There are loads of people on the forum complaining about Skytoss right now, but I don't understand it at all. Detailed below is a new tactic that my friends and I use to destroy it:
Unit Composition:
This is the least secure part, and is interchangeable. However, the ideas
Main: Corruptor - Main Anti-Air. This is the best Anti-Air unit in the game, an obvious choice.
Ultralisk - Main Anti-Ground. Ultralisks can destroy High Templar, Zealots and Collosus with ease, which should be
Situational: Viper - If the Tempest are doing too much damage, use the viper to counter them. More detail under the tactics section. Mutalisk - If your opponent has gone Mass Void Ray, Mutalisks are actually more effective against them than Corruptors. Roach - If the Ultralisks are not working, or you have trouble teching to them, Roaches can also be effective Anti-Ground. Hydralisk - If the Protoss has neglected any Collosus or High Templar, the Hyrdralisk can rip through the Protoss' army. .
Tactics
These tactics are key to beating it, and are the probably the aspect that most players miss.
The Overcharge Bait - This is designed to help vs Void Rays. Move your army into the Protoss', but move away at the last moment. This should cause the Protoss player to activate the Overcharge ability on his Void Rays. As soon as the ability wears off, move back in and engage. This almost half's a Void Ray's DPS.
The Tempest/Carrier Snipe - This is designed to help if the opponent is doing too much damage with the big units. Take a small taskforce of corruptors and one viper around to the side of the Protoss army (enough to 2-shot a Carrier or Tempest). Abduct a Tempest or a carrier and kill it. Once killed, move away. If played perfectly, the Protoss should not kill a single unit.
The Zergling run-by - A classic Zerg strategy, try to utilise this to keep the Protoss's army in his base and stop them expanding.
Focus-Fire - Another Classic Zerg strategy, focus the Carrier's for the most Damage reduction.
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That's it for now, I may update with new tactics or unit reworks if this begins to not work as well.
Thanks
TheNewerBakery
EDIT:
A video which shows the tactics and how it works. If there are any problems with it, feel free to tell me and I will follow up with another video .
I don't know what level you're playing at, but this doesn't work even at the mid-high masters level unless the toss is just playing the strategy wrong. The high templars will get off storms on the corruptors and feedbacks on the vipers then move back behind the army. run bys don't work because toss players use all the excess minerals on cannons at all bases. As for the ultras; if you make enough ultras to kill the ground force then you won't have enough corruptor viper to deal with the air army. If you try to snipe the carriers and tempest you'll just get feedbacked or simply killed because of the tempest range. The only thing that you've said that actually works well is the overcharge bait, but that alone is not enough to beat this army.
this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
Yay! The Z skill ceiling has increased. ^_^
On a more serious note: from what I've found playing against toss in the beta is you don't want to let them reach late-game - or at least when you do hit late-game, I've found that using the 300/200 food (quick remax) along with swarmhost drops in the main and pockets of broodlords sieging their expansions - it's all about massively out-multitasking the P. If you have one big roaring fire (i.e. your clumped up death-ball), in a straight-up engagement the p will win. You need to start small fires all over the place and continually mess him up. All it takes is one bad engagement and the game's over (for you or your opponent - if you've been stressing him all game with multi-pronged attacks and drop feints and so forth the probability leans slightly in your favour) and you can move on to the next one. You never want the deathball. You want to basically base-race and keep on expanding.
Stay calm, don't hesitate, and make sure you have multiple armies on multiple hotkeys. You can't just 1-A your way to victory anymore.
Um the ideas you have just aren't that great high level. I think it is impossible to beat if the protoss plays correctly (lots of cannons, templar or colossi, voidray/tempest.
The best way to fight it though is with swarmhost/hydra/viper if he goes colossi (if he goes templar vipers are useless as feedback will hit pretty much every time you try to use it unless toss is nice).
Swarmhost/hydra and a couple ultras is pretty good to and maybe adding in infestors. But mutalisks actually die to mass voidray as well. Saw a GSL game where 40 mutas died to 16 voidrays (something like that I was so positive mutas would win but they didn't). The numbers favored mutas by a lot but they got crushed.
I think you may have misunderstood the strategy a bit. The job of the Ultralisks is to kill the High Templars, and with the huge damage that they can put out now, they actually can. If the Protoss attacks you, then the Templars won't have time to storm and feedback, they will die to the Ultra's.
Void Rays are also incredibly weak without the Overcharge ability. Using the tactic that I detailed, the 'Overcharge Bait', the Void Rays can be killed easily by the corruptors. Also, if the opponent goes heavily into Void Rays, you can use Mutalisks. They are actually more effective against charged Void Rays than Corruptors are.
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
Yay! The Z skill ceiling has increased. ^_^
On a more serious note: from what I've found playing against toss in the beta is you don't want to let them reach late-game - or at least when you do hit late-game, I've found that using the 300/200 food (quick remax) along with swarmhost drops in the main and pockets of broodlords sieging their expansions - it's all about massively out-multitasking the P. If you have one big roaring fire (i.e. your clumped up death-ball), in a straight-up engagement the p will win. You need to start small fires all over the place and continually mess him up. All it takes is one bad engagement and the game's over (for you or your opponent - if you've been stressing him all game with multi-pronged attacks and drop feints and so forth the probability leans slightly in your favour) and you can move on to the next one. You never want the deathball. You want to basically base-race and keep on expanding.
Stay calm, don't hesitate, and make sure you have multiple armies on multiple hotkeys. You can't just 1-A your way to victory anymore.
yeah the Z skill ceiling has increased...a lot. Z went from easiest race in lategame to play to the hardest race in early and lategame to play. P got even easier lol ^^
but yeah while i know what you mean the problem is: zerg has no cost efficient way to harrass vs mass cannons + turtle toss, especially on the maps right now. on most maps 4 bases are very close together and mass cannons at the edges + army in the middle + MSC recall to any nexus makes harrassing basically impossible which is sad. so right now the best way is to take all bases, deny 5th base, build up mass spores and spines and build the above mentioned army and remax on the same exact army.
On February 25 2013 05:29 TheNewerBakery wrote: I think you may have misunderstood the strategy a bit. The job of the Ultralisks is to kill the High Templars, and with the huge damage that they can put out now, they actually can. If the Protoss attacks you, then the Templars won't have time to storm and feedback, they will die to the Ultra's.
Void Rays are also incredibly weak without the Overcharge ability. Using the tactic that I detailed, the 'Overcharge Bait', the Void Rays can be killed easily by the corruptors. Also, if the opponent goes heavily into Void Rays, you can use Mutalisks. They are actually more effective against charged Void Rays than Corruptors are.
i understood the ultralisk part and like i said thats the only part i agree with. you need something to kill HT and ultras do that nicely.
your bait wont work vs a good player though. he will start his overcharge once corruptors actually attack. but if you dont move in with you whole army but only with your corruptors he will storm them and attack them with carriers and tempest and get free kills before you attack his voidrays. so corruptors with range 6 cant bait a good toss. he will start overcharge once you actually attack and not 1 minute before and get free damage with his high ranged storm/tempest/carrier.
and no you can never go mutas. dont want to offend you but i think you are like gold level at max. mutas gets destroyed insanely hard by skytoss + HT, same goes for hydras.
Could a good way of preventing Skytoss from ever getting going opening up with a hydra/swarmhost ala hydra lurker contain in Broodwar? If you keep him in his base and mass expand, even if he gets his third and goes for skytoss, you'll have so much money that it wouldn't really need to worry about cost efficiency.
I realise this isn't the best solution to the skytoss "problem", but I think a good way of stopping it is to put a lot of pressure on early to force it to slow down.
Wow people here whine a lot, the guy tried to find a solution to your problem, and even if its not high level at least he is trying.
The ultimate deathball of Protoss is probably not beatable, but that is consists from so much gas it should be impossible to get. The thing about the skytoss is that in order to get so much army you need either a lot of time or a lot of bases, and since going for the deathball removes you mobility then you're focusing on the time here, and that gives the Zerg player the option to take the map and get a huge amount of larva and resources.
Basically I don't get why would you want any ground units when facing sky toss, since the only thing on the ground is HT's, which should hide behind the army so reaching them will be near impossible. Unless the Protoss invests a lot into Archons you should go mostly Corruptors and get on top of the Protoss army in order for storm to damage the forces of the Protoss as well. With a big base lead and many larva stacked you should be able to kill the remaining Protoss army with a new army, since sky toss takes ages to build, unlike corruptors.
Another idea is one that was used by someone in the GSL (don't remember who), where the Zerg player used massive amount of spores with speed overlords to spread creep and plant down the spores under the slow sky toss that can't retreat fast enough. This gives the edge that the Zerg player needed in order to beat the Protoss army.
finaly zerg need skill to win and instant every zerg cry about imbalance ... the end of the patchzergs sound like part 3 of a movie i am mid master and i can tell you there ARE zergs who CRUSH! it, and others who not even try and flame nonstop ... i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there
On February 25 2013 05:52 CoR wrote: finaly zerg need skill to win and instant every zerg cry about imbalance ... the end of the patchzergs sound like part 3 of a movie i am mid master and i can tell you there ARE zergs who CRUSH! it, and others who not even try and flame nonstop ... i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there
Hate to break it to you buddy, but if you're going skytoss templar and a zerg is crushing you, then they are so much better than you it's ridiculous.
"i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there" <-- This gave me a good laugh, thank you putting a smile on my face.
On February 25 2013 05:52 moskonia wrote: Wow people here whine a lot, the guy tried to find a solution to your problem, and even if its not high level at least he is trying.
The ultimate deathball of Protoss is probably not beatable, but that is consists from so much gas it should be impossible to get. The thing about the skytoss is that in order to get so much army you need either a lot of time or a lot of bases, and since going for the deathball removes you mobility then you're focusing on the time here, and that gives the Zerg player the option to take the map and get a huge amount of larva and resources.
Basically I don't get why would you want any ground units when facing sky toss, since the only thing on the ground is HT's, which should hide behind the army so reaching them will be near impossible. Unless the Protoss invests a lot into Archons you should go mostly Corruptors and get on top of the Protoss army in order for storm to damage the forces of the Protoss as well. With a big base lead and many larva stacked you should be able to kill the remaining Protoss army with a new army, since sky toss takes ages to build, unlike corruptors.
Another idea is one that was used by someone in the GSL (don't remember who), where the Zerg player used massive amount of spores with speed overlords to spread creep and plant down the spores under the slow sky toss that can't retreat fast enough. This gives the edge that the Zerg player needed in order to beat the Protoss army.
Show me a replay at high level where a zerg remaxes on corruptors and beats that army. As for the spore thing, idk if that actually worked, but there are so many flaws with that strategy that it's insane, one being the overlords will just get killed by the massive sky army and storms...lol
I am just going for mass muta in pvz now. Basetrade if I need to. Mutas do better against voidrays than corruptors. Storms do pose a problem, but at least you can contain the opponent and harass him while you mass expand.
On February 25 2013 05:52 CoR wrote: finaly zerg need skill to win and instant every zerg cry about imbalance ... the end of the patchzergs sound like part 3 of a movie i am mid master and i can tell you there ARE zergs who CRUSH! it, and others who not even try and flame nonstop ... i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there
Hate to break it to you buddy, but if you're going skytoss templar and a zerg is crushing you, then they are so much better than you it's ridiculous.
"i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there" <-- This gave me a good laugh, thank you putting a smile on my face.
basically this. on pro level i havent seen a 4 base HT + skytoss player who lost. literally not a single game and it should be every 2nd game to be balanced. so yeah if you lose in mid master once you reached 4 base skytoss + HT you either fucked up the engagement or you play vs much better player than you and got in midmaster like a "patchtoss". oh and have to break it to you but i was master even then Z had 40% winrates on close metalopolis 2 rax before depot times. so sorry patchtoss, i am no patchzerg (stupid word btw).
I've beaten Sky-Toss ONCE, only once. He played so poorly it didn't even count in my book.
He had a ton of tempests, Voids, x3 Colossus, HT's. I massed Corrupter's until I knew I'd take all air out & Colossus. He could of easily switched to Stalker/Sentry/Zealot to defeat me but he attempted to match my air units (dumb move).
My entire army was devoted into Corrupter's & could only transfer into Brood's after I attacked him with a few Swarm Hosts.
I shouldn't of won at all and got lucky.
Skytoss cannot be beaten at the current state of the game in the hands of a GM.
On February 25 2013 05:52 CoR wrote: finaly zerg need skill to win and instant every zerg cry about imbalance ... the end of the patchzergs sound like part 3 of a movie i am mid master and i can tell you there ARE zergs who CRUSH! it, and others who not even try and flame nonstop ... i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there
Mid master is not a high rank... I'd like to know how turtling and massing up a deathball then A moving with an unbeatable army can be called skill. And when there is no unit composition to counter said army, that's not a skill issue either.... Maybe someone is bitter from losing ZvT alot? : D
Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
You bring a good point. This strategy has been primarily used in Diamond and Master leagues, so a Grand Master may be able to beat it still. However, if they back off, do it again and again, until they can't back off anymore. This should force them into their base and give you map control, leaving you free to expand.
Could someone explain to me why this thing has become an issue? Is it really impossible to ever, ever attack a Protoss player, all game long? I still don't know what's happening in these games people keep mentioning, do you just sit on your side of the map until the 20 minute mark, then die horribly to maxed tempest / void / templar?
Also, nobody is mentioning Infestors; you can still chain fungals, even if it doesn't do as much damage as before. If Tempests are an issue at any stage of the game, I don't see why moving them around while burrowed would be impossible, since he can't possibly defend his obs that far away from his army, assuming you're attacking before he maxes.
A while back Ret used to drop infestors / roaches and force the opponents army to move back and fourth between the main & 3rd, and slow it down via fungals. That's how he would beat the growing colossus voidray ball, back when it was a problem. And he'd have infestors outside the natural to fungal the army as it moved, too, and slow it down further. So that strat may need to be revisited.
On February 25 2013 06:23 Ooshmagoosh wrote: Could someone explain to me why this thing has become an issue? Is it really impossible to ever, ever attack a Protoss player, all game long? I still don't know what's happening in these games people keep mentioning, do you just sit on your side of the map until the 20 minute mark, then die horribly to maxed tempest / void / templar?
Also, nobody is mentioning Infestors; you can still chain fungals, even if it doesn't do as much damage as before. If Tempests are an issue at any stage of the game, I don't see why moving them around while burrowed would be impossible, since he can't possibly defend his obs that far away from his army, assuming you're attacking before he maxes.
Replays?
Well, early game: Zerg's are being hit with force fields that prevent you from getting into 2 base attacks (This is the weakest point in the game for Protoss but Mothership Core+Overdrive says "back the heck off & retreat" If they start off with Phoenix play then you are making Spores and losing Overlords.
Mid-game: Photon Cannons+FF+Tempest/Voids firing from range+few stalkers with overdrive sitting next to the "Tempests" will shutdown middle game. (Phoenix shuts down Muta's)
Late-game: You now are against Voids/Tempest/HT/(Phoenix's that are left over?), Colossus
Zerg has very few "windows" to attack Protoss. If Protoss goes for the Immortal/Sentry push, Zerg had to play reactionary. Zerg literally has to all-in before 15 minutes or they are not winning at the moment.
I'm not saying there is no counter to this but as of right now, it hasn't been found.
On February 25 2013 06:23 Ooshmagoosh wrote: Could someone explain to me why this thing has become an issue? Is it really impossible to ever, ever attack a Protoss player, all game long? I still don't know what's happening in these games people keep mentioning, do you just sit on your side of the map until the 20 minute mark, then die horribly to maxed tempest / void / templar?
Also, nobody is mentioning Infestors; you can still chain fungals, even if it doesn't do as much damage as before. If Tempests are an issue at any stage of the game, I don't see why moving them around while burrowed would be impossible, since he can't possibly defend his obs that far away from his army, assuming you're attacking before he maxes.
Replays?
If the Toss player is playing a turtly style then you really have no chance of breaking it. Force fields, cannons and the insane range of colossi make it basically impossible to attack into.
In regards to infestors they are just not good enough anymore. ITs are useless lategame as they die to one storm and it is impossible to chain fungal because of the range of tempests plus all the nerfs to the infestor.
I feel like blizzard has a few choices on fixing this.
1. Buff Infestors (They are not going to do this) 2. Buff Corrupters (probably not) 3. Buff Hydras (maybe) 4. Nerf Voids and Tempests (most likely which would be sad because it would mean taking away strategies once again)
On February 25 2013 06:23 Ooshmagoosh wrote: Could someone explain to me why this thing has become an issue? Is it really impossible to ever, ever attack a Protoss player, all game long? I still don't know what's happening in these games people keep mentioning, do you just sit on your side of the map until the 20 minute mark, then die horribly to maxed tempest / void / templar?
Also, nobody is mentioning Infestors; you can still chain fungals, even if it doesn't do as much damage as before. If Tempests are an issue at any stage of the game, I don't see why moving them around while burrowed would be impossible, since he can't possibly defend his obs that far away from his army, assuming you're attacking before he maxes.
Replays?
There's a pretty good game where the z controls the game but then the protoss comes right back in with a funky composition. + Show Spoiler +
Op makes a lot of great points. The problem is most zergs are used to easy wins and not having to work hard, hence the complaining. But the tactics detailed in the OP will work if high level players are doing it.
On February 25 2013 06:56 SoFrOsTy wrote: Op makes a lot of great points. The problem is most zergs are used to easy wins and not having to work hard, hence the complaining. But the tactics detailed in the OP will work if high level players are doing it.
no they wont but keep telling it to you :D
the opposite is the case. vs better players this will get worse and worse.
On February 25 2013 05:52 moskonia wrote: Wow people here whine a lot, the guy tried to find a solution to your problem, and even if its not high level at least he is trying.
The ultimate deathball of Protoss is probably not beatable, but that is consists from so much gas it should be impossible to get. The thing about the skytoss is that in order to get so much army you need either a lot of time or a lot of bases, and since going for the deathball removes you mobility then you're focusing on the time here, and that gives the Zerg player the option to take the map and get a huge amount of larva and resources.
Basically I don't get why would you want any ground units when facing sky toss, since the only thing on the ground is HT's, which should hide behind the army so reaching them will be near impossible. Unless the Protoss invests a lot into Archons you should go mostly Corruptors and get on top of the Protoss army in order for storm to damage the forces of the Protoss as well. With a big base lead and many larva stacked you should be able to kill the remaining Protoss army with a new army, since sky toss takes ages to build, unlike corruptors.
Another idea is one that was used by someone in the GSL (don't remember who), where the Zerg player used massive amount of spores with speed overlords to spread creep and plant down the spores under the slow sky toss that can't retreat fast enough. This gives the edge that the Zerg player needed in order to beat the Protoss army.
Show me a replay at high level where a zerg remaxes on corruptors and beats that army. As for the spore thing, idk if that actually worked, but there are so many flaws with that strategy that it's insane, one being the overlords will just get killed by the massive sky army and storms...lol
Spores and Overlords are only minerals, so if the Protoss army attacks them instead of the actual Zerg army then the Zerg will win easily, don't discard it so easily, it just may be the solution you need (also it was already used at a pro match so its proven it works).
I appreciate the effort but as blade and other mid-high masters+ have said -- this is just flat out wrong at higher levels. With the current state of the game Z can't win against a turtly P if they're playing at the same level. Sorry if that sounds pessimistic but it's reality. There's not a composition that can stand up against it and mass cannons prevents runby counters.
On February 25 2013 06:56 SoFrOsTy wrote: Op makes a lot of great points. The problem is most zergs are used to easy wins and not having to work hard, hence the complaining. But the tactics detailed in the OP will work if high level players are doing it.
On February 25 2013 06:23 Ooshmagoosh wrote: Could someone explain to me why this thing has become an issue? Is it really impossible to ever, ever attack a Protoss player, all game long? I still don't know what's happening in these games people keep mentioning, do you just sit on your side of the map until the 20 minute mark, then die horribly to maxed tempest / void / templar?
Also, nobody is mentioning Infestors; you can still chain fungals, even if it doesn't do as much damage as before. If Tempests are an issue at any stage of the game, I don't see why moving them around while burrowed would be impossible, since he can't possibly defend his obs that far away from his army, assuming you're attacking before he maxes.
Replays?
There's a pretty good game where the z controls the game but then the protoss comes right back in with a funky composition. + Show Spoiler +
Byul v Tassadar in GSTL
.
Zerg won last engagement vs. Protoss only because Tassadar's positioning was bad.
TheNewerBakery coming in with his brand new builds n' strats to save the zergs! You show em' man! When people play this way they'll be just like you and your friend and destroy it! :D
I am just going to put this out here - the god composition of tempest + templar is unbeatable in TvP./ZvP lategame. I know from firsthand experience when I developed this 3+ months ago in beta (i offraced as Protoss for 2 weeks) and posted replays on the pro forums and informed blizzard that this would become a problem in the future for the game because it's simply put broodlord infestor 2.0 but better.
Blizzard has known about this unbeatable army for months, I detailed it in the pro forums, sent replays, and a lot of other P/Z pros have mentioned that when Protoss gets here you cannot lose the game.
