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I'm in platinum league at the moment, playing against high diamonds and recently i've encountered a very specific and strange unit mix that was extremely hard to deal with.
The protos i was playing, went for DT's into archons, immortals and speedlots and just crushed me, the fights weren't even close, he went trough my roach/hydra ball like a knife trough butter.
What would you suggest in these kind of situations?
I mean lings are pretty much useless since theres speedlots and archons that pretty much one shot them like siege tanks, hydras melt to speedlots and archons since archons 3shot them in bunches and roaches melt to immortals and speedlots aswell.
He also had a couple of DT's in the mix to even add insult to injury.
Infestors could be a interesting choice but they are so gas intensive that by the time the push comes, you just don't have any other kind of unit to deal with the rest of his army, mutalisks aren't a very decent choice against archons aswell and teching up to broodlords isn't viable since the push comes way before you can even get to hive tech, banelings are obviously out of the question aswell.
So what can a zerg do against this?
Here is also a replay of the game:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/3580
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You say the push comes way before hive tech but what timing are you talking about? Cos i can have hive and broods around 14 or a maxed 200 army around then
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The only thing you can do against it at the moment is a combination of either infestor/broodlords or to a lesser extend hydra/roach infestor.
You need to fungal the archons, or tank them with broodlings since they are pretty ridiculous against Zerg atm.
And casting fungal on the speedlots and then retreat attack helps a lot.
And of course have spore/spines at every expansion D:
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Yeah i guess that makes more or less sense with the fungle on them but problem is that its so gas intensive that you'll need pretty good micro to pull it off or else everything is just going to melt 
I'll try that.
And the guy above, you say your maxed by minute 14, so am i usually but i was a bit thrown off by the DT opening so i was getting ready with spores and stuff for them and cut drones a bit, thus that already hits your ability to max out super early, also i remember my last fight i was at about 170 or something supply and he just crushed me regardless, even if i would of had 10 more roaches or hydras, i dont think it would of mattered.
Getting broodlords by minute 14 is pretty much impossible unless you want to cut gas off of all of your units and play on a razorze edge all game long in perril of dying to any kind of toss push or to anything that involves just blink or normal stalkers.
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kite the lots with roaches? and use hydras on the archon and immortals?
banelings will help with the zealot cleanup...
archon and immortals cover each other's counters....
broodlords is a bit too late in that replay...
you might want to focus fire the archons and then swarm the immortals with lings. Divide and Conquer.
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Alright a few things.
1. You scout the dark shrine in beautiful fashion. You see a cancel, but he actually ends up reconstructing it anyway. You also saw a very fast nexus which means you constructing FOUR spine crawlers as well as making a bunch of speedlings was way overkill.
2. When your lair finishes you dont tech overlord speed. You know the protoss is up to no good, it is vital to know exactly what no good.
3. In a situation where fast DTs are a possibility I would have gone for a third base closer to home. For example the back door expo with a spore + spine at the other rocks high ground = DT proof expansion.
4. You started your very first +1 attack at 12:30. This is far too late.
5. He takes out your third. You then move away from your defenses to engage him. For what reason? You even stocked resources to train 12 hydralisks while this engagement was going on - why not train those first, and THEN engage.
6. The engagement itself could have gone better. +1/+1 had done a big difference. Either focusfire the archons or shoot'n'shoot your ball away from his, remember your roaches have double the range of his archons. Archons are like colossi or siege tanks the most deadly targets, micro your forces to kill them and the rest can fall.
7. Your +1/+1 finish. You are in no imidiate danger. Yet you stream out hydralisks rather than starting +2/+2 and secure your much needed third. At this point you have way too many hydralisks and nothing to soak damage for them. The +2/+2 can be excused as he actually pushed soon after but you didnt know he would, and thats a bad habit 
8. When his push comes you again opt to engage him JUST out of range of your spine crawlers. 4 super powerful spines that took a few podshots at a zealot, that was it. You had him, army dps wise. Had you placed hydras on the high ground, abit fewer hydras on the low ground along with a bunch of roaches and then drawn him into your spine crawlers, that had been in.
9. Followup: Brood lords churn this army mix to butter. The protoss macro was terrible, he had no third. He was all in. Fight your engagements abit better, work on your macro with focus on faster and safer third, and faster upgrades. You had the army to take him out at the second engagement, but you engaged on his terms and lost.
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hydras melt to archons like crazy, if i try to kite with the roaches, the speedlots just get to the hydras and roaches take unnecessary hits from the immortals, well i mean i'm still in plat so my micro isn't all that good but its pretty hard to deal with with just roach/hydra comp.
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If you see it coming (zealot/immortal and twilight council) muta play will shout it down and you should tech to broodlords behind it if he doesn't adjust his composition. Archons aren't any good against muta, even with better range, and his army is not very mobile, so he needs to invest in cannons (dt/zealot/immortal is very mineral heavy).
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Just watched the replay...
I'd have gone straight ling/infestor (and skipped the usual blings), and rushed for +2/2. Even if you lose the majority of your lings and kill off all his archons, you've won the fight so long as you can keep your infestors alive, which isn't overly hard imo!
Archons are good vs slings, but once you get an upgrade advantage they take twice as long to kill the speedlings (a 0/0 archon takes 2 hits to kill a 1/1 speedling) which will give you time to basically run in, fungal, and surround anything. The advantage of going speedling is that you can abuse the lack of mobility that army has and try and catch it out in the open and just straight surround it and kill it. Plus, immortals are hilariously helpless vs Zerglings. Once you kill off his army if he's on 2 bases, you've pretty much won the game there since you're then free to expand again, etc. etc.
