EPT[D] Ultras in ZvP (Symbol style) - Page 3
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Ballistixz
United States1269 Posts
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althaz
Australia1001 Posts
On June 20 2012 15:22 NrGmonk wrote: The counter for this as toss is extremely passive turtle play. A unit composition consisting of some combination of mainly archon/immortal/colossi/templar is the best. Zealots are pretty much worthless except for reinforcements after all banelings die, and you want as few stalkers as possible, as they don't really contribute much to the fight. Leftover sentries should be used to hallucinate archons. Fortify all your bases with spread out cannons. Basically just turtle like no other. If you reach a maxout with this composition, baneling/ultra cannot touch you. Double upgrades are also really bad versus this style cause all the main units(banelings and ultras) don't really care much about armor. In the 2nd game, Parting got a huge lead, but was just overly aggressive. In the 3rd game, Parting was just caught off guard. He didn't get to use hallucination or spread out his army. Both games are good demonstrations of this style, but in both games I feel like Parting just wasn't used to facing it enough and made huge blunders. What you say is absolutely true, but if Protoss is NOT going for the typical 3-base colossi push you can skip ultras and go straight to broodlords and infestors, which IMO still favours the Zerg. Your broodlords will be slower, but with hardcore turtle-toss that's not too much of an issue. Of course you still can lost to the crappy mechanic that is the archon-toilet because Toss will for sure have time to get there, but that basically comes down to control and I feel confident as Zerg once I get to that level. Spread and a-move my brood/roach/ling control my infestors directly with fungals, infested terran where needed and attempt to neural the mothership. No strategy is perfect, but this seems a great way to easily not die to what is a pretty scary timing push from Protoss. | ||
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GleaM
United States207 Posts
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Advocado
Denmark994 Posts
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][Primarch][
Sweden302 Posts
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
nrgmonk hates replying to me 1. Yes, Toss can get HT tech on 3 base, but if you don't have colossus, then you won't break 10+ spines and infestor/ling support. You need colossus to siege the mass spines. 2. If Zerg sees you skip Colossus tech, he will go straight into broodlords, safely. 3. If Zerg sees you get HT tech (with your standard colossus tech), then he knows that 3 base 3+ colossus deathball timing won't hit him before he has broodlords out, so he can safely tech up to broodlords and skip ultra/bane. 4. The big problem a lot of zergs have, is how to safely get broodlords in time for the 3 base 3+ colossus push that will 99% kill you in an even macro game if you go straight to broodlords. By going ultra/bane, you can survive this colossus timing. If toss goes the 'counter' to this ultra/bane by going templar tech, Zerg has a few choices: a) See the HT archives, or morphing HT/Archons, and know he can skip the ultra/bane and safely go straight to broodlords b) Perhaps fall slightly behind, but now he has 20+ banes, which many zergs (even pros, and high level players, like blade5555 recommended in his guide) think is necessary to 'counter' the archon toilet, so it's not like he made anything useless, and I think many zergs will tell you they would be much more comfortable in playing a macro game with Toss past 3 base toss, with their precious BL/infestor army out, instead of the very, very nervewrecking gamble where it's win or lose depending if you get those broodlords out in that 30 second timing (and in an even game, you wont have broodlords out comfortably in time before that 3+ colossus 3 base timing does some serious damage) I'm glad you think it's so simple, and I know you believe a lot in carriers in ZvP and are probably much more comfortable against broodlords than most Toss, but every zerg will tell you that the 3 base 3+ colossus timing is a bitch to deal with, and I think this new ultra/bane play of Symbol's is totally new, something we've never seen before or most zergs would know about (a few non-pros are saying they've been doing it for months, which sounds pretty amazing that they figured that much out before any pros did). But the idea of using ultra/bane to survive the 3 base colossus push, is pretty fucking awesome, and now, Toss will need to check before blindly pushing, and we can kill a Toss who tries to push out, forcing a lot of games where Toss will lose to ultra/bane, or will have to sit back and get HT tech, leaving zerg in a more comfortable position, and allowing them to get broodlords, which most zergs would say is a very comfortable spot to be in. Assuming a normal macro game, where toss gets a decently timed quick third behind robo tech, Zerg has a really impossibly hard time trying to play out the game, because they know they will just die to that 3+ colossus 3 base push and won't have broodlords out in time unless they really stretch everything out to the last straw, or just outplay toss with roach aggression or mutas. If Toss plays a