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On October 12 2011 17:49 Gelenn wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2011 17:18 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 17:08 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 16:38 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 16:20 Snusdosa wrote:On October 12 2011 14:46 Anihc wrote:
You know what a better counter is to vortex? Spread out your army and don't throw everything into it. And have the protoss player easily clean up one half of your army while the rest is vortexed, great idea buddy. Seriously, think a little before posting? Not only have I thought plenty about it, I've also had personal experience in hundreds of games at a very high level of play with motherships and vortexes. What about you? Of course fighting with half your army is a disadvantage; fighting with none of your army is even worse, which will be what happens if you throw everything into the vortex. Although its very dependent on both sides' army composition and the terrain where you're fighting, a lot of times it's hard for the protoss to maneuver around his own vortex, and units outside the vortex will still survive. Also, even in small numbers against a much bigger protoss force, a handful of infestors + broodlords can still do damage. While the "spread your army" advice is all well and good, it isn't all that practical. It basically translates to "never attack the protoss army anywhere that involves your units moving through a choke within casting range of the mothership." Considering how much more mobile a lategame protoss deathball (with a mothership/recall) is than a broodlord infestor deathball, this is extremely challenging. I would rather try to figure out a tactic that doesn't rely on my opponent screwing up and stupidly engaging my spread out army when he can just recall in my main and vortex everything when I run back to defend. I dislike strategies that rely on my opponent's mistakes. I never give advice that is not practical. Do I literally have to spell out the fact that I don't theorycraft my posts like the majority of people here? You greatly overestimate both the mobility of a mothership and the radius of the vortex. It's pretty hard to be vortexed by surprise (giving you plenty of time to spread out your army, and when the vortex is actually cast, you still have time to not move the rest of your army into it), and if you let a mothership mass recall into your main then it's your fault for having poor map awareness (I know that it's been done to the best of players, but still. it's not an easy feat and still preventable by the zerg). I'm not sure why you took on such an aggressive tone with this post. It really is not necessary. I appreciate reading advice from protoss players, since my ZvP is rubbish. Like I said, "spread your army" is great advice. Let me rephrase my point: spreading is great, but is is very difficult to keep an army on the move spread out. I would think any protoss trying to avoid fungals would appreciate the difficulty, at least. On a different note, let's say I see a mothership making its way toward my main, and I do have time to react. What in your opinion is the proper response? If I pull everything to the main doesn't he just attack my exposed front now? To put it another way, vortex and recall are amazing spells for controlling the battlefield and forcing favorable engagements. What are some techniques I can use to force favorable engagements of my own?
to more easily keep your army spread read up onGriffith's Magic Box guide.
With that method you can with relative ease keep brood lords in a decent spread.
If you see a mothership and your composition is brood infestor roach/ling I recommend spreading your broods in a line, so that a vortex would hit 2-3 at most, have your infestors ready to fungal stalkers and assuming it is not a choke you engage him in, have your army with your broods (but not in way that allows 1 vortex to take half of it, either have it just far enough back to prevent vortex from hitting, or spread them a bit on the fly, kinda like a T does rine splitting.
To force a favorable engagement I feel is hard to give general advice on, I feel you should give a replay and I could instead say a way you could have engaged a given situation with an advantage/less of a disadvantage.
Lastly his tone was appropiate imo considering he is not theorycrafting but actually speaking from experiance, only to get the same theorycrafting thrown at him again.
