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Updated for a third game. This is a game I just lost
http://drop.sc/225749
The guy opens stargate, I hold it, he tries to do some sentry warp prism thing to block my ramp but he doesnt kill anything, and loses a bunch of zealots, his warp prism, and all his sentries (i assure you, I didn't take damage).
He then sat in his base forever, got a robo. I saw that, but I started infestors because of the stargate. He literally sat in his base for about 8 minutes, I knew exactly what he was doing, and when he started the colossus bay. I started a spire to get corruptors for that, started hive and baneling nest, mass spines, a fourth, just everything - and I made sure not to overdo it with tech because I knew he was 2 base all-in so I didn't need to pump econ, tech, and take the map and then die.
He eventually pushes, I see every move, I let him kill my fourth (god damn ohana), it's whatever, i can just double expand, i'm still ahead, it really doesn't matter.
He then comes to engage, on creep, in the open, and we go at it. I morph a bunch of banes, have spines, my queens, everything, knowing it's an all-in. I snipe out the colossi with my ~10 corruptors, and it all dies, but the sentries, immortals, and stalkers are still alive. I remax but it doesn't matter, everything just dies.
Help. I can't beat people who just sit in their base and mass immortals, sometimes colossi, like that. I only win games by getting hive in time, and when people push 'when they shouldn't' they meet a mass spine wall and infestors and corruptors and I always have hive in time...i don't know, I lose or win sometimes based on hive, whatever.
On July 20 2012 07:34 Belial88 wrote:http://drop.sc/224658Here's another game where this happened. In this game, the guy goes gate/nexus/forge/cyber. Unfortunately, since I did not open 14/14, he can get away with this. I had 2 really stupid supply blocks at the start from overlords i swore I made, that sucked. I don't think it would have mattered. The guy does an immortal/sentry all-in from this, i recognize it and go mutas like I usually do. He hits before spire is even done, and I'm just pretty fucked. No idea how I could have won this game, really irritating when I run across people who do something like 3 gate sentry expand, 1 gate nexus core, etc, into immortal/sentry, have no idea how to beat it in that situation because it doesn't work out right, usually because I have to make roaches due to 3 gate sentry pressure or whatever.
here's another game I lost, editing this since I just added it.
I guess i lost because I overreacted to the 4 gate and so my drone count was a little low. I'm still confused how I'm supposed to tell how much to make exactly, and even then, I still maxed out in this game and I was able to get infestors on top. I should have been much heavier on ling, only make ling 20 roaches instead of maxing out on them, but this is what I see pros like leenock do and many pros who just beat immortal/sentry straight up use a maxed army of pure roach. Still a bit confused, whatever.
http://drop.sc/224531
800 points masters
I've brought this up in the zerg help me thread but it isn't working.
So I have no problem beating straight up immortal/sentry all-ins. I see the robo, I respond by going mutas, if they go all-in, I have mass spines in my nat and make no roaches (no roach warren even if I can help it, although due to stuff like prism drop I usually can't be that sure, but definitely no roach speed or upgrades) and base trade. if they robo expand, lol 20 mutas. ezpz
But I have a lot of games, where Toss will open something like, 4 gate +1, as in this game. And I stomp it, like in this game. I take zero damage, like in this game. I have a huuuuuge lead, like in this game.
But I've made a ton of roaches because of the 4 gate +1 (I don't think there's a problem with overmaking units here, because the point is to deny the third, and put on counterpressure, and well, I see my drone count is fine, and I tech up quickly asap). So I feel that mutas are out of the question.
So I'm not really sure what to do here, because well, mutas imo are too late, and mass roach doesn't work too well because the opponent is simply massing a TON of sentries and immortals because he knows how far behind he is, so many immortal/sentry that max roach won't cut it. Hydras are lol against immortal/sentry with THAT many forcefield. So I go infestors.
And in this game, i get 6 gas and infestation pit ASAP. I literally grab the 6 gas when I know I've made enough roaches to hold (as it turns out, he dips out, but I grabbed them when I made 10+ roaches and had enough to be safe). I get lots of infestors, making them asap to be out in time for the push.
I delay his push by a lot, using my roaches, which buys me plenty of time to get more infestors.
Knowing this situation has happened many times before for me, I mass spines in my natural, because I know a base trade (like playing standard immortal/sentry all-ins) is the answer to plain immortal/sentry all-ins, and although I don't plan to base trade here, I know I should mass spines because he's all-inning, and because that's half of what you do against immortal/sentry, so I'm taking what this guy doing very seriously.
So it's this weird timing where, literally, the guy is herp derp and massing immortal/sentry, he's 'lost' the game by this point, and if he was doing a standard immortal/sentry all-in and pushed out as soon as he got 2-3 immortals he would die because I have enough mass roaches, but he isn't and instead derping a deathball so I know max roach straight up won't work.
And I've lost games many, sooo many times like this before, and before, I chalked up some of the losses to being too aggressive (he throws down a bunch of FF, I FG and spam IT but it isn't enough and my roaches are washing up against the FF and I'm losing too much and I lose), so every time he FF's, I FG and IT a bit, but I back off to keep my army.
he goes around the mass spines, to my third, and so I re-root them, and i know it's now or never, the game will end here, and I can't base trade because he's got too much econ and time that he's walled off too much at home.
Well, he's just got a ball big enough to stomp my roach/ling/infestor army.
It's really aggravating. I'm very strong in ZvP recently, but I literally lose the most to scrubs who do a 4 gate +1 (the most common failed gateway timing that they follow up with an immortal/sentry all-in), fail completely and I am way ahead of, and then they just mass immortals and push.
And sorry, I know it's rude to call people scrubs like this, but I don't know how else to say it. I mean literally, i own immortal/sentry all-ins with mutas, no problem, every time, but I can't do that because the 4 gate makes me make roaches (dont say 'oh he outplayed you by forcing roaches', that's stupid, I needed the roaches and came out ahead in the engagement for doing that) and well I'd just rather not make mutas in that situation, mutas aren't the only way to beat immortal/sentry, and I own 4 gate +1. But I lose to people who do a horrible 4 gate +1 timing, I beat it, I come out way ahead, and they just mass immortals and sentries and then push out with a deathball.
So yea. Quite aggravating. it's like holding off a 6 pool, and then they just mass immortals off 2 base and win even though you know exactly what they are doing.
TLDR: I know every single thing this guy is doing from the entire game like I got maphack - he goes 4 gate +1, I hold it easily and come out way ahead, then he goes for an immortal/sentry all-in follow-up that's super late and isn't a timing but just massing a deathball, and so I get infestors, but I still lose. This happens often, I always beat immortal/sentry all-ins, I always beat 4 gate +1, but when people literally just sit in their base and mass immortals and sentries after a gateway timing, I always lose. My standard answer to robo tech, from robo expand to robo all-in, is mutas, and since the gateway timing made me make roaches and delays lair, I don't make mutas, so I can't just do what I always do.
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Why not basetrade here too? It isn't any different. Alternatively, max out on roach ling, and make sure to engage him RIGHT as he leaves his base. That way you cut his army down a bit, snipe some immortals, and bait out force fields. You'll have time money and larva to remax if you're really ahead, and then you can meet him in the middle, rinse and repeat.
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Your post just makes me facepalm so hard. Just watch the replay.
I talked to a GM and they said I was way too heavy on roaches, and should be much heavier on lings, and I shouldn't try to engage in the middle and bait forcefields over and over (which is what you are suggesting, and what i did, by the way), but instead go for one big engagement. And there is no 'snipe immortals' when the guy has over 8 sentries, has 3 immortals, and a shitton of stalkers because he's been just sitting in his base massing units. i'm not talking about a toss who tries to hit an immortal/sentry timing he clearly won't hit because he did a failed 4 gate +1 and I can cut him down because his army is too small while I'm maxed, I'm talking about a Toss who's just massed a huge army that max roach/ling will not be able to beat, let lone 'snipe the immortals'
I only started going so roach heavy the last few days, I used to go much heavier on lings, but not with infestors, so maybe that will help. Maybe I was just really close to winning but just had too many roaches and too few lings. And engaging over and over and baiting FF on my part was not a good idea.
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You only have 50 drones at 9:22 and are taking your 5th and 6th gas. You need more drones and less vespene at this point, and your waaay overreacted to his +1 Zealot pressure. Zergs I play just place a couple evos and spines at their third and then a single warpin of Zealots does nothing, they watch for more warpins with speedlings and make Roaches if they have to.
Playing a more conservative style on spamming army units should get you at least 60 drones by this time.
10:46 you have a decently sized army, but the Protoss has no fast third. This is an army you want against a fast third build -- only if you want to play an aggressive style that relies on killing the third Nex, or Sentries, or Probes.
11:26 game is basically over because you don't have the economy to fight a 2 base Protoss. You pretty much made an army and cut drones very hard, did nothing with it, all the while the Protoss army gains strength (Sentry energy) and the income deficit gets worse and worse.
If you played with more Drones in the beginning and less Vespene, you can get an overwhelming Roach/Ling army and hold it unless the Protoss has god-mode FF. And no, you don't want to do one giant engagement... You want to bait as many FF as possible while losing as little as possible. I see very good Zergs (GoldenLighT) engage allins like this from multiple directions, FF are slammed down, then he backs off. He can repeat this multiple times and then go in for one gigantic engagement.
Whoever the GM player is you asked for advice from was either being lazy by saying "too many roaches" or is just an idiot.
Edit: I reread your post and this dude you asked for advice is just an idiot. You can tell him I said this. It makes me angry when people think that they can teach other people things and then teach poorly. Just because you can play well doesn't mean you can teach well.
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Canada13379 Posts
Ok, from a Protoss perspective here's what didn't go absolutely TERRIBLY with our Protoss friends push:
- he lost only a pylon on the 4 gate attack and forced a crap ton of roaches (slightly slower econ and tech from the Zerg)
- Warp prism survived the whole time without taking any damage
- Didn't get flanked when engaging at the third.
Alright, this being said you have 3 key areas where the Protoss had some sort of advantage or lack of failure
- I think it is more than possible to hold the +1 4 gate without making as many roaches as you did, which you recovered from economically given the time it took protoss to actually attack you. So we will call the +1 4 gate more of a moot point than anything else. The protoss didn't was money executing it, the zerg didn't lose anything to it and while the econ of zerg was slowed a little little bit it wasn't a huge fail.
I feel that you think you are further ahead after the +1 zealot attack than you really are. When you seriously think about what you accomplished with those 12 or so roaches was killing one pylon. You then push up to the toss base and lose a couple roaches here and there while delaying his push so your infestors get out.
What does protoss accomplish? Well, he makes sure he isn't getting killed with some sort of 2 base all in, he verifies that the 3rd is indeed there, he gets further verification that his immortal follow up (and yes, it is a follow up) will most likely not be up against fast spire or muta play and as such he can commit to it more heavily.
The forge is also constantly spinning so he can feel secure that his upgrades will be coming along well.
There are a couple of points in the game where the warp prism pushes a little too far forward and you don't fungal it or try to force an engagement centred around that warp prism. The warp prism is key to this push working as without it the protoss has no warp ins and can not reinforce. The toss is forced to stop immortal production and rebuild or wait for reinforcements cross map or wait for a pylon to be made somewhere.
On the topic of fungal, I saw you use infested terrans a few times where the energy is in essence wasted. Especially in the first bigger engagement on the right hand side, you use infested terrans depleting all the energy that could have been used by fungal. The way you need to think of infested terrans is this: I can make 8 of them. Would 8 marines make a difference here? And if the answer is no then don't use them, instead use fungal growth.
