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On August 10 2012 15:00 TankseL wrote:
Wouldn't it be better to use Dark Templar instead of High Templar for the Archons? DT's are 25 gas cheaper so for each archon you save 50 gas. They are more expensive with minerals but gas is what limits this build for me most of the time. Also you could harass with the DT's if you wanted.
6 gas gives you about 775 gas a minute so 300 gas for an HT archon you could get about 5 Archons in 2 minutes. With DT Archons you could get around 6 in 2 minutes. This means less zealots/cannons if you spend all the minerals but i would rather have more archons.
Edit: made it easier to read.
I thought the same thing for a while running this build (I've been playing around with it for ages since the first thread was made) and once you hit a critical mass of archons going DT's leaves you in a better position, however....
1. I found that by going dt archons you have FAR, FAR, less zealots, obviously, which makes roach hydra pushes impossible to hold. playing this build I'd say once you first get your mothership and first few archons up, the zealots are actually a more important component of the army for retaining the archons you do have by being used as cannon fodder, and just generally giving your army the padding it needs to survive pure roach, or roach hydra armies- which basically soft counter your unit comp. In the build itself this is okay because you can afford to lose lots of resources in units as long as you're trading your mineral only units- zealots- for his gas units- roach hydra, while retaining your archons. Personally I think the huge hit to zealot count isnt worth slightly more archons.
2. As for dts as a harassment unit, I find they are not needed for this build. Firstly because he's seen your stargate or atleast your void ray clear out his OL around your base, there is a reasonable chance he will have a spore at each base. Sure you can still snipe hatches with DT's, but this requires a big invesment in them to kill things before his army can resposition (as sending 1 dt wouldnt be effective with a spore up) and personally I didnt like this as I felt it was a big risk.
As for using dts in their usual role in this matchup, aka tower control and patrolling expos, which I find to be quite useful, you have to realise with a mothership zealot archon army you have a super mobile army with guaranteed safe retreat via either vortex (or perhaps even recall which I dont really use) so you should constantly be out on the map anyway IMO with this build. You can hold towers and patrol expos with even zealots or probes or just have your army shark around the towers which makes dts seem basically useless except for building archons to me (and your army is already cloaked so no point even mixing them in there). The only issue of this map control is ling runbys which can be averted with good sim city and map awareness, and getting your army trapped by mass lings is no problem at all because your army is so cost effective vs lings that he may as well have not even have made them.
So I ditched this idea and now when I do this build I just get the TA, the only time I'll really get a DT shrine is if for some reason he gets so ahead that I cant get a 4th so I just want to mass a pure archon army with my mothership and pray for his bad positioning and my good vortex's vs his endgame army of death.
but just my thoughts
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After having used it several time now i can say that this is a cute legitimate build that helps protoss bypass alot of the annoying midgame shenanigans like defending against infinite waves of roach-ling where one missplaced forcefield can lose you the game etc. It is by no means unbeatable, through experience i have found 4 ways to deal with this build.
If anything this is just a very good macro orianted build that evens out the skill requirment of getting into the early lategame.
Every protoss can attest to this: cronoing gates and immortals, stressing about having good FFs etc. With this build you dont even have to worry about overmaking sentires. Its a good build overall and should be explored more.
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 31 2012 07:12 Tolazytobecreative wrote:So to all the people who haven't tested it out and still wondering if they should because it seems so easy: don't. this strat is utter bullshit and the only reason why it works is because zergs on OP's level dont know wtf they just scouted and will then be confused and just do random things wich will actually make them lose. Why is it bullshit? because you could never hold your third with this. you could just drop some roaches in the main and while the army moves into the main you could simply snipe the ms with corrupters you could also simply bust the third and dont stack all your units in a circle to for the toss to get a cortex that catches 20+ units. You could also turtle up play macro game and yet aigan dont stack your units up (zerg from op's replay... putting all your bl's at one place and the infestor under them so you get everything vortexed like an idiot... what is this low master? but the easiest way would be to simply deny/snipe third (wich you cant possibly hold with this if done correctly) or drop. also you posted this before. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=271126it's the exact same thing (but hey two threads get more attention right?) your shittalking during games hasn't improved either and yes i am fairly pissed since this thread is pure attention whoring(and maybe ment to piss people like me off?). the tactic is bad and solely relies on the zerg reacting wrong also this is coming from top 100 eu gm. so dont tell me i dont know wtf im talking about. i know it.
