Photon Canons

On March 15 2010 03:07 Fayth wrote:
thing is, phoenix is not a counter to mutas really, as opposed to corsairs who had splash, more mutas makes phoenix less effective cuz of the bouncing thingies

On March 15 2010 03:14 Fayth wrote:
the bounces are 4.5 and 2.25? this is ridiculous lol, shudnt it be 9 3 1 ?

On March 15 2010 03:18 Zelniq wrote:

i just guessed. i thought the damage was halved with each bounce, dont know if its rounded, but it wouldnt be rounded from 4.5 to 3 and 2.25 to 1 how does that make sense

until youve actually tried using phoenixes in either test custom games or real games you may not really understand just how effective they are vs mutas

like i said, 6 phoenixes will instantly 1 shot a mutalisk, 3 will kill in 2 shots.

if you read my main post, a timing attack with some phoenixes support by a well balanced ground army, especially with guardian shield, beats muta builds every time

On March 15 2010 03:18 Muirhead wrote:
Well I'm 12th plat so OK but not great, and I haven't had much luck with phoenix vs mass muta. But it's true I haven't used them in conjunction with sentries much... worth a try though it kind of cuts into the mobility of the phoenix

I'd really like to hear some good Zs comments on what they view the best counter to mass muta to be

On March 15 2010 03:22 Zelniq wrote:

as someone who has a lot of experience going mutas vs protoss, i gave you already 2 of the general build ideas already in the first post i made above.

you usually dont want to just sit on your ass and let him mass a huge number of mutalisks because theyre so mobile and your bases will be spread out that it becomes increasingly harder to defend them all. timing attacks are more effective

On March 15 2010 03:00 Defrag wrote:
Fayth, that would be terrible, as zerg already have massive problems with getting into base of turtling protoss, even with huge eco/army advantage.

I recently played with a protoss player ( platinum obv ) who got his main / natural destroyed, but in the meantime he sneaked out and turreted two more expos with like 20 turrets each, and held 4-5 HT's in each for defense.

I was limit capped and couldnt get in lol. Less static defense = funnier games.

With a boost to bunkers/sunkens ( those are terrible thou )/ photo cannons the game is going to change into playing Human of Warcraf3, where u would FE and place 10 towers that were unkillable with armor upgrade.

On March 15 2010 03:25 Fayth wrote:

this is the thing, you can't defend ur base against mutalisks while moving out, at least from what I've heard... unlike in broodwar

On March 15 2010 03:27 Muirhead wrote:
Well it doesn't matter if you can't defend your base if you can destroy his... if you push early enough cannons will do it anyways.

On March 15 2010 02:23 Fayth wrote:
the only real counter to Mutas so far is Sentries, and well they're pretty much useless against every other units since they're mainly designed to be support units, they're also fairly slow... Ps either need a Corsair'ish type unit or better static defense...

that or a psi storm buff

On March 15 2010 03:42 love1another wrote:
I think cannons are the issue, but that they're fine as is so long as you have enough of them. Without cannons, you cannot possibly defend against mutas bouncing back from base to base, given the terribly slow speed of sentries and the difficulty of mass producing phoenixes.

On March 15 2010 04:19 Zelniq wrote:
i do agree and have said before in other threads that protosses should have a better ground based options vs mutas. but im saying for the time being phoenixes are more than adequate for crushing muta builds. yes, crushing.

like in bw, protoss not only has corsairs but archons and stronger psi storms.

in the same light, or even more-so, zerg should not be forced to get air units to deal with colossuses either, as zerg ground really has 0 options now vs any army consisting of some colossuses.

On March 15 2010 04:32 Zelniq wrote:
...
the last 4 posters please read my posts in this thread, and maybe try it out & realize that phoenixes are amazing vs mutalisks

On March 15 2010 03:32 Whiplash wrote:
The thing is zerg can build mutas much faster then phoenixes, so he will have a number atv over your units 9/10 times. Splash would help balance this out I think and help alleviate some of protoss's anti air issues.

On March 15 2010 04:26 Muirhead wrote:
Man of course 100 phoenixs beat 100 mutas

The problem is that ~8 corsairs could beat 24 mutalisks and the same is not at all true for phoenixs

On March 15 2010 04:34 TheAntZ wrote:

read my last edit, it doesnt matter how amazing they are against a small number of mutas.

