Basetrading is better if you're even in roach:ling ratio; I often make the mistake of being super ling-heavy, then simcity or multiple cannons = gg for me. Generally if you can have ~15-20 roaches and any number of zerglings, you'll be guaranteed to at least snipe everything in his natural. I believe that's what is demonstrated in blade's replays in the roach/ling basetrade section.
You want to be ling heavy in a base trade, roaches don't have the dps that lings have to win a base trade. If you go mutas, you shouldn't even make any roaches at all, and if you go roach/ling base trade, you only need 10-20 as if you were fighting straight up to bust the wall-in.
You want to have quiet a few roaches and lings. If you go on mainly zerglings your base trade won't work out very well. You can't base trade with mutalisks vs the immortal all in anymore unless you are starting lair at 6-6:30. It hits to fast for mutas now of days.
I saw the replays that op uploaded were a bit old (month in a half) so here are a few in here:
On August 18 2012 04:37 Monsyphon wrote: Really enjoying that video Blade You mentioned getting a 4th queen to creep spread, mind telling me when you usually make it?
I normally do queen at main, (assuming you don't get pylon blocked at both natural and third) queen at natural once it finishes, then when thirds about halfway done you start another one at main or natural hatchery, then make the 4'th at the third base when that finishes. The one coming out of your main/natural will be used for creep spread.
If he double pylons at natural and third then you end up doing double queen at main hatch, queen at natural and then the third.
You can also hold it off a la EG.Suppy. You tech to infesters while make 7-8 spines per choke while massing lings to counter. It's kinda hard to be Goldilocks vs this all-in, they can always take a third, so you start your 4th and start droning again, then they cancel the 3rd and rape your booties.
Basetrading is better if you're even in roach:ling ratio; I often make the mistake of being super ling-heavy, then simcity or multiple cannons = gg for me. Generally if you can have ~15-20 roaches and any number of zerglings, you'll be guaranteed to at least snipe everything in his natural. I believe that's what is demonstrated in blade's replays in the roach/ling basetrade section.
You want to be ling heavy in a base trade, roaches don't have the dps that lings have to win a base trade. If you go mutas, you shouldn't even make any roaches at all, and if you go roach/ling base trade, you only need 10-20 as if you were fighting straight up to bust the wall-in.
You want to have quiet a few roaches and lings. If you go on mainly zerglings your base trade won't work out very well. You can't base trade with mutalisks vs the immortal all in anymore unless you are starting lair at 6-6:30. It hits to fast for mutas now of days.
I saw the replays that op uploaded were a bit old (month in a half) so here are a few in here:
Thanks a ton, blade! I'll add these to the OP once I get home. So, do you think that it's possible to beat the all-in with a roach/ling engagement? Just curious if you've had success with head on fights, or if basetrading is the only option at your level ^^
It is possible but it's incredibly difficult. It relies a bit on protoss messing up and you engaging perfectly each time. It's really hard and I just stopped doing it because 1 small mistake and you lose. It's very unforgiving vs that immortal all in which is why I only do the base trade, it's a lot easier to execute and I never lose with it :D.
Haha sounds awesome :D I sure this is clear in the replay, but do you mass spines in your natural once you realize what he's doing? I imagine you do, as a base trade with 0 defense can't go well
Yup as soon as I know what he's doing I prepare. I also get an overseer so that I can snipe his observer as well so that he can't change his mind and take a third.
It's pretty funny to see tosses reactions to my way of handling it. They always walk towards the natural and then get like a shock when they see 15 or so spines killing their army then they pull back and realize their fucked lol.
Provided they don't get pylon blocked and provided they go for a standard 6 minute double gas style. I cannot see the match of Jaedong considering that I don't have a GOM pass, so if you can tell me exactly what kind of build he is going for then we can see how our builds compare. That 40+ supply mark should be hit with a gasless style for sure, but unless you aren't meddled with it is hard to achieve with a fast gas style, that's why I ask you to compare players based on what builds they are going rather than comparing two seperate and different builds and noting that 'yep, he has drones out faster at this time' while that is a given in the first place.
No, you should be around 40+ even if pylon blocked. Jaedong is just doing a standard 3 hatch build. I think it's completely accurate to compare fast gas vs no gas standard - there's a reason people don't do this quick double gas, it's because it hurts your econ too much.
The whole point of drops is that that impossible to attack into position never should go up by taking out the sentries. I haven't seen replays of you getting hit at that time consistantly anyway so I guess that you won't have to play competant tosses either. Not an attack on you, just a note that to your high standard, nobody gets competant until they hit their timings 100%, which rules out only about 99% of the population on the ladder.
