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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Today I have played three games against this strategy. All three games were a loss. Here is the prototypical scenario:
- Zerg gets around 160 supply with roaches
- Adds baneling nest and maxes on roach/bling (+ infestor/muta/hydra/lings sometimes)
- I engage the Zerg with my mostly stalker composition (since he makes roaches)
- Banerain wipes out everything making it 160/200 for the zerg and 110~/200 for me
- Zerg gets to 200/200 quickly and is able to stockpile resources, and eventually win the game
This late midgame baneling switch is seriously driving me crazy, I can't think of the proper way to counter this. Perhaps my unit composition is completely off? Perhaps I'm not as equal/ahead I think I am? I don't know, but here are three replays and maybe a second opinion will enlighten me.
Game 1: vs aTMojar http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/sc2_reps/plexa_vs_mojar_bane.sc2replay
Okay the zealots put me behind a bit and he could have come a lot sooner with more stuff and killed me. But that didn't happen. Nevertheless after the initial aggression the game was quite passive. My 4th was slow-ish compared to his 4th/5th but I was being cautious (maybe I shouldn't have been?). Nevertheless, when we engaged I was 180 he was 200 and he wiped me out completely. The blink forward was bad, but I was hoping to snag a few of his infestors and didn't anticipate that he can banelings =/. The rest of the game is a slow struggle towards death since after that I am lightyears behind.
Game 2: vs Odal http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/sc2_reps/Plexa_vs_Odal_bane.sc2replay
This game I enter the midgame behind after my zealots do nothing. As a result I'm trailing most of the game. But after I kill his first max and he remaxes with banes I feel like the fight is incredibly one sided, whereas if he had not built banes then the fight would have been more even. This game I don't mind losing to banerain as I was behind, with that said it still looked absurdly powerful against what I was doing.
Game 3: vs whiteout http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Plexa/sc2_reps/Plexa_vs_white_bane.sc2replay
Kinda weird opening since he took gold first, nevertheless I eventually kill it with a VR/Zeal/sentry push. After that point I things are at worst even between us. Game progresses and there are small jabs from each side, none of which causes either side to get a significant advantage. My armour upgrades were a little slow, but I don't think that was a major factor. Then he attacks my fourth with roaches + banerain and wipes out everything. From there, it is once again a slow struggle.
My openings are not so good, mostly because I'm trying to get a nice fe 2gate suited for me. But I don't think any of the games are lost because of that. Perhaps I'm wrong, and my opening is making me fall behind more than I should. My standard unit composition is Stalker/Immortal/Templar/Sentry sometimes with zealots.
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moar air units, less stalkers try kiwikakis 2gate into 2 stargate
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
There is no way you watched a single replay, nor does it answer the question in any way shape or form
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I like going blink if they look to be doing a 2base play after i FE, (ive noticed on ladder lately a lot more zergs doing 2 base roach hydra all ins for some reason) where i'll go to ~6gateways TC and a forge.
You have to keep in mind stalkers are only really better than roaches if they have blink, otherwise roaches are 75-25 stalkers which you wont beat on a cost effectiveness basis.
If they go into a fast 3rd which is a more standard response with a roach warren ive been finding going air really effective, making 1-2 void rays and then 5-8phoenix.
In dealing with the bane rain, being able to blink back and a-move-a-move in retreat will let you snipe some of the overlords/banelings dropping out without taking too much damage, alternatively if you get air you take complete map control and deny that scenario from occurring.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Okay I don't think you have watched any of the replays either.
G1 I blinked in, got fungaled, then banelings dropped on me.
G2 I blunk backwards but the banes still did damage
G3 I blunk backwards but I don't have a lot of room because he was offensively dropping my 4th.
Blinking back is still going to mean you're going to lose all your tech units (sentries, templar, immortals, colossus) so I don't really think that is a solution. Stalkers are weak as shit, saving them won't save the game since all my gas units have been blown up.
Regarding heavy air; that's a stylistic thing. I don't think mass air is viable vs Zerg. I think it puts you far too far behind and if they go Hydra (like in G3) it's instant loss. Moreover, if they eventually get hydra that forces Colossus and a standard ground army and once again, late game banerain becomes an issue.
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I probably should have also mentioned, if he goes hatch first, his speed will be late, and you can keep your first scouting probe alive and moving around the map. When your at ~40-45food you want to check his third, if its not there go into blink, if it is go air
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:20 tsango wrote:
I probably should have also mentioned, if he goes hatch first, his speed will be late, and you can keep your first scouting probe alive and moving around the map. When your at ~40-45food you want to check his third, if its not there go into blink, if it is go air
wtf every replay was pool first, and I pylon natural every game. I get that you're trying to help but you can't help without watching any of the replays. I should really warn you =/
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havnet watched the replays, dont have time atm. but ill try help out anyway. I used to really love going roach or ling + banedrops, however a protoss with good stalker micro usually completely decimates it. you lay down forcefields to block out the roaches, and if he doesnt pull his overlords back you snipe them and try save your sentries from the few banes that will drop out. If he pulls back you try to snipe 1-2 overlords and just repeat. When finally your forced to engagem it's pretty much like marine splitting, you grab a handful of stalkers and blink them to the right, blink some to left etc. with a good split the banedrop will become rather useless. Since i havent watched the replay i dont know if you added in collosi, but to deal with the roaches after the drops are done id really recommend collosi - else the roaches might just clean up your stalkers on their own. Hope that helped out a bit
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i watched game 1, you should never be tempted to blink so aggressively onto infestors, especially when theres that many with energy, you will never get them all before being fungaled and donated - that was pretty much what happened, the forcefields were decent but not quite enough, past that point your army count got reset too hard that you couldnt pressure him and he proceeded to take the entire map.
Your warp prism was decent, against someone without a spire its best kept in the air floating behind their bases on metal because they'll know its there but theres nothing they can do about it
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You really need forcefields and blink micro to deal with banes. They are unstoppable, but they are negated through walls since they are melee (forcefields) and if they are through overlords, well then blink is the best solution but even then its tough man
and i didnt know mods played the game.......scary
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Wow, this thread is full of exactly what your post detailing strat forum responses demands not be in a response.
Watching the replays now. But really guys check out this thread and note the author. It's like you're trolling and do not even realize it.
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This sounds...Delicious :D
I've been looking for something to revitalize my zvp lately and this sound very nice. I'll check the replays tonight. I'm not sure I was the intended audience but thanks :D
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How about not blinking straight back which balls your units up. Instead blink micro your stalkers into small groups to help to negate splash?
I've also seen HasuObs run backwards and chain storm the approaching banefilled ovies.