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On October 12 2011 17:52 Snusdosa wrote:Show nested quote +You know what's just as slow as a brood lord? A mothership. Like I said before, it's really hard to be "surprised" (as in before you have time to react) by a mothership/vortex. You have plenty of time. Also I disagree with spreading brood lords being vulnerable to blink stalkers, I find the opposite to be true since if you clump all your BLs together it basically just takes 1 blink and your stalkers can be in range to kill all the brood lords. If you spread them out, you can get in position to kill a few but then you're stuck and can't kill any more because of fungal/broodlings getting in the way. And when I say spread out I don't mean spread out across the map, you just need to spread them out a little so that they can't all get sucked into 1 vortex. Vortex radius is honestly not that big, and I'm beginning to wonder if you've actually even seen one before. The Vortex range is 9 with a radius of 2.5, you wont get surprised by one. But its not dodged like nothing. Of course i've seen them before... and players that certainly have seen them before are professional zerg players. You think every single one of them reacts poorly to vortexes? No im pretty sure if spreading was the definite answer we'd seen at least one example of a good spread vs vortexes in professional games. As of now, no good answer to vortexes have been found, archon toilet was nerfed because it was deemed too strong vs zerg as zerg dont have an efficient answer to it and all their units are biological but despite the nerf it still works.
Spoilers about stuff in Arena of Legends finals
+ Show Spoiler +You would think DRG knew he needs to make roaches against mass hellions considering how good people consider his ZvT, yet the fact last I saw him play was that he actually isn't all that good at ZvT, but rather ling/bling/muta.
Even top pros make some really stupid decisions from time to time, like DRG sticking to his ling bling muta 4-5 games in a row against mass hellion play. Which in simple and crude words is retarded play.
With the small amount of games that have had such vortex situations it isn't unlikely they all just make the wrong choice. Just look back at how SC2 has evolved, the general pros have plenty of times all done the same stupid thing, now months later we can look back and say e.g. "can you believe they played like that? like watching platinum players!"
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On October 12 2011 17:58 NTTemplar wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2011 17:49 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 17:18 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 17:08 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 16:38 Anihc wrote:
Not only have I thought plenty about it, I've also had personal experience in hundreds of games at a very high level of play with motherships and vortexes. What about you?
Of course fighting with half your army is a disadvantage; fighting with none of your army is even worse, which will be what happens if you throw everything into the vortex. Although its very dependent on both sides' army composition and the terrain where you're fighting, a lot of times it's hard for the protoss to maneuver around his own vortex, and units outside the vortex will still survive. Also, even in small numbers against a much bigger protoss force, a handful of infestors + broodlords can still do damage. While the "spread your army" advice is all well and good, it isn't all that practical. It basically translates to "never attack the protoss army anywhere that involves your units moving through a choke within casting range of the mothership." Considering how much more mobile a lategame protoss deathball (with a mothership/recall) is than a broodlord infestor deathball, this is extremely challenging. I would rather try to figure out a tactic that doesn't rely on my opponent screwing up and stupidly engaging my spread out army when he can just recall in my main and vortex everything when I run back to defend. I dislike strategies that rely on my opponent's mistakes. I never give advice that is not practical. Do I literally have to spell out the fact that I don't theorycraft my posts like the majority of people here? You greatly overestimate both the mobility of a mothership and the radius of the vortex. It's pretty hard to be vortexed by surprise (giving you plenty of time to spread out your army, and when the vortex is actually cast, you still have time to not move the rest of your army into it), and if you let a mothership mass recall into your main then it's your fault for having poor map awareness (I know that it's been done to the best of players, but still. it's not an easy feat and still preventable by the zerg). I'm not sure why you took on such an aggressive tone with this post. It really is not necessary. I appreciate reading advice from protoss players, since my ZvP is rubbish. Like I said, "spread your army" is great advice. Let me rephrase my point: spreading is great, but is is very difficult to keep an army on the move spread out. I would think any protoss trying to avoid fungals would appreciate the difficulty, at least. On a different note, let's say I see a mothership making its way toward my main, and I do have time to react. What in your opinion is the proper response? If I pull everything to the main doesn't he just attack my exposed front now? To put it another way, vortex and recall are amazing spells for controlling the battlefield and forcing favorable engagements. What are some techniques I can use to force favorable engagements of my own? to more easily keep your army spread read up on Griffith's Magic Box guide. With that method you can with relative ease keep brood lords in a decent spread. If you see a mothership and your composition is brood infestor roach/ling I recommend spreading your broods in a line, so that a vortex would hit 2-3 at most, have your infestors ready to fungal stalkers and assuming it is not a choke you engage him in, have your army with your broods (but not in way that allows 1 vortex to take half of it, either have it just far enough back to prevent vortex from hitting, or spread them a bit on the fly, kinda like a T does rine splitting. To force a favorable engagement I feel is hard to give general advice on, I feel you should give a replay and I could instead say a way you could have engaged a given situation with an advantage/less of a disadvantage. Lastly his tone was appropiate imo considering he is not theorycrafting but actually speaking from experiance, only to get the same theorycrafting thrown at him again.
