|
Please have some semblance of an idea of what you're talking about. |
On April 10 2012 06:23 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 05:36 Treehead wrote:On April 10 2012 05:24 Skyro wrote:On April 10 2012 05:15 Treehead wrote:On April 10 2012 05:01 Skyro wrote:On April 10 2012 04:26 the p00n wrote: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.
If your mechanics are good I think stargate always pays itself off. You force spores, interrupt their injecting and are practically garanteed at least 1-2 ovie kills with potential for quite a bit more damage. I think the problem is just that to put those stargate units effectively to work agianst a roach push you need great phoenix control which comes on top of the macro and specifically forcefield micro. It's really difficult to multitask that all and i've rarely seen even the pro's do it well so for most realisitic purposes straight robo is probably better.
Overall i think the 9-10 min expands where you scout first are much more reliable. 7min ish 3rd may be better agianst the exact stephano build but i don't think it's safe if zerg happened to take gas faster. Some zergs still do weird shit like 3 base into ling style aggression and that kind of stuff is just hard to handle if you get a third before you're sentry energy is up.
As for stalker aggression, i think it's generally not worth. You're tremendously delaying tech and your sentry energy buildup to do so and on most maps you really won't do any damage with it. They already have their initial 4 lings and just a a couple more will do to repel the stalkers if they are good with creep spread. Only on maps where you can expect to do some good damage like korhal compound i would do it but i all-in there anyways.
|
I feel like triple robo is the way to go here
hold on, let me get my replays
+ Show Spoiler +jk  hehehehe I rarely FFE, to be honest. I open 2 gateways.
User was warned for this post
|
Here's a rep (mid-highish master MMR) vs a zerg that was maxed at the 12-13 minute mark but i think he made too many drones. Regardless, if you're at this level or below copy my build to deal with this mass roach style just fine.
http://drop.sc/157367
Basically, I get an extremely fast third;
-sometimes I fake a 4 gate zealot pressure which delays it 30 seconds or so
-otherwise it's robo first then 3 gates, expand when WG is done and use sentries/immortals/stalkers to defend early roaches The robo first version should get the 3rd up at 7:50-8:00. At this time, especially if you did some early zealot/ stalker pressure, the zerg will just be saturing his bases fully so you don't have to worry about aggression. This gives you time to power up, saturate your own third, and match the zergs economy.
Important things to note: Make sure you get blink at a good time. If he flys mutas into your base with no blink it's gg. Late game I go double forge (I use a lot of chrono on upgrades, they're so underrated in PvZ) and mass stalker and 3-4 colossus. I was maxxed at around 15:30. Taking a 4th behind it and getting a warp prism to deny outward bases.
|
On April 10 2012 08:49 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 06:23 Skyro wrote:On April 10 2012 05:36 Treehead wrote:On April 10 2012 05:24 Skyro wrote:On April 10 2012 05:15 Treehead wrote:On April 10 2012 05:01 Skyro wrote:On April 10 2012 04:26 the p00n wrote: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. If your mechanics are good I think stargate always pays itself off. You force spores, interrupt their injecting and are practically garanteed at least 1-2 ovie kills with potential for quite a bit more damage. I think the problem is just that to put those stargate units effectively to work agianst a roach push you need great phoenix control which comes on top of the macro and specifically forcefield micro. It's really difficult to multitask that all and i've rarely seen even the pro's do it well so for most realisitic purposes straight robo is probably better. Overall i think the 9-10 min expands where you scout first are much more reliable. 7min ish 3rd may be better agianst the exact stephano build but i don't think it's safe if zerg happened to take gas faster. Some zergs still do weird shit like 3 base into ling style aggression and that kind of stuff is just hard to handle if you get a third before you're sentry energy is up. As for stalker aggression, i think it's generally not worth. You're tremendously delaying tech and your sentry energy buildup to do so and on most maps you really won't do any damage with it. They already have their initial 4 lings and just a a couple more will do to repel the stalkers if they are good with creep spread. Only on maps where you can expect to do some good damage like korhal compound i would do it but i all-in there anyways.
