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Please have some semblance of an idea of what you're talking about. |
On April 26 2012 05:30 NrGmonk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 05:26 Gessen wrote:On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which, collectively, has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals and sentries become sitting ducks.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. I kinda disagree with this. I know you're in a higher league than me, maybe it's because of the caliber of opponents I'm facing. But I feel like the less stalkers you have, the better. Sentry (10+), Zealot, Immortal(3) is quite good against early roach / ling. You can use FFs to force lings to fight zealots and split roach armies.You need to scout obviously, obs or hallu should let you do this. That way you won't get surrounded and waste FFs and you can scout for tech switches. This way you're on top of any Muta switches and can get stalkers only when you need them. If he gets a lot of lings, you can fall back and use cannons and FFs to defend while using your scouting info to get the right unit comp. It's probably map dependent to a degree, but I think this is a strong style. Is that wrong? I don't think he's saying immortals are bad, just that they might not be as good as everyone thinks they are. Also, zealot do really poorly versus roach ling. You prefer simcity, cannons, and forcefields to deal with lings.
Gotcha. I don't think they are the ANSWER, but I think they are very solid when you get 3 out early and then stop and use them as a foundation. For the zealots, I feel like they do pretty well in smaller than normal numbers with FFs, morts, and sentries, probably 2 cycles max. They take care of lings very quickly with +1 and tank some roach hits while your morts go to work. I'm not that great player and you have to be super careful about how you engage, but I still would rather have more zealots and sentries, rather than stalkers. *shrugs* my opinion, I'll stop 8). Thanks for the guides you guys do all the time btw. Always a great help!
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On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach.
This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.)
As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta.
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Stephano was asked how to combat his strategy. His answer was a quick third base for the Protoss. However this only really works when the Zerg does not scout it. If the Zerg scouts it, then they can just drone up and get the 11 minute max out which makes it harder for the Protoss after this has been achieved. Stephano also says that Sentries are key for Protoss and better than Immortals to combat his roach strategy.
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On April 26 2012 05:30 NrGmonk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 05:26 Gessen wrote:On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which, collectively, has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals and sentries become sitting ducks.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. I kinda disagree with this. I know you're in a higher league than me, maybe it's because of the caliber of opponents I'm facing. But I feel like the less stalkers you have, the better. Sentry (10+), Zealot, Immortal(3) is quite good against early roach / ling. You can use FFs to force lings to fight zealots and split roach armies.You need to scout obviously, obs or hallu should let you do this. That way you won't get surrounded and waste FFs and you can scout for tech switches. This way you're on top of any Muta switches and can get stalkers only when you need them. If he gets a lot of lings, you can fall back and use cannons and FFs to defend while using your scouting info to get the right unit comp. It's probably map dependent to a degree, but I think this is a strong style. Is that wrong? I don't think he's saying immortals are bad, just that they might not be as good as everyone thinks they are. Also, zealot do really poorly versus roach ling. You prefer simcity, cannons, and forcefields to deal with lings.
At the same time though, he's trying to downplay immortals in general by ignoring their massive benefits.
To claim that immortals are bad vs lings is to claim that stalkers are are bad vs lings. The thing that makes +2 blink stalker timing attacks so scary is partially because of the fact that +2 weapons reduces the required stalker hits vs 0 armor lings to 3 and you can still warp in zealots if he has 1 carapace. It's win/win. Either he has no cost-effective unit to fight your stalkers with, or he wasted money on a carapace upgrade that won't help him. (No, roaches are not cost-effective vs +2 blink stalkers.)
At any rate, Immortals do exactly 2x the damage to lings as stalkers do except their shots have no travel time. Granted, the way things work out, this allows for the immortals to waste a lot more damage through overkill vs lings than stalkers would, they are also a lot less likely to perform said overkill due to their instant damage.
Immortals are fine units vs any army that includes roaches due to their sick damage output vs armored more than making up for any mediocrity vs light. While an immortal only counts for 2 stalkers vs lings (or standard cost-effectiveness), it counts for 4 stalkers vs roach (or a free 250/100 per immortal).
