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Please have some semblance of an idea of what you're talking about. |
United States8476 Posts
On March 28 2012 18:25 Nyast wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 11:52 Supah wrote:
In that Ret vs. Sase game, we can all pretty much agree that Ret threw the game rather than Sase playing brilliantly, right? Provided we can even safely take a "very" early third, what's the next step? Zerg notices it, alters to not Roach spam and then instead techs/expands/drones/spines up. Does anyone have experience with that style of reaction? Yesterday I played 3-4 games versus a Zerg friend who's master 1000, and we tested this style of fast third vs fast hive. I'm now pretty convinced there's no solid way to punish Zerg for doing that. He got his first brood lords morphing around 14', which is 30s earlier than I had mentionned. Behind a huge wall of spines, mass lings and infestors. The timing to push/punish the Zerg is around 11'. At 11'30 he has his spines walls, mass lings and 10+ infestors ready. But here's the problem: before 11'30, your army is tiny  There's no way you can attack after 11'30 and trade efficiently without splash damage. And guess what, using that fast third, you can't get colossi that fast..
Yea, but there's no way to reliably punish superfast infestor broodlord with any build that takes a relatively fast third on most maps. Only thing I can think of is like robo opening into super fast colossi into 3rd into cut probes into push in close position emtombed =O.
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On March 28 2012 18:38 NrGmonk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 18:25 Nyast wrote:On March 28 2012 11:52 Supah wrote:
In that Ret vs. Sase game, we can all pretty much agree that Ret threw the game rather than Sase playing brilliantly, right? Provided we can even safely take a "very" early third, what's the next step? Zerg notices it, alters to not Roach spam and then instead techs/expands/drones/spines up. Does anyone have experience with that style of reaction? Yesterday I played 3-4 games versus a Zerg friend who's master 1000, and we tested this style of fast third vs fast hive. I'm now pretty convinced there's no solid way to punish Zerg for doing that. He got his first brood lords morphing around 14', which is 30s earlier than I had mentionned. Behind a huge wall of spines, mass lings and infestors. The timing to push/punish the Zerg is around 11'. At 11'30 he has his spines walls, mass lings and 10+ infestors ready. But here's the problem: before 11'30, your army is tiny There's no way you can attack after 11'30 and trade efficiently without splash damage. And guess what, using that fast third, you can't get colossi that fast.. Yea, but there's no way to reliably punish superfast infestor broodlord with any build that takes a relatively fast third on most maps. Only thing I can think of is like robo opening into super fast colossi into 3rd into cut probes into push in close position emtombed =O.
You could just get a quick mothership though. It takes a while for Z to push with broods and you can get that mothership out on time if you for it straight after getting some colo to be safe from roach stuff.
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United States8476 Posts
On March 28 2012 19:02 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 18:38 NrGmonk wrote:On March 28 2012 18:25 Nyast wrote:On March 28 2012 11:52 Supah wrote:
In that Ret vs. Sase game, we can all pretty much agree that Ret threw the game rather than Sase playing brilliantly, right? Provided we can even safely take a "very" early third, what's the next step? Zerg notices it, alters to not Roach spam and then instead techs/expands/drones/spines up. Does anyone have experience with that style of reaction? Yesterday I played 3-4 games versus a Zerg friend who's master 1000, and we tested this style of fast third vs fast hive. I'm now pretty convinced there's no solid way to punish Zerg for doing that. He got his first brood lords morphing around 14', which is 30s earlier than I had mentionned. Behind a huge wall of spines, mass lings and infestors. The timing to push/punish the Zerg is around 11'. At 11'30 he has his spines walls, mass lings and 10+ infestors ready. But here's the problem: before 11'30, your army is tiny There's no way you can attack after 11'30 and trade efficiently without splash damage. And guess what, using that fast third, you can't get colossi that fast.. Yea, but there's no way to reliably punish superfast infestor broodlord with any build that takes a relatively fast third on most maps. Only thing I can think of is like robo opening into super fast colossi into 3rd into cut probes into push in close position emtombed =O. You could just get a quick mothership though. It takes a while for Z to push with broods and you can get that mothership out on time if you for it straight after getting some colo to be safe from roach stuff.
Never said you couldn't do that
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Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam.
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Just push early, MC style, stephano doesn't seem safe at all (drg or ret are safer) he often stays with 4 lings at 9 min and don't scout so much (no ov sac, and only 4 lings as I said)
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On March 28 2012 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam.
