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So I have never managed to beat mass Queen Swarm Host.
I open up Stargate 5 Phoenix -> Robo 4 Gates -> third
1. My Phoenix kill a couple of Overlords and that's it because of the mass Queens. (Zerg took a usual timed third)
2. Now Zerg makes nothing but Queens and Drones, takes a fourth and gets Swarm Hosts out.
3. I know Swarm Hosts are coming and try to rush out Colossi asap.
4. I lose to Swarm Hosts.
Here is the replay for a better idea: http://drop.sc/317096
Now I know that Zerg dies to any form of 2base all-in. Sadly I have to decide to all-in way before I can know I will face this.
Beat two GM players today so I thought I had a pretty decent day.. I know there were some minor macro mistakes but that's because I don't know what to do in this situation. 7 Colossi did nothing against that amount of Locusts.
Do I have to basetrade against a Zerg with an army of free units that I can't beat? Doesn't sound promising to me..
I would really appreciate help.
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On March 31 2013 17:35 DeltaBravo wrote:
A question about carriers pvz. I've heard here and there that carriers are secretly good vs hydralisks, and I was wondering about the general idea of going carriers vs a hydra roach player. I saw one game where grubby was trolling and rushed carriers off of an FFE and demolished a zerg by abusing the airspace behind his main and the new carrier micro technique. As you can't really abuse that aspect of carriers on every map, has anyone used them straight up vs a hydra-roach army and had any success?
I'm plat on the korean server and yes carriers are GREAT vs hydras supply-wise, because hydras have little hp and gets mauled very quickly as long as carriers have an upgrade lead(which you should, because cyber core is available early on and you have chrono boost). A carrier fleet can always a-move into an equal supply of hydras provided zerg doesnt have an upgrade lead, and the fight will end quite one-sidedly. Often times though the zerg will have a larger hydra army, which means the protoss should pick fights and micro carefully. use high ground/dead space to your advantage so les hydras can fire at the carriers themselves. Zealots provide great support too as they get in the way of hydras, preventing them from running under the carriers. Either way carriers are very supply efficient vs hydras.
Abusing air space is, as you say, not viable on every map. but most maps in the current map pool has quite a lot of dead space you can abuse. Even if huge dead space like the ones on korhal city isnt available, the great thing about carriers is that they can fly, and can therefore take routes most ground army will find tedious/unexpected and strike from an undefended angle like cliffs next to expansions(provided you have been diligent in cleaning up overlords that is). Abuse the range of carriers, ignore spores(carriers are hardy), quickly snipe expansions through the leash range micro(launch interceptors at geyser from 8 range, then retarget hatchery=carriers attacking hatchery from 14 range), and then retreat through dead space, or better yet, mass recall. This way you can kill bases with zero losses. It gets better if you combine this with a diversionary warp in attack at some other distant locations, providing your carriers even more time to do damage, potentially sniping one more nearby bases while the hydras struggle to run around and defend.
So basically carriers are your best tool at fighting roach hydra. But of course in a real game getting out carriers can be a challenge. In my experience though if zergs go for 3 bases before 5 minutes, you can often take a third and defend with sim city/cannon/mothership core while throwing down a fleet beacon at around 7:30 and get your first carrier out at around 10:30, which, combined with your other air units(I usually get 2 oracles and some void rays to harass and kill overlords) should be able to defend 3 base lair hydra roach pushes that comes at around 11-12 min.
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On April 01 2013 23:24 Teoita wrote:
Burning energy that early opens you up to any kind of gateway aggression (such as stalker+MSC pokes).
I don't think it's necessary to scout him that fast tbh; it's will be too late to choose your tech anyway.
It depends on your build I would say. Naniwa did a Sentry heavy FE build at the qualifier to the Swedish nationals which included scouting once you have 100 energy. Most pressure builds start poking before that 100 energy is spent so you can always choose to not go for a hallucination and just spend it on FF or GS if you feel that it's better used elsewhere. You don't need to scout him ASAP anyway if he's going for that 3 Gate pressure build.
