18:33 FataLe wrote:On May 22 2011 18:25 done wrote:
I absolutely hate how every low player just asumes 3gate expand is not good anymore... In fact it holds this losira push off just fine every single time the protoss is not greedy as hell, and it sets the zerg really far behind in tech and economy.
FFS just build a wall and force field the holes for 2 times while building stalker/zealots and you just got an easy win... dunno why people whine about it, its not even that strong a timing imo Oh you just ooze knowledge on the matter, don't you.. If it were that easy, which it's not.. you wouldn't be seeing this many threads revolving around a single build order this long after it was introduced mainstream now would you. And then again in every single one of those threads some decent protoss player comes in and tells everyone how easy it is to hold this off with just decent building, some micro and not beeing too greedy... Just listen to Minigun for example, he served the last one of these threads >.< Edit: for everyone who is not getting it, building a forge and a cannon is not beeing greedy and reqired to be save vs this. Also not getting a nexus before 6min is. But in none of these threads the"decent protoss" gives a replay or a vod, which hint to total theorycraft when the same thing ("I hold it all the time, oops sorry I have no replay") happens in all threads. Even in this thread, OP claims his build works but can't post a replay because of a strange reason. I don't save replays. If this was such a good strat why isn't it ALL YOU SEE at high level play? Because it's easily stoppable, if you don't cut corners. Well, I'd say we see this in 33% of pro games,, perhaps 25%. And it's succesful every time up to today.
lol no it's not successful 100% of the time
if you had a build that wins you "100% of games" wouldn't you use it every game?
It works so much at the lower levels because, timing, is EXTREMELY important in holding off certain things. If you don't have perfect forcefields, or perfect timing, yeah this build is hard as hell to hold.
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I edited, I wanted to say it was successful everytime it was used on TV (nasl/GSL and other tourneys)
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On May 23 2011 08:00 Keilah wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 02:20 Markwerf wrote:
I use a similar build to this all the time and it works quite well for me.
Your build gets a slightly lower probe count but finishes hallucinate a fair bit quicker so you don't ever need to cancel cannons. Also you'll need to spend a few seconds defending without cannons in the cases where you spot his roaches just as they're moving out (rush time < cannon build time). Mine gets ~1 extra probe but at the cost of wasted minerals in case he's not attacking, and gets the cannons up a little faster in situations where you spot the roaches after 7:10. Both approaches are valid IMO.
I started out with practically your build but came to the conclusion 3 boosts on nexus instead of 4 is simply more efficient. It makes the build smoother by letting WG finish at exactly the same time as your 3rd sentry pops (whereas your build has to wait 10 secs) and it works smoother with pylon timings.
Chrono boosts after the third on the nexus are generally a waste anyways, you are getting close to saturation by that point and chrono on tech or gateway is almost always more efficient. If chronoing tech allowes you to safely put your nexus 10s earlier it was already more efficient..
Just check the replay I provided earlier as that way the build is very efficient, I only need to have the forge a bit earlier which can be done by getting another sentry instead of a stalker.
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On May 23 2011 09:03 Keilah wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 08:43 murkk wrote:
I'm not saying this is or is not a good build as all you're doing is cutting corners to get a faster expansion down.
However, you're third gate is coming out WAY later and you'll have far fewer units than a 3 gate expand. How this makes it safer build vs early zerg pressure is beyond me. Not only that, you will have a heck of a time defending until your cannons do get up, since you have far fewer forcefields/units, and they don't get up until around 7:30.
Imagine I have speedlings camped out at your expansion and waiting for you to push out. How are you going to push out safely with 2 gates to get your expansion down at 5:30? Bold part is false. Until approx 6:00 when warpgate tech completes, 2gate has the exact same units as a 3gate sentry expand. At 6:10 when the first warpin round occurs, 2gate will have exactly 1 less sentry because of the 100 gas spent on hallucinate. After that, the 2 gates more than keep up with income until the third gate completes. If a 3gate sentry expand researches hallucinate at any time, it will have the exact same number of units as a 2gate sentry expand. Normal 3gate gets 1 sentry a little earlier than my build by delaying hallucinate. By the way, I said to expand at 5:50 not 5:30.
So what you're saying is the bold part is true. You will have less units than a 3 gate for early zerg pressure before 10 minutes, and are far more vulnerable. Your guide's mission statement says differently.
I can see exactly zero cases where this build has more survivability than 3 gate expand. In fact, you're actually baiting zerg to come kill you early game as most players will note the early expansion (meaning no gates).
When does you're 3rd gate get up an operational (since i have no replay to go by)? By the sounds of it, it's between 8:30 and 9 minutes if you lay down 2x cannons.
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How about this one? GreatFields by Minigun
Minigun ForceFields Against Roach/Linghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAEYzFxvAV0
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On May 23 2011 09:48 murkk wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 09:03 Keilah wrote:On May 23 2011 08:43 murkk wrote:
I'm not saying this is or is not a good build as all you're doing is cutting corners to get a faster expansion down.
