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Please have some semblance of an idea of what you're talking about. |
United States8476 Posts
On March 26 2012 21:41 aebriol wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2012 21:35 ZeromuS wrote:On March 26 2012 21:06 aebriol wrote:On March 26 2012 20:48 XxMulexX wrote:
What you are doing is typical theory crafting which is not really realistic. If you're going to change your tech path significantly, you have to make sure it's safe against a wide variety of zerg strategies, and double robo off 2 base is absolutely terrible vs a muta centric zerg.
What zerg goes straight to muta after opening 3 base though? That dies to most any x gate pushes. One that sees double robot immortals and knows you don't have the gateway support to kill him if he rushes mutalisks. If he loses a base but has mutas and you can't kill him the Zerg wins. The tech investment in double robot puts you behind against mutas especially since alongside mutas is a lot of lings. Lings and mutas kill immortals very efficiently. Mmm ... well ... As a zerg on 3 base, your lair is done around 8:30 with most common timings (2 gas at 6:00, first 100 gas to lair). Spire 100 sec, mutas 33, total 133, first mutas are out at roughly 11:00 (can be 10:43 if commits, and everything lines up perfectly). If you can kill the push with sentry zealot immortal with pure lings, by all means, you win, but that's pretty damn hard.
If your opponent scouts just a robo or double robo, the most common response(especially on larger maps) is to get a spire. The spire allows you to make corruptors in the off chance that your opponent 2 base allins with colossi. It also allows you to more easily deal with prism harass. However, more commonly, it allows for a fast muta switch if the protoss takes a 3rd off of robo tech. The spire can also be canceled if a dedicated allin is seen coming.
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On March 26 2012 22:07 chestnutcc wrote:
Nyast, how can the zerg afford to saturate both bases? He can take a fourth for sure without much hindrance, but cannot immediately saturate it (80+ drones) because a fast third opens up a v strong +2/+3 blink stalker/ variant thereof timing (We saw this happen in DRG vs JYP, though JYP lost his third, his counter was too strong. Now imagine that counter backed by the third). Not to mention the necessary spine walls that will be needed to guard it. It would seem that a fast fourth is not a viable option with roaches, since they eat up supply so you cant saturate your bases, it would only work with ling muta/ ling infestor out of which only ling muta keep the protoss back on his side of the map.
I'm theorycrafting a bit, but Zerg can afford 60 drones at 8' and go into mass roaches if toss goes typical FFE right ? Then if toss goes for an early third, it doesn't sound unreasonnable to me that Zerg can afford 80 drones at 10' with a fourth and go into mass roaches from there. The +2 blink timing push will be delayed, and 80 drones definitely allow to saturate a fourth. It's going to end up similar to the situation we previously had with 3 bases vs 2, except that now we'll be on 4 vs 3 and the timings will be delayed by a minute or two.
Is it a better situation for the toss or the zerg ? That I have no clue.
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On March 26 2012 22:21 Nyast wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2012 22:07 chestnutcc wrote:
Nyast, how can the zerg afford to saturate both bases? He can take a fourth for sure without much hindrance, but cannot immediately saturate it (80+ drones) because a fast third opens up a v strong +2/+3 blink stalker/ variant thereof timing (We saw this happen in DRG vs JYP, though JYP lost his third, his counter was too strong. Now imagine that counter backed by the third). Not to mention the necessary spine walls that will be needed to guard it. It would seem that a fast fourth is not a viable option with roaches, since they eat up supply so you cant saturate your bases, it would only work with ling muta/ ling infestor out of which only ling muta keep the protoss back on his side of the map. I'm theorycrafting a bit, but Zerg can afford 60 drones at 8' and go into mass roaches if toss goes typical FFE right ? Then if toss goes for an early third, it doesn't sound unreasonnable to me that Zerg can afford 80 drones at 10' with a fourth and go into mass roaches from there. The +2 blink timing push will be delayed, and 80 drones definitely allow to saturate a fourth. It's going to end up similar to the situation we previously had with 3 bases vs 2, except that now we'll be on 4 vs 3 and the timings will be delayed by a minute or two. Is it a better situation for the toss or the zerg ? That I have no clue.