Just to burst your bubble, I know this works until low gm atleast because I have defeated several low gm and high master zergs on ladder with this build. The hardest counter I found to this build is stephano-roach, but it only works on maps that have third and natural far away from each other, such as Cloud Kingdom, Daybreak etc etc.
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I have question for op. I am zerg, mid-high master and i am facing this a lot on ladder lately. Either full sky toss either zealot archon mix with air. Question is , are mass infestor witj some roach support good to counter this?i even had hydra/corruptor/infestor army and it got crushed by protoss air. Also detection is impossible.to survive since phoenixes kill my speed upgraded 15 overseers(they are focised easily with plus 3 attacks). Which pressire and late game composition would u reccomend me for this? Im seriously considering bbust every game cuz of this 
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On July 14 2012 03:44 the p00n wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2012 03:38 Arcanefrost wrote:On July 14 2012 02:16 the p00n wrote:On July 14 2012 02:13 Arcanefrost wrote:
Mothership on 2 bases doesn't work. If the zerg makes fast corruptors he can snipe it before you have the energy to vortex, and your archon count isn't high enough yet to stop them. With your mothership dead it becomes near impossible to take a third, and it only goes downhill from there. This is incorrect. He cannot have enough corruptors and ground forces. Keep in mind that the mothership has 700 combined hitpoints with 2 base armor and that archons deal heavy splash damage, and you have a void ray in there too. Nothing prevents you from moving your mothership a bit back, corruptors only have 6 range and will be shot at by archons/cannons. His window is extremely limited as well as you will get 50 energy extremely quickly, which is enough for 1 vortex combined with your starting energy. He just makes corruptors first, snipes your ms as it pops and then proceeds to transition into roachmax which denies your third. Hasuobs also said this once during a cast. What you are describing is not possible, no matter how much you want it to be. I do remember the HasuObs cast where he said this, but he was incorrect as well (or not using the proper build). The mothership will pop between 10 and 11 minutes. You will need a ridiculous amount of corruptors before 12-13 minutes (that is when I get 100 energy and can vortex your corruptors, and then instantly kill them by means of an archon toilet. Remember that the few seconds of invulnerability that was added after exiting the vortex is not as relevant to air units, as air units spread much slower than ground units.) Also, I can just move the mothership back.
Corrupters move faster than broodlords so they will probably be saved but on orange hp...maybe yellow with a bit of luck...
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what if the zerg makes overseers
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The zerg will almost definitely make 4-5 overseers in the mid game. If they don't, they somehow haven't scouted the mothership or don't understand how cloak works.
This strat does not rely on invis, though sometimes it does surprise them in the early game and delay a push at about 12 minutes. Usually they will already know. It is much more reliant on an archon/zealot toilet to hold off early attacks than invisibility.
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On July 31 2012 05:02 Jetaap wrote:
I would be interested to see this build against a zerg that just sits on 4 bases and maxes on broodlords/infestors/corrupters. My problem is that it's very hard to defend the momaship from corrupters with archons only (assuming the opponent spreads his corruptors). The replay in the first post only show it holding a stupid attack from the zerg, whereas the problem in my opinion is to deal with the super army of zerg.
To you and 100 other people who post stuff like this.
Test it. Test it again. Report back what you have discovered.
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On July 14 2012 01:59 the p00n wrote:
What if the lair has already been completed? It's possible that he swapped the order of research with zergling speed. Although I personally think it is retarded to get lair before metabolic boost, some zergs do it anyway. read below).
To be frank, you are wrong. Like VERY clearly wrong. If a zerg scouts gas in the nat (and scouts that gas is still being mined in the main, which is standard) then going lair before pool is what's expected.