Probably the best thing you could have done was get a flank or surround. This build relies really heavily on forcefields. Since immortals aren't the kind of thing you can just warp in wherever, you need to keep the immortals alive. And while they dish out a ton of damage, since roaches are cheap and quick and easy to build if you start to lose immortals you lose the game since all that is left is non-blink stalkers.
If you can force more forcefields by flanking, or if you get lucky and they miss forcefields, a roach sandwhich will wreck this attack.
I feel also, that since you knew he was going all in, that if you could make more spines instead of uprooting spines you would have been better off. I mean you had 30 more workers than him, and had a 1k+ mineral bank. Considering the spines never actually rooted at the third they were a non issue in the engagement.
Now all this is from my perspective as a protoss player and what I have seen as difficult to deal with when performing a similar all in as that which Cicero did in the replay you provided. Im only around 500-600 masters depending on how well I am or am not playing that day so take this with a grain of salt.
But the things to work on (continuously as zerg) are flanks and try to deny that warp prism whenever you can. Even if you need to trade a little for it its in your best interest to do so. Forcing an engagement where the toss doesn't want one is key to beating the immortals. Killing the prism results in a much less powerful push. I have even seen some zergs use spore crawlers to zone where the prism can sit when the protoss is being aggressively initially to help zone where there can be warp ins and where there can't be warp ins.
As always, I encourage others to let me know when I am completely off base as it helps me learn as well 
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I d i o t ...
User was warned for this post
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On July 20 2012 02:42 CecilSunkure wrote:
You only have 50 drones at 9:22 and are taking your 5th and 6th gas. You need more drones and less vespene at this point, and your waaay overreacted to his +1 Zealot pressure. Zergs I play just place a couple evos and spines at their third and then a single warpin of Zealots does nothing, they watch for more warpins with speedlings and make Roaches if they have to.
Playing a more conservative style on spamming army units should get you at least 60 drones by this time.
10:46 you have a decently sized army, but the Protoss has no fast third. This is an army you want against a fast third build -- only if you want to play an aggressive style that relies on killing the third Nex, or Sentries, or Probes.
11:26 game is basically over because you don't have the economy to fight a 2 base Protoss. You pretty much made an army and cut drones very hard, did nothing with it, all the while the Protoss army gains strength (Sentry energy) and the income deficit gets worse and worse.
If you played with more Drones in the beginning and less Vespene, you can get an overwhelming Roach/Ling army and hold it unless the Protoss has god-mode FF. And no, you don't want to do one giant engagement... You want to bait as many FF as possible while losing as little as possible. I see very good Zergs (GoldenLighT) engage allins like this from multiple directions, FF are slammed down, then he backs off. He can repeat this multiple times and then go in for one gigantic engagement.
Whoever the GM player is you asked for advice from was either being lazy by saying "too many roaches" or is just an idiot.
Edit: I reread your post and this dude you asked for advice is just an idiot. You can tell him I said this. It makes me angry when people think that they can teach other people things and then teach poorly. Just because you can play well doesn't mean you can teach well.
Hm, I suppose I could have made less seeing as how Toss took gas at 6:30, I could have known that he wasn't planning to go balls to the walls.
I went high on vespene because, as I got from the zerg help me thread, I should be teching up much quicker on infestors against this sort of thing. What do you think about the decision to get infestors though? I felt his army was enough that a max roach/ling army would not have won at that time (or, as sometimes happens, if they wait even longer and make even more).
Do you think I made too many roaches, and should have made more heavy on lings instead?
I thought about multiple engagements, bait out FF, et cetera, but as you saw in the game, it failed. Right? I mean, what do you think of the engaging that I did? I thought with the infestors I had, it would be better to engage in that choke area so I could just FG everything to death.
I guess a game lost to macro is a game lost to macro though ;/
I thought my macro was okay because I hit 70+ at the 8:00 mark. I guess I just overmade roaches... I was planning on just counterattacking with them, but the first poke I make with my initial 3 roaches and lings got shut down really hard by his initial force, so I backed off, made a couple more roaches since I couldn't tell if this was a 4 gate +1 or a 6/7/8 gate and I've lost before thinking it was a 4 gate +1 and it turned out to be a 6/7/8 gate and I made lair after getting speed first and some roaches. How can you tell if it's 4 gate +1 or 6/7/8 gate before 8:00? I mean you can't right?
There are a couple of points in the game where the warp prism pushes a little too far forward and you don't fungal it or try to force an engagement centred around that warp prism. The warp prism is key to this push working as without it the protoss has no warp ins and can not reinforce. The toss is forced to stop immortal production and rebuild or wait for reinforcements cross map or wait for a pylon to be made somewhere.
I didn't think of the warp prism that way, I figured he would have also brought a probe for pylons. I saw I could have done that, but decided against it because I felt I should save energy.
Next time I'll focus more on it, I didn't realize it was so critical. I thought it was just "hey push out after 3 immortals, might as well make a prism now because it can fly over and catch up quickly anyways".
Thanks.
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Uh, I'll just preface this by saying I'm 900-1000 pt masters ( ZvP gives me a lot of issues as well but, mostly just due to small mistakes turning into .. lawl gg, not really a strategy issue.. for example missing an early pylon .. misreading builds, missing double warp prism harass at my main and 3rd .. lotta silly loses )
Anyways,I have had a lot of success dealing with really, most 2 base allins toss do using large numbers of zerglings in conjunction with a few roaches. I find that really any number of roaches past about 20 are nearly useless, they have a hard time getting in firing position. This is especially true against any sentry heavy play of course. However if you have a pack of zerglings, I don't mean some sissy shit like 50 lings, I'm talking over 100 lings at all times before he can even leave his fucking all in factory of gayness. The game gets .. really pretty hilarious frankly. He can't get out of his base without dropping 8+ FF every 20 yards, you just keep swarming him, then retreating as soon as . or even before the FF's land. This delays the push by a ridiculous amount, almost indefinitely honestly. I usually don't even make any roaches until after I see him leaving his base ( in this case of course your already going to have a few to deny that 4 gate pressure ). Infesters, I feel are pretty awful against this kind of army composition. Their dmg is just to slow to mitigate how badly your roaches are getting bottled up in the FF nonsense. Their always a good supplement if you already have 20ish roaches and 100+ lings .. but they are only that in my opinion against a sentry heavy push. I normally drop my macro hatch a bit early ( 7:45 ish ) and it's critical you hit every single inject the entire game, because mass ling requires just sick amounts of larva to keep going. Also I don't take a 4rth gas, just 3 gas so 57 drones total if I know he is doing any 2 base all in. I still get lair and roach speed at their normal times as well. I just build a whole lot of lings, and wait to build any roaches until he is near my main. Also +1 armor in my experience is more useful to counteract the +1 atk of the zealots so they don't ass fuck zerglings so badly ( though many times I can get engagements where my lings are almost only attacking stalkers and immortals anyways )
In this game specifically, you really overreacted to the 4 gate pressure. A lot of toss do that sort of thing early just incase you miss the pylon and they get an ez win, if you spot it they just go .. oh no problem .. immortal sentry time. This guy didn't skip a beat transitioning, he was ready for it to be denied. So that wasn't some large victory like you might feel it was. You did a good job delaying him I think, but just pure roach composition's have a hard time against immortal sentry, you need a fuckload of lings, coming from as many directions as possible, as often as possible the moment he leaves his base. I only engage with my roaches once he is at my base on creep and I always, ALWAYS engage from at least 2 directions, ideally 3 or 4 but sometimes that isn't possible.
Oh one last thing, one other tactic when using zerglings is, send the lings in first. Every toss will drop their FF ring almost in melee range of their units in response to the lings. At this point you swarm in with roaches who can shoot right over the FF because he dropped them all way to close. Most of the time the toss is nearly out of FF before he gets to my base anyways, so he cannot just drop more FF for the roaches, if he even had enough for the lings once that final engagement comes at your base. Once he is out of FF .. ling roach ( way more ling than roach ) rapes immortal stalker + energy-less sentries.
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On July 20 2012 03:06 Belial88 wrote:
I went high on vespene because, as I got from the zerg help me thread, I should be teching up much quicker on infestors against this sort of thing. What do you think about the decision to get infestors though? I felt his army was enough that a max roach/ling army would not have won at that time (or, as sometimes happens, if they wait even longer and make even more).
You can only do this on certain maps, like Shak. Usually you'll see very light Roaches to fend off WG pressure, and then Spine/Infestor, straight to Hive and then BL. You can't go low on Drones with little Spines, get Roaches, then get Infestors and then BL tech if he's 2 basing you.
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11:26 game is basically over because you don't have the economy to fight a 2 base Protoss. You pretty much made an army and cut drones very hard, did nothing with it, all the while the Protoss army gains strength (Sentry energy) and the income deficit gets worse and worse.
He had 66 drones against a 2 base toss. I have to disagree with this, he just made the completely wrong army. Moreover his engagements where not ideal. I think you might have defended still if you had just split your roach army up and flanked him from behind in both the engagement in the middle of the map, and the final one at your 3rd. He would have ran out of FF, and you might have had a shot. Also, if it were me I would go pure IT from the infesters in almost any defensive engagement, only using FG to prevent retreat... which isn't required against sentry armies since he probably just shit out FF all over the place when you flanked him anyways.
But this all gets a lot easier to do, with large quantities of lings .. still doable with pure roach as well, but more dangerous and harder to get your shit in the right spots at the right time. Also a lot harder to make him waste FF, lings are just so fast you can make protoss just blow FF all over the place, and get nothing for it. Roaches are just to slow and predictable so they can use very few FF and accomplish what they need for a win.
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On July 20 2012 03:26 dTox wrote:
Hey dude i watched the rep. The problem with sentry/immortal is that truly, roach/ling should die to it.
Roach/ling is how I commonly see it held...
On July 20 2012 03:25 Synk wrote:Show nested quote +11:26 game is basically over because you don't have the economy to fight a 2 base Protoss. You pretty much made an army and cut drones very hard, did nothing with it, all the while the Protoss army gains strength (Sentry energy) and the income deficit gets worse and worse. He had 66 drones against a 2 base toss. I have to disagree with this, he just made the completely wrong army.
It's not a composition issue, much more a macro/micro issue.
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First of all, I'm not GM. I'm like only 150 points higher than you. Secondly, I never said you shouldn't poke and bait FFs. I thought that's like assumed when you make mass lings. I said you shouldn't be poking if you have all roach no lings.
1. Make more lings
2. Poke and force FF's
3. Make 1 big engagement when hes finally at your door with infestors
Don't misquote me and make me sound like an idiot T.T
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A) Macro perfectly. You need almost perfect injects/drones/timings in order to beat this push with roach/ling, which is why so many Protoss 4 gate to disrupt your macro and then follow up with this push. You need to make as little roaches as possible to deflect the 4 gate and ignore lings as they are useless any way. An earlier Roach Warren will make this easier for you, also your gases were quite late @ 6:30 too. Normally you take them @ 6:00 / 42 supply with the stephano style if i am not mistaken and a Roach Warren @ 6:30 if you suspect a 4 gate (someone correct me if im wrong). He would have pushed harder had he actually hit his 4 gate timing, he hit @ 8:30 which is a good minute late. He prob would have won the game had he hit at the right time.
I thought my macro was quite good, no? The problem was overmaking roaches, rather than missing injects or anything.
I made the 6:30 roach warren, which is standard vs 4 gate+1, and I got roaches way in time to deal with what he did. And I prefer 3xGas at 6:30 instead of 2xGas at 6:00, it leads to about a 5 drone difference, DRG does it this way. I think most zergs in general have stopped going 2xgas at 6:00, instead delaying it much more (2 gas like 6:15-6:30, or 3x at 6:30+). Nestea vs Naniwa Blizzcon, nestea was going 5:30 2xgas, which was standard back then.