Moral of the story: immortals hitting lings is fine, obviously sub-optimal, but fine, immortals hitting roaches is borderline imba. Stop trying to skew the argument with thinly veiled QQ.
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On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta.
What if you leave your immortals with your cannons behind your wall-off (along with a couple of sentries to protect your wall of course)? That seems to negate pretty much all of those issues. And Immortals actually deal slightly better DPS than stalkers vs lings. Their issues is mostly due to trying to keep them from getting picked off, which tucking them safely behind wall-offs achieve. You're invariably going to have to split your army no matter what vs these pushes anyway.
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United States8476 Posts
On April 26 2012 06:55 Skyro wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta. What if you leave your immortals with your cannons behind your wall-off (along with a couple of sentries to protect your wall of course)? That seems to negate pretty much all of those issues. And Immortals actually deal slightly better DPS than stalkers vs lings. Their issues is mostly due to trying to keep them from getting picked off, which tucking them safely behind wall-offs achieve. You're invariably going to have to split your army no matter what vs these pushes anyway.
But +2 stalkers do better vs lings than +1/1 immortals =P.
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I am a bad diamond player, but 90% of my games vs zerg is always this 3 base only-roach style. I've been FFE'ing into robo + stargate constant VR and immortal production, while turtling on 2 base with cannons and sentries so they cant get in. I have 5 void rays and 4 immortals (with observer), +1/+1, 4 or 5 sentries and a decent stack of stalkers and zealots by 13 minutes, in my games it comes out to roughly 120 supply, but I'm sure if a better player does the same style they could probably push it to 140 supply. And for all those losing to roaches in diamond or plat, use this build and I promise you wont lose to their 3 base roaches ever again lol.
In diamond, every zerg will do this only-roach thing that everyone is preaching, blindly, and expect great results. Before I started to turtle on 2 base with this composition, I used to do 3 gate and 4 gate agression, sometimes 6 gate with no upgrades to try and kill them, but it never works. All they have to do is make a ton of lings and roaches and I just got rolled every single time because I moved out of my base with gateway units. Then, I started to turtle and ONLY attack the map with void rays, build up a ball of units and I stopped losing to roaches.
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2 stalkers will pretty much never be more effective vs roaches than an immortal. The immortal only needs a total of 3 seconds to kill its first roach. Your stalkers are going to need at least 6 seconds to kill that same roach.
While the stalkers may be more likely to get away in a full out retreat, they will never be more cost-effective in actually killing stuff.
The best thing about immortals is that their cost-effectiveness goes way up by including more stalkers in your army. After 2 shots from a +2 immortal, a roach will have about 28 hp left. Adding 3 stalkers shots into this equation makes the immortals even better as they deal about 40% of a roaches hp every shot. In the perfect world, with perfect micro, immortals are freaking stupid.
In the game we play, its never a bad idea to have ay least a few immortals if Zerg has any roaches at all.
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Stephano said fast third is best way to beat zerg from forge and also 1 gateway expos are best overall vs zerg. Im not sure if he was referring to 1 gate gas expo or the gasless style with low ground/ramp gate that Titan does a lot and similar to the adonminus build. He said builds like this allow protoss to kill zerg third or actually do damage. (He also said pvz is pretty broken and protoss has to trick the zerg to win with some gimmicky build and whitera agreed that zerg is too good.) After experimenting with the adonminus gateway expo I found that Im able to do much more damage then with forge fe into zealot pressure. You can hit the +1 zealot timing at between 7:10 to 7:30 which is about 30 seconds faster than the average zealot pressure from forge. This makes a giant difference because most zergs build roach warren at 7 minutes at earliest and if they have to build on earlier than that they actually typically have a very similar worker count to yours. This transitions best into blink and allows you to put more pressure on the zerg.
Also MVP Tails did a high ground 13 gate 17 gas 17 nexus expo build where he scouted like at 17 supply or later vs zerg on stream a lot, built 2 zealots blind and attacked with 3 gates and zealot/stalker at about 6:30 while teching to something else. I think builds like this are going to be prevalent in pvz in the future once people figure out how to react to different things without building a blind forge. Maybe a nine scout and low ground 13 gate and if they get gas get a forge before core because their economy is worse, some slight tweaks like that.
