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On January 05 2013 04:32 BadassHamster wrote:
Can anyone give me some tips on controlling phoenixes? Like when I try and hit a worker line I'll have some of them float too far away, or I'll pick up too many workers at once, or have them blocking view of what I want to grab. What's the typical keystroke/click methods that you use while harassing?
Also, since they don't really need to attack-move, should I be right-clicking them everywhere?
Just wondering if people had any tips - thanks!
Good questions.
First of all, I want to recommend that you hunt queens at a higher priority than hunting drones, if you have the ability to pick them off. Attacking the zerg's larva injects and creep spread completely shapes the way the midgame will be set. For fighting queens, the consensus is that you want 3-4 phoenixes for the job. 3 means you have to use 2 lifts, but that's fine because hitting the queen before your 4th phoenix can often mean making him miss a crucial inject at that slightly earlier timing. 4 phoenixes, on the other hand, only need 1 grav lift if you are careful and make sure you target fire the queen (and don't auto-attack overlords nearby, which does happen). So get used to pressing your grav button, then a-click or right-click the queen; phoenix AI might rob you of a couple shots if an ovie is around.
For fighting multiple queens, you want to have 3 phoenixes shooting at one queen at a time, if you plan to lift all the nearby queens to avoid their DPS. So 5 phoenixes vs 2 queens, 6 vs 3 queens, etc. However, if the queens have an armor upgrade, your phoenixes do WAY less DPS because it's -2 damage per shot per armor upgrade. So there's a timing window when you should just not fight multiple queens, and either go for drones/overlords, or take a break from harassing and send them somewhere safe on the map (a corner over airspace or a base of yours, etc) so you can focus on macro.
You basically want to pick up drones in such a manner that you have 2-3 phoenixes shooting per phoenix lifting drones. You only want to pick up more when they're running away from the harassment/a fight/a base under attack.
Generally speaking, you want to pick up units with 1/4 to 1/3 your total phoenix count, and let the rest do their damage. Otherwise, you should just pick up as many units as you possibly can, if you're using them to catch retreating units or if you're trying to cut down the size of an opposing army (usually applies to roaches/hydras/infestors) so your ground force has a better chance in the battle.
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As far as specific mechanics go:
#1 take grav lift off the G-key, if you use standard keys. I like it to be closer, but I haven't quite decided whether I like it on e or some other key. Something where it's not next to my hold position button, but also out of my main index finger spot. It also shouldn't be the same hotkey as guardian shield, if you move that too--because you don't want to press hotkey for your ground army by mistake and then try to grav lift something and lose all your FF energy.
I recommend right-clicking, most of the time. If you are actively microing a group of phoenixes and you want to shoot down something in the air, you should be right-clicking past it and not on it. That way, you attack it while flying around it. This applies most to ovies, but also for broodlords or if you have a lot of phoenixes and you're picking up tons of units. If you right-click onto the broods, your phoenixes will slow down and spread out and do less damage in the same period of time if you were to right click on ground to move them closer to the target(s). Then, after you get them close to their targets, you should start focus-firing units. In a fight with corruptors, you should pull back phoenixes when they have tanked their shields and send them away from fighting, so they can recharge. A phoenix saved is a phoenix earned.
However, you should be A-moving when you're overlord hunting. Also, phoenix AI is really shitty about targetting units within their sight range...they could see an overlord within vision and be on A-move command, but still just fly by and ignore it. So you should shift-A-click carefully where overlords should be, when you go hunting--and don't be afraid to zig-zag so the phoenix has a higher chance of catching an ovie.
When you fight an air-to-air battle, if you know there are no infestors then you should spam right-clicks to ball your phoenixes up, so they're stacked and you can fight 1-2 corruptors with all of your phoenixes at once, which is possible due to your units' higher maneuverabilty and moving-while-firing aspect. But, if there are fungals around, you should spread your phoenixes out. Spreading your phoenixes is a lot like the marine-split challenge in the air.
In the late game, if you decide to make 15+ phoenixes to fight an air-to-air battle head on and your opponent has a few infestors around, you should set up a concave in the air and send in phoenixes from all angles. It takes manual preparation, but if you do it right then the fungals are really inefficient and you can do a ton of DPS (and therefore trade well) with your Phoenixes. Remember, unlike stalkers, Phoenixes are light units. Light units only take 30 DPS from fungal growth, as opposed to armored units, which take 40 DPS. That's why phoenixes take 6 (perfectly-timed) fungals to be killed, and stalkers take only 4 (perfectly timed) without additional DPS from the zerg. And infested terrans take 5 seconds to spawn before they can actually do damage, so you can do a ton of damage with good positioning and simultaneously drain the hell out of the infestor energy (for a follow-up timing with your next wave or two of production). If your next wave can come in and clean up the rest of the infestors and some straggling air units, that's usually going to end the game.