For the rest of the thread, yes, this build works IF you get ahead early. However, if the zerg defends perfectly, scouts your build, ect, this will not work versus top zerg players.
In the meantime, playing protoss on the side, this a fucking hilarious style ;D
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On August 14 2012 13:03 DeathToSquid wrote:This strat does not rely on invis, though sometimes it does surprise them in the early game and delay a push at 10-12 minutes. Usually they will already know. It is much more reliant on an archon/zealot toilet to hold off early attacks than invisibility.
Yeah, exactly. This is why I've been trying to focus more on setting up flanks and other tricks to increase surface area for the chargelots, nixing the mothership alltogether. Something I really like is to constantly produce Phoenixes and use them to pick up a bunch of the Roaches, effectively splitting the army in half so the lots can fight half the army at a time. I also really like using a Warp Prism (and eventually a second one) to build zealots behind the Roach ball and hit it from all sides.
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On August 12 2012 22:05 Nawe wrote:I have question for op. I am zerg, mid-high master and i am facing this a lot on ladder lately. Either full sky toss either zealot archon mix with air. Question is , are mass infestor witj some roach support good to counter this?i even had hydra/corruptor/infestor army and it got crushed by protoss air. Also detection is impossible.to survive since phoenixes kill my speed upgraded 15 overseers(they are focised easily with plus 3 attacks). Which pressire and late game composition would u reccomend me for this? Im seriously considering bbust every game cuz of this
Mutalisks.
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I see a lot of people suggesting skipping the mothership. If you skip the mothership you have to rely on sentries, else you're just going to get kited into oblivion. Vortex is basically one giant forcefield, it entangles your units in his units which allows for maximum surface area and divides the roach DPS over all of your units (the strength of roaches is that they have high damage, which allows for great focus firing and kiting, but low attack speed which makes them bad against single targets (low dps)).
Stargate 150
Void ray 150
Phoenix 100
Fleet Beacon 200
Mothership 400
That is 1000 gas. If you have to rely on sentries, expect to be using at the very very least 6 sentries. Lets say you use 7 sentries - then you have 300 gas left for an archon and you can add zealots with however many minerals you saved. You don't get the void ray for early map control, nor the phoenix for nearly perfect scouting information and you eventually have to go into mothership anyway.
That being said, it is actually quite hard to use forcefields correctly with zealot/archon. Seeing as roaches are 4 range and you are melee + 3 range, it is actually you who is supposed to close-in on the enemy, so he can just keep his distance and kite you into oblivion. If you are running stalkers you have 6 range, so in order to get maximum DPS per area occupied the roaches will actually need to close in on you which is what makes FFs effective, as you just cut their army and then move back and kill everything.
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Hi, I don't really get it.
Do you build templars to feedback infestors? They can just chain fungal ur zlot archon til they die.
Also What if his units are spread out? 2 vortexes won't be enough.
Thus can you include a replay if possible of you playing against a straight up zerg. I.e going fast 3 base, roach for defense, mass spines + infestors then broods + corruptors + infestors + spines.
Because I don't really see how this army can beat infestor brood corruptors with spine support.
Thanks
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Coincidentally, I've been doing a similar build but with some variation. Instead of getting pheonixes I get 3-4 voidrays (2nd one after mothership is queued) and go directly into double robo colossi with thermal lance. The voidrays pull back before conventional mutas pop (around 12-13 minutes) and I keep them split between my 3rd and natural to kill overlords that might morph into overseers. Keeping them from making overseers allows me to defend all of my bases with just colossi and invisible sim city. If they do the fastest roach max I lose my first wall before getting my mothership up in position in time with adquate forces but when I get it up they have no means of killing anything since they don't have vision. I rebuild my wall after they are forced back. If they go fast muta, I will know because they will kill my voidray(s) in which case I just immediately warp in 6-7 stalkers and a couple of cannons. It stops the first wave and I just keep warping in stalkers and colossi until I move out and smoke em like hash. The fact that you have 3-4 voidrays by the time they want to greedily take a 4th means you can deny the 4th base quite effectively just by denying creep spread to it and having 4 voidrays.