Just theorycraft but I assume splitting is as important in PvZ as TvZ =)
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:26 tsango wrote:
i watched game 1, you should never be tempted to blink so aggressively onto infestors, especially when theres that many with energy, you will never get them all before being fungaled and donated - that was pretty much what happened, the forcefields were decent but not quite enough, past that point your army count got reset too hard that you couldnt pressure him and he proceeded to take the entire map. I think trying to snipe infestors is generally worth the gamble, particularly since neither of our armies were in good positions. Even if stalkers get fungaled being able to kill off a few infestors seems like a decent trade. Happy to hear some other opinions on this though.
I realise that after the army count got reset game was over, the point of the thread was how do i make it so that my army count isn't reset so heavily.
On October 31 2011 19:31 frantic.cactus wrote:
How about not blinking straight back which balls your units up. Instead blink micro your stalkers into small groups to help to negate splash?
I've also seen HasuObs run backwards and chain storm the approaching banefilled ovies.
Just theorycraft but I assume splitting is as important in PvZ as TvZ =)
You can blink a long distance away and that stops them balling too. I don't think that is the answer though, it would help forsure. The run backwards storm/blink snipe works to a point, typically useful vs the ling/bling strategies that morrow uses but vs roahces into late game switch.. I don't think its as effective since storm doesn't clean up roaches and without stalkers roaches can overpower things, unlike lings which you hope to kill with archon/storm.
On October 31 2011 19:26 RuneZerg wrote:
havnet watched the replays, dont have time atm. but ill try help out anyway. I used to really love going roach or ling + banedrops, however a protoss with good stalker micro usually completely decimates it. you lay down forcefields to block out the roaches, and if he doesnt pull his overlords back you snipe them and try save your sentries from the few banes that will drop out. If he pulls back you try to snipe 1-2 overlords and just repeat. When finally your forced to engagem it's pretty much like marine splitting, you grab a handful of stalkers and blink them to the right, blink some to left etc. with a good split the banedrop will become rather useless. Since i havent watched the replay i dont know if you added in collosi, but to deal with the roaches after the drops are done id really recommend collosi - else the roaches might just clean up your stalkers on their own. Hope that helped out a bit
I think this is good advice in general, but I don't know if it's applicable in this case. Mostly because sentries are usually few and far between in the late midgame and often you'll get engaged in areas which you can FF off and do as you say. I think the only game which this mightve help is G1 but even then it's a bit debatable. Happy to hear more arguments in support of this though.
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You have a gas in you main with 2500 on it at the 20minute mark ^.^, also that blink was what seemed to be your undoing in the first game, maybe just try blinking 5 or 6. Will update when i finish ^.^
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:38 MagickMan wrote:
You have a gas in you main with 2500 on it at the 20minute mark ^.^, also that blink was what seemed to be your undoing in the first game, maybe just try blinking 5 or 6. Will update when i finish ^.^ Yeah... that was bad (they 2500 gas) :p I definitely didn't expect to see banes when blinking forward though T_T
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had a chance to watch g2, you had no sentries when you engaged and your army was a lot smaller than his, imo a very strange time to move out. I prolly wouldnt go stargate after a failed 2 gate pressure build, you know he's at lair and has his 3rd build already.
In the last engagement i dont think any amount of micro could've saved you - he was just too far ahead by then
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On October 31 2011 19:47 RuneZerg wrote:
In the last engagement i dont think any amount of micro could've saved you - he was just too far ahead by then
I accept that he had the game won. But with that said I dont think I was as cost effective as I should have been in the deciding engagement. Agree/disagree?
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On all 3 games It seemed that you were just trying to force your way in instead of taking your time or when defending having a proper concave set up.
There's also some major macro slip ups that are contributing to making this look more powerful than it actually is.
To be a little more specific.
G1 = you though he's infestors were vulnerable and went for it. Your ambush backfired and lost your whole army on top of being severely behind from that zealot push that honestly did nothing and opened you up for a counter attack that took the fear away from zerg.
G2 = Once again you have no information of whats ahead, you go straight in for the kill without looking around and poking to measure his army.
G3 = no clear concave to defend, and at that point you really needed some colossus either way.
Basically I would recommend you get some phoenix or hallucination to keep yourself informed on where his army is at all times while attacking to get into a position that can threaten him just by being there. If he's not patient you'll crush him and if he is just take your time and play like terran mech user.
cheers
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Thank you for the excellent post Doko  one question though, upon seeing the banes being loaded up should I change my unit composition? Or is it more important to take it slow and play like RuneZerg suggests.
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On October 31 2011 19:50 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2011 19:47 RuneZerg wrote:
In the last engagement i dont think any amount of micro could've saved you - he was just too far ahead by then
I accept that he had the game won. But with that said I dont think I was as cost effective as I should have been in the deciding engagement. Agree/disagree?
Indeed, you lost your sentries in the engagement prior to this one. This caused you to have no chance to block out the roaches while dealing with the bane drops, it just became you attempting to flee from the inevitable death. With forcefields you can lay a wall for the roaches(and in this case the banelings he left on the ground) if he doesnt pull overlords back, then stutterstep snipe overlords while stalker-blink-splitting if he does then try snipe a few while they are on retreat, 1 overlord with banes is 300 minerals and 100 gas, and get a few while the overlords are on the retreat. If you do this properly his bane count should be diminished when you are forced to engage and a good split prolly make the banedrops kill your shields but nothing else. I think my main point is that banedrops is a HUGE investment - and with good micro you can make it very very cost inefficient for the zerg
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I don't really have the game knowledge down to say if you should change the unit comp but just looking at baneling stats i would encourage you to have some more colossus to kill them as they drop while you move your stalkers. Storm would work as well but between forcefields and microing/blinking stalkers there's enough on your plate (or hand i should say haha)
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Watched all 3 reps. The banerain wasn't really your problem. You would have lost all 3 battles even if there were no banelings. 2 major issues:
1. You're bad at deathballing lol
2. You either panic or get too excited during the battles. Maybe the banelings are causing you to panic or something. But either way, you need to improve your late game army control.
So what do I mean by you're bad at deathballing? First of all, you're not attacking with a 200/200 army, so your army is already unnecessarily weaker than it should be from the start of the engagement. Game 1 you attacked with 180 supply, game 2 you attacked with 170 supply (random zealots + colossus elsewhere). I understand that sending some zealots at an expo while you attack with your main army is a good strat, but you can't afford to spend 20-30 supply doing so. Second of all, your composition is just... lacking. Game 1 you had basically just stalker/immortal. Why no HTs? Game 2 you had mostly stalker with only 1 colossus and 2 HT (wtf?), which got caught out of position and died pretty quickly anyway. Game 3 was a bit better, although you probably could have used some robo units in there. Anyway the point is you need a better 200/200 army composition. More robo units. More HTs. Adding in air would be good too.