Im curious does anyone have any replays from Titan's pvz games, he plays this low ground gate style a lot and I think a lot can be learned from it. The only replay in this thread is a forge fe from him.
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On April 26 2012 07:10 AlphaDotCom wrote:
Stephano said fast third is best way to beat zerg from forge and also 1 gateway expos are best overall vs zerg. Im not sure if he was referring to 1 gate gas expo or the gasless style with low ground/ramp gate that Titan does a lot and similar to the adonminus build. He said builds like this allow protoss to kill zerg third or actually do damage. (He also said pvz is pretty broken and protoss has to trick the zerg to win with some gimmicky build and whitera agreed that zerg is too good.) After experimenting with the adonminus gateway expo I found that Im able to do much more damage then with forge fe into zealot pressure. You can hit the +1 zealot timing at between 7:10 to 7:30 which is about 30 seconds faster than the average zealot pressure from forge. This makes a giant difference because most zergs build roach warren at 7 minutes at earliest and if they have to build on earlier than that they actually typically have a very similar worker count to yours. This transitions best into blink and allows you to put more pressure on the zerg.
Also MVP Tails did a high ground 13 gate 17 gas 17 nexus expo build where he scouted like at 17 supply or later vs zerg on stream a lot, built 2 zealots blind and attacked with 3 gates and zealot/stalker at about 6:30 while teching to something else. I think builds like this are going to be prevalent in pvz in the future once people figure out how to react to different things without building a blind forge. Maybe a nine scout and low ground 13 gate and if they get gas get a forge before core because their economy is worse, some slight tweaks like that.
Im curious does anyone have any replays from Titan's pvz games, he plays this low ground gate style a lot and I think a lot can be learned from it. The only replay in this thread is a forge fe from him.
Yep I've been trying to convince people to try the 1-gate nexus before core openings in PvZ for a while now but there seems to be a big reluctance for people to let go of FFE. But IMO the Nexus first variant of FFE still has its place as it is the most economical opening Protoss has.
Some comments though:
-Yes zealot pressure is much stronger out of a gate-nexus build than FFE, but zerg can still hold their 3rd which the good ones will. You should be able to trade cost effectively though in most scenarios however vs fast 3rd builds.
-You pretty much have to build at least 2 zealots out of a gate - nexus build. The reason is for safety, and it is probably why Tails makes them blind. After the 2nd zealot you can make a sentry for safety vs 2-base play, or a stalker or another zealot to pressure with.
-17 scout is risky on a 4-player map, but doable on a 2-player map with this opening.
-There are some casted Titan games you can find @ sc2casts.com. Titan however seems to always go gate-nexus and then forge before core for what I can only assume is safety reasons. Many of his games that I've seen he could've easily gone core before forge for faster tech, wg timing, etc.
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I dont really have the time to go through 1300 comments but I think I have an easy solution of the 200/200 pushes.
First off you need to get a 3rd at 7:30-8:30 to match the eco, and make sure you take none or only 1 gas because you need alot of minerals. needs to go 3gate robo into 7-10 gates 2 robo with mass immortal and 6-10 sentries, the sentries I personaly get at 1st with the 1 zealot. Around 12 min when the 200/200 push comes you should have 4-7 immortals (depends on stalker count). Ffs to block the roaches from running away AND pushing towards you. I recommend on maps like Agina to block a chocke with gates, needs to make sure the zerg wont "over possition" you (you know... chocke him), the zerg will expand to 4-all bases, if you wait too long, from there transition to 3robo colo, push with the first 3 and kill all of the roaches (ff, alot!), and than take your 4th and welcome to the late game!
sorry for grammad, I'm high platinum that wins with this strategy against also roach, ling and afew mutas. I hope my experience will help.
PS. some words I didnt know how to write so apologies again!
GLHF
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On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta.
This is probably ganna fix my current PvZ...
Thanks for the posts.
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On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta.
