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On October 11 2014 06:26 Caetus wrote: I'll change it up so that the robo is before the 2 gateways, I am always casting revelation scouting etc. etc. phoenix would be a good idea to go along with the coli, but do phoenix's out dps vikings? Because terran usually gets about 2 vikings per collosus, so how many phoenixes would it take to beat that number? 3:2 ratio?
Best advice I can give you is to check a VOD of a progamer doing phoenix colossus. CJ hero did it quite a few times. Anyway, you wanna start phoenix production after you started your robo bay. Make sure you have enough gas to start a colossus and thermal lances once the robo bay finishes (~7:45). In order to do this you should take your 3rd and 4th gases around 6:00. On 3 bases you have 720 gas/min. That's enough to costantly build phoenixes from 2 stargates, colossus from 1 robo, and a few upgrades (including phoenix range and zealot charge). And yeah you need a lot of phoenixes. At first you focus on colossus production, but once you have 4+ you should focus on phoenixes.
On October 11 2014 06:26 Caetus wrote: I'll change it up so that the robo is before the 2 gateways, I am always casting revelation scouting etc. etc. phoenix would be a good idea to go along with the coli, but do phoenix's out dps vikings? Because terran usually gets about 2 vikings per collosus, so how many phoenixes would it take to beat that number? 3:2 ratio?
Not sure at what level you are playing at, but generally, you just want to keep producing without hampering the rest of your regular build-up. Straight up out-dps'ing or beating Vikings isn't necessarily the critical aspect. I think the most important thing is that the Phoenix'es tank viking shots (vikings deal reduced damage to non-Armored), so that the Colossus can do their work unhampered.
If you're playing at a level where the opponent focuses with vikings while micro'ing bio, I'm assuming that you can focus vikings with stalkers and phoenix, so that the Phoenix-Viking ratio becomes relatively unimportant as you'll chew through the vikings.
Most important is to buy them but not buy too many that you lack critical aoe such as colossus and storm in the lategame.
Yeah, agreed. As long as long as you plan on getting storm, at some point, which you should, then ratios don't really matter. As long as you don't "overmake" colossi, if they make enough vikings to snipe your colossi, then your ground army should be vastly superior to theirs, anyways. So, you win either way. It's more dangerous to make too many phoenix than too few. As you're trying to tank shots for colossi and eliminate medivacs, where winning the battle vs vikings is kind of a bonus and secondary.
how to defend proxy 3 rax? I just lost to that, scouted, too many marines to even do anything.
Can you add a few more details? Generally if it's a stimless pure marine proxy 3-rax you want to kite with stalkers from an early point on (sending out the stalkers to his marine force and start trading shields for hit points), without losing any of your forces. Keep making stalkers and possibly a sentry to cut him on your ramp if you feel too pressured, don't lose you MsC out in the open.
On October 12 2014 20:27 Extenz wrote: how to defend proxy 3 rax? I just lost to that, scouted, too many marines to even do anything.
That kind of shenanigan hits early, and if you don't probe scout you won't see it coming. You can defend with adequate micro though ; chrono only stalkers from one gate and pull probes to deal with the first wave. It's a lot about preventing the marine ball from snowballing, so don't be reluctant to use probes to fight. Make a mothership core too ; if you can buy enough time with probes + stalkers for photon overcharge you'll be in a good spot if you don't lose too many probes, because once you reach warpgate and have 4-5 stalkers combat shield less marines evaporate. Don't underestimate sentries, being able to block your ramp / guardian shield can be a life saver and if you lose some probes and forget to balance your mining again you could end up with quite some gas you'll be more than happy to spend in those little machines.
On October 15 2014 10:04 vik7 wrote: hey guys i'm trying to find a good vod for pvt on defending drops
At every level, some things are key : a) you need obs, at least 3-4. Position one in front of your base, one to spy on your enemy's development and 1-2 to spot incoming drops. I usually stick on 3 but most people seem to go for 4 nowadays. b) with medivac boost, you need more units than in WoL to defend drops. Even if you go templar tech, you should research blink and have 6-9 stalkers ready to defend drops ; they'll even come in useful if your opponent produces widow mines, since you can bait shots with them and need them to clean mines without losing units. c) key point : building placement. Place tech buildings between your bases so that they're not too exposed, and spread pylons across your bases to be sure there is no blind spot and you see medivacs coming. This is important to do as early as possible so that you see, for instance, a factory floating to your main and can prevent it from landing. d) especially if you're not in a very high league, don't hesitate to use cannons in exposed mineral lines. If you watched Rain play on his stream, he very often adds one cannon in each base even before he takes his third. e) once you have templar tech and charge, defending drops becomes a lot easier because feedback/storm/chargelots are very supply efficient against 1-2 medivacs, especially if you have cannons. f) and, of course, overcharge can be your savior if you missed something, especially when you're still on 2 bases.
Against early widow mines drops, I usually keep my second obs in the main until the timing of a likely WM drop is expired and position my stalkers between the two bases, with the msc ready to overcharge.
Even if it's arguably his weakest mu, any Zest PvT replay from GSL/IEM (go to spawningtool to get some) should give you a good idea of how to position your units/buildings to defend against drops. It's a lot about positioning, not panicking and seeing it coming before the units are unloaded.