On March 15 2010 04:36 Zelniq wrote:

read my posts? theyre great vs large numbers of phoenixes as well? timing attack also crushes muta builds so hard the zerg cant even get to large numbers anyway

On March 15 2010 04:35 Retsukage wrote:



This. Queen production from 2 base is so far superior then phoenix production from two base its ridiculous. How is protoss supposed to match it? Just surprise! we have 5 stargates? I don't think so, in addition you can not invest that much in phoenix or else you will be over ridden with hydra/ling/ect

On March 15 2010 04:43 xnub wrote:


it is true maybe they should just make the larva that the queens spawns only be some units ? But the more hatch you have the more units unlock that those larva can be used for. So its not like omg i have a spire now i have 16 mutas .... lol

On March 15 2010 04:35 Retsukage wrote:



This. Queen production from 2 base is so far superior then phoenix production from two base its ridiculous. How is protoss supposed to match it? Just surprise! we have 5 stargates? I don't think so, in addition you can not invest that much in phoenix or else you will be over ridden with hydra/ling/ect

On March 15 2010 04:44 TheAntZ wrote:

It'd be really confusing to macro as zerg though in that case

On March 15 2010 04:37 TheAntZ wrote:
Get 2-3 corruptors in the mix, and suddenly your air army overwhelms toss air army ridiculously easily

On March 15 2010 04:45 Zelniq wrote:

1 stargate is enough

just make some phoenixes like 4-6 and attack with a well balanced army at the right time, using observer to scout and help tell you when that is. zerg wont be able to get mass mutas in time nor have enough antiground to stop it either

On March 15 2010 04:48 Zelniq wrote:

i was going to respond to the rest of your post in a normal fashion until i saw this.

clearly youre just making shit up now and not worth responding to

On March 15 2010 04:46 qvka wrote:
Try using high templars as back up to your phoenixes.You can cast few storms in less than a second and mutas will have hard time sniping now without stacking.+ Show Spoiler +
Templars are also good against hydras and lings so you can focus on zealot immortal ground army.
And dont ignore the fact that you have easier time scouting zerg base because of the limited detection.(unlike Broodwar)This should give you a time to prepare for whatever he is making

To summarize you open with robo for immortal and observer,if you scout him making spire throw down a stargate and citadel + Show Spoiler + if he start massing mutas you throw another stargate and start chrono boosting 2 phoenixes and build a templar archievs to get storm + Show Spoiler +
Feel free to disagree with me but i think you should give it a try first :D, this is the first time im posting in the strategy forum btw i hope im helpful

On March 15 2010 03:27 -orb- wrote:


Why didn't you get brood lords

On March 15 2010 03:32 Whiplash wrote:
The thing is zerg can build mutas much faster then phoenixes, so he will have a number atv over your units 9/10 times. Splash would help balance this out I think and help alleviate some of protoss's anti air issues.

On March 15 2010 04:52 Defrag wrote:


This is completetly off the numbers. Without an expansion zerg's larva spawn will be way faster then he can build mutalisks ( talking about regural one, not even with queen ).
Each mutalist costs 100 gas, you cant effictevely play mutas if you dont have expansion.

On March 15 2010 04:52 Defrag wrote:


This is completetly off the numbers. Without an expansion zerg's larva spawn will be way faster then he can build mutalisks ( talking about regural one, not even with queen ).
Each mutalist costs 100 gas, you cant effictevely play mutas if you dont have expansion.

TheAntZ wrote:


yeah, definitely making shit up, corruptors dont do shit against phoenixes, they're terrible vs air!

On March 15 2010 04:55 xnub wrote:


Most zerg don't use much gas till they get to mutas /shrug they expand Zerglings with speeds and spine crawlers and maybe like 4 roachs

and ya they fast expand

On March 15 2010 04:56 Zelniq wrote:

get into a custom game with a friend. test any number of phoenixes vs corruptors, and youll notice even without micro phoenixes are evenly matched. with micro corruptors wont even kill phoenixes unless the numbers are so large they can 1 shot focus fire. otherwise the slow corruptors easily cannot catchup when the P pulls phoenixes away 1 by 1 (so incredibly fast). this also helps in terms of the P gets to decide when to fight battles. if theyre outnumbered can easily flee w/o any worries, but if phoenixes outnumber/match the corruptors, the corruptors are too slow and will take heavy losses

On March 15 2010 04:56 Defrag wrote:


Dont use gas, meaning they go zerglings instead of raoches*? If u see lack of roach warren, just 2/3 gate push with zaels and gg.

