EPT[D] PvZ - Establishing third with Skytoss (viable?) - Page…
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Tommyth
Poland117 Posts
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Fogetaboudit
United States232 Posts
On May 06 2012 20:52 Markwerf wrote: I don't see how this works against corruptor/infestor at all. Corruptors kill the mothership easily and trade well enough with voidrays. Especially with some infestors for fungal backup it shouldn't be a problem at all for zerg to stop this. Also waiting for mothership to take third is just awfully slow. They don't trade well enough, when MS is over cannons and with voidray support if the corruptors want to target down the MS, you just lose like all of them, "easily" is a really poor word choice, and infestors cannot really be aggressive, only defensive. Micro'ing MS back helps too believe it or not. Watch the second engagement in this replay http://drop.sc/173472 I played this game today. Also IIRC he has a quick 5 base versus my 3... I say meh. Also, my third timing is pretty normal AFAIK people just haten on the Mothership. | ||
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Fogetaboudit
United States232 Posts
On May 06 2012 21:21 Tommyth wrote: Next week Funday Monday is about using air units only, guess some of u can throw Day[9] a replay or two ^^ Already did haha, didn't even make a zealot, hope I get picked! | ||
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kiklion
99 Posts
On May 06 2012 17:30 piroko139 wrote: 2. As a result of games lasting long, focus on upgrades is paramount. I have to definitely attribute a lot, if not all, of my wins to being up in reasonable upgrades. Carriers hit hard as hell when they're at 3 attack. I'm sure you guys already knew that. 4. Corrupters are not that great against this composition, UNLESS they're upgraded. I do not see many zerg going double Spire though. Hydras are also not that great against this composition. But then again, I haven't gone up against 3/3 Hydras yet (I see a lot of zerg skipping Carapace for some reason). 5. There is no efficient mineral dump against this composition. Spore Crawlers fail against Carriers, Lings can't hit air (or get past a cannon wall), and I haven't seen a queen heavy composition yet (Although I have to assume Carrier dps will negate Transfuse anyways). Forcing the zerg into a gas heavy composition is something that seems to make them uncomfortable. In other words, I have made several zerg lose purely because they ran out of gas to reinforce. Upgrades are definitely important. Attack upgrades greatly improve the dps of voids/carriers/phoenixes. Flip of the coin, getting armor upgrades greatly helps the zerg units if they get ahead of toss. (shouldn't but if) Even upgraded corruptors lose to equal supply/cost void rays. The benefit though, is how fast zerg can remax. So trading will be in zergs favor. Just as cannons are efficient in defending, lings are useful in denying expansions. But that is about it, if the cannon/pylons go up, lings alone won't break it efficiently. They will need a gas unit. | ||
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lolstarz
Canada65 Posts
http://drop.sc/173883 Shakuras, Zerg tries to nydus, then masses queens corruptors and hydras. http://drop.sc/173884 Antiga. Zerg snipes my third with big hydra/roach drop, but loses too much and I kill his main after. http://drop.sc/173885 Shakuras. I lose this game, though I was kinda tired so I didn't make good use of my army before he attacked. http://drop.sc/173886 Ohana. Zerg loses third to zealot pressure, after that it's hard to catch up. The next few I played a while ago and don't remember well enough to give a summary: http://drop.sc/173920 Antiga http://drop.sc/173922 Taldarim http://drop.sc/173924 Daybreak http://drop.sc/173925 Ohana: I remember this game because he bane busted me but I managed to stabilize. I was stilling working out timings at this point | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
Oh and far as voids go, there's a thread floating around about how upgrades *might* actually hurt voids. I'm sure that a lot of you have seen it, but here's the link for sake of completeness. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=334940 I don't know if this would affect voids in this specific strategy, such as vs. corruptor, hydra, etc. but I thought it might be worth discussing. From the descriptions of replays I've read, it seems that attack upgrades are in fact beneficial to void rays, but you never know. Maybe someone can play around with the sandbox a bit? | ||
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Rorschach
United States623 Posts
You lose if the zerg just expands lots and constantly trades with you. If you can't get to that 150+ food (which takes gas+time) you can never win and eventually the opponent wears you down. | ||
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lolstarz
Canada65 Posts
