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This is meant to be a discussion on dealing with Stephano's late game Zerg strategy.
For those unfamiliar with Stephano's play, he uses a ling-heavy opener and transitions into Infestors an fast Hive. Usually, he goes 2x Evo, 2x Spire to get simultaneous upgrades.
This is partially inspired by Stephano's amazing performance in SCI4.
So far, many Protoss rely on the Archon Toilet. This is when a mothership vortexes all the broodlords, and archons then enter the vortex. When it ends, all the broodlords will be clumped.
However, as we saw in some of Stephano's games, notably Stephano v. Grubby, mass Infestor effectively counters this strategy. Mass fungal growths prevent archons from closing in, and the threat of a neural parasite prevents us from being more aggressive with the Mothership.
As a Masters Protoss, I'm seeing this style used more and more on the NA and EU ladder. What counters this style?
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From the games I have seen Stephano has a reduced drone count in favor for better tech during the time where a 2 base all in or a fast third would occur. (being slings and +1 speed roaches)
This means that his third is a bit behind.
I used a similar style, and what delays me is zealot attacks before the 7:30 mark, and Fast air to force spores/queens/or perhaps hydra.
All of which forces me to either use drones for defense, or larve for units. Since im opting for a lower drone count anyway for tech. For me to deal with your mid game push, or even pressure you third, I will have a VERY low drone count, making its hard to keep up with a toss safely int he late game.
Does this make sense?
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I think grubby needed to use feedback more often, he didn't even use it once. If you look at someone like JYP, you'll see them use feedback much more often, which helps out a ton in keeping the number of Infestors low.
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Base race. Using recall to manouver your army around his to other of his bases. One great example was Stephano vs Kiwikaki in the IPL 2 I think. Kiwikaki won by going around the left side of the map sniping a hatch, recalling to the right side sniping a hatch and continuing and drawing stephano out of position. Your army will always be mobile than the zerg when it consists of brood lords.
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This style is very commun and the only way to beat this is to go for no stalkers, a massive ammount of Voidrays/carriers and many many HT's. You need to feedback those Infestors or you are pretty much dead. Having some Collosi in ur mix can also be good, since you can target infestor and kill broodlings. I rather have problems with mass mutas. Inmobility sucks.
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ht feedback while cloak under momma ship.
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Get more high templars and feedback the infestors. Also make archons and try to get a good clump of the zergs army in a vortex with your mothership and put 3 or 4 archons in there. Thats all the feedback I can give. 
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I saw in Stephano's stream Sage ripping apart Stephano in a similar situation of mass infestors/broodlords vs mothership. Sage used WP a lot to harass Stephano, but he crushed Stephano's unit composition in the end anyway. So I think it just depends on the skills of the players. If both players are on the same level and none of them make serious mistakes, mothership should be able to beat the composition.
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fellas, this is all true. However Its not easy to safely get BL and Infesters in a high enough count for the late game. It makes more sense to have a mid game strategy that gives you small advantages, andt he zerg disadvantages for the mid to late game switch.
This is because the zerg death ball is VERY good (if he has spines to help prevent base trade)
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It's very problematic composition also for Terrans, but I think Protoss has lower chances to beat that.. It probably comes down to micro and position. Stephano is showing very abusive playstyles on both Metalopolis and Taldarim so far.
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Carriers, might need som templars or voidrays depending what zerg does.
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On January 15 2012 23:58 redloser wrote:
I saw in Stephano's stream Sage ripping apart Stephano in a similar situation of mass infestors/broodlords vs mothership. Sage used WP a lot to harass Stephano, but he crushed Stephano's unit composition in the end anyway. So I think it just depends on the skills of the players. If both players are on the same level and none of them make serious mistakes, mothership should be able to beat the composition.
Not true Sage vs Stephano is like 20-5 in Stephano favors. Most of the time he won vs him in Korea. This spine wall and fast broodlords are really hard to deal with. And he split his broodlords perfect. Maybe alot of HT will help
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Dont start reading too much into the Grubby - Stephano games. Stephano is a much more accomplished player while Grubby is good he's still not known as one of the top protoss players. He might be in the future but it's still a better play facing a "worse player".
Though I think Mship, Carriers, HTs, Archons is a good way to deal with it!
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On January 16 2012 00:12 HappyChris wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2012 23:58 redloser wrote:
I saw in Stephano's stream Sage ripping apart Stephano in a similar situation of mass infestors/broodlords vs mothership. Sage used WP a lot to harass Stephano, but he crushed Stephano's unit composition in the end anyway. So I think it just depends on the skills of the players. If both players are on the same level and none of them make serious mistakes, mothership should be able to beat the composition. Not true Sage vs Stephano is like 20-5 in Stephano favors. Most of the time he won vs him in Korea. This spine wall and fast broodlords are really hard to deal with. And he split his broodlords perfect. Maybe alot of HT will help
I'm just taking particularly about the composition in this thread :/ When Stephano won vs Sage, it was mostly with roaches/lings/hydras/queens etc., not infestors/BLs vs mothership.