With that said, let's hope blizzard, you know...fixes it? It's an easy fix - increase tempest supply to 8, and reduce it's health, and make it an actual support unit instead of a massable deathball unit that counters everything late game with templar. A unit like this should be fragile, I played a game last night and landed 7 hunter seekers on clumps of tempests and not one was even taken down to half health...lol.
This also brings the carrier back into the forefront as the go-to Protoss air unit.
I only post here because a lot of people ask "how do you beat mass tempest + templar" in lategame, and I'm here to tell you i tried to convince them this was a balance issue months ago, and they have let it be since then.
It is actually unbeatable when you get to 16-18 tempests + 10+ high templar. So if you play Zerg at the moment and are becoming frustrated with this, or mech TvP lategame and are frustrated with this, i wouldn't worry. It's obvious they are going to have to nerf it unless they want to leave the game in a state like broodlord infestor was for over a year in wings of liberty.
The way to beat skytoss is don't let them get it. You do this with various tech switches to screw up the toss unit compositions and making them turtle 3 bases while you mass expand. Some popular and effective tech switches are hydra into muta or muta into ultra or corruptor ling bane or go swarm host with mass corruptor to keep air count low and force them to build colossi. Force trades and deny bases then they can't get skytoss. Don't try to figure out the counter but instead make them counter you. Watch gstl for some sample vods on how to do this.
air toss is really strong, which i dont mind, new strategies are allways welcome. I just feel its overly powerfull, and only needs 1a and casting storm, not saying the players who use the strat are dumb, more so that the units are dumb - void ray shoots and has ability to shoot harder, carriers just shoot and tempests shoot with a long range, could've been more versatile. Imo the problem lies in storm being so very good against all zerg anti-air(RAPES hydras and also works well even vs concaved corruptors) and in void-rays just being overly powerfull vs corruptors. Seems to me a rather simple assumption that air-air units should beat air-air/ground units just due to the fact that they cannot attack ground, and they simply dont in the case of VR vs corruptor.
On February 25 2013 08:58 avilo wrote: I am just going to put this out here - the god composition of tempest + templar is unbeatable in TvP./ZvP lategame. I know from firsthand experience when I developed this 3+ months ago in beta (i offraced as Protoss for 2 weeks) and posted replays on the pro forums and informed blizzard that this would become a problem in the future for the game because it's simply put broodlord infestor 2.0 but better.
Blizzard has known about this unbeatable army for months, I detailed it in the pro forums, sent replays, and a lot of other P/Z pros have mentioned that when Protoss gets here you cannot lose the game.
With that said, let's hope blizzard, you know...fixes it? It's an easy fix - increase tempest supply to 8, and reduce it's health, and make it an actual support unit instead of a massable deathball unit that counters everything late game with templar. A unit like this should be fragile, I played a game last night and landed 7 hunter seekers on clumps of tempests and not one was even taken down to half health...lol.
This also brings the carrier back into the forefront as the go-to Protoss air unit.
I only post here because a lot of people ask "how do you beat mass tempest + templar" in lategame, and I'm here to tell you i tried to convince them this was a balance issue months ago, and they have let it be since then.
It is actually unbeatable when you get to 16-18 tempests + 10+ high templar. So if you play Zerg at the moment and are becoming frustrated with this, or mech TvP lategame and are frustrated with this, i wouldn't worry. It's obvious they are going to have to nerf it unless they want to leave the game in a state like broodlord infestor was for over a year in wings of liberty.
Thorzain beat minigun when minigun had the unit composition you describe. Enough ravens with pdd negate tempests altogether and with viking bc ghost you can win the game using yamato and emps
I love how when the problem was the infestor / BL deathball, terran and protoss players were crying imba and complaining relentlessly about how it needs to be patched, and now that the protoss (once again) have an unbeatable deathball, it just means "finally, the Z skill ceiling has increased". Exactly why I wont be purchasing HOTS unless Blizzard scraps everything that it is right now and reworks it
The difference is Communism that this "deathball" doesn't have a single unit that spawns an infinate amount of area blockers and another unit that roots every other unit in the game with pretty much no chance to dodge it.
Skytoss is far from unbeatable. It's just people haven't had chance to learn to deal with it yet. I've noticed from replays and watching streams is that nobody has really adapted to dealing with this yet with early attacks hampering the economy and slowing down the build up or abusing the mobility of it at all.
Good map design which discourages air play as well as maps that encourage will help massively in the long run, where as with the infestor/broodlord composition it didn't matter what map it was, as long as there was areas of land it was very powerful.
I personally as a terran player are having trouble with tempest/templar, but when I look at my replays every game I see things I could be doing better, like more ravens and better viking control. Voids are a big problem currently for me, but even they can be zoned with turrets. For terran and zerg both, this composition is most likely beatable. I'd say if it's still bad after a week or two then they could probably look at slight supply nerfs, but until then they shouldn't change it massively as stargate being viable is a good thing for the game.
On February 25 2013 09:27 Communism wrote: I love how when the problem was the infestor / BL deathball, terran and protoss players were crying imba and complaining relentlessly about how it needs to be patched, and now that the protoss (once again) have an unbeatable deathball, it just means "finally, the Z skill ceiling has increased". Exactly why I wont be purchasing HOTS unless Blizzard scraps everything that it is right now and reworks it
BL/Infestor was a problem in WoL before it was nerfed. So is sky protoss now. It will be fixed.
On February 25 2013 08:58 avilo wrote: I am just going to put this out here - the god composition of tempest + templar is unbeatable in TvP./ZvP lategame. I know from firsthand experience when I developed this 3+ months ago in beta (i offraced as Protoss for 2 weeks) and posted replays on the pro forums and informed blizzard that this would become a problem in the future for the game because it's simply put broodlord infestor 2.0 but better.
Blizzard has known about this unbeatable army for months, I detailed it in the pro forums, sent replays, and a lot of other P/Z pros have mentioned that when Protoss gets here you cannot lose the game.
With that said, let's hope blizzard, you know...fixes it? It's an easy fix - increase tempest supply to 8, and reduce it's health, and make it an actual support unit instead of a massable deathball unit that counters everything late game with templar. A unit like this should be fragile, I played a game last night and landed 7 hunter seekers on clumps of tempests and not one was even taken down to half health...lol.
This also brings the carrier back into the forefront as the go-to Protoss air unit.
I only post here because a lot of people ask "how do you beat mass tempest + templar" in lategame, and I'm here to tell you i tried to convince them this was a balance issue months ago, and they have let it be since then.
It is actually unbeatable when you get to 16-18 tempests + 10+ high templar. So if you play Zerg at the moment and are becoming frustrated with this, or mech TvP lategame and are frustrated with this, i wouldn't worry. It's obvious they are going to have to nerf it unless they want to leave the game in a state like broodlord infestor was for over a year in wings of liberty.
Thorzain beat minigun when minigun had the unit composition you describe. Enough ravens with pdd negate tempests altogether and with viking bc ghost you can win the game using yamato and emps
Where can I watch this game? I was under the impression that minigun was an awful generic NA protoss, so he'd definitely have a hard time beating such an incredible nerd baller like Thorzain, regardless...
To everyone advocating "tricky" strategies against Skytoss, please remember that the Mothership Core has 14 sight, compared to almost all of your units which have only 10 sight. If you try to go around and attack from the side or something not only is he going to see it coming well in advance, but he will be moving to counter before you can even see he's moving to counter.
As I mentioned before, most other units have 10 sight only. This is not like the old 9 range infestors against 10 sight units where he'd only have a tiny split second to react after seeing them before fungal went down. With the 14 sight MSC, he has plenty of time to react to any flanks. You try to go in with vipers they're going to explode to a feedback that he already queued up before you even got in vision range of his army.
Infestors and vipers get feedbackd and are literally a waste, corrupters get raped by everything in the air protoss has besides phoenix. Also storm and a couple of collosi + the air stops any decent ground army you have. There is literally NOTHING a zerg can do when a protoss plays defensive and gets maxed out with a good composition, zerg currently has no splash damage and really shitty anti air (fungal doesn't count, infestors suck ass now, hence why muta vs muta is the only zvz strat going).
Yeah you can beat mid master players who don't know what they're doing with skytoss pretty easily, but as soon as you start playing anyone that's decently high on the ladder it feels like you're pissing in the wind.
My suggestion would be remove the void ray, this unit is currently broken and seems impossible to balance + i don't see why protoss needs this unit with all the other air options they have now, removing this unit could also help with bringing the swarm host into the game alot more...imo anyway.
I'm a GM zerg in wings and currently so frustrated with hots i dont even want to buy it ><
Personally I want to see swarm hosts have a researchable secondary firing mode called... scourge! ( i.e. spawns scourge at interval ) or something anti air that can chip away at a protoss fleet.
On February 25 2013 10:34 absalom86 wrote: Personally I want to see swarm hosts have a researchable secondary firing mode called... scourge! ( i.e. spawns scourge at interval ) or something anti air that can chip away at a protoss fleet.
I don't think that Scourges will work in SC2. And also, it would be pretty damn overpowered if Swarm Hosts had something that attacks air too. Unlike for ground units, you don't have many anti-air units where they would kill something easily. If you don't have Colossi or High Templars, your Locusts would destroy Protoss army. Now, if we have something that attacks air(flying), you don't have Colossi for AA, and Archons and HTs don't really cut because of air units being easy to spread.
I would rather see something being done with the Corruptors... You can even nerf them, since they are damn good anti-air right now, just do something about their ability...
They could make Hydras cost 1 supply, or a Hive tech upgrade that makes them 1 supply, I think that would fix it. If Protoss wants to turtle on 3 bases to mass air, you can take 6 bases and just spam masses and masses of them at him.
On February 25 2013 10:50 Xequecal wrote: They could make Hydras cost 1 supply, or a Hive tech upgrade that makes them 1 supply, I think that would fix it. If Protoss wants to turtle on 3 bases to mass air, you can take 6 bases and just spam masses and masses of them at him.
Hydras don't really help when Protoss has 200/200 units in High Templars, Voids, Carriers and Tempests with some Archons mixed in. No matter if you have 20 or 60 of them, they melt. And you are getting to the point of diminishing returns, since more Hydras you have, less of them will attack, and it is less likely that you will evade Storms with them being clumped and you not having the space to spread them.
But I am really curious to see what Ragnarok had in mind when he said that him and other Korean Zergs found the way to beat the Skytoss in HOTS.
Here is a replay of the only game I've won vs a decent player going sky toss so far: http://drop.sc/307008
It wasn't easy at all, but I think maybe if you use infestors really well and rely on chain fungals and killing observers, on most maps you can have somewhat of a chance against it.
Increase the corruptor armor by like 3 and then nerf their heallth to compensate. THen they'll do much better against both voids and carriers, and presumably equal against everything else.
On February 25 2013 11:03 osiris17 wrote: Increase the corruptor armor by like 3 and then nerf their heallth to compensate. THen they'll do much better against both voids and carriers, and presumably equal against everything else.
God no.
It's an issue of tempests being too supply efficient in lategame, as well as having too much health for their intended design purpose (a counter to broodlords).
Tempest supply increased to 8, tempest health reduced. Then see what happens.
Why 8 you ask, and not 6? Because aside from the Tempest being too efficient in lategame right now, HOTS right now design-wise across every match-up is heading towards a very bad design - mass air units vs mass air units.
Tempests being 8 supply nerfs the unit lategame, and also puts more importance back on ground focused armies instead of massing the strongest air army you can lategame.
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
Yay! The Z skill ceiling has increased. ^_^
On a more serious note: from what I've found playing against toss in the beta is you don't want to let them reach late-game - or at least when you do hit late-game, I've found that using the 300/200 food (quick remax) along with swarmhost drops in the main and pockets of broodlords sieging their expansions - it's all about massively out-multitasking the P. If you have one big roaring fire (i.e. your clumped up death-ball), in a straight-up engagement the p will win. You need to start small fires all over the place and continually mess him up. All it takes is one bad engagement and the game's over (for you or your opponent - if you've been stressing him all game with multi-pronged attacks and drop feints and so forth the probability leans slightly in your favour) and you can move on to the next one. You never want the deathball. You want to basically base-race and keep on expanding.
Stay calm, don't hesitate, and make sure you have multiple armies on multiple hotkeys. You can't just 1-A your way to victory anymore.
Well said.
In WoL, it was Toss who had to start the small fires everywhere and stop the Zerg reaching their ultimate deathball, where as in HoTS, as others have already stated, the roles have been reversed.
Skytoss (approx 2 Observer, 4 Tempests, 8 Carriers, 8 Void Rays, Mothership ) + HT + Archon is the new 'Big Daddy Hoss Boss' endgame composition, Broodlord+Infestor+Spines+Spores fails against it.
As a P player though it is extremely hard to reach that composition.
One difference between the Z WoL superior end game composition and P HoTS superior end game composition is: how fluidly the race can transition into it. It is not a smooth ride for the P player and must be done with extreme care and a royal shizzload of gas and minerals. We are extremely vulnerable during this transition because of how slow it is. We must slowly affect damage and lose supply whilst adding on the air units' supply.
In WoL P had an approx 17min (in game time) timing (which was very effective - Creator Prime was the master of it) that hit in the window of the time it takes for Broodlords to morph on mass - quite a small window.
For Z in HoTS you guys have a bigger window but as Serpest mentioned, you must take the multi location attack approach.
I am only a low Diamond Toss - Z is my worst match up by far.
Z players mobility and ability to be everywhere is incredible to watch but sooooooo hard to play against!
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
Yay! The Z skill ceiling has increased. ^_^
On a more serious note: from what I've found playing against toss in the beta is you don't want to let them reach late-game - or at least when you do hit late-game, I've found that using the 300/200 food (quick remax) along with swarmhost drops in the main and pockets of broodlords sieging their expansions - it's all about massively out-multitasking the P. If you have one big roaring fire (i.e. your clumped up death-ball), in a straight-up engagement the p will win. You need to start small fires all over the place and continually mess him up. All it takes is one bad engagement and the game's over (for you or your opponent - if you've been stressing him all game with multi-pronged attacks and drop feints and so forth the probability leans slightly in your favour) and you can move on to the next one. You never want the deathball. You want to basically base-race and keep on expanding.
Stay calm, don't hesitate, and make sure you have multiple armies on multiple hotkeys. You can't just 1-A your way to victory anymore.
Well said.
In WoL, it was Toss who had to start the small fires everywhere and stop the Zerg reaching their ultimate deathball, where as in HoTS, as others have already stated, the roles have been reversed.
Skytoss (approx 2 Observer, 4 Tempests, 8 Carriers, 8 Void Rays, Mothership ) + HT + Archon is the new 'Big Daddy Hoss Boss' endgame composition, Broodlord+Infestor+Spines+Spores fails against it.
As a P player though it is extremely hard to reach that composition.
One difference between the Z WoL superior end game composition and P HoTS superior end game composition is: how fluidly the race can transition into it. It is not a smooth ride for the P player and must be done with extreme care and a royal shizzload of gas and minerals. We are extremely vulnerable during this transition because of how slow it is. We must slowly affect damage and lose supply whilst adding on the air units' supply.
In WoL P had an approx 17min (in game time) timing (which was very effective - Creator Prime was the master of it) that hit in the window of the time it takes for Broodlords to morph on mass - quite a small window.
For Z in HoTS you guys have a bigger window but as Serpest mentioned, you must take the multi location attack approach.
I am only a low Diamond Toss - Z is my worst match up by far.
Z players mobility and ability to be everywhere is incredible to watch but sooooooo hard to play against!
I'm sorry but you are just plain wrong, protoss can open phoenix and get a couple of voids and not be punished, or at least not easily because void rays are so strong. This opening along with the mothership core allows them to defend their 3 base pretty easily while getting a couple of collosi and then continuing to transition into their ultimate composition and it is almost impossible to break them when they sit behind cannons. This vs wings of liberty is not even comparable since there was a multitude of all-ins that protoss could do to even out the win rate, while not perfect for all intense and purposes it worked. Also since the infestor nerf ZvP lategame in wings became alot more even imo.
In HotS the protoss unit composition reaches a point where it becomes so incredibly cost effeciant that no amount of harass or "multi pronged attacks" will help you, this will only put you furthur behind. The protoss synergy of their air units + collosi and templar is just too strong right now, there's no way around this.
All these harassment tactics you speak of only work if the protoss makes mistakes and a good protoss will just shut down all the harras you can do using the m.core photon thing and recall. You can try to break them with hydra ling swarm host corrupter but more and more protoss are just getting better at defending that and when they do they just walk across the map and kill you.
In my opinion the unit that is allowing protoss to get to their ultimate composition so easily and quickly is the void ray as it seemingly counters everything and shutdowns most aggression and then makes corruptors completely useless in the lategame.
On February 25 2013 10:58 goswser wrote: Here is a replay of the only game I've won vs a decent player going sky toss so far: http://drop.sc/307008
It wasn't easy at all, but I think maybe if you use infestors really well and rely on chain fungals and killing observers, on most maps you can have somewhat of a chance against it.
Watched your rep, feels like the only reason you won that game was because you played well ofc, but if he would´ve not gone full retard and just made 4-5 colo instead of just having 2 colo all the time you would´ve died, nice play though
Jaedong fights against this by mass mass (mass) basing, pressing with swarm hosts under a lot of spines/spores near the entrance. if the protoss threatens it, infestors throw out fungals, but never approaches the skytoss with the infestors. A huge corrupter force kept the aerial component pinned by picking off units that stray too much. The rest of the army is a small force of hydras and a couple vipers to hold off any gateway army that tries to pick off the swarm hosts. Dont be afraid to be mobile. When it was available (Akilon) he was constantly moving back and forth between nat and third base so the toss couldnt get a pre-set split or anything (again with corrupter picking off strays) and watch for warp prisms! No slow way to fight it though, short of some supermiracle 'land the fungal on every air unit and all the High Templars', but even then the infestors are likely to eat feedbacks
Definately check out his stream next time you can if your having trouble with this. You can figure it out much easier than through what i can write.
Husky posted a game between WhiteRA (skytoss) vs korean zerg player....
It is a good game of back and fourth as both players expand. Also a good study on how WhiteRA transit from Colossus, Immortal, Sentry, Archons mix to Void Ray, Tempest, carrier, HT, archons mix.
WhiteRA has really good map control. I guess the only thing i can learn is for the zerg player to place more spine and spores at his expansion. But the zerg has a lot of infestors at the end. Not sure if chain fungal can work very effectively. Archons just own corruptors. If corruptors are to be effective, they have to attack from different angles (which may not matter if Skytoss is a death ball).
On February 25 2013 11:03 osiris17 wrote: Increase the corruptor armor by like 3 and then nerf their heallth to compensate. THen they'll do much better against both voids and carriers, and presumably equal against everything else.
God no.
It's an issue of tempests being too supply efficient in lategame, as well as having too much health for their intended design purpose (a counter to broodlords).
Tempest supply increased to 8, tempest health reduced. Then see what happens.
Why 8 you ask, and not 6? Because aside from the Tempest being too efficient in lategame right now, HOTS right now design-wise across every match-up is heading towards a very bad design - mass air units vs mass air units.
Tempests being 8 supply nerfs the unit lategame, and also puts more importance back on ground focused armies instead of massing the strongest air army you can lategame.
tempest isn't the biggest issue in the skytoss against Zerg imo. It's the amount of dps coming out from the void rays and carrier and archons that kills corruptors before they can deal enough damage to kill off the units. Tempest is just some icing on the cake.
Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
Void rays totally lose vs hydras unless you have storm or maybe reach a critical mass.
If a toss player opens voids and phoenix then you must be able to punish him with hydras. Plus people have not even begun using vipers properly.
I have been watching a lot of HotS progamers like Grubby and hasu and I really can't say I saw them using this Skytoss "deathball" too much. It just takes too long to get and is kinda risky. Sure there are quite a few void rays added in now and then but they hardly ever get to a critical mass.
Plus I saw so many protoss lose to the crazy HotS mutas. Not sure where all the whine come from. IF you managed to max out with carriers in BW then you would kick everybodies ass no question about that.
But it's not easy to get there. Much harder than getting to brood infestor.
I really hope Blizzard does something about the sky toss dominance, because let's face it, IF the voidray/highTemplars/ tempests becomes the new Protoss "kill-everything deathball we are going to get fucking awful games ZvsP spectator wise since every protoss just will sit and camp while making three bases and build up their skytoss and then finish off the game. It will be Chruncher all over again.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
If no one screws up the game should go on and on. That's what balanced is. But eventually under pressure someone will make a mistake and the other will have to capitalize on it otherwise victory can never be achieved. This is how balance should be. There shouldn't be an "algorithm" or a "way" or a build or a composition to beat your opponent ultra army. There should be a mind game going on and on and you win when you force your opponent to do mistakes by laying a trap or baiting him over and over or pressuring him until he cracks. It shouldn't be he gets X, so I got Y and do this "plan that kills X" and win.
Now you can say that that's what you aim for; an ability to bait the protoss army or to pressure him. However all I read is "ugghh there is no army composition than I can build that can destroy his army with some good moves!! he can always respond with his own good moves!!". Well good. What I would have liked to hear is "what baits can I use?", "what traps can I lay?", "how to pressure him"? "what might we be missing for zerg to do that?" Unfortunately that's not what I hear at all. All are asking for a way to beat the opponent main army in a straight forward engagement.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
How about killing/crippling the protoss before they get to that point? That is what terrans have to do currently in WoL vs both zerg and protoss. This is Blizzard's idea with their 'asymmetric' balance.
