[G] Stephano-Style ZvP – The 12 Minute Max-Out - Page 15

On April 25 2012 02:42 MorroW wrote:

yes. ofcourse zergs figure out how to stop it and so on. the point is your making units and showing them as aggression to the zerg (units that you would already need to defend ur 3rd anyway, so your basically investing nothing into your attack) while zerg has to respond by investing into things other than drones, which makes his eventual mass attack with roaches or whatever on you much much easier to defend

the point im trying to make is you dont need to do damage such as killing stuff, your damage is by forcing him to make units before he gets the critical amount of drones so early that he can just make units for the rest of the games, attack and kill you

all this (that i said) rather than just throwing down your nexus and dont show any signs of aggression to the zerg is the best way to go about securing your 3rd.

so if you 4gate zealot, if you force 8 roaches and 12 lings on the production tab, if you then go onto losing 7-9 gateway units while "forcing zerg units", then it doesnt pay off cause you lost a bunch of units. your not really forcing zerg to make units if he manages to kill your stuff in the process. the point is to show it and force units without actually losing units.

so if you have trouble defend against zergs who max out on 48 drones on minerals and 15 drones mining (63 drones in total) then you need to force him to make units before he gets to 63 drones

my suggestion to tosses who want to learn how to defend 3base toss is to actually practice a ton and ton of different 2base allins and learn exactly the drone count zerg needs to defend the different 2base allins you do. then make similar macro oriented builds where you display the same threats to the zergs eye (so he will think its that allin) but instead back off and take ur 3rd.

fake impressions and forcing zergs unit/drone balance is a very complicated thing and it takes alot of practice and knowledge about the matchup to do right

ill say a rather standard way to do it safely but still very fast and solid.
go for the 4gate +1 stargate (your stargate should go down at 6:20, gates at 7:00 and your first 4 zealot warpin at 8:10~), then with your next 400 minerals put down your 3rd nexus and make a robo, sentries (at home).
the 4 zealots should be warped in as close as possible to their 3rd (normally right outside the creep)
robo finishes and try get out the observer asap and 3 immortals and 3 phoenixes. add a few gates to your 3rd base and a cannon if u like.

so now you should be on 7gates and have about 8 sentries and 3 immortals (also a ton of stalkers), not to mention the voidray and the 3 phoenixes that you must have kept alive.
you forced alot of units before he got to his 63 drones with and u also forced 3 spores and a bunch of extra queens)

there is no way for zerg to max out that fast on roaches and there is really no timing window where he should be able to kill you. this is just 1 example build how to get ur 3rd up, but there is over 10 different ways.

just focus on learning the standard basics of forcing zerg to make units without you losing units at the same time ur taking a 3rd and youll be more than fine


and to emphasis on what you said that they have more success killing zerg with 2base than securing 3base is because of what i talked about. the zerg plays too greedy early on and dies to 2base, if he doesnt die then he gets an advantage which he uses to hit a timing to kill protoss later instead.

so assume zergs played more safe and never died to 2base, then they wouldnt have this timing window to just go kill protoss that tries to secure a 3rd. makes sense right?

i read the other comments about the timing of the 3rd base. you might naturally think the later you take your 3rd base the safer it is, thats not actually true.
if your doing a 2base attack on 13 minutes against a zerg, thats too late and hes just going to kill you easily. because he had been gaining so much more money from 3base than u been mining from 2base. so take that thought into your 3rd nexus completes at 13 minutes. now how are you supposed to defend a zerg when he has been mining from 3base for all that time?
you want to take your 3rd nexus as early as possible and make it kick in BEFORE zerg actually can attack. in that way you get more units more everything.

a quick 3rd is considered around 8:00, a normally timed one is between 9 and 10 minutes. 12+ probably just means your bad. you cant take such a late 3rd and expect to defend the zerg rallying thats been mining from full 3base for 4-5 minutes

its not a simple task to defend a 3rd base as protoss safely, but trust me its even harder for zerg to do so



well if you look at the gsl statistics its actually <30% winratio for zerg for 2 seasons now in zvp

and its much more likely that its protosses outside korea being bad rather than korean zergs being bad

coming from korea was there for 3-4 months practicing alot especially with sage (whos expert mu is pvz) he didnt have much troubles taking and securing 3rd base defending vs mass roach ling attacks. also he never just took the 3rd without doing pressure or harassment at the same time

so far in europe, practicing on the ladder and tournament games the eu tosses play alot more passive when they are playing macro style and i think thats the key reason they have hard times against zergs

On April 26 2012 03:51 -VoidRay- wrote:


Morrow, I think pretty much everything you have said has been spot on especially the part about applying pressure to force units but not really "attacking" or "losing" much. One thing that I don't quite understand is how you can do a Voidray Zealot pressure, then back off and take your third. 4 zealots and lets say a VR and 2 phoenix wont do much at all. The roaches will come out destroy the zealots and best you get is a queen or 2. Yes, I do understand that the point is to make units and by doing that they are not droning but do you really think this is "enough" to be safe while taking lets say a 10 minute third?

In theory, I agree with everything you are saying so don't take this the wrong way i'm simply trying to understand. Currently I"m just doing a stargate pressure (1 vr and a few phoenix) into a 9:30ish minute third. While i'm doing that i'm adding a robo and getting pure sentry and by time my third is up a total of about 8 gates. Sometimes I get a few queens and sometimes I don't. I think I might do some 4 gate pressure with a VR because it seems with JUST a stragate you don't get them to make units but rather just a FEW spores and some queens. Anyway i'm rambling but yeah, I do agree with you i'm just not 100% it really works.

On April 27 2012 21:17 Gn4m wrote:
Im low diamond (but my ZvP probably at plat lvl...) and after reading this I feel like the most stupid zerg in the world. Every toss complains about how strong and unbeatable this is, but I cant seem to get it working... If the protoss is on two bases and just keeps producing immortals he's got about 3+ when I attack his base. Perhaps I'm just macroing really bad, cause I've been on a hell of a tilt the past weeks, but his immortals are just eating my roaches...

On April 27 2012 21:17 Gn4m wrote:
Im low diamond (but my ZvP probably at plat lvl...) and after reading this I feel like the most stupid zerg in the world. Every toss complains about how strong and unbeatable this is, but I cant seem to get it working... If the protoss is on two bases and just keeps producing immortals he's got about 3+ when I attack his base. Perhaps I'm just macroing really bad, cause I've been on a hell of a tilt the past weeks, but his immortals are just eating my roaches...

On April 28 2012 10:05 dpurple wrote:



This is what happen to me also. Protoss camp in his base making immortals. Im outside maxed, and cant do anything so I have to try and get my tech up. But its too late, when protoss push I just die.

On April 28 2012 10:05 dpurple wrote:



This is what happen to me also. Protoss camp in his base making immortals. Im outside maxed, and cant do anything so I have to try and get my tech up. But its too late, when protoss push I just die.

On May 01 2012 05:04 kcdc wrote:


You might be right that this roach spam won't continue to work as well as it's working right now. But it might also turn out to be over-powered. We don't know yet. All we know is that it's a very strong build and despite significant effort, Protoss players have not yet agreed on how to beat it.