On April 09 2012 09:07 GoldenH wrote: It simply isn't good advice for protoss.
- not being able to lift off is huge, as it means roaches and lings can always trade for value directly against your economy. - if you are delaying their natural expo properly, they will have been forced to build enough lings out to scout the entire map + prevent any scouting on your part until you have a flying scout. (so no scouting until around 9 minutes) - gateways are in fact good for sim city but only if you build extra gateways. This is great for zealot+archon builds but terrible for blink stalker builds. Zealot Stalker won't hold, though. You need some kind of ranged DPS behind the wall, or you're just delaying the inevitable (and protoss does not have enough DPS without committing to losing the air war). Furthermore, walls hurt you more than your opponent. They're pretty much only good for making sure that lings don't get in your main, your forcefields ought to be handling everything else. - even sim citied cannons only trade equally for cost with roaches. so if you somehow have enough cannons to hold off the roach, the Zerg should just expand more. - you cannot get your third up at the same time as a zerg unless they're completely failing at scouting. Zerg can allow protoss to get a third, if they feel they can still win. But they can (and should) deny it. Protoss does not have this option: There is no way to deny the zerg their third. - Sentries only are any good at chokes. If you try to wall off in the middle of the map, the zerg just runs away and you have to go around the long way to his base. And sentries do not help once the zerg has closed with you. Worse, when you approach his base, there will be creep there, allowing the zerg to target fire and kill your sentires with ease. And once the sentires are down, three queens will handle any VRs, and roach+ling utterly destroys immortal+zealot. Muta-ling beats both options, and if you somehow have archons, it's easy to spread the Mutas enough to take them or pick them off with roaches or pick off any immortals+zealots on the other side of the archons. And you better pray there are no infestors around. So no, there's no unit composition that will work. You can at best be equal, and usually are much worse. - While you do need to split your army, you absolutely MUST NOT split them equally. You need to hold your third with exclusively sentries + anti-air + simcity (though you don't want to let any units up the ramp if you can help it). Your main you will keep your immortals and the rest of your anti-air. This is because of the way protoss armies work, in large numbers. You have the hammer in your base, and the rock at your third: BUT, most maps won't allow this to work, and it is difficult enough to try and micro zealot+archon+immortal against ling/roach without trying to do it in two separate groups.
Why are your posts always so nonsensical? I would normally respond, but none of your points make any sense.
On April 08 2012 22:39 TechSc2 wrote:In TvZ marine tank is a safe go to build, why? marines handle lings/muta's well, Tanks handle banelings/infestors well. So why doesn't protoss get this type of build?
We do, it's called mass blink stalker + 3-6 colossus. The issue is to get them in the right ratio compared to what zerg can churn out in the same time. Secondly, the terran composition is gas light compared to protoss units, they are cheaper and more refresh-friendly. We do have a strong all-around build, but it is less accessible compared to the terran one.
EDIT: I think the strength of the terran ball is the effort that terran players put into keeping it alive, because it is much more fragile compared to the protoss ball. If protoss players put more effort into keeping our deathball alive, then I think zergs would have more problems than right now.
Until about 9 months ago, Terrans too were relying on 2 base timings to deal with zerg. As zergs began learning how to deal with all of the various and numerous timings, Terrans' success with those timings began to drop. However, eventually Terrans learned how to play "greedy" but safe macro builds that allow the Terran to keep up with econ. Two examples of these builds include:
This is the natural progression of a matchup. Once 1 base allins have been figured out, Terrans began transitioning into 2 base all-ins and 2+ base macro play. Onces 2 base allins are figured out, Terrans transitioned into more 3+ base play(I hesitate to call anything 3 base allin, but some game plans are allin off of 3 bases). These 3 cc macro builds are now the standard of how terrans play TvZ.
PvZ, on the other hand, has been lagging behind the TvZ metagame for quite a bit as 2 base all-ins are still by far the most common strategy. Now, I could blame this on a variety of things such as:
The inflexibility of FFE and how Zerg can get a free 3rd.
The fact that Protoss units work better in balls and thus are less effective non all-in pressure. For example, marines, hellions and medivacs work much better individually than sentires/stalkers/immortals.
Nexii can't float like CCs.
Now as Zerg began figuring out all the 2 base all-in timings (and as they figure out the most recent immortal/warp prism all-in), Protoss all-ins will begin to get gimmicky and coin flippy, either relying on your opponent not scouting/recognizing it or relying on him not knowing how to defend. The next logical step is 3 base macro builds.
The problem with current macro PvZ isn't that stalker/colossi can't handle Zerg as well as marine/tank. It's more that Protoss doesn't currently have well-accepted standard solid macro builds that allow them to get enough units to defend a Zerg max. The way Protoss are playing it now, they end up behind if they try to take it to the macro game every time. This is why I suggested faster thirds in order to play a more effective macro game in this thread.