You could argue that air terran in WoL was actually really good if you can get there (Mvp on Metropolis was the prime example). I don't think we can just look at a specific comp without looking into the build up/transition to that comp and whether you are taking risk/cutting corners at certain points. If you need to be very vulnerable before you can get to your ultimate composition, then that in itself is balance as well.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
If no one screws up the game should go on and on. That's what balanced is. But eventually under pressure someone will make a mistake and the other will have to capitalize on it otherwise victory can never be achieved. This is how balance should be. There shouldn't be an "algorithm" or a "way" or a build or a composition to beat your opponent ultra army. There should be a mind game going on and on and you win when you force your opponent to do mistakes by laying a trap or baiting him over and over or pressuring him until he cracks. It shouldn't be he gets X, so I got Y and do this "plan that kills X" and win.
Now you can say that that's what you aim for; an ability to bait the protoss army or to pressure him. However all I read is "ugghh there is no army composition than I can build that can destroy his army with some good moves!! he can always respond with his own good moves!!". Well good. What I would have liked to hear is "what baits can I use?", "what traps can I lay?", "how to pressure him"? "what might we be missing for zerg to do that?" Unfortunately that's not what I hear at all. All are asking for a way to beat the opponent main army in a straight forward engagement.
u really think that if no one screws up that the game should never end? the only way to have a game never end would be a mirror match where all engagments traded exxactly equal and bases were taken and mined at same rate. just saying its impossible for that to be the "ideal" of balanced. anyways no there should be ways to beat ur opponents without them making mistakes by you doing something to out play them. you could agrue that this is ur opponents mistake by letting u out play them. but its different. heres a good example. this happens alot in tvt, where one terrans positioning mulitasking allow him to manuever his way into a win even if hes behind. the fact that zergs cant break skytoss when they have massive economic leads should be screaming to u that someehtings not right. even broods/infestor play from WoL had room for the other player to make plays agasint it. (vortex/storm/feedbacks or seekermissles/nukes/emps) im ok with an army being hard to kill but impossible to kill is wrong. if u can throw remax after remax of the only units that z has to deal iwth voids and colosus and temps at the toss until ur 6-7 bases is gone and toss is still on 4-5 and barely lost a dime then thats not even close to balanced
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
How about killing/crippling the protoss before they get to that point? That is what terrans have to do currently in WoL vs both zerg and protoss. This is Blizzard's idea with their 'asymmetric' balance.
You could argue that air terran in WoL was actually really good if you can get there (Mvp on Metropolis was the prime example). I don't think we can just look at a specific comp without looking into the build up/transition to that comp and whether you are taking risk/cutting corners at certain points. If you need to be very vulnerable before you can get to your ultimate composition, then that in itself is balance as well.
While the most ideal situation of cause would be killing the protoss before they get there, the problem is that what if they got there? WoL zerg deathball for example, you can still buy time for harassment and eventually get your mothership out with archons etc OR terran could drops until they have a high upgraded viking counts and kill the zerg before the zerg had the ball too big (or go transition into a high raven counts) There are still ways to get to a comp that is possible in beating that zerg deathball, like sky terran or the sky toss. And Zerg had to end the game before that transition is made.
I have mentioned this in my thread about the problem with sky deathball. Should there be an unbeatable deathball? If so, then how quickly and how safe that deathball should be able to transition into. SkyTerran is uber powerful but weak to a lot of timings, making it 'balanced'. But SkyToss is much easier and quicker to build and is almost as strong, if not stronger than the Skyterran. In WoL, the Zerg deathball comes TOO quickly imo but not completely unbeatable because rushing it makes the army still vulnerable in terms of upgrades and low number defense structures in every base, vulnerable to drops and run bys.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
If no one screws up the game should go on and on. That's what balanced is. But eventually under pressure someone will make a mistake and the other will have to capitalize on it otherwise victory can never be achieved. This is how balance should be. There shouldn't be an "algorithm" or a "way" or a build or a composition to beat your opponent ultra army. There should be a mind game going on and on and you win when you force your opponent to do mistakes by laying a trap or baiting him over and over or pressuring him until he cracks. It shouldn't be he gets X, so I got Y and do this "plan that kills X" and win.
Now you can say that that's what you aim for; an ability to bait the protoss army or to pressure him. However all I read is "ugghh there is no army composition than I can build that can destroy his army with some good moves!! he can always respond with his own good moves!!". Well good. What I would have liked to hear is "what baits can I use?", "what traps can I lay?", "how to pressure him"? "what might we be missing for zerg to do that?" Unfortunately that's not what I hear at all. All are asking for a way to beat the opponent main army in a straight forward engagement.
u really think that if no one screws up that the game should never end? the only way to have a game never end would be a mirror match where all engagments traded exxactly equal and bases were taken and mined at same rate. just saying its impossible for that to be the "ideal" of balanced. anyways no there should be ways to beat ur opponents without them making mistakes by you doing something to out play them. you could agrue that this is ur opponents mistake by letting u out play them. but its different. heres a good example. this happens alot in tvt, where one terrans positioning mulitasking allow him to manuever his way into a win even if hes behind. the fact that zergs cant break skytoss when they have massive economic leads should be screaming to u that someehtings not right. even broods/infestor play from WoL had room for the other player to make plays agasint it. (vortex/storm/feedbacks or seekermissles/nukes/emps) im ok with an army being hard to kill but impossible to kill is wrong. if u can throw remax after remax of the only units that z has to deal iwth voids and colosus and temps at the toss until ur 6-7 bases is gone and toss is still on 4-5 and barely lost a dime then thats not even close to balanced
A mistake is not always a "blunder" it can be simply a wrong reaction or slow reaction or a misread or whatever. Someone always screws up; does a misread, falls into a trap, gets baited; gets ambushed; gets pressured then cracks and do mistakes or do suboptimal micro or multitasking. However what zerg are asking for is an army combination that just wins over the skytoss which is really not "skytoss" as much as "all protoss units" there are HTs, Colossus, archons, carriers, tempests, stalkers, zealots, sentries in that army. You want an army that can beat the ultimate protoss army in an engagement late game even if he doesn't screw up?? What should the Protoss do then? Why are you taking it for granted? Why shouldn't it be the opposite way? The protoss should be able to kill you late game with your optimal army composition even when you don't do mistakes and keep optimal micro; how about that? If you object against the latter how can you ask for the first?
What we should be arguing about is the match up in general and whether the zerg can beat Protoss; it doesn't have to be by killing his army especially when it comes to his/her ultimate army. Simply bringing up "I can't kill his army if he doesn't do mistakes" is not something really useful. I do think the match up can use some changes but arguing for killing opponent's ultimate army made of almost all his units along with all his T3 units even when he doesn't do mistakes is really awkward to say the least.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
If no one screws up the game should go on and on. That's what balanced is. But eventually under pressure someone will make a mistake and the other will have to capitalize on it otherwise victory can never be achieved. This is how balance should be. There shouldn't be an "algorithm" or a "way" or a build or a composition to beat your opponent ultra army. There should be a mind game going on and on and you win when you force your opponent to do mistakes by laying a trap or baiting him over and over or pressuring him until he cracks. It shouldn't be he gets X, so I got Y and do this "plan that kills X" and win.
Now you can say that that's what you aim for; an ability to bait the protoss army or to pressure him. However all I read is "ugghh there is no army composition than I can build that can destroy his army with some good moves!! he can always respond with his own good moves!!". Well good. What I would have liked to hear is "what baits can I use?", "what traps can I lay?", "how to pressure him"? "what might we be missing for zerg to do that?" Unfortunately that's not what I hear at all. All are asking for a way to beat the opponent main army in a straight forward engagement.
u really think that if no one screws up that the game should never end? the only way to have a game never end would be a mirror match where all engagments traded exxactly equal and bases were taken and mined at same rate. just saying its impossible for that to be the "ideal" of balanced. anyways no there should be ways to beat ur opponents without them making mistakes by you doing something to out play them. you could agrue that this is ur opponents mistake by letting u out play them. but its different. heres a good example. this happens alot in tvt, where one terrans positioning mulitasking allow him to manuever his way into a win even if hes behind. the fact that zergs cant break skytoss when they have massive economic leads should be screaming to u that someehtings not right. even broods/infestor play from WoL had room for the other player to make plays agasint it. (vortex/storm/feedbacks or seekermissles/nukes/emps) im ok with an army being hard to kill but impossible to kill is wrong. if u can throw remax after remax of the only units that z has to deal iwth voids and colosus and temps at the toss until ur 6-7 bases is gone and toss is still on 4-5 and barely lost a dime then thats not even close to balanced
A mistake is not always a "blunder" it can be simply a wrong reaction or slow reaction or a misread or whatever. Someone always screws up; does a misread, falls into a trap, gets baited; gets ambushed; gets pressured then cracks and do mistakes or do suboptimal micro or multitasking. However what zerg are asking for is an army combination that just wins over the skytoss which is really not "skytoss" as much as "all protoss units" there are HTs, Colossus, archons, carriers, tempests, stalkers, zealots, sentries in that army. You want an army that can beat the ultimate protoss army in an engagement late game even if he doesn't screw up?? What should the Protoss do then? Why are you taking it for granted? Why shouldn't it be the opposite way? The protoss should be able to kill you late game with your optimal army composition even when you don't do mistakes and keep optimal micro; how about that? If you object against the latter how can you ask for the first?
What we should be arguing about is the match up in general and whether the zerg can beat Protoss; it doesn't have to be by killing his army especially when it comes to his/her ultimate army. Simply bringing up "I can't kill his army if he doesn't do mistakes" is not something really useful. I do think the match up can use some changes but arguing for killing opponent's ultimate army made of almost all his units along with all his T3 units even when he doesn't do mistakes is really awkward to say the least.
What is being asked for is not perfect equality in the match up, it is simply to be able to trade with protoss on a level that is not heavily in favor of protoss. At the moment whatever lategame composition you have, lets say it's 35 hydras + some vipers and corrupters, you might be to kill a void ray if you're lucky (yes it's that bad).
Brood lord infestor corrupter isn't really much better either, you might get 2 void rays though with some sick micro.
On February 25 2013 13:30 i)awn wrote: Why do you want skytoss to be beatable? From what I read it's always "you can't beat the player unless he makes mistakes". Well that's the how it should be! Why would you want to beat someone if he hasn't done any mistakes? I'm tired of people wanting some composition to just roll over the enemy army regardless if the contesting player did mistakes or not. Maybe this would be valid army is composed of just massing two types of unit but we're taking here about an ultra late game army with the right mixture of different units. It shouldn't be beatable unless the other player makes mistakes.
a balanced game means that the better player wins and that nothing is unbeatable. there should be a way to play better then your opponent and beat their army regardless of ur opponent making mistakes. that is why skytoss+temps needs to be nerfed. there isnt a way for the zerg player to use strategy or decisions making or unit control/battle setups or any of the other "skills" that make players better then others to allow the zerg to win.
for example: with broodlord infestor vs toss the toss could use drop harass and the multitasking to tax their opponents skills and abuse the immobility of the zerg to get them into a position where they could take the game. this is just one example there are others but you cant do that against skytoss it just doesn't work for reasons already explained in post. unbeatable is not what anyone wants in the game. we want balanced where the skill of the players in the game determines who is the victor not that one race is unbeatable unless they screw up and the other can never beat their army
If no one screws up the game should go on and on. That's what balanced is. But eventually under pressure someone will make a mistake and the other will have to capitalize on it otherwise victory can never be achieved. This is how balance should be. There shouldn't be an "algorithm" or a "way" or a build or a composition to beat your opponent ultra army. There should be a mind game going on and on and you win when you force your opponent to do mistakes by laying a trap or baiting him over and over or pressuring him until he cracks. It shouldn't be he gets X, so I got Y and do this "plan that kills X" and win.
Now you can say that that's what you aim for; an ability to bait the protoss army or to pressure him. However all I read is "ugghh there is no army composition than I can build that can destroy his army with some good moves!! he can always respond with his own good moves!!". Well good. What I would have liked to hear is "what baits can I use?", "what traps can I lay?", "how to pressure him"? "what might we be missing for zerg to do that?" Unfortunately that's not what I hear at all. All are asking for a way to beat the opponent main army in a straight forward engagement.
u really think that if no one screws up that the game should never end? the only way to have a game never end would be a mirror match where all engagments traded exxactly equal and bases were taken and mined at same rate. just saying its impossible for that to be the "ideal" of balanced. anyways no there should be ways to beat ur opponents without them making mistakes by you doing something to out play them. you could agrue that this is ur opponents mistake by letting u out play them. but its different. heres a good example. this happens alot in tvt, where one terrans positioning mulitasking allow him to manuever his way into a win even if hes behind. the fact that zergs cant break skytoss when they have massive economic leads should be screaming to u that someehtings not right. even broods/infestor play from WoL had room for the other player to make plays agasint it. (vortex/storm/feedbacks or seekermissles/nukes/emps) im ok with an army being hard to kill but impossible to kill is wrong. if u can throw remax after remax of the only units that z has to deal iwth voids and colosus and temps at the toss until ur 6-7 bases is gone and toss is still on 4-5 and barely lost a dime then thats not even close to balanced
A mistake is not always a "blunder" it can be simply a wrong reaction or slow reaction or a misread or whatever. Someone always screws up; does a misread, falls into a trap, gets baited; gets ambushed; gets pressured then cracks and do mistakes or do suboptimal micro or multitasking. However what zerg are asking for is an army combination that just wins over the skytoss which is really not "skytoss" as much as "all protoss units" there are HTs, Colossus, archons, carriers, tempests, stalkers, zealots, sentries in that army. You want an army that can beat the ultimate protoss army in an engagement late game even if he doesn't screw up?? What should the Protoss do then? Why are you taking it for granted? Why shouldn't it be the opposite way? The protoss should be able to kill you late game with your optimal army composition even when you don't do mistakes and keep optimal micro; how about that? If you object against the latter how can you ask for the first?
What we should be arguing about is the match up in general and whether the zerg can beat Protoss; it doesn't have to be by killing his army especially when it comes to his/her ultimate army. Simply bringing up "I can't kill his army if he doesn't do mistakes" is not something really useful. I do think the match up can use some changes but arguing for killing opponent's ultimate army made of almost all his units along with all his T3 units even when he doesn't do mistakes is really awkward to say the least.
I think you're somewhat missing the point. What people are saying is 'If I make no mistakes and he makes no mistakes, I lose'. That isn't balanced. That's 'I only have A CHANCE to win if the Protoss makes an error'.
Or are you saying that it's fine for the composition to be utterly unbeatable providing the player doesn't derp and completely mis-move his units?
This doesnt work in Masters at all, once toss has 3bases or more and if its getting in the loategame u dont have any chance to beat a protoss player without having double income over hole time , once Toss is getting close to 200supply ur fucked as Zerg , when he has a composition of Storms,Colosses,Voids. Courrpters, hydras and mutas get all fucked by Voids + Storms, and even mass spores in lategame dont help because of the huge range of Carriers or Tempests.
But one thing that is really strong against toss is a 2/3 Base , Swarmhost+Queens - Nydus - Play. (But is quite and all in , u can take a 4th behind but its very very late, and u have to do much dmg but its not this hard to do much dmg with swarmhost queen.
Why Nydus?: The nydus is important to have a fast reinforcement with Swarmhost and espacially to reinforce with QUEENS. U also can build Spore/spines
Why building Queens?: Creepspread, Transfuses and the ability to attack air units (the observer / Voidrais / Pheonix / Mothershipcore.
I find these threads so strange. I play hots at masters and also watch streams on a daily basis but yet when I see a pvz hardly anyone tries to go for this ultimate mass air composition. WhiteRa uses it a lot (he did also in WOL vs zerg) but I mostly just see him dying while trying to get there. I would love if people would actually stop theorycrafting and provide replays of where "it's unbeatable and nothing can be done".
I personally never use it and just play regular macro pvz games (added voids/phoenix from one stargate and double stargate vs mass muta) and the matchup is so much better now. Zerg midgame options are really strong now (2base hydra-ling speed hydras into mutas, swarm host pushes with spores etc) but so much more dynamic and fun to play. There is no timer until (13-15min mark make your 3 base allin push with 1-2 prism when he tries to get his broodlords out).
I just don't see how this composition with hts + mass air can be unbeatable because there are some distinct differences to broodlord-corruptor-infestor from WOL zerg. It takes way more time to transition into. Air upgrades needed while zerg went for 3/3 melee/carapace which also were useful for his ground units; broodlords with +3 melee do the main dps, even if there is +0 air attack still so transitioning back into ground or having speedlings as a bonus was natural. Also remaxing with broodlords didn't take so long because you either morph corruptors into broods (38sec) or corruptors first into broods (74sec). Tempests take 70sec (from each stargate), carriers 120sec(+32sec for interceptors) and voidrays 60sec. Unless you have like 20-30 stargates you need several cycles. Getting more bases for gas and making a good canon wall is more expensive and takes more time. A protoss has it harder (that is it takes longer) to get 8+ gases so early and canons can't be moved or healed (transfuse).
So what if you get there? Ht's on the ground are not protected as infestors are with broodlords. Broodlords instantly (also automatically) made a huge broodling-wall so you can't just run chargelots to the infestors or feedback them (broodlords have higher range). Tempests have even higher range but they do really low dps and massively overkill. How will you stop a group of 50-60 speedlings or ultras running in to force storms/archon merges with the speed tehy have. Maybe have of the linsg will die beforehand. So he actually needs more ground support (archons/colossi etc). Tempests also do super low dps (9.09 vs non broodlords), that's less than a stalker. Add on top of that their massive overkill and it takes forever to actually kill mass ground. So if tempests are massed you just overrun him. If he has carriers use corruptors or fg (interceptors caught stop doing dps) or hydras (dimaga always used hydras with hold position to kill interceptors). I just don't see the amazing synergy. Tempests do super low dps (and nobody goes broods vs mass tempests) and overkill, hts can be sniped because they are not protected (like burrow moving and snaring infestors behind a wall of broodlings that tank and prevent any ground movement there).
Maybe I missed something important. But that's why I'd love to see some good replays (high level play). I'm sure one of you can help here out since you all see it used nearly every game to great success.
I'll personally stick with ground anyways because now that broods can be countered I think ht/immortal/blink etc with some slight air support is all I need and midgame fights are really fun and dynamic now (except for mass muta, there it's a stupid you either get raped or get enough phoenix out in time to rape him game).
Sleep vs First (GSTL) it's set 4, you have to manually change it (or i was just too stupid to post the correct link...-.-)
this game doesnt show the actual skytoss deathball, but something quite close to it.
watching this game i really dont understand how people keep arguing it's hard to get to skytoss "deathball". in this game sleeps 2nd and 3rd get delayed quite a bit, but then again, there's not much you can do about that. he takes a decent amount of damage from the phenixes but no direct eco dmg (he loses two queens right away and a 3rd one later, so you can argue he had less eco because he couldnt inject as much as he wanted, but thats about it).
he delays toss 3rd, he is ahead in bases (he's on 4 bases all game long even when his initial 4th gets sniped he's got two other bases up already), he's ahead in upgrades, he prevents toss from taking a 4th (yeah it gets up, but no gas is mined there), and he trades quite well against the colosus before VR HT comes into play.
but still toss get's out a couple of VR on his 3 bases with HT support. toss got no bank, but then again, once he engages with his army, he doesnt really need a bank. he just crushes through the zerg army. watch the engagement happen at around 24:12. yeah the locusts come in late but they would have been exactely where the stoms hit anyway. the corruptors melt within seconds against the VRs, so do the hydras against storm. yeah the storms are great, yeah sleep doesnt walk out of them, but then again, if he wants to do dmg to the toss army, he needs to go in and he will ultimately eat storms.
now of course you can argue, his composition wasnt all that great with all those SH, but then again, they where the only thing that allowed him to put any kind of pressure on the toss. but once there are VR with some HT there's just no way he can trade his army costefficiently and transition out of it.
now maybe i'm "analysing" this game completely wrong, so please enlighten me if i'm completely off point. but this just seems strange to me.
On February 25 2013 22:16 looken wrote: Sleep vs First (GSTL) it's set 4, you have to manually change it (or i was just too stupid to post the correct link...-.-)
this game doesnt show the actual skytoss deathball, but something quite close to it.
watching this game i really dont understand how people keep arguing it's hard to get to skytoss "deathball". in this game sleeps 2nd and 3rd get delayed quite a bit, but then again, there's not much you can do about that. he takes a decent amount of damage from the phenixes but no direct eco dmg (he loses two queens right away and a 3rd one later, so you can argue he had less eco because he couldnt inject as much as he wanted, but thats about it).
he delays toss 3rd, he is ahead in bases (he's on 4 bases all game long even when his initial 4th gets sniped he's got two other bases up already), he's ahead in upgrades, he prevents toss from taking a 4th (yeah it gets up, but no gas is mined there), and he trades quite well against the colosus before VR HT comes into play.
but still toss get's out a couple of VR on his 3 bases with HT support. toss got no bank, but then again, once he engages with his army, he doesnt really need a bank. he just crushes through the zerg army. watch the engagement happen at around 24:12. yeah the locusts come in late but they would have been exactely where the stoms hit anyway. the corruptors melt within seconds against the VRs, so do the hydras against storm. yeah the storms are great, yeah sleep doesnt walk out of them, but then again, if he wants to do dmg to the toss army, he needs to go in and he will ultimately eat storms.
now of course you can argue, his composition wasnt all that great with all those SH, but then again, they where the only thing that allowed him to put any kind of pressure on the toss. but once there are VR with some HT there's just no way he can trade his army costefficiently and transition out of it.
now maybe i'm "analysing" this game completely wrong, so please enlighten me if i'm completely off point. but this just seems strange to me.
