EPTWhen the mutas move out, you should have your phoenixes out on the map scouting for army positioning, so you should see them coming across the map. By the time they leave the creep, you should know about this, cancel all production on your stargates, and immediately boost Range and 3 Phoenixes. Start kiting the mutas across the map, and not in your worker lines. If they get to your base and your workers aren't protected by cannons, pull your probes temporarily so you avoid worker losses.
[D] PvZ - Establishing third with Skytoss (viable?) - Page…
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ineversmile
United States583 Posts
When the mutas move out, you should have your phoenixes out on the map scouting for army positioning, so you should see them coming across the map. By the time they leave the creep, you should know about this, cancel all production on your stargates, and immediately boost Range and 3 Phoenixes. Start kiting the mutas across the map, and not in your worker lines. If they get to your base and your workers aren't protected by cannons, pull your probes temporarily so you avoid worker losses. | ||
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thesupamuug
United States4 Posts
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Drowsy
United States4876 Posts
On July 14 2012 04:18 emaster wrote: Sorry, I need to correct the BS about the carriers here. Carriers suck. You might have this image in your head of them being high dps or massive damage or something, but that just isn't really the case. http://drop.sc/221479 I just did some unit tester in there. maxed voids will beat corruptors with between 1/4 and 1/3 of army remaining, even though it costs less gas. When you make it 10 carriers with the rest into voids, suddenly the corruptors win if you just a-move them in, and only micro to target fire carriers after voids are all dead. Carriers are behind voids the whole time, auto spawning interceptors (which are free on unit test map) and the corruptors dont target fire or use corrupt at all, but still win. thats because carriers suck. Maxed carriers can't beat anything cost effectively, unless they can't attack back. Interceptors themselves have a hard time beating cost effectively. Hydra just ends up being bad in the long run, because as you get maxed out armies voids can be on top of each other, take less focus fire, while hydras are stuck behind each other and have bad pathing. I went through this exact thought process too, and came to the same conclusion when you're dealing exclusively with corruptors. Mass voids are wayyy better on cost efficiency, but fungal growth tends to be a lot more effective against voids due to their greater tendency to clump compared to carriers. | ||
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ineversmile
United States583 Posts
On July 18 2012 16:36 thesupamuug wrote: If you are keeping up with your macro (money low and using chrono), you cant support 3 s gates off 2 bases with upgrades constantly producing. ESP if your opponent is going muta, phx make very fast, the range upgrade will take precedence over the 3rd sg. Even if you do get your 3rd as fast as possible, mutas will be hitting about the same time as the 3rd is finishing assuming your MS is out. So maybe inveresmile is MUCH better than I am, but I have never been able to constantly produce out of 3 sg, have a MS, have a 3rd going, have 5 phx, and have my range upgrade by the time muta hits, which is around 10 mins for any competant z. But with 2 sg you can have just as many phx with saturated bases. Maybe Im wrong but I'd love to see a rep with all of this happening before 10 mins I have no idea where our skill levels are, but I neglected to mention a couple of things: 1. I don't get any weapons upgrades until my third is established, I have a Mothership and those Phoenixes, and I have 3 Stargates pumping units. I don't care about investing into those upgrades until I have units to use the upgrades, since I can't spare the gas while powering up. If you're going for a gateway army, building gates takes only minerals and therefore you can tech while you do that. But if you're building stargates and a Mothership and all of your units cost ~50 gas per food, upgrades can wait. Being behind in upgrades is fine if you plan to boost them later on, when you're safe. 2. You can't support 3 constantly boosted stargates pumping Phoenixes off of 4 gases. Generally speaking, you can afford one stargate's worth of boosted Phoenix per base. A gas geyser with 3 workers produces 121.15 gpm (gas per ingame minute). If you constantly pump Phoenixes out of one stargate and you boost it once per minute, 2 of them build in exactly 60 seconds (35+35 for build times -10 for chronoboost), which means you're spending 200 gas per minute at that rate. Between 3 Stargates if you boost that often, it's 600 gas per minute, which is barely supportable off of 5 geysers because 121.15 gpm*5=605.75 gpm. I personally try to get my 5th geyser to finish right as the third base finishes so I can saturate it ASAP, and then I get the 6th a little later because I know from the math that 5 geysers can support 3 Stargates when they're producing as fast as possible, so I use my minerals to do other things at that point--usually cannoning and walling. And my goal is to get the 2nd and 3rd stargates to line up with my third, which lines up with the 5th gas, which leads to being able to support all that production simultaneously. Makes sense, right? 