The following is an analysis of the modern Protoss deathball currently sweeping tournaments as compared to the Zerg swarm last fall that was having good results for Zerg players.
Let's take an objective glance at part of the metagame. Ever since SC2 launched, Zerg has been all about taking an economic advantage and then killing their opponent in the late game. During a period of time after the Zealot and Reaper build time nerfs, Zergs were finally able to fend off substantial early harassment and build up these economic leads with far more ease than was possible before. After a short period of time, Zergs were enjoying strategies that basically involved "macro hard to win!" and many Zergs learned a lot of the intricacies of when to drone and when not to drone. Zerg enjoyed a brief trip to the top - Korean and foreign polls were all declaring that Zerg was far and away the top race (77% voted that Zerg was the strongest race on a leading Korean forum, the "TL" of the Korean scene). IdrA was considered a much bigger favorite than he is currently (comparatively - he's still a great favorite), and players like Fruitdealer and Nestea were (and in the case of Nestea, are) considered the players to watch.
The shift was ironic, because the exact same polls had shown Terran in a commanding lead for "strongest race" just two months earlier with 81% voting in favor. This was the time when MorroW won IEM away from IdrA with Reaper play, and Terran were placing 3-out-of-4 slots in the top 4 of many tournaments, if not winning outright. Protoss was widely considered the weakest race with the most flimsy and gimmicky mechanics (force field, Void Ray, Mothership, or just builds involving a Stargate at all).
Unfortunately for Zerg, the "reign" was relatively short-lived. One particular player, MarineKing, showed that an ultra-aggressive high pressure style could perform very well against many Zergs. Theorycrafting on Teamliquid produced results, and Terran and Protoss learned ways to pressure the Zerg and keep the drone count lower, leading to less economic dominance going into the midgame. The Zerg style was, in a sense, "found out" and a reasonable - but not always effective - counter was discovered that put the races on even footing.
Fast forward many months to season 2, jumping many major tournaments down the line. Zerg has had less than spectacular results recently as Terran and Protoss styles have grown to accommodate pressuring on Zerg to force army production and reduce the exponential growth possibilities of Spawn Larva. Except we notice that a peculiar shift of events has occurred.
Not only is Zerg under-represented in the top 16 of many tournaments, but now Protoss is over-represented. And what is causing that? In many cases it is a series of Protoss timing attacks combined with an eventual deathball off of an economic turtle style play. Isn't that exactly what Zerg were using only a few months before - a style that tried to command an economic advantage and "survive" until their advantage eventually peaked and they could win the game? Except now Protoss is doing a similar strategy - instead of requiring bases and resources to ascertain victory, Protoss simply requires that their army stay relatively unharmed in order to build up the critical mass of units necessary to sweep army after opponent army. This is a different strategy than Zerg, who welcomed the opportunity to exchange armies with an opponent due to the vastly increased economy and production capability with which to quickly reproduce an army, compared to the other two races slow acquisition of key units (Tanks, Colossus).
If you look at the post history of the strategy boards back in late 2010, you'll find an overwhelming amount of threads asking the question "How do I punish Zerg?" Eventually, with time, this was figured out. Balance changes were NOT made to cause Zerg to "fall from power" so to speak (in fact, the only balance changes during this time were pro-Zerg and con-Terran). With dedication (and whining) the players eventually figured out how to take care of the Zerg threat.
Now if we look at the strategy forums recently, it's a complete shift - the Protoss deathball is getting a lot of attention. And for good reason - it's very powerful! However it's not substantially more powerful than it has ever been (Zealot charge and Void Ray massive damage are the big changes), but only recently has it become the "most powerful strategy in the game" that allows "noobs" to beat "pros" by abusing the strategy.
TL;DR and conclusion:
So what happens now? The point of this post is to give you a little brief example of how the metagame can shift entirely. Zerg used to want to command the 200/200 army (or even the "300 food push") to destroy their opponents. After that style was figured out, ironically, Protoss adopted a similar line of thought. Instead of bases and resources being the decided factor, building army size without losses became the primary objective for these Protoss players. How do we, as a community, learn to deal with this new shift and take out the Protoss deathball?
The answer could be in light balance tweaks - but maybe it isn't. We didn't need Terran and Protoss buffs to take care of Zerg. Are we sure that we need balance tweaks to take care of Protoss?
Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
I still think this game is fairly new in terms of strategy. Zerg can easily be the most 'OP' race in a few months or years given time to fully understand it's potential. All I can think of when I read the last sentence/question in the OP, I thought of the latest SotG where Tyler and Sean talked about how the players have to stop whining about imbalances and waiting for Blizzard to patch the game. Instead, as players we should learn to play around the imbalances like they did back in BW. I think the game is at a decent place in terms of balance. Just because people out micro/macro you doesn't mean their race is OP, the pros take games off other pros all the time, it's just as a race people have found ways to abuse what they have, like in the OP mentioning timing pushes and aggression.
Also there has been talk about possibly nerfing the collosus for protoss. Personally I feel that is completely unnecessary. Nerfing the templar was one thing, but if they take away the collosus, most protoss players would be forced to stay on gateway tech due to how cost inefficient it would be to tech to collosus. (though it may force the use of the new unit: carriers :D) with proper scouting, anything can be stopped, including the massive 'deathball' of the protoss army. (the Thorzain vs Tyler series comes to mind when thinking about making collosus useless, the 250mm cannons ripped those collosi new holes)
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
edit: from the situation report 1.3
The +30% armored damage change was more strictly targeted towards stalker-based protoss armies, as well as marauder-based terran armies. We wanted infestors to be more of a core unit in the ZvP matchup while keeping them just as useful vs. terran. The stun duration reduction change by itself didn’t allow these two things, so we had to make this damage change as well in order to arrive at the right place for the infestor.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
zergs are not being aggressive enough there is no reason to let a protoss get a ball of death going... keep them on 2 base keep pressuring... zergs drone so hard they lose sight of this and suddenly protoss has map control and zerg is trying not to die... not an optimal way to play....
I don't think it's so much a metagame shift as it is the mid-game and late-game becoming more mapped out in SC2.
A big reason why zerg has such a hard time taking out the protoss deathball is that getting 4 or more bases provides only a marginal increase in economy over 3 bases (as outlined in LaLuSh's macro analysis thread). Because of this, 4/5 base zerg doesn't really give much of an increased economy over 3 base. Also, once protoss gets a 3rd base, they have enough to make a maxed army; since protoss' maxed army is the strongest in the game, it's at this point in a game where protoss is stronger than zerg. And with the sheer amount of DPS, a protoss maxed army can steamroll a maxed zerg army AND any reinforcements that come immediately after.
No, of course not. And I like that although your point is simple, it is detailed and hopefully everyone will see that not everything needs to be balanced immediately with actual tweaking but rather by development of the metagame by the players themselves.
Then again, how do I know Protoss, unlike the Terran and Zerg reigns, will not need a real balance tweak? Well I guess I don't know, but either way, it's up to Blizzard whether they will be tweaked or not, regardless of whether they "should" be tweaked.
Anyway, one point I'd like to throw out there is that many people don't realize how diverse the Protoss ball is, but instead qq, asking over and over for one unit that can counter the entire deathball; unfortunately that can't happen, as deathballs are made up of: Zealots, Sentries, Stalkers, Voids, Colossi, sometimes even more. 5 units in total, which is like 2/3 of the Zerg race.
Only time will tell. In 3-4 months if the protoss deathball is still ripping zergs limb from limb then it could be time to evaluate balance. Until then zergs need to work on builds and timings.
On April 19 2011 05:57 purecarnagge wrote: zergs are not being aggressive enough there is no reason to let a protoss get a ball of death going... keep them on 2 base keep pressuring... zergs drone so hard they lose sight of this and suddenly protoss has map control and zerg is trying not to die... not an optimal way to play....
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
The +30% armored damage change was more strictly targeted towards stalker-based protoss armies, as well as marauder-based terran armies. We wanted infestors to be more of a core unit in the ZvP matchup while keeping them just as useful vs. terran. The stun duration reduction change by itself didn’t allow these two things, so we had to make this damage change as well in order to arrive at the right place for the infestor.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
BL/Infestor are incredibly hard to get out safely which is why you don't see them more often. On top of that imagine a Protoss deathball, but your 'ball' moves at 1.4 speed (instead of 2.25 speed). I know personally I've had situations where P will just run stalkers right around the (well blink around) the broodlords and then proceed to wreck havoc in your base. Sure you FG them, but at 4 seconds it's not like your BLs are going to catch up very much if they weren't initially in range. So you end up refungaling the same stalkers 2-3 times while the rest of the pack can just move on or you fungal everything once or twice and then they break free before the bl's catch up and kill them. Now on maps without good flanking possibilities, close-ish bases, or when the P hasn't spread out at all BL/Infestor is great. You basically need to be able to do what Mondragon does and get out BL/Infestor + a crap ton of crawlers to defend which is going to be well after you have to initially max on units if you want to last that long.
I'm also curious about this so-called period of Zerg domination. All I remember is 2 players pulling out against all odds to win a tournament and IdrA being the favorite because of how long he had been training in Korea at a time when the SC2 scene was still really young and developing.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
Bigger maps help vs the aggression options, but hurt vs the turtle play if they get too large. So it's been a give and take for Zerg.
I watched idra wreck some protoss players and their death balls just by going heavy baneling.
Its not the same as going against pros but if idra can completely wreck the ball using uncommon units against inferior players then its possible that a slight change in mechanics can make these methods work vs pro players too.
The death ball is strong and easy to make but I think that discovering the counter will unleash a satisfying wave of protoss late game tears.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
No, it was a tremendous buff to zerg in ZvT. Some people (correctly) predicted it would also be a huge, if not bigger buff to Protoss.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
I think that was the perception a few months ago that bigger maps would be better for zerg but I think that now that would be very debatable. In my opinion the bigger maps favor toss the most since it really can put an emphasis on how strong the warp in mechanic actually is.
If no patch will save the zerg from the inevitable threat of the deathball, i imagine it will take a lot longer for those more experienced to find a solid way to deal with strong protoss armies. Especially in the form of early timing attacks. The reason i say this is because of the nature of larva.
Drops / nydus are very risky (in terms of wasted resource) in my humble opinion, but it looks to be absolutely necessary, which make it an all-in of sorts (depending on execution and commitment).
The recently buffed and supposed golden unit, the infestor, helps, but with 90hp you better have better micro than your opponents A-move (esp if the 9 ranged colossi are headed your way). And with the investment of gas you better make them work otherwise your reinforcement of lings or handful of roaches might as well dig their grave.
I think we have seen some effectiveness with favoring tunneling claws before speed with roaches to circumvent high sentry counts which imo is a really decent way of dealing with forcefields.
Either way, in a game of PvZ the zerg can guarantee a win if they are just better players in my humble opinion. In a game where both players are of equal skill, the current metagame favors toss.
The one thing that is good is the various styles of experimental plays going on. And i hope its just a question of when not if, zerg can deal with these army compositions.
-Stop whining about everything and anything to destroy every single LR thread. Maybe if people dedicated 1/100th the effort they put in whining posts to something useful for their race, we'd had the zerg renaissance,
On April 19 2011 06:13 Insouciant wrote: I watched idra wreck some protoss players and their death balls just by going heavy baneling.
Its not the same as going against pros but if idra can completely wreck the ball using uncommon units against inferior players then its possible that a slight change in mechanics can make these methods work vs pro players too.
The death ball is strong and easy to make but I think that discovering the counter will unleash a satisfying wave of protoss late game tears.
Would stuff like banelings even be stable? What are you going to do when the Protoss equal of MarineKingPrime comes by and splits his blink stalkers like a gosu showing everyone else how to do it?
I say that not as whine even as I do love banelings in ZvP, but using them makes me nervous.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
Actually, pros do make them from time to time. The issue is that the infestor buff doesn't hard counter the deathball. Or even soft counter it, really. Yes, you throw out a Fungal and you do 50 damage, not quite taking out the shields of the protoss army. And then the range 9 colossi kill all your infestors. Then they kill the rest of your army, too. The fact is that Fungal just isn't as strong against the deathball as it seems on paper. The pros are creative, skilled players - when infestors were buffed, I suspect the vast majority of zerg players gave infestors another go. And you say you never see any pros make them? That's because it didn't work. It still doesn't.
Note how, over the next minute, the Infestors make basically no contribution to the battle. The stalkers take a big fungal, and then regen some shields, and then take another fungal... and they're pretty much fine. Those stalkers never end up dying. The brief immobility is meaningless since force fields don't let Idra take advantage of the very short-duration root, and the infestors end up dying without having really done anything except eat around a thousand gas. Idra still wins, but he had a 50 supply advantage from the beginning. If Huk had reached a 200/200 deathball, as these threads are generally discussing, I think Idra would have been obliterated there.
Edit: I'm not bawwing about the deathball here - I think that it's beatable but I don't think that infestors are the key. And I tend to get really irritated by people saying "It's so obvious that (obvious thing) would solve (x problem), but the pros never do it! They just keep doing the same old thing!"
I believe Fungal Growth has a range of 9 which is the same as Thermal Lance Colossi. I was surprised to learn that Fungals had that much range actually.
Recently I'm starting to wonder if Infestor/Baneling wouldn't do well against the deathball. The problem is that to survive up until that point is really difficult as Zerg, Infestor/baneling is really gas heavy. I'm not even sure if it's that effective. Especially with forcefields. It's really hard to say. ;s
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
The +30% armored damage change was more strictly targeted towards stalker-based protoss armies, as well as marauder-based terran armies. We wanted infestors to be more of a core unit in the ZvP matchup while keeping them just as useful vs. terran. The stun duration reduction change by itself didn’t allow these two things, so we had to make this damage change as well in order to arrive at the right place for the infestor.
Unfortunately, what's great in theory often doesn't work in practice. I, and I'm sure most other Zergs, have tried infestors against deathballs, and it just doesn't work. Fungals do quite a lot of damage, which is very nice, but Protoss units have a crapton of health+shields. If you send a few infestors in to fungal the deathball before engaging the collosus' 9 range allows them to bzarp your infestors in an instant, and the deathball can then back off until their shields recharge, before engaging your now smaller army without having sustained any lasting damage. If you use fungals mid-battle, the fight simply doesn't last long enough to rack up any substantial damage. You'd need the fight to last at least 13 game seconds, so you can throw down 4 fungals, in order for the fungals to change the tide of the battle. Most PvZ fights barely last long enough for two. None of this is theorycraft and whining, mind you. All this stuff actually happens. There may be an answer to the deathball, but it's not infestors.
Instead of Zergs trying to counter the deathball directly, they need to counter it indirectly. Don't let the Protoss achieve that critical mass. As a Zerg player, I have been shifting away from the "normal" roach/hydra composition and into a baneling/muta play(I will give credit to VTgIx because he was the first person I personally saw use it on Bitters stream) and it seems to work great. The muta ball can provide pretty good harass damage once you achieve that critical mass, being able to snipe 5-7 probes in one volley if mutas have +1 attack. Also given that fact that banelings/zerglings are very cheap both in food cost and in resources, it allows Zerg to expand around the map and so forth.
Because of the harass supplied by mutalisks, it weakens the economy of the Protoss in getting their deathball and when they decide to move out with their weakened deathball, you completely run over it with banelings/zerglings/corruptors(if you need them)/mutalisks.
Also doing attacks from two different sides, for example, mutalisks in the base, then suiciding banelings to take out their third, further delays their deathball push and allows you quickly get your broodlords out.
All-in-all: Zergs shouldn't counter the deathball directly, counter it indirectly. If you face a turtling protoss, do everything in your power to not let him get the deathball. I have found the VTgIx style does that perfectly.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
I think this is a good chance to point that players don't always KNOW what they want and don't always KNOW what they need. There are now bigger maps which leads to easier expansions. The problem is that easier expansions don't just apply to your race, but all races - and now getting that key third base on Protoss has never been easier.
It's good evidence in the day[9] argument that players should NOT focus on game balance and should instead focus on adaptation.
Humans didn't create the universe, we merely reside within it and adapt to it. And we're doing fine so far, compared to many other "worst case" scenarios that fiction presents.
beta before roach 2 food nerf: zerg late game > protoss late game after roach 2 food nerf: protoss late game > zerg late game
pvz on small old maps: pre roach nerf mentality (must kill zerg before late game or be "overwhelmed"). early pressure is very strong anyway so games are decided by whether early push wins or fails
pvz on new bigger maps: early pressure is not as strong, someone plays macro game and discover deathball owns zerg, everyone copies deathball ever since
On April 19 2011 05:57 BlasiuS wrote: I don't think it's so much a metagame shift as it is the mid-game and late-game becoming more mapped out in SC2.
A big reason why zerg has such a hard time taking out the protoss deathball is that getting 4 or more bases provides only a marginal increase in economy over 3 bases (as outlined in LaLuSh's macro analysis thread). Because of this, 4/5 base zerg doesn't really give much of an increased economy over 3 base. Also, once protoss gets a 3rd base, they have enough to make a maxed army; since protoss' maxed army is the strongest in the game, it's at this point in a game where protoss is stronger than zerg. And with the sheer amount of DPS, a protoss maxed army can steamroll a maxed zerg army AND any reinforcements that come immediately after.
What LaLush's thread does bring to light is that unsuccesful zergs are completely missing their timings, which are fairly small. I believe now that the 300 food zerg can be stopped they should be looking at the timings rather than the numbers. A trend I have noticed recently is that the zergs who hit right around the time they hit 170-180 food are against a 125-30 food protoss army. The unsuccesful ones (since the emergence of the deathball) are the ones who hit max and do a couple more injects so they can do a mass reinforce. Its such a narrow window for the zerg, but its one that every zerg needs to get to know if the metagame is going to shift again. If you hit that window consistently the protoss will have no choice by to transition away from it. This is kind of how metagame shifts occur.
I think the worth of Lalush's thread is to identify that current zerg styles are missing the mark rather than to use it as proof of imbalance.
The crazy thing is that if you read all the Live Report threads for tournaments and leagues literally 100% of the time protoss wins a game or match its due to race imbalance and not because they played better than their or opponent or simply ARE better than their opponent. idrA, according to alot of zerg players, has never lost to a superior player... only himself. There are so many fallacious connections floating around that you would think oGsMC is just a noob who couldn't win a single game as zerg. truthfully, if he had chosen zerg or terran from the outset he would still likely be a GSL champion by now because he has the mind of a champion and the execution and game sense to back it up
I think it's just a phase. Like when Zerg got roaches buffed, everyone went crazy calling for zerg nerfs but they didn't get nerfed and they arent complained about now. Or how toss had issues with mutas they learned a timing to kill them. I think zerg need to stop being greedy and rushing for 80 drones and start putting pressure on toss to prevent the ball.
Personally I always thought Protoss was never weak. In the beginning, most protoss lost because they were knocked out by early 1 or 2 base aggression. But then protoss players saw the strength of the sentry and with bigger maps it become a lot harder to 'cheese' out a protoss.
Lets not forget we didn't even start seeing decent stargate play until GSL 3.
Bobo_ that sounds like something i will try right away. Though one would think that should the toss turtle, it means their army is at home. Their armies usually have stalkers and most if not all games i play they get blink. I will have to look at the timings as to when the usual time and if i can get a big flock of mutas in time, plus i might have a problem with phoenix and cannons, but if you force them then they have to invest in cannons rather than their army which is the goal right .