No, in a lot of my replays the toss are morons too, I don't even face 'correct' immortal/sentry even at 1.2k masters. I believe the roach/ling example I have in my guide, the Toss pushes and hits before 9:30/10:30 respectively, but the muta replay isn't too great an example.
But you make it out that these are some ridiculously hard standards to meet, and it's not. It would be like saying "pfft, you can't expect everyone to hit with a 4 gate by 7:00". You just execute a build order, and do it, it's not very hard. But at diamond, a lot of people can't even do that, hence why you can get away with a lot more in diamond. You aren't facing immortal/sentry all-ins that hit on time, and if Toss is 1 minute late in his immortal/sentry push, you can be maxed on roach/ling, which makes the push very easy to deal with.
Again, no GOM ticket. Could you be kind enough to list the units he has out in his push by this time? Because I'm pretty confident that 8 sentries and a round of Zealots easily get beaten by 24 Banelings, allowing the Zerglings to flood in straight after. I will grant you that it is hard to come back with your third lost, but without a third up for the Protoss and having the mobility of drops, it's not like you don't have the tools neccesary to harass the Protoss.
3 immortals, 7 sentries, 3 zealots, 9 stalkers. 24 slow banelings and 60 lings are not going to stop that.
If Toss is on 2 base with a robo, gateways, and a standing army, vs a 2 base zerg, he's going to be way ahead. I'm not saying you can try to pull off a win with harass or something, but you are behind, and most would say you've lost the game granted toss doesn't fuck up (which, as shown in the gsl, has happened many times when immortal/sentry pushes kill the third and then toss still loses, like in that very game i linked with leenock vs tails).
My Zerglings were attacking from behind while they should have been attacking from the front, attackign the retreating army. I should have waited until I got more Zerglings or roaches out and just posture the baneling drops rather than dropping them immediately. And I should have engaged the Immortals with the zerglings rather than the stalker fodder so a roach reinforcement could take out the rest of the army. Plenty of things went wrong in that engagement.
Toss had forcefield. How are you going to afford both roaches and ling, bane drops, with even less drones than standard 3 hatch play? Standard play can barely afford enough plain roach/ling to fight this, yet you claim you can beat this with a substantially smaller economy (by about 10-20 drones smaller), and having spent a spare 400/350 on tech.
Sorry, I don't believe that you can hold immortal/sentry with banedrops, when everyone else has a hard enough timing beating it with 20 more drones without having teched as hard.
You're taking a hit on your economy to have speed out in time for an 8 minute push so you won't have to invest gas into units. With that extra gas you can invest into +1/+1 for your Zerglings ( which make them absolutely rediculous, +2/+2 makes them so extremely cost effective that you can basically rely on getting three extra hatcheries, 1 macro hatch at the third and 2 extra bases, and still be safe enough to kill off a protoss push with Roach ling ). It's not like getting a gas earlier is only good when going for lair first, it has other advantages against other builds so you don't have to rely on roaches in the midgame as much unless you want to go for major pressure.
What 8 minute push are you talking about? Upgrades also take almost 3 minutes to research, nevermind you won't have the gas for them. You will never have upgrades in time against a warp gate pressure. If Toss does a +1 warp gate pressure, you NEED roaches to deal with it, speedlings alone won't be enough.
You can't base trade with mutalisks vs the immortal all in anymore unless you are starting lair at 6-6:30. It hits to fast for mutas now of days.
I think you can use mutalisks against immortal/sentry, with standard ~7:30 lair timing. Nestea did a quick lair and had mutas come out at 10:30, when lure was at his base, but I think even 11:00 mutas will still work as the mass spines will prevent him from busting up into your main. All you need to do is get those ~15 mutas hatched, which shouldn't be a problem.
Maybe they won't work, but I've dealt with a couple 10:30 immortal/sentry pushes with muta style where the mutas were coming out after he was already almost done killing my third, and I was still able to win the base trade. If any toss wants to test it out, i'd love to see if you can do the muta style with standard lair timings.
^ As long as he is forced to go to the third instead of the nat/main first, via 10+ spines at the nat, I think you can win the base trade still. Later mutas just means you'll have more mutas.
I'll see about finding a rep on a toss who hits with 3 immortals before 10:30 though. Going standard lair timing and mutas has worked for me, and I know I've ran into pre-10:30 3 immortal/6+ sentry pushes a couple times (though not as often as bad immortal/sentry pushes).
Let me help set standard for what Zerg should assume for this push. I present no solution, but just raw facts and analysis so that we can discuss based on the same timings/assumptions.