This would be true for the super early 6 minute thirds of the sort Ranged has demonstrated. Not that I know much, but I don't feel this is v safe. But against a later, 8-10 minute third with 4-7 gates, robo/blink and +2 behind it, the zerg is still in the dark about a possible all in since you can deny the scout at the third for a while. It would be difficult to safely drone to 80 in this window. Even in JYP's games (and many others korean tosses), he pressured at the usual timing, except that he doesn't commit when he sees roaches. It keeps the drone count down to about 70, so the fourth base will not kick in at the same time for the zerg as the third does for the toss.
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Nyast (and others),
Z taking a fast fourth isn't a problem. For supply purposes, the worker cap is about 70 or 75. You'll sometimes see people go to 80, but that leaves you with too little supply space for army in most cases. Optimal 3 base saturation takes 72 workers, so the 4th base provides little-to-no extra mineral income. What it does offer is 2 extra geysers, so a fast fourth/fifth allows Z to trade some mineral income for gas income.
And while extra gas is a plus for Z, from the P's perspective, the 3 base vs 4 base situation is not NEARLY as bad as the 2 base vs 3 base situation. In the 2 base vs 3 base situation, Z really has 50% more income. They can trade 20 roaches for a couple sentries and a nexus and come out on top. In the 3 base vs 4 base situation, both players have the same mineral income, but Z gets 25% more gas. Z can no longer afford to trade without caution.
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On March 27 2012 00:23 kcdc wrote:
Nyast (and others),
Z taking a fast fourth isn't a problem. For supply purposes, the worker cap is about 70 or 75. You'll sometimes see people go to 80, but that leaves you with too little supply space for army in most cases. Optimal 3 base saturation takes 72 workers, so the 4th base provides little-to-no extra mineral income. What it does offer is 2 extra geysers, so a fast fourth/fifth allows Z to trade some mineral income for gas income.
That's not always the case though. I regularly see Zergs that go to 90-100 drones, and that drop a wall of spines ( for teching to Brood Lords ) when they reach their 200/200 to free pop. Granted, that doesn't happen if Zerg is doing the Stephano style since he intends to bust your third with as many roaches as he afford. But if you started to take a super fast third, I wonder what would prevent Zergs from saturating 4 bases, build a defensive army with insane reinforcements, drop tons of spines when they reach 200, and tech straight to BLs ?
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Theorycrafting, but I think its valid. Any high Master / GM zergs think that if Toss takes a fast 3rd, then zerg just gets 4th (for gas) and tech immediately to broodlord / infestor? You can max at 15 min with this Tier 3 army and steamroll toss because he will be at stalker/colossus tech wihtout a mothership yet. You might apply some light pressure - maybe a roach wave in the beginning?
I am not sure taking a fast 3rd is the answer. I have lots of success in taking a 11-12 min 3rd (when I can actually defend it safely without losing my whole army). In fact, the later you take the 3rd, the less army you will lose in a confrontation. Also, with a later 3rd, you can go punish if zerg decides to tech too heavily.
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On March 27 2012 01:39 Rigorous wrote:
I am not sure taking a fast 3rd is the answer. I have lots of success in taking a 11-12 min 3rd (when I can actually defend it safely without losing my whole army). In fact, the later you take the 3rd, the less army you will lose in a confrontation. Also, with a later 3rd, you can go punish if zerg decides to tech too heavily.
I think it's been covered in this thread a few times that without any pressure a 3rd at 11-12 minute can't hold the 200/200 roaches of stephano/drg at the 12 minute mark. It's relient on forcefields that eventually run dry if they are dedicated to roach spam. That's why they are experimenting with early thirds to see if they can make up some of that supply difference at that timing.