Edit: fixed typo.

I dont understand how you're getting the gas for all this off of 1 base

On March 15 2010 04:49 TheAntZ wrote:

ok, so not only do you open with stargate, you also somehow have an observer
dual tech off of one base? or are you really implying that expanding is possible against a zerg before you move out with a considerable force?
and if you're sinking that much gas into dual teching, getting phoenixes and obs, you are NOT gonna have a formidable ground force.
Really, i hope you can prove me wrong with recent (read: this patch) replays of plat level players doing and dying to what you describe, but it simply sounds ridiculous

On March 15 2010 05:03 Zelniq wrote:



no dont open with stargate, after you scout spire with obs opening you get a stargate then. and yes you can have both robo tech and stargate with gateways off of 1 base.

however if you do open stargate which you can, your speedy phoenix can scout the zerg rather than observer obviously.

this is based off of old patches but i dont see how the latest patch effects what i had in mind. you wouldnt really be needing to add the pressure that previous warp gate rushes used to have, and you would have warp gate researched long before pushing out. btw not only can you afford this from 1 base but lorelei used to also get forge +1 weapons as well in combination with all of this, when he suspected or saw heavy lings

On March 15 2010 03:07 Fayth wrote:
thing is, phoenix is not a counter to mutas really, as opposed to corsairs who had splash, more mutas makes phoenix less effective cuz of the bouncing thingies

On March 15 2010 05:45 z]Benny wrote:
Quick question: does guardian shield also protect air units?

edit: i'm gonna go online now and test a stargate harass opening, like in SC PvZ. As in fast stargate -> go fuck up overlords with the uber fast pheonixes.

On March 15 2010 05:58 GHOSTCLAW wrote:


This has been what I've been doing - however, it loses to all sorts of lowtech rushes and delays your expansion like crazy. On the plus side, it denies scouting, which is really nice, and if you get like 3-5 pheonixes, you can start lifting and killing off the queen.

On March 15 2010 06:14 BC.KoRn wrote:
The thing is as a Protoss player if you invest a lot of resources into Phoenix' to counter the Mutal, it's very easy for the Zerg player to change gears and switch to Hydras, where as Protoss it is much harder to go from a Phoenix build to a Robo/Templar Archive build with out an expansion.

I think Psi storm is fine, but IMO archon is too weak vs Mutals, they can easily kill it and prevent you from expanding for quite some time.

Buff Archons please.

On March 15 2010 06:11 aLt)nirvana wrote:
and if u ever get to the stage where its mass vs mass same cost ie 37muta vs 25 phoenix, mutas will ALWAYS win because u cant focus fire that many muta, and the muta splash will totally annihilate your army.

On March 15 2010 05:03 Zelniq wrote:

no dont open with stargate, after you scout spire with obs opening you get a stargate then. and yes you can have both robo tech and stargate with gateways off of 1 base.

however if you do open stargate which I believe you still can, your speedy phoenix can scout the zerg rather than observer obviously. but i think robo openings are more effective

On March 15 2010 06:34 duckhunt wrote:
hey guys im just wondering..... HAS ANYBODY TRIED ARCHONS? i mean they do 35 vs biological + 4 dmg / upgrade, i know their range sucks but just keep 1 archon at your cannons in your main? say u got +2 ground attack fast, that would be 43 dmg vs mutas, kill them in 3 hits with archon, and yea archon range is only 2 but muta range is only 3
if u had 3 archons in your main army when the zerg has 20 mutas, the z wouldnt be able to engage u because you could target mutas and 1shot them lol

On March 15 2010 06:39 Taurent wrote:


ya, just spend 200 gas on the robo, 100 gas on the immortal (cause you got a roach warren but made no roach) 200 gas on the support bay, 75 gas on the ob, and then when you scout his almost-done spire start your stargate, watch it build (while zerg expands, you may click around your base) then start massing up pheonixes with your 1 stargate and 2 gas against his 2 larva injected hatches supported by 4 gas

np

On March 15 2010 07:23 KiWiKaKi wrote:
phoenix sux ass

On March 15 2010 07:34 Taurent wrote:


ya, Zelniq you make phoenix look great on paper but _every_ time i got pheonixes against zerg, I lost. every single time. do I suck with them ? probably, but I just dont know any high level protoss who likes them

On March 15 2010 04:22 HolydaKing wrote:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=115321
=> 100 Mutas lose vs 100 Phoenix by far.