3. Since you can't afford Range and 3 Stargates on boosted Phoenix detail, it's reasonable to assume that you get Pulse Chrystals first, then go all-in on producing Phoenixes with your gas. If your opponent half-asses his mutas, 8 stock Phoenixes will kill all of them in a lopsided trade with some decent micro. If he commits, though, you want range. Since mutas take 33 seconds to build and then additional time to move across the map to join the flock, you can stall the first group of mutas while you boost range twice. Range takes 90 seconds to research, and if you boost it perfectly 3 times that shortens to 60 seconds. However, boosting that perfectly is basically a joke when you're microing phoenixes against mutas while macroing, so assume you boost it twice and knock it down to 70 in-game seconds...stall for that long and you can kill all the mutas with that timing. If you have trouble boosting your stuff quickly while microing, put your Fleet Beacon next to a nexus and hit the backspace key a couple of times to find it so you can boost it faster. If you put your Phoenixes on hotkey 2, for example, this means Back-Back-C-Click-2-2 to find your Beacon, boost it, and then select and zoom in on your Phoenixes again. Your mouse shouldn't have to move very far across the screen. You could also use location hotkeys. Setting up one of those right over your stargates is a pretty good way to jump back and forth between chronoboosting and fighting. | ||
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Sated
England4983 Posts
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HelioSeven
United States193 Posts
On July 18 2012 17:10 ineversmile wrote: I have no idea where our skill levels are, but I neglected to mention a couple of things: 1. I don't get any weapons upgrades until my third is established, I have a Mothership and those Phoenixes, and I have 3 Stargates pumping units. I don't care about investing into those upgrades until I have units to use the upgrades, since I can't spare the gas while powering up. If you're going for a gateway army, building gates takes only minerals and therefore you can tech while you do that. But if you're building stargates and a Mothership and all of your units cost ~50 gas per food, upgrades can wait. Being behind in upgrades is fine if you plan to boost them later on, when you're safe. 2. You can't support 3 constantly boosted stargates pumping Phoenixes off of 4 gases. Generally speaking, you can afford one stargate's worth of boosted Phoenix per base. A gas geyser with 3 workers produces 121.15 gpm (gas per ingame minute). If you constantly pump Phoenixes out of one stargate and you boost it once per minute, 2 of them build in exactly 60 seconds (35+35 for build times -10 for chronoboost), which means you're spending 200 gas per minute at that rate. Between 3 Stargates if you boost that often, it's 600 gas per minute, which is barely supportable off of 5 geysers because 121.15 gpm*5=605.75 gpm. I personally try to get my 5th geyser to finish right as the third base finishes so I can saturate it ASAP, and then I get the 6th a little later because I know from the math that 5 geysers can support 3 Stargates when they're producing as fast as possible, so I use my minerals to do other things at that point--usually cannoning and walling. And my goal is to get the 2nd and 3rd stargates to line up with my third, which lines up with the 5th gas, which leads to being able to support all that production simultaneously. Makes sense, right? 3. Since you can't afford Range and 3 Stargates on boosted Phoenix detail, it's reasonable to assume that you get Pulse Chrystals first, then go all-in on producing Phoenixes with your gas. If your opponent half-asses his mutas, 8 stock Phoenixes will kill all of them in a lopsided trade with some decent micro. If he commits, though, you want range. Since mutas take 33 seconds to build and then additional time to move across the map to join the flock, you can stall the first group of mutas while you boost range twice. Range takes 90 seconds to research, and if you boost it perfectly 3 times that shortens to 60 seconds. However, boosting that perfectly is basically a joke when you're microing phoenixes against mutas while macroing, so assume you boost it twice and knock it down to 70 in-game seconds...stall for that long and you can kill all the mutas with that timing. If you have trouble boosting your stuff quickly while microing, put your Fleet Beacon next to a nexus and hit the backspace key a couple of times to find it so you can boost it faster. If you put your Phoenixes on hotkey 2, for example, this means Back-Back-C-Click-2-2 to find your Beacon, boost it, and then select and zoom in on your Phoenixes again. Your mouse shouldn't have to move very far across the screen. You could also use location hotkeys. Setting up one of those right over your stargates is a pretty good way to jump back and forth between chronoboosting and fighting. This man knows what he is talking about. You should listen to him. Except about location hotkeys. They're actually called camera hotkeys. But that's okay. They're still