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Warning. Useless comments that are deemed to be flame/troll bait = ban. If you have criticism, thats fine but you better have amazing support to back up your opinion. Otherwise ban. |
As for the whole 2 base thing, I think that the moment you take your third would be where you are very vulnerable. As much as some say that VR/Collo is "mobile", VR are still really slow air units (fun fact: they are as slow as off-creep hydras). Defending three bases with only VR vs Mutas isn't gonna be great (chances are you're gonna split your army). You can add stalkers to the mix, but non-blink stalkers aren't that great at defending three bases.
I would like to point that hydras are not nearly as powerful as VRs or Colossus in terms of necessary responses, and you are saying that something is "as mobile" as them, ignoring the whole cliffwalking thing.
So the zerg "power army" is more immobile than the protoss equivalent and yet can barely scratch the protoss power army. That seems a little strange doesn't it? Shouldn't the zerg army be more mobile, not less?
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First of all, zerg can too scout:
If you send an overlord into my base and I kill it with a void ray.. i think its pretty damn obvious that i'm getting void rays.
If i send stalkers to go kill it, if they dont blink.. i'm probably not going HT tech
Sentry are too slow to catch an overlord and kill it before it can scout.
You dont have to run a changeling in through our main.. man up and drop one in the side of our base. IF we see it, our army isnt goign to be in position to do anything about it immediately.
Also,
Perhaps zergs should not be letting protoss sit and get a maxed army with T3 in one tree and T2 in another WITH upgrades
Like you siad, we are low on gas. That means we may have a bunch of slow ass void rays and a couple stalkers. If you send a handfull of mutas into our base we are not going to be able to catch you before you do a ton of damage.
TOPIC:
How about we talk about that aside from colossus, protoss has no cost effective way to deal with roaches. I'm serious.. check it out in the unit tester.. immortals are our best alternative but they are still not a hard counter by any means. 3 roaches with +3 attack do 66 damage and cost 225/75. 1 immortal with +3 attack does 65 damage and costs 250/100 (not to mention we would not be building more than 2 at a time.. 3 tops).
Upgraded roaches are faster than stalkers, have = life to zealots, cost 75/25, and can burrow under FF (and regenerate while doing so). All for a 150 mineral investment that does not align with your tech tree to hive.
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I hope I'm not being too critical but I don't see why this show isn't discussing TvZ or marines in general, given T's winrate in EVERY TOURNEY/LADDER.
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Everyone saying that mass corruptors are a viable solution (or anything else like harassment, Nydus, etc.) have really no clue.
Do you guys really play Zerg ? We are NOT discussing a unit compo, we are discussing actual TIMINGS that lead the late ZvP to go utterly imbalance for the P if transitionning into this strat.
All of this reminds me why we are upset with Bronze guys telling us how to play the game, like "marine tank is shit, everytime I go marine tank Zerg rapes my main with 30+ mutas !"
I'll played 3 times against a friend (rank 20 master) using this strat and undestood why this is so strong (btw he off raced Protoss). You play standart PvZ, you can't say "oh well I'll make mass corruptors, just in case", when he 3 gate expands then pressures you must choose a way, say Mutas or Roaches, then check is mid game and react accordingly. Going mutas is so much more risky that roaches seem to be a better mid game opening. Then you saturate your 2 bases and think.
What will you do ? Good P dont die to roach pressure, if you commit to it he will just FF you out of the game, so you want to EXPAND and go roach hydra, build a handful of those just in case he cant all in you (which he will if you have no units at this stage), then P will go stalkers/sentry/colosus off 2 bases. If you want to get sufficiant Roach Hydras in order to survive AND the money to supplement them with Corruptors BEFORE 14 min mark, when he will push out with colossi while expanding. So you need to take a third at 8-9 then SATURATE the hell of it and building units in the meantime to be maxed till 14 minute mark.