I see the 3 base roach aggression in PvZ as I do the 2 base roach baneling semi all-in in TvZ. It is the main aggression 3 base macro builds have to deal with when they are in their weakest state. As I have said before, I think the keys to defending a 3 base build against this specific roach aggression include: scouting, sim city, cannons, forcefields, macro, unit composition, and army splitting. Anytime I see a Protoss fall to roach spam, he's always missing a few of these points.
Scouting: A lot of people, even pros, neglect this key point. The thing is pros can, because they can sometimes assume from their opponent what they're going to do. For example, in JYP's recent series versus Stephano, JYP just assumed Stephano would do the same build each game and he was right.
Sim city: When you can put gateways in sim city, you should; they work just as well, if not better than depots as blockers. In many cases, you can make gateways just to sim city even if you don't need them for protection as they can be more useful in defense than cannons or stalkers for the same price. Tails made this mistake of just putting gateways in his main vs Nestea at IPL and just lost when he had to waste all his forcefields to hold roaches at bay.
Cannons: Especially behind sim city, roaches cannot focus fire cannons well. Cannons+ sentries is also a more efficient use of minerals/gas for defense than stalkers
Forcefields: This is just something people have to work on. Every Protoss besides MC I've seen use more forcefields than they have to in a given situation. Protoss in general just need to get better with this basic Protoss skill. Sim city also lessens the amount of forcefields you have to use. You also can devote forcefields into trapping and killing roaches instead of blocking roaches out of your base.
Macro: Your opponent has an efficient macro build, that with decent macro, maxes between 11:30 and 12 minutes; you should have good macro build as well, backed by sufficient macro. A good macro build gets your 3rd as fast as possible so that when the roaches do hit, you have the economy to back up your defense. Spending all your money, especially under roach pressure, is just mechanics.
Unit composition: Sentries are the most important unit by far. Voidrays can work, especially when backed up by sim city/forcefieds to allow them to charge; modern protosses who rely on voidrays to hold off attacks usually get 2. Immortals also obviously work and are the best unit you can make vs roaches. Blink stalkers, on the other hand, aren't as helpful if you're relying on primarily sim city/forcefields/cannons to defend. This doesn't mean they're bad, as you usually need them to defend possible mutas if you didn't open stargate.
Army splitting: As you're defending 2 positions, you will need to split your army into 2 parts. There are a few things you can do to more efficiently and correctly place your troops. First is scouting. An obs/voidray/phoenix/hallucination in the area outside your base between your natural/3rd. Your sim city also allows you to delay the roaches, allowing you to reposition units.
Just a comment regarding tvz (know nothing about pvz): 9 months ago terrans were doing a lot of 3 base timings. Like 6-7 months ago they began learning to split map by abusing ghosts. Now a lot of terrans has kinda gone back to 3 base timings.
Terrans were never really doing a lot of 2 base timings. Beta/early release = 1 base, and then they kinda tried some unrefined play for a while which didn't work. Then they went on to 3 base timing attacks, which worked pretty decently.
On April 08 2012 22:39 TechSc2 wrote:In TvZ marine tank is a safe go to build, why? marines handle lings/muta's well, Tanks handle banelings/infestors well. So why doesn't protoss get this type of build?
We do, it's called mass blink stalker + 3-6 colossus. The issue is to get them in the right ratio compared to what zerg can churn out in the same time. Secondly, the terran composition is gas light compared to protoss units, they are cheaper and more refresh-friendly. We do have a strong all-around build, but it is less accessible compared to the terran one.
EDIT: I think the strength of the terran ball is the effort that terran players put into keeping it alive, because it is much more fragile compared to the protoss ball. If protoss players put more effort into keeping our deathball alive, then I think zergs would have more problems than right now.
Until about 9 months ago, Terrans too were relying on 2 base timings to deal with zerg. As zergs began learning how to deal with all of the various and numerous timings, Terrans' success with those timings began to drop. However, eventually Terrans learned how to play "greedy" but safe macro builds that allow the Terran to keep up with econ. Two examples of these builds include:
This is the natural progression of a matchup. Once 1 base allins have been figured out, Terrans began transitioning into 2 base all-ins and 2+ base macro play. Onces 2 base allins are figured out, Terrans transitioned into more 3+ base play(I hesitate to call anything 3 base allin, but some game plans are allin off of 3 bases). These 3 cc macro builds are now the standard of how terrans play TvZ.
PvZ, on the other hand, has been lagging behind the TvZ metagame for quite a bit as 2 base all-ins are still by far the most common strategy. Now, I could blame this on a variety of things such as:
The inflexibility of FFE and how Zerg can get a free 3rd.
The fact that Protoss units work better in balls and thus are less effective non all-in pressure. For example, marines, hellions and medivacs work much better individually than sentires/stalkers/immortals.
Nexii can't float like CCs.
Now as Zerg began figuring out all the 2 base all-in timings (and as they figure out the most recent immortal/warp prism all-in), Protoss all-ins will begin to get gimmicky and coin flippy, either relying on your opponent not scouting/recognizing it or relying on him not knowing how to defend. The next logical step is 3 base macro builds.
