Pylon-Wallin is pretty much a auto loss for zerg, if the Protoss doesnt mess up massively. Even Scarlet told (forgot at what tournament it was) Blizzard to implement neutral supply-depots like in every good sc2-tournament on earth because of the pylon-wallin ruining her ladder-practice. Btw. all the advices like: 1. drone scout 2. early pool 3. hold position on drone are pretty worthless. 14 pool doesnt do shit against the wallin, drone scout is too late and also doesnt tell you anything except for the case that protoss goes nexus first. And the drone on hold-position does work, of cause, but sending one drone scout, one hold-position-drone AND a drone for fast expansion hurts your economy massively and gives the protoss a headstart as well. And then there is the possibility for the protoss to just put down a pylon an natural hatch (like to block it from being build) and then start adding cannons, pylons or even a gateway. Even a instant pull of pretty much all drones and the lings that are being built may very well lose to it. But thats beside the topic. So back on topic!
Mistakes the Protoss can do after walling in the zerg: - overcommit and build a thousand cannons and pylons all over the place like in the video - not scouting every single base on the map for hidden hatches - not scouting every single corner of his base for nydus-play - not having at least 2 sentries and 1 or 2 cannons in his natural und avoid roach or banelings-busts - not scouting for zerg-tech as fast as possible
Those mistakes can be easily avoided and therefore zerg-allin of any kind shouldnt work at all. And a macro game simply is not winnable from that position. Any decent Protoss should win after that.
So the question is, why isnt Blizzard implementing the neutral supply-depot on ladder? I think the answer is that they want as much active starcraft 2 players as possible. And there are a lot of people out there that have no interest in playing a good game or let the better player win. They want easy wins, without investing time or energy in learning something new or become better with it. The Pylon-Wallin is the most easy to execute strategie out there and at the same time a mindblowing strong one. Because no matter what Protoss does during the cannoning. If he does it right, he will win the game with it. Its a stupid feature, but its a feature a certain kind of player wants and needs to be sccessful and therefore blizzard keeps things as it is. I think things like that ruin the game. At least they do for me.
On August 25 2012 10:50 Belial88 wrote: ^ You hold a 4 gate with your natural because if you hold, you are way ahead due to having your natural, and the ability to deny Toss' natural with roach/ling, for a long time. Also, those drones at the natural provide a HUGE income boost, you have 16 workers in your main and then about 10 in your natural, which is more than double the income of 30 workers on 1 base. And, because of the natural choke, you can rely on spines, which make 4 gate a million times easier to hold.
If you try to hold a 4 gate on 1 base, it will be MUCH harder (i dont even think it's possible, but I'll hold off on that absolute, you also can't use a spine which makes 4 gates much easier to hold too, but not necessarily needed) to hold, not to mention, you will have zero ability to capitalize on holding, whereas when taking your nat with a standard 4 gate defense, you just win the game because Toss won't be able to take his natural for forever.
Please provide a replay where Zerg holds a 4 gate on 1 base though. I can't believe that's possible, or that Zerg would end up ahead if he did end up holding (although I doubt he could).
I see stuff. Dont overreact. Scout. See 1 base = roaches. Hold 4 gate easily. Win
He puts 2 more canon but it was not needed and he didn't build gateway at the bottom of your ramp. He wasted at least 300 mineral (maybe 450 because protoss doesn't have to put a canon until you build zerglings). You hold the 4 gate because he allowed you to spread creep and put 3 spine crawler at the bottom of you ramp, protoss should never let you destroy his wall.
My previous theorycrafting got overlooked, so I'll try again:
Im only a diamond n00b, but a question here: With such an opening, toss isnt really that economical. His follow up could be either a FE, or agression. What if you go quick nydus, into expand (bypassing the wall). If toss does a FE, he cant really punish you for it, if he goes agression he 's on even footing as far as economy goes (and it might be possible to defend an expand with spines and slings?)
E.g. you get walled in, nydus you 3rd, exp, spine down the wall from above @ the natural, and then take your natural?