You're completely missing the points where Sleep completely blundered all control, stacked all his corrupters on top of his voidrays meaning they all got stormed at once doing massive damage and the moments where he moved all his hydralisks when he only needed to move a few to dodge storms.
You cannot use that game to say voidrays are strong, Sleep mucked everything up. he didn't even try and back his corrupters out of storm or away from the charged up void rays, he just sat and ate damage all over the place.
On February 25 2013 11:03 osiris17 wrote: Increase the corruptor armor by like 3 and then nerf their heallth to compensate. THen they'll do much better against both voids and carriers, and presumably equal against everything else.
God no.
It's an issue of tempests being too supply efficient in lategame, as well as having too much health for their intended design purpose (a counter to broodlords).
Tempest supply increased to 8, tempest health reduced. Then see what happens.
Why 8 you ask, and not 6? Because aside from the Tempest being too efficient in lategame right now, HOTS right now design-wise across every match-up is heading towards a very bad design - mass air units vs mass air units.
Tempests being 8 supply nerfs the unit lategame, and also puts more importance back on ground focused armies instead of massing the strongest air army you can lategame.
Because infested terrans were nerfed, Zerg no longer has any way of dealing with carriers or voidrays. Then voidrays got buffed. Zerg needs some kind of buff, simply nerfing Tempest supply is not enough. The problem is more than that.
On February 25 2013 22:16 looken wrote: Sleep vs First (GSTL) it's set 4, you have to manually change it (or i was just too stupid to post the correct link...-.-)
this game doesnt show the actual skytoss deathball, but something quite close to it.
watching this game i really dont understand how people keep arguing it's hard to get to skytoss "deathball". in this game sleeps 2nd and 3rd get delayed quite a bit, but then again, there's not much you can do about that. he takes a decent amount of damage from the phenixes but no direct eco dmg (he loses two queens right away and a 3rd one later, so you can argue he had less eco because he couldnt inject as much as he wanted, but thats about it).
he delays toss 3rd, he is ahead in bases (he's on 4 bases all game long even when his initial 4th gets sniped he's got two other bases up already), he's ahead in upgrades, he prevents toss from taking a 4th (yeah it gets up, but no gas is mined there), and he trades quite well against the colosus before VR HT comes into play.
but still toss get's out a couple of VR on his 3 bases with HT support. toss got no bank, but then again, once he engages with his army, he doesnt really need a bank. he just crushes through the zerg army. watch the engagement happen at around 24:12. yeah the locusts come in late but they would have been exactely where the stoms hit anyway. the corruptors melt within seconds against the VRs, so do the hydras against storm. yeah the storms are great, yeah sleep doesnt walk out of them, but then again, if he wants to do dmg to the toss army, he needs to go in and he will ultimately eat storms.
now of course you can argue, his composition wasnt all that great with all those SH, but then again, they where the only thing that allowed him to put any kind of pressure on the toss. but once there are VR with some HT there's just no way he can trade his army costefficiently and transition out of it.
now maybe i'm "analysing" this game completely wrong, so please enlighten me if i'm completely off point. but this just seems strange to me.
You're completely missing the points where Sleep completely blundered all control, stacked all his corrupters on top of his voidrays meaning they all got stormed at once doing massive damage and the moments where he moved all his hydralisks when he only needed to move a few to dodge storms.
You cannot use that game to say voidrays are strong, Sleep mucked everything up. he didn't even try and back his corrupters out of storm or away from the charged up void rays, he just sat and ate damage all over the place.
Storm do not kill corruptors that quickly, it's the void ray. Storm does 80 damage over 4 seconds, those corruptors (200 hp each) were dead soon if not earlier than the storm was finished. That's more HP than a roach and protoss complained about how roach can tank storm easily The void rays did most of those damage, not to mention First didn't even mix in archons, which would have further increased the burst damage against the corruptors.
That trade was guaranteed to have ended extremely cost efficiently to First
"Void Ray vs Corruptor: Using their charge power, Void Rays can now kill Corruptors in 7.5 seconds, during which the Void Ray will take 42 damage in return fire. In fact, Void Rays can now take on a couple Corruptors at once and win pretty comfortably. Previously unless they were somehow precharged, Void Rays took 12 seconds to kill Corruptors and would take 84 damage over that time—yes, with their new ability and cooldown, Void Rays now kill Corruptors in nearly half the time. If they don’t use charge, it will take them 12.5 seconds to kill Corruptors, which is about the same as pre-patch " http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=386801
The problem I'm seeing with Skytoss isn't that "In an open field the composition is unbeatable" it's that, on a map with chokes and areas to properly use Tempest range, along with pushing Photon Cannons, the composition can certainly feel unbeatable, similar to Infestor/Corruptor/Brood from WoL.
You'd think the answer would be "Kill the Protoss before they get to Skytoss" but, Protoss players have learned this and now drop 10-15 cannons blindly. This should be easy to respond to, ok he's turtling I'll macro up, but in Starcraft 2 being up 2-3 bases doesn't matter that much when someone has a composition that you cannot directly engage. Personally I'd attribute this to how the game economy and maps work but that's a much larger discussion.
On a separate note, since I saw it's still in the map pool. I wonder what the PvZ win rates look like on Daybreak. I'd assume they've flip-flopped since it's a map just begging you to turtle into 200/200 armies.
I made my own little test video with a proper unit combination that a protoss player would use The upgrades favor the zerg, also the zerg army has more supply and overal more army value: see video description for stats
At a high level (I am talking top of GM), you CANNOT kill a protoss who has: Air units, 2-3 collosus, templar (maxed of course).
Once protoss reaches this composition, it is impossible to break them. Your only option is to throw MULTIPLE 200/200 armies consisting of Hydra/corrupter/Infestor/Viper into your opponent (perfectly surrounded of course) and hope that you have so many more bases that you overwhelm your opponent (not likely with how much harass protoss has).
The key here is to establish a mid game where you get economically ahead of your opponent. This is made very difficult however when your protoss friend turtles on 3-4 bases (with cannon + sim city) and is harassing you with the best harass utility in the game - warp prisms. Since an air-going protoss has many excess minerals, expect multiple 8+ Zealot warpins at your main and outlying bases. To win, the zerg player must perfectly defend this harass while denying protoss bases and chipping away at his army.
Of course, this is all theoretical. The amount of skill difference needed for zerg to win in this scenario over the protoss is astounding. We'll see where this goes in the future.
I feel like blizzard has a few choices on fixing this.
1. Buff Infestors (They are not going to do this) 2. Buff Corrupters (probably not) 3. Buff Hydras (maybe) 4. Nerf Voids and Tempests (most likely which would be sad because it would mean taking away strategies once again)
I have no idea why the Corruptor is still in its current state. Its DPS is bad, speed slow, cannot attack ground, but worst of all it's "armored", which takes away any advantage it might have had. And it's even more expensive than mutas.
I've seen a pro game recently where the Zerg player rolled over a maxed out Toss Air Lategame composition with pure upgraded muta, because they are fast, deal splash and are "light".
My general rule for ZvP these days is never to go over 66 drones and 3 bases and try to end the game at the 15 minute mark, because why go into a phase of the game that you're unable to win?
The balancing is just a fucking joke, Zerg is basically the new Terran and Blizzard is punishing them for their own poor balance decisions. Really, first they make BL/Inf the only viable late-game comp for Zerg, at the same time they make it OP by making the Infestor way too strong, then they give the other races complete HARD counters for that while nerfing Infestors at the same time.
Playing Zerg is just pure pain in HotS, we have the same fucking early game while Terran and Toss get to play around with all their new toys while we have the SH, which is kinda nice but scales terribly into the late-game and the Viper which was designed for the mid-game but isn't available before Hive tech. In my opinion Zerg now has the weakest early, mid and late-game.
For sucks sake, Blizzard, give us BW Hydras and Dark Swarm already.
A video which shows the tactics and how it works. If there are any problems with it, feel free to tell me and I will follow up with another video .
You can't test this in a unit tester by yourself. You're not storming or controlling units properly, it's impossible to control both sides properly anyway by yourself, and you're not even really trying, just a moving. And it's a pretty unrealistic blunder for the protoss to let his carriers be abducted when he has feedback, and wouldn't have his carriers out in front like that anyway. Also that's an absurd amount of carriers, the protoss would definitely know long before the zerg gets close to reaching that number that he was massing corr and wouldn't make so many massive air units, more voids and HT. But yeah the major issue with your video is the lack of storms and micro.
I feel like blizzard has a few choices on fixing this.
1. Buff Infestors (They are not going to do this) 2. Buff Corrupters (probably not) 3. Buff Hydras (maybe) 4. Nerf Voids and Tempests (most likely which would be sad because it would mean taking away strategies once again)
I have no idea why the Corruptor is still in its current state. Its DPS is bad, speed slow, cannot attack ground, but worst of all it's "armored", which takes away any advantage it might have had. And it's even more expensive than mutas.
I've seen a pro game recently where the Zerg player rolled over a maxed out Toss Air Lategame composition with pure upgraded muta, because they are fast, deal splash and are "light".
I think corruptors are fine, but the biggest issue for Zerg is a lack of units that can support their anti air.
Terran has the BEST air to air support unit, the Raven. the air support from Thors also allows a smoother transition from mech to air. There are additional support units such as widow mines and ghosts available . Protoss on the other hand, has the best ground to air support unit, with Storm and archon. And the core air units have really good synergies between eachother.
Both Races have their very well synergy air deathball.
zerg has transfuse, fungal, corruption, infested terrans. Fungal and muta splash being the only splash anti air damage. The raw power of hydra and muta dps against air is shut down by storms/pdd.
Mass Spore/Swarm Host/Corrupter + a few viper seems to have some legs. Been watching a few pros do that, the spores let you continue to snipe OBS, swarm host in large numbers take care of any ground and then corrupters cleaning up.
It takes a lot of creep spread and continuing to fall back and push forward with spores and swarm hosts, and a lot of spores are needed.
On February 25 2013 23:02 cabal] wrote: I made my own little test video with a proper unit combination that a protoss player would use The upgrades favor the zerg, also the zerg army has more supply and overal more army value: see video description for stats
The problem here is that you used other units. You only need 2 units, one set to deal with ground, and the other to deal with air. This is the key part of the strategy. I will recreate your scenario with my tactic tonight to see .
I feel like blizzard has a few choices on fixing this.
1. Buff Infestors (They are not going to do this) 2. Buff Corrupters (probably not) 3. Buff Hydras (maybe) 4. Nerf Voids and Tempests (most likely which would be sad because it would mean taking away strategies once again)
I have no idea why the Corruptor is still in its current state. Its DPS is bad, speed slow, cannot attack ground, but worst of all it's "armored", which takes away any advantage it might have had. And it's even more expensive than mutas.
I've seen a pro game recently where the Zerg player rolled over a maxed out Toss Air Lategame composition with pure upgraded muta, because they are fast, deal splash and are "light".
I think corruptors are fine, but the biggest issue for Zerg is a lack of units that can support their anti air.
Terran has the BEST air to air support unit, the Raven. the air support from Thors also allows a smoother transition from mech to air. There are additional support units such as widow mines and ghosts available . Protoss on the other hand, has the best ground to air support unit, with Storm and archon. And the core air units have really good synergies between eachother.
Both Races have their very well synergy air deathball.
zerg has transfuse, fungal, corruption, infested terrans. Fungal and muta splash being the only splash anti air damage. The raw power of hydra and muta dps against air is shut down by storms/pdd.
Actually sums up my thoughts fairly well. My current thinking for potential Zerg AA buffs without going nuts would be:
- Hydralisk starts with +1 range (Happy to get into the details about WHY if needed. Mainly, helps mid-game vs. Terran compositions without having to nerf the early game advantage Reapers give into the ground. Also makes Hydras more viable as effective defensive units vs. early pushes. Leads into my next proposal on why it's relevant to Skytoss.)
- Grooved Spines moved to Hive tech and improved to give Hydras +2 Range (Hydras are now able to effectively add DPS to late-game Zerg compositions)
- Corruption changed to an ability similar to Spirit Link from WC3 which chains units together, sharing damage across them all (effectively gives Zerg an AOE way to deal with massed air without requiring complete re-designs of units)
With these changes you'd see improvements on the holes that the Infestor previously filled in WoL (which made it too strong) while not making any one strategy too powerful from the Zerg.
I think overlords should get a hive upgrade where they get a suicide baneling-style attack it can be bslanced because ovis are your supply depots as well. Think of huge flying banelings :D maybe morphing individually required.
Edit: ofc this would also add micro, anti death ball play and exciting spectator moments and nice visuals
What you guys don't factor in is the fact that the zerg can remax almost instantly, whereas this kind of perfect protoss unit composition cannot be replaced easily. Plus the zerg can remax instantly with whatever unit fits best at that moment.
That's why zerg can never have quite as versatile and powerful units as protoss or terran. It's the same as before with the protoss ground "deathball" if you manage to kill off the expensive slow building units, then the next army will kill what's left over.
I think once the koreans start using vipers properly, we will see a lot of carrier and collossus snipes.
Corruptors are actually decent units for their price and supply, they don't fare as well vs void rays, but there is still the option of trying to bait the charge or using chain fungals and fungal DOES have longer range than feedback now.
On February 25 2013 23:02 cabal] wrote: I made my own little test video with a proper unit combination that a protoss player would use The upgrades favor the zerg, also the zerg army has more supply and overal more army value: see video description for stats http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfgirC1Sajg
wtb corruption! battle happens pretty quick but you have to imagine that would help it a little bit
On February 26 2013 00:37 Freeborn wrote: What you guys don't factor in is the fact that the zerg can remax almost instantly, whereas this kind of perfect protoss unit composition cannot be replaced easily. Plus the zerg can remax instantly with whatever unit fits best at that moment.
That's why zerg can never have quite as versatile and powerful units as protoss or terran. It's the same as before with the protoss ground "deathball" if you manage to kill off the expensive slow building units, then the next army will kill what's left over.
I think once the koreans start using vipers properly, we will see a lot of carrier and collossus snipes.
Corruptors are actually decent units for their price and supply, they don't fare as well vs void rays, but there is still the option of trying to bait the charge or using chain fungals and fungal DOES have longer range than feedback now.
Also swarmhosts are incredibly effective vs toss.
Re-maxing doesn't help when the trades you are making are 100 supply of army for a couple of voids and a collosi, it's TOO inefficient and that's the whole point.
New video using storm and better composition. The Protoss army actually won, but with only 2 Tempest. Using the Zerg Macro mechanic, the Zerg can easily re-max and win.
The only thing I found to be working reasonable against a maxed out toss death ball in the unit tester is mass queen (40+) with a few ultras or brood lords. (depends if heavy on immortal or on tempest) Ultras/broods +transfuse decimate any ground force (templar or collosi) and because of mass transfuse the queens will eventually kill everything.
The downside of this of course, queens are so insanely slow...
Hmm makes me think... if queens work reasonable, then the fix to this composition is also really simple; just give zerg hive tech speed upgrade for queens.
i dont think void rays should be able to hit ground, for me it would be the equivalent of a banshee or viking hitting air and ground for the same DPS, just a stupid unit.
On February 26 2013 01:46 Orzabal wrote: 43 Corruptor ? in which game scenario it can happen ?
That's the point. This is the only way to win, everyone is saying that you can't win with a conventional compostition - and they are right. However, this composition can win, as you can see in the videos.
New video using storm and better composition. The Protoss army actually won, but with only 2 Tempest. Using the Zerg Macro mechanic, the Zerg can easily re-max and win.
please stop posting videos of zerg winning vs bad compositions of P. THIS IS NOT THE ARMY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT!
2 immortals, 3 archons, 4 HT, 15 VRs, 8 carrier. now there you go. hf breaking that. after testing it vs your 8 ultra 43 corruptor army 6 ultras stayed alive but so did all 8 carrier and 10 voidrays. to be fair this is vs a-moved zerg and a-moved + voidraycharge on + storm P. so it will get better results but still.
oh btw: Z loses 4,8k of gas. P loses 2,4k. so even with double the bases its a VERY bad trade.
your tests all are bad because of one thing. you dont build enough blocker for P to let the HT stay alive vs ultras. if you do that (thats what the archons and immo are for and maybe P army gets even stronger with more immos/archons involved) the Z gets crushed.
so what happens? you retreat with your ultras, build corruptor and now P just warps in 20 zealots + his 8 carrier and 10 voids an kills 1-2 bases and a whole lot of your static defense. in the meantime rebuilds easily the rest of his army in 1-1,5 minutes and yeah hf again ^^
Total of 12 gases=2040gas per minute, right? (340/m per hatch) Mine minerals from 3 bases with 16 workers. (2400/m)
Need 43 Corrupter's? Roughly 3 minute's needed to generate this Ultralisks (add another minute of time & minute for them to spawn).
Yes, I understand you aren't going to just pop-out all these units at a time but one bad engagement that lands Storms on Corrupter's in a good way, you are in big trouble.
Good grief! Gonna need some serious expanding and somehow denying them access to your 6 hatcheries.
Meanwhile, they land this composition off of 3 bases(maybe 4).
If people honestly want to say that this is unbeatable, why not post your replays instead of theory crafting. To think that we can actually consider all the variables that there are in our heads is kinda silly.
Plus I'm actually curious to see what you guys are saying. If someone did post replays and i missed them then my bad
Truthfully I wanted HotS to be as imbalanced for Zerg as WoL was against Zerg vs both races (MMM or marine/tank or mass reaper on small maps, tanks on cliffs; 4 gate, imbarays (yes they were also imba at start of WoL) ). Terrans and Toss seemed to have a lot of fun then so I was hoping I would have it too. But seems Blizzard hates Zerg. And no, defending for 20 minutes so I could build my deathball is also not fun, maybe it wins games but it is not fun (as is WoL now).
HotS could have fixed both early game and late game but did shit. Zergs are still a shadow of a fun race they were in BW.
On February 25 2013 04:48 TheNewerBakery wrote: The Overcharge Bait - This is designed to help vs Void Rays. Move your army into the Protoss', but move away at the last moment. This should cause the Protoss player to activate the Overcharge ability on his Void Rays. As soon as the ability wears off, move back in and engage. This almost half's a Void Ray's DPS.
this one just isn't true. The voids will be fighting corruptor-ultra, those are armored. Overcharge has 16 damage vs armored, no overcharge is 10 vs armored. Even more if we are talking about late game with ultras and actually a fight (that means the protoss has left his cannoned up base) you can safely expect him to have +3 air. That means 19 damage with overcharge and 13 without. How is that half the damage?
I can't help but feel that this problem has less to do with the units and more to do with the explosive 3 base economy. This is a perfect example of a composition that should be hard to get to but with current economy and map layout it is just too easy to sit on three base and max out/slowly take 4th.
I feel this composition should require lots of bases and there for it would be split to defend. Maybe a change of map layout to make thirds harder to secure for protoss? only 1 gas at third? I'm not sure the answer really but I think having a slower economy or forcing the army to split will help. 3 bases is just too easy to turtle on.
I feel like blizzard has a few choices on fixing this.
1. Buff Infestors (They are not going to do this) 2. Buff Corrupters (probably not) 3. Buff Hydras (maybe) 4. Nerf Voids and Tempests (most likely which would be sad because it would mean taking away strategies once again)
I have no idea why the Corruptor is still in its current state. Its DPS is bad, speed slow, cannot attack ground, but worst of all it's "armored", which takes away any advantage it might have had. And it's even more expensive than mutas.
I've seen a pro game recently where the Zerg player rolled over a maxed out Toss Air Lategame composition with pure upgraded muta, because they are fast, deal splash and are "light".
I think corruptors are fine, but the biggest issue for Zerg is a lack of units that can support their anti air.
Terran has the BEST air to air support unit, the Raven. the air support from Thors also allows a smoother transition from mech to air. There are additional support units such as widow mines and ghosts available . Protoss on the other hand, has the best ground to air support unit, with Storm and archon. And the core air units have really good synergies between eachother.
Both Races have their very well synergy air deathball.
zerg has transfuse, fungal, corruption, infested terrans. Fungal and muta splash being the only splash anti air damage. The raw power of hydra and muta dps against air is shut down by storms/pdd.
Actually sums up my thoughts fairly well. My current thinking for potential Zerg AA buffs without going nuts would be:
- Hydralisk starts with +1 range (Happy to get into the details about WHY if needed. Mainly, helps mid-game vs. Terran compositions without having to nerf the early game advantage Reapers give into the ground. Also makes Hydras more viable as effective defensive units vs. early pushes. Leads into my next proposal on why it's relevant to Skytoss.)