On October 15 2014 10:04 vik7 wrote: hey guys i'm trying to find a good vod for pvt on defending drops
At every level, some things are key : a) you need obs, at least 3-4. Position one in front of your base, one to spy on your enemy's development and 1-2 to spot incoming drops. I usually stick on 3 but most people seem to go for 4 nowadays. b) with medivac boost, you need more units than in WoL to defend drops. Even if you go templar tech, you should research blink and have 6-9 stalkers ready to defend drops ; they'll even come in useful if your opponent produces widow mines, since you can bait shots with them and need them to clean mines without losing units. c) key point : building placement. Place tech buildings between your bases so that they're not too exposed, and spread pylons across your bases to be sure there is no blind spot and you see medivacs coming. This is important to do as early as possible so that you see, for instance, a factory floating to your main and can prevent it from landing. d) especially if you're not in a very high league, don't hesitate to use cannons in exposed mineral lines. If you watched Rain play on his stream, he very often adds one cannon in each base even before he takes his third. e) once you have templar tech and charge, defending drops becomes a lot easier because feedback/storm/chargelots are very supply efficient against 1-2 medivacs, especially if you have cannons. f) and, of course, overcharge can be your savior if you missed something, especially when you're still on 2 bases.
Against early widow mines drops, I usually keep my second obs in the main until the timing of a likely WM drop is expired and position my stalkers between the two bases, with the msc ready to overcharge.
Even if it's arguably his weakest mu, any Zest PvT replay from GSL/IEM (go to spawningtool to get some) should give you a good idea of how to position your units/buildings to defend against drops. It's a lot about positioning, not panicking and seeing it coming before the units are unloaded.
They're still pretty solid, yeah. Nowadays colossus into storm is more trendy than 5+ colossi double forge but otherwise the staple PvT builds are the same ; 1 gate FE / FFE is still the norm in PvZ, with an emphasis on blink +2 after either gate pressure or oracle ; PvP is still very volatile though 3 gates blink builds are heavily used and quite stable in the current meta.
On October 16 2014 03:20 sepphire wrote: Hello guys,
Can someone confirm me that the build orders, which are shown in the first post are still viable because they are from 2013.
I would point you to Page 296 of this thread. From my post in the middle and downwards, there are some pointers on the metagame. The perspective is considering the last two WCS Seasons and is probably the most relevant you'll find without looking at the vods from the latest tournaments.
Not played properly in ages, watch a reasonable amount but not played. When I've been playing I've been mostly randoming in unranked and 4v4s on various accounts for a while and doing silly stuff but I'm thinking of starting up again with my old main and going back to my first race, Protoss. So I figure I'd start with some simple all-ins to try and get some proper mechanics back (gotten very sloppy)
My thoughts are:
PvZ: Man Train. Read a number of people saying how successful this can be so why not.
PvT: This is more of a problem. As far as I'm aware Blink play got nerfed. I was thinking of Zest's Immortal/Archon timing (because Archons are awesome and Immortals blow stuff up nicely) but I don't know how hard the mine buff hit it. And I always used to find Oracles a bit of an awkawrd unit so I'm not too inclined to go with a proxy Oracle build.
Ya i guess you can do that timing for PvT. You could also do blink all-ins (which will be stupid broken next ladder season), or some more vanilla immortal bust or 2base colossus allin. Blink builds are still perfectly viable.
PvZ: I use this all the time. So long as your micro is decent, it can still crush Zergs. It's an especially good build to fall back on whenever you play on a map where it's really hard to take a third.
PvP: This can work. Like any version of the DT rush, it can be hard countered by some builds, but it's not had as far as cheesy builds go.
PvT: Thanks to the widow mine buff, you may have trouble with this, since mines will evaporate chargelots. 2 base colossus all-ins can still be pretty strong.
And it's always surprisingly strong, considering that there is no deceit, no disguise to it. It's a fun build and has a high winrate against players facing it for the first time. My question is: what's the best way to go about doing it? Is putting the pylon on the ramp the best move? And would a cannon rush or gateway timing follow-up be more appropriate? So far I've played about a dozen games and it feels like a cannon rush follow up fares quite a bit better but maybe that is because I am bad at transitioning into warp-gates. Actually, is this even a good build to use? What do you guys think? Thanks!
For allin in PvT I recommend the parting big boy build but with a mid-saturated 3rd and no upgrades. You push when third colossus is out with 10 gateways. Its really strong and allows you to start pressuring as soon as blink finishes at 8:30.
its a good build to learn for pretty much anything. you stated that you want good mechanics back, great, this build utilizes blink and warp prisms. The build can transition to allin or standard macro games too. good luck
On October 19 2014 05:37 Xinzoe wrote: For allin in PvT I recommend the parting big boy build but with a mid-saturated 3rd and no upgrades. You push when third colossus is out with 10 gateways. Its really strong and allows you to start pressuring as soon as blink finishes at 8:30.
its a good build to learn for pretty much anything. you stated that you want good mechanics back, great, this build utilizes blink and warp prisms. The build can transition to allin or standard macro games too. good luck
I would say that that build is pretty difficult to execute from a returning player perspective, especially if the player was below diamond level when they used to play.
It requires a lot more multitask than most builds on account of the Blink/warprism pressure, which means that it will be very hard to win games until your mechanics are back at a higher level. However, I can't deny that this is probably the funnest way to play PvT in a standard-esque way, so if the OP is up for a challenge this build will be good.
I always do that build when I haven't played for a while. I might lose a few games but the sheer amount of things to do gets me back in shape pretty quickly.
When you're rusty, I find the best way to get back into shape isn't to start with a small hump, but to just jump right back into the thick of things. Yeah you'll lose a bunch at first, but you'll get back to the level you used to be at a lot faster overall. Besides, the multi-tasking builds are the more fun ones anyway.