On March 15 2010 07:31 Taurent wrote:
probably more on tilt from a -200 point losing streak than confused

Your theorycraft makes sense. However the whole point of mutas is to harass the toss and buying time to build up your economy, so you only really need a few of them. By the time i have an army strong enough to move out (and a main defended), i usually get rolled by hydras. Sentries are about as good as probes vs hydras. The huge strength of zerg is that they can tech switch so quickly.

I'm not saying its impossible to win vs zerg, i'm just pointing out what has given me the most trouble so far.

On March 15 2010 07:43 Paladia wrote:

There is an imbalance right now in the game, protoss can hardly do anything against mass muta+ling.

Please show me a protoss player who above 50% of the time wins against an equally skilled opponent who has gone mass muta ling.

On March 15 2010 07:43 Paladia wrote:
Ehm, and? 100 Phoenix costs much more than 100 mutas, they take several times longer to build and they can only attack air. Mutas on the other hand are cheap, build super quick and are effective vs pretty much everything.

There is an imbalance right now in the game, protoss can hardly do anything against mass muta+ling.

Please show me a protoss player who above 50% of the time wins against an equally skilled opponent who has gone mass muta ling.

On March 15 2010 07:45 cyllu2 wrote:


Umm, about everyone?

Sentries own mutas. Stalkers own mutas. Phoenixes own mutas.

On March 15 2010 08:09 Zelniq wrote:
steve has the right idea and is why i strongly advocate the timing attack vs early mutas.

On March 15 2010 03:06 Zelniq wrote:
protosses seem to not be too aware of how good phoenixes are vs mutalisks. i think they've mostly been focusing with ground units and on the ground, they have a really tough time dealing with mutalisks. many sentries are good in a straight up fight, but theyre slow and so bad at defending bases.

Phoenixes are really good in just straight up muta v phoenix fights, 6 phoenixes kills mutas in 1 shot, and they attack pretty fast. ofc this means 3 phoenixes will kill mutas in 2 shots. however it takes 20 mutalisk attacks to kill 1 phoenix, and their range is shorter.

If toss starts getting phoenixes after observer scouts spire, like 5-6 supported by a nice mixed ground army of sentries/stalkers/zealots/immortals for a good timing attack, that will crush mutas easily, especially with guardian shield. this works well vs pretty much what any early mutalisking player will have.

or you can opt for earlier phoenixes and mass them more, theyre still great in large numbers of mutas vs phoenixes. This is what Response used to do (or still does maybe?) a lot vs zerg.. as well as some other protosses (lorelei aka Insane used to do a ton, he showed me how good phoenixes were, back before he switched to terran). Phoenixes are extremely fast and good harassing.. first few to kill overlords, then after getting around 4-5 start raping queens/drones/lone hydras. ofc theyre really useful for pickign up infestors, and even early roach pushes as well.

another misconception about Phoenixes is their weakness to Corruptors. in a straight up battle, they're evenly matched to Corruptors, however Corruptors move MUCH slower than the very fast phoenix, and so the P player gets to decide when he wants to fight, and can always run away if outnumbered. however if the Z is outnumbered and tries to run, the corruptors will all get picked off. it's also very easy to pull away phoenixes just before they die to save them as well, as corruptors cant chase them whatsoever

Ground is viable, P's just need to stop opening with that stupid robo opening blind and spend the gas on sentry/stalker instead.

On March 15 2010 08:40 pzea469 wrote:


Sentry/Stalker massed suck vs any other units in the zerg arsenal. All zerg would have to do is switch or see this and not even bother with muta.

On March 15 2010 09:19 Fayth wrote:
lol zomgzergrush "cannons were never meant to stop mutas themselves, just like in SC1"

then

"People need to again stop bringing up the "well in bw..." argument, its not fucking bw."

-_-

On March 15 2010 09:05 Steve496 wrote:
The problem is that there are openings against which you *need* be aggressive. If the Z does hatch expand before pool and you don't push, you're now playing from a severe econ disadvantage, as you simply can't safely expand as early as the Z did. This is doubly true of fast expo into fast lair type builds, which put the zerg even on tech and ahead on econ unless you punish them for their greediness.