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On January 05 2013 02:34 ineversmile wrote:
Good video. I always like how clean your play is. I have a couple of minor thoughts:
At about the 12 minute mark (in the youtube video, so about 17:45 in the game), when you had a major engagement vs hydra/roach/infestor at your third, you had a big opportunity to kill most of that army if you had warped in a bunch of zealots at the reinforce pylon in the 12:00 area of the map, timed them to show up behind that army, and hit it from 2 sides. You seemed to have vision of it going across the map, so you probably could have even moved/warped in one of those sentries with that group of zealots, with enough time for it to charge to 75 energy and get guardian shield. Then, instead of forcefields in the middle of the army to deny the kiting, you just don't use any forcefields at all, guardian shield up, and hit it from both sides. Since the infestors and hydras are in the back, a warp-in round of zealots could do so much damage, and you had the zealots available up top (and a small warp-in leftover, too). Then you send your phoenixes in and pick up as many units as possible, and that crushes the army without storm. You still did really well in holding this attack without losing much besides zealots, but it could have been even better.
Something you should consider is putting your second obs into your phoenix control group. Even though it's way slower, it's worthwhile when infestors are burrowing and trying to run+hide and you can grav lift them from under the ground.
Thanks and I completely agree with what you said, especially the flanking with zealots part. Nice observations. Good one with the observer too, I didn't realisee until later I had so many observers doing nothing.
On January 05 2013 04:32 BadassHamster wrote:
Can anyone give me some tips on controlling phoenixes? Like when I try and hit a worker line I'll have some of them float too far away, or I'll pick up too many workers at once, or have them blocking view of what I want to grab. What's the typical keystroke/click methods that you use while harassing?
Also, since they don't really need to attack-move, should I be right-clicking them everywhere?
Just wondering if people had any tips - thanks!
Hmm good question.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ICtwC.jpg?1)
When you plan to harass a mineral line make sure you set your attack move command (or move command since phoenix away shoot) to somewhere around the mineral line where they will still be in range of drones you want to attack but outside of the range of the spore crawler, if there is one (In the image above this would be in the blue circle if the phoenix come flying in like the arrow points out). Once they are near there you start G + clicking on drones/queens. Make sure you don't lift too many, you want to leave asap if you see hydras/infestors incoming and not leave a bunch of stuff on low health rather than kill it. I don't really have exact number for the amount you should lift, you really have to feel it out.
As far as blocking the view I'm not sure what tips I can give. Since you can't lift overlords or other phoenix', nothing would happen if you G + click on them. So I guess I would recommend spam around it if it's blocking your view.
You can just right click them everywhere, that's what I do at least. Even if you want to target specific things, you can right-click on individual targets. I hope this helped.
Edit: haha wow ineversmile beat me to it 
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Yeah, you got ninja'ed.
If you have problems with seeing underneath your air units, try zooming in with your mouse wheel or hold one of the camera pan keys.
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One other advantage to what ineversmile has said about clicking move command past the units rather than on top of them is that your phoenix spread out much more naturally, so it fungals are less likely to hit a clump or like 10 phoenix. And it also becomes harder to hit phoenix with fungals (especially if you're playing HotS beta) if they are moving around all the time.
For those of you in beta, I'd highly suggest trying this out, because the only unit that really poses a huge threat to us before he has good upgrades for his corruptors are infestors, and fungal as a projectile = a lot harder to actually hit phoenix if you micro them around a lot (which you have to do anyways). This actually gives us a huge window where a zerg will have a really really hard time dealing with the phoenix, allowing us to seize map control, take expansions easily, and build a chargelot/archon deathball with a mothership to go kill him before he seizes air dominance over us. Also helps that phoenix have a default +1 range in HotS.
One thing that can be annoying though is ultralisks, as obviously phoenix can't kill them, but if you get a mothership, and he does not go for corruptors, he basically cannot ever engage you directly because you will insta-snipe all his overseers, and then he can't do anything.
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Really nice guide.
I love how you get in the Z head to build your timings.
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On January 05 2013 15:08 ProfessionalNoob wrote:One thing that can be annoying though is ultralisks, as obviously phoenix can't kill them, but if you get a mothership, and he does not go for corruptors, he basically cannot ever engage you directly because you will insta-snipe all his overseers, and then he can't do anything.
I agree with you about ultralisks being dangerous. That tech is brutally fast, and often surprising. The existence of ultralisks is one of the reasons why I (try to) get double robo as part of taking my third. Double immortal production is good against basically any tech path:
-If zerg goes roaches or roach/hydra, you want immortals for the roaches.
-If zerg goes hive and gets fast ultras, you need a lot of immortals to kill them off.