The OP made many good points here, but from a Zerg perspective I have to say this: As Zerg being the macro race, the main goal for the other races should be to harass the Zerg, so he cant macro up and kill you with the overwhelming meat ball. Terran for example has reapers/had reapers, Hellions, Banshees and Drops, etc. Protoss has Cannon rushes, void rays, phonix, DTs, etc. When the Zerg manages to defend all of this, he is in a good position against Terran. The game is nearly balanced in the late game in ZvT, in my opinion. Against Protoss, fighting against a 200/200 army is in most cases an auto loss. And here is the design flaw! Zerg should be by definition mightier in late game than the other races, thats why P and T have soo many possibilities to harrass Zerg in early and mid game!
idra already told everyone how we should fight the turtle-ish ball style in an mlg interview. then he explained why even doing what he says will only find limited success, and in the end will be absolutely futile to attempt at very high level play where sufficient mechanics are present.
surely zerg and terran can defeat the ball and most of the imba whining is a way of people not dealing with their own inability to play well. this applies to 99% of the players here. with time everyone will come to see how the ease of protoss defense when one has competent multitasking is absurd.
this aspect of the game design is most likely only going to change in heart of the swarm, when new zerg units will be introduced.
too bad collosi outranges infestors[/QUOTE] That really dosen't make that big of a difference if you are engaging unless you are engaging with your infesters in front (lol), i could maybe see this as a problem if you wanted to use Fungal as it was intended pre patch to delay armies instead of being a dps champ that it is now. This aside, Mondragon recently said that he would have won if he went pure roach infester, and i would link but i don't want to link something kennigit said yesterday on his twitter (skype conversation with him and mondi i think). But basically what this comes down too is using your infesters properly.
On April 19 2011 06:34 M1cha84 wrote: The OP made many good points here, but from a Zerg perspective I have to say this: As Zerg being the macro race, the main goal for the other races should be to harass the Zerg, so he cant macro up and kill you with the overwhelming meat ball. Terran for example has reapers/had reapers, Hellions, Banshees and Drops, etc. Protoss has Cannon rushes, void rays, phonix, DTs, etc. When the Zerg manages to defend all of this, he is in a good position against Terran. The game is nearly balanced in the late game in ZvT, in my opinion. Against Protoss, fighting against a 200/200 army is in most cases an auto loss. And here is the design flaw! Zerg should be by definition mightier in late game than the other races, thats why P and T have soo many possibilities to harrass Zerg in early and mid game!
Well one of the big issues many Protoss had before turtle-style became popular was that they couldn't harass the zerg - they don't have hellions, reapers or banshees, and the pheonix had a slower build time and was widely regarded as of no use. Void rays were much weaker against queens/uncharged too.
It turned out they didn't really need to, but that's beside the point...
So i am a bit curious as to what you mean by overrepresented by protoss? The only tourny where there is a large number of toss is TSL with 5/8 toss and 3/8 terran, however if you look at code s and a this season you will see that there is 13 terrans in code S this season which is larger than protoss representation. Also if you do remember assembly had a zvz final and both Code s and A of January had tvt finals, is this representative of balance? No, in fact in that code a there was 8/8 terrans in the top 8. So simply saying that Protoss is overrepresented is really overlooking facts, and if you are talking about pvp finals? Well having a mirror match up for finals really isn't balance related at all.
On April 19 2011 06:13 Insouciant wrote: I watched idra wreck some protoss players and their death balls just by going heavy baneling.
Its not the same as going against pros but if idra can completely wreck the ball using uncommon units against inferior players then its possible that a slight change in mechanics can make these methods work vs pro players too.
The death ball is strong and easy to make but I think that discovering the counter will unleash a satisfying wave of protoss late game tears.
Would stuff like banelings even be stable? What are you going to do when the Protoss equal of MarineKingPrime comes by and splits his blink stalkers like a gosu showing everyone else how to do it?
I say that not as whine even as I do love banelings in ZvP, but using them makes me nervous.
if he splits his stalkers which is only do able with BLINK would leave all of his sentrys zealots and collosi vulnerable and that is a really big hit to his army.
Fungal growth + baneling bombs. Wait for it. Fungal and colossi have the same range, yes...except most people aren't going to lead with their colossi and fungal growth has a large AOE.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
Do you realize how hard it is to break out of that midgame tech tier as zerg? You don't just decide "oh I'm going to go infestor broodlord this game, and it's going to beat my opponent's 200/200 blink stalker colossus army ez" - you have to transition out of the standard midgame roach play, which leaves a huge timing window where the protoss can just roll over anything you have. It's not that zergs don't want to get to broodlords, it's that spending money on early tech leaves you with a lower unit count that will just wilt over and die to the deathball.
And no, though it sounds very nice in theory, roach infestor (fungals) isn't particularly strong, and the spire is much more important.
People have been going ling/bling -> roach/ling + carpet bombs, but it's very hard to pull off, very risky.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
BL/Infestor are incredibly hard to get out safely which is why you don't see them more often. On top of that imagine a Protoss deathball, but your 'ball' moves at 1.4 speed (instead of 2.25 speed). I know personally I've had situations where P will just run stalkers right around the (well blink around) the broodlords and then proceed to wreck havoc in your base. Sure you FG them, but at 4 seconds it's not like your BLs are going to catch up very much if they weren't initially in range. So you end up refungaling the same stalkers 2-3 times while the rest of the pack can just move on or you fungal everything once or twice and then they break free before the bl's catch up and kill them. Now on maps without good flanking possibilities, close-ish bases, or when the P hasn't spread out at all BL/Infestor is great. You basically need to be able to do what Mondragon does and get out BL/Infestor + a crap ton of crawlers to defend which is going to be well after you have to initially max on units if you want to last that long.
I'm also curious about this so-called period of Zerg domination. All I remember is 2 players pulling out against all odds to win a tournament and IdrA being the favorite because of how long he had been training in Korea at a time when the SC2 scene was still really young and developing.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
Bigger maps help vs the aggression options, but hurt vs the turtle play if they get too large. So it's been a give and take for Zerg.
There was a solid 6 weeks around MLG Dallas 2010 where protoss were getting stomped by zergs. I think thats what hes referring to.
P.S. If you think that you're supposed to be FGing the stalkers when you use infestors then you are lost im afraid. In small engagements thats okay, but the part of the deathball that is killing you is the sentry... not the colossus or anything else. Sentry is the linchpin of the whole thing. Mass stalkers is the logical next step for protoss and infestors are only cost efficient agaisnt mass upgraded blink stalker if they have proper support.
On April 19 2011 06:18 Bobo_ wrote: Instead of Zergs trying to counter the deathball directly, they need to counter it indirectly. Don't let the Protoss achieve that critical mass. As a Zerg player, I have been shifting away from the "normal" roach/hydra composition and into a baneling/muta play(I will give credit to VTgIx because he was the first person I personally saw use it on Bitters stream) and it seems to work great. The muta ball can provide pretty good harass damage once you achieve that critical mass, being able to snipe 5-7 probes in one volley if mutas have +1 attack. Also given that fact that banelings/zerglings are very cheap both in food cost and in resources, it allows Zerg to expand around the map and so forth.
Because of the harass supplied by mutalisks, it weakens the economy of the Protoss in getting their deathball and when they decide to move out with their weakened deathball, you completely run over it with banelings/zerglings/corruptors(if you need them)/mutalisks.
Also doing attacks from two different sides, for example, mutalisks in the base, then suiciding banelings to take out their third, further delays their deathball push and allows you quickly get your broodlords out.
All-in-all: Zergs shouldn't counter the deathball directly, counter it indirectly. If you face a turtling protoss, do everything in your power to not let him get the deathball. I have found the VTgIx style does that perfectly.
I haven't tried this yet, but I can only see it work because most protoss doesn't get stargate units (because they don't need to ). Even a small number of phoenixes can counter mutas cost efficiency wise and if the protoss isn't dumb you'll never have the critical number of mutas (20+) to do anything.
That said, I've always been interested in mutalisks against toss and since people doesn't expect it it can indeed be rewarding although still easily countered.
Tbh I think protoss has the highest skill cap (esp against terran) do you remember back in s1 and s2 how easily terran stomped protoss? It's taken high level protoss players a while to figure out what works - the builds (3 gate expo harass vs T and Z), the gameplay (to get armor first for zealots, how to use force fields correctly). An important thing to keep in mind is that Zerg has only really recieved buffs since season 1 of GSL (Roach buff, Infestor buff, but protoss has only received nerfs)
I know someone will flame me for this, but protoss does have a lot of variety in their play that the they have been figuring out recently. Colossus phoenix was not seen in season 1. Roach hydra was. Armor first upgrade wasn't seen in s1, but mass MMM was. T and Z have been doing essentially the same builds / unit comps since s1 and haven't changed a lot. Recently a few zergs have with the infestor buff (see sheths Infestor Baneling Ultra against Artosis), and I think that will help a lot. People can't just go by the IdrA-syndrome where you say, If I don't do anything innovative with my play I still should win because I am a superior macro player. WELL, the fact is SC2 is very easy on macro and any player in the GSL is a 'great macro player' now. You aren't special with your 'macro' like you were in BW.. you have to keep evolving and changing your playstyle to stay on top. The players that are still doing outdated builds (3 gate Robo BEFORE nexus vs terran) haven't been doing as well (see Liquid Tyler). The players with new-school builds that catch people off guard will do the best, such as Sheth who's ~r1 in grandmaster and is doing well in NASL
On April 19 2011 06:36 Yamulo wrote: too bad collosi outranges infestors
That really dosen't make that big of a difference if you are engaging unless you are engaging with your infesters in front (lol), i could maybe see this as a problem if you wanted to use Fungal as it was intended pre patch to delay armies instead of being a dps champ that it is now. This aside, Mondragon recently said that he would have won if he went pure roach infester, and i would link but i don't want to link something kennigit said yesterday on his twitter (skype conversation with him and mondi i think). But basically what this comes down too is using your infesters properly.[/QUOTE]
You're assuming Mondragon knows what he's talking about. As good a player as he is, there's no reason to believe that he's actually correct about infestors. People may remember that IdrA himself said that the new infestors would be overpowered (albeit not as overpowered as Protoss units) when he first saw/played around with the fungal buff, but either he decided that he wouldn't use them because he has self-respect or they just aren't actually that good. Maybe Mondragon is the only Zerg pro in the world who bothered to try out the post-patch infestors and discovered the power of fungal growth, but it doesn't seem particularly likely.
On April 19 2011 06:13 Insouciant wrote: I watched idra wreck some protoss players and their death balls just by going heavy baneling.
Its not the same as going against pros but if idra can completely wreck the ball using uncommon units against inferior players then its possible that a slight change in mechanics can make these methods work vs pro players too.
The death ball is strong and easy to make but I think that discovering the counter will unleash a satisfying wave of protoss late game tears.
Would stuff like banelings even be stable? What are you going to do when the Protoss equal of MarineKingPrime comes by and splits his blink stalkers like a gosu showing everyone else how to do it?
I say that not as whine even as I do love banelings in ZvP, but using them makes me nervous.
if he splits his stalkers which is only do able with BLINK would leave all of his sentrys zealots and collosi vulnerable and that is a really big hit to his army.
Why can stalkers only split with blink? Marines can split just fine without it. And MC showed that the best way to deal with baneling bombs is to simply FF off the main Zerg army while you deal with the overlords.
On April 19 2011 06:18 Bobo_ wrote: Instead of Zergs trying to counter the deathball directly, they need to counter it indirectly. Don't let the Protoss achieve that critical mass. As a Zerg player, I have been shifting away from the "normal" roach/hydra composition and into a baneling/muta play(I will give credit to VTgIx because he was the first person I personally saw use it on Bitters stream) and it seems to work great. The muta ball can provide pretty good harass damage once you achieve that critical mass, being able to snipe 5-7 probes in one volley if mutas have +1 attack. Also given that fact that banelings/zerglings are very cheap both in food cost and in resources, it allows Zerg to expand around the map and so forth.
Because of the harass supplied by mutalisks, it weakens the economy of the Protoss in getting their deathball and when they decide to move out with their weakened deathball, you completely run over it with banelings/zerglings/corruptors(if you need them)/mutalisks.
Also doing attacks from two different sides, for example, mutalisks in the base, then suiciding banelings to take out their third, further delays their deathball push and allows you quickly get your broodlords out.
All-in-all: Zergs shouldn't counter the deathball directly, counter it indirectly. If you face a turtling protoss, do everything in your power to not let him get the deathball. I have found the VTgIx style does that perfectly.
I haven't tried this yet, but I can only see it work because most protoss doesn't get stargate units (because they don't need to ). Even a small number of phoenixes can counter mutas cost efficiency wise and if the protoss isn't dumb you'll never have the critical number of mutas (20+) to do anything.
That said, I've always been interested in mutalisks against toss and since people doesn't expect it it can indeed be rewarding although still easily countered.
Agreed with everything you said. Mutalisks can easily be countered by pheonix's. However just because a Turret counters a banshee doesn't make banshees completely useless. In the perfect scenario, pheonix's will be where your mutas are and therefore making your mutalisks useless. However, Starcraft isn't perfect and your other half of your army can get his army out of position.
But then again, thats if you want to KEEP going mutalisks. If I saw mass pheonix from a Protoss, I would be stupid to keep going Mutalisks . I would transition into Corruptors and get my hive tech, however, this is just theorycraft and I can only say so much. As a Starcraft player you need to adapt to the game and in my opinion that's what separates the pro's from the semi-pro's.
Nonetheless, I believe banelings still have a place in ZvP just because of their cost efficiency and the damage they are capable of doing to a Protoss army, especially a deathball, since it is nice and bunched up aka baneling heaven .
What interests me is that in PvZ in BW a Protoss "death ball" was almost equally unstoppable (in this case, it was reaver-archon-zealot-templar, sometimes with goons), and Zerg had to have a big ultraling-defiler or lurker-ling-defiler, sometimes with other support, to beat it - and the only way to beat it was to whittle it down and outlast, or lure the Protoss into attacking a (lurkered up) simcity.
It seems like the same ought to be true in SC2, except it seems that higher tech units are available faster (for Protoss), meaning the total force that builds up by late-game is more high-tech heavy, while the Zerg can't tech as fast - or maybe doesn't.
Don't forget that the new, large, macro oriented maps are heavily toss favored. Free natural, warp gate eliminates defender advantage for the non toss player, large rush distance and warps make counter pressure difficult, and all toss needs to do is stay on a 2-3 bases and form a deathball, even if zerg takes 5+.
That the metagame is shifting a year after retail isn't very surprising. People were predicting a lof of chaos for the first two years minimum. Even if things were balanced out now it would all be thrown eschew again with each proceeding expansion.
Expect the momentum to shift constantly for a while longer.
I'm not sure I agree, and the core of my disagreement lies in the way in which the PvZ metagame developed compared to the same of ZvP.
If you cast your memory back to the early days of GSL and other tournaments, much of Protoss play in PvZ (and PvT too) was one-base or two-base in nature. There were numerous one-base plays that Protoss could make, from straight up 4-gates to mixtures of gates, Robo, Stargate, or Twilight Council/DT tech plays. Most were fairly easy to execute and hard to defend well, meaning that this style was deemed the most practical for use in tournament play. This style, as has also been ably pointed out by other posters, was reinforced by the map pool of tiny and abusable maps.
The ZvP mindset was, as you pointed out, geared toward economic plays. Though there was some usage of cheese tactics, Protoss could relatively easily fend this off, and the most successful type of Zerg player was the one that had strong mechanics and a macro-oriented style. Even hyper-aggressive Zergs like Kyrix and to some extent Fruitdealer were far more successful in longer games than in shorter ones, shorter games in which they were almost invariably the defender against some 1-base timing attack. Essentially, the ZvP style was as you say it was: macro oriented and focused on mid-to-late game pushes reinforced with a superior economy.
Fast-forward 6 months and what has changed? I think the major change, one which you refer to kind of obliquely, boils down to this: Protoss players have learned what they can get away with economically and still be safe against most or all attacks. What makes me most fear for the state of ZvP is that yes, they have learned better ways of punishing Zerg for being too greedy, but I think that's actually the result of a shift at a more fundamental level. When your style is 1-base, or limited at most to 2-base, there are inherent limitations on what you can accomplish, and what compositions can be reasonably expected. However, when you learn that you can get 3 Gateways and a bunch of low-mineral units and be impervious to all non all-in strategies so that you can get up an expansion not that far behind the Zerg, a whole bunch of other possibilities open up. Thus, the reason for the Protoss being able to punish Zergs in the early mid-game is not because of magical new strategies that involve massively different units (though Sentry usage has obviously improved immensely in the case of someone like MC), but because the economic foundations of PvZ play have fundamentally altered: you learn how few units you can get away with at the start of the game so that you just have way more shit than your opponent a few minutes from now.
This is what makes me fearful of development potential in the ZvP metagame, and its what Lalush was pointing to in his post a while back on the economics of base and drone saturation. A Zerg can't truly react to an increased Protoss economy by being even more macro-oriented. In this case, I mean "truly" in the sense of a robust metagame shift. Yes, its possible to take a super fast third like some Zergs have been doing, but this is always going to be risky. With Chrono Boost, a Protoss is going to match a 3-base Zerg with a 2-base economy for a substantial period of time. With Warp-In and Chrono Boost, a Protoss can very quickly amass an army to punish a risky third Hatchery. As Lalush pointed out, the gain you make in SC2 in going from 2-base to 3-base is much less than it was in Brood War, thus making it riskier to take these earlier expansions because your economy is not going to be clearly superior to your opponent's for much longer.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that Protoss players are quickly learning to push the boundaries at when you can take expansions and still be relatively safe. Instead of seeing third bases at 14 or 15 minutes into the game, you're seeing them at the 10 minute mark instead. However, unless you want the ZvP metagame to devolve into a series of risky all-ins to try kill off a Protoss who might have tried to push the envelope a little too far, there is an end-point in the development of Zerg economic plays.
Maybe I'm being too doom and gloom, or overly pessimistic, but I think we're already beginning to see this. Many top Zergs, the most obvious of which is Idra, have concluded that even if with incredibly strong macro mechanics they feel its dicey to push a late-game engagement with Protoss. Instead, they're opting for risky 2-base drop plays to try cripple the Protoss early on, or Roach/Ling all-ins.
Maybe some revolutionary macro-play will come along that means that late-game Zerg will again have a clear economic advantage, but I don't feel it is likely. The lack of scouting and the prevalence of strong timing attacks that will outright kill you if you don't prepare perfectly mean that boundaries exist for these types of plays.
Interesting and fair points, i wish people considered this more. Protoss is not designed too well in my opinion (fast warpgates and force fields cause a whole lot of issues, and i play only p), but the whole "zomg protoss imba qq" thing has just gone overboard, to the point where if almost -any- pro p beats a pro z, he's often getting insulted for playing the ezmode race.
On April 19 2011 06:56 e4e5nf3 wrote: That the metagame is shifting a year after retail isn't very surprising. People were predicting a lof of chaos for the first two years minimum. Even if things were balanced out now it would all be thrown eschew again with each proceeding expansion.
Expect the momentum to shift constantly for a while longer.
Makes for exciting times doesn't it? =P
BUT yes. Zerg will figure something out I'm sure of it. Just the same way Toss figured out something for themselves.
It was inevitable that Toss would want to turtle-mass an army though, wasn't it? Having the most powerful units would mean that a massed army would be of greatest effectiveness.
But zerg still have alot of options to explore in a hundred different ways/combinations. Baneling drops, speedling drops, baneling mines, nydus play, infestor play, overseer contaminate play, and even other strategies I haven't thought of or seen yet. New timings, new methods of play, new metagames..