Squirtle's build order execution looks very close to optimal. As Khaldor said in the video, it is "textbook immortal push" that Zerg players should keep in mind. I doubt that an average NA/EU master/GM Joe can pull off this level of play at the moment, so probably add 10-30sec to every timing for your ladder play.
Timings (only important timings) 6:00&6:25 3rd 4th gas taken 9:00 move out 9:45 arrive near or inbetween Zerg bases if undisturbed. (depend on map distance) 10:10 engagement unit count =3immortals, 12 sentries, 1 stalker, 5 zealots, 1 warpprism, 1 observer(not arrived yet) with +1 attack upgrade. 10:30 +1 armor upgrade finish if no chronoboost is used. -10sec for each chronoboost. In the video, it is not clear if squirtle used chrono or not, but 10:30 is upgrade complete timing at the very latest.
Depending on map and where you set up the defense, Zerg has at least 35-60sec to prepare after lings confirm the push in front of protoss base. Map distance reference:[G]Map Distance & Travel Time. Check 2.25 movement speed section for immortal/sentry.(Ohana has different image, but distance is the same)
10:10 Forcefield count analysis energy regeneration rate is 0.5625energy/second. Time it takes to regenerate 50 energy for forcefield = 50/0.5625=88.8888=almost 90sec=1min30sec. Therefore, whichever sentry made after 8:40 has only 1 force field, and those before 8:40 have 2 forcefields. Among before 8:40 group, sentry made before 7:10 can even have 3rd forcefield as well. From video analysis, it looks 1sentry =3FF, 3 sentry =2FF, 8 sentry =1FF. 1*3+3*2+8*1=17 forcefields are available for protoss at 10:10 mark. Since there are 12 sentries and 90sec is 50energy regeneration interval, 90/12 =7.5sec is average FF refill period. That is to say, protoss gains 1 additional forcefield every 7.5 seconds on average. Therefore, 10:10 17FFcount -> 10:40 21 FFcount ->11:10 25 FFcount ->11:40 29 FFcount if protoss keeps all 12 sentries alive.
Zerg Scouting I think we need to assume the worst when skill is not involved. Standard scouting assumption: 1. Zerg can scout 3rd&4th gas timings (Cloud Kingdom 4th gas is the only one hard to scout on ladder) 2. Zerg cannot scout any tech buildings including robo with overlord sacrifice. (not always reliable, so assume the worst) 3. Zerg cannot see the sentries with overlord sacrifice. (1 stalker is already out at 6:15 to kill the overlord) 4. Zerg can know that protoss doesn't have 7:30ish fast 3rd. (1 ling can easily scout it) 5. Zerg can see the move out around 9:00-9:30 in front of protoss base. (lings with careful micro is skill-based, not luck-based) 6. Zerg cannot find/kill all proxy pylons, espcially non-close ones. (It is OK to assume you can kill close proxy before 9:30, but hidden mid map ones are not always found/killable)
With all these in mind, Zerg should go for a build that A. can defend immortal/sentry all-in (obviously) B. can defend other 2 base all-ins that involve 6:00-6:25ish 3rd&4th gas.
If you do a build that can satisfy A, but not B, then it relies on your luck or opponent's lack of skill. Your build has to satisfy both A&B to play consistently. Important thing to remember is that you never know 100% if it is immortal/sentry push until 9:00 mark. It could be delayed 2 stargate(usually 5:30&6:00 gas) as far as you know from the scouting information.
I hope these information set common ground for discussion.
On August 18 2012 04:07 Mavvie wrote: Chaos, I'm actually surprised you're only 2000MMR. Your guides are great and have helped me win a ton, I'm surprised you're not mid+ masters. Do you just not play enough to really refine mechanics? Just curious, seems the strategy's there!
I tend to prefer experimentation over adhering to the current gold standard of the metagame. I don't do a 6 queen opener in ZvT, I don't do standard gas timings in ZvP and I prefer a Mutalisk style in ZvZ due to having more control over his infestors. There's a lot less replays to copy in that sense, so I have to build up my own understanding of the game and lose to a lot of silly stuff in the process. I also prefer more multitask heavy styles to strain my micro-macro mechanics more, and messing up with those styles tends to give you really bad looking losses ( mismicroing mutalisks, having an overseer in a pack of overlords hotkeyed so you can't do drops before removing that overseer and so on ) over the standard 'sit on your ass and turtle to deatharmy X'.
Again, no GOM ticket. Could you be kind enough to list the units he has out in his push by this time? Because I'm pretty confident that 8 sentries and a round of Zealots easily get beaten by 24 Banelings, allowing the Zerglings to flood in straight after. I will grant you that it is hard to come back with your third lost, but without a third up for the Protoss and having the mobility of drops, it's not like you don't have the tools neccesary to harass the Protoss.