- Grooved Spines moved to Hive tech and improved to give Hydras +2 Range (Hydras are now able to effectively add DPS to late-game Zerg compositions)
- Corruption changed to an ability similar to Spirit Link from WC3 which chains units together, sharing damage across them all (effectively gives Zerg an AOE way to deal with massed air without requiring complete re-designs of units)
With these changes you'd see improvements on the holes that the Infestor previously filled in WoL (which made it too strong) while not making any one strategy too powerful from the Zerg.
those are pretty good suggestions imo. Well done. I can also suggest making hydra insta-shot unit (no projectice) is also an option. Somebody did a test long time ago in WoL making hydras the same as marines (damage, health, size) but with no instant-shot and it required +2 upgrades (or even 3?) to even it out
On February 26 2013 02:57 MrMatt wrote: I can't help but feel that this problem has less to do with the units and more to do with the explosive 3 base economy. This is a perfect example of a composition that should be hard to get to but with current economy and map layout it is just too easy to sit on three base and max out/slowly take 4th.
I feel this composition should require lots of bases and there for it would be split to defend. Maybe a change of map layout to make thirds harder to secure for protoss? only 1 gas at third? I'm not sure the answer really but I think having a slower economy or forcing the army to split will help. 3 bases is just too easy to turtle on.
agreed. actually they should also make naturals more wide open. why not make gateway expand, lingspeed or roaches and helions or more marines/bunker necessary to hold naturals vs aggessions? would all slow down economy and make for much MUCH better games.
On February 26 2013 02:57 MrMatt wrote: I can't help but feel that this problem has less to do with the units and more to do with the explosive 3 base economy. This is a perfect example of a composition that should be hard to get to but with current economy and map layout it is just too easy to sit on three base and max out/slowly take 4th.
I feel this composition should require lots of bases and there for it would be split to defend. Maybe a change of map layout to make thirds harder to secure for protoss? only 1 gas at third? I'm not sure the answer really but I think having a slower economy or forcing the army to split will help. 3 bases is just too easy to turtle on.
it still doesn't fix the problem that late game zvp is way too hard. There should be options for every stage of the game.
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
So it's like broodlord/infestor?
The biggest problem I've had going skytoss is being too confident in the early-midgame, and getting rolled by ling/hydra pushes.
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
HA, all you guys just suck ass, I just figured out how to beat Toss 100%.
All you need to do is Neural Parasite a Probe, build a Nexus and there you go, just a few steps up the tech tree and you can just win by making more Tempests and VRs than him. Easy as that.
On February 26 2013 03:34 ProfessionalNoob wrote: ....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
You mean like terrans don't make ghosts anymore after it got nerfed?
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
Feedback would say "Hello". Mothership core will allow you to see these incoming and feedback in time
On February 25 2013 05:09 Decendos wrote: this will work at low level. at higher level this wont work...at all. hydras get destroyed by carriers etc. theres not even need for storm but with storm its even more onesided. feedback prevents any abduct, corruptors are NOT the best AA unit (they get destroyed by storm and voidrays), roaches...no comment, mutalisks...no comment. only thing you got right is ultras.
the best way to deal with skytoss is an ultra queen infestor corruptor army with 230/200 supply with the "spore-trick". something like 5 ultras, 15 infestors, 15 queens, 30 corruptors has the best chance to fight airtoss. the thing is, while toss a-moves and after that just controls his HT to feedback and storm you have to: a-move ultras, corrupt, focus fire with corruptors, transfuse, fungal, spam mass IT, fungal again, transfuse again etc. and all that while mircoing your corruptors out of storm. but if you got the sick APM to do all that you have a small chance to fight skytoss + HT. this only works vs low numbers of carriers. once P reaches 8+ carriers its just gg.
So it's like broodlord/infestor? .
yes it is at least as OP as BL infestor WAS. BL infestor sucks in HOTS. oh and as stupid as BL infestor. so yeah obv no one wants another imba army.
Completely theorycrafting here... but has someone experimented with mass spores mid map (the way mass spines worked in WOL)... it is a mineral only 0 suply that maybe could help dealing with that? I know you'd eventually have to engage, and tempests outrange them badly, but it'd take a while to go though a spore festor field...
not sure if time would help, since engaging that deathball sill feels impossible, but that's a thought
On February 26 2013 03:38 Grapefruit wrote: HA, all you guys just suck ass, I just figured out how to beat Toss 100%.
All you need to do is Neural Parasite a Probe, build a Nexus and there you go, just a few steps up the tech tree and you can just win by making more Tempests and VRs than him. Easy as that.
You can thank me later.
This guy is a genius! Please make a guide post about this, this is by far the most viable way to deal with Skytoss I have seen.
On February 26 2013 04:00 tisalgado wrote: Completely theorycrafting here... but has someone experimented with mass spores mid map (the way mass spines worked in WOL)... it is a mineral only 0 suply that maybe could help dealing with that? I know you'd eventually have to engage, and tempests outrange them badly, but it'd take a while to go though a spore festor field...
not sure if time would help, since engaging that deathball sill feels impossible, but that's a thought
Tempests have 15 range, and the Toss is in no hurry to kill you. It will take time, but he will kill all you Spores without losing anything.
Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
I really would prefer 1 Supply Hydras with Dark Swarm.
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
blinding cloud on air would work against that... problem is it would work against everything in the game... how would you ever beat broodlord hydra viper?
On February 25 2013 20:40 Fairwell wrote: I find these threads so strange. I play hots at masters and also watch streams on a daily basis but yet when I see a pvz hardly anyone tries to go for this ultimate mass air composition. WhiteRa uses it a lot (he did also in WOL vs zerg) but I mostly just see him dying while trying to get there. I would love if people would actually stop theorycrafting and provide replays of where "it's unbeatable and nothing can be done".
I personally never use it and just play regular macro pvz games (added voids/phoenix from one stargate and double stargate vs mass muta) and the matchup is so much better now. Zerg midgame options are really strong now (2base hydra-ling speed hydras into mutas, swarm host pushes with spores etc) but so much more dynamic and fun to play. There is no timer until (13-15min mark make your 3 base allin push with 1-2 prism when he tries to get his broodlords out).
I just don't see how this composition with hts + mass air can be unbeatable because there are some distinct differences to broodlord-corruptor-infestor from WOL zerg. It takes way more time to transition into. Air upgrades needed while zerg went for 3/3 melee/carapace which also were useful for his ground units; broodlords with +3 melee do the main dps, even if there is +0 air attack still so transitioning back into ground or having speedlings as a bonus was natural. Also remaxing with broodlords didn't take so long because you either morph corruptors into broods (38sec) or corruptors first into broods (74sec). Tempests take 70sec (from each stargate), carriers 120sec(+32sec for interceptors) and voidrays 60sec. Unless you have like 20-30 stargates you need several cycles. Getting more bases for gas and making a good canon wall is more expensive and takes more time. A protoss has it harder (that is it takes longer) to get 8+ gases so early and canons can't be moved or healed (transfuse).
So what if you get there? Ht's on the ground are not protected as infestors are with broodlords. Broodlords instantly (also automatically) made a huge broodling-wall so you can't just run chargelots to the infestors or feedback them (broodlords have higher range). Tempests have even higher range but they do really low dps and massively overkill. How will you stop a group of 50-60 speedlings or ultras running in to force storms/archon merges with the speed tehy have. Maybe have of the linsg will die beforehand. So he actually needs more ground support (archons/colossi etc). Tempests also do super low dps (9.09 vs non broodlords), that's less than a stalker. Add on top of that their massive overkill and it takes forever to actually kill mass ground. So if tempests are massed you just overrun him. If he has carriers use corruptors or fg (interceptors caught stop doing dps) or hydras (dimaga always used hydras with hold position to kill interceptors). I just don't see the amazing synergy. Tempests do super low dps (and nobody goes broods vs mass tempests) and overkill, hts can be sniped because they are not protected (like burrow moving and snaring infestors behind a wall of broodlings that tank and prevent any ground movement there).
Maybe I missed something important. But that's why I'd love to see some good replays (high level play). I'm sure one of you can help here out since you all see it used nearly every game to great success.
I'll personally stick with ground anyways because now that broods can be countered I think ht/immortal/blink etc with some slight air support is all I need and midgame fights are really fun and dynamic now (except for mass muta, there it's a stupid you either get raped or get enough phoenix out in time to rape him game).
These are generally my thoughts as well. It seems like posters tend to base what compositions they view as unbeatable primarily on their own experiences. Unless you are a top, say, 100 player in the world, your experiences should be almost completely ignored for balance purposes. You do too many things wrong to have a right to have a say in a balance discussion. Your experiences can be relevant for determining whether the game is going in a bad direction or won't be fun for the non-top tier pros but that's about it.
As to the specific topic of this forum, I've only seen a couple games where Protoss has tried to do this strategy in a high level (say Code A-ish level) game. I saw Violet crush Tear in the GSTL, I believe, with roach hydra viper at around the 12-15 minute mark, iirc, which is before he was able to fully achieve the "unbeatable" comp. I saw Stephano use ling and upgraded corrupters to take down this build at around the 15-20 minute mark on his stream, although the protoss didn't have HT out yet. I haven't seen any top tier zergs try to pit their ultimate late game army against this "ultimate" late game Protoss army yet, so perhaps there may be an issue there (and the issue for me would be that it's boring for one side to always win if it gets to a specific army comp) but it's too early to tell since the top tier zergs are only now just starting to play HoTS in earnest.
As far as how the "unbeatable" Protoss air army fares against Terran's ultimate late game army. I have to give the edge to Terran from what I've seen. BC, viking, raven, ghost, tank seems generally to be the stronger composition and to generally beat this Protoss air comp.
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
blinding cloud on air would work against that... problem is it would work against everything in the game... how would you ever beat broodlord hydra viper?
Wait... I thought blinding cloud already effected air units...
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
blinding cloud on air would work against that... problem is it would work against everything in the game... how would you ever beat broodlord hydra viper?
Wait... I thought blinding cloud already effected air units...
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
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If you can't hit fungals at 10 range and 2 radius (basically 11 range) with AoE against high templar which have to individually feedback all your infestors with only 9 range, then you deserve to lose. I honestly feel like I don't get at all why people would think skytoss, of all things, is OP. It's nearly impossible to get to, and even if you get to it its not like its unbeatable.
The only noticable difference from WoL skytoss, which got crushed by just pure corruptor, storms don't even matter, is a void ray buff was is equilized by them costing more supply, and you can micro away from them, and plus fungal still destroys them. And to add to that, vortex is removed. No more archon toilets, which IMO, is a good choice, but also makes PvZ lategame a lot easier for Z.
Comparing the ghost nerf to the infestor nerf is stupid, the ghost nerf made snipe worthless against zerg tier 3 by making the damage it did abysmal. Fungal still does massive damage to clumped air units, especially armored ones like voids (and don't try to tell me you can spread void rays, yes you can, but they'll just reclump themselves in like 3 seconds so it's hardly even worth the effort) it's just a projectile, and it even gets more range. So in short, all the nerf did was make it so you don't have an easymode root+AoE damage spell and all you have to do is f-shift-click-click-click, not even having to lead shots or think about enemy movements at all since lol fungal, they can't. The tempest hardly even helps, the only thing they could be good for is supporting a ground army vs. BLs, their DPS is extremely shitty and they massively overkill, their range isn't even that helpful against the relatively mobile zerg force.
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
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If you can't hit fungals at 10 range and 2 radius (basically 11 range) with AoE against high templar which have to individually feedback all your infestors with only 9 range, then you deserve to lose. I honestly feel like I don't get at all why people would think skytoss, of all things, is OP. It's nearly impossible to get to, and even if you get to it its not like its unbeatable.
The only noticable difference from WoL skytoss, which got crushed by just pure corruptor, storms don't even matter, is a void ray buff was is equilized by them costing more supply, and you can micro away from them, and plus fungal still destroys them. And to add to that, vortex is removed. No more archon toilets, which IMO, is a good choice, but also makes PvZ lategame a lot easier for Z.
Comparing the ghost nerf to the infestor nerf is stupid, the ghost nerf made snipe worthless against zerg tier 3 by making the damage it did abysmal. Fungal still does massive damage to clumped air units, especially armored ones like voids (and don't try to tell me you can spread void rays, yes you can, but they'll just reclump themselves in like 3 seconds so it's hardly even worth the effort) it's just a projectile, and it even gets more range. So in short, all the nerf did was make it so you don't have an easymode root+AoE damage spell and all you have to do is f-shift-click-click-click, not even having to lead shots or think about enemy movements at all since lol fungal, they can't. The tempest hardly even helps, the only thing they could be good for is supporting a ground army vs. BLs, their DPS is extremely shitty and they massively overkill, their range isn't even that helpful against the relatively mobile zerg force.
so you never played against skytoss as zerg yourself. maybe do that before posting stuff like this.
infestors get killed by range 12 carriers or range 15 tempests or in a real game scenario also from feedbacks/storms which basically have about the same range. oh and yeah fungal does about 0 damage now to superhigh hp units like voids and especially carrier + tempests and archons.
just stop talking about random stuff and tell us a composition how to beat 2 immortal 3 archon 4 HT 15 VR 8 carrier army.
if there is no way to kill lets say 80% of that army you will lose the game as Z. simple as that.
On February 25 2013 06:15 KingLumps wrote: Good luck engaging a toss when his voids aren't charged. Any smart toss player just retreats if you back off when he activates his voids, only a bronzey would engage after wasting his charge.
Your basic strat sounds like 'let the toss mess up then you win', not too solid a strat...
....Except his army is slow as fucking and corruptors are much much faster. You also have fungal so you can always force an engagement as zerg if you want. I feel like the main problem with a lot of zergs now is that with the fungal nerf, they just don't make infestors. They're still really freaking good...it's not like void rays can really dodge fungals, they're not that fast.
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If you can't hit fungals at 10 range and 2 radius (basically 11 range) with AoE against high templar which have to individually feedback all your infestors with only 9 range, then you deserve to lose. I honestly feel like I don't get at all why people would think skytoss, of all things, is OP. It's nearly impossible to get to, and even if you get to it its not like its unbeatable.
The only noticable difference from WoL skytoss, which got crushed by just pure corruptor, storms don't even matter, is a void ray buff was is equilized by them costing more supply, and you can micro away from them, and plus fungal still destroys them. And to add to that, vortex is removed. No more archon toilets, which IMO, is a good choice, but also makes PvZ lategame a lot easier for Z.
Comparing the ghost nerf to the infestor nerf is stupid, the ghost nerf made snipe worthless against zerg tier 3 by making the damage it did abysmal. Fungal still does massive damage to clumped air units, especially armored ones like voids (and don't try to tell me you can spread void rays, yes you can, but they'll just reclump themselves in like 3 seconds so it's hardly even worth the effort) it's just a projectile, and it even gets more range. So in short, all the nerf did was make it so you don't have an easymode root+AoE damage spell and all you have to do is f-shift-click-click-click, not even having to lead shots or think about enemy movements at all since lol fungal, they can't. The tempest hardly even helps, the only thing they could be good for is supporting a ground army vs. BLs, their DPS is extremely shitty and they massively overkill, their range isn't even that helpful against the relatively mobile zerg force.
You forgot about the relatively small addition of the 15 range Tempest. I know it's REALLY minor but...
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
I really would prefer 1 Supply Hydras with Dark Swarm.
how can you bait out voidrays if they just use tempest to kill anything that gets close? By then you are taking way too much damage, and if you don't commit with your whole army right then and there, you are going to take a ton of damage for baiting out void ray charges.
I like the idea of using vipers with corrupters on the flanks of his army, but even so, with proper vision, tempest will crush any vipers that get near them.
A video which shows the tactics and how it works. If there are any problems with it, feel free to tell me and I will follow up with another video .
That is not skytoss. If the person would had gone the correct unit composition which would pure voidrays and 5-6 high templars with 5 zealots if the zerg would had gone hydra/muta it would actually had made sense.
Just look at the ratio between Corruptors and voidrais, corruptors outnumbers voidrays by a ratio of 3:1 that will never actually happen in realgame cause of the food cap of 200, further if you would max out 200 corruptors vs 200 voidrays, and remember that its the voidrays that are the bulk of the skytoss, why the guy made carriers doesn't even make sense, would the corruptor army be more expensive gas and mineral wise and still lose massively against the voidrays, and im not joking here, it's like hydras trying to attack two collosus they die in droves instantly.
Corruptors sucks ass against voidray so only option you have is to make hydras, but they die terrible against the 4-5 hightemplar and 7 zealots I mentioned earlier. And don't even bring up mutalisks since they stack really great and any protoss will notice that you go muta and mix in 2 archons with 1 templar instead and there goes all your mutalisks as well.
Isn't the answer similar to the protoss answer to the zerg deathball in WoL? Try and pull them apart with drops/harassment? I guess protoss have been cannoning pretty heavily, but maybe some light swarm host placement in different places around the map to kill cannons at the various expansions?
On February 26 2013 08:12 alQahira wrote: Isn't the answer similar to the protoss answer to the zerg deathball in WoL? Try and pull them apart with drops/harassment? I guess protoss have been cannoning pretty heavily, but maybe some light swarm host placement in different places around the map to kill cannons at the various expansions?
While this has logic behind hind it's not going to work due to Tempest hiding behind the Cannon walls & observer slowly poking in.
You would have to Nydus this to switch around and have spores kill the observer. Still will be a tough task to pull off
I think that with the speed upgrade blizzard tricked ppl into thinking that hydras are good units now while in reality they are still awful. Their dps might be high but they are so low on hp that it does not matter. Against a mix of voids + colossus/ht/zealot they just die before doing anything. People here claim that they do better vs voids - ok against pure voids yes but vs a voids + ground mix IMO roach corruptor works better. You are still going to lose fights with it but the difference is that your roaches (which are much cheaper to rebuild) will clean his ground army while your corruptors will die bravely taking some of his air units down. Now if he is on 3 bases he cant possible rebuild both his ground and air army as fast as you can so after few trades you should be able to overwhelm him. Ofc you should start to be aggresive before he gets to 200/200 dream deathball as at that point you cant do anything as everyone knows.
It's not hard to get to, PvZ, open FFE into Stargate, Phoenix harass, skytoss is restricted by gas not minerals so when P takes their third they can drop a fuckton of cannons whilst being safe against all pushes due to cannons, FF and mothership core.
Protoss then adds in VR whilst teching to Storm and Carrier.
This comp is far more OP than BL/Infestor/Corruptor ever was simply because there are no glaring holes or timings that can penalise a Protoss doing the build correctly.
Also due to cannons and recall AND photon charge bullshit, you can't base trade or force the protoss to take a fight he doesn't want to.
I've been playing sc2 since the early WoL Beta... this is the most imbalanced thing I have encountered as zerg thus far. That's including the reaper days, the steppes of war 2rax SCV allins, the tank pushes on steppes, all that shit... Skytoss is just impossible to kill. It amazes me we are less than a month before release and blizzard has yet to balance this.
On February 25 2013 08:58 avilo wrote: I am just going to put this out here - the god composition of tempest + templar is unbeatable in TvP./ZvP lategame. I know from firsthand experience when I developed this 3+ months ago in beta (i offraced as Protoss for 2 weeks) and posted replays on the pro forums and informed blizzard that this would become a problem in the future for the game because it's simply put broodlord infestor 2.0 but better.
Blizzard has known about this unbeatable army for months, I detailed it in the pro forums, sent replays, and a lot of other P/Z pros have mentioned that when Protoss gets here you cannot lose the game.
With that said, let's hope blizzard, you know...fixes it? It's an easy fix - increase tempest supply to 8, and reduce it's health, and make it an actual support unit instead of a massable deathball unit that counters everything late game with templar. A unit like this should be fragile, I played a game last night and landed 7 hunter seekers on clumps of tempests and not one was even taken down to half health...lol.
This also brings the carrier back into the forefront as the go-to Protoss air unit.
I only post here because a lot of people ask "how do you beat mass tempest + templar" in lategame, and I'm here to tell you i tried to convince them this was a balance issue months ago, and they have let it be since then.
It is actually unbeatable when you get to 16-18 tempests + 10+ high templar. So if you play Zerg at the moment and are becoming frustrated with this, or mech TvP lategame and are frustrated with this, i wouldn't worry. It's obvious they are going to have to nerf it unless they want to leave the game in a state like broodlord infestor was for over a year in wings of liberty.
Playing Protoss for two weeks and complaing about something being broken doesn't help anybody except those that want to paint you as a complete moron (because it gives them an example of you acting like one).
Especially when the composition you point out isn't even that strong vs Terran (vs Zerg Tempest/Cannon/Templar is stupid, but sooo hard to get to).
Skytoss is pretty strong vs passive Zergs (too strong, IMO), and I think the Tempest definitely needs an increase in supply (to 6, not 8) and something needs to be done about the Void Ray (although I honestly haven't a clue what).
On February 26 2013 05:14 Decendos wrote: so you never played against skytoss as zerg yourself. maybe do that before posting stuff like this.
infestors get killed by range 12 carriers or range 15 tempests or in a real game scenario also from feedbacks/storms which basically have about the same range. oh and yeah fungal does about 0 damage now to superhigh hp units like voids and especially carrier + tempests and archons.
just stop talking about random stuff and tell us a composition how to beat 2 immortal 3 archon 4 HT 15 VR 8 carrier army.
if there is no way to kill lets say 80% of that army you will lose the game as Z. simple as that.