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On March 27 2012 01:39 Rigorous wrote:
Theorycrafting, but I think its valid. Any high Master / GM zergs think that if Toss takes a fast 3rd, then zerg just gets 4th (for gas) and tech immediately to broodlord / infestor? You can max at 15 min with this Tier 3 army and steamroll toss because he will be at stalker/colossus tech wihtout a mothership yet. You might apply some light pressure - maybe a roach wave in the beginning?
I am not sure taking a fast 3rd is the answer. I have lots of success in taking a 11-12 min 3rd (when I can actually defend it safely without losing my whole army). In fact, the later you take the 3rd, the less army you will lose in a confrontation. Also, with a later 3rd, you can go punish if zerg decides to tech too heavily.
Well sure zerg could do that but I believe the idea is that protoss will also apply pressure while/after grabbing their 3rd. Think about the fast 3rd Nexus build Parting popularized in PvT for example. That build grabs a 3rd very fast (~6 mins) but still applies pressure ~9mins behind 8-9 gateways. You also have to factor in that most maps the 4th is quite vulnerable (think antiga or entombed). This is also why I was I feel a yufFE's gate-nexus-core/forge opening has a lot more potential to secure a fast 3rd because of the faster warpgate while still being nearly equal economy-wise as a forge first FFE. You kind of need warpgate tech to safely take a 3rd I feel, otherwise you're just gambling that they won't make mass lings to take out your 3rd, and if you wait for warpgate after a FFE before you grab your 3rd I don't think you gain enough from it to make the roach push any easier to stop.
At the end of the day though these types of fast 3rd strategies are so heavily map dependent I highly doubt it will become a new standard. For example the amount of defenses you need to defend your 3rd on entombed is infinitely less than needed to defend on any other ladder map. Why do you think DRG (and nearly every other zerg for that matter) vetos entombed in tourneys?
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On March 27 2012 02:45 Skyro wrote:
You kind of need warpgate tech to safely take a 3rd I feel, otherwise you're just gambling that they won't make mass lings to take out your 3rd.
I respectfully disagree with this point. You can scout (either directly or by the timing of his third) that Z has not taken gas by 4 minutes, and it takes 3:15 to finish metabolic boost from the point that Z starts gas. So given responsible scouting, you know that Z can't have speed until 7:15 at the earliest. Off of FFE, you can have +1 weapons and WG by 7:30 or earlier if you chrono very aggressively. So with a well-placed cannon and a smart build, there's no timing window for Z to punish your third with speedlings.
So that leaves slow zerglings. And slow zerglings are awful.
So I'd say that with good scouting, a smart build and a well-placed cannon, you're certainly not "gambling" that they won't pressure you with lings. You have the tools in your belt to defend.
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On March 27 2012 02:10 Wrath98 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 01:39 Rigorous wrote:
I am not sure taking a fast 3rd is the answer. I have lots of success in taking a 11-12 min 3rd (when I can actually defend it safely without losing my whole army). In fact, the later you take the 3rd, the less army you will lose in a confrontation. Also, with a later 3rd, you can go punish if zerg decides to tech too heavily.
I think it's been covered in this thread a few times that without any pressure a 3rd at 11-12 minute can't hold the 200/200 roaches of stephano/drg at the 12 minute mark. It's relient on forcefields that eventually run dry if they are dedicated to roach spam. That's why they are experimenting with early thirds to see if they can make up some of that supply difference at that timing.
I do this all the time. Good FF's, immo's, stalkers and VR/phoenix (if open stargate), can hold 200/200 roach spam if you sim city right (and on a decent map, not Korhal). You can even have your first colossus out by this time. I am at high Masters level, and I honestly love it when zerg opens tons of roaches, cuz then I know muta switch just went down about 99%.
And one other point about the later 3rd. There is a point where roaches just suck against stalkers/immo with their superior range. You can be down 60-80 supply and beat a maxed roach army with good FF blink and immo. So the point of a later 3rd is taking it when your army is at that point where its stronger than a low tier 1 zerg army...