The problem with current macro PvZ isn't that stalker/colossi can't handle Zerg as well as marine/tank. It's more that Protoss doesn't currently have well-accepted standard solid macro builds that allow them to get enough units to defend a Zerg max. The way Protoss are playing it now, they end up behind if they try to take it to the macro game every time. This is why I suggested faster thirds in order to play a more effective macro game in this thread.
I see the 3 base roach aggression in PvZ as I do the 2 base roach baneling semi all-in in TvZ. It is the main aggression 3 base macro builds have to deal with when they are in their weakest state. As I have said before, I think the keys to defending a 3 base build against this specific roach aggression include: scouting, sim city, cannons, forcefields, macro, unit composition, and army splitting. Anytime I see a Protoss fall to roach spam, he's always missing a few of these points.
Scouting: A lot of people, even pros, neglect this key point. The thing is pros can, because they can sometimes assume from their opponent what they're going to do. For example, in JYP's recent series versus Stephano, JYP just assumed Stephano would do the same build each game and he was right.
Sim city: When you can put gateways in sim city, you should; they work just as well, if not better than depots as blockers. In many cases, you can make gateways just to sim city even if you don't need them for protection as they can be more useful in defense than cannons or stalkers for the same price. Tails made this mistake of just putting gateways in his main vs Nestea at IPL and just lost when he had to waste all his forcefields to hold roaches at bay.
Cannons: Especially behind sim city, roaches cannot focus fire cannons well. Cannons+ sentries is also a more efficient use of minerals/gas for defense than stalkers
Forcefields: This is just something people have to work on. Every Protoss besides MC I've seen use more forcefields than they have to in a given situation. Protoss in general just need to get better with this basic Protoss skill. Sim city also lessens the amount of forcefields you have to use. You also can devote forcefields into trapping and killing roaches instead of blocking roaches out of your base.
Macro: Your opponent has an efficient macro build, that with decent macro, maxes between 11:30 and 12 minutes; you should have good macro build as well, backed by sufficient macro. A good macro build gets your 3rd as fast as possible so that when the roaches do hit, you have the economy to back up your defense. Spending all your money, especially under roach pressure, is just mechanics.
Unit composition: Sentries are the most important unit by far. Voidrays can work, especially when backed up by sim city/forcefieds to allow them to charge; modern protosses who rely on voidrays to hold off attacks usually get 2. Immortals also obviously work and are the best unit you can make vs roaches. Blink stalkers, on the other hand, aren't as helpful if you're relying on primarily sim city/forcefields/cannons to defend. This doesn't mean they're bad, as you usually need them to defend possible mutas if you didn't open stargate.
Army splitting: As you're defending 2 positions, you will need to split your army into 2 parts. There are a few things you can do to more efficiently and correctly place your troops. First is scouting. An obs/voidray/phoenix/hallucination in the area outside your base between your natural/3rd. Your sim city also allows you to delay the roaches, allowing you to reposition units.
Just a comment regarding tvz (know nothing about pvz): 9 months ago terrans were doing a lot of 3 base timings. Like 6-7 months ago they began learning to split map by abusing ghosts. Now a lot of terrans has kinda gone back to 3 base timings.
Terrans were never really doing a lot of 2 base timings. Beta/early release = 1 base, and then they kinda tried some unrefined play for a while which didn't work. Then they went on to 3 base timing attacks, which worked pretty decently.
I wouldn't say timings, but 9 months ago, 2 base pressures like the Slayers build(1 medivac 8 marine 4 bfh drop), 2 base marine tank pushes, and the 2 medivac 16 marine drop were way more common compared to straight 3 CCs. Hellion/marauder all-in was also a bit more common as well.
On April 08 2012 22:39 TechSc2 wrote:In TvZ marine tank is a safe go to build, why? marines handle lings/muta's well, Tanks handle banelings/infestors well. So why doesn't protoss get this type of build?
We do, it's called mass blink stalker + 3-6 colossus. The issue is to get them in the right ratio compared to what zerg can churn out in the same time. Secondly, the terran composition is gas light compared to protoss units, they are cheaper and more refresh-friendly. We do have a strong all-around build, but it is less accessible compared to the terran one.
EDIT: I think the strength of the terran ball is the effort that terran players put into keeping it alive, because it is much more fragile compared to the protoss ball. If protoss players put more effort into keeping our deathball alive, then I think zergs would have more problems than right now.
Until about 9 months ago, Terrans too were relying on 2 base timings to deal with zerg. As zergs began learning how to deal with all of the various and numerous timings, Terrans' success with those timings began to drop. However, eventually Terrans learned how to play "greedy" but safe macro builds that allow the Terran to keep up with econ. Two examples of these builds include:
This is the natural progression of a matchup. Once 1 base allins have been figured out, Terrans began transitioning into 2 base all-ins and 2+ base macro play. Onces 2 base allins are figured out, Terrans transitioned into more 3+ base play(I hesitate to call anything 3 base allin, but some game plans are allin off of 3 bases). These 3 cc macro builds are now the standard of how terrans play TvZ.