This is just such nonsense. Yes immortals have problems being slow and they can get focussed but saying they are worse then stalkers vs this push is just laughable. Their damage output is more then 4 stalkers vs roaches and the same as 2 stalkers against lings basically, they also survive longer then 2 stalkers against roaches, so even if they are focussed they do better then stalkers would have done. Another big plus about them is simply that you are using a building you need anyway and is otherwise dead. I agree there is no need to rush for immortals but simply skipping them against this push is ludicrous.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Immortals are bad vs this kind of push because you can't get them in the kinds of numbers necessary to roll over the army. For a maxed push you want like 8 immortals or something ridiculous which just isn't practical. Immortals are a great unit to hold vs quick roach pressure when there aren't so many roaches, but that doesn't happen in this build. I find that colossus are worth their weight in gold vs this kind of build. The splash damage you get is simply invaluable. In fact, I have a build which tends to crush the maxed push because you end up with 4 colossus, small ground army and a third base which (with appropriate simcity) rolls over the push because they just don't have the tech to deal with it. Obviously the build has other weaknesses, but for the purposes of defending the push it works.
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On April 26 2012 22:00 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta. This is just such nonsense. Yes immortals have problems being slow and they can get focussed but saying they are worse then stalkers vs this push is just laughable. Their damage output is more then 4 stalkers vs roaches and the same as 2 stalkers against lings basically, they also survive longer then 2 stalkers against roaches, so even if they are focussed they do better then stalkers would have done. Another big plus about them is simply that you are using a building you need anyway and is otherwise dead. I agree there is no need to rush for immortals but simply skipping them against this push is ludicrous.
It's not intuitive that immortals aren't a great addition to stalker/sentry against this push because it's a roach push and immortals tear through roaches.
But like I said before, immortals mostly wind up targeting lings against which they have crappy damage and huge overkill, and while immortals combine well with forcefields, if you run out of energy or forcefield too late, you quickly find that immortals don't synergize with blink at all.
The other big point with building 1 immortals instead of 2 stalkers is that you're constantly down 250/100 in army value relative to where you would have been with 2 stalkers due to the WG vs robo production mechanic.
If you have an idle robo and 2 idle WG's, I think you're probably going to be better off making the 2 stalkers in cases where you have multiple fronts to defend, limited sentry energy (<10 sentries), and you're researching blink or intend to have it before 13 min or so. Or if you think mutas are a possibility of course.
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United States8476 Posts
On April 26 2012 22:00 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2012 06:36 RaNgeD wrote:On April 26 2012 05:17 kcdc wrote:
A lot of people have pointed out that immortals are bad against mutas, and that's true, but very few people (I think just Ranged) have mentioned that immortals aren't actually that good against the roach-ling pressure either. That immortals are a pretty bad addition in this situation isn't intuitive, but it's true nonetheless.
The simple explanation is that immortals tend to auto-target onto the zerglings and they have AWFUL damage against lings.
The more complicated explanation has to do with immobility, positioning and the interaction between forcefields and early-game composition. Because you can't combine forcefields with zealots against Zerg, your immortal composition winds up being stalker-sentry-immortal which collectively has approximately 0 DPS vs zerglings. So you take forever to the lings, your immortals wasting their shots on over-killing cheap light units, and by the time you burn through the lings, the roaches either overwhelm you or back off for 20 seconds until the next giant round of lings shows up. Soon, you have blink, but your forcefields are wearing down, and your immortals become sitting ducks as you preserve your stalkers with blink micro.
A lot of times, you'll be better off with 2 stalkers instead of an immortal, and it's even harder to justify slowing down the timing on your third or your blink or your +2 etc in order to get an earlier robo for more immortals.