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Okay so I did a test. I took Zerg, did the Stephano build ( more or less well, I haven't played Zerg more than once in the past year ! ), I took my 4th around 7'30 ( at the time I would have scouted toss's third ), droned freely until 10' ( ~80 drones ). Got 180 pop around 12' of roaches with 1/1 upgrades and roach speed. Meanwhile I teched to Hive and timed my Brood lords. The first ones would start morphing at 14'30.
Incidentely, 14'30 is more or less the time you get maxed as toss out of a fast third.
Of course if toss attacks in the 10-15' window, Zerg can't get BLs at 14'30 as he has to remax in roaches. Not sure what conclusion to draw from those infos, but at least I hope it'll give a better idea of what kind of timings we're speaking about for a fast Hive as a reaction.
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On March 27 2012 03:04 Nyast wrote:
Okay so I did a test. I took Zerg, did the Stephano build ( more or less well, I haven't played Zerg more than once in the past year ! ), I took my 4th around 7'30 ( at the time I would have scouted toss's third ), droned freely until 10' ( ~80 drones ). Got 180 pop around 12' of roaches with 1/1 upgrades and roach speed. Meanwhile I teched to Hive and timed my Brood lords. The first ones would start morphing at 14'30.
Incidentely, 14'30 is more or less the time you get maxed as toss out of a fast third.
Of course if toss attacks in the 10-15' window, Zerg can't get BLs at 14'30 as he has to remax in roaches. Not sure what conclusion to draw from those infos, but at least I hope it'll give a better idea of what kind of timings we're speaking about for a fast Hive as a reaction.
Interesting test and confirms my thoughts. As long as zerg is scouting often enough (to make units and to know when to tech), the fast 4th seems very viable. Even if toss maxes at 14:30 wiht stalker colossus, zerg should laugh at him with broodlords and infestors. An I think 14:30 is a very fast max...I think if you throw a roach wave at him, it will delay at least a minute or two.
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On March 27 2012 03:04 Nyast wrote:
Okay so I did a test. I took Zerg, did the Stephano build ( more or less well, I haven't played Zerg more than once in the past year ! ), I took my 4th around 7'30 ( at the time I would have scouted toss's third ), droned freely until 10' ( ~80 drones ). Got 180 pop around 12' of roaches with 1/1 upgrades and roach speed. Meanwhile I teched to Hive and timed my Brood lords. The first ones would start morphing at 14'30.
Incidentely, 14'30 is more or less the time you get maxed as toss out of a fast third.
Of course if toss attacks in the 10-15' window, Zerg can't get BLs at 14'30 as he has to remax in roaches. Not sure what conclusion to draw from those infos, but at least I hope it'll give a better idea of what kind of timings we're speaking about for a fast Hive as a reaction.
14:30 sounds about right from my experiences and the pro games I've watched. Ret does a lot of heavy eco straight to BL's.
What this tells us is that if P wants to go fast third, they need to either have an attack timing before or at 14:00 or tech quickly to archon+mothership.
This is a big reason that I don't think P should get colossi with a fast third build. If you want 2 colossi with thermal lance for a 14 minute timing, you need to start the robotics bay (colossus den) by 11:00 at the latest. The builds that Ranged and I were playing around with had an 11:00 robotics facility, but there's no way that they're getting a bay that early.
With the fast third -> blink defense build, it seems like you should respond to passive hive tech play from Z with either a big blink timing with a few templar for feedback to prevent fungals or with a quick fourth and a fleet beacon. I'm actually very comfortable playing fleet beacon-templar archives late game vs infestor broodlord, but it's a drag when every ladder game goes 30+ minutes.
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On March 27 2012 02:56 kcdc wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 02:45 Skyro wrote:
You kind of need warpgate tech to safely take a 3rd I feel, otherwise you're just gambling that they won't make mass lings to take out your 3rd. I respectfully disagree with this point. You can scout (either directly or by the timing of his third) that Z has not taken gas by 4 minutes, and it takes 3:15 to finish metabolic boost from the point that Z starts gas. So given responsible scouting, you know that Z can't have speed until 7:15 at the earliest. Off of FFE, you can have +1 weapons and WG by 7:30 or earlier if you chrono very aggressively. So with a well-placed cannon and a smart build, there's no timing window for Z to punish your third with speedlings. So that leaves slow zerglings. And slow zerglings are awful. So I'd say that with good scouting, a smart build and a well-placed cannon, you're certainly not "gambling" that they won't pressure you with lings. You have the tools in your belt to defend.