WoL skytoss is beaten by mass spores + infestors, if they attack you kill all their interceptors with mass fungal. The Tempest completely invalidates this strategy as they can kill all your static defense without ever having to get in range.
That photoshop is absolutely epic. The only way it could be better is if the car's license plate said "Special Tactics."
Anyways, as for the topic at hand, I doubt Blizzard will make any sort of gameplay mechanic change at this point...because they've proven themselves to be incredibly hesitant to introduce any sort of new ideas, new mechanics or revamps of old units throughout the HotS beta. They're either going to do a supply nerf to the Tempest or something minor like a range buff for the Hydralisk, an hp buff for the Hydralisk, or some sort of damage increase for the corruptor.
On February 26 2013 04:09 Henk wrote: Perhaps having a hive upgrade for hydras that gives +3 range against air?
Something similar has been suggested here, but that was vs air and ground, which might be a bit too much.
Backing off after void rays popped their charge just isn't worth it, because tempests+voidrays will have gotten so many shots off, your army will be too weak to attack again before another the cooldown has been reset.
Maybe allowing blinding cloud to affect air units would help?
I really would prefer 1 Supply Hydras with Dark Swarm.
On February 26 2013 14:36 ETisME wrote: I would love to a decrease in the hydra model size, makes them better at fighting up choke points. Then skytoss will be much harder to get.
This would be a nerf to z, more damage from storms and colossus now.
I think blizz should go new ways in creating units. For instance: Awesome unit. I guess if a hydralisk could use a corrupter as a mount, many disadvantages of the hydra would vanish: 1. Its basically an air unit (colossi cannot harm it), 2. the corrupter tanks for the hydra. To balance this new unit, both hydra and corrupter should get damaged by psi storm.
On February 25 2013 05:52 CoR wrote: finaly zerg need skill to win and instant every zerg cry about imbalance ... the end of the patchzergs sound like part 3 of a movie i am mid master and i can tell you there ARE zergs who CRUSH! it, and others who not even try and flame nonstop ... i like that they removed from high ranks REALLY much because only smart guys have to be there
Mid master is not a high rank... I'd like to know how turtling and massing up a deathball then A moving with an unbeatable army can be called skill. And when there is no unit composition to counter said army, that's not a skill issue either.... Maybe someone is bitter from losing ZvT alot? : D
May be surviving until that moment is a skill?? Like in ZvP in WOL holding off all those timings and scouting them right until you got BL?
A 200/200 skytoss army is ALWAYS going to annihilate the Zerg army, no matter the composition. The only way to defeat skytoss is to out macro them by taking much more bases (5 to 3), and trade armies with them, because you would always have and econ advantage to keep re-maxing while skytoss takes quite a while to max out on. also pretty expensive. Your trades doesn't necessarily have to be cost- efficient as long as it is not totally one sided. If you do let them max out, the game is practically over.
Despite the amount of well constructed arguments that are being put forward in this thread, we are still yet to see a viable way to balance this. I will admit, despite how strong my composition and tactics can be against Skytoss, being forced to go one build, which can be very easily countered once it is well known, is simply ridiculous.
So to all you people who aren't contributing to an interesting debate, and have instead decided to moan about it being OP, suggest a way to fix it.
On February 26 2013 23:58 rebOrn3 wrote: A 200/200 skytoss army is ALWAYS going to annihilate the Zerg army, no matter the composition. The only way to defeat skytoss is to out macro them by taking much more bases (5 to 3), and trade armies with them, because you would always have and econ advantage to keep re-maxing while skytoss takes quite a while to max out on. also pretty expensive. Your trades doesn't necessarily have to be cost- efficient as long as it is not totally one sided. If you do let them max out, the game is practically over.
which is fine. but since P needs 4 base for the ultimate army its more like 6:4 bases and right now the zerg does not even closely trade in that ratio. thats the whole problem. nobody is asking that a 6 base zerg army needs to trade even with a 4 base toss army. but it needs to trade cost efficient enough which isnt the case AT ALL right now.
On February 27 2013 02:02 TheNewerBakery wrote: Just some observations;
Despite the amount of well constructed arguments that are being put forward in this thread, we are still yet to see a viable way to balance this. I will admit, despite how strong my composition and tactics can be against Skytoss, being forced to go one build, which can be very easily countered once it is well known, is simply ridiculous.
So to all you people who aren't contributing to an interesting debate, and have instead decided to moan about it being OP, suggest a way to fix it.
already showed you several times that once he builds some immos/archons to protect his HT your army loses horribly, so no you composition isnt strong vs good players.
to fix this at first lower tempest damage vs massive so you can involve some BLs again and buff hydras. they are an insanely bad unit even in midgame get countered by blinkstalker. they need at least +20 hp, maybe even more and 6 base range (+hp as hive upgrade).
the thing is mass void can probably be countered by mass muta, but once u have 3-4 arcons, mass muta + ultra will still lose. The thing is it is almost impossible to engage a skytoss army that has arcon support. Clearly you would need infestors. but even with them it isn't easy
On February 27 2013 02:02 TheNewerBakery wrote: Just some observations;
Despite the amount of well constructed arguments that are being put forward in this thread, we are still yet to see a viable way to balance this. I will admit, despite how strong my composition and tactics can be against Skytoss, being forced to go one build, which can be very easily countered once it is well known, is simply ridiculous.
So to all you people who aren't contributing to an interesting debate, and have instead decided to moan about it being OP, suggest a way to fix it.
Actually sums up my thoughts fairly well. My current thinking for potential Zerg AA buffs without going nuts would be:
- Hydralisk starts with +1 range (Happy to get into the details about WHY if needed. Mainly, helps mid-game vs. Terran compositions without having to nerf the early game advantage Reapers give into the ground. Also makes Hydras more viable as effective defensive units vs. early pushes. Leads into my next proposal on why it's relevant to Skytoss.)
- Grooved Spines moved to Hive tech and improved to give Hydras +2 Range (Hydras are now able to effectively add DPS to late-game Zerg compositions)
- Corruption changed to an ability similar to Spirit Link from WC3 which chains units together, sharing damage across them all (effectively gives Zerg an AOE way to deal with massed air without requiring complete re-designs of units)
With these changes you'd see improvements on the holes that the Infestor previously filled in WoL (which made it too strong) while not making any one strategy too powerful from the Zerg.
On February 25 2013 22:16 looken wrote: Sleep vs First (GSTL) it's set 4, you have to manually change it (or i was just too stupid to post the correct link...-.-)
this game doesnt show the actual skytoss deathball, but something quite close to it.
watching this game i really dont understand how people keep arguing it's hard to get to skytoss "deathball". in this game sleeps 2nd and 3rd get delayed quite a bit, but then again, there's not much you can do about that. he takes a decent amount of damage from the phenixes but no direct eco dmg (he loses two queens right away and a 3rd one later, so you can argue he had less eco because he couldnt inject as much as he wanted, but thats about it).
he delays toss 3rd, he is ahead in bases (he's on 4 bases all game long even when his initial 4th gets sniped he's got two other bases up already), he's ahead in upgrades, he prevents toss from taking a 4th (yeah it gets up, but no gas is mined there), and he trades quite well against the colosus before VR HT comes into play.
but still toss get's out a couple of VR on his 3 bases with HT support. toss got no bank, but then again, once he engages with his army, he doesnt really need a bank. he just crushes through the zerg army. watch the engagement happen at around 24:12. yeah the locusts come in late but they would have been exactely where the stoms hit anyway. the corruptors melt within seconds against the VRs, so do the hydras against storm. yeah the storms are great, yeah sleep doesnt walk out of them, but then again, if he wants to do dmg to the toss army, he needs to go in and he will ultimately eat storms.
now of course you can argue, his composition wasnt all that great with all those SH, but then again, they where the only thing that allowed him to put any kind of pressure on the toss. but once there are VR with some HT there's just no way he can trade his army costefficiently and transition out of it.
now maybe i'm "analysing" this game completely wrong, so please enlighten me if i'm completely off point. but this just seems strange to me.
This game is no skytoss. It's a regular pvz where the protoss started to add in more and more voidrays in the lategame. There are no carriers or tempests in there and it's far from what people write about just immediately making the skytoss army with just massing canons at their natural and third base. I'd be interested how you would hold swarm host pushes then.
I think you missed the important thing right at the start when the protoss delayed the expansions of the zerg. Whenever I did this in WOL, every zerg immediately allined me of one base. The zerg in this game had a terrible eco going into the midgame. First the huge delay, then making too many units early on vs phoenix and not being prepared for the phoenix. This didn't make up for the delay on the 3rd base of the protoss. The supplies were kinda even at this point where zerg should be ahead.
This game just shows how strong swarm host pushes are in the midgame and how strong void rays are in the lategame pvz. This is not really a ultimate skytoss deathball or anything. In both end engagements the zerg basically bathed in those storms, not moving anything out, in the last engagement even moving the broodlords in. The protoss only had those few storms and no aoe anymore afterwards.
So everyone seems to lose vs it and it seems to be so super easy to get but nobody has replays to post? Everyone knows that voidrays are really good now in pvz, but that's far from the unit composition described in this thread. And the moment you add in carriers etc the zerg has a long time to react and adjust his unit composition. It's not like carriers just suddenly hit the field. They take 120+32sec each. Mass corruptor will rape tempests and carriers but not voids, but that can be scouted.
Until I see it with my own eyes I believe in that the strongest way for protoss to play in HOTS pvz is to go for a ground based solid army (especially after phoenix opening due to mutas now being even stronger and stargate units more viable in general) and then slowly when the game allows adding more and more air into your composition.
What if the corruptors increased damage ability stacked it would help against big health targets but with good micro you would be able to focus down multiple targets at once.
On February 25 2013 20:40 Fairwell wrote: I find these threads so strange. I play hots at masters and also watch streams on a daily basis but yet when I see a pvz hardly anyone tries to go for this ultimate mass air composition. WhiteRa uses it a lot (he did also in WOL vs zerg) but I mostly just see him dying while trying to get there. I would love if people would actually stop theorycrafting and provide replays of where "it's unbeatable and nothing can be done".
I personally never use it and just play regular macro pvz games (added voids/phoenix from one stargate and double stargate vs mass muta) and the matchup is so much better now. Zerg midgame options are really strong now (2base hydra-ling speed hydras into mutas, swarm host pushes with spores etc) but so much more dynamic and fun to play. There is no timer until (13-15min mark make your 3 base allin push with 1-2 prism when he tries to get his broodlords out).
I just don't see how this composition with hts + mass air can be unbeatable because there are some distinct differences to broodlord-corruptor-infestor from WOL zerg. It takes way more time to transition into. Air upgrades needed while zerg went for 3/3 melee/carapace which also were useful for his ground units; broodlords with +3 melee do the main dps, even if there is +0 air attack still so transitioning back into ground or having speedlings as a bonus was natural. Also remaxing with broodlords didn't take so long because you either morph corruptors into broods (38sec) or corruptors first into broods (74sec). Tempests take 70sec (from each stargate), carriers 120sec(+32sec for interceptors) and voidrays 60sec. Unless you have like 20-30 stargates you need several cycles. Getting more bases for gas and making a good canon wall is more expensive and takes more time. A protoss has it harder (that is it takes longer) to get 8+ gases so early and canons can't be moved or healed (transfuse).
So what if you get there? Ht's on the ground are not protected as infestors are with broodlords. Broodlords instantly (also automatically) made a huge broodling-wall so you can't just run chargelots to the infestors or feedback them (broodlords have higher range). Tempests have even higher range but they do really low dps and massively overkill. How will you stop a group of 50-60 speedlings or ultras running in to force storms/archon merges with the speed tehy have. Maybe have of the linsg will die beforehand. So he actually needs more ground support (archons/colossi etc). Tempests also do super low dps (9.09 vs non broodlords), that's less than a stalker. Add on top of that their massive overkill and it takes forever to actually kill mass ground. So if tempests are massed you just overrun him. If he has carriers use corruptors or fg (interceptors caught stop doing dps) or hydras (dimaga always used hydras with hold position to kill interceptors). I just don't see the amazing synergy. Tempests do super low dps (and nobody goes broods vs mass tempests) and overkill, hts can be sniped because they are not protected (like burrow moving and snaring infestors behind a wall of broodlings that tank and prevent any ground movement there).
Maybe I missed something important. But that's why I'd love to see some good replays (high level play). I'm sure one of you can help here out since you all see it used nearly every game to great success.
I'll personally stick with ground anyways because now that broods can be countered I think ht/immortal/blink etc with some slight air support is all I need and midgame fights are really fun and dynamic now (except for mass muta, there it's a stupid you either get raped or get enough phoenix out in time to rape him game).
These are generally my thoughts as well. It seems like posters tend to base what compositions they view as unbeatable primarily on their own experiences. Unless you are a top, say, 100 player in the world, your experiences should be almost completely ignored for balance purposes. You do too many things wrong to have a right to have a say in a balance discussion. Your experiences can be relevant for determining whether the game is going in a bad direction or won't be fun for the non-top tier pros but that's about it.
As to the specific topic of this forum, I've only seen a couple games where Protoss has tried to do this strategy in a high level (say Code A-ish level) game. I saw Violet crush Tear in the GSTL, I believe, with roach hydra viper at around the 12-15 minute mark, iirc, which is before he was able to fully achieve the "unbeatable" comp. I saw Stephano use ling and upgraded corrupters to take down this build at around the 15-20 minute mark on his stream, although the protoss didn't have HT out yet. I haven't seen any top tier zergs try to pit their ultimate late game army against this "ultimate" late game Protoss army yet, so perhaps there may be an issue there (and the issue for me would be that it's boring for one side to always win if it gets to a specific army comp) but it's too early to tell since the top tier zergs are only now just starting to play HoTS in earnest.
As far as how the "unbeatable" Protoss air army fares against Terran's ultimate late game army. I have to give the edge to Terran from what I've seen. BC, viking, raven, ghost, tank seems generally to be the stronger composition and to generally beat this Protoss air comp.
This. Could anybody give me replay about skytoss. I just get it working in my head. During fight Tempests do absolutely no dmg at all. 6 tempest may be able to take down 1 corruptor. Split corruptors and storm means nothing... what's left? Void? Just wate until cooldown.
On February 27 2013 04:08 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: This. Could anybody give me replay about skytoss. I just get it working in my head. During fight Tempests do absolutely no dmg at all. 6 tempest may be able to take down 1 corruptor. Split corruptors and storm means nothing... what's left? Void? Just wate until cooldown.
I can't give you a replay but games like the one on this VOD http://de.twitch.tv/egstephano/b/369772964 starting around 2h 19min seem to suggest that it really is unreasonably hard to deal with Skytoss.
so you never played against skytoss as zerg yourself. maybe do that before posting stuff like this.
infestors get killed by range 12 carriers or range 15 tempests or in a real game scenario also from feedbacks/storms which basically have about the same range. oh and yeah fungal does about 0 damage now to superhigh hp units like voids and especially carrier + tempests and archons.
just stop talking about random stuff and tell us a composition how to beat 2 immortal 3 archon 4 HT 15 VR 8 carrier army.
if there is no way to kill lets say 80% of that army you will lose the game as Z. simple as that.
How about you don't be a pompous ass and assume I don't know what I'm talking about? Awfully convenient that you exaggerate like crazy isn't it?
Carriers don't start shooting interceptors at you at 12 range, they have 12 leash range, which means I have to run in first then fly back to use 12 range.
Tempests, as someone else had said, have terrible DPS and cost 6 supply. They are incredibly supply inefficient, and they don't protect templars the way broods protect infestors at all. For starters, infestors are faster and can burrow, so they have much higher survivability than templar. Add that to the broodling wall created by the BLs and sniping infestors with ground units are very, very hard when broods are there.
Compare that to tempests, they do less DPS than a stalker, they massively overkill, in short, just because protoss has tempests does not mean that his templar are not vulnerable.
On February 26 2013 05:19 ShamW0W wrote:
You forgot about the relatively small addition of the 15 range Tempest. I know it's REALLY minor but...
Yes, tempests are SO overpowered at 6 supply and less DPS than a stalker. Nerf PLEASE. ;-;
The only thing they're good at is forcing engagements, and even in that they're not that great vs. zerg, it's more against like a siege line of tanks or something that tempests actually shine.
On February 27 2013 04:08 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: This. Could anybody give me replay about skytoss. I just get it working in my head. During fight Tempests do absolutely no dmg at all. 6 tempest may be able to take down 1 corruptor. Split corruptors and storm means nothing... what's left? Void? Just wate until cooldown.
I can't give you a replay but games like the one on this VOD http://de.twitch.tv/egstephano/b/369772964 starting around 2h 19min seem to suggest that it really is unreasonably hard to deal with Skytoss.
Lol that's just ridiculous.. Stephano didn't play perfect, but this shows attacking into something like this is just impossible. Corruptors melt to void rays, and hydras are worthless against storms.. Even when split.
Also attacking/retreating to wait until his charge is on cooldown is not viable. He'll pop the charge when you have committed, and if you then pull back, you end up with an army with half of their HP. Sure, you can then attack into void rays on cooldown, but with low hp you might as well move-command into him.
Skytoss is exactly the same thing as BL/Infestor in WoL. Yes, it is possible to defeat 200/200 skytoss if the Toss player royally fucks up. However, if the protoss plays equally well to the zerg, 200/200 skytoss will destroy any possible army composition.
Skytoss is not as easy-to-get than BL/festor in WoL, because toss don't have anything close to Spines + Lings + Fungal in power. However, I still think it's lame to have a single endgame unit combo that steamrolls all else.
IMO, hydras simply need a buff to antiair range and/or damage. They are not viable against endgame air units of any kind. Heck, hydras don't even counter Mutas all that well in HotS.
I still think the answer lies in redesigning the corruptor ability. I think Blizzard actually said they wanted to make the corruptor (and the overseer) more interesting early on in the beta. What happened, did they run out of time? Corruption is a weak and uninspired ability that nobody would miss if it was taken out.
Since lategame air armies are what zerg struggles the most with, you could make the ability an upgrade in the greater spire. Give the corruptor attack a small AOE for example, or give them acid spores from the devourer. Doesn't really even matter what the ability does, as long as it makes corruptors a decent counter against the units it is supposed to counter.
so you never played against skytoss as zerg yourself. maybe do that before posting stuff like this.
infestors get killed by range 12 carriers or range 15 tempests or in a real game scenario also from feedbacks/storms which basically have about the same range. oh and yeah fungal does about 0 damage now to superhigh hp units like voids and especially carrier + tempests and archons.
just stop talking about random stuff and tell us a composition how to beat 2 immortal 3 archon 4 HT 15 VR 8 carrier army.
if there is no way to kill lets say 80% of that army you will lose the game as Z. simple as that.
How about you don't be a pompous ass and assume I don't know what I'm talking about? Awfully convenient that you exaggerate like crazy isn't it?
Carriers don't start shooting interceptors at you at 12 range, they have 12 leash range, which means I have to run in first then fly back to use 12 range.
Tempests, as someone else had said, have terrible DPS and cost 6 supply. They are incredibly supply inefficient, and they don't protect templars the way broods protect infestors at all. For starters, infestors are faster and can burrow, so they have much higher survivability than templar. Add that to the broodling wall created by the BLs and sniping infestors with ground units are very, very hard when broods are there.
Compare that to tempests, they do less DPS than a stalker, they massively overkill, in short, just because protoss has tempests does not mean that his templar are not vulnerable.
You forgot about the relatively small addition of the 15 range Tempest. I know it's REALLY minor but...
Yes, tempests are SO overpowered at 6 supply and less DPS than a stalker. Nerf PLEASE. ;-;
The only thing they're good at is forcing engagements, and even in that they're not that great vs. zerg, it's more against like a siege line of tanks or something that tempests actually shine.
This gave me a lot of hope. I'm going to have to give it a try. It's unfortunate that there isn't really a unit composition that can properly deal with skytoss without the use of the spores at the moment. At least technically it's doable if you apply enough pressure (swarm hosts) to make the Protoss engage you.
Would you care to elaborate as to why the toss keeps camping the middle of the map near all those spores instead of going straight to your main/bases and rape all your tech and eco? Just asking. Maybe you should have told hin that his units can actually fly and don't need to resort to the ground route.
Problem is that viper is quite useless vs. skytoss.
Maybe it would be good idea to make Blinding cloud affect casters. If caster is in blinding cloud, they can't cast any spells costing mana. This would make hydra viper much more potent vs. storms.
I just tought of this, not sure if it would be good or not tough. How about give the infestor a new spell. A spell that you cast on light units and it lowers the damage you take from psy spells for X amounts of seconds.
For example you cast the spell on the hydra's and now they take X amount less damage from psy storm. This would mean if you have good micro you could make your hydra's last quite a bit longer allowing them to cause more damage. Yet it would not make the templar useless either as it can still storm/feedback the infestors and zerg army softening them up but not instantly melting the hydras. But at least then Protoss wouldnt want to directly engage into Zerg when the infestors are around. Mind you collosi would still do their full damage to hydra's so zerg couldnt just mindlessly attack into protoss either.
well it's just and idea I might have missed a huge flaw somewhere I'm not a fantastic player nor do I claim to be one
Would you care to elaborate as to why the toss keeps camping the middle of the map near all those spores instead of going straight to your main/bases and rape all your tech and eco? Just asking. Maybe you should have told hin that his units can actually fly and don't need to resort to the ground route.