The point of a ZI type push is not to necessarily *kill* the Z outright - it's to punish overgreedy zergs and guarantee that you enter midgame with similar expansion timing - as if they expo too early, you just kill it and make them try again. And the problem is, the timing window for this sort of thing is pretty narrow - it's not like you can stop and build 3 cannons to prevent ling backstabs and an observer to check on their tech and *then* push - by that point they'll have hydras or mutas, and you can't do anything anymore.

My experience is that P needs to be either pretty aggressive - 2gate, ZI timing push, etc. - to force the Z to play somewhat defensively and not just power in the opening... or they need to play super greedy themselves. And the latter is pretty risky as well. So saying "don't be so aggressive, you don't need to push early" sounds all well and good in theory... but in practice, having no plan for early aggression is just asking to play out the rest of the game with a severe econ disadvantage, which doesn't work very well either.

On March 15 2010 03:00 Defrag wrote:
Fayth, that would be terrible, as zerg already have massive problems with getting into base of turtling protoss, even with huge eco/army advantage.

I recently played with a protoss player ( platinum obv ) who got his main / natural destroyed, but in the meantime he sneaked out and turreted two more expos with like 20 turrets each, and held 4-5 HT's in each for defense.

I was limit capped and couldnt get in lol. Less static defense = funnier games.

With a boost to bunkers/sunkens ( those are terrible thou )/ photo cannons the game is going to change into playing Human of Warcraf3, where u would FE and place 10 towers that were unkillable with armor upgrade.

On March 15 2010 09:35 radiumz0rz wrote:
the problem with the cannons could be that they are too smart. In sc1, if you have a lot of cannons they all shoot the 1 target, in sc2 the game is smart enough to only fire enough cannon shots on the first target to kill it and move on to the next target more efficiently.

On March 15 2010 09:28 zomgzergrush wrote:

I agree there are SOME cases where they should, i.e. 13 hatch. I said P dont NEED to be aggressive. I know that is the mentality of all P nowadays since I see the same play every game. The problem is that P are doing the same thing no matter what Z is doing and Z is simply reacting to what P is doing. P's too often push out with their ZI builds when they're not even able to. They proceed to possibly kill Z nat, lose their army to muta, then their bae, then cry IMBA MUTAS!! Tip: killing the Z nat, especially one that is just hauling a bit of gas, is not worth the price of losing your entire army. Least that's the case in my games. The inherent problem is applying that pressure in the first place can land the P with 0 army. Rather than applying pressure and losing your army, you can hold onto it, use it to expo, etc. Z sees what you have and needs to have enough to cover it, even if you don't push.

13 hatch imo is suicide nowadays with the advent of ZI and is a completely different story than what I do. I equate the risk of 13 hatching to old school 14 nex and 3 hatch before pool. In this situation there's not a whole lot of room for "punishing" but pretty much only either "killing" or "losing econ completely"

I strongly disagree with 2gate. I don't think that this is even viable anymore. An analogy: 9 pooling vs a mech terran with a wall. I say this because Z can scout it in time and proceed to move to roaches without changing their build very much at all.

Nowadays my entire build route is dictated by what P is doing and if P pushes out prematurely to "try to apply pressure" they lose their army followed by their base.

On March 15 2010 11:37 Steve496 wrote:
The problem is, if you get a stalker early enough to chase out the overlord before starting the robo, the robo is now delayed by the full build time of a stalker, plus a little extra to chase out the overlord. And that means, for instance, it's too late to:

1) Defend an early roach rush
2) Get Immortals out fast enough to hit the zerg before they have lair tech.

Like, the roach rush arrives right about the time you can theoretically get an immortal out. If you delay it by 30 seconds, you're now looking at defending a roach rush with zealot/stalker/sentry... which can get ugly. The ZI push, without waiting for a stalker to clear scouting - already arrives after the hydra den/spire starts building. So I would argue that the simple fact that you don't see a robo until after a stalker pops out *already* means you're safe from any early push assuming you're going anything reasonable in your own base. It also, as a note, means your first observer is that much later, making your blind period of having no idea what the Z is doing is that much longer.

Again, I'm not going to argue that the matchup is unwinnable - it's not. I actually win it about half the time. But there's some very real issues with the early game dynamic that mean that a lot of my wins owe quite a bit to luck - I happened to pick an opening that doesn't die horribly to what the Z is doing. And I think the game would benefit by making the opening a little less volatile in that respect.

On March 15 2010 15:48 zomgzergrush wrote:


dropping 50 gas on a stalker does not cost you 30 seconds worth of gas mining time... If need be, gas a tad bit earlier. If the build is not working, don't jump to the conclusion that the game is broken. Rather, adjust your build. More on this later.