I'm not going to argue the point since I've never really experimented with it much, but what exactly are you using to defend? Even if you constantly produce units from your initial gate you only have a smattering of units before warpgate finishes, and except for maybe entombed will not have any kind of wall-off at your 3rd. Also to hit +1 weapons and WG by 7:30 out of a FFE is already pretty aggressive on the chronos as is. You should also consider what the opportunity cost of 5 chronos on wg tech is compared to using those on probes. WG tech finishes out of a gate-nexus-core build @ 7:20 with no chronos at all. I haven't crunched the numbers but I'm pretty sure a gate-nexus-core build would come out ahead eco-wise compared to a FFE in that scenario (there was a thread calculating the gain from chronos on Probes but I forgot the title, anybody have a link?).
Zerg is pretty much guaranteed to spot the 3rd the instant you put it down due to overlords, so if they react by making a round of lings it seems to me they can at least cause a cancel. I think you could probably take your 3rd slightly before warpgate tech completes simply due to zergling build + travel time, as long as you can get in 1 warp-in round before units are streaming in your base, but not significantly so.
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Gate-nexus-core-forge is better than forge-nexus-gate-core if you can get away with it without probe cuts. I don't think we should get too involved in the merits of gate-nexus openings with delayed gas. I'm not convinced they're all that safe, but there's a ton of iterations that you can do, and the discussion would be better in another thread. The openings put you in more or less the same spot as FFE by 8:00, so a detailed analysis of gate-nexus openings wouldn't be terribly relevant to the issue of the 12 minute minute speed roach timing.
As for defending my proposed build with a 3 gates into a 6:45 third base, check out the timings in Ranged replay where Z tried to punish the third with speedlings. WG tech off of FFE finishes in time to deal with speedlings off of a 3 hatch before gas opening.
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I've got this vision of an old White-Ra build where he used to produce equally off Stargate, Robo and 3 gates off 2 bases before taking a 3rd.
Would this possibly hold the roach push if you were building Voids, Immortals/Colossus and Sentry/Zealots. Any time you build more than 3 or 4 voids it forces the Zerg to build Hydra, Infestor, Corruptor or a mix of each.... which would screw with the roach timing and/or the broodlord follow up. Any time your trading voids for corruptors is a win in my books as focus fire Stalker support usually tilts the battle in the toss's favour.
Unproven... but just a thought. I know my Phoenix opening usually forces some sort of Hydra reaction. I find the Roach/Hydra mix a lot easier to deal with while trying to defend a third than the pure roach which hits earlier.
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Hello people.
This will be my first post into the TL forums hurray!
I am a mid/high master Zerg (850+) and i want to give you some of my insights here.
first of all, the staphano roach spam is something i really like to do on most maps on my own, because it is possibly the best and only viable option a zerg has against a FFE besides going a two base all-in.
Zerg units are the weakest and most costineficcent units in the game (untill you reach infestor, broolords), so by all meanings... from SC1 to BW to SC2 Zerg HAS TO HAVE more bases/econ then the other races in order to stand a chance.
A long 2base vs 2base game and the Zerg player has no chance of winning against a good toss/terran player.