Thank you for the advice, I will try to implement those suggestions into my play.
I would like to respectfully challenge your impression that I threw theorycraft back at him. I too was speaking from experience, it just so happens that my experience is different from his. I find protoss armies with motherships extremely hard to engage favorably, which is why I am here: to get help with this problem and improve my play. And in my experience, it has also been very difficult to keep my army sufficiently spread out while moving to make much difference at all to a vortex. I think that the magic boxing of broodlords will be a good place to start.
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I loath the reaction of a high number of TL-ers who blindly contest what someone with actual knowledge has to say.
On topic: Spreading out your army definitly seems like the smartest decision. in any case its always bad to have a Z army clumped up. This best thing to do id suppose is move your remaining units in such a way that the vortex is betwen you and your opponent and your broods can still shoot.
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My comment about theorycrafting was not aimed at you or anyone in specific, it was more my impression of the other posts (as in those not made by Anihc) in general.
A bit in yours, a bit in others, in combination it to me as well felt a bit frustrating.
And late game ZvP where it is brood infestor + roach and/or ling against ground army + mothership the main thing that wins you the battle is getting the smallest amount of broods vortexed, and this also happens to be the easiest thing to do fix against a mothership; sure keeping your ground army spread and slightly in the back, having your infestors at just the right spot is all good, but has much less impact on the battle, and is much harder to do, than simply sending broods a bit away from each other, and then keep them magic boxed.
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yeah ... unless the toss has voidrays just spread your broodlords ... its better against blink stalkers as well. If they have voidrays well corrupter production can overpower that easily after a few engagements. (spreading out is a bad idea though with voidrays out)
As for the banelings. let them move in, wait, storm, vortex another time ... move in archons. Never move your army into a vortex if the ms has 200 energy. The next thing you will see is your army popping out just to get absorbed into a slightly moved vortex that swallows half of your army while the rest is cut off by force fields and dependend on the position the rest will be dead as well as you reinforcements will be to slow.
Its really fortunate that people hate the ms because it replaced the arbiter ... will mean it won't see to many nerfs even though its damn good for only 8 supply.
Another thing is learn the vortex shortcut and research neural if you haven't already. Broodlings generally take the damage and if colossi focus infestors the broodlings will do terrible damage ^^. And if you try it with 3 from a different angle really high chance on sucess if there are no hts. As vortex range isn't the highest, neural is a good conter. (burrow one behind the toss army is also a good idea, if you have enough corrupters to scare the ms behind the army)
In general do the same you do against storm fungal and emp ^^; . If a toss moves in their ms to vortex your army it means they are close to losing or because they don't know how to handle a ms, or they think you are unable to deal with it.
clearing the zerg deatball generally takes more time then the vortex is up so your units should come back to turn the tides. Oh and spread your overseers, if they are close together you know where the vortex will hit.
Oh and spine walls are a good protection for broodlords as they are spell immune.
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I forget who the game was between but the 'baneling toilet' was done and it proved very effective. The Protoss player was going for the Archon Toilet and wasn't hidding what he was doing, just made a lot of Archones for a couple of mins then moved out. The Zerg saw it coming and maxed on banelings and infestors, banelings followed the Archons and then mass fungal when they came out.