Also, your probe scout comes in plenty early enough to notice the roach warren or lack thereof if it is in fact a roach rush. Roach rushes need the warren to come down after pool pops. Your core isn't even close to being done at that point. That is plenty of scout time. Also, send a second probe if need be, isn't too hard to dodge a ling outside of creep. If you think it's impossible to scout zerg just because your first scout probe dies, I challenge you to watch the replay afterwards and say with 100% certainty there was no way to scout the z after the initial probe scout. Face it, this isn't bw anymore, the probe scout won't live forever and see exactly what the zerg is doing the first time around. Adjust your play.

From the viewpoint of a zerg (others may react differently, this is just how I think):
If my drone can't see a robo, I can't make any assumptions. If there is a robo, then ZI is gonna kill me if I don't skip roaches. If there is no robo then Z is gonna be screwed if he goes straight for muta vs a zeal stalker sentry push. Note that most zergs don't even bother to drone scout at which point shooing the ovie in time is even easier. You don't even need to kill it before you plop down the robo, you can plop it down far away while shooting down the ovie. Better yet, proxy the robo, especially if you are opting for a ZI push.

I think Ps gotta study Z builds more closely and figure out timings from replays. I think there is much understanding that Ps need to learn about the finer details of Z builds and timings.

After dying repeatedly to ZI and voidray rushes, instead of crying imba and asserting that the game is broken, I did my replay homework on my own and that is how I figured out how to craft and time my build to block voidrays and ZI. Literally all it takes is marking the time X should arrive and formulating a build to counter X. 99% of the time a given scenario is not impossible to solve.

Main detail I see with this current view though, you swear Z is automatically going to roach rush. You can spot a roach warren or 1st roach plenty early enough to know if this is the case or not. Again, refer to my spiel about scouting earlier in this post.

On March 15 2010 16:11 L wrote:

Even if Z puts down a warren, its perfectly possible for him to eat a 150 mineral deficit and go lair to muta regardless while P prepares for the wrong thing. If the probe dies before the warren is done? Cool beans, Z fakes P out for even less.

That's the entire problem: P needs to guess and guess right. There's very little reaction room. Between those first two lings and your first obs/phoenix, P sees nothing. Normally that wasn't terrible because you'd have warpgates to let you frontload your production to match your current need, as well as provide reinforcements at the site of a push. Now that's gone.

Just by way of example: prior, you could toss out an early sentry to have it build energy with the understanding that if your opponent went roach or ling all in, you could warp in another 2-3 sentries, ff the ramp for an entire minute (if not longer), and get 2 immortals or a bunch of zealots out to beat back the push. Now, that's simply not an option.

On March 15 2010 16:41 Steve496 wrote:
Ok, couple of points here.

1) Stalker doesn't cost you 30 seconds of gas. True. But: a robo can be dropped the same time you can start building a stalker. So if you see a stalker and not a robo, that robo has been delayed by at least the build time of that stalker. You *could* drop it earlier - but that totally defeats the purpose of the stalker, as if you're going to let them see the robo before chasing out the scout, why bother chasing out the scout?

2) Yes, you can spot a fast roach rush. But there are delayed roach rush timings that can be dangerous - just like a protoss *can* chase your scout out and then get a robo, you *can* chase the scout out and then drop a roach warren. Or, alternately, drop the roach warren and then cancel it if you see a robo. Or even just let it finish - it's not like it cost you any gas to get.

3) Rescouting: yes, but only on certain maps. On any map other than Kulas Ravine or Scrapyard, any decent zerg just puts about 4 lings on his ramp, and you can't get through that with a probe. With a wide ramp or wide choke (like those two maps) - yes, you can rescout. And I do. And it helps. But that's sort of the exception rather than the rule.

4) Which brings us back to the problem I mentioned. Zerg has a much easier time keeping an eye on what P is doing than vice versa. It's easy to say "just adjust your build to what they're doing" but there's a lot of very plausible situations where you don't *know* what they're doing. And that makes it hard to adjust to.

