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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
On April 26 2019 20:12 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2019 19:00 Wombat_NI wrote:On April 26 2019 18:16 Ej_ wrote:On April 26 2019 04:35 Wombat_NI wrote:
Is there a particular reason Collosus/disruptors seem largely non-existent in PvZ these days?
I've taken the odd break from playing for long periods, or even watching the game. I do like to think I do have a decent Starcraft brain and have some ideas as to why these might be the case, just was curious to get some answers here. Because immortals are better Certainly a good unit to have, plus the game flow and setup works better compositionally to go chargelot/immortal/Templar, and those timing attacks can be extremely nasty Collosus I guess is just too vulnerable to a player saccing corrupters and removing your AoE, or viper pulls. Plus they synergised better with stalker balls in Wings/HotS, which isn’t how PvZ flows now. Disruptors though? They seem like they’d be useful to zone stuff away from your army and do damage when you’re transitioning to air toss, and you’ve generally got dual robots up anyway. Don't have disruptors the same issue that they need blink stalkers? Because otherwise you risk killing your own chargelots in case you missmicro slightly? (maybe it's the micro requirement)
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Watching Stats vs Maru a few disruptors sprinkled in seemed really pivotal in delaying advances, or doing a little non-committal damage, keeping his Carriers from getting bum rushed etc, just seems they could be useful in softening Zergs up or keeping them at arms length.
They are expensive units, and they overlap with tempests and storm quite a bit. Plus that’s got to be a really awkward composition to control well, be interested to see if anyone’s tried it out and what their thoughts might be
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On April 26 2019 21:47 Wombat_NI wrote:
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Well, you don't really stop building immortals until there's broodlords on the map or you have like 16 immortals and I don't think going disruptors at either point is an amazing call.
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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
On April 27 2019 03:18 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2019 21:47 Wombat_NI wrote:
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Well, you don't really stop building immortals until there's broodlords on the map or you have like 16 immortals and I don't think going disruptors at either point is an amazing call.
So the dream of balls of death with one’s deathball is dead?
I have watched quite a bit of contemporary stuff, but I’m marathoning old tournaments from when I was on total SC hiatus, so I feel my view of the meta is sometimes clouded by watching stuff so out of order
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maaan what do you guys do to protect yourself from losing all your production to drops? I use shield batteries & a few stalkers-zealots + extra pylons but some terrans just drop so much bio it don't even help. Like, we're talking 3 medivacs full. And this shit sucks when they pop those out of nowhere when im in the middle of the map going for a push. :///
On April 27 2019 03:18 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2019 21:47 Wombat_NI wrote:
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Well, you don't really stop building immortals until there's broodlords on the map or you have like 16 immortals and I don't think going disruptors at either point is an amazing call.
Also, I wanna add to this. I too, do not like disruptors vs Z. As a a matter of fact I don't even like storm vs Z, only immortals & archon + dts if I wanna be sneaky.
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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
On April 27 2019 08:21 Jan1997 wrote:maaan what do you guys do to protect yourself from losing all your production to drops? I use shield batteries & a few stalkers-zealots + extra pylons but some terrans just drop so much bio it don't even help. Like, we're talking 3 medivacs full. And this shit sucks when they pop those out of nowhere when im in the middle of the map going for a push. :/// Show nested quote +On April 27 2019 03:18 Elentos wrote:On April 26 2019 21:47 Wombat_NI wrote:
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Well, you don't really stop building immortals until there's broodlords on the map or you have like 16 immortals and I don't think going disruptors at either point is an amazing call. Also, I wanna add to this. I too, do not like disruptors vs Z. As a a matter of fact I don't even like storm vs Z, only immortals & archon + dts if I wanna be sneaky.
You can’t really reactively stop such drops with warpins , and you can’t pre-emptively stop them without investing stupid amounts in static defence that you mightn’t need that puts you behind in other ways.
You need to split better and keep better tabs on such potential, just get better at doing that. Between obs, oracles, single zealots patrolling, spotter/warpinpylons on certain routes and hallucinated (or real) phoenix you have the tools.
You’ve identified yourself when it tends to happen, so that kind of cuts your period of vigilance as it were. Focus hard on keeping tabs of dropships when you are trying to move out and see if you can plug the holes that way.
It’s super draining to keep that vigilance up for a whole game, but for a specific period you know you’re vulnerable and consistently die, focus on that period and work on that.
