|
woops, double post.
3. Colossus vs no colossus, pre-BL timings - I've played around a lot with getting colossus versus no colossus and I really think getting colossus is the better and safer route. I know that progamers often skip colossus but I think those are specific towards special situations/builds/maps. Monk, do you have any replays/vods showing PvZ without colossus going up a heavy ling/infestor style?
Archon/HT with storm is alot of more effective vs. ling infestor and alot more cost efficient as well. 4 solid storms will easily kill as much as 4 colossus would in a fight for alot less cost, and will also better prepare you to begin combating against the brood infestor army.
not to mention that if you havent scouted the zerg yet, HT are a safer choice as it will help to defend vs. muta as well.
The only time i see colossus as a favorable option is vs. roaches (and hydras? LoL) or as an anti-hive timing used to pick off spine crawlers from a distance
|
Thanks rsvp. A lot of really good thoughts there.
It sounds like our early game is pretty similar. You get a faster robo while I get a faster +1 weapons. I think your solution is better, so I'll switch.
As for the timing on the 4th, I'll play around with it some. I always try to be aggressive with expansions until I die enough that I'm convinced that it doesn't work, so I'm probably going to keep experiementing here. I haven't died enough yet.
Regarding the carrier transition timing, I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, yes, having one or two carriers isn't better than having that supply in stalkers, so from that perspective, it makes sense to time the carrier transition so it comes all at once. On the other hand, carriers take forever to build, and if you have five stargages producing carriers at once, there's a big timing window where your army is down 30 supply. If they attack while you're making your carriers, you just die.
From my limited experience with this build, I'm able to get a good carrier count out before Z has the 20 BL army that I can't handle with mothership+ground. He might be able to catch me on 1 or 2 carriers if he attacks with 6 broodlords, but if he waits for 20, my air transition will be in better shape. If it turns out that my fourth is totally unsafe, I might not be able to complete the air transition in time, which will force me to stay on colossi longer like do.
I'll watch your replay when I get home. Let me know if you try taking a fourth a little faster. If you have a handful of sentries, couple colossi and a good stalker force, It seems like you can handle anything they throw at you before broodlords, and you know when the broodlord timing will hit.
Also, the reason I don't get aggressive with my colossus-stalker ball before the BL's pop is that I can't retreat against fungal. Maybe my control is just bad, but if I attack with my army at that time, it often gets rooted to the ground in green goo, and eventually cleaned up when the BL's finish. I tried the push a lot with the MS tech behind it, but even with tech behind the push, it wound up feeling all-in since I couldn't retreat, so if I couldn't beat his army, I lost the game.
I do think it's worth posturing like you might attack with the colossus force, but really, if there's a spine wall, you're not gonna kill him and in my mind, it's not worth actually commiting to an attack given the risk of becoming fungal-locked. There's definitely a timing attack window there, but I think you need a mothership core to make it safe.
|
On October 04 2012 06:43 rsvp wrote: lol lots of posts in the time it took me to write that
Some things I want to comment on -
1. Versus roach max - there's the kind that waits until 200/200 max at 12-13 minutes before attacking - which I believe kcdc's build in the OP will be fine against. However, lots of roach max builds begin attacking much earlier, and any sort of fast 3rd, especially those without a fast robo and sentries, will have a lot of difficulty holding.
This is very map dependent. On maps like CK , Ohana or daybreak, it is definitely easier to make some sort of choke at the third and wall of the ramp to natural. Then you can just rely on good FF to hold the early roach attacks and have immortals out on time for the max. Since you will get TC instead of robo bay, you can have blink just in time to fend off muta.
That being said, on maps like Antiga or TDA, it's nearly impossible to do this.
|
My whole game plan is similar too, but I don't do stalkers. I do 3 zealots out of a gate and rally them to Zerg's 3rd, then warp in 2 more from 2 gates while continuing to tech to DTs and waiting for +1 to finish (5 zealots, don't lose them, run if roaches). I get Shrine, and gates 3 and 4 after Shrine is down. After the 2 zealot warp-in cooldown has expired is usually when Shrine finishes, along with gates 3 and 4. Depending on how aggro you want to go, and when you took gasses 3 and 4 you can warp in the fitting number of Dark Templar, I usually do 3. You get robo around when shrine finishes, and you should have started the 3rd. Everything else is zealot/cannon defense at the 3rd augmented by 1-2 archons and 1-3 immortals depending on how much damage you do and when Zerg pushes out.
Questions on your build: I would rather do zealots than stalkers for the poke at third, since at that point I'm not sure I won't just lose stalkers to speedlings. Thoughts?