5) I'm not claiming that Z is always going to roach rush, I'm just saying you need to be prepared for that eventuality. Just like Z needs to be prepared for P to ZI push. It's not that it's unbeatable by any stretch, it's simply that you need to have a build that can deal with that possibility, or it's not a very good build. Which leads to problems like: if my scout sees a fast roach warren, I *have* to build something - usually immortals - that can kill roaches. So I have to robo immediately on finishing my core, which means the Z gets to see my robo start. And at that point, he can simply... not build roaches. At which point I had to build at least one immortal that's not terribly useful against any other build you're doing, and you have a roach warren you're not immediately utilizing. Which of us comes off better in this exchange? I submit that the answer is the Z.

Again: I'm not arguing that the matchup is imbalanced or unfair. As I say: I have a decent win rate at it. But there *is* a scouting imbalance, and there *are* quite a few Z strats that can very easily kill you in the opening if not handled correctly. And not all of them can easily be identified in time. Hence the first 5-10 minutes of the game does feel a bit... unstable to me. Not necessarily unfair, but volatile. I play a lot of very short PvZs both ways. And maybe it's just that I'm missing some general build/strategy notion that can more easily handle all of Z's options. I won't discount that possibility. I'm simply trying to identify the problems I've been having with the matchup, so as to see if other people are having them as well, and if it might be the sign of some sort of issue. The answer may very well be no. But from my experience, it does feel like some changes to make the opening more stable might not be a terrible idea.

On March 15 2010 17:25 TossFloss wrote:
How to Phoenix not counter mutalisks?

Phoenix has 5 (x 2 attacks) + 5 bonus to light = 20 damage to mutalisks.

Zerg has the opening advantage because of their unit production mechanics. They can store up unit production (larvae) to quickly build a large number of tech units. This is not different than SC1 corsair vs mutalisk opening in which the corsairs lose in a straight fight only because of sheer number of mutalisks.

I'd suggest the following opening:
* 2 cannons defending the mineral line
* a few sentries for guardian shield
* 1 stargate pumping out phoenix
* research + 1 air attack upgrade

Once the +1 attack upgrade finishes, take the fight to zerg.

Unlike air-to-air corsairs, phoenix threaten ground units with their graviton beam. With some micro to lift the queen and pick off drones, that can turn into a very serious threat.

On March 15 2010 17:28 zomgzergrush wrote:

My only gripe with this is the "large number of tech units"
Yes, for the last time, Z get extra larvae, we know. But they won't be 50 mutalisks + hydralisks. Z users are limited by gas just like everyone else when it comes to tech units. I'd also recommend against +1 air attack upgrade. That's better spent in another phoenix IMO, specially that early in the game plus the whole 1 base gas thing.

On March 15 2010 17:50 TossFloss wrote:


Yeah, I think my choice of wording was poor. I'm just trying to point out that (ala SC1) zerg can do stuff like quickly build 9 mutalisks once their spire completes (3 hatch muta build). Of course they are limited by resources. But in a PvZ early corsair vs mutalisk, if you plot a graph of total-gas-spent / minute for each race (again, in the early game) the zerg graph would suddenly spike up then fall off whereas protoss would remain relatively constant. Eventually both graphs will converge. IMO this gives zerg an early game aggression advantage which stalls Protoss aggression until P catches up.

On March 15 2010 17:23 zomgzergrush wrote:
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On March 15 2010 18:01 Steve496 wrote:


Hmm. Your experience is pretty different than mine, I guess is the takeaway here. I usually run over P that go straight to mutas before they get there on all but the largest maps when I ZI push. I might not kill them, but I usually at least get the queen, some drones, and often the lair as well, at which point the muta-ing player shows up at my base with a handful of mutas, sees 3 cannons, and leaves. The point of knowing the robo is delayed (due to a stalker or whatever) is that it *guarantees* you'll have time to get mutas out. Or hydras, which also do just fine against ZI. Or, most problematically, hydras and an expansion, which is where things get sticky.

So maybe I've just been playing against bad zergs who are slow on their muta tech. I can't discount that possibility. Or maybe the P you're playing are slow at ZI pushes. Also a possibility. But I think part of the issue we're having is that our experience of how certain openings line up don't 100% match up, so we're going to have a hard time agreeing on what counters what.

As an aside: I certainly agree that P tends to have a fairly appreciable advantage at scouting Zs bases in the mid and late game. The scouting issue definitely does equalize and even swing back the other way at times. And you'll note, I have no real complaints about PvZ once we're out of the first 10 minutes and I actually do have some idea what you're doing. But until that point, I feel like P has more ways to lose and less information about which one is coming, which I'm not a big fan of. If you disagree, so be it - I'm inclined to leave it there.