really quick macro game, there might not even be time to do that, so it's just a realyl uncomfortable spot for a lot of zergs, and now there seems to be a rather simple and easy way for zergs to survive this timing from a macro toss or a defensive toss or even an aggressive toss who just backs off and takes a third after his aggression doesnt end the game and eventually does that killer 3+ colossus timing that you know you won't have broodlords in time for, but you still have to try. Anyways here's a game I played: http://drop.sc/208815 Maybe you were right (that guy who said banes more important). In this game, I try to go ultra/bane, but he pushes before I have ultras out. I think he may have been ahead, and I was having huge difficulties due to mouse problems (mouse kept double clicking every time, as evidenced when drones kept all of the sudden not mining anymore 2 times in the start which basically put my opener about 20 seconds behind, and when i constantly kept stopping my drones at the third from mining, and just could never get drones at my fourth for forever). When the Toss hit, I didn't even have bane speed, but he was on creep way too quickly, and I did take out all his sentries with my roach aggression earlier on (he went fast third off robo tech - i feel like he took it dishonestly quickly, whatever), so he couldn't really forcefield. I traded extremely cost efficiently and just won the game then and there as all my roaches and infestors were still alive and I just walked into his main. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
with this build, do u get melee upgrades for the ultras and banes? or is it one of those "in the moment" builds to deal with 3 base pushes and no upgrades are needed past bane speed and chitinous plating? It's up to you. You probably want to tech to hive asap instead of getting lots of upgrades, but whatever. I think getting double evo by the time you take your fourth and infestation pit is always a good idea. For protosses defending this push, try hallucinating immortals and putting them in front instead of using forcefields. It's very strong. No! Archons are always better to make than immortals. Yes, there is hardened shield, but immortals are armored, and being hallucinations, they take 20 dmg to shield instead of 10. So the very, very few units (i think 2? immortal and siege tank) that do a single shot of over 20 damage, they also do bonus to armored, of 50 damage, so a siege tank or immortal will 2 shot the hallu immortal when it's shields are gone, which would only take 5 shots to take down anyways, for a total of 7 hits to kill, whereas an archon is not armored, and has 360 life (which means a lot more shots to take down). Zerg will probably have splash (fg) and an overseer with his army, which will makes the hallu near useless. probably better to just make more forcefields, the ultras can't clear every forcefield, you can ff behind the ultras, and you ff behind you. I mean whatever, if you want to hallu thats fine but archons are better than immmortals, always. when P learns to scout this and react they will not attack, take a fourth, start chrono out immortals and get lots of archons and templars + storm and then some collosi maybe just for the lulz... ... as zerg safely takes his 5th base, and gets his pure broodlord/infestor army out comfortably instead of being on a ticking timebomb hoping their mass spine wall lasts for just 10 more seconds (now with ultras and banes to nullify archon toilets!) and then some queens maybe just for the lulz... I know as a Zerg, I'd rather play a long macro game with Toss with 5+ bases and having a pure bl/infestor army, than win or lose 50% on that extremely, thin, thin razor margin where Toss does his 3+ colossus 3 base deathball push that will straight up kill you if you go straight into broodlords if it's a macro game or you are both even and it's anything less than you completely outplaying Toss all game with roach aggression or mutas. | ||
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La1
United Kingdom659 Posts
 as a Z and a P player i've always thought faster ultras is a viable build so its nice to see this finally getting used.I think zerg are finally starting to realise they dont need to rush for things and they have units to hold pushes if they are played correctly | ||
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Vaapad
Norway171 Posts
But fortunately for Zerg, we can rely on Toss' instinct to all-in and push out with his 3+ colossus 3 base deathball for a long time ^^ so true man, so true :D | ||
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Insomni7
667 Posts
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Nuclease
United States1049 Posts
I mean that what he was really doing (which I just found out Artosis and Tasteless actually say on the cast) is taking those Colossi so that he can stop 2-3 of their hits on the banelings and zerglings. The zerglings and banelings get ripped apart by the Colossi, even before they can hit the sentries and stalkers. Now, one could stipulate that he traded those roaches for banelings and zerglings, and so it is true that he got NP due to lack of roaches. BUT, I would say that he would probably have traded those roaches off for Ultras, Infestors, and BLs, and even if he hadn't, NP would be a great addition to this even with a few less zerglings or banelings for roaches, as long as the Colossi are the ultimate backbone to the army. Just my two cents, it may sound like semantics, but I think Symbol is playing it less by ear than your point on NP made it sound like. I think NP's pretty important to the build. | ||