I have very little actual late game knowledge PvZ (as I try to end it before then) so could you help me out and tell me what are some of the rough benchmarks or timings with which I should get a Mothership?
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Italy12246 Posts
On March 29 2012 02:22 Mikelius wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam. I have very little actual late game knowledge PvZ (as I try to end it before then) so could you help me out and tell me what are some of the rough benchmarks or timings with which I should get a Mothership?
Start teching towards it when you see his hive start. If you have no clue at all, i think after your third is saturated and you are about to take your 4th is a reasonable time (don't quote me on that).
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On March 29 2012 02:22 Mikelius wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam. I have very little actual late game knowledge PvZ (as I try to end it before then) so could you help me out and tell me what are some of the rough benchmarks or timings with which I should get a Mothership?
I also have a little bit of trouble in the PvZ late game, even when I get mothership/carrier/archon. I'm just not quite sure how to micro the army in battle. Any pointers?
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Canada13389 Posts
On March 29 2012 02:24 Teoita wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 02:22 Mikelius wrote:On March 28 2012 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam. I have very little actual late game knowledge PvZ (as I try to end it before then) so could you help me out and tell me what are some of the rough benchmarks or timings with which I should get a Mothership? Start teching towards it when you see his hive start. If you have no clue at all, i think after your third is saturated and you are about to take your 4th is a reasonable time (don't quote me on that).
If you watch MC play his games, if the opponent goes fast 3 hatch he gets the fleet beacon around the 15 minute mark assuming he took his third at about 12 minutes or sooner. He starts a mothership when he gets close to max but has the tech and scouts for hive and makes mothership when a hive is being researched. I've seen it in a few games in the past and is pretty cool. Hero the other day vs curious got a fleet beacon after taking his third too and used it since it was there to get anion pulse for the pheonixes.
Note these are the games he doesnt 7 gate it. I have seen it on his stream a little while back and more recently in MLG he played one game like that and in another league I also saw something similar maybe a month ago now? Might have been GSL not sure off the top of my head
More on topic with regards to roach spam:
I am not sure why some people are saying you shouldn't pressure at all with zealots with the +1 zealot 4 gate. I feel that if you do some sort of aggression or pressure you are at the very lease preventing some drones. Sure they can drop tons of drones after the aggression or pressure ends but on the flip side they can make those drones during the time there is no aggression as well.
Perhaps a +1 4 gate zealot is good if you see no roaches so you can prepare to do the attack, but if you see a lot of roaches and decide not to follow through by not warping in a lot of zealots at the forward pylon. Then continue with the blink stalker expand that Ranged is proposing. I tried it only two or three times now and I've found it helps a lot. The one time the opponent went for a lot of hydras I was in trouble but the roaches and mainly roaches with a few hydras was fine for me and I handled it well with blink.
On March 29 2012 04:02 garsh0p wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2012 02:22 Mikelius wrote:On March 28 2012 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Yeah, I think a lot of P's are of the mindset that you need to kill Z before broodlords. A quick third sets P up very well for lategame--just take a fourth, do some cannon spamming and build a mothership and some archons. Do a little counter-attacking if you need to buy time. Broodlords are way easier to beat than mid-game roach spam. I have very little actual late game knowledge PvZ (as I try to end it before then) so could you help me out and tell me what are some of the rough benchmarks or timings with which I should get a Mothership? I also have a little bit of trouble in the PvZ late game, even when I get mothership/carrier/archon. I'm just not quite sure how to micro the army in battle. Any pointers?
You need to engage somewhere that has ground and not a large air space. For example, on entombed if the broodlords are in the empty air space you should try not to engage there unless you have an air force and 2 vortexes on the mothership.
The reason being that the goal is to vortex the broodlords when they stack and then move the archons into the vortex while trying to kill any infestors you can. If you have carriers, you need to make sure the carriers are far away from the vortex because otherwise the interceptors will get sucked in and do nothing during the duration of the vortex. In this sense the micro should involve poking at the Zerg position and keeping vision of the broodlords. If you poke and back off without getting fungalled then you can be patient. The moment the broodlords move to a new position they will begin to stack and when you see them stacking you drop a vortex immediately. Try to move the archons in from the side to get in the vortex so while you prepare to vortex, seperate the archons from your main army and move them to the side so that they can hop in the vortex easily without being blocked by your own units.