On April 19 2011 05:57 BlasiuS wrote: I don't think it's so much a metagame shift as it is the mid-game and late-game becoming more mapped out in SC2.
A big reason why zerg has such a hard time taking out the protoss deathball is that getting 4 or more bases provides only a marginal increase in economy over 3 bases (as outlined in LaLuSh's macro analysis thread). Because of this, 4/5 base zerg doesn't really give much of an increased economy over 3 base. Also, once protoss gets a 3rd base, they have enough to make a maxed army; since protoss' maxed army is the strongest in the game, it's at this point in a game where protoss is stronger than zerg. And with the sheer amount of DPS, a protoss maxed army can steamroll a maxed zerg army AND any reinforcements that come immediately after.
But it does provide additional larva, and if you saturate only 16 workers per mineral patch having a 4th and 5th base allows you to collect more gas and allows for an easier time getting your workers who mine out the main to go to other mineral patches at a 4th and 5th. By also having extra patches, workers can be saved and remain optimal assuming you transfer to the 5th from the 2nd and main with a nydus should it be under attack. I feel a good example was the minigun/spanishiwa show match that showed how nydusing to a different main and rebuilding there can give Zerg a second chance at survival after a major attack.
I feel that extra larva is another resource we shouldn't forget. The queen mechanic makes it difficult in late game to always have optimal larva creation/production. Having extra hatches can mitigate this issue to a certain extent.
On April 19 2011 05:57 purecarnagge wrote: zergs are not being aggressive enough there is no reason to let a protoss get a ball of death going... keep them on 2 base keep pressuring... zergs drone so hard they lose sight of this and suddenly protoss has map control and zerg is trying not to die... not an optimal way to play....
I think I agree with this, if you play really aggressively as Zerg and constantly exchange your army for theirs as well as things such as baneling drops and nydus play you can prevent the opponent from moving out, or at worst force a base race.
I've not really thought on the point enough, and I'm only high diamond so I don't claim to be an expert here but from watching some of the potent aggression that players like Spanishiwa does (and to an extent every player that does baneling busts, MorroW and I think Dimaga spring to mind, probably all the professional Zerg players at some point) I've seen it have great success.
I love how much the StarCraft II meta-game has an impact on play for almost every level. It's literally days you have to wait after seeing a potent strategy exerted by a professional player and it shows up on the ladder frequently.
I think it's going to shift to something like roach/infestor/banelings at some point infestors just to hold em still and just then baneling drop everything and then clean up with roaches. Only thing I can see what will take out balls nowadays without broods lateish game.
And someone mentioned that fungal and colousses has same range, yeah it does, but only a tiny bit of the circel touches 9 range, to get a full fungal in you need to be at 6-7 range.
I feel like the future of ZvP will involve a lot of tactics that essentially wear the Protoss down to the point where the deathball they produce is much less effective than it could be. Zerg players already know just how hard it is to deal with the deathball, and so instead of dealingly with it dircectly (as another poster said) Zs will have to learn to deal with the deathball indirectly. And since the indircect correlation between Z and P in this MU is based on economy and how far the Protoss can push the limit, then Zergs will have to start punishing Protoss economically to a much greater extreme.
In the few minutes after a Protoss takes an early expansion, I think a lot of different timing windows can be exposed. The Protoss army has to be whittled down and contained completely. From there a Zerg player needs to expand and slowly accumulate the infrastructure needed to wipe out the remains of the Protoss deathball.
I've seen baneling carpet bombs and ling surrounds in the early to midgame completely annhiliate the beginnings of deathballs, and I think Zergs need to take this one step further. Small harrassments all over the map will split the P's attention (and do wonders against those who cannot adequately split their army). Not just one or two, but multiple. While doing a ling run by to the natural, nydus the main and baneling bomb the third etc...all the time. Granted this will probably take a lot of APM and ability to multitask, but if Zerg could get to the point where they punish Protoss this severely for teching up to reach the deathball, it could have great potential.
Zerg was definitely designed as the race meant to be everywhere, all the time. Mutas, creep, lings, fast mobile armies keeping the other races pinned down and contained. Originally Zergs matched the Protoss deathball with deathballs of their own (and still today), but this ruins a lot of potential of the race. Zerg units are naturally more frail and fall quickly to high DPS Protoss units such as the Collosus, but most move much more quickly and can simply evade the Protoss deathball. The greatest aspect of creep is in how quickly it allows you to return to your base and defend attacks. Once your ground forces hit the creep they are up and running.
Just some thoughts I've had in my head for awhile now. Can't wait for the players that begin to utilize a really hyper-aggressive style of play like this. I've already seen baneling bombs for awhile...so much potential.
Terran had their time in the light where everyone thought they were too good. Zerg had their time in the light where people had a hard time beating them. Now Protoss have their few months in the light until people figure out the new way to deal with them. So far this is the pattern, dominance until the crack in the race's armor is found. In a month or two, everyone will figure out how to deal with the Protoss before their critical mass is reached, and then another race will step up with their new dominant strat. No point in complaining about races taking over, just get to work on your theorycraft and find the crack in the armor. Eventually we'll figure it out.
I agree completely with the OP. Moreso after watching Sheth's stream for a good few hours the last couple of days. It's almost embarrassing to see how little faith people have in Blizzard's ability to balance a game, especially when they were responsible for what's considered the most balanced RTS on the planet that isn't a pure mirror. If anything people should have MORE faith in them since between now and Brood War Blizzard have had years to refine their methods of balancing games.
On April 19 2011 07:23 Buffy wrote: I think it's going to shift to something like roach/infestor/banelings at some point infestors just to hold em still and just then baneling drop everything and then clean up with roaches. Only thing I can see what will take out balls nowadays without broods lateish game.
And someone mentioned that fungal and colousses has same range, yeah it does, but only a tiny bit of the circel touches 9 range, to get a full fungal in you need to be at 6-7 range.
Actually, the range on the center point of a fungal is at 9 - which means that you can fungal the first unit and half of the circle will hit those behind it. This effectively allows you to fungal the Colossi outside of it's range - test it in a unit test map - have the far point of a fungal hit the colossi (not the middle of the fungal reticule) and see that the colossi cannot attack your infestor.
On April 19 2011 05:57 purecarnagge wrote: zergs are not being aggressive enough there is no reason to let a protoss get a ball of death going... keep them on 2 base keep pressuring... zergs drone so hard they lose sight of this and suddenly protoss has map control and zerg is trying not to die... not an optimal way to play....
I think I agree with this, if you play really aggressively as Zerg and constantly exchange your army for theirs as well as things such as baneling drops and nydus play you can prevent the opponent from moving out, or at worst force a base race.
I've not really thought on the point enough, and I'm only high diamond so I don't claim to be an expert here but from watching some of the potent aggression that players like Spanishiwa does (and to an extent every player that does baneling busts, MorroW and I think Dimaga spring to mind, probably all the professional Zerg players at some point) I've seen it have great success.
I love how much the StarCraft II meta-game has an impact on play for almost every level. It's literally days you have to wait after seeing a potent strategy exerted by a professional player and it shows up on the ladder frequently.
this is definitely a promising approach and i completely agree and also play aggressive myself but the dirty truth is that there are 3 problems: maps, forcefields and cannons
dont get me wrong - aggressive play has won me several games and put me on a huge winstreak against protoss but its not like this is the solution for everything
not too long ago we thought large maps favour zerg as we were heavily into playing macro where protoss players mostly used 4 gates or 3 gate air/robo but it turns out that large maps make aggressive play somewhat weaker - if the protoss builds up simcity and knows how to use forcefields you would definitely need roaches to trade armies because your lings/blings will die without any trade - large maps and slow roaches is not a good combination, waiting for speed upgrade will miss the point where protoss is really vulnerable; im not even talking about natural chokes that appear on certain maps at the expansion and also there are maps where the protoss can even expand earlier and you can hardly do anything to make it costly (shakuras, taldarim)
as i've been using baneling drops a few times i discovered that it only works against people that dont know or dont pay attention else all players move probes immediately when they see the overlords; also a lot of players dont realize how good 2-3 cannons are to kill any kind of early drop or muta harassment but as soon as it changes drops will loose its value
I'm sure that new ways to play will be invented but I'm not sure if it's enough to make the game balanced enough without making any actual changes to the game. I think it's just too early to decide and we should wait for a year or so before we start having these balance discussions.
Nah, zerg vs protoss was really all about the protoss making mistakes. This is why at a lower level, toss is not as overpowered, but at the highest level, it is, because zergs will do aggression, but a good toss will easily stop it and defend everything, scouting everything, microing well, and in the end if the toss makes no mistakes, the toss will win no matter what. For example, the only reason why MC lost against July in the finals was because he didnt scout the overlord hydra drop, if he then he would be much more prepared. Same thing for huk vs idra, if huk had scouted more better, saw that the roaches had tunneling claws, he wouldnt have gotten owned so hard without the obs.
After watching Cruncher Vs Mondragon i think that it looks like the some players are still neglecting to use infestors. The early phoenix/ voidray harrass could have easily been neutralized with infestors and a few fungal growth, and those infestors could have been saved for later on during the major battles. I think that balance wise there might be a few tweaks here and there, nothing major tho. I think players just need to critically analyze their gameplay and the gameplay of others to work out a strategic build to stop the "deathball"
You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked. Most of the top 8 from the first 2 GSLs are gone/code A now. Yet the only new zerg is basically LosirA and July... Idra, ret, fruit, nestea, zenio are still around.
If you look at how oGsTOP or Rain played against Fruit back in GSL1, it wouldn't even be Code A level right now.
During the time of the early GSLs, most pro zergs had far more average ladder games played than the other races, meaning more practice.
Terrans were still using mostly MMM and didn't incorporate tanks (even when they did 50 damage to all units) into their armies forever. Mass drop play was barely touched until MVP showed up.
Protoss were still stuck on 4gate and learning how to expand safely, especially after 4 range roaches. They went as far to say that expanding early was an instant loss against a roach rush because of the 4 range. Turns out they just had to learn where to place cannons and how to use the sentry. THE SENTRY. That is the unit that protoss players learned how to use that has completely owned the metagame, you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago.
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
Then you have patches, which nerfed terran over and over and over, making TvZ one of the best and most balanced matchups in the game right now, also the favorite of many. Yet protoss also got a lot of buffs, such as cheaper hallucination, cheaper observers, faster phoenix... all these things MASSIVELY help them in the scouting department so they will always know to make more zealots or more stalkers or if they need an immortal as opposed to colossus, etc.
On April 19 2011 07:02 Teoita wrote: Interesting and fair points, i wish people considered this more. Protoss is not designed too well in my opinion (fast warpgates and force fields cause a whole lot of issues, and i play only p), but the whole "zomg protoss imba qq" thing has just gone overboard, to the point where if almost -any- pro p beats a pro z, he's often getting insulted for playing the ezmode race.
I think protoss was designed pretty well as a race. their units alone are not that strong but together they form an almost unbeatable combination.
In regards to the mass anti-protoss qq, I think much of it just comes from the current protoss playstyles that are very effective against current terran and zerg strategies but (at least superficially) seem to be much, much "easier" to carry out.
Example (WARNING: contains spoilers from TSL Ro16): + Show Spoiler +
A good example of this would be cruncher vs. mondragon. You can cry all you want about how cruncher has no skill compared to mondragon, but his strategies worked well and there's no denying it. mondragon even admitted later on that he had been using the wrong strategies (no infestors in any games). btw, I dislike cruncher and really, really wanted mondragon to win
i just think that zergs became too dependent on roaches ever since patch 1.21 200/200 roach is terrible. While zerg can make reinforcement faster, will the pure roach army do enough damage? I think not. Also FF wasn't that a big problem before, its just that zerg prefer a heavy roach army now. We don't even see muta lings anymore and with the new storm nerf, the strat become more potent. Zerg really need to adapt a harass style against zerg. Protoss is strongest when the army is in a ball and weaker when separated. Mondi's styles is good, just need better execution and I'm sure it will happen in the future.
Seems like Protoss definitely has the upper hand in this match-up. If Zerg macros up without pressure, Protoss has the advantage. If Zerg is aggressive, forcefields give them an amazing defenders advantage. It really seems like Zerg has to fight an uphill battle.
I think for the most part it comes down to maps whether Zerg can successfully be aggressive or not. If the third is close by, like on Tal'darim, it makes it incredibly hard to do multi-pronged attacks because it doesn't take long for the Protoss to get to any of his 3 bases. On something like slag pits, it becomes much easier. Maybe maps with a far away third can help out the match-up?
On April 19 2011 05:40 Polatrite wrote: Are we sure that we need balance tweaks to take care of Protoss?
What the hell is your opinion?
Like, I understand the progression of the strengths and weaknesses of races, but why are you saying this? Are you trying to stir conversation by being some objective outsider?
Give me something to work with; say something about your own thoughts. If you don't, then any person could have written this thread.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Gigaudas wrote: You mentioned that the answer might be in light balance changes.
I believe in huge balance changes. Substantial buffs could be made to Zerg units to balance ZvP.
I would love to know why you think this? Why you don't believe that players can discover different ways to play the matchup and explore an ingame resolution to any MU problems that they are having (read: July) - there is just so much that hasn't been explored yet; Protoss have discovered a new strategy to beat Zerg, it is now Zergs turn.
Why resort to mass balance patching that will undoubtedly result in a broken game? What balance changes would you propose?
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked. Most of the top 8 from the first 2 GSLs are gone/code A now. Yet the only new zerg is basically LosirA and July... Idra, ret, fruit, nestea, zenio are still around.
If you look at how oGsTOP or Rain played against Fruit back in GSL1, it wouldn't even be Code A level right now.
During the time of the early GSLs, most pro zergs had far more average ladder games played than the other races, meaning more practice.
Terrans were still using mostly MMM and didn't incorporate tanks (even when they did 50 damage to all units) into their armies forever. Mass drop play was barely touched until MVP showed up.
Protoss were still stuck on 4gate and learning how to expand safely, especially after 4 range roaches. They went as far to say that expanding early was an instant loss against a roach rush because of the 4 range. Turns out they just had to learn where to place cannons and how to use the sentry. THE SENTRY. That is the unit that protoss players learned how to use that has completely owned the metagame, you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago.
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
Then you have patches, which nerfed terran over and over and over, making TvZ one of the best and most balanced matchups in the game right now, also the favorite of many. Yet protoss also got a lot of buffs, such as cheaper hallucination, cheaper observers, faster phoenix... all these things MASSIVELY help them in the scouting department so they will always know to make more zealots or more stalkers or if they need an immortal as opposed to colossus, etc.
Lol this is a grossly inaccurate history of SC2. First of all, since the roach went to 2 food and sentry damage was nerfed, no race has ever been "overpowered" in SC2. Second, Lol@ protoss knows when to build more zealots. After the point when you can get hallucinate out (about 7 minutes reasonably) zealots have already almost outlived their usefulness in the matchup (save a rare ultralisk appearance, but even then zealots are only good at "not getting killed too fast"). Third, 4 gate is more prevalent now than even back then. The metagame for a while was TC tech for DT's/blink stalker/HT (for feedback on overseers and storm) and then whatever else applied. To be honest those were more interesting games back then.
A race has not been "overpowered" at all yet. Some tweaks were needed (see original void ray), but theres never been a situation where it was so grim for one race that they might as well not even bother competing.
On April 19 2011 08:01 DarkRise wrote: We don't even see muta lings anymore
The buff to hallucination scouting and reduction in pheonix build time, and the discovery of the 6-gate all ended muta-ling style quite quickly. And Protoss got quite good at defending it. It was already on a knife edge surviving long enough.
In the ZvP matchup, I think Banelings are HEAVILY overlooked. Banelings with burrow researched forces P to have obs at all times, they're like the new Lurkers. I think in the future we will see Zergs playing a drop-heavy style, and utilizing Banelings more, most likely with burrow, to force P to keep Obs with his army.
I see it playing out like this: P deathball comes with obs. Zerg has a nice unit mix, probably the usual Roach/Hydra/Corruptor, but with Banelings as well, in a pretty high ratio, making sure to have Overseers. Zerg tries to snipe obs with Overseer +Hydra or Corruptor, keeping Banelings back. Denying P detection could open up windows, because I've seen good Z players use burrow Banelings (along with a pretty modest supporting army) take out an entire Protoss deathball, just using clever positioning. They are really good for taking out the dreaded Sentry, and great against Collossus as well. Banelings using burrow to get close before forcefields can be thrown all around the ball or slice the Z army can get right inside and do insane damage. A lot of things are underused and undiscovered, because most people use the same strats and unit compositions, as they care more about winning every game than they do about learning new playstyles.
Heavy drop-play and more Baneling usage is the future of ZvP, I contend.
On April 19 2011 07:23 Buffy wrote: I think it's going to shift to something like roach/infestor/banelings at some point infestors just to hold em still and just then baneling drop everything and then clean up with roaches. Only thing I can see what will take out balls nowadays without broods lateish game.
And someone mentioned that fungal and colousses has same range, yeah it does, but only a tiny bit of the circel touches 9 range, to get a full fungal in you need to be at 6-7 range.
Actually, the range on the center point of a fungal is at 9 - which means that you can fungal the first unit and half of the circle will hit those behind it. This effectively allows you to fungal the Colossi outside of it's range - test it in a unit test map - have the far point of a fungal hit the colossi (not the middle of the fungal reticule) and see that the colossi cannot attack your infestor.
Easier said than done.
On to the topic at hand. There really has only been 1 BIG shift in core playstyle in regards to player evolution since release, and that has to do with the incorporation of more sentries in the Protoss army. Beyond that, changes in the form of unit balance and map size have dictated much of the change we see today (map size being the biggest contributor).
Now Protoss can feel safe because of the increased time cushions provided by map size and sentries. I'm not talking about forcefielding ramps to get higher tech out to deal with 7RR or MM stim push, but a more general domination of early Protoss army composition. Proper FFs can change a devastating timing push into a timing mush, which discourages a lot of aggression from both T and Z. Instead of pushing out and trying to pick off misplaced/mistimed units and buildings, T and Z are encouraged to prepare for one large push against the P army/defenses. This doesn't work as well though, since a well made Protoss army will beat most other armies in a head on fight due to both FFs and Colossi.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked. Most of the top 8 from the first 2 GSLs are gone/code A now. Yet the only new zerg is basically LosirA and July... Idra, ret, fruit, nestea, zenio are still around.
If you look at how oGsTOP or Rain played against Fruit back in GSL1, it wouldn't even be Code A level right now.
During the time of the early GSLs, most pro zergs had far more average ladder games played than the other races, meaning more practice.
Terrans were still using mostly MMM and didn't incorporate tanks (even when they did 50 damage to all units) into their armies forever. Mass drop play was barely touched until MVP showed up.
Protoss were still stuck on 4gate and learning how to expand safely, especially after 4 range roaches. They went as far to say that expanding early was an instant loss against a roach rush because of the 4 range. Turns out they just had to learn where to place cannons and how to use the sentry. THE SENTRY. That is the unit that protoss players learned how to use that has completely owned the metagame, you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago.
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
Then you have patches, which nerfed terran over and over and over, making TvZ one of the best and most balanced matchups in the game right now, also the favorite of many. Yet protoss also got a lot of buffs, such as cheaper hallucination, cheaper observers, faster phoenix... all these things MASSIVELY help them in the scouting department so they will always know to make more zealots or more stalkers or if they need an immortal as opposed to colossus, etc.