Do you really guy think that while I struggle to saturate my third and taking a 4th and try to apply presure how much as I can while not loosing anything (P is awesome defending), I will say to myself "ohhhhh look ! He builds Void Rays !! lets cancel all my drones to Nydus/mass 30 corruptors/massqueen/rush ultra/drop roach the hell of him before he gets his death ball !". No, It wont happen guys.
I usually PRAY I can get my corruptors in time before his 2-3 colossus push with sufficient ground army, do you really think Zerg would do something stupid enough like 20 corruptors with a weak ground army just because P has 2-void rays ? Even if Z manage to destroy all his voids and colossi, wich is very unlikely as stalkers and voids really own corruptors and mutas so hard, he will need so much corruptors so fast that P will just resupply with stalkers and you WONT have sufficient eco running in order to remax fast enough.
No, we Zerg cannot have roach/hydras/20+ corruptors/massqueen/ultras with nydus harasment then do the 300 food push in the same time by 15-16 minutes. We play an actual game with actual set of constraints, and VR colossi is strong not in terms of unit compo but because it transitions so well from P's mid game and awesome defensive capabilities while being able to threat Zerg's mid game if he does something fancy.
And for everyone arguing that VR/colossi is not unbeatable, I think they miss the point. 'Imbalanced' does not mean 'Unbeatable', otherwise their show would have been renamed accordingly. This strat is perfectly beatable, it just requires so much macro skills and multitasking to beat (to apply pressure, deny third, while macroing like a mad man, good positionning, etc.) that at equal skill level, it just, well... a little too hard to deal with. Which is exactly what the word 'imbalanced' means.
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On February 16 2011 13:08 Aerakin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:02 Ballistixz wrote:
you dont have to skip colls. you dont need that many sentries and stalkers to deal with the mutas because the voids already do good DPS against them. sure mutas own void rays in a void ray vs muta fight, but with ground to air support units backing void rays up makes them insanely more powerful. and you dont need to invest that much into the sentries. infact you dont need sentries at all tbh.
so really all you would need is Void+colls+some stalkers as filler. and like idra and artosis said this is only on 2 base. there is nothing stoping them from taking a 3rd base in order for them to support even more units. If we're talking about mass muta, I doubt building stalkers from two warp gates is gonna cut it. I mean, it is possible. But I doubt it. As for the whole 2 base thing, I think that the moment you take your third would be where you are very vulnerable. As much as some say that VR/Collo is "mobile", VR are still really slow air units (fun fact: they are as slow as off-creep hydras). Defending three bases with only VR vs Mutas isn't gonna be great (chances are you're gonna split your army). You can add stalkers to the mix, but non-blink stalkers aren't that great at defending three bases.
who builds 2 gates on 2 bases? in the vid idra even said that you can just switch to gateway units at anytime by cutting star gate production with 6 gateways. all of the gatways dont always have to be constantly in use, but the option is always there.
the best the mutas can do is harass his eco. he will not cut down the unit size. so all it would really do is delay toss a bit, but it wont stop his death push unless you can cut it down. and if you try to engage that kind of army with pure mutas then they will simply disintegrate. then you will have to throw another maxed army at it only to have that one disintergrate.
like really your not gonna get anything accomplished with the mutas. they cant engagethe army and they will only be good for keeping the toss on his toes. and if he defends it and decides "time for you to die" what will the mutas do? nothing.
all the toss needs to do is scout. he can make voids+stalkers and easily deal with the mass mutas. if zerg sees that then he will naturally go hydra roach since the mutas wont be enough to kill him. and once the toss sees u going hydra then he will simply start pumping cols. zerg cannot win the counter game.
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On February 16 2011 13:02 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
And I'd just like to make one more point, which is sort of hypocritical: I don't think these types of discussions are incredibly useful for high level players. And if they're not useful for us, they're not useful for anyone. What high level players need are refined build orders. The specifics are what win games, or they are at least equally essential to overarching strategies and general unit compositions. How much effort has been put into every kind of response to this build? 10 games of each approach from a handful of players? I doubt even that much. And that wouldn't be enough. Even when you know a certain strategy works well and people are already successfully doing it, it can take a progamer 30+ games to really master it.