On May 07 2012 07:25 Rorschach wrote: My exp with this build, yes you can take games off ppl. You lose if the zerg just expands lots and constantly trades with you. If you can't get to that 150+ food (which takes gas+time) you can never win and eventually the opponent wears you down. This is true. In my experience the difficulty is timing your expansions. If you can get your third quickly enough (which some maps almost guarantees your forth; for example on Shakuras, if you take the distant third then by blocking that ramp with lots of cannons it becomes easy to take the 4th behind it) then it's much easier to pull off. Compare with Antiga which has no easy 4th to take, and in some ways the third is harder (although it's easier to use the mothership to defend it since the ramps are so close together. | ||
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willkillson
United States123 Posts
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TheSymbiont
United States7 Posts
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Rimak
Denmark434 Posts
No WAY!! 10-0 This is so extremely one-sided game. I think most of the wins are, because zerg doesn't know how to counter this. I'm also getting my templar tech so my unit comp is: Vrays, 2 carriers, Phoenix(if muta play), 3-6 templar (depending on how many infestors), archons (extremely powerful against hydra and corrupter stacks). Toughest game was when guy went infestor-hydra. Then i've learned about power of templar and archon in this composition. Awesome strategy, works! | ||
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Nyast
Belgium554 Posts
1. I took the third near the center instead of the further one, so one side of my third was exposed to hydras attack. As a result, I was forced to engage with all my voidrays + MS where there was no cannons and traded badly. 2. I kindda rushed to zealots + colossi when I saw he was going so heavy on hydras, instead of strengthening my voidrays compo. Voidrays were upgraded, zealots and colossi were not, and I had to stop my air production to get 4-6 colossi out. As a result he transitionned to corruptors and destroyed everything  | ||
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Darkomicron
Netherlands216 Posts
Cannons are great, but you can only cover so much. I feel like a good player will recognize the weakness and do multi pronged attacks to delay your production, either killing probes, supply blocking, or taking out production facilities. Then he'll max and attack into your army, killing it with fungals and focus fire. You don't have archons so a toilet will only delay it a little and probably won't make a difference. I'd like to see a grandmaster protoss utilize this against good opponents. If it works for him then I think it's worth trying, as of what I've seen now. I very much doubt I would be able to win with it. P.S. it looks really weak against zerg all ins. | ||
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Bulldog654
United States79 Posts
I never thought to go crazy on cannons, maybe because it seems so bronze league to build so many, but the way I figure it, zerg can't say much because they spam the map with spine crawlers in traditional pvz games. The one game I lost to my buddy was because i didn't remember to cannon up my third. So far what I have experienced with this build playing against him, fully upgraded hydras come very close to being able to beat this, so being quick with that mass recall is key. Also, if the zerg thinks to bring infestors to your third and neural your mothership that can cause a few problems. | ||
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Rimak
Denmark434 Posts
On May 07 2012 21:11 Bulldog654 wrote: I absolutely love this build, i used it against my buddy in our weekly practice session and beat him 4 out of 5 games with it. I have thought for a long time that the stargate was the future of pvz but for some reason the key to this particular build escaped me completely: Cannons! I never thought to go crazy on cannons, maybe because it seems so bronze league to build so many, but the way I figure it, zerg can't say much because they spam the map with spine crawlers in traditional pvz games. The one game I lost to my buddy was because i didn't remember to cannon up my third. So far what I have experienced with this build playing against him, fully upgraded hydras come very close to being able to beat this, so being quick with that mass recall is key. Also, if the zerg thinks to bring infestors to your third and neural your mothership that can cause a few problems. One game on entombed wally I got hydra-infestor. I managed to win the game, because hydra is so slow, even on creep. Basically u attack one end of the map, when hydra arrives - recall - attack from the other side, if he splits forces, Protoss fleet will just run him over. Also carriers are fine addition: - Dumping minerals - Good against spore - Usually get targeted first, which gives your voids time to charge up. adding 2-4 carriers makes army so much better. Also against hydra i would prefer storms over colossi. If corruptors - storm, archons, vortex = Win. | ||
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djchillfit
4 Posts
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Borkbokbork
United States123 Posts
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Rimak
Denmark434 Posts
Since you are swimming in minerals, you can get a ton of gateways. If you get a speed prism or two, you can attack with fleet at one place, and then recall, and with zealots in other (two other places). About 7-9 zealots will snipe hatches very fast | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