So if the Protoss player goes into a FFE we as zerg have to get either a 3rd base quickly, or we have to all-in bust the FFE because otherwise our weakish units will be overwhelmed.
so i guees everybody agrees, that a zerg on even bases with terran/toss has literaly no chance of winning when this goes on for a longer period of time. (try 1base vs 1base as a zerg, thats a lot of fun!)
so taking a rather quick 3rd seemes to be the only choise zerg has. so i do it most of the times as well.
when i try to use the roach spam style, there are some things that i feel are very powerfull against it and some not.
the most powerfull and hardest to hold on to is a 6/7 gate +2 blink stalker timing which hits around 10-11 min mark, so right into the time where i start spamming like crazy. if i didnt scout this build and dont cut drones, i die straight to a blink stalker army. the power of the blink stalkers is easy to see. as long as you keep your blink stalkers alive in the first engagement and kill a little here and there, your army snowballs very quickly to a blink stalker army which is just unbeatable vs roaches. so this blink stalker timing is really something! its hard to hold even IF you scout it and the toss has proper micro, and if you dont scout it you die.
the ability of blink also allows you to retreat once you did dmg and even take a third behind it, because its hard for the zerg to go outside with roaches against those nasty blink stalkers.
with those you have to be active as P because in the defense with no point to blink back to, the stalkers obviously die to roaches, but in the open field... damn i hate those 
2nd and also very nice strat is to go for a quick voidray, followed by a few penix.
this allows you to gain a little map controll, scouts very nicely everything zerg is up to and kills a queen here and some droines there. it forces the zerg to build more queens early on and or spores which all hurts his timing and eco. (i can tell you if i have to build 2-3 extra queens after seeing first voidray this cost sooo much time and i wont be able to go to 200 supply at all by 12 min mark) so this 1 stargate VR+some penix can really be a pain in the ass for a zerg player. true it allows me to build some more drones, but not too many because the stargate opening can also be followed up by 7 gate all in OR a third base. This strat doesnt win straight up the game, but it hruts the zerg timings alot, some eco dies and you get 100% scouting information + some map control. though you need 4 gases quickly to build some sentrys , otherwise i dont give a fuck about your VR and spamm into your natural.
3rd
the Immo sentry all in.
dotn scout it, and let it get to your base... your brown bread as zerg. you have to fight this army while it moves to deny sentry energy. if you fail one single fight your dead. so this all in is also strong, but a little bit more risky then the blink stalker play, because there is no way you can turn around and run with sentrys / immos.
obviously there are more strats like the early +1 zealot pressure (which is easy to deal with i feel) or some quick 3rd plays (which i love , i just take a 4rd while teching to mutas, try to defend 3 bases as P without blink/stalker penix.) but those 3 seemed to me as the hardest to deal with as zerg.
Blink stalker is somehow all-inish, but not 100% and those stalkers are real monsters when you are able to blink micro
Immo-sentry is 100% all in but its powerfull and you have to take it into your arsenal as well.
VR+Penix is the easiest and best way to do light pressure while beeing able to get a full scouting, and a properly "fast" third behind it.
true the roach spam IS hard to deal with, but trying to hold a 2base allin is also NOT as easy as it is read in here.
some think its just easy you go 3 hatches roach spamm gg. its acutally not!
if you take a look at the results in GSL (which i feel is THE ONLY PLACE where we could see if something is imba because its only imba if the BEST players cant beat it.) ZERG is the smallest force since... GSL begann? there is no Imba in the zvp machtup, although i agree, that in the metagame right now, it looks easier to execute a roach spam than to counter a roach spam. but seriously buffing stalkers?????
why do you think the stalker is the most used protoss unit in the game? because it is a great unit !
sure it is not as cost efficient as a marauder or a roach head on, BUT it has the ability to fucking blink
this is propably the best skill in the game, it makes the stalker sooooo effective when fighting roaches/rines/lings/mutas and so on.
if you buff the stalker, it will end in 7 gate blink stalker all in 100% of the games
im not telling its easy to hold / beat stephano roach spam with FFE but its far away from auto win for the zerg.
and plz dont try to find arguments with "but DRG beats everyone)", because that is basically because right now he is one of the best players in the world, not because the roach style is unbeatable.