Basically, it's hard for me to believe that Zergs have been able to execute responses well enough, with the type of refinement and precision that an S-Class progamer puts into the builds he'll use for a starleague finals, such that any conclusions can be made. Conclusions about the strength of the build relative to other builds are premature. Conclusions about balance are beyond reach. It doesn't matter if tip top players are the ones playing these games. If they aren't doing what they need to do to play at a tip top level, their opinions and experiences are as irrelevant as the diamond league players.
My guess is this build isn't in fact as common as Artosis made it out to be. In the GSTL, yonghwa did this and Artosis didn't clue in to the colossus/VR combination until very late. He was in fact completely surprised. Playing toss on the KR ladder, he probably would've known about this if it was really that rampant. It might also explain his tremendous success with this build against zergs because most have not seen this style of play and haven't formulated robust counters to this strategy.
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On February 16 2011 10:14 jhsu98 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 10:07 CrAzEdBaDgEr wrote:On February 16 2011 09:58 GGzerG wrote:
Well I have to completely disagree here, when I see a protoss massing voidray / colossi I am actually always very happy / confident that I will win, Obviously corrupters are not the correct solution, IMO the correct solution is MASS mutalisk with upgrades, then upgrades on zerglings, Speedling, Baneling, Mutalisk, will almost always win vs voidray / colossi, since there will be practically no sentries out on the field.
I have encountered this build many times, and when you see it coming, it is actually a lot easier to stop than people think, the only problem is mass mutalisk instead of mass corrupter, I'm surprised that Idra would not attempt to come to this conclusion...I guess because he goes roach / hydra / corrupter EVERY ZvP i've ever seen him play, like I said before, no offense but I strongly disagree, Muta / ling / bling with upgrades destroys voidray / colossi / zealot army.
EDIT : The only real thing you have to worry about when massing muta / ling / bling is them going storm / archon, and even then by the time they do this , you can just tech switch to mass roach / ultralisk then broodlord and you will almost always be fine. I play random, and I completely agree with you. Mass muta is really hard for Protoss to deal with unless the Protoss has a decent number of sentries and/or lots of phoenixes. Upgraded speedlings as a mineral dump with mass upgraded mutalisks are quite effective against this, and once a lot of the void rays are gone, re-max with roaches (can be done much faster than the Protoss can rebuild his army) for the win. I'm not saying the Protoss death ball isn't extremely difficult to deal with, but mass mutalisks are really good against this version of the death ball. EDIT: I forgot to add that many zerg players also don't bother teching up to tier 3, and I feel many complaints lie in the fact that a tier 2 zerg army is fighting a tier 3 protoss army. If the zerg player gets NP or brood lords out, a lot can change, and the broodlings have upgrade synergy with zerglings (the mineral dump) too. Considering the protoss is going robo/stargate it's very easy for him to transition to phoenix with his stargates as soon as he sees mutas. Mutas aren't a mass up and roll unit like VR/colossus so with 5 phoenixes the map control is gone and you've wasted the resources. It's a case of "mass muta would be nice RIGHT NOW" but remember units don't come up instantly it takes time to mass them up and in that time protoss will easily adapt to counter it hard.
Uh...zerg is the only race that CAN completely tech switch that quickly. You are only limited by money and larvae.
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On February 16 2011 13:10 AlBundy wrote:
Liquid'Tyler is spot-on, we can see that he actually has the mindset of a genuine progamer.
Sorry for the one-liner but I can't think of anything meaningful to add.
Well, tbh, I think it's a good show but they just need to change a few words. Not use balance/imbalance. Just say they're gonna explore some of the interesting strategies going on at the highest levels. When a new strategy seems invincible (or not invincible, but at least overpowered), even after initial efforts have been made to deal with it, they just gotta say that it seems like a strat with some staying power and talk about what they think the best possible responses are to it. Or why the initial responses to it aren't working. There doesn't have to be any conclusions or point to the conversation beyond those things. They're really interesting and I respect the things IdrA and Artosis say in these shows.