PvZ, on the other hand, has been lagging behind the TvZ metagame for quite a bit as 2 base all-ins are still by far the most common strategy. Now, I could blame this on a variety of things such as:
The inflexibility of FFE and how Zerg can get a free 3rd.
The fact that Protoss units work better in balls and thus are less effective non all-in pressure. For example, marines, hellions and medivacs work much better individually than sentires/stalkers/immortals.
Nexii can't float like CCs.
Now as Zerg began figuring out all the 2 base all-in timings (and as they figure out the most recent immortal/warp prism all-in), Protoss all-ins will begin to get gimmicky and coin flippy, either relying on your opponent not scouting/recognizing it or relying on him not knowing how to defend. The next logical step is 3 base macro builds.
The problem with current macro PvZ isn't that stalker/colossi can't handle Zerg as well as marine/tank. It's more that Protoss doesn't currently have well-accepted standard solid macro builds that allow them to get enough units to defend a Zerg max. The way Protoss are playing it now, they end up behind if they try to take it to the macro game every time. This is why I suggested faster thirds in order to play a more effective macro game in this thread.
I see the 3 base roach aggression in PvZ as I do the 2 base roach baneling semi all-in in TvZ. It is the main aggression 3 base macro builds have to deal with when they are in their weakest state. As I have said before, I think the keys to defending a 3 base build against this specific roach aggression include: scouting, sim city, cannons, forcefields, macro, unit composition, and army splitting. Anytime I see a Protoss fall to roach spam, he's always missing a few of these points.
Scouting: A lot of people, even pros, neglect this key point. The thing is pros can, because they can sometimes assume from their opponent what they're going to do. For example, in JYP's recent series versus Stephano, JYP just assumed Stephano would do the same build each game and he was right.
Sim city: When you can put gateways in sim city, you should; they work just as well, if not better than depots as blockers. In many cases, you can make gateways just to sim city even if you don't need them for protection as they can be more useful in defense than cannons or stalkers for the same price. Tails made this mistake of just putting gateways in his main vs Nestea at IPL and just lost when he had to waste all his forcefields to hold roaches at bay.
Cannons: Especially behind sim city, roaches cannot focus fire cannons well. Cannons+ sentries is also a more efficient use of minerals/gas for defense than stalkers
Forcefields: This is just something people have to work on. Every Protoss besides MC I've seen use more forcefields than they have to in a given situation. Protoss in general just need to get better with this basic Protoss skill. Sim city also lessens the amount of forcefields you have to use. You also can devote forcefields into trapping and killing roaches instead of blocking roaches out of your base.
Macro: Your opponent has an efficient macro build, that with decent macro, maxes between 11:30 and 12 minutes; you should have good macro build as well, backed by sufficient macro. A good macro build gets your 3rd as fast as possible so that when the roaches do hit, you have the economy to back up your defense. Spending all your money, especially under roach pressure, is just mechanics.
Unit composition: Sentries are the most important unit by far. Voidrays can work, especially when backed up by sim city/forcefieds to allow them to charge; modern protosses who rely on voidrays to hold off attacks usually get 2. Immortals also obviously work and are the best unit you can make vs roaches. Blink stalkers, on the other hand, aren't as helpful if you're relying on primarily sim city/forcefields/cannons to defend. This doesn't mean they're bad, as you usually need them to defend possible mutas if you didn't open stargate.
Army splitting: As you're defending 2 positions, you will need to split your army into 2 parts. There are a few things you can do to more efficiently and correctly place your troops. First is scouting. An obs/voidray/phoenix/hallucination in the area outside your base between your natural/3rd. Your sim city also allows you to delay the roaches, allowing you to reposition units.
Just a comment regarding tvz (know nothing about pvz): 9 months ago terrans were doing a lot of 3 base timings. Like 6-7 months ago they began learning to split map by abusing ghosts. Now a lot of terrans has kinda gone back to 3 base timings.
Terrans were never really doing a lot of 2 base timings. Beta/early release = 1 base, and then they kinda tried some unrefined play for a while which didn't work. Then they went on to 3 base timing attacks, which worked pretty decently.
I wouldn't say timings, but 9 months ago, 2 base pressures like the Slayers build(1 medivac 8 marine 4 bfh drop), 2 base marine tank pushes, and the 2 medivac 16 marine drop were way more common compared to straight 3 CCs. Hellion/marauder all-in was also a bit more common as well.
2 base marine tank timings didn't really exist (as a standard tactic). MVP used it to mix up his play on short distance maps once a while (but he was one of the few who did it). ´ Terrans didn't really rely on the slayers build. It worked extremely efficient for a short while, but then zergs kinda figured out how to stop it, and it become more of a pressure build where you made sure that the zerg wasn't overdroning (and couldn't take a too fast 3rd) in a very similar fashion as most marine/hellion/medivac pressures are today.
The slayers build slowly developted into a "metagame change" as more and more terrans used blue flame hellions in the midgame instead of tanks.