-If the zerg does a standard hive tech to BL/infestor/corruptor, he needs to sit behind spines and spores in order to do it. Also, immortals 2-shot infestors, which is always relevant.
Basically, the only other tech paths are ones which lose to chargelots and phoenixes, so 2xRobo immortals are always a good 3base followup. I think it's more reliable to get 2 robos, at that stage of the game, than to get the fleet beacon that fast. I think fleet beacon should come with the 4th base; +1 air weapons should be started just as the third is nearing full saturation to time +2 with the fleet beacon. The exception, of course, is when you're facing mutas...then obviously you go ranged phoenixes very quickly and you can basically end the game with chargelot/phoenix alone.
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Diamond here. Every time I attempt this build, my opponent goes for a huge ling push at around 6:00. They completely take out my expansion and leave me very far behind. What do I do to counter this?
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On January 07 2013 16:59 Davron wrote:
Diamond here. Every time I attempt this build, my opponent goes for a huge ling push at around 6:00. They completely take out my expansion and leave me very far behind. What do I do to counter this?
Post a replay, or nobody will know what the hell you're talking about. You have told us a specific timing for lings to hit and cancel your expansion, but what good does that do us? Are they slow lings, or fast? Did you open FFE or 13gate? Did you scout the gas and react, or not? Are they speedlings, or slow lings? You're diamond, so your macro is probably decent--but maybe your wall-off is suspect. There are a lot of factors at play here, but without posting a replay, what kind of help can you reasonably expect?
6 minutes is about the timing for ling speed to finish on a 14/14 gas/pool opening. That's the opening that a FFE hard counters, and a gateway expand can beat with practice. Also, it's a planned cheese--reactively building a gas means the speed timing will finish around 7:15-8:00 upon overlord scouting the lack of FFE. So if your opponents are sending out a ton of lings by 6;00 and they have speed, you should be able to tell this is coming when you scout such an earl gas in the zerg's main.
Any slow ling timings can be scouted by probes (FFE) and reacted with a sim-city, or scouted by stalkers (13gate 15 gas) and kited across the map until the WG timing and barricades handle the ling rush. In the case of a FFE, you should be able to wall off your front door and tell slow lings to piss off. In the case of a gateway expansion, you should be able to kill some slow lings out on the map with stalkers, then either send them home to help defend your wall, or send them out on the map so the slow lings all go on a wild goose chase and buy you time to set up more of a solid defense for your natural.
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Played a practice game today where I managed to apply pressure, kept macroing fine through having 3 bases, and kept my initial phoenixes alive. http://drop.sc/293976
There were a handful of timings in which I could have just gone over and killed the zerg, but my brain basically shut down 20 minutes into the game and I was on autopilot. I'm OK with this because now that marker is 20 minutes, as opposed to 15...which is when my brain would be fried about a week and a half ago. And also, when I do get better and I can handle myself later into a game with this complicated style, I know that there are timings to exploit. Not just one or two timings, but multiple timings where I could be aggressive in a number of different places.
I think, in this game specifically, what I should have done when I was nearing max-out was to start pumping carriers off the 3 SGs and then go up to 6 SGs. Instead, I got a third robo and a bay, got prism speed, but then I didn't even really use it. I had total air dominance and +2 air weapons pretty quickly; I should have committed even more to air and not built a bunch of shitty stalkers. I think going into Carriers just seems like the correct move, about that point in the game when I'm nearing max. The +3 air weapons timing is so brutal.
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On January 12 2013 03:57 ineversmile wrote:Played a practice game today where I managed to apply pressure, kept macroing fine through having 3 bases, and kept my initial phoenixes alive. http://drop.sc/293976There were a handful of timings in which I could have just gone over and killed the zerg, but my brain basically shut down 20 minutes into the game and I was on autopilot. I'm OK with this because now that marker is 20 minutes, as opposed to 15...which is when my brain would be fried about a week and a half ago. And also, when I do get better and I can handle myself later into a game with this complicated style, I know that there are timings to exploit. Not just one or two timings, but multiple timings where I could be aggressive in a number of different places. I think, in this game specifically, what I should have done when I was nearing max-out was to start pumping carriers off the 3 SGs and then go up to 6 SGs. Instead, I got a third robo and a bay, got prism speed, but then I didn't even really use it. I had total air dominance and +2 air weapons pretty quickly; I should have committed even more to air and not built a bunch of shitty stalkers. I think going into Carriers just seems like the correct move, about that point in the game when I'm nearing max. The +3 air weapons timing is so brutal.
Hi, sorry for the late repply. I looked at the replay just now and noted a couple of things.
First off, you should really get your 5th and 6th gas geyser earlier. As soon as your 3rd base is done you should be mining from it. As you can see from the sc2gears graph below your opponent spent over 3 times more gas than you in that game.