He would not have won if he hit at the right timing, which is 8:00, not 7:30 (7:30 is only possible if you go nexus first, gateway before forge, etc super greedy play, which just means you dont have an initial units from your gateway but rather from warp gate so its not much different anyways, its more units initially but same by 8:00), and I had roaches by 8:00 anyways.
I said you shouldn't be poking if you have all roach no lings.
i missed that.
Have you ever built ling/bling with drop VS sentry immortal? Its so easy its laughable. It is 10x harder with roach/ling, but ling/bling isn't such a great mid-game combination and it has many weaknesses compared to roach/ling. At least for now.
ling/bane drop could be a great way to hold herp derp mass immortal style play, but the problem is if toss pushes out for a timing instead of massing units. The problem is I have to make roaches to deal with 4 gate stuff like in this game, if I didn't have to I'd just go mutas which is how I beat regular immortal/sentry all-ins. ling/bane cannot beat immortal/sentry all-in that hits at 10:30, so theres a sort of consistency problem. Which is why instead of going mutas, i just keep making roach/ling (since you can supposedly beat immortal/sentry with it, although i never see that) and add infestors.
So I guess I just lost the game by overmaking roaches. So how do I tell if it's a 4 gate or a 6/7/8 gate? I suppose if I see them take gas, that's my queue not to overmake roaches...? But ive run into 6/7/8 gates that took gas and at 6:30+, and i thought it was 4 gate +1 and I die to it because i started lair and only made a few roaches and continued with drones.
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He'll chrono forge and cyber for 6/7/8 gates too. Sac'cing an overlord might not see any of the gateways if he denies scouting, and just because you see 3 of them doesnt mean 1-4 more are somewhere else.
You shouldn't see 7-7:30 4 gate +1's that often... you can only do that if you went like nexus, gate, forge, and were super greedy (which, if you see toss do, you should of course account for, then 7 pool them next time you see them). Unless maybe you are referring to like 3 chrono'd zealots out of the gateway or something. But 7:00 or 8:00 warp gate still gets a comparable number of units at your door at 8:00, so a 6:30 warren will take care of it, you'll have lings, maybe a spine, and queen, to stall until 8:00 easily. Having to make a 5:30 roach warren because of nexus, gate, forge 4 gate +1 would just be ridiculous.
Ling/bane drop is absolutely not the counter for sentry/immortal at all, i dont know why people say that. Dimaga played against naniwa who did NOT go immortal/sentry but rather took a third, and then people say it counters it. Not really... if you go 'stephano style' 2xgas at 6:00, lair is 80 seconds, drop is 130, blahblahblah, that means drop tech is done at 10:45, thats about 25 seconds too late after an immortal/sentry is shooting at your third hatchery. I have never seen ling/bane used against it, and on paper it doesnt seem like the right answer at all. Not to mention that most zergs, like DRG and myself, get lair a little bit later, more like 7:30 instead of 7:15, so we definitely aren't going to have ling/bane drop tech ready in the same minute that immortal/sentry would hit.
Furthermore, I explicitly talk about in the OP why I can't do something roachless - I made roaches to deal with the 4 gate +1 or similar warp gate timing opening, which is why I can't do what I always do to own immortal/sentry all-ins, quick mutas. If I could afford early tech against immortal/sentry, I'd rather go mutas, which I can get in time, rather than ling/baneling drops, which I've never seen anyone use or attempt to use. So I could see maybe suggesting it as a way to beat late immortal/sentry herp derp mass deathball, but in such cases I can't because I made enough roaches, and I'd rather go mutas anyways, and i can't go mutas, I'd just rather go infestors.
I appreciate your advice though. I'll stick to trying to flank more, even if I have infestors. i thought once I had infestors, I'd want to engage in a choke sort of area, and at the last second so I have banked energy.
Cecil (or anyone) how much gas should I take? I hear you guys say my gas was taken too quickly but... should i be getting infestors or not? I guess the key problem was my overreacting to the 4 gate, but I still sometimes lose to people who dont do a timing and just mass up immortal/sentry and I don't know what to do against it when it isn't a timing.
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The problem with infestor is that you normally don't have enough energy built up to stop the push and then they become dead weight. In this case you slowed him down so much that you had a lot of infestors with significant energy, and it probably would have been okay. but don't engage up a ramp even with infestors. you need vision so that you can target the fungals directly on his sentries, and you need enough space that he can't just forcefield you away, or even trap your infestors. you got burrow remember - you didn't know if he had an obs or not, but it would still let you save infestors from trouble.
So I guess I just lost the game by overmaking roaches. So how do I tell if it's a 4 gate or a 6/7/8 gate? I suppose if I see them take gas, that's my queue not to overmake roaches...? But ive run into 6/7/8 gates that took gas and at 6:30+, and i thought it was 4 gate +1 and I die to it because i started lair and only made a few roaches and continued with drones.
The overlord poke you did at about 9 minutes(after he turned around)... do that earlier, while his units are pushing across the map for a pylon. you should be able to see everything. Or keep lings active around his pylon and count warp-ins. It's great to have lings behind him to keep him defending his pylon, but they also get you very valuable information.
You act like you CRUSHED his 4gate pressure, but in reality he hardly committed anything to it at all, and he even saved his units. I prefer to make roaches only from the larva at my 3rd base. With the other larva I will either make a few lings, but not overcommit. Consider banking those larva until you can confirm his level of pressure. If it's only 4gates you can drone with your other hatches and make units at your 3rd, especially if he doesn't commit heavily.
Start your lair blind, and cancel it if you need units, instead of delaying the lair until you find out what he's doing.
But all that aside, despite everything else, I think you were still in good shape to hold his push. you died with money in the bank, you know what that means.
You never attempted a flank. It's easy to call what he was doing "herp derping", but to be fair... you both were. a second control group makes such a big difference.
And it's a lot easier to flank when you have spines or infestors that slow him down because you don't need to worry about him pushing too soon before your flanking force gets in position. there was no excuse not to.
and I think you should be aware of the huge gas bank you accumulate starting at 10 minutes. This is what let you build 10 infestors (ultimately I don't know if you even want 10 infestors), but you should be aware that it is money not being used for at least 3 minutes. That could have been more minerals for more units sooner (which may, for example, have given you enough stuff to get more threatening engagements across the map), or it could have been upgrades started much earlier. something to be aware of.
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It seems like you WAY overreacted to the +1 4gate pressure. You only have 50 drones at 9:10. You have 15 roaches and 10 lings and a spine...
Quite honestly, I think that 7 roaches + 5 lings and the spine and the queen is MORE than enough. That was way overkill.
Now, i would say that you need to try to do something with your units. I feel like you could have maybe picked off the forge and the 5 zealots he had.
Think of it this way. At 10:00 you could be at his base. At 10:00 he has only five zealots which are useless, one immortal and eight sentries. Quite honestly, 15 roaches and 10 lings could kill all of that, quite easily with some micro.
I still think you could win the game at this point though.
I think what you needed to do was set up a GIGANTIC surround with ling roach hydra or just ling hydra. (ling hydra works perfect for me, but both work). Really, the key to holding off this push is positioning.
Also, ling roach + drops works. You can drop right on top of the immortals + sentries thereby making forcefields useless.
You might want to think of burrow? This push usually doesn't come with an observer.
Even using this method, I think you could have won actually. You need to put spines in a large concave around the chokes. the spine placement was very bad by you.
14:00 Why the fuck are you fighting away from the spines?
After you had nine infestors, i think you needed to go for either mutalisks or hydras. You did neither.
15:00... Why do you have 6 spines at your nat and 1 at your third? that just doesn't make sense... put 4 at your third and 3 at your nat since the choke is smaller at your nat then at your third, and it's a ramp.
If you had hydras and a surround set up at this point, you would have won... period.
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On July 20 2012 04:52 dTox wrote:
It does work, you get double gas earlier @ 36 and you have it in time, maybe a few seconds late but its a small price to pay for a fraction of the cost of roach/ling to completely decimate the all in. It is a hard counter, you just drop the blings on the sentries and just crush him with lings. The trouble with ling/bane, as you said, its weak VS 4 gate (but there are ways around it). It is also weak in the mid-game and opens you up for some nasty immortal/archon timings.
No you should always avoid chokes, remember their army will always be clumped regardless of what part of the map they're in your fungals will always hit everything cos its Protoss. @ 12 minutes you should destroy sentry immortall all in with roach ling, it was just some bad engagements, a little missed timing (infestors a little late) and dodgy macro (some missed injects, too few drones, too much gas, etc). Like i said, a lot harder to beat the all in then perform it as we all knew already.
stop saying that, no one in tournament play has used ling/baneling to stop immortal/sentry all-ins. Please, provide a vod or replay where someone stopped an immortal/sentry all-in that moved out by 9:30 and is shooting your base by 10:30.
And it's irrelevant to the discussion anyways, we have to stick with a roach/ling core because of the 4 gate +1 timing. And double gas at 36 I'm sure works, it's just way earlier than most zergs do these days. As you can see in the replay, I hold just fine with 3xgas at 6:30, which is more popular these days than the fast lair and fast gas of 2xgas at 6:00. It's like a loss of 5-10 drones (i've never seen stephano hit 80+, definitely not, at least not with 2xgas at 6:00). The problem wasn't even the 4gate +1 itself, it was the transition and effect of holding it that was a problem.
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I'll have to agree with Oboeman, start your lair and cancel it if you are really being pressured. Gives you much better timing windows techwise. Had you put it down after you got those 3 roaches, you would have been fine for a baneling drop transition even with the delayed gas. Even though you deflected his 4 gate attack, you delayed your lair tech for over 300 gas ( those 12 extra roaches ) which put you in a difficult spot.
If you started the lair after those three roaches ( 8:14 ) instead of after all of them ( 8:48 ) you would have gotten drop tech ready at 11:44. For this late immortal push, which you KNEW that was coming because you didn't see a third in sight after that gateway pressure, your infestors were still in time after delaying the army with your roaches at 13:31. Frankly I find the argument that it wouldn't be possible to reactively get droptech and banelings rediculous in this game. You know the push won't come at 10:30 because he skimps on immortals to do the gateway attack, so you don't even have to go a quick double gas style to execute it.
10 infestors is enough gas for 52 banelings while still having enough gas to take a cheaky spire as extra tech ( although with the mineral expense of the banelings you probably would be able to afford roughly 20 I guess, still more than enough ). And while Infestors only really work to delay pushes or keep stalkers from hitting your broodlords, they don't KILL as fast as banelingdrops do.
In the maticulous way you were playing with your macro and roach force, you simply can't claim you wouldn't be able to transition to baneling drops rather than infestor tech because you were able to delay enough for infestors as is, which take longer to tech to than overlord drop...
I really think you're being too conservative with your builds. Even if you would have just gotten drop and he takes a third afterwards, you can still do 2-ovie ling drops in the main while attacking the natural and third with a roach force. Much less passive than infestor turtle broodlord games, and gives you more controll over the protoss than just letting him have his way until you have an unstoppable broodlord fleet.
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http://drop.sc/224658
Here's another game where this happened.
In this game, the guy goes gate/nexus/forge/cyber. Unfortunately, since I did not open 14/14, he can get away with this. I had 2 really stupid supply blocks at the start from overlords i swore I made, that sucked. I don't think it would have mattered.
The guy does an immortal/sentry all-in from this, i recognize it and go mutas like I usually do. He hits before spire is even done, and I'm just pretty fucked. No idea how I could have won this game, really irritating when I run across people who do something like 3 gate sentry expand, 1 gate nexus core, etc, into immortal/sentry, have no idea how to beat it in that situation because it doesn't work out right, usually because I have to make roaches due to 3 gate sentry pressure or whatever.