Microing during the big engagements: you're too trigger happy with blinking all your stalkers at once. During big engagements, there's probably only 2 scenarios where you'll ever want to blink all your stalkers at once - 1) chasing after a retreating army or 2) you have a lot of zealots in your army and they're all trapped behind your stalkers. Game 1 the blink forward automatically killed you. You don't need to blink all stalkers to try to kill some infestors. Just take a few. Game 2 you blinked everything back which caused the rest of your army (especially your power units - ht/colossus/immortal) to get picked off easily. Just blink a few stalkers back at a time. Preferably the ones that are getting hit. This also helps a lot against banelings since then you can spread your army out via blinking as well.
Your spell usage is lacking in these big engagements. Again I think you panic too much. Many times you have sentries but either don't use GS at all or wait until the battle is halfway over before remembering to throw up a GS. Then like in game 3, you had 5 HTs but only get 1 storm off before walking your HTs into the opposing army and forgetting about them. Really the only thing you have to worry about in these big battles is 1) is my army positioned ok (i.e. no zealots/archons trapped behind stalkers) 2) use spells like gs, ff, storm, and feedback and 3) blink stalkers backwards, a few at a time. It doesn't take 400 apm to do it, just don't be scared when you see overlords coming your way.
Also as a side comment I don't like your opening build. While it didn't put you behind in those 3 games (all 3 games you were either even with the zerg or ahead going into mid game after your zealot pressure even though it didn't seem like it did anything), I think it hits way too late. If you go FE > 2 gate you should aim to hit by 7:30-8:00 at the latest, otherwise why not go for warpgate timing instead? If I get a proxy pylon up I can get +1 zeal in the zerg's base by 7:45-8:00, if no proxy pylon then still 8:30. Yours were hitting at like 9 minutes into the game or something.
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I've only watched the first replay so forgive me if I don't have the full picture.
In my opinion, heavily stalker builds rely on map control, and scouting. In game 1, you built a single observer (and when it died, you didn't rebuild it). This hinders the protoss a lot because creep spread ends up winning map control back for the zerg.
Secondly, observers is used to gain vision of high ground. One of the advantages of blink is the ability to blink up to the high ground when attacked in an unfavourable situation. If you were able to blink up to the high ground in that first big engagement, I believe the banelings would have done less damage to your army, especially because you could target overlords without worrying about roaches there.
Lasty, you were right about passive. The last thing blink stalkers are good for is mobility. I would have liked to see you patrolling the map, and utilizing blink whenever in an unfavourable situation.
This analysis might not be top notch (platinum random player) but I hope it helps
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If you see overlords coming at you i find its best to just force field his entire army of and kite the overlords back, however in the first game you just get caught with your pants down due to that blink ^.^, like Doko said, there are a couple of macro slip ups which hinder you severely.
A few things to note;
The zealot push and eventual harass just doesn't seem to work at all, which accompanied with the 90 probes on 2 bases with 3/4 of your potential gas, just puts you significantly behind without him really doing anything.
You don't seem to scout or clear any creep, when you push out at 180 supply you are completely in the dark as to what he is doing, what i would consider is scouting with the warp prism, you should notice he is cleaning up your harass with nothing but roach ling, which would indicate he has limited anti-air, allowing you to be significant more aggressive with your warp prism in terms of scouting
Other than that, smart engagements are key you lose a bunch of stalkers just due to bad luck when you try to take your third, and the first 3 zealot pushes could have gone significantly better if you had hugged the walls and ran those first 4 away from them queens
Like i said before, blinking all your stalkers, unless you know its safe, is way to risky, losing 5 or 6 to get 1 or 2 Infestors and realizing you need to back up is way better than what happened
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i don't understand why are you going so much with a gateway composition, i mean blink stalkers are good but if you have extra immortals, they will take a steaming dump on banelings and roaches altogether
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I just watched game 1 and one thing i noted that you had 4 robotics facility at the 26 min mark and only built 1 observer and 1 warp prism. If you had built 2-4 immortals from the first 2 robos you things could have gone differently. And i dont know why you built 2 extra robos when you didnt even use the ones you had. I think thats the main thing you did wrong in this game didnt use the robos. Just my opinion.
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Okay, in the game against whiteout the zealot pressure doesn't hurt you at the least. You still lost more cost for cost but you kept his drone count low at the least.
The zealot/sentry/void ray attack was nice. After this attack you have no real info about the zerg's unit composition or number of bases. use what you have at your disposal and grab a phoenix for scouting. You have the money for it for a long period of time. Against the heavy roach composition, skipping charge in favor of an earlier blink with gas going into dt/stalker instead of archon (ht variant) and charge and storm. None of which are great against roach.
He didn't have an overseer there either so you could have dealt a lot of damage while taking nearly none around 15 minutes in his counter attack.
The zealot/dt harass is nice in the mid-game and sets you up okay in the late game. I hate to say it but really it's your unit composition that got you killed. Before the large engagement you have 17zealots, 16 stalkers, 6 hts, 9 dts and 4 archons. You're up against around 50 roaches and 20 banes in overlords. Your army is screwed before this battle starts.
Once the battle happens though, you lose your hts that have 7 storms and only cast one. Without that aoe, which isn't good vs roach anyway you're in really rough shape. You need some immortals and preferably colossus to go with them. You lost a lot of gas units throughout the game which could have been 2-3 colossus to complement your army. I know they're boring but they're a pretty good unit.
Also, I've had success with HTs against bane drops when I engage them well away, say near the top tower on metal, from my base. Storm under the overlords as they try to chase you, then attempt to snipe as many as possible with the stalkers. Just leave the zealots sitting somewhere else for a flank. You cannot at any cost allow the banes to connect with your clumped zealots or you're in a lot of trouble. In this game against his composition your zealots are worthless.
In the game against Odal on Antiga, your zealot pressure cost effective at least. It's 62 drones to 52 probes and he doesn't have his 5th and 6th geyser which he'd love at this point for more mutas.
The second attack you're pushing cross map on antiga with zealot/sentry when you know there are mutas on the field. The two zealots in his mineral line get 12 worker kills which helps and I don't think you're that far behind. You deflect the muta harass very nicely and are ahead on resources lost. Taking a fourth base on that map can be very difficult pvz.
He has 5k banked to your 1500 but you have 3000 invested into cannons.