So while terran has historically been able to kill zergs with 2 bases, it has never been the standard play of terrans and it has never been a neccesity for terrans to 2 base to be able to kill the zerg, which is kinda the opposite as the current pvz metagame where it seems really hard for the toss to secure a 3rd.
On April 08 2012 22:39 TechSc2 wrote:In TvZ marine tank is a safe go to build, why? marines handle lings/muta's well, Tanks handle banelings/infestors well. So why doesn't protoss get this type of build?
We do, it's called mass blink stalker + 3-6 colossus. The issue is to get them in the right ratio compared to what zerg can churn out in the same time. Secondly, the terran composition is gas light compared to protoss units, they are cheaper and more refresh-friendly. We do have a strong all-around build, but it is less accessible compared to the terran one.
EDIT: I think the strength of the terran ball is the effort that terran players put into keeping it alive, because it is much more fragile compared to the protoss ball. If protoss players put more effort into keeping our deathball alive, then I think zergs would have more problems than right now.
Until about 9 months ago, Terrans too were relying on 2 base timings to deal with zerg. As zergs began learning how to deal with all of the various and numerous timings, Terrans' success with those timings began to drop. However, eventually Terrans learned how to play "greedy" but safe macro builds that allow the Terran to keep up with econ. Two examples of these builds include:
This is the natural progression of a matchup. Once 1 base allins have been figured out, Terrans began transitioning into 2 base all-ins and 2+ base macro play. Onces 2 base allins are figured out, Terrans transitioned into more 3+ base play(I hesitate to call anything 3 base allin, but some game plans are allin off of 3 bases). These 3 cc macro builds are now the standard of how terrans play TvZ.
PvZ, on the other hand, has been lagging behind the TvZ metagame for quite a bit as 2 base all-ins are still by far the most common strategy. Now, I could blame this on a variety of things such as:
The inflexibility of FFE and how Zerg can get a free 3rd.
The fact that Protoss units work better in balls and thus are less effective non all-in pressure. For example, marines, hellions and medivacs work much better individually than sentires/stalkers/immortals.
Nexii can't float like CCs.
Now as Zerg began figuring out all the 2 base all-in timings (and as they figure out the most recent immortal/warp prism all-in), Protoss all-ins will begin to get gimmicky and coin flippy, either relying on your opponent not scouting/recognizing it or relying on him not knowing how to defend. The next logical step is 3 base macro builds.
The problem with current macro PvZ isn't that stalker/colossi can't handle Zerg as well as marine/tank. It's more that Protoss doesn't currently have well-accepted standard solid macro builds that allow them to get enough units to defend a Zerg max. The way Protoss are playing it now, they end up behind if they try to take it to the macro game every time. This is why I suggested faster thirds in order to play a more effective macro game in this thread.
I see the 3 base roach aggression in PvZ as I do the 2 base roach baneling semi all-in in TvZ. It is the main aggression 3 base macro builds have to deal with when they are in their weakest state. As I have said before, I think the keys to defending a 3 base build against this specific roach aggression include: scouting, sim city, cannons, forcefields, macro, unit composition, and army splitting. Anytime I see a Protoss fall to roach spam, he's always missing a few of these points.
Scouting: A lot of people, even pros, neglect this key point. The thing is pros can, because they can sometimes assume from their opponent what they're going to do. For example, in JYP's recent series versus Stephano, JYP just assumed Stephano would do the same build each game and he was right.
Sim city: When you can put gateways in sim city, you should; they work just as well, if not better than depots as blockers. In many cases, you can make gateways just to sim city even if you don't need them for protection as they can be more useful in defense than cannons or stalkers for the same price. Tails made this mistake of just putting gateways in his main vs Nestea at IPL and just lost when he had to waste all his forcefields to hold roaches at bay.
Cannons: Especially behind sim city, roaches cannot focus fire cannons well. Cannons+ sentries is also a more efficient use of minerals/gas for defense than stalkers
Forcefields: This is just something people have to work on. Every Protoss besides MC I've seen use more forcefields than they have to in a given situation. Protoss in general just need to get better with this basic Protoss skill. Sim city also lessens the amount of forcefields you have to use. You also can devote forcefields into trapping and killing roaches instead of blocking roaches out of your base.
Macro: Your opponent has an efficient macro build, that with decent macro, maxes between 11:30 and 12 minutes; you should have good macro build as well, backed by sufficient macro. A good macro build gets your 3rd as fast as possible so that when the roaches do hit, you have the economy to back up your defense. Spending all your money, especially under roach pressure, is just mechanics.
Unit composition: Sentries are the most important unit by far. Voidrays can work, especially when backed up by sim city/forcefieds to allow them to charge; modern protosses who rely on voidrays to hold off attacks usually get 2. Immortals also obviously work and are the best unit you can make vs roaches. Blink stalkers, on the other hand, aren't as helpful if you're relying on primarily sim city/forcefields/cannons to defend. This doesn't mean they're bad, as you usually need them to defend possible mutas if you didn't open stargate.