A race has not been "overpowered" at all yet. Some tweaks were needed (see original void ray), but theres never been a situation where it was so grim for one race that they might as well not even bother competing.
BECAUSE it was patched. If terran had not received a single of their 20~ nerfs since 1.0, do you think the game would be the way it is right now? It was not just apparent back then because they didn't have enough time to practice how to abuse the power they had. Even now, after terran has been balanced to hell and back, they are doing GREAT.
On April 19 2011 07:51 koolaid1990 wrote: Nah, zerg vs protoss was really all about the protoss making mistakes. This is why at a lower level, toss is not as overpowered, but at the highest level, it is, because zergs will do aggression, but a good toss will easily stop it and defend everything, scouting everything, microing well, and in the end if the toss makes no mistakes, the toss will win no matter what. For example, the only reason why MC lost against July in the finals was because he didnt scout the overlord hydra drop, if he then he would be much more prepared. Same thing for huk vs idra, if huk had scouted more better, saw that the roaches had tunneling claws, he wouldnt have gotten owned so hard without the obs.
This is one of the stupider things I have read on TL.
In a game of skill, if one player makes zero mistakes, they should win 100%. No mistakes means playing perfectly, and if you can play perfectly and still lose, that's when the game is broken.
Now, you might be able to argue that even if Zerg plays perfectly, they can still lose, but that's a completely different argument, and I think you would have a lot of trouble proving that.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
thats because roach hydra corrupter is the only way to deal with early timing attacks with a few colossi.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
I love how OP assumes now we know the game perfectly... despite "being totally wrong a few months ago". Very cute logic there. Seriously though, I would like to see more Zergs doing well... but I think there are too many with the wrong mindset for how the units work out. I mean, you have units that are equal to or beat Protoss units for half the cost. This translates into early and mid-game power! Use it!!@!!
And bigger maps aren't figured out yet. And I love to see aggressive zergs, because they have more bang for their buck per unit cost. Macroing blindly is the wrong strategy, hello? JulyZerg is paving the way, IMO. Instead of thinking "How can I barely get by to get to late game" Zergs should be thinking "How can I use my mobile, high DPS army and quick tech switches to prevent the Protoss from expanding or building a big army."
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
On April 19 2011 08:11 LF9 wrote: In the ZvP matchup, I think Banelings are HEAVILY overlooked. Banelings with burrow researched forces P to have obs at all times, they're like the new Lurkers. I think in the future we will see Zergs playing a drop-heavy style, and utilizing Banelings more, most likely with burrow, to force P to keep Obs with his army.
I see it playing out like this: P deathball comes with obs. Zerg has a nice unit mix, probably the usual Roach/Hydra/Corruptor, but with Banelings as well, in a pretty high ratio, making sure to have Overseers. Zerg tries to snipe obs with Overseer +Hydra or Corruptor, keeping Banelings back. Denying P detection could open up windows, because I've seen good Z players use burrow Banelings (along with a pretty modest supporting army) take out an entire Protoss deathball, just using clever positioning. They are really good for taking out the dreaded Sentry, and great against Collossus as well. Banelings using burrow to get close before forcefields can be thrown all around the ball or slice the Z army can get right inside and do insane damage. A lot of things are underused and undiscovered, because most people use the same strats and unit compositions, as they care more about winning every game than they do about learning new playstyles.
Heavy drop-play and more Baneling usage is the future of ZvP, I contend.
The banelings and drop heavy play I completely agree with. You don't know much much I agree with it. But the only problem with this is that observers are cheap, and any gold+ protoss always has a observer with their army to take out creep tumors.(Burrowed roachs with tunneling claws work better then banelings vs protoss.) The only thing zergs can do is roach hydra with 20 banelings for dropping. Its only 10 food, and can comepletely decimate a protoss army.(Kill sentries if not stalkers too and deal significant damage to everything else.) Roach hydra and corruptor cleans everything up. Dropping 4 upgrades banelings on a probe line will destroy their economy. And if you keep doing it at specific times in the game when they get resaturated will give you a free win because they won't have economy to create an army. I have just practiced with a friend, and using baneling drops, and hydra drops do amazingly well vs protoss. They gave me a better result then I have ever achived. Nydus I think will also be used for surrounds and base harassment. But balance needs a huge change currently. I am watching grubby destroy a zerg with mass blink stalkers against hydra ling infestor. Which is suppose to counter blink stalkers.
There is no point in analysing short-lived trends. However, there is also nothing to be gained from blindly assuming that the game is fully balanced as it is.
SC wasn't balanced properly until BW, as en example.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked. Most of the top 8 from the first 2 GSLs are gone/code A now. Yet the only new zerg is basically LosirA and July... Idra, ret, fruit, nestea, zenio are still around.
If you look at how oGsTOP or Rain played against Fruit back in GSL1, it wouldn't even be Code A level right now.
During the time of the early GSLs, most pro zergs had far more average ladder games played than the other races, meaning more practice.
Terrans were still using mostly MMM and didn't incorporate tanks (even when they did 50 damage to all units) into their armies forever. Mass drop play was barely touched until MVP showed up.
Protoss were still stuck on 4gate and learning how to expand safely, especially after 4 range roaches. They went as far to say that expanding early was an instant loss against a roach rush because of the 4 range. Turns out they just had to learn where to place cannons and how to use the sentry. THE SENTRY. That is the unit that protoss players learned how to use that has completely owned the metagame, you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago.
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
Then you have patches, which nerfed terran over and over and over, making TvZ one of the best and most balanced matchups in the game right now, also the favorite of many. Yet protoss also got a lot of buffs, such as cheaper hallucination, cheaper observers, faster phoenix... all these things MASSIVELY help them in the scouting department so they will always know to make more zealots or more stalkers or if they need an immortal as opposed to colossus, etc.
A race has not been "overpowered" at all yet. Some tweaks were needed (see original void ray), but theres never been a situation where it was so grim for one race that they might as well not even bother competing.
BECAUSE it was patched. If terran had not received a single of their 20~ nerfs since 1.0, do you think the game would be the way it is right now? It was not just apparent back then because they didn't have enough time to practice how to abuse the power they had. Even now, after terran has been balanced to hell and back, they are doing GREAT.
I wouldn't say GREAT, but I think they are not in a bad position. Same thing can be said of Zerg. Like you mentioned earlier, ZvT seems to be at a really good point where it's a favorite of players and balanced quite well. Each part can punish the other for attempting something stupid/ridiculous, but can also be rewarded for pulling off stupid/ridiculous things.
You know which players give me the hardest time in the late game? The ones that aren't still hanging around on lair tech or barracks tech.
There is always the usual excuse: "it costs too much" or "it takes too long to make." Yeah well deathball falls under both of those. Watch any replay with a "deathball" and it's army value is usually twice that of the opponent. Blizzard balances units on unit cost, not supply. You need more supply efficient units. 200/200 of all marines is not quite as powerful as a 200/200 army of all tanks.
Sometimes when I play, I sacrifice all my zealots on a suicide mission to harass and replace them with stalkers or just more colossus.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
Well of course all decent P bring an Observer (probably 2) with their army, but I'm saying that if you have burrow Banelings in a good number, the goal would be to snipe the observer(s), forcing the Protoss to back up. If you can keep playing this game, you will buy yourself time for some drops in a few different places here and there, whittling away at his economy, and if you manage to snipe the Observer(s), he can't attack you without burrowed blings popping up right in the middle of his ball and raping all his units, so he has to go elsewhere. And that means you get to control the map, instead of him. Take an expo, harass with drops, both? Just a possibility.
And branflakes, I'm pretty sure 5unrise totally just didn't get it. RIGHT over his head. lol.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
Macro Zergs were never insane. Maybe in the beta before ultralisks sucked less and stalkers did 2 less damage and every1 had terrible forcefield control, maybe. The only time in retail Zerg has actually done well vs Protoss was after roach range was buffed, and that was basically just Protoss slowly figuring out their old bullshit didnt work and having to adjust their play accordingly.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
Yea, this might be it. If only Idra, Ret, Morrow, Sen, Dimaga, and Sheth were as skilled as Cruncher . In all seriousness though, the argument that Zerg players lack the skill other races have is just absurd.
@OP This thread explains perfectly why Protoss is owning atm
On April 19 2011 08:29 LF9 wrote: Well of course all decent P bring an Observer (probably 2) with their army, but I'm saying that if you have burrow Banelings in a good number, the goal would be to snipe the observer(s), forcing the Protoss to back up. If you can keep playing this game, you will buy yourself time for some drops in a few different places here and there, whittling away at his economy, and if you manage to snipe the Observer(s), he can't attack you without burrowed blings popping up right in the middle of his ball and raping all his units, so he has to go elsewhere. And that means you get to control the map, instead of him. Take an expo, harass with drops, both? Just a possibility.
And branflakes, I'm pretty sure 5unrise totally just didn't get it. RIGHT over his head. lol.
Yeah, but do you think pros want to base their entire gameplan on 'and then I snipe his oberver, and his backup, and I hope he doesn't look after them well or have a third nearby!'
You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked. Most of the top 8 from the first 2 GSLs are gone/code A now. Yet the only new zerg is basically LosirA and July... Idra, ret, fruit, nestea, zenio are still around.
If you look at how oGsTOP or Rain played against Fruit back in GSL1, it wouldn't even be Code A level right now.
During the time of the early GSLs, most pro zergs had far more average ladder games played than the other races, meaning more practice.
Terrans were still using mostly MMM and didn't incorporate tanks (even when they did 50 damage to all units) into their armies forever. Mass drop play was barely touched until MVP showed up.
Protoss were still stuck on 4gate and learning how to expand safely, especially after 4 range roaches. They went as far to say that expanding early was an instant loss against a roach rush because of the 4 range. Turns out they just had to learn where to place cannons and how to use the sentry. THE SENTRY. That is the unit that protoss players learned how to use that has completely owned the metagame, you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago.
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
Then you have patches, which nerfed terran over and over and over, making TvZ one of the best and most balanced matchups in the game right now, also the favorite of many. Yet protoss also got a lot of buffs, such as cheaper hallucination, cheaper observers, faster phoenix... all these things MASSIVELY help them in the scouting department so they will always know to make more zealots or more stalkers or if they need an immortal as opposed to colossus, etc.
This is a pretty brutal over generalization:
The discrepancy in skill between code A and code S, if there even is one at all, is paper thin. Commenting on how those players have dropped to code A doesn't say anything, you'd have to evaluate the shifts in skill on an individual basis.
More ladder games does not indicate more practice. More time spent practicing (very likely with practice partners) means more practice.
Force fields have always seen effective use. It's an essential part of some of the wilder timing pushes we've seen lately, but it's grossly inaccurate to say "you didn't see amazing force fields 5 months ago."
The part of your post I find most interesting, however, is:
Then you now have big maps, which lets zerg macro.... slightly better than before, but lets protoss and terran get an easy 3 bases. Terran and Protoss can sit and produce off 3 bases for over 20-30 minutes and win, as a protoss can actually max 200/200 3/3/3 off 6 gases if you don't kill any of their colossus with constant attacks.
See ZvT from bw? A player should never feel entitled to wins playing passively. If there's an argument to be made against protoss balance right now, it starts there. But do the best protoss play that way? Not usually. Sheth has been playing a style that really seems to punish passive protoss, see his game vs Artosis in the NASL. It reminds me of the ZvT mu from bw because the zerg laid on the aggression and harassed and harassed and harassed so that when the push finally came from terran, it was manageable.
ZvP is ridiculously hard right now, and maybe it will get patched (further), but (as has been said a thousand times) it's not becoming of players to expect blizzard to spoon feed us the responses to certain styles with balance patches when there's still room to explore solutions.
As for protoss buffs, the overall trajectory of the race's balance has been nerfs. There have been buffs, but they themselves would not constitute enough change to alter the balance of the game. If there is a problem, it exists without the buffs you've mentioned. You've conveniently ignored the most recent nerf to high templar, and the substantial nerf that voidrays had before that (as well as the build time of zealots, the cool down of warp gates, etc.)
All of those were warranted, imo, but you've been pretty selective with your information there.
On April 19 2011 08:26 Ownos wrote: You know which players give me the hardest time in the late game? The ones that aren't still hanging around on lair tech or barracks tech.
There is always the usual excuse: "it costs too much" or "it takes too long to make." Yeah well deathball falls under both of those. Watch any replay with a "deathball" and it's army value is usually twice that of the opponent. Blizzard balances units on unit cost, not supply. You need more supply efficient units. 200/200 of all marines is not quite as powerful as a 200/200 army of all tanks.
Sometimes when I play, I sacrifice all my zealots on a suicide mission to harass and replace them with stalkers or just more colossus.
Because Protoss can actually defend. Forcefields, ramps, cannons and actually having decent range gives you an ENORMOUS defender's advantage against Zerg. Warp-ins completely negate the Zerg defender's advantage. You can just sit around building up a deathball, because once you have a few sentries and collosi the Zerg player simply cannot attack you. Try doing that with Zerg and a bunch of gateway units will roll you every single time.
On April 19 2011 07:33 branflakes14 wrote: I agree completely with the OP. Moreso after watching Sheth's stream for a good few hours the last couple of days. It's almost embarrassing to see how little faith people have in Blizzard's ability to balance a game, especially when they were responsible for what's considered the most balanced RTS on the planet that isn't a pure mirror. If anything people should have MORE faith in them since between now and Brood War Blizzard have had years to refine their methods of balancing games.
Actually, in point of fact Blizzard's methods of balancing SC mostly consisted of not balancing it: by my count there were exactly two major balance patches. One of those "patches" was the release of Brood War, and the other was made just after Boxer won his 1st (!) OSL. It was a decently balanced game to begin with, but "balance" in the BW sense of near-perfection has been the result of just about everybody except Blizzard: map-makers, innovators (Boxer), tons of practice, dumb luck (Shark and his mutas), etc.
The thing I take away from the OP is basically this: a couple months isn't long enough, usually, to determine "balance". Therefore - and with BW as an example, no less - we need to quit screaming for patches and just play the game.
Sheth keeps getting referenced, but I'm not familiar with his ZvP outside of his NASL games with Artosis. What is he doing that is apparently so effective? Just good execution of drops and multi-pronged attacks on lair tech?
Spanishiwaa's play (especially on his stream yesterday) was showcasing the funday monday for day9, which was 12 lings, and nothing elsee except corruptors, infestors, ultras, and broodlords. Though it is a funday, it shows that zerg has the units to crush the so called protoss deathball, and its a matter of time before these strategies work their way into tournaments. Even with the most recent balance changes, its like trying to point out to zerg that they have this unit called the infestor, and they should use it. So to the original poster - I disagree with you that the game needs a balance change to fix protoss. It's like calling the 1 base immortal push on scrap station invincible (the unstoppable build from beta lolll).
On April 19 2011 09:11 Tachion wrote: Sheth keeps getting referenced, but I'm not familiar with his ZvP outside of his NASL games with Artosis. What is he doing that is apparently so effective? Just good execution of drops and multi-pronged attacks on lair tech?
Strong timing understanding, great map control with mobile units, denying P expos, fantastic positioning/engagements with his army, and solid scouting to name a few aspects.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
You're saying Zerg players suck more than Protoss and Zerg atm, and u expect to be taken seriously? oO
The reason why Zerg sucks, well Zerg doesn't suck. Even though Zerg has won 2 GSL, nearly 3 (each time it was another Zerg reaching final), we keep hearing since Beta 0.01 that Zerg is the weakest race.
Recently, July won the ST tournament, and got into the final of GSL. Ret won the assembly. Idra did well in several tournaments. Dimaga won a lot of games when he was in Korea playing for the GSL WorldCup. Morrow doing great as well. Mondragon nearly beating (2-3) the best European Protoss last week. Stephano an emerging French Zerg (ex war3 player) has won the last 3 Go4sc2 Cup.
Protoss on the other hand... Yes there's MC, he won 2 GSL, asides from that ? Nobody. In fact, if it wasn't for MC, no Protoss would have reached the final of the GSL.
But if Zerg wants to do better, they will need to macro better. Yes MACRO BETTER.I'm tired of seeing so called Pro Zergs camping with over 3k minerals, no macro hatch, and a 200 food army with 90 drones and 50 roaches. Harassing with speeroaches/overlords + teching to tier3 is the key of this MU. Mark my words, in a few months people will systematically tech to infestors/broodlords or infestors/ultralisks in this MU. Zerg will also do better the day they will realize that Protoss can't have enough gaz to support sentries along HT/colossi (so that banelings in lategame are very good).
You know, I don't really think it's balance at this point. If, a year and a half from now, there are still fairly big issues then it should be looked at and balanced out, but as for right now I'm not sure. I do think Protoss might be almost unbeatable at the death ball stage, but why are people letting them GET to that death ball stage? Fact of the matter is there should be some situations where you will lose. It's as simple as that. The death ball might be one of them. Really maybe it has something to do with lack of certain Zerg units like the Lurker for an early siege type of unit. Or maybe lack of foresight from Zerg players in getting people get to 200/200. Or hell, maybe lack of control.
Look at a BW game. You'd have these beautiful groups of armies all over the place as a Zerg. Mutas up here, Lings there, Hydras off doing their own thing. But that was because of control groups. But in SC2 you can box everything, Ctrl1 it together, then just attack move and expect to win. If anything I think the control group setup is deceptive. It makes people think they can just A move to the win, when in reality they should be manipulating 3 different fronts at the same time.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
You're saying Zerg players suck more than Protoss and Zerg atm, and u expect to be taken seriously? oO
Please, explain to me why you think a claim like that can't be taken seriously, especially considering all I did was reverse exactly a claim someone else made.
On April 19 2011 09:21 gNs.I-Jasa wrote: make roaches 1 food again. hahaha no but seriously. zerg is suppose to dominate the late game. but protoss units are so cost effective late game.
...Zerg isn't suppose to dominate the late game. If one race is suppose to have the best late game army that would be the Protoss.
Theres no reason for a Zerg max army to be able to fight with a Protoss maxed army. Given that Toss has the most divergent Tech Tree, their race SHOULD reap the benefits of combining those prongs in to a Very powerful army.
Now, im not trying to downplay how hard ZvP is right now. Just that Zerg armies shouldn't be able to take out maxed toss armies. (especially considering the fact that around about 10 avg supply of a Zerg's max will be tied to Queens our maxed army is actually has less attacking units than other races)
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
You're saying Zerg players suck more than Protoss and Zerg atm, and u expect to be taken seriously? oO
Please, explain to me why you think a claim like that can't be taken seriously, especially considering all I did was reverse exactly a claim someone else made.
I can't speak for the pros, obviously, but on ladder there are two key things goog zergs are doing to combat / slow the production of the deathball.
First off, they are being aggressive midgame to keep my army size small. Roaches are very cost effective when army sizes aren't large, and there is a strong point where mass roaches can cut back on Protoss army size largely. When Zerg don't use their strong midgame, I can get my deathball up quickly and safely, along with securing expansions much easier.
Secondly is their late game army composition. Any zerg that doesn't eventually go Broodlords loses to me. The base of the army is Roach with Hydras sprinkled, 6 or so broodlords, 2-3 infestors, and baneling drops. I'd say the baneling drops and infestors are very important because it quickly cuts down the Protoss' army mass, making the Roach base of your army a lot more cost (food?) effective quickly, and the food cost from these two units is so low compared to the amount of damage they do.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
You're saying Zerg players suck more than Protoss and Zerg atm, and u expect to be taken seriously? oO
Please, explain to me why you think a claim like that can't be taken seriously, especially considering all I did was reverse exactly a claim someone else made.