However, you're third gate is coming out WAY later and you'll have far fewer units than a 3 gate expand. How this makes it safer build vs early zerg pressure is beyond me. Not only that, you will have a heck of a time defending until your cannons do get up, since you have far fewer forcefields/units, and they don't get up until around 7:30.
Imagine I have speedlings camped out at your expansion and waiting for you to push out. How are you going to push out safely with 2 gates to get your expansion down at 5:30? Bold part is false. Until approx 6:00 when warpgate tech completes, 2gate has the exact same units as a 3gate sentry expand. At 6:10 when the first warpin round occurs, 2gate will have exactly 1 less sentry because of the 100 gas spent on hallucinate. After that, the 2 gates more than keep up with income until the third gate completes. If a 3gate sentry expand researches hallucinate at any time, it will have the exact same number of units as a 2gate sentry expand. Normal 3gate gets 1 sentry a little earlier than my build by delaying hallucinate. By the way, I said to expand at 5:50 not 5:30. So what you're saying is the bold part is true. You will have less units than a 3 gate for early zerg pressure before 10 minutes, and are far more vulnerable. Your guide's mission statement says differently. I can see exactly zero cases where this build has more survivability than 3 gate expand. In fact, you're actually baiting zerg to come kill you early game as most players will note the early expansion (meaning no gates). When does you're 3rd gate get up an operational (since i have no replay to go by)? By the sounds of it, it's between 8:30 and 9 minutes if you lay down 2x cannons.
You said the 2gate would have far fewer units. I pointed out that, until warp, it has the same, after warp, it gets 1 less sentry than a 3gate with no hallucinate, after 3gate gets hallucinate both builds have the exact same number of units.
If having 1 sentry less/more at 6:10 makes all the difference, fine. It might, but I kinda doubt it.
I forget the exact timing, but yeah the third gate is complete and in warpgate mode around 8:40.
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On May 23 2011 09:40 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 08:00 Keilah wrote:On May 23 2011 02:20 Markwerf wrote:
I use a similar build to this all the time and it works quite well for me.
Your build gets a slightly lower probe count but finishes hallucinate a fair bit quicker so you don't ever need to cancel cannons. Also you'll need to spend a few seconds defending without cannons in the cases where you spot his roaches just as they're moving out (rush time < cannon build time). Mine gets ~1 extra probe but at the cost of wasted minerals in case he's not attacking, and gets the cannons up a little faster in situations where you spot the roaches after 7:10. Both approaches are valid IMO. I started out with practically your build but came to the conclusion 3 boosts on nexus instead of 4 is simply more efficient. It makes the build smoother by letting WG finish at exactly the same time as your 3rd sentry pops (whereas your build has to wait 10 secs) and it works smoother with pylon timings. Chrono boosts after the third on the nexus are generally a waste anyways, you are getting close to saturation by that point and chrono on tech or gateway is almost always more efficient. If chronoing tech allowes you to safely put your nexus 10s earlier it was already more efficient.. Just check the replay I provided earlier as that way the build is very efficient, I only need to have the forge a bit earlier which can be done by getting another sentry instead of a stalker.
Your way might be better, seems to me they're very close.
Note:
-I lay down the expansion nexus when the third sentry is born (with the 4th coming in seconds), not when warpgate completes. When warpgate does complete, I just barely have the gas to do my warpins. So, getting warpgate 10s faster wouldn't give me my sentries or expansion 10s faster.
-I DO notice and dislike that my build has several seconds of idle gateway time, but it more than keeps up with gas income so unless you're building units other than sentries I don't see how you can avoid idle time.
-The 4th probe chrono happens when you have 22/23 probes, so yeah we're past the 16 probes on minerals mark, but it still helps. Having ~1 extra probe to transfer to the expo is a small bonus. It's not a big deal, but every little bit helps.
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Well, I just watched the VOD posted and I have a few things to say.
-First off, mini opens with zealot -> stalker, which is fine but will screw with timings and such compared to zealot -> sentry. So my very next point might be only because of this opening.
-Mini lays down the expansion nexus at 6:05, 15s later than I recommend.
-Mini gets pressured by lings at 6:20, and he holds with 1 sentry, 1 near-dead stalker, and 3 warpin reinforcement sentries, losing the stalker and 2 sentries. Surely the same pressure with 8 extra lings (which mini killed earlier) could be held by 1 zlot and 5-6 sentries.
-Mini loses loads of stuff in the battle. The first cannon is canceled or killed, he loses (or should lose) a bunch of probes at 8:10 ingame time (can't tell with low res but i think the lings milled about aimlessly), he loses 2 pylons, the forge, a good few military units, and a few times there were opportunities for lings to kill several probes (not sure if it happened or not from low-res). He also ends up building 4 cannons (3 and 1 cancelled?), two of which are placed farther back than ideal, and the last one gets killed. And this is from a pro gamer! With my build, you can have worse micro and lose less.