Gotta be careful of forcefields and upgrades though, but there's no way in hell he's getting immo/sentry/archon/upgrades off of 4 gas :D
I've really fallen in love with the Ling/Infestor/Bling vs 'toss recently. It's such a great feeling to watch the deathball just fall over
The game itself -- I'd have been a lot more active with those speedlings you had, you didn't really know when he moved out which meant that your positioning to fend off his push was less than ideal too -- if you saw him move out, you could have backstabbed sooner and bought yourself more time to get more roaches and hydras out...and you could have also engaged him from two sides in more open ground which would have given you the advantage (especially since if you'd delayed him by 30 seconds by forcing him to pull back you'd have had a MUCH huger army than you did!)
I think, if you'd not lost your third you'd have been in much better shape this game anyway -- that it came down to a scouting and macro mistake more?
My 2 cents, anyway. Low Masters toss/zerg player here, btw.
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On May 30 2011 18:24 DESOUL wrote:
hydras melt to archons like crazy, if i try to kite with the roaches, the speedlots just get to the hydras and roaches take unnecessary hits from the immortals, well i mean i'm still in plat so my micro isn't all that good but its pretty hard to deal with with just roach/hydra comp.
i hope i don't injure any feelings...but hydras just are terrible as a unit imo... it's different from sc1... with the light unit classification, they are glass
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i've lost vs this alot myself aswell
any repos of people beating this?
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I think infestors with basically any decent comp can beat this. One thing id add is that Neural Parasite works great against archons against this comp, as long as you have something to tank the zealots. None of these units have any range to really snipe the infestors well and if you get all their archons you will shred their army pretty quickly.
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Never build hydras, that's mistake #1.. especially not against that.
Mass roach counters all of that except there's some immortals involved. Your best bet would be roach/infestor.
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Watched the replay, you lack the reactivity that is the trademark of the style you're trying to pull off, TBH I feel like if you had a 250/200 army of roaches and reinforcing speedlings you'd've been fine. Smooth out your style, every time you're not going to die, there's no reason NOT to make drones.
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On May 30 2011 18:25 Dariusz wrote:
If you see it coming (zealot/immortal and twilight council) muta play will shout it down and you should tech to broodlords behind it if he doesn't adjust his composition. Archons aren't any good against muta, even with better range, and his army is not very mobile, so he needs to invest in cannons (dt/zealot/immortal is very mineral heavy).
actualy archons rape mutas in 3 IIRC hits and have splash damage while mutas tend to clump up
To beat this u can go pure hydra and some roaches while taking 3/4/5(gas) bases and teching to , then its amove to victory
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You played quite well for plat.
The critical part of the match was when he killed your third. Then you engaged his zealot archon immortal army after it had killed your expansion with almost pure roach. If you actually had roach hydra this would be fine but with pure roach you are going to need good micro to come out even here. Instead of good micro, which is stutter stepping away from those units, you stutter into them maximising the archon zealot and immortal damage on your units. The worst possible choice.
You also should have broken your own rocks and taken that third when you saw he wasnt expanding, then his two base attack has to go into your spines or is delayed while he breaks back rocks.
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Thraundil made some great points, just to add to it when you engaged for the first time it looked like you had a food advantage but infact you had 20 lings on the other side of the map, you shoulda engaged with them.
When toss goes zealot/archon rather than stalker collossus, the roles are reversed ^^ you need to be kiting rather than the protoss engage on creep and shoot + scoot
In general always check food and army values before saying 'this combo beat this combo' its possible you got outmacroed, in this case your macro was better than his imo but the lings were absent.
GLHF
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On May 30 2011 19:54 SMMN wrote:
actualy archons rape mutas in 3 IIRC hits and have splash damage while mutas tend to clump up
To beat this u can go pure hydra and some roaches while taking 3/4/5(gas) bases and teching to , then its amove to victory
Remember archons will be his only anti air, and mutas should abuse his low mobility to harass, and not engage directly, but still with a little micro they would do ok against zealot/archon/immortal with ground army support. Archons alone are good only on paper from my experience. Also maby i'm wrong but if you hit air, the splash doesn't hit ground units and the other way around.
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I love questions like "what do I do against colossi, archons, carriers, mothership, HTs, DTs, and 30 warpgates with 3/3 stalkers?"
The answer is simple, as Artosis would say "You don't let them get that much."
Have you even tried to count how much gas it takes him to get Archons with immortals? You can roll him like bread dice with roaches waaay before he gets the first immortal out. I know, timing is seldom problematic, but ability to scout and time your play for a zerg is a difference between platinum and masters level. Watch NesTea's play. He sees stalker +3 zealots, builds 2 spores, powers drones like 20 a minute, repels DT rush, double expands and attacks with 25 roach 50 ling before blink/charge even finishes, funny to even mention immortals here.
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Against this comp i usually use a zergling/bling/hydra army. Baneling will do a quick job of the zealot, zergling will tank long enough for your hydra to do the job. hydra is actually the best unit against archon (and immortal) because their insane dps allow them to vanish them before they really engage.
After that, you need to reinforce your army with ling and maybe roaches to pursue the agression in his base. Hydra are way to slow to be efficient in attack.
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EPT