It was the engagement in the middle that really killed you. You have 3 obs and a watch tower on the map but none of them are there to spot for that engagement. He kills some hts and all of your sentries in exchange for some roaches.
After that you don't use your gas on the gold base and float 3500 minerals. If you had been able to spend that quickly you could have pushed much sooner. Those 78 lings are not nearly as intimidating at 22 minutes as the banes are at 25 minutes. You're right, after that the game is over.
I think you missed a timing after the infestors dropped their energy and played with the mindset that you were behind all game.
Well also, in that engagement you get caught in a bad position. If you're going to harass with 9 zealots, at 189 supply you're already missing 29 supply. Then there's an archon and HT in your main, so 35 supply. Then you also have 82 workers on two bases. Really, you're missing nearly 50 supply in army compared to him. Another 25 stalkers or 6 colossus and 13 stalkers would really make that fight look completely different. Or void rays against his roach/bling army that cannot hit air!
Against Mojar your zealots again do not do as poorly as you think. 11:13 probe count 58, drone count 45!
Transfer workers to third base faster. You know that.
Okay, one thing I've noticed in the three games is your army movement. What prompted you to move out at that point? You have observers and a stargate. Scout ahead of your army so you don't get caught in these awkward spots.
Once you were caught there the game was over. You have nothing that can engage that army yet. Colossus help a lot.
Overall points: Get more scouting info and keep observers ahead of your army. Cut workers earlier. If you prefer 82 workers, that's fine. I cannot tell you otherwise but you did not expand aggressively enough in these games to utilize 82, and 87 workers. I'd say 65-72 at your expansion rate. Just watch it more closely.
If your army had the nearly 50 supply you were missing in games 1 and 2 (between workers and not being capped) and you had a better position, spread and concave for the engagements from better scouting you can avoid the terrible engagements you endured.
Also, if they have no infestors harass the ovies and roaches more with storm, phoenixes or stalkers. And yes I know colossus are boring but they're very, very, very good.
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-- nevermind, I don't want to derail the conversation, will post my comment elsewhere --
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Well according to oGsMC, vs this strat, you should scout it (via sg or hallu opening) and when u see baneling nest, get twilight/blink and just don't move out.
He has made a bunch of banes and nothing to do with them if u just turtle. and create stalker/collosus deathball and get a cannon behind each mineral line to distract baneling drop pathing on probes.
As for the actual engagement later on, keep your stalkers on a separate key and move them forward and backward trying to snipe overlords. When the roach/overlord drop army tries to engage, forcefield off the roaches and run back with main army while keeping stalkers ahead to snipe the incoming overlords and blink backwards if necessary.
Most of beating this strat is based on practice with your army control vs this composition
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High diamond player, so hopefully you take my advice for what it is and can look past my low rank. Only saw the first replay, watched up until the 19 minute mark because the game seemed to be more or less over by that part so it's where you should watch. With your initial zealots when there is no creep spread you should put your zealots on the far side of the hatchery and on hold position. This way the queens take longer to get there since they move so slow, and much more importantly, with them hugging the hatchery on hold position they will attack the hatch until the lings come up, then immediately attack the lings and won't get surrounded. You got surrounded in the first 3 engagements from being in the open. The first time attacking the hatch, the next time attacking near his nat you were surrounded, and then your army got surrounded and you lost valuable gas units which actually hurts in later engagements. As already mentioned your offensive blink was the final nail in the coffin.
Since you defended quite well you were even despite having some poor engagements, but blinking in and being clumped you took extra damage from blings and potential fungals. Work on blinking back your front tiers of stalkers as ovies come in so the blings do as little damage as possible, and if they blow up on the immortals hardened shields you are in great shape as it takes a lot of banelings to kill an immortal.
You took your fourth quite late as you mentioned, but still had a quite high probe count. You were oversatured with 86 probes on 3 base which is enough to pretty much fully saturate 4 bases, so you were behind a full base worth of income from being over cautious. The wallin you made at your third was a good idea but restricted movement to your fourth which is a potential reason why you felt it was hard to take (although meta is hard to take expos against zerg.
The final thing I thought was that your tech seemed quite late after your robo. You didn't have templars or colossi which would have been a large help against the lategame zerg army. Your stargate was going up around 18 (more or less, can't remember exactly) minutes and you had no robo support bay or dark shrine or templar archives which would have helped out against the army you faced.
A brief summary, poor engagements, late fourth while oversaturated, late tech which you could have afforded to throw up earlier (especially if you had a faster fourth)
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I have a couple bits of what I would affectionately refer to as "dumb commentary". Before I check if a strategy is bad (stalkers/immortals vs. roach/bane), I like to check if the armies were at all even.
Game 1: His army was 7250/3000 to 5275/2350. So his army was almost 1.5x as expensive as yours. You had 1 upgrade advantage over him.
Game 2: 7425/2775 to 5300/3450. Closer, but 700 gas probably isn't worth 2100 minerals. It should be noted that you got a legitimately atrocious engage here. More on this later.
Game 3: You had a more expensive army here! Let's talk about this.
The underlying problem I see here is that you are going for high-tech, finesse units (DTs, HTs, Archons), and are then not managing them well. In the second game, your outgunned army is attacked while you aren't paying attention to it, and your colossi spend most of their brief lives focus-firing down rocks. There is no way you ever win this battle. =)
The third game is perhaps the most telling, though. Your composition is: Stalker, DT, Zealot, HT, Archon. His is Roach/Baneling. All of your units are on one hotkey. You have 6-7 high templars, all of which have 75 energy. In the engagement:
1.) Half your archons are in back.
2.) All but 1 of your high templars die without getting off a storm because they wander into melee range of roaches (woe!)
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Finally, I think that stalker/colossus is a better combo for fighting roach/baneling - zealot/HT heavy comps are exactly what a zerg wants to fight when he has mass roach. You just need to kite the zerg army while focusing down overlords until you're ready to fight. However, that circumstance never appeared in your game - the one time you had stalker/colossus (game 2), you got a really, really bad engage and lost your army.
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To summarize:
Stalker/Colossus is good against roach/baneling - templar tech/zealot really isn't.
If you use finesse units (HTs, sentries), you need to make sure you get the most out of them - otherwise, they're dead weight in your army. Another 6 storms and you might have won that battle in game 3.
In the first two games, your army was significantly smaller, resource-wise, than his.
In the last two games, you got awful engages.
Hope that helps.