The above deviation gets an early TC which is nice if you can't proceed with the build because you scouted something. You already have +1 and can just do blink/add gates/+2 instead of DTs.
Is gas in sentries for defense better than gas in other tech for maybe stronger offensive units?
DTs have more utility compared to stalkers, even if they do no damage they are better defending your 3rd as an archon than stalkers. Would you rather have 5 stalkers or 1 archon and 3 zealots when defending third?
|
rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds.
|
On October 04 2012 07:41 kcdc wrote: rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds.
1) I messed up somewhere, usually I can get it to hit at 8:00 which I guess is still a bit later than yours but not that much later. Here's an example where I warp in at 8:00, and as you can see there's still room for improvement (I could have chronoed the warpgate tech more). http://drop.sc/261192
2) It's only a suicide attack because I warped in zealots. You can choose to warp in stalkers with it and still not make it into a suicide attack.
|
In terms of Builds oriented around getting fastish thirds up, I don't think Jangbi's PvZ build has gotten enough attention. He did it a couple times and it looked really good at first impression, but then no one seemed to care about it to work out the details. Thread on it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=352807
|
On October 04 2012 07:41 kcdc wrote: rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds.
You can use hallucination to scout and get up to 6-7 sentries.
|
On October 04 2012 10:37 ian952 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 07:41 kcdc wrote: rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds. You can use hallucination to scout and get up to 6-7 sentries.
Robo is important not just for obs but for immortals to defend against roaches.
On October 04 2012 10:24 Vaporak wrote:In terms of Builds oriented around getting fastish thirds up, I don't think Jangbi's PvZ build has gotten enough attention. He did it a couple times and it looked really good at first impression, but then no one seemed to care about it to work out the details. Thread on it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=352807
I commented on this build in an earlier post, basically it's a viable build but I personally don't like it because of the late robo.
|
I don't know if you're willing but I'd like to try playing some games vs this on because I feel this style is pretty vulnerable to a few different styles but I'm not 100% sure. I'm a high master Zerg, we can play on NA.
|
Seems like pretty interesting stuff. Tomorrow i'll check this with some games and post the results.
|
On October 04 2012 06:36 monk. wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 06:29 rsvp wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Watched the first rep. I used to pretty much do this exact thing almost every PvZ, namely warpgate aggression without fast tech, relatively fast 3rd, turtle with colossus and cannon, get 4th, get carrier/mothership, make carrier/colossus/archon/ht mothership deathball, win. However, problems with it include: 1. Fast 3rd with slow tech is unsafe. You need to know if they're trying to mass roach off 3 base to kill you or if they're teching/macroing/getting a 4th. If you have few or no immortals against fast roach max, you will die, if you blindly chrono immortals/more sentries and other defenses you'll be behind going into late game or if they go mutas. I guess in your game you might have reacted differently if you sensed/scouted a fast roach max was coming, but there would be no way you'd survive it doing what you did. 2. Getting a 4th early before you're nearly maxed or have a large number of robo units is unsafe. The zerg should have been maxed at that point, and also his infestor play was sloppy so you were able to defend it (for example he threw infested terrans only after his army died). I'm never able to hold a 4th at that stage of the game though. 3. Slowly transitioning to carriers is awkward. If you have a large ground army you want to vortex broodlords and then burst DPS when units come out. If you have carriers you want to vortex corruptor. If you are slowly transitioning to carriers then you have a period time where you're extremely weak when you only have a few carriers out and a lot of supply tied into making more carriers. At that point your army is still mostly ground but it's significantly smaller, and the few carriers you have are not adding much to your side especially when your own vortex sucks in interceptors. In other words what I'm trying to say is mass carrier with colossus/ht/archon support is strong, mass ground with mothership is not bad, but mostly ground with some carrier support is very bad. So now my standard PvZ macro/turtle build is a bit different. Here's how I've adapted: 1. Fast robo, fast 3rd but still with the 8 minute 4 gate warpgate timing. My first 100 gas goes to warpgate tech and a stalker, my next 100 gas goes to the robo. Then I add 3 additional gateways, and I can put down my 3rd at around 7:30. I afford this by not getting my +1 upgrade that early (usually I start it after I start my 3rd base), and by delaying my 2nd gas and the 3rd/4th gas until after I start the 3rd base (I know that you also delay your 2nd gas in your games, but most standard PvZ builds get double gas at 19/20 supply). Not only does the fast robo provide me with a fast obs for fast scouting, it also allows me to build up that immortal count fast to defend my 3rd against roaches. 