+ Show Spoiler +
Other than your phoenix harass I think you lack pressure. I felt like the zerg could stay on speedlings for quite long and tech comfortably to infestors. Also he was able to get up to 90+ drones and build his spine wall off 20 lings without having infestors on the way. This is why I prefer going for a faster forge to guarantee that you have +1 attack before his +1 armor so that you can pressure and force roaches with very few zealots while taking a 3rd.
So with the gas deficit and the zerg mining with ~90 drones off 4 bases, I don't think it was a good idea to keep trading with him. Even though you could've killed him at some points I think that your attacks are lacking quite a bit. At 16:40 you did your first ground push.
+ Show Spoiler +
Here is where you didn't have +2 attack to deal with the +2 armor lings. It didn't matter that much because most of your zealots were out of position. I think this is one of the bigger reasons you lost that fight. You really need something to keep the immortals safe. I also think that you need at least 1 sentry in your army for guardian shield. I would prefer even 2 so that if you have full energy you can throw down a forcefield wall for only 4 supply in army.
I think the attack at ~20min wasn't very good at all. You charged into a spine wall with a small part of your army. 8 zealots and 2 immortals attacked at first while 12 zealot were late to the party and 8 other zealots and 2 immortals didn't join the party at all. At this point in the game your opponent had infestors + corruptors and killed quite a pack of phoenix. Right now I would've teched to more AOE since it would be very unlikely for your opponent to continue to mass roaches. He would probably want more infestors and broodlords. So I really think you should tech to storm or use your robo's to produce colossus. I know you made colossus later, but 2 colossus and 3 archons isn't enough AOE.
So at 24:00 is where he walks his army down your ramp quite easily and kills your 4th.
+ Show Spoiler +
I think if you had some good AOE you could try to fight his army. I really recommend storm since it's a lot better against infested terrans now.
at 26:40 you attack his 4th but get your phoenix in a pretty bad situation. They were too far away from your main army, it was impossible to clear the infested terran under them or pose a treat to the infestors basically underneat them most of the time.
So in conclusion I would say more gas and more AOE while you're heading towards the late-game. I'm not sure what I can say about carrier transitions since I've never tried that. But I can imagine it to be very good in combination with storm.
edit: cba to resize images, so I spoilered them.
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I definitely didn't play perfectly in that game. What I've been happy about is that this build is incredibly multitask-oriented, and I'm finally able to macro behind a long time of pressure, from the stalkers to the phoenix, and then save my phoenixes for later when the infestors pop. Thanks for helping me by pointing out a lot of big mistakes, though--that's the next step.
I've been playing some more games, with what you've said in mind. This is what I've been thinking about:
-I think that 6 gases is too much, if I take them right away with my 3rd base. I really need to start powering up gates at that point, and my transition is into lots of zealots, so I don't really want to get the gas that early. However, maybe taking a 5th gas (but not the 6th yet) could work to power out those immortals and upgrades simultaneously, and then I get the 6th gas later. For a different variation of the midgame, going into Archons or faster storm or something else that gas-heavy, 6 geysers makes a lot of sense. But for what I'm doing, 4-5 is mathematically better.
-I agree that I would like to get some pressure in after the phoenix play starts to wear down. I seem to be coming to 2 different variations of my midgame play: double robo first, or charge first. I like the Robos more vs Roach play, and the forges better vs ling play. So my goal should be to scout his composition and transition with phoenixes, then go with whichever tech suits the situation better. Either that, or I need to just narrow it down to one and stick with that...which would probably be charge and earlier ups, since that composition can beat anything up out on the map with a good surround and some grav lifts.
I think that the double robo first should lend itself to drop play as a follow-up to phoenix work. Basically, this makes the most sense because the phoenixes clear all the overlords away, and then I go drop the main and FF the ramp and then kill a bunch of stuff. Or I multiprong him, now that his vision is cut down on the airspace, and hit his main and third at the same time--terran style.
I think that earlier charge lends itself more to going up to 10-12 gates and just brute-forcing a timing with chargelots and a couple of sentries. Not necessarily an all-in, but definitely semi-all-in pressure.
-I've been testing out a followup to the 3 stargate +2 air weapons phoenix range transition into the late game, and I think going up to 4-5 stargate carrier is the correct follow-up. Then when the 4th is done and the gases are saturated there, I drop the Temp Archives and get archons, followed by storm (when I have the money). The +3 carrier timing is probably the most brutal thing I have ever seen, now that infested terrans don't scale with upgrades.
-I might never build a Colossus in PvZ ever again. Seems unnecessary now.
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Seems like a really solid idea  worked for me on ladder!
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1YzCo.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9VC2j.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dEqz5.png)