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HT's would destroy those infestors if you could get around the cluster of broodlings...
what about several warp prisms carrying HT's, then drop on top of infestors and pew pew pew? i haven't seen any protoss use that warp prism/HT micro in battle except for whitera.
each HT can feedback multiple times INSTANTLY (energy permitting)... if you can deal with the majority of infestors then it's not a hard composition to face.
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The big key here is immobility, trying your best to do warp prism harass on multiple locations. I know the problem about facing like 12 spines in every base, but a massive warpin of zealots should do the job. When both players are banking this many minerals you cannot afford to not have supply open for harassment warpins.
I think the biggest mistake Grubby did during this series was maxing out on low-tier units and switching to a pure high-tier army 2 late. This made his harassment minimal and insuccessful.
Besides the abuse of immobility I believe you really do have to get a well upgraded over-50%-airforce, meaning your army should be mostly VR/Carrier. This forces A lot of corrupters, meaning after the fight you could remax on low-tier units and push hard before he can make brood lords out of his corrupters. This is just theorycrafting though...
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On January 16 2012 01:58 Harmonized wrote:
The big key here is immobility, trying your best to do warp prism harass on multiple locations. I know the problem about facing like 12 spines in every base, but a massive warpin of zealots should do the job. When both players are banking this many minerals you cannot afford to not have supply open for harassment warpins.
I think the biggest mistake Grubby did during this series was maxing out on low-tier units and switching to a pure high-tier army 2 late. This made his harassment minimal and insuccessful.
Besides the abuse of immobility I believe you really do have to get a well upgraded over-50%-airforce, meaning your army should be mostly VR/Carrier. This forces A lot of corrupters, meaning after the fight you could remax on low-tier units and push hard before he can make brood lords out of his corrupters. This is just theorycrafting though...
i don't think air protoss is a counter to air zerg... imo it will be an even encounter and will come down to positioning, micro, upgrades, gas stockpile... that's not ideal when the zerg has a headstart on getting mass numbers and upgrades.
i think warp prisms containing HT's would be brilliant.... what can zerg do?
you float a warp prism over, it gets fungaled then your ht drops out and gets 2-3 feedbacks off instantly. then likely your warp prism dies to fungal/corruptor and HT soon after - but the damage has been done.
soooo.... you get another warp prism with another HT. fungal, drop out, feedback pew pew and lose warp prism.
rinse and repeat until infestors have 0 energy, then broodlords are free kills for your stalkers.
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Northern Ireland27220 Posts
On January 16 2012 03:19 shizna wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2012 01:58 Harmonized wrote:
The big key here is immobility, trying your best to do warp prism harass on multiple locations. I know the problem about facing like 12 spines in every base, but a massive warpin of zealots should do the job. When both players are banking this many minerals you cannot afford to not have supply open for harassment warpins.
I think the biggest mistake Grubby did during this series was maxing out on low-tier units and switching to a pure high-tier army 2 late. This made his harassment minimal and insuccessful.
Besides the abuse of immobility I believe you really do have to get a well upgraded over-50%-airforce, meaning your army should be mostly VR/Carrier. This forces A lot of corrupters, meaning after the fight you could remax on low-tier units and push hard before he can make brood lords out of his corrupters. This is just theorycrafting though... i don't think air protoss is a counter to air zerg... imo it will be an even encounter and will come down to positioning, micro, upgrades, gas stockpile... that's not ideal when the zerg has a headstart on getting mass numbers and upgrades. i think warp prisms containing HT's would be brilliant.... what can zerg do? you float a warp prism over, it gets fungaled then your ht drops out and gets 2-3 feedbacks off instantly. then likely your warp prism dies to fungal/corruptor and HT soon after - but the damage has been done. soooo.... you get another warp prism with another HT. fungal, drop out, feedback pew pew and lose warp prism. rinse and repeat until infestors have 0 energy, then broodlords are free kills for your stalkers.
That's all well and good but Zerg usually have a few corruptors as well, surely your WP can get sniped by a competent player? Like the idea mind
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Against turtly EU Protoss players (cos they all play deathball turtly), Stephano is pretty amazing at punishing them for their passivity. Unfortunately, from what I saw vs MC, he never got to hive tech without dying. MC's 3 base 'im gonna make loads of blink stalkers and somehow win' strategy is what Stephano struggles with. He's never beaten MC in a game in tourney.
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EPT