What I'm thinking is this: Instead of focusing on air attack upgrades first and going double Cybernetics core, instead start with Air Armor, and start working on Protoss Shields as well. Then you use both buildings that you need to have anyway, the Shields will help your cannons as well as your Mothership greatly (keep in mind she has a very high shield count). Then with a Twilight council you'd have the ability to throw down either Templar Archives or Dark Shrine. That way you can build a pretty strong sim city with Gateway/Cannons (which take a long time for Zerg to break, especially with Shield upgrades) and if needed you can morph some Templar and make Archons which benefit hugely from shield upgrades. Then you can archon toilet if it's necessary. I'm not sure which I prefer, since if you go Dark Templar you have the option of making a few and then you can just use them to harass far out expansions, while keeping your main Voidray fleet at home... Reducing the dependancy on the Mothership in the event of infestors. On the flip side, by going High Templar you have the ability to deal better with the infestors as well as Hydra/Corrupter. The armor/shield upgrades also make the unit stronger against both Hydras and Corrupters as well (mainly Hydras which have a quick rate of fire). Corrupters deal only 14 unupgraded damage per shot (which is a fairly low rate of fire), which is actually only slightly more than Hydras deal... Just a little slower. Corrupters of course will all be able to engage the voidrays, whereas hydras will line up and not all of them will necessarily be able to fight the void rays. Either way, since the Voids are really the big time consuming investment, making them stronger against these units I think is kind of key. They also really help a lot vs Infested Terrans, whereas the damage upgrade isn't really helping THAT much. Like I said though, I think the main strength would be that you would be building a very tough voidray fleet, and if they commit very hard to defeat that fleet, by that point the idea is to be on enough bases and have enough gateways that you can warp in a large army of Zealot/Archon rather quickly. That's in the event of losing the fleet which ideally won't happen. If they've been going mass Hydra to deal with the Voids, then chargelot/archon can be extremely effective vs the Hydras, and if they go mass corrupter, you can simply overwhelm them on the ground with a freshly warped in army. I think it's this type of contingency plan that needs to exist, because if you lose that fleet of void rays by accident, you need a way of quickly creating some type of army in order to combat the one the Zerg has already mustered/or is mustering. The good news is that either option of dealing with the voids (Corrupters/Infestors/Hydras) are all very gas intensive, and if they've spent that much gas to deal with the Voids then they won't be able to create a GIANT army of roaches to deal with Zealot/Archon. From the game I played I decided to get a Robo after getting my third, and if I had focused on Twilight/Shield upgrades instead of air attack upgrades, I would have had the opportunity to get a Warp Prism and do some Zealot harass. This build definitely has a lot of minerals to spare, and once you reach a critical mass of cannons (or run out of room) then you need to find a way of spending that money in a productive way. Since the optimal Zerg response to Void Rays is likely the Infestor, infestors have issues dealing with multiprong harass, and having a Warp prism or two could be extremely aggravating for the Zerg... Nevermind that an infestor based defense would have to rely on spending some energy in dealing with said Zealots, which will make your Void Ray fleet that much stronger. Anyway, I'm just blabbering on and thinking out loud at this point, but I actually feel like this playstyle has a lot of potential. Some kinks need to be refined and worked out... But I actually think that working on a type of air based strategy is the future of Protoss, especially with the potential possibilities coming in HotS (another discussion for another time). | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
In PvT, the prevailing wisdom is to try to take a quick third with a bare defense so you can get archons/ storm against bio, then do a quick tech switch to colossi to force lots of vikings or just kill him there. Then, you can then switch back to a gateway based army whole a lot of supply is taken up by vikings. From there you just switch back and forth to confuse him. In PvZ, this strategy brought up the idea of an air composition with relatively quick three bases. This forces a hydra or corrupter heavy composition as the only viable opposing composition. Then, you can quickly warp in a large ground army which is extremely good against hydra corruptor. Infestors are okay, but they can be nullified through adding a few colossi or something as well. It seems Protoss may be the most versatile race after all. Once you hit the lategame, you can essentially dictate the game through tech switches. Oh yeah, funday monday is on! gogo! | ||
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