really useful. Speaking of using phoenixes against mutas, I just recently played this game holding 2 base muta aggression with a single stargate and a couple cannons. Kind of a wonky game, he early pools me, and in the end he over commits to air army and I chrono 3/3/3 with double forge and make a massive gateway transition as he sacks my air army and main. Oh, and that baneling bust. Not sure why I didn't make any sentries upon seeing the baneling nest or how I came out of that whole situation as well as I did, but whatever. At least you can get a general timing on the whole first phoenix scout, see timing on spire, boost +1 and APC, get 3 to 4 phoenix out and hold 2 base muta @ 12-13 mins thing. Even if you don't see the spire, if it feels like muta play those cannons are always worthy insurance. I actually really like the muta/corruptor/queen composition he used (too bad his transfuses were awful to non-existant), which really did kinda rip through my air army. In the end I was focusing on those forge upgrades so it didn't matter, but it's worth noting as an anti-Skytoss composition. | ||
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emaster
United States32 Posts
 Archons are good obv, but feed back and storm on muta queen corruptor with archon and void/carrier is basically unbeatable :D | ||
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HelioSeven
United States193 Posts
On July 19 2012 08:01 emaster wrote: A transition to HT will kill all of that nicely though Archons are good obv, but feed back and storm on muta queen corruptor with archon and void/carrier is basically unbeatable :DWell yeah, and that's what I ended up doing, sort-of. I got the transition to stalker/HTs off though had to sack my air army in the process. The storms weren't even really that good, the upgrades carried me though there. But yeah, HT seems to be the corner piece of every successful Skytoss build; at some point, you gotta get 'em. | ||
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trbot
Canada142 Posts
On July 19 2012 20:30 HelioSeven wrote: But yeah, HT seems to be the corner piece of every successful Skytoss build; at some point, you gotta get 'em. Wholeheartedly agreed. For me, this is the key to victory in the late-game in many situations. As soon as I see infestors or queens, I roll out the high templar. Then it's a glorious micro battle of unit splitting, fungal and feedback (which is tons of fun). Usually an infestor can get off one fungal before being feedbacked if the zerg sends them in one-at-a-time (since I don't move ht's ahead of my army), so it can be quite close if the zerg's infestor control is top notch! Sometimes I even need to use a recall during the penultimate battle to save my low-health army, then grab reinforcements and immediately move out again. EDIT: adding a few carriers also -REALLY- helps with infestors. I win many games with zero HTs simply because I can split my units a little bit and the carriers can launch interceptors in time to ward off more than one fungal. I really hope Blizz doesn't remove the carrier in HoTS. It will severely weaken this strategy against infestor and mid-game hydra. | ||
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AndySCWilson
43 Posts
Much love -Andy | ||
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emaster
United States32 Posts
 I've played 15 games and only lost to 6 pool and tell all my opponents not to feel bad cuz I haven't lost to it yet, but then again im in plat haha | ||
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trbot
Canada142 Posts
On July 20 2012 13:37 AndySCWilson wrote: How does Zerg beat this? I've never been able to win against it, and my lost opponent told he he had never lost using this strat. Could someone maybe do a write up on how to beat this as Zerg? Much love -Andy After about 40 games with this style, I've only lost to: 6-7pool baneling bust 180 supply almost-pure-hydra push at my natural with 2-2 at 14:30, followed by another huge wave 3 minutes later These strategies actually account for about 15 losses (6-7p is very common in diamond). I feel like a baneling bust will win easily on most maps (since you can't spare early gas for sentries), and banelings are especially powerful versus this build, since it relies on cloaking for defense, and banelings can detonate on invisible walls and probes... I believe you can also be successful if you are vigilant in denying the toss third and fourth (NOT just trying to kill them once they are up). It is very hard for toss to compete with zerg production on 5-6 base if they are confined to three. If you confine him to two, I believe he is essentially dead. On a side-note, I had a zerg take a hidden expo at my fourth, and spore+spine the hell out of it. I managed to win (partially because he didn't do a very good job of denying my fourth elsewhere), but that really hurt. | ||
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HelioSeven
United States193 Posts