Here is what you do to make sure he doesn't go around your spores.
You were @53 supply by the 8min mark without any notable aggression...?
But anyway, this toss had no idea what he was doing. He was massing Tempests vs your Composition instead of VR. You could have basically amoved his army the whole time behind your locust waves. Apart from the fact he lost nearly all his Templar to the Locusts @34min.
Tempests are for forcing engagements. He couldn't engage you front up anyway because of your setup and static defenses, so no point in massing them in the first place, and they did nothing to your composition in the first place.
On February 27 2013 18:43 ALPINA wrote: Problem is that viper is quite useless vs. skytoss.
Maybe it would be good idea to make Blinding cloud affect casters. If caster is in blinding cloud, they can't cast any spells costing mana. This would make hydra viper much more potent vs. storms.
But that might make hydra viper TOO strong because viper would hard counter all the units that hard counter the hydra (colo, storms)
On February 27 2013 18:43 ALPINA wrote: Problem is that viper is quite useless vs. skytoss.
Maybe it would be good idea to make Blinding cloud affect casters. If caster is in blinding cloud, they can't cast any spells costing mana. This would make hydra viper much more potent vs. storms.
But that might make hydra viper TOO strong because viper would hard counter all the units that hard counter the hydra (colo, storms)
Well now voidray HT are far too strong so...And it's not like viper hardcounters collossus. And for HTs - just spread them, not a big deal.
You were @53 supply by the 8min mark without any notable aggression...?
But anyway, this toss had no idea what he was doing. He was massing Tempests vs your Composition instead of VR. You could have basically amoved his army the whole time behind your locust waves. Apart from the fact he lost nearly all his Templar to the Locusts @34min.
Tempests are for forcing engagements. He couldn't engage you front up anyway because of your setup and static defenses, so no point in massing them in the first place, and they did nothing to your composition in the first place.
http://drop.sc/307371 - vs 1800 masters toss this guy goes for colossus voids templars
On February 27 2013 04:08 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: This. Could anybody give me replay about skytoss. I just get it working in my head. During fight Tempests do absolutely no dmg at all. 6 tempest may be able to take down 1 corruptor. Split corruptors and storm means nothing... what's left? Void? Just wate until cooldown.
I can't give you a replay but games like the one on this VOD http://de.twitch.tv/egstephano/b/369772964 starting around 2h 19min seem to suggest that it really is unreasonably hard to deal with Skytoss.
After I posted above, I went and watched some more of Stephano's past streaming sessions and he got beat pretty badly by the air toss + high templar comp in a couple games, so at least one high level zerg is having trouble with it. I have to admit it did look extremely difficult to engage. It's still very early on though. He also generally wasn't using infestors. I have to wonder whether zergs are overreacting to the infestor nerfs. In the one game I saw where he used infestors and queens he shut down this build before it got out of control. Infestors, in theory, seem like they should be really good to switch into, or to have, if your opponent starts massing voidrays to kill your corruptors. Also it seems like you might want a few swarm hosts mixed into your unit comp to keep the HT back.
On February 27 2013 11:31 Bagi wrote: I still think the answer lies in redesigning the corruptor ability. I think Blizzard actually said they wanted to make the corruptor (and the overseer) more interesting early on in the beta. What happened, did they run out of time? Corruption is a weak and uninspired ability that nobody would miss if it was taken out.
Since lategame air armies are what zerg struggles the most with, you could make the ability an upgrade in the greater spire. Give the corruptor attack a small AOE for example, or give them acid spores from the devourer. Doesn't really even matter what the ability does, as long as it makes corruptors a decent counter against the units it is supposed to counter.
I was thinking about this the other day as well. What if they simply upped the damage multiplier that corruption does against flying units to say 60% or 80%, to make it meaningful? Although spamming corruption isn't the hardest task in SC2 i can think of, it can be reasonably hard to do if you have to spam the spell 15 times, while trying to get off fungals, control the rest of your army, etc.
I don't think looking to the corruptor is the answer. Corruptors turn into broods, so making them counter toss air (the counter to brood's) renders toss air nonviable.
It would only work if they specifically assisted Zerg ground units vs air, or at least more so. Problem then is, with only six range you need a buttload to get close enough to use an ability so it's hard to use them as just support.
Suppose Corruption was range 10. Not much of a buff for corruptors directly since they still need to close to fight, but now a smaller number can soften up an air army for a combined ground and air attack...
On February 27 2013 11:31 Bagi wrote: I still think the answer lies in redesigning the corruptor ability. I think Blizzard actually said they wanted to make the corruptor (and the overseer) more interesting early on in the beta. What happened, did they run out of time? Corruption is a weak and uninspired ability that nobody would miss if it was taken out.
Since lategame air armies are what zerg struggles the most with, you could make the ability an upgrade in the greater spire. Give the corruptor attack a small AOE for example, or give them acid spores from the devourer. Doesn't really even matter what the ability does, as long as it makes corruptors a decent counter against the units it is supposed to counter.
I was thinking about this the other day as well. What if they simply upped the damage multiplier that corruption does against flying units to say 60% or 80%, to make it meaningful? Although spamming corruption isn't the hardest task in SC2 i can think of, it can be reasonably hard to do if you have to spam the spell 15 times, while trying to get off fungals, control the rest of your army, etc.
60/80% would be absurd, that would wipe out any kind of air play without a doubt
On the other hand something that could be fun is to make the 2min buff last 6min, or even forever, so corrupting, dying then remaxing over and over to kill a super army of death would be a legitimate strategy (Still I dont think that's how skytoss should be balanced)
skytoss is just broken at the moment. The stupid thing is that it should have been completely obvious to blizzard that it's the case.. Voids + colossi with some stalkers have been OP in WoL before until infestors and the removal of void speed eventually fixed this. In HotS however voids gotten a huge buff, stargate as a whole got more versatile and infestor damage against armored was nerfed quite a bit. This result was painfully obvious from the moment they practically simultaneously nerfed infestors and buffed voids... I think buffing hydra hp (tack in onto the speed or range upgrade with possibly extra cost) and/or nerfing the voidray a little bit is the obvious move here. Voidray feels interesting with it's current strength at other matchups though which is better than the near useless unit it is in WoL. I kind of feel the voidray would have a better role as an light unit. This way it can be nerfed to not be so good against zerg anymore (zerg has no unit that cares about light/armored anymore I believe) while it's role changes in PvT and PvZ. PvT it would be good against vikings (though still outranged) but countered by thors, a much more interesting dynamic than now where terran just counters any air unit with vikings except the mutalisk. In PvP it could then keep a similar role, it would lose some hp but stalkers wouldn't get a bonus against it anymore, ie. it be practically the same as now against stalkers but weaker against phoenixes and archons. Storm could also be really interesting then as it would actually take good chunks out of voids then.
Overall I actually think the premise of airtoss being a viable style is cool, it opens up lots of interesting play opportunities reminiscent of carriers in BW. The thing that sucks now though is that fights with air units are so intensely boring... - First of all air units tend to be countered by just massing enough air units of your own.. Phoenixes, corruptors or vikings.. That is boring and doesn't lead to cool positional play. Air units should be countered by ground with the ground army being stronger straight up but the air army being faster. It's a crucial mistake in design that they made dedicated AA units like the corruptor, viking and phoenix. Those should have been niche units or AoE units like their BW counterparts were (BW basically had no simple dedicated AA unit, they were all AoE or had something else interesting). - Secondly there should be cool abilities or AoE effects that air battles at least. Scourge or corsairs are sorely missed in this game now.. They provide a nice cap for air units: you want a few but not too many or the AoE units will get too strong..
TL;DR Skytoss is blatantly OP now. Interesting solution is to nerf voids HP but changing their armor type to light. Effect is a straight nerf for PvZ fixing skytoss, in PvP they get slightly better vs stalkers but more vulnerable to storm, archons and phoenix, in PvT they are weaker against marines and thors but they become strong against vikings.
edit: of course there are interesting other solutions, for example changing corruption on corruptors to be some AoE damage spell. It would give zerg a solution to deal with the massive skytoss army but leaves or even buffs smallish use of air units / corruptors as toss. It's also an interesting change to viking vs corruptor fights forcing T to counter zerg air with a mix of air and ground and not just mass viking. At the same time it converts the most boring skill in the game (corruption) into something interesting.. For example change name to corrosion and let it do 15 AoE damage to armored units in a wide area, useless in small fights, good in big ones.
Ok I think skytoss is broken. But I was able to kill a maxed out voidray/colossi/templar army. I would have to do this a lot more to be able to say for sure, but this is best success I ever have vs sky toss of lameness :D
Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Ehh? Zerg dominated toss in Wol, for a long time. This is beta and u complain that a strat (that hasn't been figured out yet) is imbalanced? Toss had to play so much better than zerg in wol, and that was retail, this is still beta. Try to find a solution rather than whining. I think every zerg player deserves to get stomped by toss for awhile, to equalize it
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Ehh? Zerg dominated toss in Wol, for a long time. This is beta and u complain that a strat (that hasn't been figured out yet) is imbalanced? Toss had to play so much better than zerg in wol, and that was retail, this is still beta. Try to find a solution rather than whining. I think every zerg player deserves to get stomped by toss for awhile, to equalize it
Its just silly the way it plays. It requires no multitasking, no scouting, no game sense, nothing. Just sit and wait for hydras or corupters to come so you can kill them...lol Im sure there are ways around it, but its just silly that one player needs to play 5x as well with 5x as much mutli tasking just to stay on even grounds. I guess is more of a game design issue, but either way its no fun to play.
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Ehh? Zerg dominated toss in Wol, for a long time. This is beta and u complain that a strat (that hasn't been figured out yet) is imbalanced? Toss had to play so much better than zerg in wol, and that was retail, this is still beta. Try to find a solution rather than whining. I think every zerg player deserves to get stomped by toss for awhile, to equalize it
Uh toss had it's period of dominance pvz. A lot of wol was protoss dominated. Love people who forget that and act like zerg was always favored vs toss rofl.
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Ehh? Zerg dominated toss in Wol, for a long time. This is beta and u complain that a strat (that hasn't been figured out yet) is imbalanced? Toss had to play so much better than zerg in wol, and that was retail, this is still beta. Try to find a solution rather than whining. I think every zerg player deserves to get stomped by toss for awhile, to equalize it
So your idea of having a fun, fair, balanced game, is that?
Is it just me or why is it that a lot of of you just come up with sub-optimal balance changes when the problem is bad game design? Sure, they can mend the zvp matchup with some inelegant balance changes but this will not make the matchup fun by itself. The core of the problem is not balance, it's game design. Death ball design is bad, air-to-air battles are bad, a-move units are bad, terrible-terrible damage is bad, period. These basics have been proven and kept repeated by many for so long, but those in charge just doesn't seem to listen and learn. I can't help feeling tricked by all of what is HoTS right now.
Can anyone enlighten me, why are Tempests still in the game? This unit is one of the dullest, lamest design Blizzard has ever come up with. Yeah, I guess Tempests are good, because they are special... their specialty is that they have long range, and when we say long, we really mean it, like looooooooooooong range, get it? And to compensate this, they have a downside of course, you would never guess: their dps, it's low, how fascinating, you just got to love that, right? No, micro is not involved at all, who needs cool micro, grow up for God's sake...
Ok, end of sarcasm, what is the puspose of Tempests in HoTS? Originally it was to counter Brood Lords, right? But there is the Carrier, which can be microed effectively now and the revamped Void Ray, which also involves a bit of micro, so both of them are clearly better-designed units... which just leeds back to the original question, why are they needed? Definately not for breaking siege lines as basicly every protoss unit counters siege tanks already, so why? So my point is, if you take them out of the equasion, would it help against the opness of airtoss?
On March 02 2013 00:14 Saigon2246 wrote: Is it just me or why is it that a lot of of you just come up with sub-optimal balance changes when the problem is bad game design? Sure, they can mend the zvp matchup with some inelegant balance changes but this will not make the matchup fun by itself. The core of the problem is not balance, it's game design. Death ball design is bad, air-to-air battles are bad, a-move units are bad, terrible-terrible damage is bad, period. These basics have been proven and kept repeated by many for so long, but those in charge just doesn't seem to listen and learn. I can't help feeling tricked by all of what is HoTS right now.
Can anyone enlighten me, why are Tempests still in the game? This unit is one of the dullest, lamest design Blizzard has ever come up with. Yeah, I guess Tempests are good, because they are special... their specialty is that they have long range, and when we say long, we really mean it, like looooooooooooong range, get it? And to compensate this, they have a downside of course, you would never guess: their dps, it's low, how fascinating, you just got to love that, right? No, micro is not involved at all, who needs cool micro, grow up for God's sake...
Ok, end of sarcasm, what is the puspose of Tempests in HoTS? Originally it was to counter Brood Lords, right? But there is the Carrier, which can be microed effectively now and the revamped Void Ray, which also involves a bit of micro, so both of them are clearly better-designed units... which just leeds back to the original question, why are they needed? Definately not for breaking siege lines as basicly every protoss unit counters siege tanks already, so why? So my point is, if you take them out of the equasion, would it help against the opness of airtoss?
I'm all for the removal of tempests, I too think they are solving a problem that is no longer there, now that protoss void-rays can fight corruptors and IT no longer get upgrades... protoss can go Air+templar/archon to fight the Infestor/brood/corruptor.
but, if they remove the tempest, carrier build time will have to be decreased to something like: 90s-100s (120s+build time of 4 interceptors is just stupid).
Oh well, it no longer matter, the game is out in less than 2 weeks...
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Ehh? Zerg dominated toss in Wol, for a long time. This is beta and u complain that a strat (that hasn't been figured out yet) is imbalanced? Toss had to play so much better than zerg in wol, and that was retail, this is still beta. Try to find a solution rather than whining. I think every zerg player deserves to get stomped by toss for awhile, to equalize it
#1 That was only in top games that this "domination" happened. Rest of the games Zerg didn't dominate shit #2 The Broodlord/infestor tactic only appeared because there was not other realistic way for Zerg to beat Toss. So don't blame this on Zerg players, blame it on stupic Blizzard balancing mechanics.
BTW in WoL toss still had a fair chance to beat zerg late game with Motherships and well done blink stalker sniping of broodlords. Zerg cannot do anything against Skytoss atm. This is same shit that voidrays/colossi/stalkers was before zergs started playing all spines and teching to broodlords. But this time there is no next tier of units that Zerg can start using to beat this or cost effective all purpose caster like what infestor was.
Sooo, has any of the people telling the OP his unit composition doesn't work actually tried it? There are lots of posts repeating how bad hydras are against Skytoss + HTs; well, yes, they are, but they aren't part of the unit composition recommended by the OP. It's some Ultras, some Vipers, and mass Corruptors, with enough cash in the bank to remax quickly even if you trade evenly or at a small loss.
On March 03 2013 04:20 Empirimancer wrote: Sooo, has any of the people telling the OP his unit composition doesn't work actually tried it? There are lots of posts repeating how bad hydras are against Skytoss + HTs; well, yes, they are, but they aren't part of the unit composition recommended by the OP. It's some Ultras, some Vipers, and mass Corruptors, with enough cash in the bank to remax quickly even if you trade evenly or at a small loss.
Yup because corruptors are trash verse sky toss. Unless the protoss is going to be super nice and not make voidrays, corruptors are the worst option. Ultra/swarmhost/hydra/viper is a much better composition against sky toss and your best chance imo at killing it.
On March 03 2013 04:20 Empirimancer wrote: Sooo, has any of the people telling the OP his unit composition doesn't work actually tried it? There are lots of posts repeating how bad hydras are against Skytoss + HTs; well, yes, they are, but they aren't part of the unit composition recommended by the OP. It's some Ultras, some Vipers, and mass Corruptors, with enough cash in the bank to remax quickly even if you trade evenly or at a small loss.
I saw Stephano lose a couple games using some combination corruptor, ultra, ling against the toss air comp. Once HT were out, all of the trades seemed to go in the P's favor. The vipers get feedbacked by HTs and generally seem to be completely useless. I'm going to guess that SHs are going to have to be used (perhaps not in great number) in order to beat this comp since the SHs' effective range is massive and they can keep the HT back or kill them outright. The other units would be some combination of infestor, hydra, queen, ultra, spore and corruptor.
As an aside, I dont' feel too bad for zerg yet. If P domination continues at the pro level for a couple months then I'll start feeling bad. Also Protoss never had a period of dominance during WOL, IIRC. Perhaps it's their time to shine, although I believe Terran is the strongest now, based on GM ranking results,so perhaps once HoTS is released we will come full circle and we'll be treated to (or forced to endure, depending on your race loyalities) another period of utter domination by Terran.
On February 28 2013 14:58 blade55555 wrote: Ok I think skytoss is broken. But I was able to kill a maxed out voidray/colossi/templar army. I would have to do this a lot more to be able to say for sure, but this is best success I ever have vs sky toss of lameness :D
Best chance to kill it IMO and I did it with ultra/hydra/swarmhost.
Have you used this combination some more? How is it faring? From a purely HoTS armchair perspective I would guess that SHs are the key to beating this comp since they would seem to make it a lot more difficult to be cost efficient with HTs.
On February 28 2013 14:58 blade55555 wrote: Ok I think skytoss is broken. But I was able to kill a maxed out voidray/colossi/templar army. I would have to do this a lot more to be able to say for sure, but this is best success I ever have vs sky toss of lameness :D
Best chance to kill it IMO and I did it with ultra/hydra/swarmhost.
Have you used this combination some more? How is it faring? From a purely HoTS armchair perspective I would guess that SHs are the key to beating this comp since they would seem to make it a lot more difficult to be cost efficient with HTs.
I have used it to a decent amount of success quiet a few times. On every map in hots except newkirk you can do it and win just fine, on a map like newkirk (the map where split map is going to happen a lot) you can't win because you have the same income as your opponent as your opponent should be taking his half of the map even though he doesn't even need it. Once toss gets to 5 bases I don't know if you can ever kill him unless it was on a map like whirlwind where zerg can get many bases :p.
On March 03 2013 06:18 KawaiiRice wrote: ultra hydra nydus is working fine for me but I haven't played that many gms yet.
Where do you put the nydus? Can't imagine you getting it anywhere inside a good protoss's base.
Hydras just melt to VR + Storm.... Zlots will distract utlras for long enough for templar to get off storms, suddenly you have 0 hydras and a bunch of charged up void rays killing every ultralisk that you posses in <1 second each.
On March 03 2013 06:18 KawaiiRice wrote: ultra hydra nydus is working fine for me but I haven't played that many gms yet.
Where do you put the nydus? Can't imagine you getting it anywhere inside a good protoss's base.
Hydras just melt to VR + Storm.... Zlots will distract utlras for long enough for templar to get off storms, suddenly you have 0 hydras and a bunch of charged up void rays killing every ultralisk that you posses in <1 second each.
While I don't really feel nydus + ultra/hydra is that good vs it, voidray/templar is actually beatable. Swarmhost/hydra/ultra actually deals with that composition super well and I have multiple replays (one verse puck who literally loves chargelot/templar/voidray also one verse a korean toss and some others). I do still think voidrays are to strong though don't think I will ever change my mind on that xD
Mass static defense (mainly Spores) push with Hydra/Swarm Host/Viper can be difficult to deal with in the late game. Locust keep your High Templar at bay and Vipers hug the Spores and grab air units and Hydras/Spores gib them.
On March 03 2013 17:53 Arco wrote: Mass static defense (mainly Spores) push with Hydra/Swarm Host/Viper can be difficult to deal with in the late game. Locust keep your High Templar at bay and Vipers hug the Spores and grab air units and Hydras/Spores gib them.
Eh I can already tell you something that beats that easy. Tempests will be able to shoot spores from a mile away as well as snipe vipers before they even get close to abduct. Voidray/tempest/templar is a super strong composition and using mass spore/viper isn't going to be that good due to feedback (same range as abduct) and tempest range.
On March 01 2013 07:21 EuroRabbit wrote: Skytoss just makes this game sad to play. Toss just sits there and does NOTHING the entire game but defend with cannons, FF's and voids untill they get storm and archons with charglots. I just hate the way this match up is going right now, toss already had it easy enough in WoL and now its even worse with amove armys, it really is poor game design from everyone at blizzard.
The saddest part about skytoss right now is much better you have to play as zerg to beat it. It requires little to no mutli tasking from toss, they just look at production facilities the entire time and count probes while sitting somewhere between their 3rd and nat. Even 3-4 200/200 hydra armys are not enough to kill off or even do a significant amount of damage between voids, charglots and storms. It really is a joke how easy PvZ is right now.
Rofl.. welcome to what every protoss thought about PvZ for most of 2012 with the infestor/broodlord/mass spine crawler turtle crap. Any unbiased player will tell you that the tides have just simply been reversed at this point right now, so yes, if it continues to be a problem a month or two after HOTS release, I certainly hope Blizzard will do something to fix it asap, and not let the zerg imbalance of 2012 repeat itself with another race in 2013 HOTS.