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I think i watched a game on CatZ stream the other night against PiQliQ. I don't think anyone would argue that PiQliQ is better than CatZ, but i will say that PiQliQ played the stargate + colossi build quite well. It was on LT and cross positions. He quickly had phoenix' out to harass CatZ mineral lines + queens, forcing some spore crawlers + extra queens. He simply expanded behind cannons (lots of cannons) and started building up a very large ball of VR + phoenix + colossi. I'm sure CatZ made mistakes in the game, as i'm sure PiQliQ did, but it seemed to me there wasn't really much CatZ could do. If i remember correctly, CatZ was on 3 bases quicker than PiQliQ and even spammed quite a lot of corruptors but did almost no damage to PiQliQ. I guess my question is, when you throw phoenix in there for the harass + map control, what can Zerg do? Early aggression and hope to break? Clearly having a better Macro than your opponent doesn't do anything when you don't dent the deathball.
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Can't wait to watch this when I get home.
@ all the people claiming this is just a Zerg QQ show.
Go and watch the first episode, and listen to the explanation that they give. This show is about Balance at THE HIGHEST ECHELONS of professonal play. At anything under the skill ceiling of people like EGIdrA, TSL_Fruitdealer, etc there are just too many variables to make a concise conclusion regarding balance. (Eg: player skill)
Yes the Protoss deathball of Collosi/VR can be countered. I'm sure plenty of you Diamond/masters players can counter it. Litterally everything in this game can be countered. However...at the HIGHEST echelons of tournament play, where everyone has perfect macro and 300apm, this unit comp might actually be imbalanced.
In the end though, these guys are pro's. They've both made careers out of this game, and I think they are a little more qaulified to make judgement calls about balance than any of us. They are only opinions though, so like it or lump it, no one is forcing you to watch the show.
@ Artosis and Idra;
Keep em comming.
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On February 16 2011 13:15 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +As for the whole 2 base thing, I think that the moment you take your third would be where you are very vulnerable. As much as some say that VR/Collo is "mobile", VR are still really slow air units (fun fact: they are as slow as off-creep hydras). Defending three bases with only VR vs Mutas isn't gonna be great (chances are you're gonna split your army). You can add stalkers to the mix, but non-blink stalkers aren't that great at defending three bases. I would like to point that hydras are not nearly as powerful as VRs or Colossus in terms of necessary responses, and you are saying that something is "as mobile" as them, ignoring the whole cliffwalking thing.
Mind you, I was only saying that void rays are as slow as the unit that is considering "slow as hell" by most players. Void Rays are still flying units, so they do have mobility.
And yes, collosus are still kind of mobile, but then they don't really help against muta.
On February 16 2011 13:18 Ballistixz wrote:
who builds 2 gates on 2 bases? in the vid idra even said that you can just switch to gateway units at anytime by cutting star gate production with 6 gateways. all of the gatways dont always have to be constantly in use, but the option is always there.
You can cut production all you want, but any production facility you are not using is either wasted money or a time delay. You don't just get 4 additional gateways instantly either. Really, you can do it, but it just doesn't optimal.
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On February 16 2011 13:18 JoeSchmoe wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:02 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
And I'd just like to make one more point, which is sort of hypocritical: I don't think these types of discussions are incredibly useful for high level players. And if they're not useful for us, they're not useful for anyone. What high level players need are refined build orders. The specifics are what win games, or they are at least equally essential to overarching strategies and general unit compositions. How much effort has been put into every kind of response to this build? 10 games of each approach from a handful of players? I doubt even that much. And that wouldn't be enough. Even when you know a certain strategy works well and people are already successfully doing it, it can take a progamer 30+ games to really master it.