Well you're not making up some hypothetical situation. Like I said, Zerg has players like IDra, Morrow, Ret, Sen, Dimaga, Slush, and Sheth. Saying those players aren't at least equally as skilled as the top Protoss and Terran players is just ridiculous.
On April 19 2011 09:25 TeWy wrote: The reason why Zerg sucks, well Zerg doesn't suck. Even though Zerg has won 2 GSL, nearly 3 (each time it was another Zerg reaching final), we keep hearing since Beta 0.01 that Zerg is the weakest race.
Recently, July won the ST tournament, and got into the final of GSL. Ret won the assembly. Idra did well in several tournaments. Dimaga won a lot of games when he was in Korea playing for the GSL WorldCup. Morrow doing great as well. Mondragon nearly beating (2-3) the best European Protoss last week. Stephano an emerging French Zerg (ex war3 player) has won the last 3 Go4sc2 Cup.
Protoss on the other hand... Yes there's MC, he won 2 GSL, asides from that ? Nobody. In fact, if it wasn't for MC, no Protoss would have reached the final of the GSL.
But if Zerg wants to do better, they will need to macro better. Yes MACRO BETTER.I'm tired of seeing so called Pro Zergs camping with over 3k minerals, no macro hatch, and a 200 food army with 90 drones and 50 roaches. Harassing with speeroaches/overlords + teching to tier3 is the key of this MU. Mark my words, in a few months people will systematically tech to infestors/broodlords or infestors/ultralisks in this MU. Zerg will also do better the day they will realize that Protoss can't have enough gaz to support sentries along HT/colossi (so that banelings in lategame are very good).
ST tournament was won by Bomber. Aside from MC? U mean like aside from Naniwa winning MLG Kiwi placing 2nd, 2 tosses claiming top 2 in DH invitational? The truth is zerg is still the least successful race as it has been for the past year. And thank you for your newbie advice, i'll be sure to inform all pro zergs that you dont need good economy to win.
Zergs have enjoyed a bit success as a result to other races adjusting to patch. Now we're back to square one.
While I'm not going to qq that Protoss is OP I'm a bit disappointed at some of the suggestions in this thread, like don't let them get to death ball (see Idra 7 base vs Cruncher 3 base or Mondragon vs Cruncher). It's not like they didn't play aggressively, its just that defending a Toss base is so easy. Throwing down cannons costs only minerals so you can save your gas to build VR and/or Colossus. People suggest Muta harass... so waste 1200/1200 on 12 mutas so that the Toss spends 1200/0 on 2 cannons at each base? How is that effective? Also Zerg should be more aggressive? We must all-in or auto lose? There should at least be a way that a macro zerg can beat a macro toss. Crunchers play (I want to call it abusive) shows that with a couple VR and pheonix running around the base to keep the Zerg defending he can just cannon up expos and build a death ball.
Maybe the best suggestions I've heard are Baneling drops... though these don't seem particularly stable. Look at how easily a handful of Pheonix/VR's defended roach drops for Cruncher vs Mondragon. He didn't even have stalkers.
Nydus plays seems good too (see Spanishiwa) but it is only a matter of time before Protoss cancel that. One cannon will kill a nydus before it even finishes building. In the recently popular Spanishiwa vs Cruncher game (see almost any youtube caster to get it : I suggest PsyStarcraft) the only reason Spanishiwa won was because Cruncher had no vision behind his grass.
Infestor play must be considered more... but the gas investment in infestors means that FG or NP must really be a game changer. NP on a colossus is basically unmanageable at the moment without a high-ground advantage. Many people have also argued that FG is not as effective vs P as vs T because of shields and greater life total in general... not to mention FF.
I think a shift in the meta game must be made. Watcing pros go roaches every game makes me cringe. In my league (high diamond) I've been having success opening ling hydra (which does well vs gateway pushes or stargate tech) and adding roaches only at the late game to reinforce. Still I die to death balls if my early aggression fails to do damage.
When I play Zerg i find that the point in which i have the biggest advantage is when i am in the 100 to 200 game because if you are hyper aggressive, you can force your opponent to all in before he is able to do any real damage.
Sure its a risky way to play, but you can't allow a race to build up a death ball. Because that requires cutting corners, and you as zerg can punish them for that.
It may be a slight oversimplification, but I think that zergs at the moment are struggling most with map control. Rather, holding a specific position on the map. As we have seen in some of Idra's and Mondragon's recent games, the aggressive/drop oriented style is effective at keeping a protoss on his heels, but when it comes down to it, the deathball can usually just attack into anywhere on the map that it pleases.
What zergs seem to be lacking most(but moving towards), is a way to effectively slow a large bulked up army. Multi-pronged attacks divert attention, but given the inevitable large maxed vs maxed engagment, this harass just serves to distract.
Maybe the key lies with infestors and broodlords, maybe not. Either way I think ZvP is at least moving in the right direction(i.e. zerg should never be attacking in only one place)
IMHO the game is quite balanced, given the newness of the game and the state of flux the metagame is still in. It's great to see infestors finally appearing in competitive play after the recent buff, or really, the recent change bringing that unit to the attention of players. What's more, too many players (such as Mondragon in TSL last weekend) get stuck on Roach Hydra Corrupter and fail to take advantage of Zerg's awesome ability to mass up a unit fast.
That said, the map pool doesn't seem too much in Zerg's favour, despite the trend of larger maps like Taldarim, their chokes remain tight and favour units such as the siege tank and colossus more. That said, Crossfire just seems messed up.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Gigaudas wrote: You mentioned that the answer might be in light balance changes.
I believe in huge balance changes. Substantial buffs could be made to Zerg units to balance ZvP.
I dont believe that huge changes are necessary - there are already some new strategies out that are really promising
Aside from that zvp is pretty balanced until the protoss has full supply where your only chance as zerg is that you are already on tier3 and either have broodlords for long range attacks or ultras to mow through forcefield, stalkers and colossi
In my opinion the only weak unit in the zerg arsenal are hydras as they are usually only sunken resources and supply - the closest solution someone could think about is changing them like they were in bw. The thing is that if you do that it will have huge impacts on the entire gameplay as you could tech to hydras and they would probably destroy protoss before they get any colossi out. Another approach might be to change them into a "mid-supply" unit with 3-4 supply that fills a role which is covered by tanks for terrans and immortals for protoss
The most annoying thing for me in zvp is that protoss has so little necessity to adapt and just almost get default wins just by choosing to 3 gate expand into colossi and i really dislike the changes that were made to phoenix production time (because you can hold mutas with one stargate) and void rays that are stronger against massive units as void rays are insanely good against 4 different zerg units and immortals/archons are not necessary. The result is one strategy that is supposed to beat everything thrown at them and in my understanding this is more of a balance issue than everything else
Very nice post, brings up a great point. And I'm sure you will be proven correct as new styles emerge to beat the mainstream strategies we see today. In the meantime for most people its far easier to just make posts on TL complaining about imbalance and wait on patches than trying to actually find these new strategies.
the big huge humongous monstrous problem is that after a year of whining begging and straight up politely asking to make zerg scouting adequate Blizzard didnt bulge one bit. That puts the initiative in the hands of P/T players and if u know anything of SCBW you'll understand how important that is. A race that inherently gives up initiative has to be stronger during the time it gives up initiative or the game is imbalanced. The problem here is that it seems that it's the opposite and P/T are actually stronger than zerg during those times. Which would indicate, if i'm correct in my logic, that Z is actually even weaker then it currently seems because the P/T builds are still largely wasteful and hence the grip on the initiative advantage P/T gain is weaker.
On April 19 2011 07:54 Mailing wrote: You didn't need balance tweaks to take care of zerg because zerg was never overpowered, the players for T and P just sucked.
Maybe our current Z players suck.
yeah bro please show them how to play zvp
Sorry for suggesting something completely reasonable then. It's fine that T and P players can suck, but completely unreasonable that Z players can.
You're saying Zerg players suck more than Protoss and Zerg atm, and u expect to be taken seriously? oO
Please, explain to me why you think a claim like that can't be taken seriously, especially considering all I did was reverse exactly a claim someone else made.
Well you're not making up some hypothetical situation. Like I said, Zerg has players like IDra, Morrow, Ret, Sen, Dimaga, Slush, and Sheth. Saying those players aren't at least equally as skilled as the top Protoss and Terran players is just ridiculous.
Did no one read the post he initially responded to? Some player basically claimed that the only reason Zerg ever did well was because Terran and Protoss were crap. He responded (in a not serious way) by saying that maybe the only reason Protoss is doing well is that the Zerg players are bad. He was making a point that you can't call one race terrible at what they do and claim thats the only reason they fail.
On topic - I agree that patching isn't the solution to this problem, but rather using the tools that exist to greater effect. Yes, it's not fair that the deathball is easy to execute but hard to hold off - but it's also not fair that a 6 pool is very difficult to hold if scouted last, and a 3 rax all in is easier to execute than the forcefields required to stop it. The game isn't going to be perfectly balanced on difficulty at all points - but we work around it. The key to good play is to minimize the number of ways the opponent can do "easy things" while maximizing the way you can.
I think someone that I was on vent with said it best: "Only in sc2 can a protoss on 2 and a half bases beat a zerg on 5."
Protoss deathball is also quite difficult to beat as terran, mainly because
1). Colossi are really strong 2). Instant replenishment of army with warpgates 3). Speedlots are uber cost effective (tvz) with upgrades 4). Storm + colossi melts terran balls
This is of course from a Terran's perspective but I do think Protoss is the strongest right now due to some of the mechanics they have.
after Bobo_ suggestion i went mutas. Played quite a games doing it. And it was awesome. I even hid the spire elsewhere so if they had an observer so the only chance they would have to see it is when the mutas pop. Made about 10-15 and it was great. Killing probes left and right.
Started making hydras back home during the harass, but didnt really matter. But in every game they upped their stalker count so much that the mutas couldnt really touch them and the hydras were really lol well they died pretty quickly.
Did the same with lings waiting back home and with roaches.
The thing is i know i did a lot of economical damage, but mass stalker is one of those army compositions i don't really know how to deal with. Mass roach or even mass hydra never works for me that is. Havent tried infestors with mutas but i didnt have alot of gas. (but again this is something new for me)
yea i feel like the definition of a zerg "all in" is going to have to be redefined because not only can zerg make alot of units at once for strong timings, the can also recover with tons or drones faster then any other race
On April 19 2011 09:11 Tachion wrote: Sheth keeps getting referenced, but I'm not familiar with his ZvP outside of his NASL games with Artosis. What is he doing that is apparently so effective? Just good execution of drops and multi-pronged attacks on lair tech?
Sheth has a 37-8 ZvP record in international play, but there are many superior Protosses out there that he has yet to face.
I think right now the game is balanced. Protoss has been crap for awhile. It's just now starting to change. I remember the threads all the time, asking how to deal with mutalisks. How to deal with mass roach as P. How to stop 6 pool as P. These were actual threads.
Finally the threads are changing to how to stop P. It will change again. Everyone needs to stop complaining and start making replays, make changes to your play and show other people. Answer the threads. Then things will change and people can complain about the next thing. its a cycle.
And whatever you do, don't listen to idra. I like the guy but he complains when he loses and that is not the attitude to have. He wont come out and say he was wrong either so you can't quote him.
Protoss players are just playing for the late game now. Its not that they were incredibly innovative and had overcome adversity to get to their dominant position today.
Thats why 300 food pushing seemed so strong originally, because no P/T was playing to get on 3 or 4 bases. So naturally, if Zerg weathered the storm of they would be in a very advantageous position come late game.
I think Aggressive Zerg play is the right way to go. Honestly the Zerg army shouldn't be able to take out a P/T Maxed army. When you think about it, given the upply that Queens take up, the Avg Zerg max probably has 10 supply allocated to Queens. So if your even on harvesters your actually still behind on army size with not as cost efficient units.
Unlike P/T Zerg's should view their army as a liability, not an asset. For ever moment your army is on the field its loosing value. So you need to attack asap to make sure your army can perform at maximum effectiveness.
Its like your in an extremely inflationary society. You need to spend money (units) asap, while they have the most value, and can return the most asset (kills).
So since you should be constantly trading army theres no since in cutting drones for a bigger army. What you should do is drone up to 90 - 95 drones, and use the excess eco to fund your losses incurred from your aggression.
Sheth is the closest i've seen, to playing a "stylistically" correct late game for Zerg.
I think there are a few openings that Zerg has to end up blind countering to be on top of a toss player. 1. That recent phoenix build time buff meant that a P can pump up so many phoenix in a short amount of time. So when a toss opens forge first, getting a fast third is very hard to defend against the quick 4 phoenix + 1 void ray combo. What makes this even worse is that void rays can now charge to max power on an overlord making them so much more effective against the distant thirds Z has to take on many maps. And spore crawlers take so long to build, Z has to blindly pre-empt. This is made even worse by hard scouting before lair.
2. Another problem is that P can very cost efficiently cause a lot of damage while macro-ing. They can throw down a dark shrine anytime and send a DT each of Z's 4 or 5 bases. Z has to pre-empt by throwing spores and spines. The fact that Zerg has to be many bases up on a Protoss makes DTs all the more effective.
3. So many Zerg's go early burrow now just so as not to die to a 6 gate push with FF abuse. I mean, the very fact that zerg has to play so cautiously makes it hard to get a significant macro advantage over a Protoss who knows how to defend any form of harass.. ala Cruncher.
The only hope I've seen for Zerg are infestors that the way Spanishiwa uses them. 2 full energy infestors can sneak to the back of a base and clean out an entire probe line. I think more pros can experiment w more infestors and drop play but the matchup is probably not very balanced now.
So all the Protoss players here care to explain why you think you'd know more about ZvP than Idra, Morrow, Zenio, Dimaga, Sen etc just by watching a few minutes of Spanishiwa and Sheth's streams?
I don't remember the last time I saw a Zerg beating a good Protoss player (ie. no stupid all-in play and just solid macro) on any of the Blizzard maps, since the Protoss would be able to keep up with Zerg's macro while defend against any kind of timing attack with good sentry usage, good blink micro, and warp-gate mechanics. A late game mass blink stalker army is simply more cost-effective AND more mobile than pretty much any Zerg composition if controlled correctly.
I don't think Zerg is completely broken though. As new maps come into play, strategies that were previously considered coin-flip may eventually evolve into standard solid play. For instance, all the new GSL maps are designed to handicap a Protoss's late game economy one way or another: Tal'darim altar, Terminus SE, and Crevasse have less resource available on their safe second expo than a regular full expo; Xel'naga Fortress and Dual Site have very vulnerable, open third base, which make any aggression from Zerg very difficult to deal with. Not to mention the lack of destructible rocks blocking expansion gives Zerg a much better chance of out-macroing Protoss without wasting larvae on units in the early game. Still anyone who thinks that Protoss late game isn't too strong against Zerg on the current Blizzard map pool is, IMO, as delusional as people who think ZvT is fine on Steps and DQ.
As for the OP: The short period when Zerg was doing well in the top level, Terran wasn't even leap frogging Siege Tanks or splitting Marines. It took forever for Protoss players to figure out how strong early Sentries are and how ridiculously strong Col/VR is against Zerg lategame. Hell, it took forever for players from other races to figure out exactly how to feign pressure to keep Zerg from getting too much drones in the midgame.
Comparatively speaking Zerg units have little micro potential (ie. lower skill cap) as they are all melee, move really slow, or have really long attack cooldown. It's not surprising that Zerg now has the weakest lategame as players get better overall and make more cost-effective use of their units.
On April 19 2011 10:16 TheResidentEvil wrote: I think right now the game is balanced. Protoss has been crap for awhile. It's just now starting to change. I remember the threads all the time, asking how to deal with mutalisks. How to deal with mass roach as P. How to stop 6 pool as P. These were actual threads.
Finally the threads are changing to how to stop P. It will change again. Everyone needs to stop complaining and start making replays, make changes to your play and show other people. Answer the threads. Then things will change and people can complain about the next thing. its a cycle.
And whatever you do, don't listen to idra. I like the guy but he complains when he loses and that is not the attitude to have. He wont come out and say he was wrong either so you can't quote him.
Idra admitted his mistake when he played bad. for the most recent one, check out idra interview after vs huk games (some girl interviewed him). what idra said/predicted is annoyingly accurate, most of the time.
OT:
Lets face it guys, Cruncher is the best example of being a 'common' toss - he doesnt need to have amazing timing/mechanics/macro (i still remember the Game 1 he vs Idra in TSL3, idra food count is 3times of cruncher at some point, something like 57:150), he just need to turtle up and make his 200/200 death ball and A move gg >_> not that I disrepect or saying cruncher is bad, i honestly dont blame him to win game in that fashion (when you are against the guy who is called Macro machine XD). but seriously, how would people justify that the level of requirement to play a game like Cruncher compare to the skills of a zerg require to beat him?
Baneling bust +lings runby or any sort of roaches all in is what i think is the best strat in zvp. why would you bother to play against a toss with a 200/200 army. neff voids or buff corruptors, or give zerg a unit that is good vs Voids (if you say hydra or corruptor than i'd say you dont play against death ball enough).
On April 19 2011 09:59 phrenzy wrote: after Mobo_ suggestion i went mutas. Played quite a games doing it. And it was awesome. I even hid the spire elsewhere so if they had an observer so the only chance they would have to see it is when the mutas pop. Made about 10-15 and it was great. Killing probes left and right.
Started making hydras back home during the harass, but didnt really matter. But in every game they upped their stalker count so much that the mutas couldnt really touch them and the hydras were really lol well they died pretty quickly.
Did the same with lings waiting back home and with roaches.
The thing is i know i did a lot of economical damage, but mass stalker is one of those army compositions i don't really know how to deal with. Mass roach or even mass hydra never works for me that is. Havent tried infestors with mutas but i didnt have alot of gas. (but again this is something new for me)
Stalkers actually have very low dps. The reason why mass stalkers actually work is because they have a lot more stalkers than you do anything.
Anyway, Zergs are definitely having a hard time right now. I believe that even if Zergs find out a new way to beat Protoss players in a macro game, it won't be a consistent strategy because of the sheer power of the Collosus. An example would be something like game 2 of Mondragon vs Cruncher.
Despite my Protoss roots, I honestly think though they do need to nerf the colossus. Mass gateway units have been shown to work in spite of my earlier assumptions that they were shit.
I really worry that Blizzard will do that (they have clearly considered it, given their posts about the templar nerf). PvT is not far off balanced, and a nerf to collosus could seriously tip things.
Dudes....Mondragon already solved it....he just forgot the infestors at game 3 vs Cruncher :D And his startegy is as simple as it is genius the same time.... how do you fight a deathball? right....dont let the protoss build one! and when he turtles and gets his ball with heavy damage over time, ur fine cuz ur infestors are out....unfortunatly mondragon forgot it on shakuras :D ...
Just make some Infestors. Heck even Mondragon said that he doesn't have that much problems with Deathballs anymore but he figured it out too late unfortunately.
"yeh but that doesn't say much"
Well it does say more than a couple of bronze leaguers whining their **sses off instead of playing the game and improving their own game for sure.
We will see more infestor play soon (with broodlords/speedlings or roaches or maybe banelings) and then Protoss will be in tears again. No need for any changes until 2/3/4 months have passed and people start to figure out how to beat it. It has always been like this, every race is winning tournaments and is able to do so and that is okay.