nough said from a zerg. now you can stomp on me
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+ Show Spoiler +On March 27 2012 16:21 grummel wrote:Hello people. This will be my first post into the TL forums hurray! I am a mid/high master Zerg (850+) and i want to give you some of my insights here. first of all, the staphano roach spam is something i really like to do on most maps on my own, because it is possibly the best and only viable option a zerg has against a FFE besides going a two base all-in. Zerg units are the weakest and most costineficcent units in the game (untill you reach infestor, broolords), so by all meanings... from SC1 to BW to SC2 Zerg HAS TO HAVE more bases/econ then the other races in order to stand a chance. A long 2base vs 2base game and the Zerg player has no chance of winning against a good toss/terran player. So if the Protoss player goes into a FFE we as zerg have to get either a 3rd base quickly, or we have to all-in bust the FFE because otherwise our weakish units will be overwhelmed. so i guees everybody agrees, that a zerg on even bases with terran/toss has literaly no chance of winning when this goes on for a longer period of time. (try 1base vs 1base as a zerg, thats a lot of fun!) so taking a rather quick 3rd seemes to be the only choise zerg has. so i do it most of the times as well. when i try to use the roach spam style, there are some things that i feel are very powerfull against it and some not. the most powerfull and hardest to hold on to is a 6/7 gate +2 blink stalker timing which hits around 10-11 min mark, so right into the time where i start spamming like crazy. if i didnt scout this build and dont cut drones, i die straight to a blink stalker army. the power of the blink stalkers is easy to see. as long as you keep your blink stalkers alive in the first engagement and kill a little here and there, your army snowballs very quickly to a blink stalker army which is just unbeatable vs roaches. so this blink stalker timing is really something! its hard to hold even IF you scout it and the toss has proper micro, and if you dont scout it you die. the ability of blink also allows you to retreat once you did dmg and even take a third behind it, because its hard for the zerg to go outside with roaches against those nasty blink stalkers. with those you have to be active as P because in the defense with no point to blink back to, the stalkers obviously die to roaches, but in the open field... damn i hate those 2nd and also very nice strat is to go for a quick voidray, followed by a few penix. this allows you to gain a little map controll, scouts very nicely everything zerg is up to and kills a queen here and some droines there. it forces the zerg to build more queens early on and or spores which all hurts his timing and eco. (i can tell you if i have to build 2-3 extra queens after seeing first voidray this cost sooo much time and i wont be able to go to 200 supply at all by 12 min mark) so this 1 stargate VR+some penix can really be a pain in the ass for a zerg player. true it allows me to build some more drones, but not too many because the stargate opening can also be followed up by 7 gate all in OR a third base. This strat doesnt win straight up the game, but it hruts the zerg timings alot, some eco dies and you get 100% scouting information + some map control. though you need 4 gases quickly to build some sentrys , otherwise i dont give a fuck about your VR and spamm into your natural. 3rd the Immo sentry all in. dotn scout it, and let it get to your base... your brown bread as zerg. you have to fight this army while it moves to deny sentry energy. if you fail one single fight your dead. so this all in is also strong, but a little bit more risky then the blink stalker play, because there is no way you can turn around and run with sentrys / immos. obviously there are more strats like the early +1 zealot pressure (which is easy to deal with i feel) or some quick 3rd plays (which i love , i just take a 4rd while teching to mutas, try to defend 3 bases as P without blink/stalker penix.) but those 3 seemed to me as the hardest to deal with as zerg. Blink stalker is somehow all-inish, but not 100% and those stalkers are real monsters when you are able to blink micro Immo-sentry is 100% all in but its powerfull and you have to take it into your arsenal as well. VR+Penix is the easiest and best way to do light pressure while beeing able to get a full scouting, and a properly "fast" third behind it. true the roach spam IS hard to deal with, but trying to hold a 2base allin is also NOT as easy as it is read in here. some think its just easy you go 3 hatches roach spamm gg. its acutally not! if you take a look at the results in GSL (which i feel is THE ONLY PLACE where we could see if something is imba because its only imba if the BEST players cant beat it.) ZERG is the smallest force since... GSL begann? there is no Imba in the zvp machtup, although i agree, that in the metagame right now, it looks easier to execute a roach spam than to counter a roach spam. but seriously buffing stalkers????? why do you think the stalker is the most used protoss unit in the game? because it is a great unit ! sure it is not as cost efficient as a marauder or a roach head on, BUT it has the ability to fucking blink this is propably the best skill in the game, it makes the stalker sooooo effective when fighting roaches/rines/lings/mutas and so on. if you buff the stalker, it will end in 7 gate blink stalker all in 100% of the games im not telling its easy to hold / beat stephano roach spam with FFE but its far away from auto win for the zerg. and plz dont try to find arguments with "but DRG beats everyone)", because that is basically because right now he is one of the best players in the world, not because the roach style is unbeatable. nough said from a zerg. now you can stomp on me
This looks to me like little more than a thinly veiled balance whine, or at best a very uninformed post.