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I'll have to agree with Oboeman, start your lair and cancel it if you are really being pressured. Gives you much better timing windows techwise. Had you put it down after you got those 3 roaches, you would have been fine for a baneling drop transition even with the delayed gas. Even though you deflected his 4 gate attack, you delayed your lair tech for over 300 gas ( those 12 extra roaches ) which put you in a difficult spot.
Has anyone ever done this? I've tried this, and you just get screwed - you figure out to cancel the lair and make roaches or speed instead when a bunch of zealots are in your third.
I see, so I could have reactively gone baneling drops in this game. Is that the only answer to beat a late immortal/sentry push like this then? Because no one else, such as the high masters and GMs that have posted, suggested anything to that effect, and I've never seen a pro do anything like that or vod of it or replay of it.
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On July 20 2012 07:36 Belial88 wrote:Show nested quote +
I'll have to agree with Oboeman, start your lair and cancel it if you are really being pressured. Gives you much better timing windows techwise. Had you put it down after you got those 3 roaches, you would have been fine for a baneling drop transition even with the delayed gas. Even though you deflected his 4 gate attack, you delayed your lair tech for over 300 gas ( those 12 extra roaches ) which put you in a difficult spot.
Has anyone ever done this? I've tried this, and you just get screwed - you figure out to cancel the lair and make roaches or speed instead when a bunch of zealots are in your third. I see, so I could have reactively gone baneling drops in this game. Is that the only answer to beat a late immortal/sentry push like this then? Because no one else, such as the high masters and GMs that have posted, suggested anything to that effect, and I've never seen a pro do anything like that or vod of it or replay of it.
I'm sure I've seen some korean zerg cancel his lair when he was getting 7-gated or 8-gated once. I think it was Curious, but I'm not sure and I don't remember the game.
I don't think baneling drops is the only answer. My personal opinion is that drop tech is the 2nd best upgrade in the game after metabolic boost, so it's something i'd probably do, but I'm sure other ways work.
Maybe a faster lair would give you a chance to get mutalisks out. Or your infestors would be out earlier for more energy (you had the gas earlier). Faster roach speed gives you better map control. or maybe burrow. Or it lets you continue your upgrades (if you had started them in the first place). It gives you an overseer to confirm 100% exactly what he was doing if you didn't already know. It gives you options.
Against this guy's super late push, a normal lair time would probably crush him, with either drop or muta or infestor. the 4-gate slowed down your lair way more than it should have.
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I guess the main reason I lost was because I overreacted to the 4 gate +1...
How do you know if it's a 4 gate +1 or a 6/7/8 gate in time? Your lair won't be done (or overseer at least), even with a quicker lair, and you can't tell if Toss is going to warp in or not. You can't exactly just make units as you watch warp-ins occur and respond in a perfect ratio.
I've always just gone roach/ling whether it's 4 gate +1 or 6/7/8 gate, with 6/7/8 gate you crush their push with roach/ling and win, with 4 gate +1, you crush the push and start lair when you are winning and are just ahead (not quite enough to close the game, but close).
DRG had a game where he lost against a 4 gate +1 into immortal/sentry, in this game:
http://www.gomtv.net/2012gstls1/vod/66902/?set=5&lang=
Did he lose for not droning enough and overreacting to the 4 gate +1 too?
And was infestors the right call or not? Maybe baneling drops is one answer, but what about infestors?
Maybe if I see someone going robo/sentry like this again I'll go baneling drops... I used to go roach/bane/infestor in ZvP, so maybe now on when I run into this sort of thing, i'll do that.
As for that game where the guy went gate/nexus/forge/core, I definitely don't think baneling drops would have worked in that game ;/
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Instead of making a new post, here's a pathetic game that just happened:
http://drop.sc/225749
The guy opens stargate, I hold it, he tries to do some sentry warp prism thing to block my ramp but he doesnt kill anything, and loses a bunch of zealots, his warp prism, and all his sentries (i assure you, I didn't take damage).
He then sat in his base forever, got a robo. I saw that, but I started infestors because of the stargate. He literally sat in his base for about 8 minutes, I knew exactly what he was doing, and when he started the colossus bay. I started a spire to get corruptors for that, started hive and baneling nest, mass spines, a fourth, just everything - and I made sure not to overdo it with tech because I knew he was 2 base all-in so I didn't need to pump econ, tech, and take the map and then die.
He eventually pushes, I see every move, I let him kill my fourth (god damn ohana), it's whatever, i can just double expand, i'm still ahead, it really doesn't matter.
He then comes to engage, on creep, in the open, and we go at it. I morph a bunch of banes, have spines, my queens, everything, knowing it's an all-in. I snipe out the colossi with my ~10 corruptors, and it all dies, but the sentries, immortals, and stalkers are still alive. I remax but it doesn't matter, everything just dies.
Help. I can't beat people who just sit in their base and mass immortals, sometimes colossi, like that. I only win games by getting hive in time, and when people push 'when they shouldn't' they meet a mass spine wall and infestors and corruptors and I always have hive in time...i don't know, I lose or win sometimes based on hive, whatever.
I just don't even know what composition to go for or anything. i use mutas to beat 2 base colossus, but this guy opened stargate so I went infestors instead and respond to stargate with a quick hive and infestors to get broodlords in time. I know how to deal with VR/Colossus by going mass infestors, but he had a ton of immortals and sentries and stalkers so I couldn't quite do that.
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On July 21 2012 15:43 Belial88 wrote:Instead of making a new post, here's a pathetic game that just happened: http://drop.sc/225696The guy opens stargate, I hold it, he tries to do some sentry warp prism thing to block my ramp but he doesnt kill anything, and loses a bunch of zealots, his warp prism, and all his sentries (i assure you, I didn't take damage). He then sat in his base forever, got a robo. I saw that, but I started infestors because of the stargate. He literally sat in his base for about 8 minutes, I knew exactly what he was doing, and when he started the colossus bay. I started a spire to get corruptors for that, started hive and baneling nest, mass spines, a fourth, just everything - and I made sure not to overdo it with tech because I knew he was 2 base all-in so I didn't need to pump econ, tech, and take the map and then die. He eventually pushes, I see every move, I let him kill my fourth (god damn ohana), it's whatever, i can just double expand, i'm still ahead, it really doesn't matter. He then comes to engage, on creep, in the open, and we go at it. I morph a bunch of banes, have spines, my queens, everything, knowing it's an all-in. I snipe out the colossi with my ~10 corruptors, and it all dies, but the sentries, immortals, and stalkers are still alive. I remax but it doesn't matter, everything just dies. Help. I can't beat people who just sit in their base and mass immortals, sometimes colossi, like that. I only win games by getting hive in time, and when people push 'when they shouldn't' they meet a mass spine wall and infestors and corruptors and I always have hive in time...i don't know, I lose or win sometimes based on hive, whatever. I just don't even know what composition to go for or anything. i use mutas to beat 2 base colossus, but this guy opened stargate so I went infestors instead and respond to stargate with a quick hive and infestors to get broodlords in time. I know how to deal with VR/Colossus by going mass infestors, but he had a ton of immortals and sentries and stalkers so I couldn't quite do that.
Wrong replay.
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On July 21 2012 15:43 Belial88 wrote:Instead of making a new post, here's a pathetic game that just happened: http://drop.sc/225749The guy opens stargate, I hold it, he tries to do some sentry warp prism thing to block my ramp but he doesnt kill anything, and loses a bunch of zealots, his warp prism, and all his sentries (i assure you, I didn't take damage). He then sat in his base forever, got a robo. I saw that, but I started infestors because of the stargate. He literally sat in his base for about 8 minutes, I knew exactly what he was doing, and when he started the colossus bay. I started a spire to get corruptors for that, started hive and baneling nest, mass spines, a fourth, just everything - and I made sure not to overdo it with tech because I knew he was 2 base all-in so I didn't need to pump econ, tech, and take the map and then die. He eventually pushes, I see every move, I let him kill my fourth (god damn ohana), it's whatever, i can just double expand, i'm still ahead, it really doesn't matter. He then comes to engage, on creep, in the open, and we go at it. I morph a bunch of banes, have spines, my queens, everything, knowing it's an all-in. I snipe out the colossi with my ~10 corruptors, and it all dies, but the sentries, immortals, and stalkers are still alive. I remax but it doesn't matter, everything just dies. Help. I can't beat people who just sit in their base and mass immortals, sometimes colossi, like that. I only win games by getting hive in time, and when people push 'when they shouldn't' they meet a mass spine wall and infestors and corruptors and I always have hive in time...i don't know, I lose or win sometimes based on hive, whatever. I just don't even know what composition to go for or anything. i use mutas to beat 2 base colossus, but this guy opened stargate so I went infestors instead and respond to stargate with a quick hive and infestors to get broodlords in time. I know how to deal with VR/Colossus by going mass infestors, but he had a ton of immortals and sentries and stalkers so I couldn't quite do that.
I'm not a Zerg, I'm a Protoss.. but there are definitely two things that I see fundamentally wrong in that replay..
First, your macro. I kind of understand your logic, "he going to push so I shouldn't overdrone", but I think past a certain point this shouldn't apply anymore. We're at 15', there has been no engagement so far, and you still haven't found a small timing to go past 55 drones ?
I think your composition and army were quite good. But you messed up the major engagement at 18'18 exactly. "Engaging in the open" ? That's not what I see. I see you engaging in a choke, with 3/4 of your army unable to advance due to poor positionning. I see bannelings behind roaches, and unable to pass. I see a lot of infestors snipped for nothing, no more than a couple fungals, no infested terrans, and an army that has 0/0 upgrades ( the protoss wasn't that good either, just 1/1.. but that's still better ).
So yeah, it all comes down to you messing up the engagement. You have to learn how to flank and position your units better and you'll roll over this kind of Protoss army.
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Sup Belial.
I'm GM on SEA zerg, 1000 pt masters NA.
I've started going ling bane every Z v P. Just sick of forcefields and immortal sentry all ins.
You say you can't get drops out by 10:30 when a well timed sentry immortal push comes in. However, I disagree.
Often he'll take early gas, in which case you lair first - drops will be out. Otherwise, I am now almost invariably going lair first anyway becuase I can hold 4 gate anyway with pure ling and a spine or two.
I agree with you that toss on two base is kind of ridiculous. You can hold an all-in with roach ling and then they come at you again showing that the all-in wasn't an all-in after all.
Ling bling drops solves this entirely. Once you crush his blind sentry immortal all in (lol), you make sure you're properly saturated on 3 base with 4 gas, mass lings and blings and drop on his army or in his main.
Goodbye to two base toss turtling.
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On July 21 2012 15:43 Belial88 wrote:Instead of making a new post, here's a pathetic game that just happened: http://drop.sc/225749The guy opens stargate, I hold it, he tries to do some sentry warp prism thing to block my ramp but he doesnt kill anything, and loses a bunch of zealots, his warp prism, and all his sentries (i assure you, I didn't take damage). He then sat in his base forever, got a robo. I saw that, but I started infestors because of the stargate. He literally sat in his base for about 8 minutes, I knew exactly what he was doing, and when he started the colossus bay. I started a spire to get corruptors for that, started hive and baneling nest, mass spines, a fourth, just everything - and I made sure not to overdo it with tech because I knew he was 2 base all-in so I didn't need to pump econ, tech, and take the map and then die. He eventually pushes, I see every move, I let him kill my fourth (god damn ohana), it's whatever, i can just double expand, i'm still ahead, it really doesn't matter. He then comes to engage, on creep, in the open, and we go at it. I morph a bunch of banes, have spines, my queens, everything, knowing it's an all-in. I snipe out the colossi with my ~10 corruptors, and it all dies, but the sentries, immortals, and stalkers are still alive. I remax but it doesn't matter, everything just dies. Help. I can't beat people who just sit in their base and mass immortals, sometimes colossi, like that. I only win games by getting hive in time, and when people push 'when they shouldn't' they meet a mass spine wall and infestors and corruptors and I always have hive in time...i don't know, I lose or win sometimes based on hive, whatever. I just don't even know what composition to go for or anything. i use mutas to beat 2 base colossus, but this guy opened stargate so I went infestors instead and respond to stargate with a quick hive and infestors to get broodlords in time. I know how to deal with VR/Colossus by going mass infestors, but he had a ton of immortals and sentries and stalkers so I couldn't quite do that.