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Lategame PvZ:
If Z gives you all the time you need, you want to be working towards a composition of a mothership, about 5 carriers, 3-5 void rays, 4 templar (more if less than max energy--need enough energy to feedback infestors and have a few storms left for corruptors) and the rest of your supply in archons and probes.
The carriers are there to provide ranged AA to focus down broodlords from safety and everything else in the composition is basically to support your carriers. Vortex+storms+archons keeps corruptors at bay in an open field, and it's even easier with cannon cover.
I'd say that the top priority in a battle is feedbacking infestors followed by getting a good vortex. Try to focus your carriers and voids on broodlords and your archons on corruptors.
How to get there:
You want to start a fleet beacon when Z starts hive. You really want to have a stargate before they start hive, so have that in mind if you think the game will go late. You can fight broodlord-infestor with just a mothership and your normal ground army, but think of that as an emergency option. It's usually better to posture around the map and counter-attack to buy time until you have a strong air composition. It's better to sacrifice a base than to engage with an army that won't win.
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United States8476 Posts
On March 28 2012 12:52 TyrionSC2 wrote:
I wasn't talking about a gateway expand.
If you read any of the posts you'd see that I've been responding to this frequently.
I was talking about forge expand into chrono stalkers...
Referencing hero vs curious last night on dual sight.
But you can also make terrible posts like taht one too nice try.
Hero never did this vs curious on dual sight. He gateway expanded twice.
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Remember how people used to do the +1 zealot attack accompanied with voidrays? The one that hits a little later around 8:30-9 with 8 zealots and 2 vrs. What about doing something similar except with immortals? Obv the main plus of voidrays is that its easier to actually get them to zergs base because they're flying, but immortals are better units in general and it could lead to an interesting situation vs the standard roach counter.
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On March 30 2012 03:58 Drowsy wrote:
Remember how people used to do the +1 zealot attack accompanied with voidrays? The one that hits a little later around 8:30-9 with 8 zealots and 2 vrs. What about doing something similar except with immortals? Obv the main plus of voidrays is that its easier to actually get them to zergs base because they're flying, but immortals are better units in general and it could lead to an interesting situation vs the standard roach counter.
I've done a LITTLE bit of experimenting with that, and... well, Immortals are scary. Going for the Immortals has one huge weakness, though: you can't split up your army. The real bonus to Void Rays is the ability to warp Zealots into the Zerg main and to completely take over if you manage to snipe all the Spores and Queens in an area. However, if anything goes wrong with the Immortal push, you're going to suddenly lose everything and the game will pretty much be over. I forget the exact timings, but I remember being able to work in some Sentries to the build, which obviously helps a lot. The main thing is to keep your army together and to keep your Immortals alive. Maybe mixing in a Warp Prism would improve the build?
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WP would give you that vision, no? And mean that you don't need a proxy pylon, vulnerable to lings, for warp-ins.
The +1 would benefit the Immortals too (+22/+55). I don't know the timings though of 2 Immortals and WP compared to 2 Void Rays. You only have so many chronoboosts to spend at that point in the game between Nexus, Core, Forge, Robo Bay etc.
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On March 30 2012 04:12 aZealot wrote:
WP would give you that vision, no? And mean that you don't need a proxy pylon, vulnerable to lings, for warp-ins.
The +1 would benefit the Immortals too (+22/+55). I don't know the timings though of 2 Immortals and WP compared to 2 Void Rays. You only have so many chronoboosts to spend at that point in the game between Nexus, Core, Forge, Robo Bay etc.
I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but basically you're hitting around 8:45 with WP/immo/zealot +1.
+1 zealot voidray can hit as early as 8:00-8:10 if done perfectly, with 5-6 zealots and 1 VR.
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I'm not sure if it has been posted, but I just saw a VoD from MLG on Tal'Darim Altar where JYP beat DRG's Roach push.
http://sc2casts.com/cast7911-JYP-vs-Dongraegu-Best-of-3-MLG-Winter-Championship-Pool-play#
It's Game 2
He opened with a fast +1 and 4gate zealot pressure off of a FFE. The zealot pressure did minimal damage; though JYP followed up with a fast TC (he got it while the 3 extra gates for the zealot pressure were building), with fast blink and +2 (with +3 directly after attack, he then added his third and 4 more gates, along with a robo (he also got hallu a bit earlier for scouting). The roach attack arrived at ~12:40 with DRG at max and JYP at ~120 supply; DRG was overwhelmed by a Blink stalker sentry force, but still managed to snipe the third base. After JYP cleaned up the remaining forces, he counter pushes with his blink stalkers, and took the game.