3 immortals, 7 sentries, 3 zealots, 9 stalkers. 24 slow banelings and 60 lings are not going to stop that.
If Toss is on 2 base with a robo, gateways, and a standing army, vs a 2 base zerg, he's going to be way ahead. I'm not saying you can try to pull off a win with harass or something, but you are behind, and most would say you've lost the game granted toss doesn't fuck up (which, as shown in the gsl, has happened many times when immortal/sentry pushes kill the third and then toss still loses, like in that very game i linked with leenock vs tails).
I am only going to answer this point, because it absolutely baffles me that you lack the imagination neccesary that in a straight up fight with drops, you imagine the first to win. Either you bait out a ton of forcefields ( you're moving in with the overlords while attacking with the lings at the same time, forcing protoss to pick either forcefielding, retreating or spreading rigth away ) or you just straight up swamp him. Unless he has some kind of magical marineking-prime esque split, manages to get forcefields up while sniping away at overlords, his sentries will be long dead, the zealots gone with it, leaving only 9 stalkers and 3 immortals to fight against 60 Zerglings...
On August 18 2012 09:27 Belial88 wrote: ^ As long as he is forced to go to the third instead of the nat/main first, via 10+ spines at the nat, I think you can win the base trade still. Later mutas just means you'll have more mutas.
I'll see about finding a rep on a toss who hits with 3 immortals before 10:30 though. Going standard lair timing and mutas has worked for me, and I know I've ran into pre-10:30 3 immortal/6+ sentry pushes a couple times (though not as often as bad immortal/sentry pushes).
so basically you still say basetrading with mutas + spines is viable and basetrading with ling banedrop + spines isnt?
if you sac your 3rd and put mass spines at your natural while having your lings and ovis positioned in front of his base you will drop him as he kills your 3rd. its not like he kills your 3rd and walks back and defends the drop since you drop him AS he kills the 3rd.
i think best way to go if you go banedrop is basetrade if you see you cant get drop in time/dont have enough shit or just outright kill him/defend 3rd if your BO + macro went well.
Edited the OP, reformatting a bit, adding in Orek's content, and hopefully we can discuss the new ways to safely defeat this all-in. I've also added a rep of mine, to demonstrate that even a noob can do it (Y)
10:10 Forcefield count analysis Since there are 12 sentries and 90sec is 50energy regeneration interval, 90/12 =7.5sec is average FF refill period. That is to say, protoss gains 1 additional forcefield every 7.5 seconds on average. .
On August 20 2012 12:47 Mavvie wrote: Edited the OP, reformatting a bit, adding in Orek's content, and hopefully we can discuss the new ways to safely defeat this all-in. I've also added a rep of mine, to demonstrate that even a noob can do it (Y)
10:10 Forcefield count analysis Since there are 12 sentries and 90sec is 50energy regeneration interval, 90/12 =7.5sec is average FF refill period. That is to say, protoss gains 1 additional forcefield every 7.5 seconds on average. .
I did not know that sentries share energy.
I did not know that making "average" italic TWICE to emphasize my point was not enough to avoid this discussion.
10:10 Forcefield count analysis Since there are 12 sentries and 90sec is 50energy regeneration interval, 90/12 =7.5sec is average FF refill period. That is to say, protoss gains 1 additional forcefield every 7.5 seconds on average. .
I did not know that sentries share energy.
I did not know that making "average" italic TWICE to emphasize my point was not enough to avoid this discussion.
You cannot add their energy and average it. It does not work like that.
Let me break it down for you. You divided 90 seconds into 12 sentries. This only works assuming a shared energy pool. Every 90 seconds Protoss gains an additional force field, for each sentry in the group. You tried to oversimplify.
Guys, not every sentry has the exact same amount of energy. Sometimes it'll be 1 second between one sentry reaching another multiple of 50, sometimes it'll be up to 89. On average, the time between a Protoss sentry ball of 12 sentries gaining enough energy for one more forcefield is 7.5 seconds. The calculations have nothing to do with a "shared energy pool" or anything. He's right.
On August 20 2012 13:33 FullAccess wrote: Let me break it down for you. You divided 90 seconds into 12 sentries. This only works assuming a shared energy pool. Every 90 seconds Protoss gains an additional force field, for each sentry in the group. You tried to oversimplify.
You're pretty right, but on average, those 90 seconds are 7.5 seconds apart. Besides, this is a fairly trivial part, I found it more an interesting statistic than something crucial to base timings off of.
EPT
