EPTOn December 01 2012 19:08 Zrana wrote:
Man i want to love this style so much, ultras, banes and hydras are the coolest zerg units, but i feel it relies too heavily on your opponent being unfamiliar with the style and reacting wrongly. What would you do if he goes SG and keeps making phoenix when he sees hydra? The drops are your gateway to the lategame, can you really make the style work if they are shut down by air or just good play?
Man i want to love this style so much, ultras, banes and hydras are the coolest zerg units, but i feel it relies too heavily on your opponent being unfamiliar with the style and reacting wrongly. What would you do if he goes SG and keeps making phoenix when he sees hydra? The drops are your gateway to the lategame, can you really make the style work if they are shut down by air or just good play?
Stargate openers can negate drop play, but I've used it by moving around the phoenixes with overlords. This is pretty risky though, not sure I would recommend it. However vs stargate openers his robo will be delayed, giving you time to transition to T3 a little quicker.
As far as phoenix vs hydra, my experience is that phoenix are good vs hydra in low numbers, but soon hydras start to hit a critical mass (around 8-10 or so) where they start to really overwhelm phoenix. Phoenixes fare all right against hydras but not that well; getting a handful to defend against them and then transitioning can work. It kind of depends on how the game goes as to whether or not to try to drop. Still a toss shouldn't stay on phoenix to counter moderate numbers of hydras.
On December 01 2012 19:08 Zrana wrote:
If you look at that daybreak game, the protoss player does this weird warp prism thing that gets completely shut down with no discernable gain for the toss player, then he reacts very badly to your drops+aggression and loses a lot more than he should. For the rest of the game he makes far too many stalkers instead of zealots or immortals and repeatedly refuses to move his collosus out of ultralisk splash damage. It seems like a better player with a safer opening would have come out slightly more ahead than he did with each engagement. If he can make sure the part of his army left standing after each battle is the high tech stuff then gradually he can build up a ball of collo/immo/archon which eventually will roll over anything on the ground. The game really just looked like you straight up outplayed him.
If you have a replay of you winning against a safer player who cleans up the drops relatively well i'd love to see it.
I'm just not convinced it can really win against a protoss who takes more care of their high-tech units. This probably wont stop me trying out though ^^
If you look at that daybreak game, the protoss player does this weird warp prism thing that gets completely shut down with no discernable gain for the toss player, then he reacts very badly to your drops+aggression and loses a lot more than he should. For the rest of the game he makes far too many stalkers instead of zealots or immortals and repeatedly refuses to move his collosus out of ultralisk splash damage. It seems like a better player with a safer opening would have come out slightly more ahead than he did with each engagement. If he can make sure the part of his army left standing after each battle is the high tech stuff then gradually he can build up a ball of collo/immo/archon which eventually will roll over anything on the ground. The game really just looked like you straight up outplayed him.
If you have a replay of you winning against a safer player who cleans up the drops relatively well i'd love to see it.
I'm just not convinced it can really win against a protoss who takes more care of their high-tech units. This probably wont stop me trying out though ^^
I'm not sure how much he lost, but if you look at the units lost tab throughout he's pretty far ahead. I was able to make up for this deficit via a better economy (which is how Z typically used to deal with less cost-efficient units). I did manage to buy time though with the drops, which is really what I aim for.
He probably should have moved his colossi back, but they were not in a bad position for a lot of the game and I usually had to go through his archons first, which are mighty tanky. This is also where, at a higher level of play, I think flanking would help out tremendously to negate kiting micro. I do agree that zeals may have fared better, but it's hard for me to say since I haven't played against zeal-heavy comps. I'm pretty sure this is something that my practice partners will try, so I'll try to update accordingly.
On December 01 2012 19:08 Zrana wrote:
I've tried ultra/bane before and had some success and some failure but your addition of the tech switches to deal with immo/archon compositions is really cool and makes zvp seem more fun to play again. The lack of infestors is interesting, it seems like you'd probably want to get them at some point just because neural and fungal is so good with this style but the question is when and how many?
I've tried ultra/bane before and had some success and some failure but your addition of the tech switches to deal with immo/archon compositions is really cool and makes zvp seem more fun to play again. The lack of infestors is interesting, it seems like you'd probably want to get them at some point just because neural and fungal is so good with this style but the question is when and how many?
This is a great question. Personally I don't think getting infestors in the midgame is the answer at all. I saw Symbol do this against Parting (link is in the OP) and I really feel that he would have been much better off getting ultras out more quickly to deal with stalker/colossi effectively.
My feeling on this is probably 3-4 infestors after the first max for fungals and to get favorable engagements, when you can afford them. One reason I'm also hesitant with infestors is that they really cut into your baneling count; each infestor is worth 6 banelings, and the upgrade is another 6. Large numbers of banes gives you a much higher chance of connecting, so you can afford to lose a bunch and still be fine. Also your army is fast enough to generally catch up to his eventually; I don't think kiting works that well, at least in open areas (see Symbol vs Seed, linked in the OP).
Still I've found that I'm very mineral-starved lategame with this strat. I'm not sure why; maybe it's because of poor resaturation once my main and nat run low, so infestors would be a pretty reasonable addition at this point due to low mineral/gas ratio.