2. I don't take a 4th until I'm nearly maxed and I'm moving out to attack. I typically go for a pre-bl colossus timing, but I still get a mothership behind it so it's not a complete all-in and I have something to fall back on if he is able to defend until BLs come out. Because my 4th is later, I can't afford to get carriers that fast, so I don't. But this leads to my next comment: 3. Carrier transition - the best way I've come up with to transition to air is to prepare for a mass transition - get air upgrades and lay down a lot of stargates, but don't make any carriers yet, just focus on your stalker/colossus/archon/mothership army first. Work on your mothership micro (which is actually quite difficult - you need to control it will since it needs to be fully stopped before it can cast vortex, and also you need to watch it at all times and protect it from neurals), but if you are careful with your mothership although the game may stalemate if he hides behind a spine wall, he shouldn't be able to beat your army until he slowly turns his entire army to ~20 broodlords with some infestors/corruptor support. At this point you should be grabbing a 5th and even more bases and mass cannoning to protect them, while harassing with warp prism/poking with your main army. When he finally attacks you can choose to try to defend it, or go counter into his main. Most likely he'll turn around to try to defend, and then you do your air transition while trying to kill off as much of his base/tech as you can. After he stabilizes, continue to buy time by doing warp prism harass (use 2+ warp prisms). Hopefully you haven't actually killed any of his brood lords so that all his supply is tied into bl when you get air out. It sounds kinda cheesy but it's the best you can do unless you just want to all-in earlier and pray for lucky vortexes, once the zerg gets like 20 broodlords and doesn't stack them all in 1 place there is literally no way for you to kill it with only ground and 2 vortexes. Note that the carrier transition doesn't always happen - in fact it's actually quite rare for the game to get to that stage, but it's pretty much the best way I can come up to make carriers. I Here's a replay kinda showing this, it's not too good (some early timings were off especially the late warpgate timing, also I get an early 4th like I say not to, but I get it because I scout his fast hive plus I kill off a group of roaches without taking any losses), but it's the best I can quickly find right now. I'll try to find other reps later. http://drop.sc/261127Also just as another build you may want to look at is that jangbi fast 3rd build where you just chrono gateway units out of your first gate, and get your 3rd base off of 1 gateway. It's nice if you want to pressure the zerg earlier, since most zergs are just used to defending the 8:00 warpgate timing and can get caught off guard either taking more damage than they should or overbuilding units and then being behind in drones. I personally don't like it because your tech is slower but if you don't mind that you should try it, it's safer than you'd think with a lot more early aggressive potential. Feel like I need to ban you for this post. You know why.....
Mind explaining?
|
On October 04 2012 10:39 rsvp wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 10:37 ian952 wrote:On October 04 2012 07:41 kcdc wrote: rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds. You can use hallucination to scout and get up to 6-7 sentries. Robo is important not just for obs but for immortals to defend against roaches.
I get what you mean, but wouldn't hallucination do the same as obs (trying to see if its roach max, muta, or fast 4th). Since you are using hallucination instead of obs, I suppose you can delay the obs in favour of fast immortals. Since you took your third earlier, wouldn't that help you with a better economy?
|
United States8476 Posts
On October 04 2012 11:07 ian952 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 10:39 rsvp wrote:On October 04 2012 10:37 ian952 wrote:On October 04 2012 07:41 kcdc wrote: rsvp, I watched your rep, and your WG timing is (1) much later than mine, and (2) a suicide attack. I like your idea of a faster robo because I'd like to scout earlier, but my 7:50 1z/5s WG timing is much stronger than the WG timing you used in that replay. Maybe there's a way to get the best of both worlds. You can use hallucination to scout and get up to 6-7 sentries. Robo is important not just for obs but for immortals to defend against roaches. I get what you mean, but wouldn't hallucination do the same as obs (trying to see if its roach max, muta, or fast 4th). Since you are using hallucination instead of obs, I suppose you can delay the obs in favour of fast immortals. Since you took your third earlier, wouldn't that help you with a better economy? You still need obs to scout roach splits and detect burrow. Hallucination costs too much valuable sentry energy to keep a phoenix up all the time.