Basically, it's hard for me to believe that Zergs have been able to execute responses well enough, with the type of refinement and precision that an S-Class progamer puts into the builds he'll use for a starleague finals, such that any conclusions can be made. Conclusions about the strength of the build relative to other builds are premature. Conclusions about balance are beyond reach. It doesn't matter if tip top players are the ones playing these games. If they aren't doing what they need to do to play at a tip top level, their opinions and experiences are as irrelevant as the diamond league players. My guess is this build isn't in fact as common as Artosis made it out to be. In the GSTL, yonghwa did this and Artosis didn't clue in to the colossus/VR combination until very late. He was in fact completely surprised. Playing toss on the KR ladder, he probably would've known about this if it was really that rampant. It might also explain his tremendous success with this build against zergs because most have not seen this style of play and haven't formulated robust counters to this strategy.
No, like any trend someone has to start it. I'm sure IdrA and Artosis play ladder enough that this build came up enough times to realize it isn't going away.
I doubt many people have come up with a build to help fend off this strategy. If a build does come up, I doubt there will be an easy solution. The fact that the Void Rays are able to stop all scouting from the Zerg puts them in the dark, making the Zerg go from scout and react race into a what-to-do now race. The Protoss keeps scouting unit combinations until he gets maxed with the right combination and is able to move out and clean up the zerg.
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On February 16 2011 13:17 DjayEl wrote:
Everyone saying that mass corruptors are a viable solution (or anything else like harassment, Nydus, etc.) have really no clue.
Do you guys really play Zerg ? We are NOT discussing a unit compo, we are discussing actual TIMINGS that lead the late ZvP to go utterly imbalance for the P if transitionning into this strat.
Timing is not an issue here. We're talking about a protoss player turtling whilst building up a ball of high-end units from multiple tech paths. The zerg player has enough time and freedom to do just about anything while this is happening. The question is what the zerg SHOULD do to either prempt or be ready for the push.
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On February 16 2011 13:20 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:10 AlBundy wrote:
Liquid'Tyler is spot-on, we can see that he actually has the mindset of a genuine progamer.
Sorry for the one-liner but I can't think of anything meaningful to add. Well, tbh, I think it's a good show but they just need to change a few words. Not use balance/imbalance. Just say they're gonna explore some of the interesting strategies going on at the highest levels. When a new strategy seems invincible (or not invincible, but at least overpowered), even after initial efforts have been made to deal with it, they just gotta say that it seems like a strat with some staying power and talk about what they think the best possible responses are to it. Or why the initial responses to it aren't working. There doesn't have to be any conclusions or point to the conversation beyond those things. They're really interesting and I respect the things IdrA and Artosis say in these shows.
I agree in spirit but disagree in terms of showmanship and entertainment. It's more dramatic to declare something as imbalanced rather than going all soft and giving a non answer.
What i do want to see is them revisit topics after a few weeks in a followup episode to see if things have changed. I'd like the show to be like a consistent flow as opposed to one offs without a sequel.
You mentioned earlier about players needing the time to refine a build in reponse to builds which have been refined in house before jumping to conclusions (or something to that effect). So my question to you, or just in general, is how much time is needed? Obviously we're after some magic arbitrary number, how long is a piece of string? But let's say in 4 weeks this build is still crushing zergs left right and center, what say you?
In any event, i pray for FruitDealer.
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Whilst I hate to go against what Tyler says (as he is a significantly better player) but if the P is going 2 Star Voids w 1 Robo Coll (Which is the build that was mentioned on the video), whats stopping the protoss from quickly pumping out some Phoenix to counter? If the phoenix are out fast enough, the Z isnt going to do that much damage and falls behind (and loses map control).
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On February 16 2011 11:11 AlBundy wrote:
So, guys, do Mutalisks rape Phoenix, or is it the other way around? Let's get facts straight please. otherwise the discussion is pointless.
From what I understand in this thread, the Collosus-Void deathball destroys Zerg. So Zerg should be aggressive mid-game in order to prevent the Protoss from reaching the deathball. Problem is, you can't be aggressive without sacrificing economy because you have to commit and Protoss can easily defend.