Powerdrone, get a spine to break wall, put up expo at nat and 3rd while not doing anything other than massdroning until you got 70-80? What's he gonna followup with? He did at least spend 450 minerals early on delaying himself alot aswell, and he wont be able to get agressive for a long time.. What happens if u just play greedy?
On August 27 2012 17:25 gronnelg wrote: My previous theorycrafting got overlooked, so I'll try again:
Im only a diamond n00b, but a question here: With such an opening, toss isnt really that economical. His follow up could be either a FE, or agression. What if you go quick nydus, into expand (bypassing the wall). If toss does a FE, he cant really punish you for it, if he goes agression he 's on even footing as far as economy goes (and it might be possible to defend an expand with spines and slings?)
E.g. you get walled in, nydus you 3rd, exp, spine down the wall from above @ the natural, and then take your natural?
I dont think that theres something called a "quick" nydus. 100 gas for Lair, 200 gas for nydus and 150 gas for the worm. I dont know the build time for everything, but it just takes too long to get that hatch up to make use of it in time of a gateway attack imo.
My only thought of this is that a change is needed on the maps where this is possible.
Possible solutions got buried again, so I'm going to try one last time.
Note: These solutions are only necessary for 2 player maps.
1) Drone scout your ramp at 9. You do not have to patrol your drone for a long time, if at all. You just need to scout the pylon at your ramp if it's there, timing your scout such that a) you'll be able to react if he throws down the earliest possible 10pylon before it's done, and b) there is no 25 second gap between your drone scout of your ramp and your 9 overlord getting vision of your ramp. Someone else already calculated this to be a 20-25 mineral loss, not an 80 mineral loss.
2) Send your first overlord over your own natural before sending it to your opponent's base, and make sure to keep it around long enough to see a super early probe coming to your natural. You should still be able to overlord scout your opponent earlier than on 4 player maps, where your first overlord doesn't scout them first 2/3 of the time.
All the theorycraft / testing for dealing with the wall-in once it has occurred is nice, but people have come up with these two simple changes to one's opening which should make one safe from the wall-in ever occurring.
Just expanding on someone's idea that I liked and hasn't been discussed a lot - I haven't tested it but it seems viable for several reasons I'll discuss. I think one of strengths of this build for toss is that it forces early misuse of larva; this specifically tries to eliminate that and avoid getting behind.
Macro hatch close to the ramp for quick creep spread. This allows you to avoid using early queen energy on a creep tumor when you can gain much more benefit from an inject. Get a spine up as soon as your pool finishes and move it to the top of the ramp. Get another queen, chip away at the pylons. Drone this entire time and immediately tech to lair and get an overseer in his base to see everything he does for the next 5 minutes basically (super delayed warp gate means not nearly enough stalkers to kill an overseer). Also get ling speed with your next 100 gas. I am thinking now you want to go up to 4 queens so you have at least one transfuse while constantly injecting, and depending on how many cannons, get lings out (only if necessary) and clear out your expo. If you think you can kill all cannons with 3-4 queens + a spine + a transfuse, do this and spend all larva on drones. If there's one cannon you can probably kill it with a spine and 2 queens much earlier on.
If you're behind at this point then this strategy isn't viable I guess, but I feel like as long as you use all the larva from two hatches for drones, it would be hard to be behind even with the delayed expo. This also gives you a significant scouting advantage going into mid game and keeps the toss on edge for an all in since he can't see what you're doing except knows you're on lair and is probably paranoid about a nydus.
If the toss goes stargate, you can defend with queens and spores and take your third and go up to 80 drones and use some speedlings to deny third most likely. If the toss does some form of 2 base all-in, which I think is most likely, you can just pick your choice of lair tech and build spines to defend (personally I'd go hydra).
what if the zerg goes immediately for both gases, and straight to 6-7 roach nydus? not the main, but third. it comes around 7:30. i dont see how u can stop that if u go FFE. 2 cannons and 2 sentries dont cut it
if you scout it in time with quick check top ramp at 9 it's protoss player who will autoloose ! this action cost you 10 mineral at most! So it's fine and easy to counter this build. Stop whine about this cheese ! it's a total all in okay we get it ! if it is in place it could be hard to win as a zerg , above all it piss off zerg players but it's so easy to counter that you should just get used to make that ridiculous timing scout. end of story. If you don't do that you are like player that don't check in PvP for canon rush/ proxy gate you take a risk it's your choice.