I can’t remember the specifics but back in Wings I had timings I consistently died to drops, so I worked on those specific periods. Think about what adjustments you can make. For example I found (can’t remember QQ) having the exact number of stalkers to one shot a medivac > having way more supply of upgraded zealots once the medivac(s) unloaded.
A 2 medivac drop you can actually clear up with warpins + your existing defences, 3 and the burst damage becomes too much to deal with.
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i think the best scenario to justify disruptors against zerg is probably if you're playing against someone you know has a high probability of doing a sustained mass roach/hydra allin and not teching to hive. even then i don't know if it's "better," but it's probably the most favorable situation. on ladder i think anyone who goes spire or hive can just dismantle a disruptor play with more useful tech
as for defending drops, what helps me is to focus on targeting down medivacs as they're unloading and then blinking away to wait for reinforcements. even getting half damage on one medivac before the bio is all out makes a big difference, because if you can kill medivacs and clear 10-20 supply of bio you're often still in the game as opposed to losing stuff for free and the whole drop getting away and healing
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A PvZ scenario I saw Parting get disruptors in was after killing off a base with a DT drop since the zerg was practically forced to all-in because they had lost a good chunk of their economy. The disruptors killed some units but more chased the zerg army away. His counterattack to end the game actually wasn't all that powerful seeming since he was playing blink/disruptor against roaches with speed on creep. It took him a while to finish the zerg off since his disruptors were only hitting a couple roaches at a time at most.
Disruptors seem a lot more useful for defending in PvZ than attacking. Everything's too quick on creep to do much damage with the disruptor shots so you'd have to rely on the zerg player making mistakes while attacking. Parting used a warp prism to make the disruptors a bit more useful but even so he still only managed to hit a unit or two at a time at the most until the end when the zerg mismicroed and lost a huge clump of roaches.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On April 27 2019 08:21 Jan1997 wrote:maaan what do you guys do to protect yourself from losing all your production to drops? I use shield batteries & a few stalkers-zealots + extra pylons but some terrans just drop so much bio it don't even help. Like, we're talking 3 medivacs full. And this shit sucks when they pop those out of nowhere when im in the middle of the map going for a push. :/// Show nested quote +On April 27 2019 03:18 Elentos wrote:On April 26 2019 21:47 Wombat_NI wrote:
Yeah as a main composition for sure. I’m thinking more in that period of the game where you haven’t succeeded, and won’t succeed in trying to kill your Zerg opponent with chargelot/immortal/Templar and are transitioning to other compositions, and you’re past the point where pumping dual Robo immortal is maybe wise.
Well, you don't really stop building immortals until there's broodlords on the map or you have like 16 immortals and I don't think going disruptors at either point is an amazing call. Also, I wanna add to this. I too, do not like disruptors vs Z. As a a matter of fact I don't even like storm vs Z, only immortals & archon + dts if I wanna be sneaky.
Phoenix opener so I am the one keeping him at base and he's afraid of dropping. Or shitton of observers/spotting pylons and then going for phoenixes, but I am weird and I play in lower leagues. If phoenix opener isn't viable I would go for observer at his army so I know when "something" is missing and spotting pylons
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I posted earlier looking for help on defending drops against terran, well. I found a solution that I feel is good enough. DT's. One drop = one scan, and if you have 2-3 dt's scattered in your main they don't have any real solution. Just had a gaming session where i played against four terrans and went dt in main army + for defending drops in all games. I went 4-0.
Anyone else tried this solution before? XD
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On May 05 2019 05:16 Jan1997 wrote:
I posted earlier looking for help on defending drops against terran, well. I found a solution that I feel is good enough. DT's. One drop = one scan, and if you have 2-3 dt's scattered in your main they don't have any real solution. Just had a gaming session where i played against four terrans and went dt in main army + for defending drops in all games. I went 4-0.