But please cut out that Toss had it easy enough in WoL.. look at the TLPD charts - protoss was undoubtedly the worst race overall at the professional levels for the entire span of Wings of Liberty, this can't even be disputed. Not only did Protoss have by far the fewest months of dominance, the "sad zealot" days of protoss was just as long and even had lower win rates than zerg at the release of WoL (when it was very underpowered). Aside from just win rate charts, this can simply be just proven by looking at the total tournament winnings, where there is just 1 protoss in the top 10. Not to overuse a Tastosis joke, but that protoss (MC) is there because he literally lived on a plane.
And no, I'm not crying that Protoss was unplayable in WoL, because its certainly a strong ladder race for casually competitive players, but balance should always be based on the tip top levels. Protoss was anything but an easy race at Code-S levels.
many Ps argue that Zs where stronger in WoL. (that is wrong, show me some numbers plz) so, now they want to be the stronger race... are you kidding me? if thats you opinion how fairplay works... no gg bye!
On March 03 2013 06:18 KawaiiRice wrote: ultra hydra nydus is working fine for me but I haven't played that many gms yet.
Where do you put the nydus? Can't imagine you getting it anywhere inside a good protoss's base.
Hydras just melt to VR + Storm.... Zlots will distract utlras for long enough for templar to get off storms, suddenly you have 0 hydras and a bunch of charged up void rays killing every ultralisk that you posses in <1 second each.
anywhere near protoss expos, mixed with doom dropping in bases, simultaneous nydus cross map etc. just constantly do dmg once P is spread out at all. I play it sorta like tvp dropping in wol except nydus lets me teleport anywhere I want. Later on I think sitting a group of infestors in the middle of the map to stall out / chain fungal P pushes will be very useful late game but I still need to work on a lot of stuff/timings.
it will probably be exponentially harder to execute once I get to high gm protosses but I'm actually eager to try it before I call anything imbalanced.
On March 03 2013 22:29 StarscreamG1 wrote: The skytoss has a lot of weaknesses early and mid game, it can be exploit. Void rays and tempest aren't an all around unit like infestor.
On March 03 2013 22:29 StarscreamG1 wrote: The skytoss has a lot of weaknesses early and mid game, it can be exploit. Void rays and tempest aren't an all around unit like infestor.
That's why you hide behind cannons just like infestors did behind spines.
On March 04 2013 00:48 mantequilla wrote: Forgive my ignorance but doesn't streaming roaches and lings endlessly early-mid game work like before?
Have you heard of the mothership core yet?
mothership core offers nothing vs roaches, it's the new voidray ability that enables you to kill roaches before they destroy your base.
i would love some theorycraft so il just throw it there :
what if protoss makes like 4 cannons in a spot where he can defend main base and 2 more bases + he throws near cannons a nexus . 400 minerals not such a big deal when you go air . you eighter drump all minerals in warp prism zealot harass or cannons . then i ask what if he adds a nexus with cannons :> i dont think zerg can break this .
On March 04 2013 00:48 mantequilla wrote: Forgive my ignorance but doesn't streaming roaches and lings endlessly early-mid game work like before?
Have you heard of the mothership core yet?
mothership core offers nothing vs roaches, it's the new voidray ability that enables you to kill roaches before they destroy your base.
time warp and photon overcharge would like to have a word with you
asdf, that timewarp change from oracle to msc still makes so little sense to me that my brain tries to ignore that fact timewarp is pretty good vs roaches of course (although i still dont think overcharge does a lot)
On March 03 2013 22:29 StarscreamG1 wrote: The skytoss has a lot of weaknesses early and mid game, it can be exploit. Void rays and tempest aren't an all around unit like infestor.
Actually voidrays are exactly what an all round air unit is O.O
The mothership core for scouting purposes and for the Air to Ground vs single queens (with a zeal or stalker help) as well as the overcharge on nexus to defend allins gives makes ZvP harder for zerg in HOTS.
Muta being stronger but phoenix getting 1 extra range may balance each other out
New swarm hosts gives protoss an allin they should be worried about
Vipers make collosus+stalker less favorable lategame possibly as roach+hydra+viper does decent against collosus stalker
Infestors are relatively the same with +1 range on fungal but projectile cast imo
Ultras are stronger vs zealots
Creep spread is nerfed cuz the tumor has to travel for ~2 seconds before rebuilding as it spreads. This makes creep spread slower in HOTS.
New voidray is sick good vs litterally everything when combined with storm. Hydras? blanket storm makes them worthless once protoss gets enough gas to get it. Vipers die to feedback before they can abduct anything and they cost more gas than templar. Corruptors do well vs everything except for voidrays which demolish them. Storm+voidrays makes it even more 1 sided. Ultras are better vs zealots but are very weak to voidrays and weak when attacking into buildings (cannon/pylon walls). As the protoss wants to max out before attacking if they ever try to attack at all.
mothership overcharge+mothership AtG makes allins or runbys vs skytoss more difficult to pull off in HOTS than in WOL. Now you can get away with fewer cannons than before.
Skytoss playstyle just gets a million voidrays, a few tempest and 4-10 templar for storm then camps behind a ton of cannons while inching forward with tempest. Nothing zerg can do to cost effectively stop that IMHO.
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
haha I love when people like you say stupid things like that when most protosses (will pro's) agree that it's over powered (MC has stated that any protoss who loses a pvz after 20 minutes might as well quit sc2).
Also if sky toss is gone in 3 months it will be because blizzard nerfed it. Zerg has hydra/swarmhost/ultra which is the best chance you have at killing it, but the sky toss composition is still to powerful.
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
your post implies that zergs have high templar and protoss don't
storms and voidrays demolish corruptors storms demolish hydras feedback nullifies vipers tempests don't need high DPS, they do infinite free damage because no unit can ever attack them. not saying it's unbeatable, but pretty much all I've heard from pros and forum members of all skill levels and races is that it's a little too strong.
also, I like your balance whine attitude. All zergs are actually terrible at the game and only beat you in WoL because of infestors and broodlords, right?
Creep spread is nerfed cuz the tumor has to travel for ~2 seconds before rebuilding as it spreads. This makes creep spread slower in HOTS.
It's more like a buff. You can cancel tumor if there is enemy nearby, when in WOL it will be instakilled with 1 shot
Creep Tumor scouting trick. Heart of the Swarm expansion introduced one nice cosmetical upgrade to Creep Tumors. Instead instant tumor spawn, you can see snake-animation, which lasts 3 ingame seconds. During this time you can cancel it. But the trick is about small range scouting around future placement for Creep Tumors. Even if it's not placed, you still will be able to see around at 3,5 range. It means that you can do some scouting at the edge of your creep zone by placing tumors and cancelling them during 3 ingame seconds.
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
Nice trolling post, it worked quite well. OT: the nerfs gonna come, i guess enjoy the next month to the fullest.
Infestors are relatively the same with +1 range on fungal but projectile cast imo
The projectile is too slow to catch the faster units The damage is too low to affect the heavier unit Infestor are complete garbage and shouldnt ever be made
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
Nice trolling post, it worked quite well. OT: the nerfs gonna come, i guess enjoy the next month to the fullest.
Can we stop talking about nerfs and focus on buffs instead?
The Corruptor has been aching for some kind of rework or buff to make it a more capable unit like its siblings the Viking and Phoenix. I think bringing back some of the Corruptors Alpha abilities would neatly fit in for this. Move NP from the Infestor to the Corruptor, but modify it so that the affected units are rendered immobile, like the Alpha Corruptor Corruption abilitiy (if Zerg want to move them, just use Vipers). Since the Infestor is now down a spell I think that at least warrants giving ITs back their upgrades. Even better, split Fungal into 2 abilities (1 slow that gains the +damage from the Corruptor's original Corruption and 1 damage spell).
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
Nice trolling post, it worked quite well. OT: the nerfs gonna come, i guess enjoy the next month to the fullest.
Can we stop talking about nerfs and focus on buffs instead?
The Corruptor has been aching for some kind of rework or buff to make it a more capable unit like its siblings the Viking and Phoenix. I think bringing back some of the Corruptors Alpha abilities would neatly fit in for this. Move NP from the Infestor to the Corruptor, but modify it so that the affected units are rendered immobile, like the Alpha Corruptor Corruption abilitiy (if Zerg want to move them, just use Vipers). Since the Infestor is now down a spell I think that at least warrants giving ITs back their upgrades. Even better, split Fungal into 2 abilities (1 slow that gains the +damage from the Corruptor's original Corruption and 1 damage spell).
It would be awesome if they could experiment a little bit in that direction. But i guess Blizz is afraid to change the game too much, if only there was some kind of sandbox environment to test such changes without confusing the current player base. IMO using a dedicated server with only a small population could be a nice approach. They can give this setup even a unique, cool name like "Beta Test". lol
Once the protoss establishes the ultimate sky army of void ray carrier with cannons protecting bases from ling run bys and good observer spread, there's nothing the zerg can do. In a straight up battle void all protoss has to do is focus fire corruptors with void rays, and carriers will clean up the rest as long as you have an upgrade advantage (which you should cuz you can chrono boost, there's no point in chronoing stargates in most situations as you can just get more of them) We dont even need psi storms. Infestors fungal growth? I can recall out while at the same time, kill off 4-5 infestors with the new carrier leash range targeting micro thingy, and dont even talk abot hydras, as long as you dont engage in open ground they are nothing but marines without stim. vipers may help a bit but it doesnt change the fact that hydras die REALLY fast to carriers, I'll say skytoss composition is almost unbeatable The key does not lie in beating the composition itself, but exploiting how much time/resources is needed to make it work. I feel like instead of working towards a perfect composition to beat skytoss, zergs should figure out specific timings to scout/pressure the protoss and prevent the protoss fleet from achieving 3-3 upgrades and 200 supply.
Hi i'm terran and i was thinking about all of what you guys said about skytoss and i'm wondering if the following strategy is possible for zerg.
Since it seems very difficult to touch a FFE now that Mscore is in game ,maybe zerg can exploit the weakness of the third while protoss is establishing it. maybe you could deny 3rd with a lot of roaches back and forth just sniping the nexus and go back and abuse the lack of mobility of voidray.
Somebody have already tried to sacrifice roach to deny indefinitevly the 3rd? Is it worth it?
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
haha I love when people like you say stupid things like that when most protosses (will pro's) agree that it's over powered (MC has stated that any protoss who loses a pvz after 20 minutes might as well quit sc2).
Also if sky toss is gone in 3 months it will be because blizzard nerfed it. Zerg has hydra/swarmhost/ultra which is the best chance you have at killing it, but the sky toss composition is still to powerful.
Whatever happened to Zerg ingenuity? Any case consider that Overlords have no production cap. Think Naruto's Kagebunshin.
Which of the overlords contain hydras? Either case, this is similar to BW Prtoss dropping zealots on top of siege tanks to waste shots and injure each other. Just saw MMA break a defensive contain by dropping marauders on top of QXC's sieged tanks.
Another idea is to overwhelm Templar/tempest with sheer numbers of spawned units. That a few well timed abducts during the confusion and it is possible to break a P's APM.
On March 05 2013 03:34 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Whatever happened to Zerg ingenuity? Any case consider that Overlords have no production cap. Think Naruto's Kagebunshin.
Which of the overlords contain hydras? Either case, this is similar to BW Prtoss dropping zealots on top of siege tanks to waste shots and injure each other. Just saw MMA break a defensive contain by dropping marauders on top of QXC's sieged tanks.
Another idea is to overwhelm Templar/tempest with sheer numbers of spawned units. That a few well timed abducts during the confusion and it is possible to break a P's APM.
What in the world are you trying to accomplish loading hydras in the overlords? I seriously don't even know where to start with any of your statements other than to suggest on mar 12 you try it and tell us how it works out for you.
On March 05 2013 03:34 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Whatever happened to Zerg ingenuity? Any case consider that Overlords have no production cap. Think Naruto's Kagebunshin.
Which of the overlords contain hydras? Either case, this is similar to BW Prtoss dropping zealots on top of siege tanks to waste shots and injure each other. Just saw MMA break a defensive contain by dropping marauders on top of QXC's sieged tanks.
Another idea is to overwhelm Templar/tempest with sheer numbers of spawned units. That a few well timed abducts during the confusion and it is possible to break a P's APM.
What in the world are you trying to accomplish loading hydras in the overlords? I seriously don't even know where to start with any of your statements other than to suggest on mar 12 you try it and tell us how it works out for you.
He is just saying that you have tons of overlords buffering the damage while the other overlords puke hydras through the air into the sky toss fleet. It's a great idea but I would suggest using banelings instead of hydras because of the splash dmg.
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
haha I love when people like you say stupid things like that when most protosses (will pro's) agree that it's over powered (MC has stated that any protoss who loses a pvz after 20 minutes might as well quit sc2).
Also if sky toss is gone in 3 months it will be because blizzard nerfed it. Zerg has hydra/swarmhost/ultra which is the best chance you have at killing it, but the sky toss composition is still to powerful.
I have studied Stephano's stream looking for an answer.
Here's what I gathered:
Don't make hydras unless you want to lose the game. Hydras just plain suck vs skytoss. They just don't have enough life or armor and they clump a lot. They're litterally a waste of money unless Protoss somehow has no storms left and no Colossus left. Its like a money black hole, seriously. Its way better to make queens instead. Plus, they need 2 expensive upgrades just to deserve showing up in battle. Save your money. I'm never making an Hydralisk in ZvP ever again unless they get a substantial HP buff. (And no, it wouldn't break ZvT - Blue flame hellions still exist) Even in a forest of spores they still die and are not cost efficient.
Upgraded corruptors are not terrible By upgraded corruptors, I mean double spire upgrades as soon as you get a Lair. Corruptors do a nice job and I saw Stephano actually clear the fleet once or twice with double upgraded corruptors. He still needed perfect micro and awesome ling-ultra control, but that's better than flat out dying to a noname player when you were a master of ZvP in WoL. With queens to heal them, corruptors have some survivability and can win vs overcharged VRs fungalled over spores.
Muta/Infestor is kinda somewhat playable If you can sneak in your infestors in good positions to allow your mutas to retreat, you can win battles. It's worse than in WoL, but not that much.
Make tons of spores and spines and get the creep on his side or you're just dead No battles can be won against skytoss unless you can retreat easily into some spores and spines.
Swarm host/Queen/Spores/Spines can be able to set up outside the third and batter it down. I think this is one of the best options if you can sneakily get your queens there and entrench yourself. But Toss will probably soon figure it out and this play will stop working.
Vipers won't save you All the Abduct shenenigans I've seen have never convinced me that they're making a difference at all. Sure you can peel off a few units from the Deathball and kill them some of the time, but as often, if not more, Vipers just die to feedback or Tempests without doing anything useful. I would rather have 2 more corruptors for the gas. The best use I've seen for them is to Blind Cloud cannons in remote expos to take them out with lings. Otherwise, they should just stay over spores to pull if they can. I would never make more than 2 or 3 Vipers.
I've also checked some TLO games. In the one vs Kyo, he doesn't even try to engage the Doom Fleet until the end. They fight over TLO's spores. He's maxed on hydras and he loses everything. 100 supply lost vs 30 for Kyo. Just don't make hydras. They're not any better than in WoL, since you're fighting on creep anyway.
So yeah, these are the basic ideas. You're still gonna die horribly, but maybe you'll be able to steal a game off a slightly worse player than you once in a while.
On March 05 2013 03:34 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Whatever happened to Zerg ingenuity? Any case consider that Overlords have no production cap. Think Naruto's Kagebunshin.
Which of the overlords contain hydras? Either case, this is similar to BW Prtoss dropping zealots on top of siege tanks to waste shots and injure each other. Just saw MMA break a defensive contain by dropping marauders on top of QXC's sieged tanks.
Another idea is to overwhelm Templar/tempest with sheer numbers of spawned units. That a few well timed abducts during the confusion and it is possible to break a P's APM.
What in the world are you trying to accomplish loading hydras in the overlords? I seriously don't even know where to start with any of your statements other than to suggest on mar 12 you try it and tell us how it works out for you.
He is just saying that you have tons of overlords buffering the damage while the other overlords puke hydras through the air into the sky toss fleet. It's a great idea but I would suggest using banelings instead of hydras because of the splash dmg.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Assuming late late game, Between mass SH spawns, spine crawler forest (immune to storm and conserves supply), mass upgraded corruptors, the overlords will have +3 armor whether you drop banelings, hydras or ultras (to clean up HTs).
Sheer numbers (30+ on patrol command to prevent clumping) of overlords can make it very hard to micro. See below:
On March 05 2013 03:34 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Whatever happened to Zerg ingenuity? Any case consider that Overlords have no production cap. Think Naruto's Kagebunshin.
Which of the overlords contain hydras? Either case, this is similar to BW Prtoss dropping zealots on top of siege tanks to waste shots and injure each other. Just saw MMA break a defensive contain by dropping marauders on top of QXC's sieged tanks.
Another idea is to overwhelm Templar/tempest with sheer numbers of spawned units. That a few well timed abducts during the confusion and it is possible to break a P's APM.
What in the world are you trying to accomplish loading hydras in the overlords? I seriously don't even know where to start with any of your statements other than to suggest on mar 12 you try it and tell us how it works out for you.
He is just saying that you have tons of overlords buffering the damage while the other overlords puke hydras through the air into the sky toss fleet. It's a great idea but I would suggest using banelings instead of hydras because of the splash dmg.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
Assuming late late game, Between mass SH spawns, spine crawler forest (immune to storm and conserves supply), mass upgraded corruptors, the overlords will have +3 armor whether you drop banelings, hydras or ultras (to clean up HTs).
On March 04 2013 04:51 lorestarcraft wrote: Tempets are really low DPS, Storms kille interceptors, Vipers can blinding cloud and pull, Corruptors are Corruptors...
HOTS isn't even out yet and Z is crying already. If Z's are having trouble it's because they are bad any everything but macro.
Time to learn how to actually play, omg. Skytoss will be gone in 3 months.
Nice trolling post, it worked quite well. OT: the nerfs gonna come, i guess enjoy the next month to the fullest.
Can we stop talking about nerfs and focus on buffs instead?
The Corruptor has been aching for some kind of rework or buff to make it a more capable unit like its siblings the Viking and Phoenix. I think bringing back some of the Corruptors Alpha abilities would neatly fit in for this. Move NP from the Infestor to the Corruptor, but modify it so that the affected units are rendered immobile, like the Alpha Corruptor Corruption abilitiy (if Zerg want to move them, just use Vipers). Since the Infestor is now down a spell I think that at least warrants giving ITs back their upgrades. Even better, split Fungal into 2 abilities (1 slow that gains the +damage from the Corruptor's original Corruption and 1 damage spell).
It would be awesome if they could experiment a little bit in that direction. But i guess Blizz is afraid to change the game too much, if only there was some kind of sandbox environment to test such changes without confusing the current player base. IMO using a dedicated server with only a small population could be a nice approach. They can give this setup even a unique, cool name like "Beta Test". lol
Thanks for the compliment. Sadly, based on the AMA today it seems that DB will not be making any changes to the Corruptor, apparently they couldn't think of anything better than a simple damage increase abiltiy since he was saying everything else people will complain of as a nerf.
On March 07 2013 15:15 Disastorm wrote: i wonder if a zerg player litterally does the spore trick and gets like 270 supply if they could beat skytoss lol
I don't think you could humanly make 70 spores and then cancel them all in time xD
If this is so OP why did we not see it in a single game at MLG dallas? My take is that it is not an easy place to get to, despite what you all say, except against a passive opponent.
On March 18 2013 14:21 DeathToSquid wrote: If this is so OP why did we not see it in a single game at MLG dallas? My take is that it is not an easy place to get to, despite what you all say, except against a passive opponent.
Well there were only 4 PvZ's at Dallas...
2 were Life vs Minigun and Leenock vs Babyknight, where, to be honest, the zerg players just out classed their opponents.
Another one was Sen vs Parting, where Parting won his games with a 6-7 gate, a soul train, and a 3 base colo build. Parting didn't even attempt to go for the composition.
Finally there was MC vs Life, which was a 6 pool, a 2 base colossus build, and a phoenix colossus play which life did a timing attack against.
Notice, out of these 4 matches, only one really had a chance at being a good candidates to transition to sky toss. Certainly this isn't a big enough sample size to determine its professional viability.
[QUOTE]On March 08 2013 03:08 -VapidSlug- wrote: [QUOTE]On February 25 2013 04:48 TheNewerBakery wrote: EDIT: [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDBhlKNDFrc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDBhlKNDFrc[/url]
A video which shows the tactics and how it works. If there are any problems with it, feel free to tell me and I will follow up with another video .[/QUOTE]
I don't see any situation where the toss would have so many tempest and colossus vs. almost only corruptor and ultralisk. The toss would probably have gone almost only void upon seeing only corruptor.
EPT
.
- if you've been stressing him all game with multi-pronged attacks and drop feints and so forth the probability leans slightly in your favour) and you can move on to the next one. You never want the deathball. You want to basically base-race and keep on expanding.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HUHKs9b.jpg)
timewarp is pretty good vs roaches of course (although i still dont think overcharge does a lot)![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iKFSazq.png)