Army splitting: As you're defending 2 positions, you will need to split your army into 2 parts. There are a few things you can do to more efficiently and correctly place your troops. First is scouting. An obs/voidray/phoenix/hallucination in the area outside your base between your natural/3rd. Your sim city also allows you to delay the roaches, allowing you to reposition units.
Just a comment regarding tvz (know nothing about pvz): 9 months ago terrans were doing a lot of 3 base timings. Like 6-7 months ago they began learning to split map by abusing ghosts. Now a lot of terrans has kinda gone back to 3 base timings.
Terrans were never really doing a lot of 2 base timings. Beta/early release = 1 base, and then they kinda tried some unrefined play for a while which didn't work. Then they went on to 3 base timing attacks, which worked pretty decently.
I wouldn't say timings, but 9 months ago, 2 base pressures like the Slayers build(1 medivac 8 marine 4 bfh drop), 2 base marine tank pushes, and the 2 medivac 16 marine drop were way more common compared to straight 3 CCs. Hellion/marauder all-in was also a bit more common as well.
2 base marine tank timings didn't really exist (as a standard tactic). MVP used it to mix up his play on short distance maps once a while (but he was one of the few who did it). ´ Terrans didn't really rely on the slayers build. It worked extremely efficient for a short while, but then zergs kinda figured out how to stop it, and it become more of a pressure build where you made sure that the zerg wasn't overdroning (and couldn't take a too fast 3rd) in a very similar fashion as most marine/hellion/medivac pressures are today.
The slayers build slowly developted into a "metagame change" as more and more terrans used blue flame hellions in the midgame instead of tanks.
So while terran has historically been able to kill zergs with 2 bases, it has never been the standard play of terrans and it has never been a neccesity for terrans to 2 base to be able to kill the zerg, which is kinda the opposite as the current pvz metagame where it seems really hard for the toss to secure a 3rd.
My whole point was that 2 base -> pressure -> 3 base was more common before while direct 3 base is more common these days. Nothing more. I'm not really disagreeing with anything you're saying.
The problem with current macro PvZ isn't that stalker/colossi can't handle Zerg as well as marine/tank. It's more that Protoss doesn't currently have well-accepted standard solid macro builds that allow them to get enough units to defend a Zerg max. The way Protoss are playing it now, they end up behind if they try to take it to the macro game every time. This is why I suggested faster thirds in order to play a more effective macro game in this thread.
This is probably the most salient point in the thread. Two things pop out in my head as sidenotes to this point: 1. Until not too long ago, colossi were widely thought to be overpowered. Heck, before the infestor buff, I personally got called a "cheeser" by zergs, despite attacking with Colossi off of 2-3 bases. Also, we all know warpgate/blink timings can often still be effective. This indicates that it is not the units themselves which are inherently incapable of winning battles. 2. There is a big difference between "doesn't currently have a well-accepted standard solid macro build" and "is incapable of going into macro games in PvZ", though at this stage of the matchup, they'd both look identical. Don't confuse the two. There's a lot of stuff people at the top of the game need to try that haven't been widely publicized, and at the very least the build proposed by RangeD implies that there are areas of PvZ build orders that haven't really been sufficiently explored yet. Be pessimistic if you want - but keep in mind that there are since these areas exist, there are no "absolute facts" about when you "need to pressure", when you can macro, and when you have to have anything to play PvZ "correctly".
Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for RangeD/kcdc Blink Stalker early third as an opening, but when it goes beyond that I think it's easy to get lost because you don't know how to get from there to the templar/stargate tech which is usually useful latgame.
There's a bunch of stuff that should probably go into the OP, but I'm not checking this thread as regularly anymore, and I'm not interested in keeping the OP up-to-date indefinitely. If a mod wants to take over, that's fine, but otherwise, I think the OP is going to remain static from this point forward. Sorry guys. If somebody more motivated wants to start a new thread collecting the most up-to-date ideas, that would be okay too, but I don't think it'd be worth making a mess of the strategy forum. The people motivated enough to still be reading this thread on page 59 will have caught most of the good content.
One of the later Day9 Dailies features the 10:30 3rd, which seems safer as you've gotten your infrastructure and saturation up and probably got the probes ready to properly saturate your third.
However, I feel as if the 7:30 one puts the zerg on the spot. Do I keep droning, or do I attack with a few roaches, which is much less effective compared to the later roach spam, especially when a couple of void rays are out.
Both are capable of getting to the 17-18 minute deathball pretty fine, however, a good question is whether how well they handle the mid-game harass\different compositions..
On ipl4 squirtle beat this against nestea but i dont think we should take that game as a reference since nestea engaged horribly and was playing really crappy all around.
For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
I mean, yeah - obviously if you can hurt the zerg you want to. What I'm trying to get at here is whether the amount of damage you *need* to do not to die to roach spam/roach hydra as you take your third is on an order of magnitude which is attainable without your opponent messing up. The effectiveness of this play tends to vary from game to game, so I was just looking to see if anyone has a sense of "ok, I killed two queens" - that's nice, but is it enough to establish a third if he is going to get aggressive when I throw it down?