Adding Ultralisks would add to the effectiveness of this 'counter' but if a Protoss player has a mothership out then they could quite easily follow it up with Voidrays or carriers if they scout your mass baneling ultra army
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On October 12 2011 17:49 Gelenn wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2011 17:18 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 17:08 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 16:38 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 16:20 Snusdosa wrote:On October 12 2011 14:46 Anihc wrote:
You know what a better counter is to vortex? Spread out your army and don't throw everything into it. And have the protoss player easily clean up one half of your army while the rest is vortexed, great idea buddy. Seriously, think a little before posting? Not only have I thought plenty about it, I've also had personal experience in hundreds of games at a very high level of play with motherships and vortexes. What about you? Of course fighting with half your army is a disadvantage; fighting with none of your army is even worse, which will be what happens if you throw everything into the vortex. Although its very dependent on both sides' army composition and the terrain where you're fighting, a lot of times it's hard for the protoss to maneuver around his own vortex, and units outside the vortex will still survive. Also, even in small numbers against a much bigger protoss force, a handful of infestors + broodlords can still do damage. While the "spread your army" advice is all well and good, it isn't all that practical. It basically translates to "never attack the protoss army anywhere that involves your units moving through a choke within casting range of the mothership." Considering how much more mobile a lategame protoss deathball (with a mothership/recall) is than a broodlord infestor deathball, this is extremely challenging. I would rather try to figure out a tactic that doesn't rely on my opponent screwing up and stupidly engaging my spread out army when he can just recall in my main and vortex everything when I run back to defend. I dislike strategies that rely on my opponent's mistakes. I never give advice that is not practical. Do I literally have to spell out the fact that I don't theorycraft my posts like the majority of people here? You greatly overestimate both the mobility of a mothership and the radius of the vortex. It's pretty hard to be vortexed by surprise (giving you plenty of time to spread out your army, and when the vortex is actually cast, you still have time to not move the rest of your army into it), and if you let a mothership mass recall into your main then it's your fault for having poor map awareness (I know that it's been done to the best of players, but still. it's not an easy feat and still preventable by the zerg). I'm not sure why you took on such an aggressive tone with this post. It really is not necessary. I appreciate reading advice from protoss players, since my ZvP is rubbish. Like I said, "spread your army" is great advice. Let me rephrase my point: spreading is great, but is is very difficult to keep an army on the move spread out. I would think any protoss trying to avoid fungals would appreciate the difficulty, at least. On a different note, let's say I see a mothership making its way toward my main, and I do have time to react. What in your opinion is the proper response? If I pull everything to the main doesn't he just attack my exposed front now? To put it another way, vortex and recall are amazing spells for controlling the battlefield and forcing favorable engagements. What are some techniques I can use to force favorable engagements of my own?
Sorry for being harsh, but I do take offense when I get accused of giving theorycrafted or non-practical answers. My strengths are not my micro, macro, or multitasking ability, and I rarely strive to do "difficult" or apm-intensive tasks, much less recommend them or expect them of others.
As far as spreading your army goes, all you really need to do is to split your army into 2 or maybe 3 if you're being ambitious, and make sure all your infestors are not directly underneath your brood lords. That's it. NTTemplar suggested some magic boxing trick which is great and all for keeping your brood lords spread out but even that's not absolutely necessary.