Watch infestor play rising up, oh not in bronze/silver league ofcourse because they are prolly too bad to use them anyway. People need to learn most of them don't lose the game vs undefeatable deathballs or undefeatable drop harass or whatever. Most of them lose the game to themselves because they make mistakes that cost them the game. Stop whining and start playing. Mondragon lost a tournament with some nice cashout and he isn't whining, he is just stating he figured out how to do it too late. More and more people will realize infestor play is the way to go.
Hello, I'm just dropping by to mention the Infestor, I'm sure most Zergs haven't forgotten about this awesome uberbuffed unit that deals with the "deathball" quite good in many situations.
The development of Zerg play has been quite striking compared to the other races.
Protoss are finally harnessing force field to its fullest potential, and you see many fewer useless or harmful force fields now. Sentry counts are much higher than they used to be (after the damage nerf) as people figured out their utility. Protoss also figured out how to safely incorporate an air-heavy composition and dark templar, and the 4-gate timings were really hammered out.
I suppose I haven't paid as much attention to Terran, but they have found many ways to "abuse" their powers -- 5 rax reaper, 2 rax bunker marine, banshees, etc. A lot of this has gotten nerfed but its still very strong and flexible against a Zerg player. Marine control has dramatically improved and after much whining about the tank nerfs, tanks are again commonly incorporated into almost every style of play.
In comparison, the Zerg developments feel really lame -- get the gas a little later, drop stuff from overlords, get better at droning, etc. Spanishiwa's build is being considered the biggest development but it's not really all that new. It's just another way for Zerg to maximize their abuse of drone production.
If you just look at the number of abilities and options available to each race, it shouldn't be surprising that Terran and Protoss have made huge strides while comparatively Zerg hasn't improved as much. I can't speak on absolute strengths, but relatively speaking, Terran and Protoss have a lot more to play around with in terms of viable unit compositions, and I think this is what is really driving the shifts in gameplay.
I think the ease at which 200/200 is reached is definitely hurting Blizzard's ability to balance the game. The 200/200 dynamic is so much different than the rest of the game. Maybe it's my perception but SC2 reaches that stage much sooner than SC1 did, and so a lot of the old balance conceptions no longer hold true.
On April 19 2011 07:33 branflakes14 wrote: I agree completely with the OP. Moreso after watching Sheth's stream for a good few hours the last couple of days. It's almost embarrassing to see how little faith people have in Blizzard's ability to balance a game, especially when they were responsible for what's considered the most balanced RTS on the planet that isn't a pure mirror. If anything people should have MORE faith in them since between now and Brood War Blizzard have had years to refine their methods of balancing games.
You must have missed the RTS had between Broodwar and SC2. Called Warcraft 3, not the best example in balance.
On April 19 2011 07:33 branflakes14 wrote: I agree completely with the OP. Moreso after watching Sheth's stream for a good few hours the last couple of days. It's almost embarrassing to see how little faith people have in Blizzard's ability to balance a game, especially when they were responsible for what's considered the most balanced RTS on the planet that isn't a pure mirror. If anything people should have MORE faith in them since between now and Brood War Blizzard have had years to refine their methods of balancing games.
You must have missed the RTS had between Broodwar and SC2. Called Warcraft 3, not the best example in balance.
Exactly, and while I've not played WoW I've heard nothing but horror stories about its balance team. Brood War was a total fluke. Its balance relies on a million different glitches and tricks that were never intended to work.
Zerg units don't have enough range to compete as equals with the Protoss. Terran doesn't seem to have as much difficulty dealing with Protoss armies, because they have more than enough cost effective ranged units.
I just want to point out that one thing is missing from the OP. The Ultralisk was in fact nerfed... So now Zerg Macro players generally are required to stay Tier 2 because the Tier 3 isn't all that great anymore. Don't get me wrong, Brood Lords are amazing units, but against a Protoss Deathball that features Void Rays and Colo.... I think that they aren't as cost effective as the Colo which has amazing splash. And since Voids now do bonus to BLs.
Completely avoiding any balance talk, in my eyes, to say that "a Zerg 200 should never be able to beat a Protoss 200" is completely wrong. It should not be the case that a properly constructed army can never beat another maxxed army.
On April 19 2011 10:21 frucisky wrote:2. Another problem is that P can very cost efficiently cause a lot of damage while macro-ing. They can throw down a dark shrine anytime and send a DT each of Z's 4 or 5 bases. Z has to pre-empt by throwing spores and spines. The fact that Zerg has to be many bases up on a Protoss makes DTs all the more effective.
This was pretty much bw pvz, Savior was just breaking necks left and right because his greedy style worked so well. Then Bisu came out with a dark templar FE build and just destroyed Savior 3-0 by punishing his greediness.
My opinion - P players simply got better at using Force Fields. That's completely upset the metagame and ruined the illusion of balance in PvZ. How many P did you see get crushed in S1-S2 by simple MM pushes up ramps, where P missed a FF and lost instantly? Players have improved so much that a blunder like that would be unthinkable now, in Code S-level play. Much stronger FF usage has dramatically altered the metagame, putting PvZ early, mid and late game all in P's favor. Whether he wants to crush you with a timing attack or turtle to a deathball, with sufficiently strong FFs he can completely set the tempo of the matchup.
another reason the turtle protoss is different from the hard macro zerg play is that protoss doesn't need to take too many bases to get critical mass, so all the bases they need will be relatively close and thereby easier to protect. zerg can try to harass via nydus or drop or muta, but the protoss army isnt that far off from getting there to protect it. if any pressure is going to come at all, the needs to happen before collosi start coming out, and zerg tech windows just aren't that open.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Definitely a copy-paste error. Regardless, OP does make an interesting point with the comparison of how macro Zergs used to be scary while the Protoss deathball strategy goes along the same lines. I highly doubt balance tweaks will be necessary to counter the deathball, but we'll see what happens in higher levels of play. That's how it always goes. Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy. As good as MC is, sooner or later someone will figure out how to consistently stop his insane pushes. Sooner or later, someone will just figure out how to dismantle Cruncher in ZvP in convincing fashion (some pros probably can already and just haven't faced him).
But balance tweaks have already been made. The infestor buff hard counters protoss death balls, being highly effective against pretty much the whole protoss composition.
And yet every pro don't make them. Broodlords with infestors&anything support destroy any kind of stalkers/colossi deathball protoss can make. But everyone is still sticking to roaches hydra corruptor. :/
At a point in the game units lost is shown and it is double for zerg (talk about cost efficiency) and then, at the end, a 20~ Broodlord + 20infestor army is obliterated by a stalker ball...... I don't know, but I think protoss cost efficiency MAY be a bit off, here....
On April 19 2011 06:15 sekritzzz wrote: First way to tackle this issue as a zerg player:
-Stop whining about everything and anything to destroy every single LR thread. Maybe if people dedicated 1/100th the effort they put in whining posts to something useful for their race, we'd had the zerg renaissance,
Sorry, but I don't know how a bunch of bronze/silver leaguers (most audience and QQ people) would help.
And lately you see a lot of: "And I even play protoss/terran" in QQ posts.
And, obviously, this is in itself a QQ post and troll bait and I'm really surprised there is no red text bellow it.
I feel like zergs need more defensive nydus' and queens with their armies and they need spine crawlers with their attacking units instead of pooling 5k minerals in the late game. If they had the defensive nydus' at their far away expansions they could defend drops easier. More burrowed banes too...
Maybe they should make it that you cannot stack forcefields on top of each other and they have to be spread out by exactly 1 forcefield length. It makes the toss pay more attention to their ramps if they're defending or spamming FF on the ramp.
A queen actually out ranges an un-upgraded Colossus.
I think Protoss has the best, or the core unit, Stalker. Stalkers is just too good for any situation in PvZ, attack air and ground, armor, good range, mobile with fast speed and blinking. High damage. Stalkers can counter roaches, lings, hydras, mutal, ultras, broodlords, corruptors, even infestor if they could blink and snipe infestor before the FG.
imo the biggest issue is P can set the tone. They can defend ANYTHING if they scout, and can choose to macro on par w/the Z. They dont even need to come out of their lovely defensive posture, and can come out of t here w/ANYTHING.
Also, i think someone stated it perfectly. Z has very few abilities/techs to use to improve, they just "play more fundamentally sound", which doesnt further their metagame much comparatively...
Earlier theory-crafting that zerg wanted bigger maps with close defendable expansions....turned out to be incorrect. With the power of forcefields protoss have learned how to out-zerg the zerg. They make tech and infastructure and build an economy relatively safely with a relatively small army.
Then they go to the money units.
So the problem is manyfold--the maps promote turtling on 2-3 bases. 3 based is enough for a protoss to make whatever they like. Forcefields by expect users are extremely powerful. Warpins are excellent versus drops and harass. And the protoss deathball is very hard to beat once it is up.
We have seen zerg going with drops in recent tournaments with varied success. This doesn't always work and zerg are always at risk because they aren't quite sure what is going on behind the protoss wallin. It could well be a protoss timing attack rather than a 200/200 deathball.
Personally, I think zerg need an easier/cheaper/faster drop (or better nydus) tech path. The threat of drops has to be there, so that the protoss can't just build structures while using gas to make sentries. Of course, who really knows how it will shake out.
On April 19 2011 13:02 skrzmark wrote: I feel like zergs need more defensive nydus' and queens with their armies and they need spine crawlers with their attacking units instead of pooling 5k minerals in the late game. If they had the defensive nydus' at their far away expansions they could defend drops easier. More burrowed banes too...
Maybe they should make it that you cannot stack forcefields on top of each other and they have to be spread out by exactly 1 forcefield length. It makes the toss pay more attention to their ramps if they're defending or spamming FF on the ramp.
A queen actually out ranges an un-upgraded Colossus.
Defensive nyduses are terrible. They die in an instant, so any drop will just target them and annihilate the worm in the blink of an eye. Even if your opponent doesn't notice the giant worm spewing out units, it can only unload 2 units per second. That might sound decent, but in practice it's absolutely terrible. A dropship full of marines or two DTs can kill your units as fast as they can leave the nydus worm, so trying defensive nyduses just lets your opponent kill your entire army without taking a single casualty. And even if that weren't the case, the slow unloading means it's actually faster to just walk your army over to the expo. Finally, what does defensive nydusing do to help against Protoss deathballs? Protecting your expansions can be done much more efficiently and easily with spines and spores, but they still don't do jack shit when your opponent turtles to 200/200 and then rolls you, so I'm not sure why you even brought it up.
Burrowed banelings only work if the Protoss has no observers. They might catch someone off-guard once, but after you lose a single deathball to a massive baneling landmine you'll always have at least one when you move out, and any burrowed banelings are 50/25 and half a supply wasted. Queens outranging unupgraded collosus doesn't matter much when you only ever see upgraded collosus in the deathball, plus they melt against collosus fire anyways.
Sorry if I'm coming across a bit harsh, but it gets really annoying when every 'zerg is underpowered, what do?' thread is full of Terran and Protoss players saying "USE MORE NYDUS AND BANELINGS" as though it would somehow help.
this thread is stupid and ridiculous. pro games show numerous styles being played vs protoss yet the same results. once blizzard swings the nerf bat then we will see a change, until then, i guess toss will just keep defending themselves on forums.
On April 19 2011 13:02 skrzmark wrote: I feel like zergs need more defensive nydus' and queens with their armies and they need spine crawlers with their attacking units instead of pooling 5k minerals in the late game. If they had the defensive nydus' at their far away expansions they could defend drops easier. More burrowed banes too...
Maybe they should make it that you cannot stack forcefields on top of each other and they have to be spread out by exactly 1 forcefield length. It makes the toss pay more attention to their ramps if they're defending or spamming FF on the ramp.
A queen actually out ranges an un-upgraded Colossus.
Defensive nyduses are terrible. They die in an instant, so any drop will just target them and annihilate the worm in the blink of an eye. Even if your opponent doesn't notice the giant worm spewing out units, it can only unload 2 units per second. That might sound decent, but in practice it's absolutely terrible. A dropship full of marines or two DTs can kill your units as fast as they can leave the nydus worm, so trying defensive nyduses just lets your opponent kill your entire army without taking a single casualty. And even if that weren't the case, the slow unloading means it's actually faster to just walk your army over to the expo. Finally, what does defensive nydusing do to help against Protoss deathballs? Protecting your expansions can be done much more efficiently and easily with spines and spores, but they still don't do jack shit when your opponent turtles to 200/200 and then rolls you, so I'm not sure why you even brought it up.
Burrowed banelings only work if the Protoss has no observers. They might catch someone off-guard once, but after you lose a single deathball to a massive baneling landmine you'll always have at least one when you move out, and any burrowed banelings are 50/25 and half a supply wasted. Queens outranging unupgraded collosus doesn't matter much when you only ever see upgraded collosus in the deathball, plus they melt against collosus fire anyways.
Sorry if I'm coming across a bit harsh, but it gets really annoying when every 'zerg is underpowered, what do?' thread is full of Terran and Protoss players saying "USE MORE NYDUS AND BANELINGS" as though it would somehow help.
Well said.
Jumping off the Nydus thought, during the past few months the other accompanying comment was "Harass more! Use your mobility!".
Harassing, using mobility, and general trickery does NO GOOD when you simply cannot stand up to a 200/200 army and win. So many games I've seen where the Zerg gets a brilliant base backstab, and his opponent simply attacks and either wins the base race, or forces the Z player back, who then loses his army to the more cost-efficient ball.
I would love to win by harrass or throwing units at zerg with constant rate, but the thing is...protoss can't do that. Our units are very expensive. We can't afford re-building our army constantly. Kill a protoss army and it'll take several minutes to re-build it. Unless it's end-game and protoss has like 20 gateways and a 5k trust fund, but still.
Take away "deathballing" from protoss and I don't know what I would do (vs Zerg). On other hand, I'm a low diamond and I have nowhere near the imagination of a pro or masters leaguer.
On April 19 2011 13:10 hitman133 wrote: I think Protoss has the best, or the core unit, Stalker. Stalkers is just too good for any situation in PvZ, attack air and ground, armor, good range, mobile with fast speed and blinking. High damage. Stalkers can counter roaches, lings, hydras, mutal, ultras, broodlords, corruptors, even infestor if they could blink and snipe infestor before the FG.
No, the stalker is has one of the worst stats / cost ratio in the game. They are terrible by themselves, the only 2 points speaking for them is their mobility and range. Their dmg is bad and scales bad.
The problem doesn't lie in the stalker, it's the colossus / sentry combination or either one of them right now, but certainly NOT the stalker.
On April 19 2011 13:42 Greentellon wrote: I would love to win by harrass or throwing units at zerg with constant rate, but the thing is...protoss can't do that. Our units are very expensive. We can't afford re-building our army constantly. Kill a protoss army and it'll take several minutes to re-build it. Unless it's end-game and protoss has like 20 gateways and a 5k trust fund, but still.
Take away "deathballing" from protoss and I don't know what I would do (vs Zerg). On other hand, I'm a low diamond and I have nowhere near the imagination of a pro or masters leaguer.
San has shown that exact style working spectacularly in both PvT and PvZ. He's constantly harassing, picking away at his enemy, and taking casualties, but in the end he comes out on top, even against players like Nestea. Losing amulet did certainly hurt, but that's mainly a PvT thing, since warp-in storms were only necessary to mitigate EMPs. Against Zerg there's nothing wrong with sitting around for fourty seconds building up energy. Yes, it requires excellent multi-tasking, macro and micro skill to win with San-style play, but isn't that what you should need to win a game of Starcraft? It's certainly what people seem to expect of Zerg players, who, if you read what some people are saying, need to be expanding all over the map while nydusing in three places at once, dropping banelings on every Protoss mineral line and spamming transfuse from their mass queens on a wall of spine crawlers whenever they get attacked.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure the main reason San's style works is because he never goes for those big expensive units such as collosus and void rays. Because he relies on the cheaper gateway units that are perfectly usable in small numbers rather than going for super expensive units such as collosus that are only really efficient in large numbers he's capable of constantly throwing units away as long as he gains an economic advantage out of it. Pure gateway has always been considered weak since it dies to both hydras and marauders, but recently we've been seeing improvements in FFs, blink micro and general playstyle that have allowed mass gateway armies to take these units on rather efficiently. It's something to consider, at least.
Protoss seems really solid the entire time that they build the deathball and the other players typically try tricky things like drops/nydus/harass to hurt them. I am fine with Zerg players being forced to play much better in ZvP by leaving Colossus unchanged. I'm a Terran player and I think I've kinda "figured out" Bio TvP. The deathball is beatable, but Zerg players are going to have to micro like Terran to beat it.
On April 19 2011 13:42 Greentellon wrote: I would love to win by harrass or throwing units at zerg with constant rate, but the thing is...protoss can't do that. Our units are very expensive. We can't afford re-building our army constantly. Kill a protoss army and it'll take several minutes to re-build it. Unless it's end-game and protoss has like 20 gateways and a 5k trust fund, but still.
Take away "deathballing" from protoss and I don't know what I would do (vs Zerg). On other hand, I'm a low diamond and I have nowhere near the imagination of a pro or masters leaguer.
This is a pretty big design flaw in the race when it comes to e-sports, which they claim to care a lot about. A large percentage of Protoss games are either early heavy warpgate pressure(4/6gate), or deathballs. Neither is entirely fun to watch. Would anyone disagree? Playing 15 min only to have everything ride on 1 bigass game deciding fight determined by if the deathball lives or dies just seems dumb ;/ TvP had a pretty similar dynamic in BW didn't it? What made it fun to watch? Just seeing if the P can break the T before it's too late? How is it different than what we have now?
On April 19 2011 13:20 Malpractice.248 wrote: imo the biggest issue is P can set the tone. They can defend ANYTHING if they scout, and can choose to macro on par w/the Z. They dont even need to come out of their lovely defensive posture, and can come out of t here w/ANYTHING.
Also, i think someone stated it perfectly. Z has very few abilities/techs to use to improve, they just "play more fundamentally sound", which doesnt further their metagame much comparatively...
Everything you said is wrong. Watch almost any PvZ and you see that all protoss does is sit back on 2-3 bases until they get a deathball going. Until that point, zerg has total map control, vision, and freedom is expand. Zerg can set tone they choose to.
And "few abilities/techs" is ridiculous. Compared to what? The choice for protoss is whether they get stalker/sentry/colossi or stalker/sentry/colossi/void ray. Zerg has the most diverse options as far as unit composition.
Edit: May be one thing that happened after 1.3 is that the few players who favored HT over colossi have been forced to use colossi, which is (imo) the superior choice anyway. So the nerf may have been a blessing in disguise for HT users.
Well after reading this thread It looks like current pro zerg players tried pretty much everything. They have uncanny Starsense, perfect macro, perfect micro, perfect multi-tasking, and perfect decision making. However that's seemingly not enough to make Z successful in ZvP. I guess Zerg definitely needs a patch. I believe that Blizzard needs to buff Zerg just like they buffed the Death knights in world of warcraft.
On April 19 2011 13:42 Greentellon wrote: I would love to win by harrass or throwing units at zerg with constant rate, but the thing is...protoss can't do that. Our units are very expensive. We can't afford re-building our army constantly. Kill a protoss army and it'll take several minutes to re-build it. Unless it's end-game and protoss has like 20 gateways and a 5k trust fund, but still.
Take away "deathballing" from protoss and I don't know what I would do (vs Zerg). On other hand, I'm a low diamond and I have nowhere near the imagination of a pro or masters leaguer.
TvP had a pretty similar dynamic in BW didn't it? What made it fun to watch? Just seeing if the P can break the T before it's too late? How is it different than what we have now?