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YouMake
United States262 Posts
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JDub
United States976 Posts
On June 27 2012 14:05 Belial88 wrote: No! Archons are always better to make than immortals. Yes, there is hardened shield, but immortals are armored, and being hallucinations, they take 20 dmg to shield instead of 10. So the very, very few units (i think 2? immortal and siege tank) that do a single shot of over 20 damage, they also do bonus to armored, of 50 damage, so a siege tank or immortal will 2 shot the hallu immortal when it's shields are gone, which would only take 5 shots to take down anyways, for a total of 7 hits to kill, whereas an archon is not armored, and has 360 life (which means a lot more shots to take down). Zerg will probably have splash (fg) and an overseer with his army, which will makes the hallu near useless. probably better to just make more forcefields, the ultras can't clear every forcefield, you can ff behind the ultras, and you ff behind you. I mean whatever, if you want to hallu thats fine but archons are better than immmortals, always. I think you are forgetting in your calculations that hallucinations take double damage, so any attack over 10 dmg (baneling, roach) gets reduced by hallucinated immortal's hardened shields. Banelings (20 dmg, +15 v. light): Hallucinated immortal takes 5 hits (hardened shields) + 5 hits (200 hp / 40) = 10 hits to kill Hallucinated archon takes 9 hits (360 hp / 40) = 9 hits to kill Roaches (16 dmg): Hallucinated immortal takes 5 hits (hardened shields) + 6.25 hits (200 hp / 32) = 12 hits to kill Hallucinated archon takes 11.25 hits (360 hp / 32) = 12 hits to kill Roaches with +2 (20 dmg): Same stats as banelings, 10 hits to kill hallucinated immortal, 9 hits to kill hallucinated archon So hallucinated immortals are better against banelings and upgraded roaches, and hallucinated archons are better against lings and hydras. Also, hallucinations work well against melee units, even if they are detected they act sort of like a destructible force field if you have em in front (and ultras don't insta-destroy them). Also, being able to take 9-10 baneling hits for energy is pretty huge if it does work out! Edit: If roaches are attacking your hallucinations, they are probably going to get way over-killed (especially if Zerg focus-fires your immortal or archon), so I'm not sure if the 1 hit difference for +2 roaches is noteworthy. | ||
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Walitgon
Australia550 Posts
LOLLLLL ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5zmjz.jpg) | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
I think you are forgetting in your calculations that hallucinations take double damage, so any attack over 10 dmg (baneling, roach) gets reduced by hallucinated immortal's hardened shields. i think you are forgetting that hallucinations take double damage. A hallucinated immortal's hardened shields only reduces attacks over 20 damage, not 10, because of the double damage factor. It still has hardened shield, but the difference is that hallucinated immortals will take up to 20 damage instead of up to 10. Because of this, hallucinated archons are always better than hallucinated immortals, except against thors. There are only 4 units in the game that the hardened shield of the hallu immortal still affects - thor, ultra, immortal, siege tank. 2 of the units (tank, immortal) do up to 50 damage due to bonus to armored, so will 1 shot the hallumortal when its shields are down (maing the archon a better choice) Ultra does 15(no bonus) x 12 x 2(hallu bonus) = 7 hits to kill archon Ultra does 35(+armored bonus) damage per. with hardened shield (20), its 5 hits to break shield, then 2 more to kill it. So because of the huge bonus ultras get against armored, this makes archons better than hallumortals as well. Thors do no bonus to armored, so it does same damage to both archon and immortal, and does a 2x attack. So 30x2(attacks)x2(hallu bonus)=120 dmg, 3 shot archons Hardened shield makes it 2.5 shots to break through shields, then does 60 damage to hp, so hallumortal has 40 hp left. So thor technically kills hallumortal in 3.5 shots, round to 4. | ||
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JDub
United States976 Posts