Suprisingly, one of the best solutions to 'weird' or 'bad play' is just to go kill him. A big drop play (Symbol-style) would've killed him. We all know 200/200 P armys are scary, that's why you have to pressure them, even on two base, if they turtle for so long.
It would work since: 1) if he moves out before he's maxed he would get crushed. 2) he has to turtle up to 200/200 because he's on twobase and the only thing that will win him the game is a giant push that will come much much later than usual. 3) If he doesn't touch you the entire game, you can do whatever you want and do it FASTER.
Mutas would've worked as well I think.
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Alright so in that particular game you were really ahead after that gateway-warpprism-single voidray all in. Infact, you had that game hands down. While personally I would have gone for a large mutalisk flock and baneling drops instead, your transition worked out well. The only thing macrowise that I would look at is getting drones rather than the 7 infestors after you hold the attack. You had 55 for quite a while.
But please get drops T_T...
You had 12 infestors that hardly did anything in the fight. Sacrifice two of those and you have baneling drops instead of ground-banes in that final fight, you would have absolutely TORE that army apart. I hate to be the person that keeps saying 'ermagerd burneleng derps' but you keep ending up with the absolute perfect positions to get the drop upgrade, yet you don't. In that last game you even HAD the banelings...
I can lay out the main logic for them against a 2 base push. Protoss is tied on gas and can't reinforce a second all in well enough, fact. Banelings trade armies really effectively. And even if you don't break the push completely on the first go, your reinforcements will be able to overwhelm him and regain complete map control. Infestors really don't have the same trading effect because it takes a lot longer for the damage to take effect, and often some units will slip through and you'll have to lay 'oh crap fungal those 3 stalkers' and move your infestors back, which will delay your first chain-fungal and might break the units free.
On the tied for gas part. Protoss can't support anything else than 2 robos collosi on two bases. He can't get a large phoenix fleet AND have sizable sentry army. He can't have a large immortal force and a big phoenix force. A phoenix is 100 gas, so is a sentry. If he gets a large phoenix force, fine, your baneling drops won't have a lot of effect, no matter, you'll crush through his groundforce ezpz because he lacks sentries anyway. He gets a lot of immortal sentry? Also fine, baneling drops choke him out. You force the protoss to make choices about his limited gas, and he can't meet in the middle because he is so starved.
You're a good player, vastly superior to me in macro for sure. But your reluctancy to make an army that is effective at trading rather than one that is amazing in the super lategame ( which won't happen, come on, 2 base all in ) in these situations is really giving you losses that just shouldn't happen. Just try it, atleast like 5 games.
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1k+ NA masters Z.
I lose to the same stupid shit. Especially that guy on Ohana, I think I played him and lost just the same.
I watched the Ohana and Daybreak game, I would say that your strategies and timings are far superior than your opponents and you did have both games won. The reason you lost those is because you consistently botch the infestor controls. Just look at all the engagements in slowmo and you would see how much better it should have gone for you.
The Ohana game they basically got targeted down by colo fires like meat to the grinder. You only had a couple fungals, not even enough to break the shields. Yes you had too many roaches in the engagement after because you got rid of all his colos and all he has left is immortals. Should've reload with more lings, I think that's what people meant when they said you have too much roaches. Lings are fairly useless with 4 colos on the field.
The Daybreak game first engagement you just randomly threw down infested terran eggs, like wtf man, if you keep throwing fungals you would've raped his army right there. Instead he just runs away and come back later.
If I'm you I'd just tune out those people talking about how you should have more drones blah blah. Ya, maybe, but that's not why you lose. You might've over reacted a little to the +1 4 gate but wait til you think to yourself after consciously made less roaches then the guy just instantly chrono all the gates, throws down 3 more and punish your ass for it. But I'm not you.
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I will be talking about the latest replay posted here. Macro-wise, you were only up by about 8-10 drones over your opponent. Sure, you had 6 extra workers on gas, but at the final engagement you were sitting on almost 1k gas and not enough minerals to reinforce. Do you see why having that extra 6 workers wasn't so important if you couldnt even use the resources they gathered? So you had a 2-4 worker advantage on minerals. That's going to put you on fairly even or arguably disadvantaged ground in ZvP. It's pretty important to keep in mind that when reinforcing it is often wise to reinforce with lings which require no gas and perform extremely well against immortals once FF and Colossus have been removed from his army.
That aside, there are two issues of army control which contributed greatly to this loss.
First, there is Infestor control. This was touched on by an earlier poster, so I won't go into detail, but there is a great amount of potential in those Infestors and it appeared they were not wisely used.
Second, there is army positioning. You fought him from one side and through a choke into a superior concave. A flank is vital to a Zerg army, and it was not present here. Take half or a third of your army, or even a group of lings, and move them around so they can engage from BEHIND when your main force attacks from the front.
This is what happened:
---you---> <---him---
A proper flank looks like this:
---you---> <---him---> <---you---
You create more surface area, so more of your units are attacking at once. His "safe" units in the back (immortal/colossus) are not safe. And he has to use twice as many FF as he would otherwise, if he even has that many. The way it was executed in the replay will usually lose. A proper flank will usually win.
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Just to add on to the "get drops" suggestions... get drops.
It's one of the first things I do when I see that a toss player isn't pushing out of his base before 10 minutes. I don't rely on it to defend the standard timing of the immortal sentry all-in, but I get it as quickly as possible once I feel safe.
Here's what drops gives you:
- a great way to trade away useless supply when you are changing your max. Roaches and lings in his main and natural is more effective than walking them into his army and letting them die.
- baneling drops if necessary
- a counterattack that does not get stopped by a wall
We have all been told time and time again to try to slow down a protoss push by threatening a counterattack. What if they seal off their wall, build 2 more cannons and leave a sentry behind? It doesn't slow them down. When a guy sits on 2 base for longer than usual, it gives you time to get drops, which means as soon as he steps outside of his base you can drop 75 zerglings in his main, and he HAS to turn around (or lose). In fact he loses either way.
When I upgrade drops it becomes a defensive upgrade in that I try to be as greedy as possible behind it. I had a strange game where a protoss player chose to max out on immortal/stalker/sentry on 2 base. I had lings in position to counterattack, started infestor tech and drop tech, but when I saw he wasn't moving out I double expanded to bases 4 and 5, made 75 drones. Then he moved out, in my moment of weakness, before my investments had kicked in. But I had a ton of lings and overlords just waiting, I drop them moments after he steps out of his base, and he turns around. And that gives me time to reap the rewards of my insane economy, mass spinecrawlers, and get a ridiculous infestor count. I sac one of my bases, but I hold my 4th. Even if I had to sac my 4th I would have been ahead, but because I could hold the 4th, the game was as good as over.
This is the game I'm talking about:
http://drop.sc/190265
Even against a 3 base toss, a ling drop in the main is now one of my standard responses to the big 3 base max push that is intended to hit before broodlords. 9 times out of 10 I kill the main nexus and a bunch of pylons and gateways in the main, sac one of my bases, and then hold off his push, still maintaining an economic lead. Baneling drops are great against that push too.
Drops are really good.
Anyway more specific to your last game (and a lot of the other games you post, there are some trends), you don't upgrade very much, you tend to lose your infestors before spending their energy, and you don't spend your minerals. It's great to see all the replays because it shows overall weaknesses that you can focus on improving, instead of brushing things away as an isolated incident.
For much of that game, you were 4 drones short on your 3 bases (12 mineral drones) and you were still floating 1k+ for an extended period of time. This means that you could have made 20 drones with that money, without hurting your tech or army size, to round out your 3 bases and have more mineral drones at the 4th base, and that is basically free money. You had the larva for it as well, at certain points in time. If you had spent it all and droned up you'd get more larva back overall because you were basically losing every auto-spawned larva.
Turn the minerals into drones, then turn the drones into spinecrawlers, then turn the minerals into drones again. When you are mining on 4 base and slowly teching, all you have to do is not die, so just keep turning minerals into drones and spines and gas into tech.
or drop him as soon as he moves out to put him 100% all-in.
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I lost the infestors because I tried to NP all his colossus. I guess that was a bad idea? I don't know what potential I could have done with 12 infestors I guess... I try to spam IT but with these 2 base pushes it never really works out that way because they just don't have that energy bank yet. Maybe I should stop making infestors?
I'm a bit confused on the advice I'm given here. So I basically lost because I didn't have drop tech? Even if i had drop tech, what am I supposed to do again? Get baneling rain, or am I supposed to just drop roach/ling? I'm kind of confused, I'm hearing 4 different things about drops, and all I'm getting is I lost because I got drops... Okay, so drops are the choice if the opponent does some sort of 2 base weird all-in. I'm still a bit confused on it though.
I don't believe in upgrades that much in ZvP, in early-mid game. i go for double evo once I start hive/4th for melee/carapace though. Just a personal choice.
I'll try to flank more though.
I'm still confused on what... like I should be trying to even do. Do I get banelings, spines, infestors. Was making corruptors a good idea? Yes? No?
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On July 22 2012 07:26 Belial88 wrote:
I'm still confused on what... like I should be trying to even do. Do I get banelings, spines, infestors. Was making corruptors a good idea? Yes? No?
Maybe you should stop listening to all these people giving you poor advice. I said pretty clearly that it wasn't a composition issue -- you just didn't have enough drones to have enough shit because you don't know how to drone properly.
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^ So I should not have teched so hard?
In this most recent game on Ohana (stargate into warp prism ramp block fail into lots of immortals, then colossus mass 2 base attack), I avoided droning specifically because of what i saw the opponent doing. Do you think straight up roach/ling with more drones would have been a better choice? I specifically stopped droning, and at the end I was maxed so i had plenty of shit.... i dont know if a remax would have worked (many horrible games a year ago with roach/hydra and roach/ling being washed upon 2 base colossus deathballs...).
I think I also had a recent spate of games where overdroning caused me a lot of stupid losses (cannon rush into dt into mass stalkers, x3, same guy), so that may have played a factor there too.
I suppose if I droned more, I would have been more conscious to get upgrades... say i avoid the infestors and any tech, it'd be me with 70 drones on 4 base with roach/ling on 1/1, with a remax. I don't know if that would work.
I'm pretty low in masters at the moment (despite 800+ points, which would be top 8 in most divisions, looking at my mmr i'm not even in the halfway point between the GM line and masters line). I just felt like I had total control of that game, and I knew I had a large, although limited, amount of time to just get whatever I wanted. I specifically avoided droning, and went with lots of tech and a max.
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On July 22 2012 07:26 Belial88 wrote:
I lost the infestors because I tried to NP all his colossus. I guess that was a bad idea? I don't know what potential I could have done with 12 infestors I guess... I try to spam IT but with these 2 base pushes it never really works out that way because they just don't have that energy bank yet. Maybe I should stop making infestors?
