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Hi Everyone
I'm a grandmaster Protoss on North America Server and have been struggling forever against some really good 1-1-1s.
I know the first thing people will do is recommend me to the various guides around TL on how to defend them, but I feel I can execute those perfectly and still get completely facerolled.
I've attached a replay of a well executed 1-1-1 and what I thought was pretty good execution on my end too. Sadly, I get completely destroyed and I really am clueless.
I've seen Whitera fast expand into colossus and hold it off, but all the terrans I've talked to say that you absolutely lose if you do that, and that has been my experience as well.
It seems that the general consensus is to go immortal zealot with some stalkers and a couple sentries, but I really feel the synergy with marines/scvs makes zealots so useless. Regardless, I'm at a complete loss and would especially appreciate any and all replays of players deflecting a standard 1-1-1 with a regular 1 gate expand style.
I've never really had as much trouble with 9 minute or 9:30 pushes, but any time after that I feel the scv/marine ball gets too large to deal with with just zealots.
Again, I appreciate any feedback and assistance.
http://drop.sc/126949
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You should have tried to stall the engagement longer, you kinda just ran into him while you could have waited until another warpin. You also should have pulled some probes imo. What I try to do vs 111 is to do flanks with 5ish zealots/1 sentry for guardian shield and maybe an immortal too, on shattered I would have had them waiting at the natural closest to mine and behind the bushes near my own main.
But really there are some maps where I think you can't hold 111 consistently, and shattered is one of them.
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That's the same build I use the most and I took it from watching Polt play. You might find some examples of him losing with it, though it could take a while, especially as I don't recall seeing him 1/1/1 that much lately.
I noticed some mistakes in the replay. You have to target fire your immortals on the tanks and your forcefields were essentially useless. While meeting him out in the middle may have seemed like a good idea, you could possibly have stalled for an extra warp in if you did not do that and if you force him to walk into a choke it makes forcefielding a lot easier as well. FF is less useful if you let him siege up in a good spot, but he has to walk in pretty close to do that and you can forcefield him off before he gets in place. I'm not sure if you should cut probes earlier, but the guides you talk about likely have good information regarding that. Also given he pulled every single SCV you can afford to pull a sizeable amount of your own probes too.
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Ok I am a diamond player so take this with a grain of salt or what ever you see fit, but I do have a few ideas for what I have done for fighting off 1-1-1's.
Your scouting was really good, you were able to see if siege or cloak was being researched, and I have found that this is a great help to see what is coming at you and how to prepare for it.
They biggest thing that helps in my opinion is when they pull there SCV's I move up with my stalkers to kite the oncoming force, and in doing this it slows the armies forward progress, picks off a few units, and the big thing for when they have there raven, it may burn their PDD before the actual engagement. Also by slowing down their army, this is allowing you more time to get out more immortals, and get in more warp ins.
I personally have not had to pull probes to defend a 1/1/1 but I could definitely see how this would help. As I said before, kitting with the stalkers help alot because he is not going to be producing any more units, and has no more income, so this works in your favor big time.
As I said before, I am diamond, no where near GM so take my advice for what you want, but keep at it, and when you do feel like you have been able to defend 1/1/1's on a consistent basis, let us know and post a few replays. GLHF 
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I have played and beaten the OP with this exact same build on ladder several times. As said above, this build was basically copied completely from Polt, and I've been using it to great success on a lot of the ladder maps as a GM terran on NA.
In the replay, you actually saw exactly what he was doing by sending in a probe and he killed it with a tank shot. This should have told you he was going tank before banshees so he was going for a later push with more tanks. Based on what I personally lose to a lot when I do this build, I think the best thing you could have done was contain him at his ramp around 9 minutes, because you know he went tank first so he was going raven, eliminating the possibility of a medivac drop early. This could buy you some extra time or force him to make a medivac to pull you away from his ramp.
In the actual engagement, your forcefields were really less than adequate and you should try to flank with a few zealots from the side to draw the first tank shots. You also need to be focus firing the immortals on the tanks and the stalkers on the banshees, because if you kill all the tanks and banshees you can kite the unstimmed marines all day with your stalkers since he HAS to win with that attack given how many workers he brought.
As mentioned, it might also be good to pull all the probes from your natural to tank a little because you saw he basically brought every single scv with him. Hope it helps.