If you play it out a lot, you find that immortals aren't a particularly good addition against the roach-ling attack unless you have cannons or zealots to kill zerglings or an exceptional position where you can forcefield all day without running out or screwing up. It just doesn't play out how you'd draw it up in your mind when you think immortal > roach. This. While immortals are obviously good against roaches, having 2 stalkers instead is much more cost effective (assuming you have blink and +2 weapons.) As soon as you start running out of forcefields, OR you mis-forcefield and they get a good chunk of roaches in, they will immediately start targetting down your immortals. Stalkers on the other hand are much more versatile, as I mentioned before, they are faster/less clunky and come in much more handy later on if your opponent tech switches to muta. This is just such nonsense. Yes immortals have problems being slow and they can get focussed but saying they are worse then stalkers vs this push is just laughable. Their damage output is more then 4 stalkers vs roaches and the same as 2 stalkers against lings basically, they also survive longer then 2 stalkers against roaches, so even if they are focussed they do better then stalkers would have done. Another big plus about them is simply that you are using a building you need anyway and is otherwise dead. I agree there is no need to rush for immortals but simply skipping them against this push is ludicrous.
Again, I don't think anyone's saying immortals are horrible. They're just pointing out the advantages of initial +2 blink stalker defense over immortal defense. Those are:
- +2 blink stalkers are much better vs lings than immortals are. +2 blink stalkers 3 shot lings while +1 immortals 2 shot lings.
- Blink stalkers are more mobile, allowing you to re-position and defend 2 fronts.
- Blink stalkers warp in faster and give you instant damage.
- Blink stalkers are more versatile against tech switches.
Personally I think it's possible to get both +2 and immortals for defense in certain circumstances.
On April 26 2012 22:09 Plexa wrote:
Immortals are bad vs this kind of push because you can't get them in the kinds of numbers necessary to roll over the army. For a maxed push you want like 8 immortals or something ridiculous which just isn't practical. Immortals are a great unit to hold vs quick roach pressure when there aren't so many roaches, but that doesn't happen in this build. I find that colossus are worth their weight in gold vs this kind of build. The splash damage you get is simply invaluable. In fact, I have a build which tends to crush the maxed push because you end up with 4 colossus, small ground army and a third base which (with appropriate simcity) rolls over the push because they just don't have the tech to deal with it. Obviously the build has other weaknesses, but for the purposes of defending the push it works.
I don't know what build you're playing, but there are reasons colossi aren't discussed much at all in this thread and why they're never used in this defense.
- Long build time
- High place in the tech tree
- Immobile to defend on 2 fronts
- Gas heavy, so cuts into your sentry count. As Stephano has said, sentries are the most important thing versus this type of build.
- Relatively late expansion at 10-11 minutes
- Obviously there are problems with a colossi opening versus a muta threat
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Disclaimer : I am nothing near GM level and I do not play protoss. Moreover, I did not read the 66 pages of this thread.
Now that I have lost all credibility, I would like to say that I really do not understand the statements about gateway expand in the op. Otolia stated earlier in this thread that Adelscott's build is a good answer and I have to praise that statement. With a heavy sentry push hitting at 8 min, the zerg does not have the opportunity to max a roach army. In fact, very few zergs even dare to take a third and Adel often comes out with a third earlier than the zerg player.
Note : You will need perfect forcefield placement, and good army positionning.
For vod : http://fr.twitch.tv/onemoregametv/b/316135082 : Adelscott in EG MCSL against Son and Moon, starting around 2:10. In these series, the zergs do try several builds to counter Adel's predictable style, but (almost) always fail.None of them went for early third though. And I was not able to find the replay of Adel vs Nerchio where Adel completely destroyed the third and came out way ahead.
Plus I would like to mention that Stephano himself stated that he hates playing against gateway openings.
Just my 0.02 ! Do not hate !
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On April 26 2012 23:28 VyingsP wrote:Disclaimer : I am nothing near GM level and I do not play protoss. Moreover, I did not read the 66 pages of this thread. Now that I have lost all credibility, I would like to say that I really do not understand the statements about gateway expand in the op. Otolia stated earlier in this thread that Adelscott's build is a good answer and I have to praise that statement. With a heavy sentry push hitting at 8 min, the zerg does not have the opportunity to max a roach army. In fact, very few zergs even dare to take a third and Adel often comes out with a third earlier than the zerg player. Note : You will need perfect forcefield placement, and good army positionning. For vod : http://fr.twitch.tv/onemoregametv/b/316135082 : Adelscott in EG MCSL against Son and Moon, starting around 2:10. In these series, the zergs do try several builds to counter Adel's predictable style, but (almost) always fail.None of them went for early third though. And I was not able to find the replay of Adel vs Nerchio where Adel completely destroyed the third and came out way ahead. Plus I would like to mention that Stephano himself stated that he hates playing against gateway openings. Just my 0.02 ! Do not hate !