Should watch the replay before saying anything.
Your insult is also just stupid because it is true that pylon wallin should be on ladder. Zerg should not have to have a drone on hold position on the ramp until your spawning pool is done just so you don't get an auto loss.
Another thing the 3 pylon wall is not an auto loss for protoss if it fails. They just cancel the pylons if they can't get them up or whatever, get most of their money back and start their nexus. The tech and nexus are a little late but it is far from an auto loss to protoss. The fact you think that is very laughable.
Your insult is also just stupid because it is true that pylon wallin should be on ladder. Zerg should not have to have a drone on hold position on the ramp until your spawning pool is done just so you don't get an auto loss.
Another thing the 3 pylon wall is not an auto loss for protoss if it fails. They just cancel the pylons if they can't get them up or whatever, get most of their money back and start their nexus. The tech and nexus are a little late but it is far from an auto loss to protoss. The fact you think that is very laughable.
you should watch the replay too and know that the topic is about 9 pylon 10 forge to block your ramp and not about 3 pylon block that is less allinish. So i agree easily with your saying and i never talked about that whatever. My purpose is that 9 pylon 10 forge is auto loose for protoss if properly scouted by the zerg. (you prevent the probe to make the forge throw down a pool and win ) and you loose maximum 20 mineral or so doing this kind of quick scout up the ramp as protoss does sometimes when they fear canon rush. (the timing of this quick scout is about 10 drone)
if you want so bad talk about 3 pylon block i think there is also a reflexion to make about optimizing your patrolling drone as there is also a timing range you know that this thing can be coming and you can optimize the time of your patrolling drone too.
So let me advice you three things !
1) read the topic
2) watch the replay
3) try to read people's writing before criticizing it or at least if you don't know what they are talking about don't say a thing or ask for precision so you won't make misinterpretation + anger + insult
Thanks blue man and i advice you to think long and hard before speaking next time
Edit : the end is maybe a little bit trolly and i apologize for that but as french expression tell this so well
"qui sème le vent récolte la tempête"
"Whosoever sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind"
Edit 2 : the reason i get angry last post is because people troll without looking about options discussed in this topic that are good so far imo.
if you scout it in time with quick check top ramp at 9 it's protoss player who will autoloose ! this action cost you 10 mineral at most! So it's fine and easy to counter this build. Stop whine about this cheese ! it's a total all in okay we get it ! if it is in place it could be hard to win as a zerg , above all it piss off zerg players but it's so easy to counter that you should just get used to make that ridiculous timing scout. end of story. If you don't do that you are like player that don't check in PvP for canon rush/ proxy gate you take a risk it's your choice.
Your insult is also just stupid because it is true that pylon wallin should be on ladder. Zerg should not have to have a drone on hold position on the ramp until your spawning pool is done just so you don't get an auto loss.
Another thing the 3 pylon wall is not an auto loss for protoss if it fails. They just cancel the pylons if they can't get them up or whatever, get most of their money back and start their nexus. The tech and nexus are a little late but it is far from an auto loss to protoss. The fact you think that is very laughable.
you should watch the replay too and know that the topic is about 9 pylon 10 forge to block your ramp and not about 3 pylon block that is less allinish.
...
You make a reply on pylon-wallin and then complain about that it's not the topic when someone replys to you?