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Yeah I think you should have been a bit more active with your stalkers. You an always find weak points to hit and run as they advance across the map, which stalls it out and gives you valuable seconds to get those additional warp-ins.
I also think in that kind of situation you do really have to pull some probes yourself.. his army has an effective 1400 HP in SCVs which you have to deal with.. you can't expect to match that without pulling some workers yourself.
I also have some personal reservations about double gas expand in PvT, but thats just my personal preference. I prefer to get the nexus down a little sooner.
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Seeing as I also have problem with a good 1-1-1 I'll post this here and check the replay and see if I get any ideas to help when I get home.
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Chronoboost is at 100 energy for a while 7minutes in, I feel to beat a 1-1-1 you need to chrono to 35-40 probes and then spend the remaining chrono on robotics for immortal + gateway chrono whilst cutting probes. Oversaturated by 4 at the main, this minute stuff matters against 1-1-1.
Overall your macro was pretty good but like an above poster said try to stall the push, you have 3 sentries so you can sacrifice a fake guardian shield for a pdd and a seige, that would be really good. You just need to stall for one or two more warp-in cycles, remember to chrono gates. Because your chrono is really stocked up.
Try to lead with a single zealot so splash doesn't occur from seige mode.
Better luck next time!
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Alright so I downloaded the replay and analyzed it while drink my coffee
Here are the biggest things that popped out at me
1) When your expansion at your natural finished, you were very slow to transfer probes to it. Also, when you eventually did, you didn't transfer as many as you needed too. For example, you should only leave 16 probes mining minerals at your main. You left 20. So next time transfer those extra 4 to the natural.
2) There is no way to deal with a late 1/1/1 push without collosus. You can deal with some of the earlier pushes just fine with immorta/sentry/zealot/stalker; but once the marine count gets high, gateway units pretty much just melt without support.
You should always start the collosus bay after your first immortal. If you keep a unit outside his base to see when he pushes out, you can always cancel the robo bay in order to get extra units out in time to stop an early push. Once you have a collosus, though, things become a lot easier for you because you can push into the center of the map, and you have a lot of weight to your army. Everytime your army engages it should force him to siege, or he will lose a lot of his marines. When he sieges, you back off. Repeat. This buys you a LOT of time. Maybe even enough to get thermal lance out; and when that happens, you win.
Some small things to think about:
Get your 3rd gas at your natural before the nexus finishes; you will need it for collosi.
3-4 gateways is enough if you are going for collosi.
Once you have 2 collosi, return to immortal production. You only need 2 collosus.
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Also really watch the banshee count, so you got enough stalker. Next to the other facts that are written here. Or atleast that you are capable of smashing the banshees in your next warp-ins, since you don't want to lose having build to many zealots.
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3 gate robo - 2 obz (1 in each mineral line) get 16 3 3 probes at one base and about 10 at the 2nd base. add 2 more gates when you can afford. 2 stalkers in each mineral line. 1/2 sentry's and the rest zealots and immortals. clean up the marine tank with mass zealot + guardian shield, then warp in stalkers to deal with banshee. Even after 10min, if they are going 1 base, you should have more eco then them which means more stuff. quick collosus is quite bad imo it leaves a timing window when you are vulnerable. As you probz all ready know losing probes early makes defending the rush way harder. so try not to lose a single probe.
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There are a few things that I think would help,
Try to stall as long as you can, meet them about halfway with your stalkers sentries immortals and drop a few ff and try to catch a few scvs or rines with them if you can. If they burn a pdd, even better. You can probably do it 2-3 times before they are at your natural. This will give some extra time and you might be able to get a extra warping or 2 of zealots.
If they bring all their scvs or a large chunk of them, i would bring a few probes from your natural and fight with them. If u were able to stall them long enough, and were able to get 2-3 warpings of zealots (10+), then you probably wont need the probes.
Also swifthit is correct, you want the fewest number of stalkers when you initially engage, so 4 total, the remaining of the warpings should be zealot sentries. Once you clean up all the marines scvs and tanks, warping stalkers to clean the banshees
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I am not as high as you so most of this you already know, but I will tell you what works for me at 650 masters.