|
On October 04 2012 05:38 monk. wrote:First, I don't how the way you take your third is safe. Should easily fall to a roach max. Second, I don't see how what you're doing is different from a standard turtle style. The two "safe" builds that don't involve stargate are the standard robo expand, which i talked about here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=327905and a defensive 4 gate into twilight into robo expand, which was innovated by creator. Creator vs Moon on Metropolis from GSTL Parting vs Symbol on Daybreak from GSL Oz vs JKS on Metropolis from GSL, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandOz vs JKS on Entombed Valley from GSL, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandOz vs Violet on Cloud Kingdom from MLG Sumemr Arena, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expand, vs roach/ling heavy pressure into infestorsOz vs Stephano on Entombed Valley from MLG Summer Arena, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandCreator vs Idra on Ohana from IPL TAC 4, gate, twilight, robo, expandSquirtle vs Hyun on Metropolis from IPL Fight Club, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expand
Genius does (or at least used to) a build that goes 4 gate twilight expand robo. What are your thoughts on that? Is the earlier expand worth the slower immortals? Can you decisively hold roach maxes?
|
United States8476 Posts
On October 04 2012 11:52 Indrium wrote:Show nested quote +On October 04 2012 05:38 monk. wrote:First, I don't how the way you take your third is safe. Should easily fall to a roach max. Second, I don't see how what you're doing is different from a standard turtle style. The two "safe" builds that don't involve stargate are the standard robo expand, which i talked about here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=327905and a defensive 4 gate into twilight into robo expand, which was innovated by creator. Creator vs Moon on Metropolis from GSTL Parting vs Symbol on Daybreak from GSL Oz vs JKS on Metropolis from GSL, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandOz vs JKS on Entombed Valley from GSL, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandOz vs Violet on Cloud Kingdom from MLG Sumemr Arena, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expand, vs roach/ling heavy pressure into infestorsOz vs Stephano on Entombed Valley from MLG Summer Arena, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expandCreator vs Idra on Ohana from IPL TAC 4, gate, twilight, robo, expandSquirtle vs Hyun on Metropolis from IPL Fight Club, 4 gate, twilight, robo, expand Genius does (or at least used to) a build that goes 4 gate twilight expand robo. What are your thoughts on that? Is the earlier expand worth the slower immortals? Can you decisively hold roach maxes? Maybe, but it seems extremely hard. Robo 4 gate expands are the best for holding, but even they have problems on a map like Antiga. 4 gate twilight robo expand already needs some help from the map, ie not Antiga, and it's close. I suspect 4 gate twilight expand robo would be even harder. Also, I don't think delaying the robo speeds up your expand by much. In my experience, the limiting factor is usually the first warp-in of sentries and not the 400 minerals. At worst, it only delays you by 200 minerals.
|
I think the fact is a well controlled zerg deathball rolls a protoss deathball (carriers or not) if they make they're composition right for what you have, you guys are trying to find a solution where there isnt one really, I honestly believe that without doing alot of damage to zerg throughout the game a turtle style just isn't effective anymore, unless you can seriously hinder the zergs tech/economy or they attack into you over and over while you turtle they are just going to get ahead in macro have a maxed BL infestor corrupter army before you have the army you want.
|
I'm struggling to see what makes this strategy any different from other macro PvZ builds. It opens with a FFE, you go Robo+Sentry into a third with blink, then you get Colossi, then your endgame is 100% reliant on the Mothership against the Broodlord/Infestor ball.
What am I missing? Or is this not supposed to be about the build itself, but just playing for the macro game? Because I play almost exclusively macro-style in PvZ, but I use pressure and tech instead of turtling.
|
Italy12246 Posts
On October 04 2012 18:55 ineversmile wrote: I'm struggling to see what makes this strategy any different from other macro PvZ builds. It opens with a FFE, you go Robo+Sentry into a third with blink, then you get Colossi, then your endgame is 100% reliant on the Mothership against the Broodlord/Infestor ball.
What am I missing? Or is this not supposed to be about the build itself, but just playing for the macro game? Because I play almost exclusively macro-style in PvZ, but I use pressure and tech instead of turtling.
The opening pressure is somewhat innovative, mothership tech is much faster than many builds, there is no pre-bl timing, the 4th and carriers are faster than normal.
|
On October 04 2012 18:55 ineversmile wrote: I'm struggling to see what makes this strategy any different from other macro PvZ builds. It opens with a FFE, you go Robo+Sentry into a third with blink, then you get Colossi, then your endgame is 100% reliant on the Mothership against the Broodlord/Infestor ball.
What am I missing? Or is this not supposed to be about the build itself, but just playing for the macro game? Because I play almost exclusively macro-style in PvZ, but I use pressure and tech instead of turtling.
It's actually gateway pressure into a third followed by robo + sentry, not robo + sentry into a third. Also the end game is NOT 100% reliant on the mothership, that's what the carriers are for and one of the major points of this thread.
|
|
|
|