-Cross
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Sorry, I'm not hear to help or watch any replays. But I would like to mention that, Plexa... You have more patience than I ever will. If I was the administrator of the site playing against some of these members, and I opened with clear forum guidelines posted in a sticky at the top of the forum, and transitioned into a post looking for help and had my opponent respond with the compositions shown in the first few posts... I'd be implementing my ban-rain strategy so fast the forum supply would drop from 200/200 to 160/200 before my opponents could Blink.
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The problem isn't the bahrain thing.
You seem to be playing a very passive style which allows Zerg to mass in the mid game and roll you over while assembling gateway heavy armies that are prone to get rolled over by these sorts of attacks. Remember that the gateway units are not very efficient without massive amounts of AOE to back them up. You need more colossus or HT/Archon. Immortals are good for roaches but then what? They are good for support or built up for a specific timing attack against roaches, don't just build tons of them like in game 1.
Additionally you should seek to engage in better positions. Both game 1 and game 2 basically were decided due to your army being caught in a really bad position without a good Col/Templar based core.
Protoss isn't my specialty but those are the general feelings I got.
Also: G1, the dropping is okay but it is easily counterable when you only drop/attack only at one place. A single drop isn't going to do anything to one base where the opponent can just sit his whole army under your war prism.
Also: Someone make a chocolate rain parody right now.
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I'll try to address the unit comp vs the banerain but first just general comments on the games:
Game 1: Your 4 zealot harass was meh. Whenever i do it I go 7 lots because either way if it's roaches you're way behind, but if you get to the third w/ no lings on your back, you can either take it out or force a massive number of lings and if you just sit in the mineral patch, 7 lots will basically tank an infinite number of lings.
If you bother to get a warp prism, do cool stuff with it. You basically did two attempts with it that flopped. Whenever i pop out a warp and am going b-stalks, i'll make 12 or so and head to the far expansion and basically drop my warp in his base as i hit the expo, and there's a very good chance that at least one will do damage. Usually you can get a zerg to flood everything to the expo with stalkers just by letting him see you're heading that way, you don't even have to actually attack it. Also 4 stalkers can do ridiculous work in a warp, drop snipe queens etc, its very underrated.
As far as unit comp goes, I think he would have beaten you whether or not the bane rain was there, his army was just bigger and scarier. You really also had no reason to attack. If you dont have archons, templar, or collos vs infestors, you have to have a much higher army count, which you didn't. I think you may have had that feeling of *oh no, it's zerg, he must be macroing and i'm gonna get owned if I don't attack* but your worker count was pmuch even, you could have just split the map in half and done some warp prism and blink stalker harass while you built up a better deathball.
I'd comment on the rest but i've already typed way too much.
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I play Zerg, not Protoss, but maybe I can give some insights from my POV:
Game 1: I feel you didn't make any big mistakes overall, but 2 things happened: the small losses you suffered added up and the Zerg had a bigger income (less harvesters for most of the game, but better spread out in more bases). Your harassments were inefectual and in the end his army was 2000/1000 stronger than yours, and, more importantly, your army comp didn't make up for it. Stalker/colossus can attempt to kite the baneling overlords, but stalker/immortal/sentry has a worse time doing it (plus no way try to kill infestors to deny fungal). After that, the game was in his favor, even though he made a few bad mistakes that almost put you back in there.
Anyway, I would avoid that unit comp unless you're sure he's just massing roaches or you have some kind of stargate stuff to force gas to be put into hydras. I was surprised how easily your army was rolled, though.
Game 2: You could have won if you just reinforced the zealot push! Both your macros went to hell, but he came out ahead since he had a 10 worker lead and (more importantly) his 3rd secured. Your second push was throughly crushed, and it was amazing you stayed in the game (great muta defence!). During the bainrain push you were kinda caught off-position, your army was a bit smaller and the stalkers got blink-stuck at that ledge (was funny, though).
Game 3: I just don't know what to say. The game looked yours until that big engagement. Still, your army was 20 food weaker at the time of the big engagement (though, still, you had the resourse lead), you didn't have forcefields or a decent aoe damage dealer (only 1 storm went off) and the positioning favored him a whole lot. Also, his banelings found their mark (zealots and HTs) so perfectly it brought a tear to my eye.
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Mothership archon beats baneling rain pretty decently, you don't destroy the army and you don't trade very well, but it takes a lot of banelings per archon and archons are massive so the splash is absorbed much better.
Personally I think every protoss who is going mass blink stalkers should try and take a 4th as fast as possible, its kind of difficult to "maintain" but its worth that risk, if not 3 bases is kind of hard to do.
Anyways upon mass blink stalker (you already have twilight ^^) if you scout the baneling nest with one of your many run bys, especially if you scout overlord speed is to tech to mothership asap. If you think about it, a zerg who is massing roaches has to afford baneling nest/drop/speed/overlords/zerglings/banelings on top of already having 160 pop of roaches (not very easy to do). Which means he will sacrifice roaches by engaging or harassing your third very slowly (losing 5 or so at a time to not incite a push). In this time you should be able to get a mothership out and some archons (again with your own sacrificing of 5 or so stalkers every once in awhile).
To answer your question about composition, just make sure your lategame composition is archon mothership blink stalker.
You should take it very slow, play methodical. There is almost never a reason to attack a zerg who is massing roaches, the longer they are forced that much pop the better. Just deny bases and blink away.
I hope this helps again this is the general "what to do", and you should be very careful with your units and be diligent with your scouting!
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Things to do
1)Split (Blink Split)
2) Focus Fire OLs
3)Let colossus do the tanking vs banes but not vs roach army.
4)Establish good positioning
5)Never! Engage on creep unless you have to
6)Immortals, Immortals, Immortals as they are both good against bling/roach army, and then you just stop at 2-3 colosus.
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In my personal experience of ZvP, I find Banerain to be a very powerful strategy against most unit compositions, but there are a few units that it ends up being essentially worthless against, specifically, the Archon, the Void Ray, and the Immortal.
Assuming a deathball is the goal, you are aiming for 4-6 colossi, a handful of voids, HTs, and as many stalkers as you can muster. While that is certainly a solid unit comp, adding immortals doesn't actually cost anything extra, and adding archons should always be a goal for any PvZ army (though their gas cost is extremely high, so skimping on them is understandable).
In general, I would just say to get more immortals once you start seeing roaches, even if that means delaying colossi. A zealot/immortal base for you army is actually a lot scarrier than a blink stalker base in my opinion.
For you specifically, I didn't see anything majorly wrong (saying to micro better vs banerain sounds like a cop out), I would just suggest tweaking the unit comp, that should give you more 1A goodness.
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Why don't you just do what terrans do with their marines and split them into really small groups. I imagine this would be really easy with blink
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Im at work at the moment, but I will definately watch the replay when I get home.