I'm a bit confused on the advice I'm given here. So I basically lost because I didn't have drop tech? Even if i had drop tech, what am I supposed to do again? Get baneling rain, or am I supposed to just drop roach/ling? I'm kind of confused, I'm hearing 4 different things about drops, and all I'm getting is I lost because I got drops... Okay, so drops are the choice if the opponent does some sort of 2 base weird all-in. I'm still a bit confused on it though.
I don't believe in upgrades that much in ZvP, in early-mid game. i go for double evo once I start hive/4th for melee/carapace though. Just a personal choice.
I'll try to flank more though.
I'm still confused on what... like I should be trying to even do. Do I get banelings, spines, infestors. Was making corruptors a good idea? Yes? No?
Sup Belial again. I didn't watch the replay (TT) but just chiming in to assist with understanding drop play.
Many times I face toss who do a failed 4gate and follow up by turtling a bit in their base and either pushing out, or taking a delayed third, and then pushing at near max.
It's damn scary indeed, and particulary because hive tech really won't be behind, and you can't push up his ramp.
However, to be sure, there are plenty of ways to beat 2 base turtly shit that toss do. I have beated it by spining up and waiting for his push wtih infestor ling, or just generally going infestor ling roach, or by getting spire for potential collosi.
However I just don't believe that this is the 'optimal' or theortically correct way to deal with this situation.
Like, the 'one you're ahead get more ahead' applies in many situations but not this one. Because of the power of a delayed toss push, you want to push your advantage then and there.
There are only two things stopping you from doing that - forcefields and the map terrain. Both are overcome with drops.
Mind you, if you're caught off gaurd some how, drops will help you immensely against high masters forcefields.
THus, I believe if you hold some silly 4 gate pressure and he just sits there, you should simply ensure you have around 70 drones, with 4 gas, and 4 hatch, and mass units.
As for what you should actually drop, although I like bane rain, I have found much success dropping ANYTHING! Once you have that lead you simply need to get on top of his army. I have actually found GREAT success dropping bane/roach/ling. The banes deal some splash, the lings have sick DPS when you get them close, and the roaches have lastability. It's deadly.
As for where to drop your army - depends on a few things I guess but experiment and see. I like to doom drop his main and keep like 3 overlords near his natural ramp. When he moves up the ramp to get to your army you bane drop him on the ramp - so epic.
Finally, I note that sometimes I do the 'get everything' approach because I'm scared - I get spire, double ups, infestation, spines, some spores, overseers. I believe this is not the correct approach. You will actually spend too much in drones and cash getting everything and it will blunt your attack.
User was warned for this post
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http://drop.sc/225979
Here's yet another game that this just happened in.
I tried to do drops. I did a terible miscontrol, and it was horrible.
I specifically droned up very hard after holding the pressure. He did some sort of 6 gate void ray allin and i held and killed all of the stalkers and denied the third and everything. He then went double robo immortal mass. I lose everything trying to do the drop. I dont know why you guys insisted I do drops, that was not very helpful advice (as cecil pointed out).
Probably lost trying to follow the drop advice (he kept moving his damn army around). I dont know if I would have won if I didn't do that, he had a ton of immortals that would have made sure any sort of roach remax would have died anyways.
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As for the droning issue, if you're on 3 base and you hold early pressure, you should ALWAYS then saturate your bases properly...
There is no reason to spam units on say 55 drones so that you have a bigger max by 15 supply than droning to 70 and then making units. As you no doubt know, you'll hit max with 15 less supply, but be banking ungodly amounts of money while toss gets further behind. At 55 drones you're basically remaining only on par with two-base toss.
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You tried to drop roach/ling directly on his army, and you made two complete passes without unloading any units, gifting 5000 resources for a zealot. In one sentence you acknowledge a horrible miscontrol, but in the next sentence you try to use that to claim that drops are useless.
Here's what drops gives you:
- a great way to trade away useless supply when you are changing your max. Roaches and lings in his main and natural is more effective than walking them into his army and letting them die.
- baneling drops if necessary
- a counterattack that does not get stopped by a wall
We have all been told time and time again to try to slow down a protoss push by threatening a counterattack. What if they seal off their wall, build 2 more cannons and leave a sentry behind? It doesn't slow them down. When a guy sits on 2 base for longer than usual, it gives you time to get drops, which means as soon as he steps outside of his base you can drop 75 zerglings in his main, and he HAS to turn around (or lose). In fact he loses either way.
I don't play around much with dropping units directly on his army (except for banelings). I wait for him to leave his base and drop a handful of units (more than can be handled by a single warp-in) in his main. I either turn him around or take away his ability to reinforce. If he turns around I use the extra time to get more infestors, more spines, more energy, more larva, etc.
But drops aren't necessary. What you did this game with your drones and minerals was much better than the other games. By getting the drone count up while teching and making the spines, you could probably hold most monster two base pushes with spine + infestor, since you had many more spines this game than Ohana, and also had a bigger economy and better upgrades, making your remax much more powerful.
Even after throwing away all of the roach ling, had you saved your infestors and fungalled him at your spines, you still would have held him off easily.
and you still died with money in the bank.
these are things you can find by watching the replay, not necessarily things you need us to tell you.
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United States8476 Posts
On July 22 2012 09:55 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2012 07:26 Belial88 wrote:
I'm still confused on what... like I should be trying to even do. Do I get banelings, spines, infestors. Was making corruptors a good idea? Yes? No? Maybe you should stop listening to all these people giving you poor advice. I said pretty clearly that it wasn't a composition issue -- you just didn't have enough drones to have enough shit because you don't know how to drone properly.
There isn't a discussion on this topic, so I'll put it here. Above advice is good; can't stress this enough, the way to beat this all-in isn't with composition. Everything can beat it, but the problem is you have to do everything almost perfectly to fend it off and it's easier to execute than it is to defend. It's similar to P vs 1-1-1 or P vs stephano style roaches in this way.
Generally things like:
- Stopping drones within 2 of the correct number-I believe this number is closer to 58 than 60-62, like most people done.
- Good macro-probably by far biggest problem. Even some GM Zergs even have about 30 less supply than they could have at the 10:30 mark.
- Correct creep spreading depending on this map. For example, spreading from 3rd on daybreak and spreading to connect natural and third on antiga.
- Good flanks. You'll never win if you attack from one angle-attack from a minimum of two.
- Also, versus a super standard non-late all-in, there's a timing where Toss only has 2-3 immortals plus 8 sentries at around 9:30. You can abuse this timing by trading a few units for sentries, and sentry energy. This goes along with stopping drones closer to 58 than 60+. Your units aren't more valuable as time goes on while sentries are.
In short, I recommend practicing this kind of stuff rather than giving up and changing styles completely like ling/bling or fast mutas. This will get your mechanics and your first 10 minutes of the game much better, which will help with your game by miles. That is, unless you really want to play a new style; just don't change styles because of this one all-in.
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On July 22 2012 11:00 Belial88 wrote:http://drop.sc/225979Here's yet another game that this just happened in. I tried to do drops. I did a terible miscontrol, and it was horrible. I specifically droned up very hard after holding the pressure. He did some sort of 6 gate void ray allin and i held and killed all of the stalkers and denied the third and everything. He then went double robo immortal mass. I lose everything trying to do the drop. I dont know why you guys insisted I do drops, that was not very helpful advice (as cecil pointed out). Probably lost trying to follow the drop advice (he kept moving his damn army around). I dont know if I would have won if I didn't do that, he had a ton of immortals that would have made sure any sort of roach remax would have died anyways.
Come on man, this is a terrible example. That was the worst drop control I've ever seen in my life, ever.
Before hating on the style, practice it. You had drops at lik 17 min, if you had it earlier, you'd be dropping his main earlier. Also, you should be mixing blings in at that point. It's easy and you have the money. Well executed, that army would have evaporated.
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^ Yea everything went wrong there. I had to FG, but that brought infestors into fire. I noticed my supply plummet so I focused my control on just remaxing because I already saw this wasn't going to work. I tried to control the drop and the guy simply walked around it in the open and realized how much of a fail this was, especially without having something like a bunch of lings already out to prevent that.
I think just that going drops was is not the answer at all. I used to go roach/banelingrain/infestor in every zvp for better part of a year, for a very long time, so I know how to control it, but as soon as that engagement started I knew that it wasn't going to work out, and that my best chance for winning the game from that moment was to just remax again.
I realyl don't think that his 'army would have been evaporated' with better control. I've done roach/bane for a long time, i know what it can take on, and his 6+ immortal can definitely handles banelings and dropped roaches pretty damn well.
I'm just going to follow cecil's advice on it, and that drops aren't the answer.
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On July 22 2012 12:10 Belial88 wrote:
^ Yea everything went wrong there. I had to FG, but that brought infestors into fire. I noticed my supply plummet so I focused my control on just remaxing because I already saw this wasn't going to work. I tried to control the drop and the guy simply walked around it in the open and realized how much of a fail this was, especially without having something like a bunch of lings already out to prevent that.
I think just that going drops was is not the answer at all. I used to go roach/banelingrain/infestor in every zvp for better part of a year, for a very long time, so I know how to control it, but as soon as that engagement started I knew that it wasn't going to work out, and that my best chance for winning the game from that moment was to just remax again.
I realyl don't think that his 'army would have been evaporated' with better control. I've done roach/bane for a long time, i know what it can take on, and his 6+ immortal can definitely handles banelings and dropped roaches pretty damn well.
I'm just going to follow cecil's advice on it, and that drops aren't the answer.
Lol, I've heard people talk about you on the chat channels and have also chatted to GM level zergs (about ling/infestor in ZvZ) and your name comes up. They all regard you as a pure theorycrafter with poor mechanics and I can now see why.
Honestly, this is just such a poor attitude and approach to the problem. On paper drops are a great solution, and many good zergs have told you that it is. You post a replay which is an utterly horrendous example of drops, and then proceed to proclaim that drops are not the answer.
I could theorycraft right back at you and say that you invested in too many tech paths - infestors, spines (think 2000/2000 more units in drops - or earlier) or I could simply point out the fact that that was the most horrendous engagement I've ever seen.
However, I won't stoop to that level. I'll go and ladder now, and hopefully I'll come across stupid toss (no doubt I will) and I'll post some replays of failed 2 base pushes into dealyed 2 pushes, where I go drops. It should show you that it is a great, effective, and conceptually sound solution to your problem.
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^ I actually intentionally stopped micro'ing the drop, because I 'knew' it would fail (keyword 'knew' as in my opinion). If you watch the production tab or my POV, you'll actually see as soon as that battle started in the open, I abandoned micro'ing in favor of just remaxing. I felt my only chance to win when that moment occured, was to remax.
I did roach/banelingrain/infestor for a better part of a year in every ZvP, so I think I have a good grasp on what drops can take on, and how to execute it. I intentionally abandoned control because I felt the battle was going to be a disaster even if I controlled perfectly, so I dedicated my control to macro'ing up a replacement army.
But even with perfect control, I don't think that engagement would have gone in my favor. It was in the open, as opposed to where you usually drop (in chokes, by their base, against a wall), so he simply dodged my overlords, and anytime I tried to FG, my infestors fell rapidly under fire. Maybe if I had only the roaches loaded, and lings on the ground to keep him down a bit, but I think that would have just been maybe better, but not a good engagement still.
If you would upload some reps where you take on 7+ immortals with drops, please, I'd love to see it, but I don't think drops would have worked in that occassion. I went drops specifically in that game because of the advice given here, and I also specifically droned up very hard, per Cecil's advice.
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On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:Show nested quote +Lol, I've heard people talk about you on the chat channels and have also chatted to GM level zergs (about ling/infestor in ZvZ) and your name comes up. They all regard you as a pure theorycrafter with poor mechanics and I can now see why. My rank is no secret, ... snip
You don't need to respond to posts like this 
I reported it, but nobody cleaned it up in time.