TvP has had a game in the game if you want. There were 2 battles occuring nearly at the same time.
Once protoss has to get high economy to deal with the super efficient terran units. They had to delay / slow / wear down the terran ball from getting to big.
Yet terran also couldn't just sit on their fat ass and trying to get to their ball. They had to prevent protoss from becoming to big and get too much ahead in macro, by harassing or timing attacks. Both players had to prevent the other from reaching their goal.
It was extremely tense, spells interacting with each other, who has the better map control / positioning. It's not to compare to ZvP when the protoss aims for the deathball. There it's bascially Protoss: I don't care if he gets 8 expansion, as long as i get my ball and 2 bases, at best 3, it's fine.
Everything relies on zerg, and that's not really fair. (I'm protoss btw)
I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
One is that a good toss on top of his game/scouting can play VERY greedy. Using just sentries and cannons, protoss can cheaply hold expansions, expand quickly (especially on maps like Shakuras) and get big expensive tech units.
Zerg doesn't have any viable way to apply strong pressure because of how strong protoss defense can be with forcefield against roaches/lings. Because zerg can't apply real pressure, toss can be very greedy. Meanwhile, the zerg can't be very greedy because if the toss decides to not go greed game and go aggro, zerg will die.
A strong solution IMO, would be to give hydras a speed upgrade to allow for a strong timing push that isn't so all in. The threat of a hydra timing push would definitely make toss stay on their toes more. Obviously there needs to be some careful balance in this, as hydras are very strong very gateway. However, protoss is still very strong on defense so it should work out fairly well.
Another issue is the corurptor. It's kind of a joke, an AtA that is absolutely atrocious vs. vikings/void rays.
Another one elegant solution that solves ZvP and PvP issues is giving normal gateways an advantage over warpgates ie producing units faster
On April 19 2011 13:42 Greentellon wrote: I would love to win by harrass or throwing units at zerg with constant rate, but the thing is...protoss can't do that. Our units are very expensive. We can't afford re-building our army constantly. Kill a protoss army and it'll take several minutes to re-build it. Unless it's end-game and protoss has like 20 gateways and a 5k trust fund, but still.
Take away "deathballing" from protoss and I don't know what I would do (vs Zerg). On other hand, I'm a low diamond and I have nowhere near the imagination of a pro or masters leaguer.
TvP had a pretty similar dynamic in BW didn't it? What made it fun to watch? Just seeing if the P can break the T before it's too late? How is it different than what we have now?
TvP has had a game in the game if you want. There were 2 battles occuring nearly at the same time.
Once protoss has to get high economy to deal with the super efficient terran units. They had to delay / slow / wear down the terran ball from getting to big.
Yet terran also couldn't just sit on their fat ass and trying to get to their ball. They had to prevent protoss from becoming to big and get too much ahead in macro, by harassing or timing attacks. Both players had to prevent the other from reaching their goal.
That sounds much more similar to ZvT in SC2, Where Zerg is in the P's shoes and mutas/map control are the method to slowing down the Terran rather than straight up engagements.
On April 19 2011 13:20 Malpractice.248 wrote: imo the biggest issue is P can set the tone. They can defend ANYTHING if they scout, and can choose to macro on par w/the Z. They dont even need to come out of their lovely defensive posture, and can come out of t here w/ANYTHING.
Also, i think someone stated it perfectly. Z has very few abilities/techs to use to improve, they just "play more fundamentally sound", which doesnt further their metagame much comparatively...
Everything you said is wrong. Watch almost any PvZ and you see that all protoss does is sit back on 2-3 bases until they get a deathball going. Until that point, zerg has total map control, vision, and freedom is expand. Zerg can set tone they choose to.
And "few abilities/techs" is ridiculous. Compared to what? The choice for protoss is whether they get stalker/sentry/colossi or stalker/sentry/colossi/void ray. Zerg has the most diverse options as far as unit composition.
I think what he meant was that the protoss decides the build order the zerg must choose in the game.
Before even the game happens, the protoss can decide 'hmm, i'll go FFE this game or i'll go 3gate expand or i'll go 2gate pressure etc.' The zerg can't blindly decide to choose to go 1 base against 3gate expand or early expo against 2gate pressure, etc. The zerg is entirely reactionary to how the protoss decides the 'pace' or 'flow' of the game is played out.
Again, I think what he meant was that the tech choices are limited in a zerg's play because they have to play reactionary to how protoss decides to 'tech' path or 'tech opener'.
The protoss can FFE in 1void 3 phoenix opener, then can branch to gateway + robo or double robo + voidray play. A protoss can open 3gate expand into phoenix play into robo, etc. A protoss can open 1gate DT in expo, or 1gate stargate into expo into.. etc. Or FFE into 6gate allin, or 5 gate pressure or etc.. You get the idea.
The zerg only has limited response to all those varied openers/tech choices. Essentially the protoss is forcing the zergs hand and therefore, is dictating the 'pace' or 'flow' of the game.
Watched Sen this morning, the guy is 6k/2k (common situation for zvp on taldarim). He makes 30 spine crawlers, cranks out extra corruptors, cancels spines and fights with 230/200 army.
On large maps, this is one solution for late game zerg vs turtling protoss.
On April 19 2011 13:20 Malpractice.248 wrote: imo the biggest issue is P can set the tone. They can defend ANYTHING if they scout, and can choose to macro on par w/the Z. They dont even need to come out of their lovely defensive posture, and can come out of t here w/ANYTHING.
Also, i think someone stated it perfectly. Z has very few abilities/techs to use to improve, they just "play more fundamentally sound", which doesnt further their metagame much comparatively...
Everything you said is wrong. Watch almost any PvZ and you see that all protoss does is sit back on 2-3 bases until they get a deathball going. Until that point, zerg has total map control, vision, and freedom is expand. Zerg can set tone they choose to.
And "few abilities/techs" is ridiculous. Compared to what? The choice for protoss is whether they get stalker/sentry/colossi or stalker/sentry/colossi/void ray. Zerg has the most diverse options as far as unit composition.
I think what he meant was that the protoss decides the build order the zerg must choose in the game.
Before even the game happens, the protoss can decide 'hmm, i'll go FFE this game or i'll go 3gate expand or i'll go 2gate pressure etc.' The zerg can't blindly decide to choose to go 1 base against 3gate expand or early expo against 2gate pressure, etc. The zerg is entirely reactionary to how the protoss decides the 'pace' or 'flow' of the game is played out.
Again, I think what he meant was that the tech choices are limited in a zerg's play because they have to play reactionary to how protoss decides to 'tech' path or 'tech opener'.
The protoss can FFE in 1void 3 phoenix opener, then can branch to gateway + robo or double robo + voidray play. A protoss can open 3gate expand into phoenix play into robo, etc. A protoss can open 1gate DT in expo, or 1gate stargate into expo into.. etc. Or FFE into 6gate allin, or 5 gate pressure or etc.. You get the idea.
The zerg only has limited response to all those varied openers/tech choices. Essentially the protoss is forcing the zergs hand and therefore, is dictating the 'pace' or 'flow' of the game.
If we're talking about pressure openers, zerg also have some powerful options. Protoss can't easily expand against roach rushes or banelings, especially sensee we need a forge for cannons while zerg can build spine crawlers whenever. If you watch Spanishiwa's strategies, he manages to defend any early pressure with queens and spines while transitioning to just about whatever he wants.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
On April 19 2011 05:40 Polatrite wrote: The following is an analysis of the modern Protoss deathball currently sweeping tournaments as compared to the Zerg swarm last fall that was having good results for Zerg players.
Let's take an objective glance at part of the metagame. Ever since SC2 launched, Zerg has been all about taking an economic advantage and then killing their opponent in the late game. During a period of time after the Zealot and Reaper build time nerfs, Zergs were finally able to fend off substantial early harassment and build up these economic leads with far more ease than was possible before. After a short period of time, Zergs were enjoying strategies that basically involved "macro hard to win!" and many Zergs learned a lot of the intricacies of when to drone and when not to drone. Zerg enjoyed a brief trip to the top - Korean and foreign polls were all declaring that Zerg was far and away the top race (77% voted that Zerg was the strongest race on a leading Korean forum, the "TL" of the Korean scene). IdrA was considered a much bigger favorite than he is currently (comparatively - he's still a great favorite), and players like Fruitdealer and Nestea were (and in the case of Nestea, are) considered the players to watch.
The shift was ironic, because the exact same polls had shown Terran in a commanding lead for "strongest race" just two months earlier with 81% voting in favor. This was the time when MorroW won IEM away from IdrA with Reaper play, and Terran were placing 3-out-of-4 slots in the top 4 of many tournaments, if not winning outright. Protoss was widely considered the weakest race with the most flimsy and gimmicky mechanics (force field, Void Ray, Mothership, or just builds involving a Stargate at all).
Unfortunately for Zerg, the "reign" was relatively short-lived. One particular player, MarineKing, showed that an ultra-aggressive high pressure style could perform very well against many Zergs. Theorycrafting on Teamliquid produced results, and Terran and Protoss learned ways to pressure the Zerg and keep the drone count lower, leading to less economic dominance going into the midgame. The Zerg style was, in a sense, "found out" and a reasonable - but not always effective - counter was discovered that put the races on even footing.
Fast forward many months to season 2, jumping many major tournaments down the line. Zerg has had less than spectacular results recently as Terran and Protoss styles have grown to accommodate pressuring on Zerg to force army production and reduce the exponential growth possibilities of Spawn Larva. Except we notice that a peculiar shift of events has occurred.
Not only is Zerg under-represented in the top 16 of many tournaments, but now Protoss is over-represented. And what is causing that? In many cases it is a series of Protoss timing attacks combined with an eventual deathball off of an economic turtle style play. Isn't that exactly what Zerg were using only a few months before - a style that tried to command an economic advantage and "survive" until their advantage eventually peaked and they could win the game? Except now Protoss is doing a similar strategy - instead of requiring bases and resources to ascertain victory, Protoss simply requires that their army stay relatively unharmed in order to build up the critical mass of units necessary to sweep army after opponent army. This is a different strategy than Zerg, who welcomed the opportunity to exchange armies with an opponent due to the vastly increased economy and production capability with which to quickly reproduce an army, compared to the other two races slow acquisition of key units (Tanks, Colossus).
If you look at the post history of the strategy boards back in late 2010, you'll find an overwhelming amount of threads asking the question "How do I punish Zerg?" Eventually, with time, this was figured out. Balance changes were NOT made to cause Zerg to "fall from power" so to speak (in fact, the only balance changes during this time were pro-Zerg and con-Terran). With dedication (and whining) the players eventually figured out how to take care of the Zerg threat.
Now if we look at the strategy forums recently, it's a complete shift - the Protoss deathball is getting a lot of attention. And for good reason - it's very powerful! However it's not substantially more powerful than it has ever been (Zealot charge and Void Ray massive damage are the big changes), but only recently has it become the "most powerful strategy in the game" that allows "noobs" to beat "pros" by abusing the strategy.
TL;DR and conclusion:
So what happens now? The point of this post is to give you a little brief example of how the metagame can shift entirely. Zerg used to want to command the 200/200 army (or even the "300 food push") to destroy their opponents. After that style was figured out, ironically, Protoss adopted a similar line of thought. Instead of bases and resources being the decided factor, building army size without losses became the primary objective for these Protoss players. How do we, as a community, learn to deal with this new shift and take out the Protoss deathball?
The answer could be in light balance tweaks - but maybe it isn't. We didn't need Terran and Protoss buffs to take care of Zerg. Are we sure that we need balance tweaks to take care of Protoss?
To me the fundamental shift in paradigm isn't that a new strategy for protoss was figured out. What happened was Zergs were macroing, and macroing really hard. We didn't ahve an early game strategy, only a mid game one. IT was about survival until then. Becasue Protoss didn't have this problem, the quickest and easiest way to win was figured out. That is why Zergs macro'd and Protoss didn't.
What happened was Zergs were getting too good at defending and the Protoss would lose to the "too strong" Zerg. So you started to see a shift where Protoss also began to macro as the game went on. When the Zerg and Protoss are both macroing it is clear protoss is the favor. Zergs have always been ahead of the curve in terms of mid-late game understanding, execution and strategy because that was where all our wins came from. Now that everyone is comfortable with the macro late game Protoss players have discovered their insanely strong army.
Is it imbalanced, I don't know. I find that I'm opening Mutalisks only because all the protoss I face blindly go colossus Robo. IT is sad that I only win because of what I'm expected to do. I simply cannot win anymore going Roach/hydra/corruptor. Whe Mutas stop working I'll probably have to spam Infestors. Will this work? I can't tell. It is difficult to say at the moment.
On April 19 2011 13:10 hitman133 wrote: I think Protoss has the best, or the core unit, Stalker. Stalkers is just too good for any situation in PvZ, attack air and ground, armor, good range, mobile with fast speed and blinking. High damage. Stalkers can counter roaches, lings, hydras, mutal, ultras, broodlords, corruptors, even infestor if they could blink and snipe infestor before the FG.
No, the stalker is has one of the worst stats / cost ratio in the game. They are terrible by themselves, the only 2 points speaking for them is their mobility and range. Their dmg is bad and scales bad.
The problem doesn't lie in the stalker, it's the colossus / sentry combination or either one of them right now, but certainly NOT the stalker.
lol, you haven't seen late games PvZ, where all the colossus and sentries were destroyed. All units Zerg have left are useless corruptors, then they started to bump out roaches, hydras, that's when stalkers work in late game.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care.
On April 19 2011 13:10 hitman133 wrote: I think Protoss has the best, or the core unit, Stalker. Stalkers is just too good for any situation in PvZ, attack air and ground, armor, good range, mobile with fast speed and blinking. High damage. Stalkers can counter roaches, lings, hydras, mutal, ultras, broodlords, corruptors, even infestor if they could blink and snipe infestor before the FG.
No, the stalker is has one of the worst stats / cost ratio in the game. They are terrible by themselves, the only 2 points speaking for them is their mobility and range. Their dmg is bad and scales bad.
The problem doesn't lie in the stalker, it's the colossus / sentry combination or either one of them right now, but certainly NOT the stalker.
lol, you haven't seen late games PvZ, where all the colossus and sentries were destroyed. All units Zerg have left are useless corruptors, then they started to bump out roaches, hydras, that's when stalkers work in late game.
You have a protoss icon, but I can't believe you play protoss. Stalkers are the last to stand only because they're targeted last. Their purpose is to stand in front of the colossi while it deals damage. If the zerg is just left with useless corrupters, it's because he over made them
I think when it comes to sentries they need forcefields, defensively. But sentries in numbers are so good offensively i think the way FF has to change.
I would think it wouldnt be hard for blizzard to implement a way that when a sentry FF anywhere near pylon power it lasts the length it does now, but away from any pylons and it will last much less.
There could be timing attacks with them and it could still be useful offensively, but not to the point of being abusive where you get 10 sentries asap and then at the 18 minute mark with your stalkers just roll the zerg.
Hydra speed is something i agree with though. They are so expensive that i have to be certain that toss isnt going colossi and even then, FF mess them up lol.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care.
Once game really gets rolling and minerals bank, make spines to free up supply, then cancel the building spines. 70 workers mine more efficiently off 4 bases and zerg units cost less per supply. Fight protoss 220/200 to 200 and zerg has much better chance.
I think the metagame will change soon when he see Zerg pros abusing the crap out of fungal growth. The cool thing about FG + upgraded lings is that it can actually take the protoss ball straight up. Not talking about 3 or 4 infestors to "delay the push". More like 10-12 infestors with all the other gas stoked up for tier 3 ultras.
Somebody recently posted a hydra vs infestor DPS comparison and the infestor DPS over area is so much more than hydras. Roach/Hydra has no place in ZvP late game imo. Just not cost efficient.
Also, 220 supply vs 200 supply, 10 extra hydras/roaches won't make much of a difference against a P deathball.
On April 19 2011 13:10 hitman133 wrote: I think Protoss has the best, or the core unit, Stalker. Stalkers is just too good for any situation in PvZ, attack air and ground, armor, good range, mobile with fast speed and blinking. High damage. Stalkers can counter roaches, lings, hydras, mutal, ultras, broodlords, corruptors, even infestor if they could blink and snipe infestor before the FG.
No, the stalker is has one of the worst stats / cost ratio in the game. They are terrible by themselves, the only 2 points speaking for them is their mobility and range. Their dmg is bad and scales bad.
The problem doesn't lie in the stalker, it's the colossus / sentry combination or either one of them right now, but certainly NOT the stalker.
lol, you haven't seen late games PvZ, where all the colossus and sentries were destroyed. All units Zerg have left are useless corruptors, then they started to bump out roaches, hydras, that's when stalkers work in late game.
You have a protoss icon, but I can't believe you play protoss. Stalkers are the last to stand only because they're targeted last. Their purpose is to stand in front of the colossi while it deals damage. If the zerg is just left with useless corrupters, it's because he over made them
Watch MC vs IdrA game 1 at Dream Hack yet ? Please, stalkers save MC's ass. I play protoss and now I have a idea how to play against Zerg, it's stalkers and a few colossus, and I never QQ about PvZ back in the day when PvZ was the hardest MU for Protoss. Zerg players just haven't figure out yet doesn't mean they are UP or Toss OP.
Zergs complaining that they can't beat the (full sentry energy) deathball with pure roach corruptor just sound a lot like the terrans who used to complain that they can't beat the deathball with pure marauder medivac.
Things seem balanced to me, and i say that as PvZ is my hardest matchup--just not when zerg goes mass roach vs my 2-3 base gate/robo. I will hate to see what happens when zergs learn the "best way" to do upgraded ling/bling/(infestor)/(ultra), about which I'm already having nightmares... So far I've seen a few general ways to do it (I don't play zerg).
-make a bunch of early 1/0 speedlings to delay the 3gate sentry expand, then take a fast 3rd yourself. -speedlings and spines to look like muta/ling, but drop bane/infestation instead. -spanishiwa opener.
But basically, I agree with OP--just give it time.
Also, all three races need to stop anointing themselves the race that innovates while calling the others complacent, as if playing one race over another reflects your creative potential when, for the most part, you're just assimilating the strategies you see in tournament play.
doesn't look to hard to beat that deathball, if i watch recent games, it works well for alot of players. Even though double forges are popular again and once at blink/charge 3/3 the toss gateway units become really strong. Its really easy to punish a toss for trying to keep up in macro with a zerg, though like a zerg knows a terran will come, the toss knows zergs will attack soon and be really careful. Another problem is that the toss army may not be to mobile, but lategame when only colossi stalker are left, the complete army can pass cliffs. I have seen zergs that are totally fine, but at some point the toss simply moves into the back expos and kills the last base with minerals for the zerg and then let them bleed out. (bases mine out really fast if you have 80 workers on only your first 3 bases and the toss mostly abuses this)
I don't think this cliff walk mechanic is removable and zergs are also build for losing bases. But a toss can attack 3 posis at the same time, which is a bit hard to deal with if your army is weaker and you need a positional advantage (possible attacks: over a cliff, or the near choke point, or with a ms recall on the other side of the map). Mobility of the zerg doesn't helps there if they need 20 spines to hold up the enemy at every base ^.^. before infestors could simple fungal the toss army and they wouldn't dare to move up because 8 seconds. Now its 4 and they don't care (though the 4 seconds were badly needed in other matchups)
And the biggest problem is its not even the colossi, its the stalker they can simply jump up snipe the base and run away before the zerg army is present. (meta is probably the best map for sniping expos from the zerg xD)
I mean the deathball is not on its end ^.^ . got your 200/200 ? stack up some res, kill some probes, make a mothership. Enables -> easier defense -> instant retreat and not even fungal can stop this (maybe it should so, but then again the warp delay makes it problematic) -> another attack position after you gained partly map control.