On June 29 2012 12:38 Belial88 wrote: i think you are forgetting that hallucinations take double damage. A hallucinated immortal's hardened shields only reduces attacks over 20 damage, not 10, because of the double damage factor. It still has hardened shield, but the difference is that hallucinated immortals will take up to 20 damage instead of up to 10. It reduces attacks that would do >20 damage to a hallucination, otherwise known as 10 normal damage. Let me quote Liquipedia for you: "A hallucinated Immortal does possess the Hardened Shield ability. However, due to the nature of hallucinations taking twice the damage, this results in 20 shield damage." A.k.a. A roach shot, which would do > 20 dmg to a hallucinated archon, does only 20 shield damage to a hallucinated immortal. I will await your apology. Edit: I think our disagreement also comes from the # of hitpoints an immortal has. An immortal has 200 hp, and 100 shields, not 100 hp and 100 shields. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Ultralisk Hallumortal: 8 Archon: 12 Roach: Hallumortal: 12 Archon: 12 Roach +2: Hallumortal: 10 Archon: 9 Baneling: Hallumortal: 10 Archon: 9 I don't think zerg with +2 will be moving towards hive tech soon, I think most zergs get +1 missile and then go towards melee/carapace. I think I was confused on the hp an immortal has though. I think I knew it was 200, but in my mind said 100 due to double damage, but then would factor the double damage again. So yea, I guess immortals are better against +2 roaches, but I don't think most zergs get +2 missiles ANDS go towards hive, banelings, ultras, etc. It does seem with banelings, immortals are better in a straight up fight. I also didn't think at all about lower tier units, forgetting about their double damage going above 20 when against a hallu. | ||
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Tistou
France14 Posts
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
bbongbbong tried to do this in the gsl on ohana. the toss didnt even go for colossi, instead going charge and archons. i think the toss was just an idiot, because he did all of this before any indication of ultra/bane was coming, but it ended up just working out and bbongbbong sadly, got crushed in a game where he was just completely outplaying the opponent all game long, from lings into his base to killing off all his immortals and sentries for free. bbongbbong seems to have some macro issues, like he never took his fourth, and then when he took it, he took the weird one and never, ever took his fifth. so it just shows the vulnerabilities of this style - don't attack until you have NP out yet, since NP is the only way to deal with mass archons, as well as immortals, and it's just as much up to zerg to go ultras vs colossi and broodlords vs templar tech as it is up to protoss to go templar tech vs ultra/bane and stalker/colossi deathpush vs broodlord. http://www.gomtv.net/2012gsls3/vod/67577/?set=2&lang= | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Here's a game where I did this and won. My ultra/bane was pitiful, but it prevented Toss from pushing out, and he killed my ultra/bane easily, eventually, but at that time I was able to remax on 20 broodlords instantly and won the game when he counter-pushed. I've been having a mixed bag doing this, but basically, I've been losing for not doing it right. I mean, you REALLY gotta get hive and your fourth QUICK. As soon as Toss takes his third (or you see him going toward third with your overseer seeing his gateway count), you gotta cut roach production (if you made more than 15, gg...), start fourth, infestation pit and hive asap, pathogen then NP asap. I was having trouble because I wouldn't do this quick enough (when you go 2 base ling/infestor in zvz, similiarly, you start hive like as soon as you get your third up). You should have enough gas during the morphing of hive to get the good 6-10 infestors that you need anyways - I alwasy felt (and in zvz ling/infestor) you should get more infestors vs aggression, hive for macro play, but you can afford 10 infestors even with going hive, it just means you'll have a lower/later ultra tech but that's okay, you gotta get that ultra tech asap. In this game, I see him get his third, and my hive is done by 13:00. It's all about the ETA concept - when toss goes macro, you go macro with a fourth, and toss getting a third is basically a free pass to go hive for zerg (that or lots of roaches, and lots of roaches suck...). By the time my ultras have popped and I have like 5 ultras, when comparing armies via relpay, I actually have an army to crush him. He made the right move of going templar tech, but my army would have just crushed him if I went for an a-move. I actually do that, but bad positioning means I don't do so well, and he hallucinated a ton of immortals so I backed off (i had an overseer but I had it hotkeyed with infestors instead of my army, which is a bad thing to do). The point of that engagement was to bleed supply though. I aggressively expanded, and he took out my 6th and 7th bases, but at this point in the game I only need 5 bases, and I remax in time with 20 broodlords, with my 10 infestors, and just close the game. Now normally, I think the opponent would have mothership in time, so it's nothing special, but personally, I would much rather go ultras, then 20 broodlords against a 4 base toss with mothership and play the stupid dance of imbalance, rather than sweat my balls off racing the clock of morphing broodlords vs 3 base deathball push. In this game, I think if I identified templar tech, I would have been safe to go broodlords, but he went templar tech probably as a reaction to my ultras (have to check what he scouted again exactly). But when I saw his templar tech, I quickly cut ultra production and started into broodlords. The game ended immediately, just because he didnt have a mothership and took his fourth too late, but in a normal game I think it just would have been a dance, which is a lot cooler than simply one or the other winning because they hit 10 seconds before/after broodlords pop. | ||
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