On another note I tried doing a similar DT drop opening P vs T today as Artosis was talking about on SOTG. The win rate is 100% after 5 games. I tried it first in unranked where it did okay damage etc but then I played ladder I stomped the Terrans by winning with my warp ins from the Warp Prism, lol.
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So I've seen a good bit of advice regarding PvZ in the last few pages discussing a FFE>Stargate>4 Gate>Robo >3rd base. I like the sounds of this build, and I'm going to give it a go. But there seems to be some disagreement on when to take the 3rd. One poster said you could take before colossus with zealot/sentry/immortal. Another has said to wait until 1.5ish colossus. While another said while harassing with 4-5 phoenix. Which of these is the typical composition/timing we would want for taking our 3rd? Thanks guys
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On April 03 2013 07:46 WaRLoRD786 wrote:
So I've seen a good bit of advice regarding PvZ in the last few pages discussing a FFE>Stargate>4 Gate>Robo >3rd base. I like the sounds of this build, and I'm going to give it a go. But there seems to be some disagreement on when to take the 3rd. One poster said you could take before colossus with zealot/sentry/immortal. Another has said to wait until 1.5ish colossus. While another said while harassing with 4-5 phoenix. Which of these is the typical composition/timing we would want for taking our 3rd? Thanks guys
Well it is situational. You want to harass with your Phoenix obviously. And scout, see what units he makes and how many, from there on you can choose when to take your third.
Zealot Sentry Immortal can work if you do not face fast Hydras.
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On April 03 2013 07:46 WaRLoRD786 wrote:
So I've seen a good bit of advice regarding PvZ in the last few pages discussing a FFE>Stargate>4 Gate>Robo >3rd base. I like the sounds of this build, and I'm going to give it a go. But there seems to be some disagreement on when to take the 3rd. One poster said you could take before colossus with zealot/sentry/immortal. Another has said to wait until 1.5ish colossus. While another said while harassing with 4-5 phoenix. Which of these is the typical composition/timing we would want for taking our 3rd? Thanks guys
All of them are wrong. While harassing queens, ovi's and drones keep track of what he is doing. Based on that information think of a the right army composition and tech to go for, and if possible expand.
If he is looking to go 3 base all in make sure you get the right army, before taking another expand. But if you feel like you can get an expand at 11:00 just do it.
Taking a third at 8:00 - 9:00 is more risky, so you need perfect control and knowledge of the hots timings, before even thinking of this, but ofcourse you can start practicing such thing.
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Brazil677 Posts
How can you scout this build properly anyway? The other day I was playing and I was like "infestation pit, spire... wtf?" For all I know, if a zerg can get swarm host AND corruptors, then he could get swarm host and mutas too. Which would make voids most likely a poor choice, and my colossi could be easily picked off too. In the end, I made 3 stargates and 3 phoenixes immediatly, but once I saw he had corruptors instead I couldn't even get enough void rays in time. How are you even supposed to scout and respond to this properly? Not to mention the fact that even if he goes swarm host corruptor, a handful of mutas could still show up anytime to take down one of your bases. This is really confusing.
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is it at all humanly possible to be aggressive against terran without being all in? protoss gateway units are crap versus terran mmm and any 2 collosus push i do is all in and if they kill the collosus i lose the game..PvT is annoying to play because it's oring all i do is turtle up because i cant punish, harrass or attack the terran and if any of those ones fail, im pretty much dead. im in diamond btw. I like pvz, in pvz im always harrassing and attacking him because gateway units can actually be worth some thing in that match up but in pvt it's just annoying...maybe theres some really good all ins or something? i really dont want to play pvt anymore because of this. They always manage to push me back no matter what attacks i do unless i get to 4 base mass gateway 200/200 deathball like usual.
oh and warp prism harrass doesnt work because they instantly pull workers so it does no damage at all.