-there is LOADS of idle gateway time. In particular, all 3 gates sit idle for ~10 waiting for warp to complete. There's also a lot of idle time right around when the attack hits (watch the warpgate counter in lower right). What's the point of a third gate you can't afford? It sacrifices a faster forge for nothing.
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On May 23 2011 10:19 Keilah wrote:Show nested quote +On May 23 2011 09:48 murkk wrote:On May 23 2011 09:03 Keilah wrote:On May 23 2011 08:43 murkk wrote:
I'm not saying this is or is not a good build as all you're doing is cutting corners to get a faster expansion down.
However, you're third gate is coming out WAY later and you'll have far fewer units than a 3 gate expand. How this makes it safer build vs early zerg pressure is beyond me. Not only that, you will have a heck of a time defending until your cannons do get up, since you have far fewer forcefields/units, and they don't get up until around 7:30.
Imagine I have speedlings camped out at your expansion and waiting for you to push out. How are you going to push out safely with 2 gates to get your expansion down at 5:30? Bold part is false. Until approx 6:00 when warpgate tech completes, 2gate has the exact same units as a 3gate sentry expand. At 6:10 when the first warpin round occurs, 2gate will have exactly 1 less sentry because of the 100 gas spent on hallucinate. After that, the 2 gates more than keep up with income until the third gate completes. If a 3gate sentry expand researches hallucinate at any time, it will have the exact same number of units as a 2gate sentry expand. Normal 3gate gets 1 sentry a little earlier than my build by delaying hallucinate. By the way, I said to expand at 5:50 not 5:30. So what you're saying is the bold part is true. You will have less units than a 3 gate for early zerg pressure before 10 minutes, and are far more vulnerable. Your guide's mission statement says differently. I can see exactly zero cases where this build has more survivability than 3 gate expand. In fact, you're actually baiting zerg to come kill you early game as most players will note the early expansion (meaning no gates). When does you're 3rd gate get up an operational (since i have no replay to go by)? By the sounds of it, it's between 8:30 and 9 minutes if you lay down 2x cannons. You said the 2gate would have far fewer units. I pointed out that, until warp, it has the same, after warp, it gets 1 less sentry than a 3gate with no hallucinate, after 3gate gets hallucinate both builds have the exact same number of units. If having 1 sentry less/more at 6:10 makes all the difference, fine. It might, but I kinda doubt it. I forget the exact timing, but yeah the third gate is complete and in warpgate mode around 8:40.
You're not just 1 unit less at the first warp in. You also one gateway less, and are a long ways away from building more gateways. At 8:30, that's a substantial number of units.
The initial post said this was a guide to help people who were having trouble overcome zerg aggression on 3 gate expand. It was to make it so you don't need to rely on forcefields as much. If anything, you need much better forcefields and have a greater chance of just straight up dying to any zerg early aggression.
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Look, just try it, you'll see. Even with just two gates you still have idle gateway time. A third early gate doesn't get you more units, it gets you more idle gateway time. The only thing that costs you any units is hallucinate. If your normal 3gate gets hallucinate anyways then both builds will get the same number of units by 9:00-10:00. 2gate trades 1-2 units during the roachling attack in exchange for hallucinate and 2 completed cannons. Would you rather have 9 units, 3 gates, and a cannon halfway warped in? Or 8 units, 2 gates, a third gate halfway warped in, and 2 cannons completed?
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3 gate still works for me at high masters, i've been doing the blind 2 cannons just because the losira attack is so common and sometimes i cancel one. At the very least they allow you to push out and put some pressure on without worrying about backstabs.If you stay a little behind your cannons and forcefield well (focus on keeping the lings off you) then you should be ok. I defend something like 80% of these pushes successfully and then counter push with immortals + 5 gate and win as they try to catch up.
edit: the minigun video is a poor example, losing 2 sentries and a stalker to speedlings cripples your ability to defend this build, any gains/losses will snowball vs this sort of aggression.
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On May 23 2011 11:53 Keilah wrote:
Look, just try it, you'll see. Even with just two gates you still have idle gateway time. A third early gate doesn't get you more units, it gets you more idle gateway time. The only thing that costs you any units is hallucinate. If your normal 3gate gets hallucinate anyways both then both builds will get the same number of units by 9:00-10:00. 2gate trades 1-2 units during the roachling attack in exchange for hallucinate and 2 completed cannons. Would you rather have 9 units, 3 gates, and a cannon halfway warped in? Or 8 units, 2 gates, a third gate halfway warped in, and 2 cannons completed?
2nd option please. Murkk hasn't figured it out yet. 
I am starting to practice this build because roach/ling all-in is surprisingly popular at my level (1000M) in every map + position that is not long.
Pretty easy to follow as well. Thanks. I love learning these new builds.
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EPT