Edit: If I were at a level where I could meaningfully experiment here, I'd do it in the following way. I'd go through my opnening and artificially create scenarios where the 5 pheonixes deal certain amounts of damage at certain times. The rest of the time, both players would just focus on macro and see if the third is defensible or not. Given how small the ground army of P is early game when building 6 air units right off the bat, I'm going to guess you need to do a ton of damage to come out even.
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
I mean, yeah - obviously if you can hurt the zerg you want to. What I'm trying to get at here is whether the amount of damage you *need* to do not to die to roach spam/roach hydra as you take your third is on an order of magnitude which is attainable without your opponent messing up. The effectiveness of this play tends to vary from game to game, so I was just looking to see if anyone has a sense of "ok, I killed two queens" - that's nice, but is it enough to establish a third if he is going to get aggressive when I throw it down?
What do you want me to say? If zerg plays perfect you will be behind, but VR/Phoenixes are highly micro-able so you should be able to do good damage vs equally skilled opponents. A lot of people get all bent out of shape that omg stephano is unbeatable etc. etc. but guess what you're not playing stephano on ladder. You're playing people much much less skilled and you're going to be able to do enough damage to justify the cost more often than not.
And the reason you prioritize queens is to mess up his larve injects. So if you killed 2 out of 3 queens + whatever extra damage from drones + OLs yeah I'd say you are in good shape to grab your 3rd and survive the follow-up push. If they were prepared and made extra queens and you killed 2 out of 6 queens and he didn't miss a beat on injects, then yeah, you're behind.
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
But see, this kind of attitude is problematic if your opponent is getting an early third. If you can just barely hold a 200 food push at the 12 minute mark with a build designed specifically for it, and you're investing in a stargate, a void and a phoenix (which amounts to 250/150 marginally assisting in defending the roach push for an investment of 550/400 ), how're you going to defend?
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
I mean, yeah - obviously if you can hurt the zerg you want to. What I'm trying to get at here is whether the amount of damage you *need* to do not to die to roach spam/roach hydra as you take your third is on an order of magnitude which is attainable without your opponent messing up. The effectiveness of this play tends to vary from game to game, so I was just looking to see if anyone has a sense of "ok, I killed two queens" - that's nice, but is it enough to establish a third if he is going to get aggressive when I throw it down?
What do you want me to say? If zerg plays perfect you will be behind, but VR/Phoenixes are highly micro-able so you should be able to do good damage vs equally skilled opponents. A lot of people get all bent out of shape that omg stephano is unbeatable etc. etc. but guess what you're not playing stephano on ladder. You're playing people much much less skilled and you're going to be able to do enough damage to justify the cost more often than not.
And the reason you prioritize queens is to mess up his larve injects. So if you killed 2 out of 3 queens + whatever extra damage from drones + OLs yeah I'd say you are in good shape to grab your 3rd and survive the follow-up push. If they were prepared and made extra queens and you killed 2 out of 6 queens and he didn't miss a beat on injects, then yeah, you're behind.
What I'm proposing is answerable if you've experimented with it. I'm not asking a question that's anything like "how do you beat stephano as a bronze level protoss?" If you haven't experimented with it, you don't have to - the question wasn't directed at you specifically. I just thought it was a reasonable question and that someone who has opened stargate a lot would want to be able to answer. I can do the macro part of it just fine and come up with the number of units each side can have as the third is going down - but then if I suck at forcefielding (as has been pointed to many, many times in this thread) I can't really take those counts and say "look, this isn't stable".
Therefore, I put my suggestion to the community. Feel free to ignore it and I'll wait til I'm better to figure out the answer if the question is still there at that point.
Edit: And if I am to take from your post that making 6 queens instead of 3 generally is adequate to protect from phoenixes - then isn't the phoenix harassment simply adding on an cost effective adaptation zergs have to do?
For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
I mean, yeah - obviously if you can hurt the zerg you want to. What I'm trying to get at here is whether the amount of damage you *need* to do not to die to roach spam/roach hydra as you take your third is on an order of magnitude which is attainable without your opponent messing up. The effectiveness of this play tends to vary from game to game, so I was just looking to see if anyone has a sense of "ok, I killed two queens" - that's nice, but is it enough to establish a third if he is going to get aggressive when I throw it down?
What do you want me to say? If zerg plays perfect you will be behind, but VR/Phoenixes are highly micro-able so you should be able to do good damage vs equally skilled opponents. A lot of people get all bent out of shape that omg stephano is unbeatable etc. etc. but guess what you're not playing stephano on ladder. You're playing people much much less skilled and you're going to be able to do enough damage to justify the cost more often than not.
And the reason you prioritize queens is to mess up his larve injects. So if you killed 2 out of 3 queens + whatever extra damage from drones + OLs yeah I'd say you are in good shape to grab your 3rd and survive the follow-up push. If they were prepared and made extra queens and you killed 2 out of 6 queens and he didn't miss a beat on injects, then yeah, you're behind.