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On March 28 2012 18:25 Nyast wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2012 11:52 Supah wrote:
In that Ret vs. Sase game, we can all pretty much agree that Ret threw the game rather than Sase playing brilliantly, right? Provided we can even safely take a "very" early third, what's the next step? Zerg notices it, alters to not Roach spam and then instead techs/expands/drones/spines up. Does anyone have experience with that style of reaction? Yesterday I played 3-4 games versus a Zerg friend who's master 1000, and we tested this style of fast third vs fast hive. I'm now pretty convinced there's no solid way to punish Zerg for doing that. He got his first brood lords morphing around 14', which is 30s earlier than I had mentionned. Behind a huge wall of spines, mass lings and infestors. The timing to push/punish the Zerg is around 11'. At 11'30 he has his spines walls, mass lings and 10+ infestors ready. But here's the problem: before 11'30, your army is tiny There's no way you can attack after 11'30 and trade efficiently without splash damage. And guess what, using that fast third, you can't get colossi that fast..
I'd like to see more high level exploration of warp prism dts as a response to a Z taking a fourth and teching straight to Blords. I am referring to fast fourths from Z in response to a fast third from P.
At diamond-level, I always take fast thirds and I have success with 2 prisms, or a proxy pylon and a prism, and dts as a response to fast fourth/quick hive tech. I can hold a third, harass the 4th and snipe tech buildings with dts in the main. I don't expect to snipe the morphing hive, but I sometimes do.
During this dt harass, I take a fourth and cannon up while teching to Mothership/archon.
People have been throwing around the numbers for Z straight-teching to blords off of 4 bases as though P has no options to slow this down. I find that fast teching Zerg are often horribly underprepared for dealing with harassment.
Furthermore, I'll echo KCDC and Monk in noting that blords just aren't nearly as scary when I have three saturated bases by 13 minutes. Those first blords are so immobile and by the time they are morphing, toss economy is so strong that you can afford to lose units by harassing: force the Z to move his ground army away from the broods to deal with harass and whittle down the roach/ling.
I feel that the immobility of blords is exacerbated when toss has a fast third and fourth as I can afford to be active with my army, forcing him to be defensive with his blords.
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On March 30 2012 17:51 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote:I'm not sure if it has been posted, but I just saw a VoD from MLG on Tal'Darim Altar where JYP beat DRG's Roach push. http://sc2casts.com/cast7911-JYP-vs-Dongraegu-Best-of-3-MLG-Winter-Championship-Pool-play#It's Game 2 He opened with a fast +1 and 4gate zealot pressure off of a FFE. The zealot pressure did minimal damage; though JYP followed up with a fast TC (he got it while the 3 extra gates for the zealot pressure were building), with fast blink and +2 (with +3 directly after attack, he then added his third and 4 more gates, along with a robo (he also got hallu a bit earlier for scouting). The roach attack arrived at ~12:40 with DRG at max and JYP at ~120 supply; DRG was overwhelmed by a Blink stalker sentry force, but still managed to snipe the third base. After JYP cleaned up the remaining forces, he counter pushes with his blink stalkers, and took the game.
this would never have worked if drg didn't waste the rest of his army trying to get into the natural.
jyp barely managed to defend and do a counter allin, was also his only option.
had drg just saved 10-20 supply of his attack force he would have easily crushed jyp
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This is kind of obvious, but building placement seems to benefit AND hurt you vs this specific style. Roaches have range now, they can hit your buildings and kill them without taking any kind of significant damage. The key here seems to be stopping the first push. If the first push does damage, you're basically dead. If you can kill at least half of the first push without losing any sentries or immortals you'll be in good shape.
So it is then obvious that you don't want to defend behind your wall of buildings. You have +1 zealots at this timing, zerglings aren't exactly the enemy here, as their cost effectiveness is much less than the +1 speed roaches. On a map like daybreak, you'll need to engage at the natural ramp. Even if there isn't a ramp, you need to engage outside of your wall, because your cyber core, forge, and gateway can and will get sniped if you choose to engage behind your wall. This might sound ridiculous, but no one has tried it. You won't get surrounded, you can always retreat with your back against a wall which, ideally, the zerg doesn't like (unless he is trading extremely favorably). You're getting hammered from the front anyway, try to defend it from a different position.