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you were super low drone and couldn't remax when he pushed. also, you probably needed more spines, but thats debatable.
also, too many roaches i think. ling/infestor/corruptor with maybe ~10 roaches should do pretty well vs that.
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Problem is, you are the instigator, the person being inflammatory. If it isn't obvious, I can spell it out for you.
On July 22 2012 12:10 Belial88 wrote:
I've done roach/bane for a long time, i know what it can take on, and his 6+ immortal can definitely handles banelings and dropped roaches pretty damn well.
If you profess to know what it can take on, please post a replay of you executing the drop style correctly with more lings and banes, and without infestors, and 10 spines behind. That would be on point.
On July 22 2012 12:10 Belial88 wrote:
I'm just going to follow cecil's advice on it, and that drops aren't the answer.
You state that 'drops aren't the answer, when many people have said that they work, and you have not shown them not to be the answer, and that, contrary to your later statement, they are often used in pro play.
On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:
My rank is no secret, I link my sc2ranks profile on all of my guides. I don't know why anyone would regard me as a theorycrafter, I don't present any sort of strategy that is different from standard, and everything I say is more on what I view as standard in play (ie everyone goes 3rd before hatch zvp in macro game) as opposed to trying to present something new (here's this hydra timing i use to crush everyone). I'm glad you find enjoyment that a low masters is low.
I never referred to your rank, and I do not find enjoyment in your rank. I do not think you are low masters, and if you are, I did not know that. The point is that you 'theorycraft' insofar that you blatantly label drops as 'not the answer' although you have not given it a chance, much less in a way the executed correctly.
On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:
Similarly level zergs (actually most of them are lower level than me) have stated to use drops. A GM posted in here that that was bad advice. What's theorycrafting, is the idea of using bane drops to stop immortal/sentry all-ins when it's never done in pro play.
It is so frequently, that 'never done in pro play' is both inflammatory and wrong. Please watch Dimaga play if you would like. Drops, more generally are used (without banes) on more ocassions that I can recount. It is a standard style for Idra, for example. I believe I saw Symbol or some GSL zerg using it repeatedly against, I think, Oz or PartinG lately, and crushing him. I cannot recall what game it was but I think it was RO16 this season (Code S).
On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:Yes, I post a horrendous example of drops - something I stated in the replay. You can watch the replay, and I think it's pretty clear even with better control, the drops would not have worked. I specifically abandoned control of the drops as well, to go back to macro (if you pull up the production tab or first person view, you'll see I stop micro'ing the drops and instead remax). If you want to tell me that if the drops were controlled better or executed in a different manner and then I would have won, please, do so. But I knew right away that the drops were a fail, which is why I gave up control on them.
Well, I disagree that you should ever stop controlling your army mid-fight. I used to do that, but I remax just a few seconds later. His wave will hit closer to my hatches but I think the trade off is worth it. But that is quite besides the point. THe point is that there is no point posting the replay you did. It is not a good example to prove or disprove a point, and so it is unconstructive.
On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:Please, show me drops working against 6+ immortals. That's what I've been asking this entire time.
Perhaps I will. I somewhat cannot be bothered with this thread, but on the chance I got some ladder toss doing that, I will post it.
On July 22 2012 13:36 Belial88 wrote:Also, you don't need to be an asshole. I don't know what relevance it is to bring up that you have 'friends' who don't like me. Everyone has haters, and everyone has bad games. I'm confused on what to do, so I'm asking for help. I've never claimed to be good at this game, and many times I've talked about how low level I am. I don't know what you are trying to get it. Kind of irritating. Please, post replays of how much better you are than me. Just so much as I get an answer to this.
I don't have friends that don't like you. I don't even have friends in sc2. You don't have haters either. THe point is that if you are asking for help, and people go out of their way to respond to you in a thread that you specifically created for yourself (because the help me thread was not good enough), then it is rude and insulting to post a replay that showcases nothing, and then proclaim that 'it is not the answer'. That is why I had a jab at you, saying that you're a theorycrafter.
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If you profess to know what it can take on, please post a replay of you executing the drop style correctly with more lings and banes, and without infestors, and 10 spines behind. That would be on point.
I stopped going roach/bane/infestor because it's simply inferior to mutas, standard roach max, and mass spine/infestor/fast hive styles of play. It's a semi-all-innish play, quite frankly, and just a more advanced version of 'using roach aggression to end the game and make up for the late tech'. it's a great form of aggression, but I think quicker, standard roach/ling is better, or just a quick hive.
You state that 'drops aren't the answer, when many people have said that they work, and you have not shown them not to be the answer, and that, contrary to your later statement, they are often used in pro play.
I have never seen them used in pro play. I've also never really seen a pro protoss sit his ass in his base, and mass immortals, sometimes colossi. They always do timings, which I can handle just fine. It's this 'just mass shit on 2 base with immortals" that I have trouble with. I also had trouble with VR/Colossus back in the day.
The one time I've seen a toss do this sort of thing, is DRG vs Squirtle in the GSL on Daybreak. DRG holds a 4 gate +1 perfectly, like I did (he made as many units as I did, i compared, but maybe thats' why he lost too), and Squirtle falls back on just massing immortals and sentries. DRG makes some drones, and maxes out on roach/ling. He splits his roaches in two, does a flank, and pokes multiple times to draw out FF in the open.
He gets stomped.
I've also noticed that in general, Zergs at gom very rarely hold the sentry/immortal all-in. The only cases are:
1. Leenock, he loses his third but toss overcommits (imo toss made a huge mistake) and loses his entire army in a bad trade by backing into a corner and terrible overspending ff that in that engagement when the hatch popped and broodlings were there, he died.
2. Some toss on cloud literally forgets 2 of his 3 immortals, and also lets his sentries get surrounded when not paying attention.
3. Nestea's muta style, which is what I do. I think this is one of 2 times it's been held where Toss didn't make huge blunders
4. Hyun on mulgenheim whatever map. He does nestea's base trade style of mass spines in nat, sac third, base trade, but with roach/ling instead of muta.
5. Some zerg, i think curious or someone like that, loses his third, toss is over-aggressive and instead of backing off, when he easily could have, he tries to run into the main when he's out of FF and dies. He did the immortal/sentry just fine, was in a complete lead, but killed himself by committing instead of backing off.
Every other time, zergs have lost.
But I dont have a problem with 10:30 immortal/sentry all-in, since I go mutas. The problem is the 17:00 mass immortal 2 base mass stuff.
I never referred to your rank, and I do not find enjoyment in your rank. I do not think you are low masters, and if you are, I did not know that. The point is that you 'theorycraft' insofar that you blatantly label drops as 'not the answer' although you have not given it a chance, much less in a way the executed correctly.
No i did not. That's exactly why I tried to make drops work in this game...
I say drops are not the answer against a 10:30 immortal/sentry all-in. This is because stephano's build of 7:15 lair from 2xgas at 6:00 will have drops finished, at earliest, at 10:45, 15 seconds after toss is in your third, in a choke point, killing your base. You can't possibly have drops in time, even with such a fast lair, as the standard these days is actually much later than 7:15 lair, and more like 7:30+ lairs. DRG, and most zergs now, go for 3xgas at 6:30+, or a later 2xgas, et cetera. So it doesn't make sense that you'd say "go drops" when drops can't even be out in time for immortal/sentry.
Now, a few people have said "okay, of course, you are right, but get drops when you see toss is just going to sit his ass in his base and derp derp". Well, maybe that works, I don't know. I tried it, and I knew before the engagement occurred that it simply would not have worked. If you want to argue that I could have won with better control in the game, I can buy that. If you post a replay of using drops to beat 7+ immortals, I would believe it then too.
But so far, I have never seen a pro use drops to beat 2 base immortal/sentry all-in (because you cant have it out in time, duh..), and I've never seen a pro use drops to hold any sort of mass immortal derping, although, as I said before, at the pro level you generally don't run into toss who just sit in their base for 17 minutes and mass immoratls. Probably because the zergs, and toss', at that level, are much better than what I am and whom I face, and would beat it soundly, but I just have never seen it happen so I dont know exactly how pro zergs would beat it soundly.
There is no theorycrafting going on here... maybe it's happened in pro play, but it's never happened at GOM, because I follow every zvp at gom. I've seen roach drop aggression used against robo expands. But I've never seen a toss at GOM just mass double robo immortals until 17:00 in the GSL. Please, enlighten me if this is Hero's build that these guys I run into on ladder are copying.
Well, I disagree that you should ever stop controlling your army mid-fight. I used to do that, but I remax just a few seconds later. His wave will hit closer to my hatches but I think the trade off is worth it. But that is quite besides the point. THe point is that there is no point posting the replay you did. It is not a good example to prove or disprove a point, and so it is unconstructive.
K, well I disagree with you. Shall we duel?
I think there is plenty of point posting that replay. How could I have won the game? The drops would not have taken that army on. I was literally confused as hell.
You can even see it in the chat. Before that drop engagement even occured, I asked the guy
"Why are you still in this game, not to be BM".
That gives you a little insight to my mentality. What I was saying, basically, was if the opponent honestly think he could still win the game from the position he was in. I think he replied that he couldn't or something, now sure, but I was thinking that there was no decision I could make from that point onward, to end this game in a win. I knew then and there, that this toss was going double robo immortal, and that I would lose the game.
And oh look, exactly as I was thinking it, I lost the game. I went drops just because I had nothing to lose, because I felt, in my mind, i had no possible way to win the game, even though I'm sure the opponent felt the same way.
I don't have friends that don't like you. I don't even have friends in sc2. You don't have haters either. THe point is that if you are asking for help, and people go out of their way to respond to you in a thread that you specifically created for yourself (because the help me thread was not good enough), then it is rude and insulting to post a replay that showcases nothing, and then proclaim that 'it is not the answer'. That is why I had a jab at you, saying that you're a theorycrafter.
There's no theorycrafting going on. Drops clearly would not have won against that army of 7+ immortals.
Maybe you think it's a bad replay, but I could tell before the engagement occurred that I was not going to win it. That's why I abandoned control. If you can show me otherwise, please, I'd love to see so, but I don't think that roach drops will win against such a large army.
As far as I see it, you are the one theorycrafting by saying "Drops! Drops! Drops!". There's a GM in here even saying that that's poor advice. He's probably theorycrafting too. You should report him.
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you were super low drone and couldn't remax when he pushed. also, you probably needed more spines, but thats debatable.
also, too many roaches i think. ling/infestor/corruptor with maybe ~10 roaches should do pretty well vs that.
Really?
So I guess a recurring theme in my games is too many roaches. Hm. I'm going to check out some reps of Stephano doing his roach max to see what his ratio is, but okay, I'll go more with lings now on. I think maybe you are right, less roaches, a lot more infestors, more spines.
It's just that awkward spot where I don't think I can go hive, broodlords, because he's obviously 2 base all-inning before broodlords. But maybe what I could do, is make a shitton of infestors now on, and like 20+ spines instead of just like 10+, and sit my ass hard on 4 base and just turtle up a broodlord army, despite the opponent doing a 2 base all-in.
I like the sound of that. And if he gets colossus, I'll add corruptors. Just force the situation into a stephano-style 100+ drones mass infestor/spine game, except I don't need 5 bases like you do in a normal game, and maybe I can like cut on the upgrades or something to get the broods out quicker. And make way more spines, since I'm not in a hurry to get the broods anyways.
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If you would upload some reps where you take on 7+ immortals with drops, please, I'd love to see it, but I don't think drops would have worked in that occassion.
I posted a replay on the previous page where I used drops against a protoss who maxed on 2 base.