confirm zerg is doing the roach stuff via phoenix
play it like normal
except skip immortals entirely (unless floating money) for void rays
profit
"but what if he goes mutas"
confirm via phoenix
play it like normal, but keep making phoenix
|
I'm sure it has already been posted as a strategy, but I would like to build upon the 6 gate, 2 robo +1/1 timing at around 11:00/11:15. I have been doing this more and more vs Z and have found it very successful. Would just like thoughts on how people have been doing with it if they tried it? The Z's production has just barely started to kick in, and by the time you attack you will have (roughly) 20 stalkers, 5 zealots, 5 sentries, 5 immortals, and a warp prism/6 gates to reinforce. The key is that you have to hide 1 of your robos, it cannot be scouted, so you have to be active with stalkers, and have awareness of where overlords are coming from. This build places a high demand on execution. Hiding your immortal counts and at least one of your robos is key. Mind games help too 
Obviously you can transition out of this (get a 3rd behind it, if hydras come, you can lay down a robo bay and get 2 colossi production at once)
|
What about double stargate after the FFE? You can clear out all the overlords quickly, act like you're just doing the standard 1 Stargate thing for pressure/defense/information, and then hit over the cliff into the main with 4-5 Voids and a bunch of Phoenix with +1 air weapons? If they're spamming Roaches, all you have to do is send the Voids home and watch an air army fight against an army that can't shoot up. That's not a hard fight to win, considering sim city and sentries to slow down the damage from Roaches being sent to trade with infrastructure.
Sure, they can counter the air units, but the metagame is heavily roach-dependent. If they aren't getting into your base and you don't show too many stargate units early, they're not going to blind-go into Hydras or do something similarly out of character. It's not like you're going to lose to Mutas, either, if the plan is to directly go into double Stargate with +1 air units.
|
Stephano has optimized his build he now max out at 11min
|
I've been dealing with this for some time and besides the 3-base blind counter which could lose to a number of other builds that the zerg might switch to, I find that I have pretty good success with an FFE, then transitioning into 4 gate +1 zealots with void ray support (the artosis build). Here is what I try to achieve:
- Ideally, be able to deny the third without losing any void rays in the process
- Scare the opponent by forcing spore/spine production and hydralisk den
- At the very least, force roach production and make them cut drones
I build about 3 void rays then reinforce with constant phoenix production and warp-ins. The transition into phoenix will keep you safe in case the zerg player decides to make a tech switch into muta while giving you the option to pick off queens, overlords, and hydralisks (if they pop up in small numbers from different spawn locations). Depending on how the engagements go, you might want to drop a robotics facility as insurance against tunneling roaches and to start transitioning into colossus
|
Ffe
7 gateway
+2 attack
A few zealots, sentries and stalkers to kill the third
User was warned for this post
|
I just went up against this on ladder the other day. It seems to be picking up in popularity!
Sweet name too!
|
omfg thank you for this. the build titan used is pretty good for it. if you don't go for the hopeless pressure you should be able to keep up in macro enough to defend efficiently
|
Sorry, I dont play P much and this probably has been said, but have you guys considered DTs as means to secure your 3rd?
As in going:
FFE into Stargate to distrupt the Zerg, tech into DTs. Use your phoenixes to snipe Overseers in the middle of the map.
Seems like ti could work against the 200 food roach push, if he goes Mutas you can make DT Archones in the meantime while teching to Storm,(also lets you get Blink).
Don't know how well the the timmings line up but to me at least on a theorycrafting level seems like a sound choice.
Only thing you could be vulnerable are Burrow timmings, but as long as you fight by your cannons the Zerg won't be able to attack into your bases.