I haven't tried it with less voids going directly into chargelot archon but I might give it a try
Master P here
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Are there any replays or examples of this working on the pro level? It seems a little too gimmicky to work, but I'm not sure, I haven't ever run into this on ladder. Seems interesting.
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Thanks for the build p00n. I think it definitely has promise... compositions that you would think could work to kill it won't because scouting is denied early on and mothership pops pretty early. Zerg is usually afraid to engage directly into the mothership since they can't tell what is under it. It definitely does not seem gimmicky to me.
The only thing I can think of that could potentially stop this is mass mutas. Archon/mothership/zealot is pretty slow so mass mutalisk (with good control) could work. Has anyone tried this?
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Sometimes it's good to go for base trade vs mass mutas. What I'm doing is sending zelots with some (not too much) archons to attack, and leaving my mamaship with archons to defend base. He probably will have a lot of spines, but zelots don't die that easly. The thing is to snipe some key buildings and recall if needed.
That is ofc when he suprise you with a lot of mutas, if you know it's comming, I guess it's better just to put a lot of canons, get storm and leave some templars and just A move.
Personaly, I have the biggest problem with mass infestor. They make a wall of infested terrans, and just fungal everything that comes close to them. Ofc it's followed by spine crowler wall. Rly no idea what to do there.
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Personaly, I have the biggest problem with mass infestor. They make a wall of infested terrans, and just fungal everything that comes close to them. Ofc it's followed by spine crowler wall. Rly no idea what to do there.
I cannot beat entrenched spine crawlers AND a maxed army (infestor broodlord) with zealot archon, and when I've tried it hasn't worked out well. Take more bases, throw up cannons and go for carriers (or recall past the spines, though at that point you are committing to an all in). This is often necessary if your first attacks with maxed zealot archon don't win outright.
Also try doing a lot of warp prism / zealot harass while you get up the carriers. At this point you should have minerals coming out your ears so it doesn't really cost you anything.
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I feel like, in some conspiracy, p00n is the only honest Protoss in this thread. The rest of people post here with "sorry to burst your bubble..." just try to cover up the power of this gracefully powerful strategy of simplicity..
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Hi, I don't really get it.
Do you build templars to feedback infestors? They can just chain fungal ur zlot archon til they die.
Also What if his units are spread out? 2 vortexes won't be enough.
Thus can you include a replay if possible of you playing against a straight up zerg. I.e going fast 3 base, roach for defense, mass spines + infestors then broods + corruptors + infestors + spines.
Because I don't really see how this army can beat infestor brood corruptors with spine support.
Thanks
Shoot I have one. He skips agression and goes straight BL/infester with a few roaches, and has a very hard time. The site I use to upload says replays for the new patch can't be uploaded yet, I will put it up as soon as the site is working. If anyone knows a free site that is working, please let me know...
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It's actually similar to something I was doing a back in march, except I was going colossus after a few voids and then a fast mothership, also adding in carriers 1 at a time. While getting shield and air attack upgrades early, also using tons of cannons (the shield upgrades help cannons, ground and air) The reason I made so many cannons because so much gas goes to tech so you can't afford many sentries or stalkers, I continue adding them all game because muta is such a huge problem, I can see the spire and still not be sure because it's often for corrupters or sometimes it's a roach/muta tech switch. I was actually doing gateway opening for a while too, but I stopped after the queen buff because zealot pressure can't do anything now. (it doesn't even force them to make lings anymore) Nowadays, I like to nexus 1st, if possible or I will go forge 1st if I intend to pylon block them.
+ Show Spoiler +
Kind of funny that after watching these again, I realize how much I've improved
edit: against the terrans, the build orders often didn't go as planned. I had to make adjustments on the fly because of what was scouted.
Also, the colossus before mothership was because I found hydra busts so hard to stop. It was common for zergs to try that after they see the stargate opening because they know your splash dmg will be late.
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EPT