TL DR - Positioning on engaging the first push at your natural ramp, or anywhere not behind your own wall because roaches can snipe your early tech (cyber core, forge, gateway).
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On March 26 2012 07:22 fastr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2012 07:15 NrGmonk wrote:On March 26 2012 07:03 fastr wrote:On March 26 2012 06:51 Allred wrote:On March 26 2012 06:39 fastr wrote:On March 26 2012 05:18 NrGmonk wrote:On March 26 2012 04:51 fastr wrote:
Just throwing that outthere without too much thinking in it, but have somebody tried something like ffe into double robo, and taking the third around 10:30 with like 5 immortals 5 sentry and a few cannons (only assuming the composition, probably need to be tested)?
It is now pretty common to see fast double robo in pvp, why not trying it in pvz? I feel that with 5+ immortals and good forcefields, even a maxed roach army shouldnt causes too much trouble. Just beware of the mutas switch as your stalker count will be low, but with 2 robos you should have enough observers to see it coming.
Then muta or ling roach infestor kills you. All the units composition you gave relies on t2 tech (muta/infestor/hydra). With a fast double robo and multiple observers, I fail to see how it is possible to not scout a fast spire or infestation pit, which I think are the only 2 options that would hard-counter this build. If you see a spire, just stop immortals production, get some stalker and react like you would normally do. Infestor lings timing might be harder to defend, but imo switching into zealot/sentry should enable you to survive. Concerning hydralisk, I can't see how it would causes an issue, as immortals + ff ravages roach/hydra off creep. I might be wrong but I think that protoss has still unexploited options to play against this stephano style. Genius stargate play seems pretty strong, 2 robos should be at least tested, as i have never seen it in a pro game. i am pretty sure if you go double robo the mutas will hit before you will have enough time to respond Spire : 120 ingame seconds Mutalisk : 33 ingame seconds Time for mutas to come into your base : at least 30 ingame seconds Again, 2 robo, at least 2 observers, easy scouting. Are you sure that in 3 minutes you can't warp 10 stalker and make 2 cannons to defend against 8 mutalisks? Just saying. edit: on 2 bases, i'm pretty sure you can afford 2 robos and 3 gates for immortals + sentry/stalker production. But like I said, it needs some testing. You will just straight up die to mutas if your infrastructure is only 3 gates when mutas show up. You'll also have a close to impossible time trying to defend 3 bases with no twilight, a smaller number of gates, and lots of immortals. 2 blind robos is just too much of an investment just to try to blind counter one particular strategy. Yes indeed, you won't be able to defend 3 bases with 3 gates against mutas. But if the zerg is going mutalisks, I think you can stall on 2 bases for a few minutes while teching to HT. You will be behind, but not out of the game. I'm not saying 2 robos should be standard, but if 80% of zerg on ladder are doing the stephano build which I think is the case, why not trying to take advantage of it?
Hi! So I was (got demoted recently) a low master Zerg player, and I love to play stephano style vs FFE protoss.
I like the idea of super heavy immortal production simply because the build relies on heavily upgraded masses of roaches pretty early. Good stuff.
But here is the thing, If im playing a stephano style game vs protoss FFE and I notice a lot of immortals early, or scout the double robo, I'm not going to mass mutas because the low gateway count, and high robo investment. I'm going to just not make roaches and mass a gross amount of speedlings + throw down a bane nest asap.
Colossi are an option, but not if you want a well timed 3rd base, and not if you wanna pressure the Zerg player. Simply throwing down a macro hatch and getting +1 melee started is going to put me into a relatively good position as your gas isn't going into Sentries or Templar tech, it's going into immortals which blow chunks vs mass slings w/ banes. With minimal FF sling/bling is an extremely effective unit comp vs toss, and the mobility advantage it gives you makes for denying a 3rd base that much easier.
Should Protoss invest further into tech (robo support bay) before being able to safely secure a 3rd, Zerg has that much more time to take another base and throw down a spire, as robo tech typically demands anyway.
tl;dr
double robo tech on 2 bases, especially immortal, is pretty easy to counter by throwing down a bane nest + macro hatch. This isn't a huge deviation from the go-to stephano style roach build. Less sentries = more bane hits landing on an already small gateway army.
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EPT