Anyone else tried this solution before? XD
DTs are good for defending drops yes, and the lower your league the better they usually are in general. but they are expensive, and if the drop scans and kills them then destroys your base it's obviously not really a win for you. if the terran is microing the drop and has no scans he can also just move away from the DT and have plenty of burst damage to kill things like forges, templar archives, lots of pylons, even a nexus. when i use DTs against drops i like warping in zealots as well because if he sees visible units it becomes harder to tell that DTs are involved
so yes it's a good idea, yes DT good unit, no it is not the supreme answer to drops nor an autowin  and another thing about defending drops with melee units is that he can just fly away lol. if he's going for a full basetrade (like 75% of his army in your main while you're attacking him) then DTs are definitely crazy good against that, but against terrans who drop conservatively it's not as devastating
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There is no better response to drops than good game sense, observers in position and army spliting. Everything else is a gimmick.
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i agree generally, but that doesn't mean using multiple tools is bad! pros certainly do use DTs to help clean up drops when they have a shrine. i think it's just that making a shrine is not all that common in the first place at the highest levels since timings are sharp and punish odd builds. i think calling DT warpins a "gimmick" is a bit dismissive, but i wouldn't personally build a shrine specifically just to counter drops
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Noone argues that DT may be good situationally, especially in base trade scenarios, but his question was purely general. He asked for an ultimate, generic way to counter drops. That was the whole purpose of the post. And the obvious truth is that there is no way around just getting good. But according to his posts he plays w/o build orders and just want to corner cut every milestone game mechanics has to offer, so i bet he wont listen and continue his "i don't wana learn at all" mastery path.
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On May 07 2019 01:25 insitelol wrote:
Noone argues that DT may be good situationally, especially in base trade scenarios, but his question was purely general. He asked for an ultimate, generic way to counter drops. That was the whole purpose of the post. And the obvious truth is that there is no way around just getting good. But according to his posts he plays w/o build orders and just want to corner cut every milestone game mechanics has to offer, so i bet he wont listen and continue his "i don't wana learn at all" mastery path.
Don't know what to say to this. "There is no way around just getting good" is not the response I want. So that's why I tested out DT's in the first place, but ok. I can understand that angle of approach.
About a week ago or so I went offrace terran at D2 just to kind of see if I could juice out some more understanding to this race. PvT is my worst MU and has been that since like 2017.
I got some interesting games. Most important observation being that some toss players will actually make an entire colossus and park it in the main to secure against drops and drag it back to main army when an enemy (or them) commit to a big engagement ingame.
I think that's just too much of a sacrifice, but hey. I guess that works too. Not to mention that, as many say. The lower you get on ladder the more you can deviate from standard responses. Mass probe works too. To defend drops.... in Bronze 3.
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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
On May 08 2019 00:57 Jan1997 wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2019 01:25 insitelol wrote:
Noone argues that DT may be good situationally, especially in base trade scenarios, but his question was purely general. He asked for an ultimate, generic way to counter drops. That was the whole purpose of the post. And the obvious truth is that there is no way around just getting good. But according to his posts he plays w/o build orders and just want to corner cut every milestone game mechanics has to offer, so i bet he wont listen and continue his "i don't wana learn at all" mastery path. Don't know what to say to this. "There is no way around just getting good" is not the response I want. So that's why I tested out DT's in the first place, but ok. I can understand that angle of approach. About a week ago or so I went offrace terran at D2 just to kind of see if I could juice out some more understanding to this race. PvT is my worst MU and has been that since like 2017. I got some interesting games. Most important observation being that some toss players will actually make an entire colossus and park it in the main to secure against drops and drag it back to main army when an enemy (or them) commit to a big engagement ingame. I think that's just too much of a sacrifice, but hey. I guess that works too. Not to mention that, as many say. The lower you get on ladder the more you can deviate from standard responses. Mass probe works too. To defend drops.... in Bronze 3.
Well it is largely the case.
Really well positioned stalkers and map vision can snipe a medivac before it even lands, in the olden days I would keep exact numbers to one-shot a medivac, but if it’s a big multi-vac drop you need another solution. Templars can’t zap medivacs with feedback like they could before, cannons can be bypassed and DTs have positives and negatives too.
Sometimes keeping some excess supply for big reactive zealot warpins as you move out is the best choice too, it’s quite dynamic
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Austria24417 Posts
As harsh as it sounds, I have to agree with the getting better response. There is no set formula for defending drops, it varies from game to game. The only constant you always want is map vision, be it through observers, spotting units or pylons. Depending on the situation in game you might want to prioritize other robo units over observers, in that case you have to create vision differently.