tldr: how do i keep pvt action packed but actually do damage? honestly i think this is why terran complain about toss having deathball - because toss can't do anything else in pvt
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On April 03 2013 12:13 FireMonkey wrote:
is it at all humanly possible to be aggressive against terran without being all in? protoss gateway units are crap versus terran mmm and any 2 collosus push i do is all in and if they kill the collosus i lose the game..PvT is annoying to play because it's oring all i do is turtle up because i cant punish, harrass or attack the terran and if any of those ones fail, im pretty much dead. im in diamond btw. I like pvz, in pvz im always harrassing and attacking him because gateway units can actually be worth some thing in that match up but in pvt it's just annoying...maybe theres some really good all ins or something? i really dont want to play pvt anymore because of this. They always manage to push me back no matter what attacks i do unless i get to 4 base mass gateway 200/200 deathball like usual.
oh and warp prism harrass doesnt work because they instantly pull workers so it does no damage at all.
tldr: how do i keep pvt action packed but actually do damage? honestly i think this is why terran complain about toss having deathball - because toss can't do anything else in pvt
Do some stargate openers, but careful what you wish for. It's a pain to be able to hold terran timing attacks while harassing with phoenix/oracles at the same time.
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Northern Ireland26101 Posts
Turtle up, and harass all over the place, you can't split your army up and hope to be cost effective.
Pre-load warp prisms with Zealots and drop them directly on mineral lines, do storm drops, maraud around the place with blink stalkers and snipe medivacs and blink back. Even zealot runbys are good if they don't have planetaries up. Even a DT warp-prism build a la Tails can be good, I'll look through the thread as somebody wrote the build
You don't need to do massive damage in each attempt, just chip away, use that time to secure bases and map control.
Aggression via full-frontal pokes is risky as hell, but we have the MsC to enable a bit more of that as well.
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anyone have replays on how to deal with mine drops efficiently and in a timely manner in early game pvt? i get mine dropped and i lose so much mining time, i cant muster enough forces to defend some bio pushes with medivacs that are designed to pressure me while i deal with the mines.
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On April 03 2013 03:39 uh-oh wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2013 17:35 DeltaBravo wrote:
A question about carriers pvz. I've heard here and there that carriers are secretly good vs hydralisks, and I was wondering about the general idea of going carriers vs a hydra roach player. I saw one game where grubby was trolling and rushed carriers off of an FFE and demolished a zerg by abusing the airspace behind his main and the new carrier micro technique. As you can't really abuse that aspect of carriers on every map, has anyone used them straight up vs a hydra-roach army and had any success? I'm plat on the korean server and yes carriers are GREAT vs hydras supply-wise, because hydras have little hp and gets mauled very quickly as long as carriers have an upgrade lead(which you should, because cyber core is available early on and you have chrono boost). A carrier fleet can always a-move into an equal supply of hydras provided zerg doesnt have an upgrade lead, and the fight will end quite one-sidedly. Often times though the zerg will have a larger hydra army, which means the protoss should pick fights and micro carefully. use high ground/dead space to your advantage so les hydras can fire at the carriers themselves. Zealots provide great support too as they get in the way of hydras, preventing them from running under the carriers. Either way carriers are very supply efficient vs hydras. Abusing air space is, as you say, not viable on every map. but most maps in the current map pool has quite a lot of dead space you can abuse. Even if huge dead space like the ones on korhal city isnt available, the great thing about carriers is that they can fly, and can therefore take routes most ground army will find tedious/unexpected and strike from an undefended angle like cliffs next to expansions(provided you have been diligent in cleaning up overlords that is). Abuse the range of carriers, ignore spores(carriers are hardy), quickly snipe expansions through the leash range micro(launch interceptors at geyser from 8 range, then retarget hatchery=carriers attacking hatchery from 14 range), and then retreat through dead space, or better yet, mass recall. This way you can kill bases with zero losses. It gets better if you combine this with a diversionary warp in attack at some other distant locations, providing your carriers even more time to do damage, potentially sniping one more nearby bases while the hydras struggle to run around and defend. So basically carriers are your best tool at fighting roach hydra. But of course in a real game getting out carriers can be a challenge. In my experience though if zergs go for 3 bases before 5 minutes, you can often take a third and defend with sim city/cannon/mothership core while throwing down a fleet beacon at around 7:30 and get your first carrier out at around 10:30, which, combined with your other air units(I usually get 2 oracles and some void rays to harass and kill overlords) should be able to defend 3 base lair hydra roach pushes that comes at around 11-12 min.