Has anyone tried this? Sorry for the theorycrafting, but I've really been thinking about this lately and if the timmings come out Ok I can see it holding the roaches with enough DTs. Why not go voidrays instead? Well, I think Voids kill the mass amount of Roaches too slowly to make a difference while the Zerg tries to overrun you.
Haha, good luck figuring this out
|
On April 13 2012 10:43 windsupernova wrote:
...FFE into Stargate to distrupt the Zerg, tech into DTs. Use your phoenixes to snipe Overseers in the middle of the map.
Seems like ti could work against the 200 food roach push...
They'd run by your DTs and voids with speed roaches. You'd need to have like a wall of DTs on hold position to make that hold - and even then, they'd just have to sneak one overseer by and it'd be over.
|
On April 13 2012 10:43 windsupernova wrote:
Sorry, I dont play P much and this probably has been said, but have you guys considered DTs as means to secure your 3rd?
As in going:
FFE into Stargate to distrupt the Zerg, tech into DTs. Use your phoenixes to snipe Overseers in the middle of the map.
Seems like ti could work against the 200 food roach push, if he goes Mutas you can make DT Archones in the meantime while teching to Storm,(also lets you get Blink).
Don't know how well the the timmings line up but to me at least on a theorycrafting level seems like a sound choice.
Only thing you could be vulnerable are Burrow timmings, but as long as you fight by your cannons the Zerg won't be able to attack into your bases.
Has anyone tried this? Sorry for the theorycrafting, but I've really been thinking about this lately and if the timmings come out Ok I can see it holding the roaches with enough DTs. Why not go voidrays instead? Well, I think Voids kill the mass amount of Roaches too slowly to make a difference while the Zerg tries to overrun you.
Haha, good luck figuring this out
I've played against many protoss who do FFE into DT. If they don't catch me completely off guard with it then it's basically auto-loss. Opening stargate into dt won't really disrupt the zerg tech unless they are terrible. Since you already have 3/4 queens and evo chamber ready a single stargate usually doesn't do much of anything.
From personal experience, ffe into dt is my favorite build to play against because you can pretty much just morph overseer and 1a.
Edit: Best non-all-in builds I've played against are early 3rds like Titan's build or a well executed ffe into stargate into quick immortal/colossus.
|
I rarely lose to this going fast 3rd. I'm much more afraid of a turtly zerg who gets an insane econ and make 15 broodlords / infestors / corrupters who can ultra switch etc.
Feint pressure, take fast 3rd (7:50-8:30) upgrade and get immortals / blink / colossus eventually.
http://drop.sc/158824
Had an obs in position to see if he was attacking my 3rd or my nat on daybreak, once you defend the initial aggression stage it's pretty much GG as your army gets too strong / well upgraded (with the build I use at least). he was at 170 supply at 11:30 and already attacking my 3rd, maxxed a bit later on.
|
On April 13 2012 10:54 memcpy wrote:Show nested quote +On April 13 2012 10:43 windsupernova wrote:
Sorry, I dont play P much and this probably has been said, but have you guys considered DTs as means to secure your 3rd?
As in going:
FFE into Stargate to distrupt the Zerg, tech into DTs. Use your phoenixes to snipe Overseers in the middle of the map.
Seems like ti could work against the 200 food roach push, if he goes Mutas you can make DT Archones in the meantime while teching to Storm,(also lets you get Blink).
Don't know how well the the timmings line up but to me at least on a theorycrafting level seems like a sound choice.
Only thing you could be vulnerable are Burrow timmings, but as long as you fight by your cannons the Zerg won't be able to attack into your bases.
Has anyone tried this? Sorry for the theorycrafting, but I've really been thinking about this lately and if the timmings come out Ok I can see it holding the roaches with enough DTs. Why not go voidrays instead? Well, I think Voids kill the mass amount of Roaches too slowly to make a difference while the Zerg tries to overrun you.