Did I get that right?
god are you really for real seriously asking if mutas rape phoenix??? youve really never seen the two units fight? or you just know nothing about sc2/?
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On February 16 2011 13:20 Liquid`Tyler wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:10 AlBundy wrote:
Liquid'Tyler is spot-on, we can see that he actually has the mindset of a genuine progamer.
Sorry for the one-liner but I can't think of anything meaningful to add. Well, tbh, I think it's a good show but they just need to change a few words. Not use balance/imbalance. Just say they're gonna explore some of the interesting strategies going on at the highest levels. When a new strategy seems invincible (or not invincible, but at least overpowered), even after initial efforts have been made to deal with it, they just gotta say that it seems like a strat with some staying power and talk about what they think the best possible responses are to it. Or why the initial responses to it aren't working. There doesn't have to be any conclusions or point to the conversation beyond those things. They're really interesting and I respect the things IdrA and Artosis say in these shows.
I agree with that, but I think it also highlights a weakness in this week's episode. Last week I felt Idra and Artosis had improved their format because they looked at the TvP early game from both sides, and discussed variations that could occur with each race, as well as the limitations and strengths o the different openings. That seems to have been lost this week, as the analysis is fairly one-dimensional and repetitive, without examining the build and counter-builds from different angles.
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One unit that I wished they had talked about is the infestor. Fungal growth really hurts Void rays (due to clumping) and Neural parasite is pretty good against Collosus. And even infested terrans have potential as well. Fungal can be used to the hold the void rays while queens kill them from range, or delay the push by forcing protoss to only move when the infestors are out of energy or dead. An infestation pit is needed to move to Hive, so the gas costs aren't that significant either. I'm not sure why they consider this type of solution.
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On February 16 2011 13:23 Aerakin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:15 DoubleReed wrote:As for the whole 2 base thing, I think that the moment you take your third would be where you are very vulnerable. As much as some say that VR/Collo is "mobile", VR are still really slow air units (fun fact: they are as slow as off-creep hydras). Defending three bases with only VR vs Mutas isn't gonna be great (chances are you're gonna split your army). You can add stalkers to the mix, but non-blink stalkers aren't that great at defending three bases. I would like to point that hydras are not nearly as powerful as VRs or Colossus in terms of necessary responses, and you are saying that something is "as mobile" as them, ignoring the whole cliffwalking thing. Mind you, I was only saying that void rays are as slow as the unit that is considering "slow as hell" by most players. Void Rays are still flying units, so they do have mobility. And yes, collosus are still kind of mobile, but then they don't really help against muta. Show nested quote +On February 16 2011 13:18 Ballistixz wrote:
who builds 2 gates on 2 bases? in the vid idra even said that you can just switch to gateway units at anytime by cutting star gate production with 6 gateways. all of the gatways dont always have to be constantly in use, but the option is always there.
You can cut production all you want, but any production facility you are not using is either wasted money or a time delay. You don't just get 4 additional gateways instantly either. Really, you can do it, but it just doesn't optimal.
considering how powerful the army is its not a waste. like i said, if he scouts you going muta then he can make stalker void and you wont be able to engage him. if you stop making mutas and he sees you are going hydra/roach he can simply start to pump cols+void with some gateway back up. like idra said toss just needs to scout and adjust accordingly. there is a reason why they never mentioned mutas as a viable strat and its because blink stalkers ALONE deal with them so good. so just imagine adding voids to that mix.
the best way that i see to deal with it is mutas+ultras. but that is so fucking gas heavy and not to mention how long it takes to tech to ultras. zerg basically needs a huge economical/macgro advantage just to deal with a strat that can be pulled off off of 2 bases.
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This show is incredible. I love watching this discussion. Videos and audio only would be good, but the discussion is the UNIQUE part of the show. Discussion should always remain 90%+ of the show.
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