On July 20 2012 05:14 trbot wrote: Wholeheartedly agreed. For me, this is the key to victory in the late-game in many situations. As soon as I see infestors or queens, I roll out the high templar. Then it's a glorious micro battle of unit splitting, fungal and feedback (which is tons of fun). Usually an infestor can get off one fungal before being feedbacked if the zerg sends them in one-at-a-time (since I don't move ht's ahead of my army), so it can be quite close if the zerg's infestor control is top notch! Sometimes I even need to use a recall during the penultimate battle to save my low-health army, then grab reinforcements and immediately move out again. EDIT: adding a few carriers also -REALLY- helps with infestors. I win many games with zero HTs simply because I can split my units a little bit and the carriers can launch interceptors in time to ward off more than one fungal. I really hope Blizz doesn't remove the carrier in HoTS. It will severely weaken this strategy against infestor and mid-game hydra. Not even mid-game hydra, either, think about hive-tech speed hydras. Skytoss with no carriers against infestor/viper/speed hydra? Ugh... On July 20 2012 13:37 AndySCWilson wrote: How does Zerg beat this? I've never been able to win against it, and my lost opponent told he he had never lost using this strat. Could someone maybe do a write up on how to beat this as Zerg? Much love -Andy I maintain infestors are the best Zerg's currently got against Skytoss. Corruptors should tank lots of damage, so get armor upgrades from the spire. Infestors with pathogen glands and neural parasite and a lot of energy should be able to engage even maxed out Skytoss fleets cost-efficiently enough to win on the remax. Maybe add a few hydras in, but no more than a few. Queens are always good for additional anti-air (benefit from same ranged attack upgrade as infested terrans and hydras), but more importantly have transfuses. Burrow the infestors, find a favorable location to engage, and toss a large volley of infested terrans, while moving towards his fleet. As soon as he breaks away to avoid the ITs, unburrow and lay down fungals and NPs. The more NPs you use the less incentive he has to mass recall, the more fungals you use, the less incentive he has to stay around and fight, so find a balance there. | ||
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trbot
Canada142 Posts
On July 20 2012 14:13 HelioSeven wrote: Burrow the infestors, find a favorable location to engage, and toss a large volley of infested terrans, while moving towards his fleet. As soon as he breaks away to avoid the ITs, unburrow and lay down fungals and NPs. The more NPs you use the less incentive he has to mass recall, the more fungals you use, the less incentive he has to stay around and fight, so find a balance there. This is an interesting strategy. I've only faced it once, and I could be wrong, but I'm not so sure it's the best option zerg has. In particular, I'm not in favor of the IT dump. It doesn't seem too hard to micro against neural parasite, unless the zerg controls really well, since if my voids aren't all fungaled, your infestors will die to focus fire pretty quickly. (And, even if you've fungaled my voids, I'll still have interceptors flying around, and they can continue the job.) Once your neuraling infestors are dead, I just recall and hit you again immediately. Since you've depleted a huge amount of energy with the IT dump, things will likely go in my favor. Even if you manage to keep 8 voids neuraled (which seems like a lot), I can take the hit and have them rebuilt in one minute with chrono. Neuraling carriers seems more useful, since they take so long to build but, since they're in the back of my army, your infestors will die even to fungaled voids while trying to neural them. Besides, this is predicated on my not bringing half a dozen templar with me, in which case any infestor that gets in range of feedback (much greater than neural range) will die instantly... (And, when I see infestors, I almost always bring high templar with me...) If you want to talk ultra late-game strength, it seems from my experience that zerg is strongest if they can sac some corruptors to destroy my mothership (21 corruptors will 2-shot it), then remax and either expo/add static defenses with impunity while I can't move out safely, or fungal me to death when I do move out like an idiot. Rinse and repeat, and you either buy time to get 1,000 spore crawlers you can engage from atop, or catch me out of position and trade cost effectively. Either way, you're going to have to play cost effectively if you each own of half the map. If you don't like how that sounds, you're going to have to prevent them from getting half the map. (Good luck being cost effective after the fact with a dozen cannons at each expo.) | ||
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Rimak
Denmark434 Posts
On July 20 2012 13:37 AndySCWilson wrote: How does Zerg beat this? I've never been able to win against it, and my lost opponent told he he had never lost using this strat. Could someone maybe do a write up on how to beat this as Zerg? Much love -Andy Weak spots, that i know of: Baneling bust. (though i know get 2 sentry as a MUST and get 4-6 cannons at entrance, and was able to handle a 2 base BB, guy faked 3rd and i got only one sentry, but still held, though lost a lot of probes.) Corruptor-ling timing@ 3rd, before lots of cannons constructed. | ||
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Nyast
Belgium554 Posts