Haha, good luck figuring this out I've played against many protoss who do FFE into DT. If they don't catch me completely off guard with it then it's basically auto-loss. Opening stargate into dt won't really disrupt the zerg tech unless they are terrible. Since you already have 3/4 queens and evo chamber ready a single stargate usually doesn't do much of anything. From personal experience, ffe into dt is my favorite build to play against because you can pretty much just morph overseer and 1a. Edit: Best non-all-in builds I've played against are early 3rds like Titan's build or a well executed ffe into stargate into quick immortal/colossus.
Yeah I know that FFE into DT is easy to stop. That why I was talking about, regular FFE into Stargate(which is pretty solid to secure your nat and get some kind of map control), then take a 3rd with Dt tech. That way if the Zerg want to do the 200 food push of Roaches you can kill it with DTs while sniping the overseer with your phoenixes.
What I suggested was making a few stargate units, get a quickish 3rd while teching to DTs. I never mentioned aggressive usage of the Dts. But as I said I don't know if the timmings will line up.
Basically from what I see:
-Early Voidray and cannons can stop almost all early Roach pushes from Zerg, can distrupt the Zerg if played well and indirectly hurts the Zerg economy by forcing spores and Queens.Follow up phoenix(es) serve to scout the Zerg.
- DT followup would (theoricratingly) allow the P to be able to Defend his 3rd against a big Roach push as long as you can snipe the overseers, also opens up tech path to Blink,storms and archons to deal with Mutas.
Dunno where you got the idea that I said to use the DTs as offensive tools. Sure, Zerg will have tons of detection INSIDE his base, but outside they won't have many overseers because Phenixes will be roaming the map and Roaches and Lings can't shoot up.
Now that I think about it this will be super vulnerable to a Zerg that goes Hydras, but I guess thats why you get the phoenixes to scout.
|
On April 13 2012 11:07 AegiS_ wrote:I rarely lose to this going fast 3rd. I'm much more afraid of a turtly zerg who gets an insane econ and make 15 broodlords / infestors / corrupters who can ultra switch etc. Feint pressure, take fast 3rd (7:50-8:30) upgrade and get immortals / blink / colossus eventually. http://drop.sc/158824Had an obs in position to see if he was attacking my 3rd or my nat on daybreak, once you defend the initial aggression stage it's pretty much GG as your army gets too strong / well upgraded (with the build I use at least). he was at 170 supply at 11:30 and already attacking my 3rd, maxxed a bit later on.
502 Bad Gateway can you reupload it? thx
edit: oh seems it might be the site for me my bad
|
Warp prism drops in the main when he moves out are really strong, think of it as a counter timing... You wait for the roaches to move across then warp in zealots to snipe his main, this will slow down reinforcements and possibly cut them off entirely if you take out the roach warren and spawning pool, this forces the zerg to either base trade against your warp prism harass or retreat... If he trys to base trade it should be an easy win since most your force is still on defense and you should be able to warp in several cycles of units using you warp prism which ideally will be enough to clean up the roaches... Of course it is far from 100% but it can be a great tool to spread the zerg thin and snipe tech
|
Zealot dance party has been absolutely crushing my face when I use this build. The timing is so weird, I have to scout earlier than I ever would otherwise (meaning I have to have a second suicide ovie on hand because usually the first will show me almost nothing).
Then even if I see it coming... it's rough. A dozen zealots in my face at 8:45... it's not easy to deal with.
|
On April 13 2012 11:53 windsupernova wrote:
Yeah I know that FFE into DT is easy to stop. That why I was talking about, regular FFE into Stargate(which is pretty solid to secure your nat and get some kind of map control), then take a 3rd with Dt tech. That way if the Zerg want to do the 200 food push of Roaches you can kill it with DTs while sniping the overseer with your phoenixes.
The roaches will kill DTs faster than phoenixes kill overlords. IF you managed to grab every overseer & overlord within range before he gets to you then good job, but he'll just kill your 3rd and natural nexus while your DTs get to work and remax, thats the whole problem with stephano roaches in the first place.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