However I have read all of your post. Depending on what composition he has I fell these are your options;
- If he pirmarily has roaches/blings, I think the stalkers are the right way to go..... but it seems like you need a higher sentry count. I feel a blink stalker + sentry combo could sort this out. You would just need to be on the ball with your forcefields. Keep in mind he dosen't really have air control, you can abuse this with warp prism harass, whilst your main army is taking out expos (with your stalkers abusing cliffs ect.) When you do eventually get that collossi up. I feel this is when it will start to get scary for your zerg counter part.
- I would even try just squeezing out a couple of pheonix, just to deny his overlord spread and as a means to scout. (this is just an idea). The way I think is, the less ovies he has, the less he will be willing to sacrifice.
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On November 01 2011 12:07 ZorBa.G wrote:
Im at work at the moment, but I will definately watch the replay when I get home.
you're replying to a op made by a mod with "im at work".................................... really?
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I'm awestruck by Plexa's mercy for all these posting violations! <3
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my banerain always struggles and does not do as much damage as i want to when they split their stalkers down the middle left and right. It makes the player chose, most likely hesitate allowing you to kill more overlords prevent more damage from happening.
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Game 1: Your opening zealots slowed your tech a little, but you forced a lot of lings so I think you were about even after that. If you are going to open blink stalkers, you need to pressure. The style you tried to play was the sit-back-macro-death ball style, and if you want to play like that you need to incorporate colossus, void rays, or templar. Having immortal/stalker that late in the game is death. The Zerg player had 5 bases at 16 minutes. This is a no-no. You need to deny expansions and hit many different places at once, ESPECIALLY if you opened blink. You can pop in and out of the main and snipe key buildings with minimal losses. Also you need to scout. You only built 1 observer this game, so you had no idea of when he was going to attack, which expansions he took, and what his army comp was. You need to know all these things and react accordingly. The warp prism harass was good, you sniped good tech buildings. Try to take expansions faster also.
Game 2: Almost flawless opening. You killed a lot of shit with your zealots so you were ahead. You play way too passively though, lol. At the time you took your gold, you could have pushed and won the game. This game like the last, you didn't make the higher tech units fast enough. You should have started archon/void rays/ colossus production way earlier. As well, you need to be proactive if you don't see infestors on the field. Good warp prism harass to kill his 4th/5th. Maybe a fast dt shrine? DTs are good unit.
Game 3: Many of the engagements in this game were bad. You need to make observers to see when he is coming, so that you can prepare a pre-engagament concave. You also need to make observers to see expansions. This way you can deny them the instant they are built. Engagement at 25:45 : You only used 1 of your 4+ possible storms. If templar are about to die, just spam storms. Storm is a good spell. Good tech switch, but you ran out of money in the end.
Overall, I think you need to be more aggressive in your play and engage better. When fighting that ball of roach/bane drops, you need to split the roaches from the overlords, and micro for your life. Split units as best you can and snipe overlords. This will take practice, so find a Zerg practice partner and run engagements through the unit tester over and over again.
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On November 01 2011 17:47 mR.bONG789 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 12:07 ZorBa.G wrote:
Im at work at the moment, but I will definately watch the replay when I get home.
you're replying to a op made by a mod with "im at work".................................... really?
What's wrong with posting while at work?
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On November 13 2011 15:30 Keilah wrote:
What's wrong with posting while at work?
Because you can't watch replays at work and therefore contribute nothing but blind theorycraft to a thread asking for help. Also just posting saying "I'm at work, can't watch reps" in and of itself is a useless comment.
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Insight from the other side, as I play ZvP like this.
Baneling drops cost a lot of money, and so delay the zerg's tech, if you see it coming you should not try to engage since baneling drops are very cost efficient, if you turtle the zerg is stuck on lair tech units and will have to push or try dropping your mineral lines to force an engagement. Defend until the deathball and if he fails to properly transition you have a big advantage. It's a very powerfull midgame comp but it relies on a lot of roaches, the zerg will have to engage or try to get rid of some roaches with runbys and drops when he tries to transition into broodlords.
You have a great timing to exploit right before them.
If you do engage, the zerg will remax on roach-ling, take that information to your advantage. There is also the possibility of severly supply blocking him since he is using his supply depot to drop you.
When you engage, you need sentries to hold the roaches back while your stalkers kite the overlords, but keep your sentries as far back as possible, the zerg will try to drop on them over anything else. As always try to fight at chokes. Splitting your units is fine ONLY if you are sure the roaches and lings are properly cut off from your army, or it's death.
The way I lose engagements is when the protoss pushes my roaches back with forcefields and kites the overlords, if I pull my army back the protoss takes pot shots at the roaches with the colossi and snipes even more overlords. In game one you should have had that composition to fight when going for a macro game. Going templars as you did in game 3 works as well, but you need to abuse forcefields even more when doing that because they are so slow.
To summarize work on your engagements since you do not seem to be sure about how to engage such an army, cut off the roaches from the overlords, if he still tries to engage, great for you, kite the overlords. If he pulls back try to hit as many stuff as possible but be careful he doesn't suddenly turn back. And stall as long as you can, as this composition gets weaker as you get later into the game.
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Bainrain takes an extremely long time to set up, requires perfect micro and engagements (imo most micro intensive army), and it doesn't matter how you do, you will lose everything (either very small roach army due to 200/200 limit or just pure lings getting eaten by aoe as it's a mid-late game composition).
That said, it's the only composition I can think of that really trades evenly (it does well when your fighting 3 gate sentry expands on maps you cant take a fast third on).
For me, the hardest problems when I use baneling rain is lots of colossi, deathball play. VR/Colossi is okay, but I can usually be aggressive with baneling rain on your probes or straight into your base (ignores ffs ), but stalker/colossi with double robo colossi is just impossible to deal with. You have to get that 'critical number' of colossi where infestors get messed up, and secondly baneling rain is amazing on small numbers of colossi. Once you get 5+, baneling rain isn't very useful.
Watching the replays now, will edit:
Game1:
If there's no overlord at the natural, just cannon rush. Why didnt you just cannon rush the guy? He would've lost.
If he did a roach/ling all-in nestea style (35 supply warren) you would've straight up died. Your 3 zealot pressure was super risky, and metalopolis is not the best map to FFE on. I'm surprised he didn't roach/ling all-in you when you did that on metal and only made 2 cannons.
Why didnt you just go for a third at the 10:00 mark? You saw with your zealots (that did zero damage) that he wasn't droned up yet (this guy isn't macroing well at all), you were pretty safe to with 6 gateways coming online.