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On October 12 2011 19:03 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 12 2011 17:49 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 17:18 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 17:08 Gelenn wrote:On October 12 2011 16:38 Anihc wrote:On October 12 2011 16:20 Snusdosa wrote:On October 12 2011 14:46 Anihc wrote:
You know what a better counter is to vortex? Spread out your army and don't throw everything into it. And have the protoss player easily clean up one half of your army while the rest is vortexed, great idea buddy. Seriously, think a little before posting? Not only have I thought plenty about it, I've also had personal experience in hundreds of games at a very high level of play with motherships and vortexes. What about you? Of course fighting with half your army is a disadvantage; fighting with none of your army is even worse, which will be what happens if you throw everything into the vortex. Although its very dependent on both sides' army composition and the terrain where you're fighting, a lot of times it's hard for the protoss to maneuver around his own vortex, and units outside the vortex will still survive. Also, even in small numbers against a much bigger protoss force, a handful of infestors + broodlords can still do damage. While the "spread your army" advice is all well and good, it isn't all that practical. It basically translates to "never attack the protoss army anywhere that involves your units moving through a choke within casting range of the mothership." Considering how much more mobile a lategame protoss deathball (with a mothership/recall) is than a broodlord infestor deathball, this is extremely challenging. I would rather try to figure out a tactic that doesn't rely on my opponent screwing up and stupidly engaging my spread out army when he can just recall in my main and vortex everything when I run back to defend. I dislike strategies that rely on my opponent's mistakes. I never give advice that is not practical. Do I literally have to spell out the fact that I don't theorycraft my posts like the majority of people here? You greatly overestimate both the mobility of a mothership and the radius of the vortex. It's pretty hard to be vortexed by surprise (giving you plenty of time to spread out your army, and when the vortex is actually cast, you still have time to not move the rest of your army into it), and if you let a mothership mass recall into your main then it's your fault for having poor map awareness (I know that it's been done to the best of players, but still. it's not an easy feat and still preventable by the zerg). I'm not sure why you took on such an aggressive tone with this post. It really is not necessary. I appreciate reading advice from protoss players, since my ZvP is rubbish. Like I said, "spread your army" is great advice. Let me rephrase my point: spreading is great, but is is very difficult to keep an army on the move spread out. I would think any protoss trying to avoid fungals would appreciate the difficulty, at least. On a different note, let's say I see a mothership making its way toward my main, and I do have time to react. What in your opinion is the proper response? If I pull everything to the main doesn't he just attack my exposed front now? To put it another way, vortex and recall are amazing spells for controlling the battlefield and forcing favorable engagements. What are some techniques I can use to force favorable engagements of my own? Sorry for being harsh, but I do take offense when I get accused of giving theorycrafted or non-practical answers. My strengths are not my micro, macro, or multitasking ability, and I rarely strive to do "difficult" or apm-intensive tasks, much less recommend them or expect them of others. As far as spreading your army goes, all you really need to do is to split your army into 2 or maybe 3 if you're being ambitious, and make sure all your infestors are not directly underneath your brood lords. That's it. NTTemplar suggested some magic boxing trick which is great and all for keeping your brood lords spread out but even that's not absolutely necessary.
To further put emphasize on spreading your army I'll post the very last way I can think of so far to explain how to deal with vortex.
Split your zerg army with the same principal as splitting marines vs banelings usually use.
"slice" as day9 has termed it, this is what Anihc said with taking 2-3 groups and spread them abit, but I consider it valueable for enough people to compare it to something familiar like rine splitting, as I have the impression the average player understands that.
just doing this quick "slicing" of your army before engaging a groundarmy+mothership can be what you need to come out ahead as it should make no more than a small portion of ground army, and 2-3 broods be vortexed at most.
It is fast, it is effective, it is relatively easy.
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you forgot to count the anti air portion in the zerg army... no matter what the mother ship and the voidrays still left behind....
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On October 12 2011 19:37 NB wrote:
you forgot to count the anti air portion in the zerg army... no matter what the mother ship and the voidrays still left behind....
The more protoss put into air, the more zerg can put into air.
Since protoss then have a smaller ground army, zerg can have a smaller ground army and even fewer broods which in itself means more corruptors just there, but even more from putting less into ground.
Mothership with air is easier to deal with than groundarmy+mothership.
As in theory you would want AA against the mothership, but in practice a lonely mothership doesn't justify putting supply into AA, while voidrays do.
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In an ideal situation, my counter as a protoss would just be to vortex ur banelings/broodlord clump, and react to what you do.
a. You keep fighting with the remaining half of your army which gets crushed by my complete army, then I just retreat and group together and attack you again
b. You send everything in, i send in 4 archons to kill all of your broodlods and banelings and clean up the rest (or just wait outside and storm/collosus AoE).
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I don't get it... why do the banelings even do dmg? What about the invulnerability? It doesn't even work against banelings? Bug? (they automatically explode as soon as the vortex is over, it SHOULD be in the time window of invulnerability!)
btw, there's just another abuse for vortex now: cast it on a group of banelings that would classify as "so. many. banelings." - then send in a single zealot or stalker to sacrifice him to die in a giant explosion.