Thanks a lot for the confirmation. Is there any way you could throw up a replay or two of your opening? Also how many stargates do you go up to and when. I found that I had a very low carrier count off of just two stargates when I roughly tried this on ladder.
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I'm just gonna put this out there:
people need to experiment more with mass phoenix in pvz. and i do mean mass. zerg counters for them are far from ideal. hydras are good vs phoenixes in limited number. but mass phoenix gravitron beam vs hydras works wonders. infestors are okay and it could go either way if you really get chain fungalled but the zerg should never get a critical mass of infestors, you should be picking them off constantly. oracle for burrow detect. corruptors are alright but cannot catch phoenix in the first place. if he's using corruptors to protect swarm hosts or something then you should be able to take the corruptors head on. (because you're massing them and upgrading them like a madman whereas zerg is split between corruptors hydras and swarm hosts-remember im talking non-stop phoenix production off multiple stargazes)
you will need other units but this just has to many benefits i don't understand why more people aren't experimenting with it. it requires a very high APM and is very fragile. i think that's because it hasn't been figured out yet.
oh- and the best part: don't have to deal with mutalisks at all.
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On April 03 2013 13:40 JSK wrote:
I'm just gonna put this out there:
people need to experiment more with mass phoenix in pvz. and i do mean mass. zerg counters for them are far from ideal. hydras are good vs phoenixes in limited number. but mass phoenix gravitron beam vs hydras works wonders. infestors are okay and it could go either way if you really get chain fungalled but the zerg should never get a critical mass of infestors, you should be picking them off constantly. oracle for burrow detect. corruptors are alright but cannot catch phoenix in the first place. if he's using corruptors to protect swarm hosts or something then you should be able to take the corruptors head on. (because you're massing them and upgrading them like a madman whereas zerg is split between corruptors hydras and swarm hosts-remember im talking non-stop phoenix production off multiple stargazes)
you will need other units but this just has to many benefits i don't understand why more people aren't experimenting with it. it requires a very high APM and is very fragile. i think that's because it hasn't been figured out yet.
oh- and the best part: don't have to deal with mutalisks at all.
Ultralisks will just destroy any Protoss going for mass Phoenix.
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On April 03 2013 14:42 Yericho wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 13:40 JSK wrote:
I'm just gonna put this out there:
people need to experiment more with mass phoenix in pvz. and i do mean mass. zerg counters for them are far from ideal. hydras are good vs phoenixes in limited number. but mass phoenix gravitron beam vs hydras works wonders. infestors are okay and it could go either way if you really get chain fungalled but the zerg should never get a critical mass of infestors, you should be picking them off constantly. oracle for burrow detect. corruptors are alright but cannot catch phoenix in the first place. if he's using corruptors to protect swarm hosts or something then you should be able to take the corruptors head on. (because you're massing them and upgrading them like a madman whereas zerg is split between corruptors hydras and swarm hosts-remember im talking non-stop phoenix production off multiple stargazes)
you will need other units but this just has to many benefits i don't understand why more people aren't experimenting with it. it requires a very high APM and is very fragile. i think that's because it hasn't been figured out yet.
oh- and the best part: don't have to deal with mutalisks at all.