Ok, I took it out. There was a time that the thread was being derailed by a discussion of gateway expand vs FFE (a debate which was widely considered settled months earlier), and a disclaimer not to talk about gateway expanding in platinum was needed.
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Again, I don't think anyone's saying immortals are horrible. They're just pointing out the advantages of initial +2 blink stalker defense over immortal defense. Those are: - +2 blink stalkers are much better vs lings than immortals are. +2 blink stalkers 3 shot lings while +1 immortals ALSO 3 shot lings.
- Blink stalkers are more mobile, allowing you to re-position and defend 2 fronts.
- Blink stalkers warp in faster and give you instant damage.
- Blink stalkers are more versatile against tech switches.
Personally I think it's possible to get both +2 and immortals for defense in certain circumstances.
Yes I believe ranged was saying that getting +2 weapons and blink is better at defending this particular timing than having a few immortals but with no blink and only +1 weapons. So if you had to choose one of the other, and I agree with him. BUT if you get a 6 min third you can have +2 weapons and blink done AND a few immortals (depending on how many obs or warp prisms you want to make) done by the time this hits. Ranged was getting a 8min expansion and could not get both in time so he had to choose one or the other.
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It surprises me how many zergs are in here telling the pros that they need Immortals because of their “massive benefits”. I’m not going to say that Immortals are useless (far from it), but when you consider Immortals vs. Blink Stalkers, can you honestly say that you know for sure that one is better than the other, ignoring the ability to micro, simcity and positioning? Immortals dps is high, but their survivability is not on par with well-microed blink (if you blink 2 stalkers just as they lose their shields, you’re essentially gaining the dps of one stalker – the one that would die if it didn’t have blink – while also gaining whatever health buffer is able to accumulate between the time of the blink and the time they take damage again). Therefore, in situations where you cannot blink effectively due to micro/multitasking or being surrounded by roaches, Immortals are better. In situations where you can blink and/or disengage blink stalkers are *probably* going to be better unless you’re able to get a large number of Immortals (i.e. perfect micro can get you out of engagements without netting much/any losses with blink stalkers – Immortals get run down eventually, unless you have so many that the roaches die before many can get to the Immortals). And that’s not to mention that Immortals are really only useful against armies made of roaches, ultras or infestors, and the rest of the time they’re pretty bad (yes, stalker dps without stalker mobility against lings is pretty bad).
Note: On the issue of the “borderline OP” damage of Immortals, 300/75 in marauders with stim get 60 dps versus 250/100 in one immortal, which gets 50 dps. Not the issue, but just saying – it isn’t as though its dps is of unrivalled caliber. It’s good, but a lot of things in this game deal good damage, and Immortals only have good damage against armored ground units, which is a fairly slim category.
I’m a bit late to the party on FRB and its impact on this push, but (pure theorycrafting) the reason that this push is so devastating is that economically spending 600 resources to get 3 bases up and 450 on queens for injects is enough larva to use 60 workers of economy (with a perfect distribution of 48 minerals/12 gas). FRB does a couple things which I think will be helpful here, delaying the economy significantly by requiring 3 bases to have a push with 45 workers (36 minerals/9 gas – think almost Losira caliber pushes), and making 4 bases required for a push with 60 workers spamming roaches – though a 4th queen probably isn’t needed. Also, the higher ratio of vespene to minerals will enable protoss to pump out more of their sentries and tech based units used to defend this push. If a zerg has time to take 4 bases to make a 60 drone push, protoss almost certainly (I hope) should have time to take 3 bases – and that’s enough gas to do a lot more than we’re doing now – which is basically scrambling to react with tech to what we see zergs doing, and hoping a 50 food army can be microed/simcitied well enough to defend a 200-food army.
No expert, just adding my thoughts – maybe they’ll drum up good discussion.
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