On August 29 2012 17:28 SSVnormandy wrote: 3) try to read people's writing before criticizing it or at least if you don't know what they are talking about don't say a thing or ask for precision so you won't make misinterpretation + anger + insult
Also, it can be pretty easy to missunderstand your posts since you do not care about formatting your posts in a way that makes it clear what you are talking about.
sorry about this confusion but Pylon wall-in could be easily misinterpretred as the strategy we were discussing in this thread is a kind of pylon wall-in also. If people could just talk about the main subject in such forum and not disgress everytime we could advance and discuss of solutions.
and btw the thread of this guy was so obtuse mind like "all your solutions are shit and there is no discussion to have about that because this kind of strat shouldn't exist"
Btw. all the advices like: 1. drone scout 2. early pool 3. hold position on drone are pretty worthless.
i should have maybe quote another angry zerg sorry for that. But actually i'm trying with other reasonable people in this thread to make you understand that this allin can be countered with an optimal way that doesn't hurt zerg economy much so I invite every people in this thread to think about that and not trolling everytime !
i will remove my angry post from above
Also, it can be pretty easy to missunderstand your posts since you do not care about formatting your posts in a way that makes it clear what you are talking about.
Also it's kind of obvious that when i talk about 9 scout timing up your ramp it's about 9 pylon 10 forge as this timing of scout have absolutely no sense vs a 3 pylon block that appear at 17 probe timing at minimum
Why don't you just send the overlord along the probe path to your ramp? Eg in Cloud Kingdom send your Overlord pass your Natural rocks first then towards Protoss expansion. Your overlord will pass the probe at your natural rocks if Protoss send 1/6 starting probes. If you see it just pull a drone to deny the Forge from going down and another to chase the probe.
Just did this. So fun and easy if you caught zerg unprepared.
On August 29 2012 22:32 samuraibael wrote: I managed to get walled in even with a drone blocking. Apparently you also have to micro it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J7pkewgtZw
that probe was 1 hit away from dying He then proceeded to plant down like 1k minerals of buildings lol. Also this is a different type of ramp block than the OP.
On August 29 2012 22:32 samuraibael wrote: I managed to get walled in even with a drone blocking. Apparently you also have to micro it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J7pkewgtZw
Your pool finished a long time ago but you never started 4 lings. And you never blocked it, you never hit hold or patrol. While an enemy worker will block buildings, it's better to use hold or patrol in case he attacks you, as a drone will move if it's attacked when not on hold or patrol.
That's why you lost there ;/
If you are lower level, you should patrol 1 drone while a 2nd drone takes the hatch (or tries to). Make sure to patrol the drone out a bit, since where buildings are planted is actually a little bit out from the ramp (if that makes sense...). What I do is pull 2 workers for the scouting probe, one on a-move, the other to take the hatch and block the front of the probe. If I see him go for the ramp I'm quick enough to move the drone to the ramp, and many times I've had toss attempt to ramp block and I'll see it. This takes about 200 apm but I manage it fine. Here's a rep example:
Just ignore the troll blade. What a douchebag to be insulting a blue like that. I stopped caring a long time ago what he had to say.
Thanks MrLama, that was a very informative video! A real practical solution to the problem, I like it.
Do you think you were ahead or behind though? You said that Toss was ahead in workers at one point, and if Toss played a very straight-forward robo expand, I think he would have been way ahead of you. Yea, okay, every single Toss who is going to ramp block is going to do some sort of all-in (voids or blink) into DT, so maybe I don't have to worry about that, but just saying ;/
I'd like to see the rep of it, see maybe who's ahead in it. Or a better picture of who is ahead. Seemed like you just countered his build, that's how it looked so easy, but it seemed like he could have been ahead if he wasn't such a moron.
On a side note, I really liked ling/baneling bust all-in as a response to this. I played Toss on ladder for a while, trying to find a zerg to do it too (i found 10 t/p first, dropped my MMR by 300 points tt), and he responded by simply by not pulling drones against it (like you advise), and busted out with 2 spines, and then did a ling/bane all-in and wrecked my 3 cannon wall-in at my natural with no sentries.
On August 29 2012 23:17 Belial88 wrote: Your pool finished a long time ago but you never started 4 lings. And you never blocked it, you never hit hold or patrol. While an enemy worker will block buildings, it's better to use hold or patrol in case he attacks you, as a drone will move if it's attacked when not on hold or patrol.
That's why you lost there ;/
I didnt actually realise he could continue with the wall around the drone, thats why I didnt build lings/pull drones until he built the second pylon.
EPT
that probe was 1 hit away from dying