Here's the link again: http://drop.sc/190265
I did not drop roach/ling directly on his army, nor did I use baneling drops. Baneling drops would have been great, but i didn't make a baneling nest for some reason.
I drone up like crazy, and used drops to pin him and buy time while I turned my huge drone count into a lot of spinecrawlers and two dozen infestors (and I don't lose them all in one fight!). Without drops, I'm sure I would have lost my 4th base, but maybe I could have held onto my 3rd.
it's a bizarre game and probably not a very good example. But I defended a two base max protoss, and drops were instrumental in buying time.
Drops aside, look at my upgrades and drones and spinecrawlers and infestors and all that. There is plenty I can improve upon as well, so maybe you can learn from my game too.
It's just that awkward spot where I don't think I can go hive, broodlords, because he's obviously 2 base all-inning before broodlords. But maybe what I could do, is make a shitton of infestors now on, and like 20+ spines instead of just like 10+, and sit my ass hard on 4 base and just turtle up a broodlord army, despite the opponent doing a 2 base all-in.
I like the sound of that. And if he gets colossus, I'll add corruptors. Just force the situation into a stephano-style 100+ drones mass infestor/spine game, except I don't need 5 bases like you do in a normal game, and maybe I can like cut on the upgrades or something to get the broods out quicker. And make way more spines, since I'm not in a hurry to get the broods anyways
Yes, this sounds like a reasonable plan. I think that the upgrades are important, and 100 drones is too much against a 2 base opponent, because he can push at any time, but other than that it seems about right. I use drops to let me do a big counterattack if he moves out before I feel ready, and it gives me baneling drop as an option.
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^ Sorry, I missed that post.
That's an interesting concept.
K, so get drops to counterattack if he pushes. In the meantime, mass a shitton of spines and get infestors to force the game into a fast hive, mass infestor/spine game. Take my fourth, drone up, don't make lots of roaches, make lots of lings, use the drops to prevent toss from moving out or forcing a good base trade for me, while I make even more spines spines spines.
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http://drop.sc/226778
Here's a game I just played where someone did the 'late immortal/sentry'. It's not exactly like my other games, because the guy doesnt sit on his ass and mass 5+ immortals, but he it is like the game on ohana with the 3 gate sentry expand into immortal/sentry, in that he opens weird, and goes for an immortal/sentry timing.
So the guy opens with a 2 gate, but not a proxied one (he asked me at the start 'was i 7 pooling' maybe that has something to do with it? i dont know why, maybe he was 7 pooled every game prior to this...). I get gas before hatch and so I easily crush the 2 gate. His bo was basically something like:
2 gate, core, nexus, 3rd gate.
I see him grab a quick double gas, and usually when someone goes 1/3 gate sentry expand or the like, I gotta make roaches at 50+ in case of a zealot/sentry push, but I see quick double gas and so I drone harder, and I sac 2 overlords and a lot of lings to confirm that he's actually going immortals and not massing a ton of zealot/sentry.
So seeing what he's doing, instead of trying to fail like I have every game in this thread, I go with my personal method of dealing with a quick immortal/sentry all-in, which always works for me and works for nestea apparently, and go fast spire, cut the roach upgrades, and 6 gases.
He made a double forge, so I think he was just an idiot, but I have a ton of lings and I do the whole 'just outplay him and bait FF' thing, and recognize just straight up fighting him would do a lot of damage, so I do that, I take out all the sentry energy, and eventually the immortals with just pure ling.
He warps in lots of stalkers (i dont know why stalkers instead of zealots), but I recognize with reinforcing 4 x hatch larva inject lings and 15+ mutas on the way, I can straight up take him. So I do, and I win, he reinforces with stalkers, I have to back off for my lings, and then this goes back and forth like twice until I simply overpower him with ling/muta. I can't but think if he didnt do that stupid double forge thing, it wouldn't have worked out that easily, but whatever.
I imagine if he didn't go double forge like that, I would have just base traded. I was missing spines, I only didn't make them because I saw weakness and felt I could take him head on (yea, i guess that's kind of a gamble... but i knew what i could and couldnt take on), and I imagine if it wasn't like that, i would have base traded and won.
So I guess the lesson of the story is maybe I should just be going spire like I always do, drone better, scout better, and
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Do you have replays of you holding an immortal push that pushes out of the opponents base around 9:30-10:00 with fast spire?
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What do guys think about just getting an armor upgrade instead of ranged attack against this kind of build? You'll be focusing immortals early anyway mostly and roaches dont do more than 10 dmg per shot to them regardless of +attack, and it lengthens the engagement which is good for the zerg. Plus, it stops lings from getting 2-shot by zealots in the +1 attack, and benefits both roaches and lings anyway. Thoughts? 1000 pt masters here
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I used to do something like this (diamond), where I'd drop 2 extra robos during a push I could tell was going to fail, and then pump out 10 immortals in three production rounds, warp some units and push. Of course, the reason I could afford 3 robos + units is because my macro was bad and I was floating... =) However, I can attest that this is pretty good, if you slow down his transition to air and then hit before he has mutas out. (I used to move when I saw your spire going down with my obs.)
When I lost: Sometimes my opponent would have mutas faster than I expected and I'd just get crushed. Other times, I didn't have enough sentries (or got too many FFs baited out in open ground) and got swarmed with super ling-heavy ling-roach.
Wackyness: once I waited until I had 20 immortals before pushing, since I scouted pure roach. I pushed and killed his maxed roach army with brute force, losing my 4-6 sentries due to bad FFs. I had about 14 immortals left, but he was able to reinforce with mutas and clean up, losing only one base. Obviously mass immortal only isn't that great.. =D
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On July 24 2012 07:04 Noak3 wrote:
What do guys think about just getting an armor upgrade instead of ranged attack against this kind of build? You'll be focusing immortals early anyway mostly and roaches dont do more than 10 dmg per shot to them regardless of +attack, and it lengthens the engagement which is good for the zerg. Plus, it stops lings from getting 2-shot by zealots in the +1 attack, and benefits both roaches and lings anyway. Thoughts? 1000 pt masters here
If you're going Roach/Ling I'd be much more afraid of +1 armor than melee or ranged weapons. Armor affects all of your units, whereas an attack will only affect your ranged or melee units.
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Do you have replays of you holding an immortal push that pushes out of the opponents base around 9:30-10:00 with fast spire?
Check the "nestea's anti-immortal sentry build' thread I made. I posted quite a few reps of me using quick mutas to hold the standard immortal/sentry push. It's my standard response to robo play (you can't tell if it's a robo expand or robo all-in until after you throw down that spire, around 9:00, at basically when they start to move out) but it's good against either expands or all-ins. It's the basic idea of holding immortal/sentry all-ins - mass spines in nat, base trade, sac third (but keep drones on gas there), except instead of using roach/ling, I use ling/muta and completely cut out roach tech (depends on how early i saw his robo or sentry or how he took his gas to identify his build, but I may even not make a roach warren if I spot it early enough).
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On July 24 2012 07:53 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2012 07:04 Noak3 wrote:
What do guys think about just getting an armor upgrade instead of ranged attack against this kind of build? You'll be focusing immortals early anyway mostly and roaches dont do more than 10 dmg per shot to them regardless of +attack, and it lengthens the engagement which is good for the zerg. Plus, it stops lings from getting 2-shot by zealots in the +1 attack, and benefits both roaches and lings anyway. Thoughts? 1000 pt masters here If you're going Roach/Ling I'd be much more afraid of +1 armor than melee or ranged weapons. Armor affects all of your units, whereas an attack will only affect your ranged or melee units.
Right that's what I was thinking, but almost all pro zergs get +1 attack and then melee off a single evo chamber instead, which I dont understand. Any idea why that is? It seems much more worthwhile to just get the armor
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^ Well, I don't get armor first because Toss usually races and chronos the fuck out of attack upgrades (and usually only attack upgrade off single forge), so there's no hope to try to catch up in Toss in upgrades. Zerg would also start +1 very late, since we get out evo, at the earliest, at 7:15, and usually we take it later to be greedier. By then, +1 is usually done for Toss and he's starting +2.
What's for sure, is that upgrades will never finish in time for a gateway all-in, so why bother. A 7:15 evo chamber, and 160 seconds for an upgrade, that means 35+160=185, 3 minutes essentially, so 10:20 is when +1 of anything would finish. That means at best, we might get it in time for an immortal/sentry all-in, but certainly not against anything else, and if Toss is playing a macro game, he'll have +2. And upgrades don't really make many critical hit numbers - like, zealots 2 shots lings instead of 3 shot, wow, that's amazing.
So for zerg to really change critical hit numbers, we have to be ahead of toss in upgrades in armor than their attack, which will just never happen. So +1 vs +0 immortal, roach takes one more shot to survive, true, that's nice, but that will be very near impossible to happen in a real game. Because check these numbers out:
+0 roach, +0 immortal, 3 shots.
1 roach, 0 immortal, 4 shots (yay right?)
2 roach, 1 immortal, 3 shots... ahh man wtf
3 roach, 1 immortal, 3 shots... fuck that shit, ill rather get a broodlord out than +3 armor
Also, against zealots...
If zerg is even in upgrades, it'll take 3 shots, and if you have +3 armor vs +0 zealot, it takes 4 hits! But.
+3 ling, +1 zealot, 3 hits (why bother?)
+2 ling, +0 zealot, 3 hits (why bother)
roach vs stalker...
0 roach, 0 stalker, 12 hits to kill roach
1 roach, 0 stalker, 13 hits, not special ;/
2 roach, 0 stalker, 14 hits, not special again
Now attack upgrades, for zerg, on the other hand...
0 ling, 0 stalker, 36 hits
1 ling, 0 stlkaer, 30 hits
1 ling, 1 stalker, 34 hits (hey an improvement, its balanced in favor of zerg)
ie you get the idea. tldr, not going to beat toss in the upgrade game, and since +3 weapons on toss doesnt mean much more than +1, dont worry about it. go for attack, which is always useful, and zerg is usually more worried about getting their tech on time rather than upgrades. For toss, yea, upgrades are important, same with marines. For zerg, it's not as important. Of course, in lategame, we are going to have double evo and all, but toss have chronoboost, and with ffe, you likely upgrade much earlier on. We aren't going to ever have an upgrade advantage on you, so we play the game with mass units or tech instead.
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Actuall Belial, if you are going to rely on 3 base + macro hatch Roach/Ling to hold off an all in you're much better off getting the carapace upgrade because your zerglings aren't as completely useless. But generally this kind of play is on a relatively low drone count and relies on a strong counter attack towards their third to get the time to drone up and transition to spire.
Any evo after lair generally won't get a timing where the Protoss' +1 weapons and the Zergs +1 carapace, so in those cases a +1 range would make a lot more sense .If you rely on Roach/Ling, melee upgrade is definitely the worst of the options if the protoss has gotten +1 because your Zerglings won't live long enough to get that extra efficiency considering they die 33% percent faster anyway, while the attack upgrade is only an increase 20% in efficiency.
Generally I prefer the following set up on upgrades:
- Does the protoss have a forge later than you get an evo chamber? Melee upgrade ( guaranteed +20% efficiency )
- Did the protoss go for a forge and you went evo before lair? Carapace upgrade ( maintaining efficiency on your zerglings, resulting in an 33% percent increase in efficiency compared to 0/0 lings )
- Did you go lair before evo? There is no way you can catch up or get reliable timings with melee and carapace upgrades. Might aswell make your roaches that tiny bit stronger.
But against the Immo-sentry all in, that's neither here nor there because even with +1 cara I can't hold it off reliably against good forcefields. So it doesn't really belong in this thread, just wanted to chime in on the upgrades.
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^ Thanks, that's a cool post.
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EPT