Ultralisks will just destroy any Protoss going for mass Phoenix.
stargates can also produce void rays and tempests, not to mention dts are great on defense
you really need to do better than a one-sentence captain obvious post about the fact that phoenixes dont kill ultralisks
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On April 03 2013 14:58 JSK wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 14:42 Yericho wrote:On April 03 2013 13:40 JSK wrote:
I'm just gonna put this out there:
people need to experiment more with mass phoenix in pvz. and i do mean mass. zerg counters for them are far from ideal. hydras are good vs phoenixes in limited number. but mass phoenix gravitron beam vs hydras works wonders. infestors are okay and it could go either way if you really get chain fungalled but the zerg should never get a critical mass of infestors, you should be picking them off constantly. oracle for burrow detect. corruptors are alright but cannot catch phoenix in the first place. if he's using corruptors to protect swarm hosts or something then you should be able to take the corruptors head on. (because you're massing them and upgrading them like a madman whereas zerg is split between corruptors hydras and swarm hosts-remember im talking non-stop phoenix production off multiple stargazes)
you will need other units but this just has to many benefits i don't understand why more people aren't experimenting with it. it requires a very high APM and is very fragile. i think that's because it hasn't been figured out yet.
oh- and the best part: don't have to deal with mutalisks at all.
Ultralisks will just destroy any Protoss going for mass Phoenix. stargates can also produce void rays and tempests, not to mention dts are great on defense you really need to do better than a one-sentence captain obvious post about the fact that phoenixes dont kill ultralisks Ever see Mondragon vs. some protoss on Crevasse from TSL3 where the Protoss went for a kinda cutesy stargate build? All someone would have to do is embrace their inner Mondragon and you would die.
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On April 03 2013 15:10 Ben... wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 14:58 JSK wrote:On April 03 2013 14:42 Yericho wrote:On April 03 2013 13:40 JSK wrote:
I'm just gonna put this out there:
people need to experiment more with mass phoenix in pvz. and i do mean mass. zerg counters for them are far from ideal. hydras are good vs phoenixes in limited number. but mass phoenix gravitron beam vs hydras works wonders. infestors are okay and it could go either way if you really get chain fungalled but the zerg should never get a critical mass of infestors, you should be picking them off constantly. oracle for burrow detect. corruptors are alright but cannot catch phoenix in the first place. if he's using corruptors to protect swarm hosts or something then you should be able to take the corruptors head on. (because you're massing them and upgrading them like a madman whereas zerg is split between corruptors hydras and swarm hosts-remember im talking non-stop phoenix production off multiple stargazes)
you will need other units but this just has to many benefits i don't understand why more people aren't experimenting with it. it requires a very high APM and is very fragile. i think that's because it hasn't been figured out yet.
oh- and the best part: don't have to deal with mutalisks at all.
Ultralisks will just destroy any Protoss going for mass Phoenix. stargates can also produce void rays and tempests, not to mention dts are great on defense you really need to do better than a one-sentence captain obvious post about the fact that phoenixes dont kill ultralisks Ever see Mondragon vs. some protoss on Crevasse from TSL3 where the Protoss went for a kinda cutesy stargate build? All someone would have to do is embrace their inner Mondragon and you would die.
I'm not talking about a "cutesy" stargate build. And you're talking about Wings of Liberty right?
I agree, if I went for a cutesy stargate build in wings of liberty vs mondragon on crevasse, I would probably die.
I want to have a discussion about this but just completely dismissing out of hand what I'm trying to have a discussion about is not the same thing as constructive criticism.
So. Why can't mass phoenix with upgrades work? i do not mean ONLY phoenix. i mean as the core of the army.
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Italy12246 Posts
Because they'll get shredded to pieces by infestors corruptors hydras and queens.
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On April 03 2013 16:33 Teoita wrote:
Because they'll get shredded to pieces by infestors corruptors hydras and queens.
You are a far better player than I and I respect you very much. I disagree and I wouldn't try to fight that head on with just phoenix.
I'll accept this for now and come back after Ive spent a few months experimenting and developing a style based on it, and of course once I have a bank of replays against quality players.
You could very well be right, of course. But I think it's worth looking in to.
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EPT