+2 7 gate blink allin is already used pretty standard as an allin and while it's hard to hold most good players have already figured out how to do so and if it fails to do pretty significant damage(read: snipe the third base/kill a large chunk of zerg's army) you're usually dead.
One stargate void or void/phoenix play is also fairly standard and used quite a bit after a FFE, it's good for map control and pressure but it dosen't make this timing any less effective. Immortal/sentry allin is just that; an allin. Is that really your suggestion for dealing with this, protoss should just allin zerg every game? I'm not even going to bother with adressing points like + Show Spoiler +so by all meanings... from SC1 to BW to SC2 Zerg HAS TO HAVE more bases/econ then the other races in order to stand a chance.
More on topic: This is just theorycrafting as I've yet to test how well it works myself but what about things like trying for a very fast warp prism and dt shrine to try and snipe the lair and roach warren a couple minutes before this timing hits? I seem to remember a pro doing something similar in a lot of tournies a couple months ago(Sase maybe?)
Besides that, the only way I can really see that sorta deals with this is trying to snipe zerg's third repeatedly with 6-8 gates or a smilar allin. At least, that's what I've been resorting to lately.
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LoL, why is thie a balance whine if i say zerg has to have more bases then the other race?
explain why this is balance whine? this is just a fact you see in all games, from SC1 to SC2.
and i dont mean it as balance whine because zerg is allways ABLE to get more bases as its opponent, and thats good beacause he has to.
did i say at any point, that zerg is underpowered? not at all, i just posted what i feel is strong against the roach spam and why so.
i dont tell you should allways go allin, and the voidray build is far away from that. You saw genius use it against drg in the finals and it works out into transitioning into a 3rd quiet ok.
sure it delays the zerg timing. even killing 2-3 overlorads effect the zerg timing because getting supply blocked causes a BIG loss of time. (cant bui,ld drones in that time, spend larva on overloards etc.)
building spores early on is like killing eco , killing a queen or two helps out extremly, not only will it cost me 150 to build a new one, it also lets me miss a larva inject / creep tumor.
true those strats are all standard and you know why? because they usually work good
when you use a DT shrine, you have to be sure to build it where it doesnt get spottet, so somewhere out on the map or not?
guess if zerg scouts the DT shrine, (we allways fly into main and natural) + robotics, its just easy to guess what will come, and because the evo should be there anyways it will only take like 20-30 sek to react with spores.
if unscoutet it can be brutal if i fly into your main and see a robo bay, but a dt shrine is somewhere hidden on the map, then it might kill me instantly :D
but truely im suprised you found a balance whine in my post, because i never ever said anywhere that P is imba vs ZERG, i just pointed out that zerg cant be IMBA because there have allways been only a few zerg in code S (like this season).
and i really dont think zerg is underpowered at all (finally because a ZERG won code S so it cant be underpowered)
if it sounds like imbawhine i appologize.
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I see a proposed build was to go up to 4 gate robo and take a fast 3rd, skipping observer in favor of immortal production. Could there be any merit to taking it up a notch, and going 2-3 gate double robo, or just double robo and add on gates but don't necessarily use them unless you have to, and just going hardcore plus 1 immortals? Or is the scouting timing on hallucination just not fast enough to confirm no 2 base muta in time for this to be a viable option?
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