At a higher level anticipating drops is as much about reading the flow of a game as it is about seeing them coming, though. When a Terran army is out on the map, for example, and he's looking to pressure you, and you see the army, you should be able to tell whether he's also trying to drop you by evaluating the size of the army. If a chunk of it is missing but you know you're in a Terran pressure window, drops are very likely. You would then reactively split off some army units and perhaps save a few warpins to defend likely drop locations.
DTs can also be useful to defend against Terran aggression in general, not just drops, but they're very situational. You really don't want to waste 125/125 just to have your DT scanned and killed, giving the Terran the full duration of the scan to destroy your structures. That's not just wasteful, it's simply not a good strategy. There are niche situations, like when you know a Terran is down in economy and likely to use all their energy on MULEs, but they're absolutely not the norm and you would rarely build a dark shrine reactively even in these situations. Unless you already have one and find yourself in a situation like that, don't bother with DTs.
If you really want to learn how to reliably defend against drops (and multipronged aggression in general), I really suggest working on your map vision and army splitting instead of looking for an easy solution. The easy solutions really don't exist, and improving these areas of your game will vastly improve you as a player overall. Map vision and reactive army movement and positioning are some of the fundamentals of high level SC2.
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Yeah I also agree. The best solution is to know the drop is coming in the first place so you have time to warp in units and prepare. Putting an observer on patrol along the common area where drops come in through or placing spotter pylons will help way more than teching to dark shrine and hoping they don't have scans. In the later game especially, if you can know what's going on for your entire half of the map if you use observers with speed patrolling around.
Another thing I've seen pros do is hotkey certain nexuses separately for recalling, and that concept doubly makes sense with the main nexus.
But yeah, scouting is the actual best way to stop Terran drops.
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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
On May 09 2019 11:45 Ben... wrote:
Yeah I also agree. The best solution is to know the drop is coming in the first place so you have time to warp in units and prepare. Putting an observer on patrol along the common area where drops come in through or placing spotter pylons will help way more than teching to dark shrine and hoping they don't have scans. In the later game especially, if you can know what's going on for your entire half of the map if you use observers with speed patrolling around.
Another thing I've seen pros do is hotkey certain nexuses separately for recalling, and that concept doubly makes sense with the main nexus.
But yeah, scouting is the actual best way to stop Terran drops.
Outside of doing that how are they prioritised if you use your all Nexus’ hotkeys? Highest energy or closest nexus?
I’d kind of like to do that but I’m running out of hotkeys alas, I’m getting semi-used to Brood War macro cycles with camera hotkeys so I can recall to specific nexuses pretty quickly just hotkeying them would be even speedier.
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On May 09 2019 16:03 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2019 11:45 Ben... wrote:
Yeah I also agree. The best solution is to know the drop is coming in the first place so you have time to warp in units and prepare. Putting an observer on patrol along the common area where drops come in through or placing spotter pylons will help way more than teching to dark shrine and hoping they don't have scans. In the later game especially, if you can know what's going on for your entire half of the map if you use observers with speed patrolling around.
Another thing I've seen pros do is hotkey certain nexuses separately for recalling, and that concept doubly makes sense with the main nexus.
But yeah, scouting is the actual best way to stop Terran drops. Outside of doing that how are they prioritised if you use your all Nexus’ hotkeys? Highest energy or closest nexus? I’d kind of like to do that but I’m running out of hotkeys alas, I’m getting semi-used to Brood War macro cycles with camera hotkeys so I can recall to specific nexuses pretty quickly just hotkeying them would be even speedier.
From what I can tell, it is closest nexus with enough energy for a recall.
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Northern Ireland25550 Posts
Hey folks was wondering if there was a stable/safe-ish macro opene opener that you’d recommend for each matchup? Preferably only from good Masters players.
I’m extremely extremely rusty, borderline 5 years not playing but we’ve our annual fun LAN so I’m trying to get back into shape for it, few others are coming back from big layoffs who I’ll probably share stuff with.
I’ve got a good grasp of various things at present, I just want to grind and grind games until I get back into the flow and I’m a bit lost
I have a bunch of builds I’ve written down in detail from replay packs especially from Katowice, but I find they’re both too technical for me to execute + they’re exploiting people who know what they’re doing and are cutting corners, some of those windows just don’t really exist in pleb tier.
I’m not lazy just so much information out there, want to pick one build, grind it for a while and then diversify after.
Thanks in advance
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EPT