You got to stop throwing units away. All the zealots you lost by now, was enough to secure your third. Now, you can't take it safely. Dont throw units away without support. I get it's hard to tell when zerg has units or not, but you should've known that throwing away a handful of zealots into someone you saw mass a bunch of lings would've died.
You need to time your build a bit more. You got that twilight archives, you need to do a push. I know pushing with say, 4 units, feels really risky, but when zerg goes fast third, they won't have any units until 8:00 at the earliest. 6 blink stalkers with 5 zealots is a shitton of pressure when it comes at the 10:00 mark, with 6 more being warped in. You need to pressure more. You seem to do these moves that force zerg to overmake units, and then you half commit right away afterwards to the units he overmade.
If the zerg was macro'ing correctly, he would've denied that third. Just keep in mind not to throw units away, those could've been sentries that would've held his pushes. If you are going to attack, you need to commit more. You prod with your army, and step back, you aren't trying to kill him. Just do a bit of damage, but just throwing away a group of units which is half of your army, is weird.
Yea those immortal balls don't work well against banes. zealot/immortal/ht and similar comps (like stalker/immortal) get hit pretty hard by baneling rain. You just had the wrong composition, and he countered yours very hard. You should've scouted what he was doing, that's all it realyl comes to.
Like I said, the better composition is stalker/colossi. You engaged in a pretty bad spot too, you don't want to be surrounded and stuck in a ball with it. You want room to retreat, and a simple avenue to ff to keep his ground units away while you kite the overlords.
Your push though, totally blind, on creep, without even knowing what composition he is going for, was really foolhardy. I know protoss units are good, but it's not like you can just make a composition and just beat anything zerg has. Certain protoss compositions are better than others for dealing with certain things. While immortals 'tank' banes okay, immortal based armies are horrible against baneling rain. They are slow, don't shoot up, and their range isn't that high.
Your macro kind of fell apart too. You should have been able to muster up a large enough army to have survived him, made colossi instead, and have stayed in the game. (look see how much beter you did with colossi).
G2.
Engaging at the bottom of the ramp, you lost wayyy too much. That should've won you the game if you engaged better there. Just walk around.
Yea missing that storm against his first bane attack... that was bad. You stay on t1 too long. Stalker, immortals, your on 4 bases with a gold, taking a 5th. You should be having void rays, mommaships, colossi, mass archons, high templar. Baneling rain/roach/infestor just rolls through this sort of mass gateway stuff.
Putting zerglings into banes into overlord, then setting up the hotkeys, takes a long time. 99% of the time, a baneling rain player will remax on roaches (he could also remax on lings). You should prepare for the mass roaches. It's never too late to get more sentries either.
Funny game though. I think his whole muta thing didn't work too well, but not bad enough to really tip the game too far either way. His bane switch just worked really wella gainst your low tier composition.
G3.
Just didn't really have robotech out. HT are just owned by baneling rain, you really need colossi. If you want to go HT or mass stalker style, then you'll need very good micro and use sentries.
Check out JulyZerg vs MC on XNC in the GSL (i believe season 4 finals?). July does banelingrain, and MC just outmicros it by putting down forcefields in the 'alley' of XNC (kind of like the streets of metal), and then blink-kiting and splitting. Every time he does that, he picks off a few overlords and roaches, and loses nothing. But you really need either sentries or colossi.
And note that baneling rain does very well against midgame sentry based armies. What I mean is that your huge stalker army will do well with sentries added in to the 200/200 army, whereas ~100 supply armies of just gateway units that is mostly sentry based gets pretty owned by baneling rain.
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Even though i didnt check the replays i have watched many times liquidTLO doing this when he plays ZvP and tried to find a solution to it .
I am pretty sure that having some archons infront taking damage is a huge plus , also id like a wide range of strom followed by blink stalkers in different sides . I know thats a bit micro heavy but its also for the zerg micro heavy
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On November 13 2011 14:06 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I'm awestruck by Plexa's mercy for all these posting violations! <3
But it wasn't necessary to bump the thread ^^
I'll just say that Doko's point of trying to force my way in, along with rsvp's points were excellent
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^ There plexa, edited for you.
also id like a wide range of strom followed by blink stalkers in different sides . I know thats a bit micro heavy but its also for the zerg micro heavy
Storm is raped by banenling rain. The whole point of stuffing banes into overlords is because storm 1 shots banes on the ground. Storm can work well against overlords, since they sort of clump up, but zerg will just disengage and buys you time rather than kills zerg, since he will get it and stop flying through 10 storms.
I agree with rsvp though, he had good points. And the guy below me too.
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As a zerg player I will try to explain why I stopped going baneling drops, and what I felt really countered it well.
I am ranked 8th in my master division at 490 points, for reference and validity level.
Baneling drops have a very specific purpose in ZvP. As a zerg player I used to get them when I went muta-ling. They are intended to kill the protoss army ONCE. I know it's insansely obvious but the BEST situation in a fight with banelings for a zerg player is that both armies die. The worst is that just the banelings die. This is different than when you win another kind of army where it is leftover after and can go attack a base.
So basically this is what beat me when I used to go baneling:
- Many cannons at bases
I would win a fight in the middle of the map with roach baneling drops, get to the protoss base with what roaches were leftover, and not have enough to take on the cannons + re-inforcements. The protss remakes army, while teching and attacks, I remake my bad army and repeat until I lose.
- Mass gateway Warp in re-inforce. I know its only 20sec + ling time, but banelings take a while to remake in the heat of a fight. Many zerg players are tempted to just fight with the lings as they spawn. I didnt have time to get everything setup again for a nice bane drop when a huge blink army appeared all at once.
- Much forcfield, and then running away. If all the banelings drop and there are still most of the units left, even in the red, its REALLY bad for zerg. Shields will regen, and all the units will still be hitting. I have lost many games like this. The game where you blunk forwards...thats just how it was. You had to see it coming. Try to take the baneling hits and then come back to fight the standing army later. Don't engage the standing army while taking the bane hits if possible.
- MANY MANY COLLOSUS. I like baneling drops against a stalker army with a few collosus, but I feel like it's not answer to an army with like 6+ collosi. I know that is not an easy number of collosi to get, but untis with lots of shield that can regen are great as they won't actually die to the bane rain.
Also baneling drops even in the late-midgame hurt teching options. Often, a zerg who gets bane-drops is expecting an attack from protoss, and has maxed out with the banelings as part of it. It's kind of like a counter-allin. What I found is that i would wipe this attack and then (maybe in error) get the same army again, roach baneling, but this time the protss would come with more collosus, or more high gas units, or something, and I could never really break bases. The protoss army eventually became too strong.
hope that helps!