Hint @ blizzard on how to ultimately fix Vortex (apart from replacing the skill with another):
Make units that come out of Vortex when it ends unable to attack for 2-3 seconds.
No more imba toilets of any kind. No more sending in 400 supply and 15s of nothing happening in a game. One can still aoe the shit out of the units that were inside, but it doesn't work automatically, the protoss actually has to position himself and maybe use a skill or two (like storm) - the attack debuff actually would be an advantage here compared to before. Its just about removing the known and probably upcoming exploits with this ability (like I believe when used on a cliff you could also make units enter from below or above and have them spawn on the other side (in which case the defender at least gets 2 seconds more time now too)).
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Banelings is awesomeone vs mothership for all the reasons already mentioned. The toss can not put all his units into the vortex, which in a lot of cases is what he wants.
However, Ultralisks is a really bad idea. Ultras do so poor vs archons and zealots (which the toss player will have a lot off if he's going mothership), so thats basically free money you're giving the toss player here. I have been experimenting a lot with mothership lately, following some of the nice guides right here on TL, and I have never lost once when the zerg goes for ultras. I have, however, lost quite a few games vs banelings and broodlords.
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On October 12 2011 23:16 FeiLing wrote:
I don't get it... why do the banelings even do dmg? What about the invulnerability? It doesn't even work against banelings? Bug? (they automatically explode as soon as the vortex is over, it SHOULD be in the time window of invulnerability!)
btw, there's just another abuse for vortex now: cast it on a group of banelings that would classify as "so. many. banelings." - then send in a single zealot or stalker to sacrifice him to die in a giant explosion.
Hint @ blizzard on how to ultimately fix Vortex (apart from replacing the skill with another):
Make units that come out of Vortex when it ends unable to attack for 2-3 seconds.
No more imba toilets of any kind. No more sending in 400 supply and 15s of nothing happening in a game. One can still aoe the shit out of the units that were inside, but it doesn't work automatically, the protoss actually has to position himself and maybe use a skill or two (like storm) - the attack debuff actually would be an advantage here compared to before. Its just about removing the known and probably upcoming exploits with this ability (like I believe when used on a cliff you could also make units enter from below or above and have them spawn on the other side (in which case the defender at least gets 2 seconds more time now too)).
1.5 seconds
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Honestly i see no problem with this its more like if you SEE a mothership back off make some blings then engage
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i realized bane toileting works a week back, but really that's all you need. and you only need about 24 tops, with 2-0 upgrades, to effectively clear up enough of the protoss army that the rest of your army will have no problem handling the rest. the want for an ultra is totally bogus and cheeky. it is impractical to spend the resources and unit space you are suggesting on handling one spell from one protoss unit. it is also important to note that the 24-tops baneling count is also considered a decent counter because these are not wasted resources / supply should you have to engage in a normal fight without a toilet scenario taking place, as it is an okay number of banes to use with army bane drops. am high masters zerg.
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The baneling vs archon tactic was done in the GSL several months ago, Nestea vs San. Basically everytime San vortexed, Nestea would bring his banes nearby to discourage the archons from going in. However, if I remember correctly San still won after archon toileting Nestea's brood lords.
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On October 12 2011 13:25 Kornholi0 wrote:
I'm interested, however this counter is 100% dependent on your own play, if you aren't going ultralisk baneling or have either out, a mothership "rush" or at least a 3 base mothership can kill you.
This is the supposed counter to archon toilet. A mothership rush wont include archons and even if it did you wouldn't have broods at the time. Mother ship and archon are both tier 3 so if fair to compare it to ultra brood. As for banelings, baneling drops work wonders when combined with broods so its a reasonable tech option.
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On October 12 2011 14:46 Anihc wrote:
You know what a better counter is to vortex? Spread out your army and don't throw everything into it.
You tell me what blink stalkers feel like when you have your brood lords spread out.
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EPT