I like to build my support bay as soon as I have the money after I start my first immortal, if they push out before its close to done I cancel for the extra gateway units.
Build 5 gateway, almost all zealot, sentry, only 2 stalkers for every banshee (this is the hardest part I have found is figuring out exactly the right amount of stalkers).
After my range upgrade is complete, I don't find 1-1-1 scary.
Making the enemy siege as they move across the map is huge to delay time for range research.
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The way I manage to deflect the push is by being agressive with Stalkers early on. You can't make too many, but the ones you make should be poking Terran's front and hopefully take out some marines. Some must obviously stay home to defend against banshee.
Other then that its all in the engagement. Engage as early as you can. Fighting at your natural choke is tricky because units will clump up and take siege fire. You have to try cutting the SCVs off to snipe them. Watch your Zealots, they shouldn't take marine / siege fire while the SCVs block them. If you can flank, do it, really helps. Otherwise pull them back out of siege range and try killing some SCVs with Stalkers & Immos before running your Zeals in.
Try spreading your Zealots out and then run them into the marines. Its important that they catch siege fire because this is what'll actually kills the marines. Immos obviously focus tanks but you'll want to stutter step them in to hopefully take out other stuff on the way.
There's a crapton of micro involved in the engagement and you macro can't slip. Hotkey a pylon for fast warpin and by all means don't get supplyblocked or you'll die.
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Some tidbits:
I don't quite get your opening, standard 1 gate does a probe, zealot stalker poke which would have pushed up that ramp against 3 maines. He should need a bunker with his build and the bunker should tell you you can move up your robo production instead of getting 3 more gates. (if there are enough units to repel you without a bunker, then it's a different build and getting the 3 gates is fine). By not knowing if you need those gates early you also need to make extra sentries which puts your robotics further back, this slightly leads into the next point.
If he gets a raven or cloak before starting siege, that pushes the timing back from 8:30 to 10 minutes which should give you enough time to get collosus with thermal lance on the way, the 10 minute timing is late enough that the number of marines is reaching that middling number where it becomes very difficult without splash, your build is good against the 8:30 variety but not as good against the 10 minute kind.
If you see the scv's coming, as others have said you're going to need the probes from your natural or splash, almost no two ways about it.
Hope something in here was useful, I'd love to see some replays once you feel you have a good handle on it as I think people assume it's more figured out then it actually is.
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Would be helpful to the OP and others if the posters here provided replays.
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If you scout a 1-1-1 go for a 4gate timing off of 1 base, this means that you are knocking at his door by 7 minutes with a scary force that would crush whatever he has
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On March 06 2012 00:40 scAmaze wrote:
If you scout a 1-1-1 go for a 4gate timing off of 1 base, this means that you are knocking at his door by 7 minutes with a scary force that would crush whatever he has
When he scouts it he will throw down an extra bunker. Reactor marines will hold it until tanks with siege are out and the banshee will begin killing your probes.
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I personally got a totally different way to hold of 1-1-1.
My basic idea is to go Stargate first and later on make a fast tech to DT's. So i can abuse that he's only got 1 orbital and a rare amount of Scans. Only thing that is ofc necessary is to snipe the Raven (therefore i got my Phoenix) if he brings one with the push. I m only 650 Master so not to sure how this will work out in the higher levels but maybe you wanna give it a try.
Replay: http://www.mediafire.com/?hwino6mc5i2dehx
(Note: This Replay shows a Hellion Drop first but its basically the same if he goes banshee. Most Terrans will cancel cloak when they see you going stargate but you definitly wanna add a robo when you scout it)
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To hold 1-1-1 you just need an expo of 1 gate and then mass units. If you feel you can tech to collosi you can try but some of the timings will kill you cause 1-1-1 varries a lot.
In any case don't tech to much becasue that is what ussually kills tosses in my experience (as in to much tech and to few units).
So i would recoment you use something like 1 gate expo into directly 5 gates unleas he is going for cloack banshee oppening in which situation go for 1 robo obv instead of 5th gate.
Someone suggested that you stop producing probes at one point which is also correct. with arround 40 probes on 2 bases your eco is more than enaugh strong to hold 1-1-1.
If it matters anything i'm terran and am doing 3 different variations of 1-1-1 every 3rd game on ladder.
good day, svizcy
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EPT