http://www.twitch.tv/nyast/b/324887129 at 0:54:35 Summary: Zerg moves his WHOLE army to chase.. 3 stupid zealots, on the bottom-right of the map. As I see he's so out of pos, I go snippe his closest base ( there are tons of spores, I ignore them and focus the hatchery ). He comes back in catastrophe and decides to push in my center base.. At 0:54:57 in the vid ( around 25'30 in game ).. he sends roaches, hydras and infestors into 14 canons, 6 templars full of energy and my air army. I land some insane storms, no need for vortex, his army dies instantly. I went down to 183/200 food for a couple seconds before getting maxed again. Geez.. | ||
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BoBiNoU
France181 Posts
On July 20 2012 13:37 AndySCWilson wrote: How does Zerg beat this? I've never been able to win against it, and my lost opponent told he he had never lost using this strat. Could someone maybe do a write up on how to beat this as Zerg? Much love -Andy Denying 4th is much more important than denying 3rd. I feel that trading "okishly" while preventing the toss to go for the 4th ( while you expand ) is the way to go. | ||
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Oboeman
Canada3980 Posts
On July 20 2012 13:37 AndySCWilson wrote: How does Zerg beat this? I've never been able to win against it, and my lost opponent told he he had never lost using this strat. Could someone maybe do a write up on how to beat this as Zerg? Much love -Andy I haven't played against it enough to be sure. I've never seen anyone make a good transition into getting storm+archon as well, but I think that's because I don't let them get a 4th base. My experience is that it's been pretty easy to deal with. The number one most important thing is to use zerglings to their fullest. Make sure that he never gets to build a nexus without sitting his mothership ontop of it to cloak it. He can't take a 3rd base with only void rays, you will kill it and burrow a ling. Never let him finish cannons without being spotted, use lings to deny every attempt unless he brings all of his air units over to defend it while it builds. Now on most maps, if he moves his fleet out to take a 3rd base, he leaves another point of his base very vulnerable, even if he builds a ton of cannons. If he hasn't ringed his entire main base in cannons, you want to drop a ton of zerglings into it while his fleet is out of position, and when he pulls it back to clean up the lings, you go kill his 4th base. You should upgrade drops early, but check with an overseer before committing all your overlords to it. Drops will be the best 200 gas you've ever spent in your entire life. Normally protoss will have about 20 cannons at the new base, so I usually just drown the base in infested terrans to clear out the cannons for free. Any time his fleet moves, counterattack with ling/infested terran, while queen/corruptor/spore plays defensively. Sometimes you trade a base for a base, but that's okay because you'll probably be up by 2 bases most of the game anyway. I've never let a pure skytoss player get a 4th base. As for actually being able to fight his army, get two spires and upgrade at both of them. Make a bunch of queens and infestors, and when you fight, fungal if he clumps void rays, otherwise just spam infested terrans, and spam transfuses on your corruptors. I tend win these fights without actually microing my corruptors (to busy spamming infested terran and transfuse), but if you do use corruption and target fire it should be even more one sided than usual. Don't fight in range of his cannons. In late game, mineral dump into mass spore crawlers and walk them across the map to contain him. Slowly trade free stuff (infested terrans or broodlings) for his cannons and eventually you'll get to a point where you can just kill him. against storm, you will have to fight a lot more carefully, but I think that you will still be able to remax and clean him up without doing anything too much differently. I only have one replay, and it's not that great a game (far too one sided), but it should demonstrate my point. http://drop.sc/195659 basically - spend your minerals. Keep finding ways to trade zerglings throughout the game, instead of banking 16000 minerals in a long turtle game, and when it gets to the point where you actually do need a max army, spend the minerals on spores (and spines - for archons!) instead. I'd be happy to play games against protoss players doing this to explore it further. oboeman.146 on NA. | ||
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trbot
Canada142 Posts
On July 21 2012 03:32 Oboeman wrote: Make sure that he never gets to build a nexus without sitting his mothership ontop of it to cloak it. He can't take a 3rd base with only void rays, you will kill it and burrow a ling. Never let him finish cannons without being spotted, use lings to deny every attempt unless he brings all of his air units over to defend it while it builds. [...] I've never let a pure skytoss player get a 4th base. This. I believe this is the reason you win. If I get a fourth, I add high templar, and feedback+a few archons makes your life very difficult. I've had some pretty difficult games where zergs made it very difficult to take my fourth. | ||
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AndySCWilson
43 Posts
Also around what time should a baneling timing hit? | ||
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