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On October 31 2011 20:09 coL.rsvp wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Watched all 3 reps. The banerain wasn't really your problem. You would have lost all 3 battles even if there were no banelings. 2 major issues:
1. You're bad at deathballing lol
2. You either panic or get too excited during the battles. Maybe the banelings are causing you to panic or something. But either way, you need to improve your late game army control.
So what do I mean by you're bad at deathballing? First of all, you're not attacking with a 200/200 army, so your army is already unnecessarily weaker than it should be from the start of the engagement. Game 1 you attacked with 180 supply, game 2 you attacked with 170 supply (random zealots + colossus elsewhere). I understand that sending some zealots at an expo while you attack with your main army is a good strat, but you can't afford to spend 20-30 supply doing so. Second of all, your composition is just... lacking. Game 1 you had basically just stalker/immortal. Why no HTs? Game 2 you had mostly stalker with only 1 colossus and 2 HT (wtf?), which got caught out of position and died pretty quickly anyway. Game 3 was a bit better, although you probably could have used some robo units in there. Anyway the point is you need a better 200/200 army composition. More robo units. More HTs. Adding in air would be good too.
Microing during the big engagements: you're too trigger happy with blinking all your stalkers at once. During big engagements, there's probably only 2 scenarios where you'll ever want to blink all your stalkers at once - 1) chasing after a retreating army or 2) you have a lot of zealots in your army and they're all trapped behind your stalkers. Game 1 the blink forward automatically killed you. You don't need to blink all stalkers to try to kill some infestors. Just take a few. Game 2 you blinked everything back which caused the rest of your army (especially your power units - ht/colossus/immortal) to get picked off easily. Just blink a few stalkers back at a time. Preferably the ones that are getting hit. This also helps a lot against banelings since then you can spread your army out via blinking as well.
Your spell usage is lacking in these big engagements. Again I think you panic too much. Many times you have sentries but either don't use GS at all or wait until the battle is halfway over before remembering to throw up a GS. Then like in game 3, you had 5 HTs but only get 1 storm off before walking your HTs into the opposing army and forgetting about them. Really the only thing you have to worry about in these big battles is 1) is my army positioned ok (i.e. no zealots/archons trapped behind stalkers) 2) use spells like gs, ff, storm, and feedback and 3) blink stalkers backwards, a few at a time. It doesn't take 400 apm to do it, just don't be scared when you see overlords coming your way.
Also as a side comment I don't like your opening build. While it didn't put you behind in those 3 games (all 3 games you were either even with the zerg or ahead going into mid game after your zealot pressure even though it didn't seem like it did anything), I think it hits way too late. If you go FE > 2 gate you should aim to hit by 7:30-8:00 at the latest, otherwise why not go for warpgate timing instead? If I get a proxy pylon up I can get +1 zeal in the zerg's base by 7:45-8:00, if no proxy pylon then still 8:30. Yours were hitting at like 9 minutes into the game or something.
Definitely the best post in here.
Generally I like to open FFE into stargate, then move to HTs on 3 base. So I will generally get voids and storms against bane rain. This doesn't answer your question about what you should do, but it might give you something different to try. Always get blink on two bases, upon seeing overlords flying in I will FF the army and issue a flee command. Then I choose all my stalkers and scoot and shoot. This forces a decision on the zerg to either go for it or try to save the banes for another drop. If they go for it, the only thing to do is blink into small groups to try to minimize the damage. Then try to snipe ovies and use blink and FF to try to stall the engagement to recover shields. If I have storm, then usually FF and storm will deter the ovies.
My analysis of the games:
1) You started mining from your second gas after 24 minutes and your first gas dried up shortly after. This had a major effect on the engagement you're interested in because your army was much weaker than his and not very well upgraded. As people have said, I think the main problem with this engagement was control. But you also didn't see the the infestors until they destroyed your drop around 17:30 which was when your attack moved out. You have no information about what army you're heading into and you don't know about the banes. If you have made another observer you would have known not to engage this. I would have turned right back home when I saw the infestors and put down a templar archives for feedback. If you did this, you would have had storms in the engagement and wouldn't need to blink on the infestors because you can feedback instead.
2) I would say the main thing in this one was that you had very poor HT control and low HT counts. I think it's too bad you got the robo bay when your opponent went muta, you could have used the gas spent on that on the colossus to get more HTs. I know you wanted archons to deal with the mutas, but having 6 HTs in the engagements would have really helped.
Anyways, I don't know why you included this replay because your army was shooting rocks while getting destroyed. You stormed your own army to kill the lings once before you lost both of your HTs, then the army came and killed you. There just happened to be some bane rain involved, and you accidentally blinked onto a platform where you couldn't micro against the ovies. Then you lost your observers and you couldn't come back.
3) You scouted the wrong way, but the ovie came into your vision for a split second =P Again, I think the bad engagements lost you the game. Your zealot attack did some damage, and your second got the gold but I don't know how strong the trades were. As for the bane rain, I think you should have kicked out some void rays before you got maxed. Between voids and better blink micro, you might have been able to handle the bane rain. But without FF or storm I still think that was just an unwinnable situation. I wouldn't say the voids are mandatory, but they are always useful against zerg if you can keep them alive. I do think you should figure out how to incorporate HTs though.
In all of your games, whatever that FFE 2 gate thing you're doing is it hits too late and I think you're vulnerable to roach bust. Your attack comes at 9 minutes with 6 zealots and no reinforcements. I bet it either wins you the game instantly or gets surrounded by lings and doesn't do anything in most games. If you prefer gateway transitions after the FFE (which it looks like you do), try the 7 gate. It's not an all in, it typically takes out Z's third while securing your own. I can't find a very good guide for it other than in Artosis' blog (they're near the bottom). I don't do this attack because I prefer stargates on maps which allow for safe FFE so I don't know the ins and outs of this build. I gave it a shot and I was able to warp the gateways in around 9 minutes, and arrive at the enemy's base with 9 sentries, 7 stalkers and an observer.
Lastly, since a moderator posted this [H] thread maybe a moderator should be a little stricter on the posters. You said something about issuing warnings to people who didn't watch the replay - I think you should. It says in this stickied thread to always view the replay and in this stickied thread stickied thread, "Only reply to a help thread if you are an experienced SC2 player, and if you have watched the replay. Otherwise, these threads are simply no place for you to post." So watch the replay and watch the replay.
Good luck Plexa! If this fails there's always your awesome mothership/blink stalker build
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EPT