The issue here is that while we're individually trying to find out what works against roachspam builds, you shouldn't scale the discussion to individual skill level - we might as well go back to telling people to macro better. At this level of discussion we're obviously trying to seek a practical pro-level response to the build as a whole, not how to beat (insert skill scaling here) level zergs spamming roaches.
The primary problem with opening stargate is the lack of dps - while powered up voids are very strong, they're not exactly strong enough to stop the roachspam at the same level that immortals or blink stalkers are able to (with forcefields etc), and cost a significant amount more gas - remember, we're heavily capped by sentry energy in pretty much all currently viable builds.
On April 10 2012 04:19 Treehead wrote: For those who insist that FFE into early Stargate with one void/phoenixes is the way to play against this style, how much damage do your phoenixes typically need to do so that your phoenix harass catches you up appropriately to compensate for the slower third (like the 10:30 from the day9 daily).
That depends on how many phoenixes you make. I personally just make 1 phoenix for scouting, and 1 void to prevent early pushes. I don't intend to do much damage at all, it's just for safety.
I highly recommend you make 5 phoenix after your initial VR and try to do as much damage as possible if you are playing a 3rd base macro style (priority should be queens and then drones). You will have much more success this way. The only time I would not make the phoenixes is if I were trying to fake-out my opponent to make them think I was going for a passive 3-base macro style but instead go for a mass gateway push.
I mean, yeah - obviously if you can hurt the zerg you want to. What I'm trying to get at here is whether the amount of damage you *need* to do not to die to roach spam/roach hydra as you take your third is on an order of magnitude which is attainable without your opponent messing up. The effectiveness of this play tends to vary from game to game, so I was just looking to see if anyone has a sense of "ok, I killed two queens" - that's nice, but is it enough to establish a third if he is going to get aggressive when I throw it down?
What do you want me to say? If zerg plays perfect you will be behind, but VR/Phoenixes are highly micro-able so you should be able to do good damage vs equally skilled opponents. A lot of people get all bent out of shape that omg stephano is unbeatable etc. etc. but guess what you're not playing stephano on ladder. You're playing people much much less skilled and you're going to be able to do enough damage to justify the cost more often than not.
And the reason you prioritize queens is to mess up his larve injects. So if you killed 2 out of 3 queens + whatever extra damage from drones + OLs yeah I'd say you are in good shape to grab your 3rd and survive the follow-up push. If they were prepared and made extra queens and you killed 2 out of 6 queens and he didn't miss a beat on injects, then yeah, you're behind.
What I'm proposing is answerable if you've experimented with it. I'm not asking a question that's anything like "how do you beat stephano as a bronze level protoss?" If you haven't experimented with it, you don't have to - the question wasn't directed at you specifically. I just thought it was a reasonable question and that someone who has opened stargate a lot would want to be able to answer. I can do the macro part of it just fine and come up with the number of units each side can have as the third is going down - but then if I suck at forcefielding (as has been pointed to many, many times in this thread) I can't really take those counts and say "look, this isn't stable".
Therefore, I put my suggestion to the community. Feel free to ignore it and I'll wait til I'm better to figure out the answer if the question is still there at that point.
Edit: And if I am to take from your post that making 6 queens instead of 3 generally is adequate to protect from phoenixes - then isn't the phoenix harassment simply adding on an cost effective adaptation zergs have to do?
The amount of "damage" you need to do is not easy to quantify, however a good point of reference however is that up until 7 mins or so, worker count on both sides is essentially even (~40 workers), and between 7-8 mins Zergs really start to power drones past this mark, as they have the larve and resources to do so. At 8 mins, you're looking at something like ~45 probes to ~60 drones (which is where you would stop if you want to max on roaches and break a protoss 3rd). Every full inject cycle you delay you essentially reduce larve (and workers) by 4. Every spore means 1 less drone, and of course every drone you kill also means 1 less drone. For example you kill 2 out of 3 queens and force 3 spores (1 at each base)? That's roughly 10 drones, which should help you catch up a bit in eco, though you probably still need to do more damage than that since you spent significant resources going stargate units. Like I said, hard to quantify specifically.
And it's not as easy as making extra queens. Zergs don't want to make extra queens, and you could possibly kill those queens as well with good micro. It all depends on so many factors, but like I said the numbers above are a sort of reference point you can use in your head.
edit: I feel that if your goal was to go FFE into a 9-10min 3rd then stargate is the way to go. It's quite hard to force many units out of a robo or twilight opening unless you spend significant resources to do so. Although stargate you also spend significant resources, with good micro you shouldn't lose any of those units so it is not as bad. Stargate units also gives you perfect scouting to see the angles of attack which is very important, and also hedges you a bit vs. roach into mutas switches. Also I feel if you have the micro for it making 2-3 stalkers from your initial gate to go harass the zerg to force lings is also a low cost, low risk way to force units instead of drones.
EPT