Well i don't think zergs are done and have tryed out everything against the toss. But the issue i noticed is that an upgraded gateway army can pretty much work on their own. And the weakspot of the colossi anti air gives the gateway units a really serious supply lead and you are kind of forced to waste the anti colossi units again to get that supply free. (and then one the colossi comes back).
So i guess they would have to add a weakspot to the colossi, that forces the toss to micro more (if there is anything they can change on this without destroying the options a toss can go for). I mean a toss army can be afk and they still wreak havoc if you engage them. have an mech army afk and you are pretty much screwed. (just an example x3)
So maybe it would be good to make thermal lances a skill (overheat da thing ! more dakka !). Adds range for dunno 30 seconds and has a cooldown of 1 minute. So you can bait forcefields and thermal lances, also adds one micro move to the toss army. (they are already have alot of micro possibilitys ... they just don't use it alot). that way colossi will be easier to snipe for air units or won't be able to participate in the fight full time.
on the other hand air units aren't really effectiv because the only cliffs or movement blockers are at main bases (mostly because the poor zergs hate cliffs), so you can't really attack the colossi with your air units from another angle other then backed up by your army.
So the colossi stalker combi really benefits from the map pool.
And they still care about the zerg bases, they just wait till the right moment (zerg mined out on their first bases). So i guess there is alot of room for improvement (though voidrays kill fast far off expands and the zerg anti air is a bit slow off creep and fast nydus makes you a bit weak against expo cancel 4 gate things)
PS: i kinda like the thermal lance idea xD makes me thing of the 250mm of the thor. (but a passiv buff over a few seconds is really difficult to handle timing wise.)
oh and because everyone says their races here (I'm zerratoss btw)
On April 19 2011 06:18 Bobo_ wrote: Instead of Zergs trying to counter the deathball directly, they need to counter it indirectly. Don't let the Protoss achieve that critical mass. As a Zerg player, I have been shifting away from the "normal" roach/hydra composition and into a baneling/muta play(I will give credit to VTgIx because he was the first person I personally saw use it on Bitters stream) and it seems to work great. The muta ball can provide pretty good harass damage once you achieve that critical mass, being able to snipe 5-7 probes in one volley if mutas have +1 attack. Also given that fact that banelings/zerglings are very cheap both in food cost and in resources, it allows Zerg to expand around the map and so forth.
Because of the harass supplied by mutalisks, it weakens the economy of the Protoss in getting their deathball and when they decide to move out with their weakened deathball, you completely run over it with banelings/zerglings/corruptors(if you need them)/mutalisks.
Also doing attacks from two different sides, for example, mutalisks in the base, then suiciding banelings to take out their third, further delays their deathball push and allows you quickly get your broodlords out.
All-in-all: Zergs shouldn't counter the deathball directly, counter it indirectly. If you face a turtling protoss, do everything in your power to not let him get the deathball. I have found the VTgIx style does that perfectly.
I haven't tried this yet, but I can only see it work because most protoss doesn't get stargate units (because they don't need to ). Even a small number of phoenixes can counter mutas cost efficiency wise and if the protoss isn't dumb you'll never have the critical number of mutas (20+) to do anything.
That said, I've always been interested in mutalisks against toss and since people doesn't expect it it can indeed be rewarding although still easily countered.
Agreed with everything you said. Mutalisks can easily be countered by pheonix's. However just because a Turret counters a banshee doesn't make banshees completely useless. In the perfect scenario, pheonix's will be where your mutas are and therefore making your mutalisks useless. However, Starcraft isn't perfect and your other half of your army can get his army out of position.
But then again, thats if you want to KEEP going mutalisks. If I saw mass pheonix from a Protoss, I would be stupid to keep going Mutalisks . I would transition into Corruptors and get my hive tech, however, this is just theorycraft and I can only say so much. As a Starcraft player you need to adapt to the game and in my opinion that's what separates the pro's from the semi-pro's.
Nonetheless, I believe banelings still have a place in ZvP just because of their cost efficiency and the damage they are capable of doing to a Protoss army, especially a deathball, since it is nice and bunched up aka baneling heaven .
Actually, if a protoss switches tech to make phoenixes to counter mutalisks the zerg player will be ahead quite substantially. It's not possible to crank out the phoenix numbers to deal with mutalisks fast enough to stop the harasss effectively. Sure the zerg will take some potshots while he has to retreat but when the mutalisk group doubles back it almost instantly destroys the phoenixes. When P runs away, you do the same. When P chases you, meet him head on!
If phoenixes are used as a reaction to mass muta it sucks all the toss's resources and they won't help much. The proper counter to mutas is high templar. Cruncher smartly used HTs when he played against Mondragon in the TSL to counter mutalisks instead of trying to get phoenixes.
On April 19 2011 05:40 Polatrite wrote: The following is an analysis of the modern Protoss deathball currently sweeping tournaments as compared to the Zerg swarm last fall that was having good results for Zerg players.
Let's take an objective glance at part of the metagame. Ever since SC2 launched, Zerg has been all about taking an economic advantage and then killing their opponent in the late game. During a period of time after the Zealot and Reaper build time nerfs, Zergs were finally able to fend off substantial early harassment and build up these economic leads with far more ease than was possible before. After a short period of time, Zergs were enjoying strategies that basically involved "macro hard to win!" and many Zergs learned a lot of the intricacies of when to drone and when not to drone. Zerg enjoyed a brief trip to the top - Korean and foreign polls were all declaring that Zerg was far and away the top race (77% voted that Zerg was the strongest race on a leading Korean forum, the "TL" of the Korean scene). IdrA was considered a much bigger favorite than he is currently (comparatively - he's still a great favorite), and players like Fruitdealer and Nestea were (and in the case of Nestea, are) considered the players to watch.
The shift was ironic, because the exact same polls had shown Terran in a commanding lead for "strongest race" just two months earlier with 81% voting in favor. This was the time when MorroW won IEM away from IdrA with Reaper play, and Terran were placing 3-out-of-4 slots in the top 4 of many tournaments, if not winning outright. Protoss was widely considered the weakest race with the most flimsy and gimmicky mechanics (force field, Void Ray, Mothership, or just builds involving a Stargate at all).
Unfortunately for Zerg, the "reign" was relatively short-lived. One particular player, MarineKing, showed that an ultra-aggressive high pressure style could perform very well against many Zergs. Theorycrafting on Teamliquid produced results, and Terran and Protoss learned ways to pressure the Zerg and keep the drone count lower, leading to less economic dominance going into the midgame. The Zerg style was, in a sense, "found out" and a reasonable - but not always effective - counter was discovered that put the races on even footing.
Fast forward many months to season 2, jumping many major tournaments down the line. Zerg has had less than spectacular results recently as Terran and Protoss styles have grown to accommodate pressuring on Zerg to force army production and reduce the exponential growth possibilities of Spawn Larva. Except we notice that a peculiar shift of events has occurred.
Not only is Zerg under-represented in the top 16 of many tournaments, but now Protoss is over-represented. And what is causing that? In many cases it is a series of Protoss timing attacks combined with an eventual deathball off of an economic turtle style play. Isn't that exactly what Zerg were using only a few months before - a style that tried to command an economic advantage and "survive" until their advantage eventually peaked and they could win the game? Except now Protoss is doing a similar strategy - instead of requiring bases and resources to ascertain victory, Protoss simply requires that their army stay relatively unharmed in order to build up the critical mass of units necessary to sweep army after opponent army. This is a different strategy than Zerg, who welcomed the opportunity to exchange armies with an opponent due to the vastly increased economy and production capability with which to quickly reproduce an army, compared to the other two races slow acquisition of key units (Tanks, Colossus).
If you look at the post history of the strategy boards back in late 2010, you'll find an overwhelming amount of threads asking the question "How do I punish Zerg?" Eventually, with time, this was figured out. Balance changes were NOT made to cause Zerg to "fall from power" so to speak (in fact, the only balance changes during this time were pro-Zerg and con-Terran). With dedication (and whining) the players eventually figured out how to take care of the Zerg threat.
Now if we look at the strategy forums recently, it's a complete shift - the Protoss deathball is getting a lot of attention. And for good reason - it's very powerful! However it's not substantially more powerful than it has ever been (Zealot charge and Void Ray massive damage are the big changes), but only recently has it become the "most powerful strategy in the game" that allows "noobs" to beat "pros" by abusing the strategy.
TL;DR and conclusion:
So what happens now? The point of this post is to give you a little brief example of how the metagame can shift entirely. Zerg used to want to command the 200/200 army (or even the "300 food push") to destroy their opponents. After that style was figured out, ironically, Protoss adopted a similar line of thought. Instead of bases and resources being the decided factor, building army size without losses became the primary objective for these Protoss players. How do we, as a community, learn to deal with this new shift and take out the Protoss deathball?
The answer could be in light balance tweaks - but maybe it isn't. We didn't need Terran and Protoss buffs to take care of Zerg. Are we sure that we need balance tweaks to take care of Protoss?
To me the fundamental shift in paradigm isn't that a new strategy for protoss was figured out. What happened was Zergs were macroing, and macroing really hard. We didn't ahve an early game strategy, only a mid game one. IT was about survival until then. Becasue Protoss didn't have this problem, the quickest and easiest way to win was figured out. That is why Zergs macro'd and Protoss didn't.
What happened was Zergs were getting too good at defending and the Protoss would lose to the "too strong" Zerg. So you started to see a shift where Protoss also began to macro as the game went on. When the Zerg and Protoss are both macroing it is clear protoss is the favor. Zergs have always been ahead of the curve in terms of mid-late game understanding, execution and strategy because that was where all our wins came from. Now that everyone is comfortable with the macro late game Protoss players have discovered their insanely strong army.
Is it imbalanced, I don't know. I find that I'm opening Mutalisks only because all the protoss I face blindly go colossus Robo. IT is sad that I only win because of what I'm expected to do. I simply cannot win anymore going Roach/hydra/corruptor. Whe Mutas stop working I'll probably have to spam Infestors. Will this work? I can't tell. It is difficult to say at the moment.
I do exactly the same. Nobody expects the Zerg player to go mutalisks so they don't know how to counter it. I've made a comeback from a 30 worker disadvantage from a 6 gate attack using mutalisks, just because the usual protoss response is pure blink stalker and cracklings eat that for breakfast.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care.
Really? Requiring more bases allows zerg to utilize their mobility and forces protoss not to be able to easily turtle on 3 bases to get their deathball.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care.
Really? Requiring more bases allows zerg to utilize their mobility and forces protoss not to be able to easily turtle on 3 bases to get their deathball.
What I wanna say is Zerg just sit there, take the whole map and do nothing, then think that they macro so hard and just deserve a win. When I watch IdrA play, he just a-move, never care about the army, look back to his base, inject larvae, bump units, then send them in waves after waves. Finally lost then QQ about balance.
imo zerg's late game problem stems from their food distribution. A toss 200 ball from 3 base is really closer to a 130 food army. And a zerg's 200 swarm is more of a 120 army. Zerg by nature and style needs to throw away 3 or 4 units to take out one. But since zerg needs to drone up to be at that stage, and needs to saturate 2.5 bases of minerals and 4 base worth of gas, you're looking at something like 80 dones. And since you have a 200 population cap, well, the resulting army math is elementary.
I'd love to see blizzard experiment on the PTR server with .5 food drones, since the main limiter for zerg is larvae management and not minerals. I'd like to see 300 food available too, but maybe a 180 food toss ball would be really fucking scary
i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros. When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement. I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
On April 19 2011 16:27 SweetenemY wrote: i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros. When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement. I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
mfg NM3
Sadly these FFA situations you describe simply don't happen in 1v1 games. Yes, 200/200 of 3/3 Mutalisks is pretty strong against void ray/collosus armies, but you just can't get that situation. Building up that army gives your opponent a giant timing window in which he can just go fucking kill you, as Day9 so eloquently put it, and since you're only against a single opponent he will simply adapt to what you make. Void ray/collosus is designed to wreck a ground-based Zerg army, so unless your opponent is playing completely blindly (unusual in pro-level games, especially when Protoss has observers) he'll just not make that deathball. If you're putting all your money into mutalisks and air upgrades, the Protoss can make a few templars and absolutely demolish you with storms, plus when your mutalisk flock is still small a few well-microed phoenixes can kill every single one. Generally if every single progamer in the world does or doesn't do something they tend to have a reason for that.
On April 19 2011 16:59 AzureD wrote: People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
LMAO, im guessing you play toss, when you figure out the unstoppable 200 food zerg army, pls promise me, you'll make a post and solve all our zerg troubles.
Zerg was always underpowered since release, especially with the maps. I thought it was stupid how many people could have thought otherwise, and still do.
Zerg got just two buffs since release, not fixing the major issues that have existed since beta (aside from over-nerfing) the roach supply problem in beta.
I think the comparison of how people are saying zerg is OP to how protoss is OP is terrible. There are pretty huge differences in the scenarios, and as far as I know while many people may have been complaining about zerg, I think this was large just due to one or two big tournament wins like the GSL and not for proper reasons.
GSL is a tournament. Tournaments have large factors of luck involved, let alone the luck that already exists in match games. Just because a zerg wins a tournament doesn't mean they are overpowered.
As far as I know, since release zerg have been the winners of (or even in the top 4 of) tournaments proportionally less than the other two races, which is a statical sign of a problem, as opposed to QQ about a zerg who happens to win a major tournament.
I also want to point out that balance/imbalance in games exists in more than one way, and that both are important: • There is win/loss (outcome) imbalance • There is play-style or play-options-diversity imbalance
You can have a race that can win 50% of their games statistically vs a bunch of other races, but they have only 5 units and no special abilities, while you can have another race that has 20 units and 25 special abilities, and still have the same win rate (or obviously even possible to have a 35% win rate only).
I'd argue that not only is zerg underpowered, but that they are also not fun enough or micro intensive enough due to the lack of units and lack of abilities, let alone the lack of VIABLE units and VIABLE abilities.
I know heart of the swarm is coming, but I still think it's ridiculous. I think Blizzard should have spent more work on the alpha/beta dealing with balancing, so that they don't have leave critical tweaking for the next expansion.
something not really conventional which i think should at least be considered is zerg tossing away all their mineral drones when they are maxed with a few k saved..this could open up 60 more supply for units while still mining on max gas to reinforce after it dies.. true you only get 1 attack and 1 reinforce..but you never really know...an extra 60 supply engaging when its not a mistake could skew the results more so then people think due to concept of critical mass
by the way, the "modern deathball" is just about the only way to beat the final protoss mission in the campaign on brutal, and I've been asking people why they aren't using that composition since release pretty much
there's a big difference between that (something that lies in wait to be figured out) and the brief zerg dominance a while back (a strat that emerged with a recent patch change and was easily beat when figured out)
In my opinion there are a few core problems with ZvP:
1. Having 4 bases as zerg against 3 bases as protoss isn't much of an economic advantage, so once protoss is mining his third, there really isn't much of an economic advantage for zerg to speak of.
2. When does zerg (safely) get siege units that are similar in function and power to colossi/tanks? Around ~20 minutes into the game, when protoss already has three fully saturated bases. What is the unit with the highest range before that? A unit with range 5 (6 with an upgrade) that melts to colossi standing behind wallins. Besides that, a range 4 unit that barely manages to hit units behind a gateway/forcefield. Protoss can afford to make a small high tech army that would not survive in an open field battle, but can fend off most zerg attacks while turtling with wallins and forcefields.
3. Map design. How easy would it be for protoss to defend his expansions if there were no terrain restrictions (chokes, cliffs) and you could surround the expansion from every angle? Lings/roaches would rape that expansion and the sentry/colossus based army defending it.
A maxed zerg army is not supply efficient and pretty fragile, zerg can not safely punish turtling players until very late in the game when protoss is already close to maxed anyway, and it does not really have an economic advantage over protoss (or terran) after just three bases.
On April 19 2011 14:14 dave333 wrote: I think an essential problem is that 3 bases is just too efficient. There should be rewards for having 4-5+ bases mining. The problems stem from there.
I agree with this. Less mineral patches per base will help here. Bigger maps gave zerg the ability to react to early game pressure better, but also made it easier to avoid the midgame by turtling on the magic 3 bases and taking your 4th after you have the money matrix (deathball). Make the 4th base that sweet spot instead of 3 and things will work themselves out.
more bases don't mean a shit. Zerg need more base so they can produce more, when both have the same amount of workers. Just like protoss have to build tons of gates and robot to produce. Please take your bases and maps control reward away. No one care.
Really? Requiring more bases allows zerg to utilize their mobility and forces protoss not to be able to easily turtle on 3 bases to get their deathball.
What I wanna say is Zerg just sit there, take the whole map and do nothing, then think that they macro so hard and just deserve a win. When I watch IdrA play, he just a-move, never care about the army, look back to his base, inject larvae, bump units, then send them in waves after waves. Finally lost then QQ about balance.
The whole issue is that it's very easy for a protoss to defend 3 bases so zerg doesn't have any real options other than to just sit and macro. Look @ game 2 of mondragon vs cruncher where mondragon harasses and "does stuff" the entire fight and what happens? Cruncher can defend (he didn't even do a good job of it) and still amass his mini deathball. If the Protoss has to spread out, it gives the zerg the opportunity to harass.
On April 19 2011 16:27 SweetenemY wrote: i know i'm not a decent player, playing mostly FFA, but i like watching the pros. When i am doing this, i often shake my head about many decisions the pros do regarding the very lategame. It seems they are too good to engage lategame armies that much, what is really standard way to play in FFA, also how to use those army tactically.
I wonder if anyone of the pros has ever seen what 200 supply worth of Mutalisks 3-3 do to a deathball army (Collossus/voidray/stalker) head to head, or to the protoss base - a basetrade is really onesided. Unless the Protoss has HTs/archons and tons of fully upgraded Stalker he has not the best chances to win any angagement. I exclude hordes of pheonixes, which aren't that good agains a flood of Cracklings ... it looks like Corrupter against Stalker, except the Lings do it right and simply ignore the airunits.
I cant help, although i know FFA is nowhere near the Pro's level of play and kind a retarded, i still think u can learn a lot from it in terms of the very lategame unitcompositions and how to deal with them.
But maybe i am just an platinumnoob reaching the 400. FFA win with about 60% win and dont even meet the requirements to post any suggestion here - if so i am sorry about that.
mfg NM3
Sadly these FFA situations you describe simply don't happen in 1v1 games. Yes, 200/200 of 3/3 Mutalisks is pretty strong against void ray/collosus armies, but you just can't get that situation. Building up that army gives your opponent a giant timing window in which he can just go fucking kill you, as Day9 so eloquently put it, and since you're only against a single opponent he will simply adapt to what you make. Void ray/collosus is designed to wreck a ground-based Zerg army, so unless your opponent is playing completely blindly (unusual in pro-level games, especially when Protoss has observers) he'll just not make that deathball. If you're putting all your money into mutalisks and air upgrades, the Protoss can make a few templars and absolutely demolish you with storms, plus when your mutalisk flock is still small a few well-microed phoenixes can kill every single one. Generally if every single progamer in the world does or doesn't do something they tend to have a reason for that.
Yea thats right. but i dont say "go straight massmutas" ^^ (as it was only an example for underused lategameoptions) For this idea we usually see no archives at the Protoss, while he is pounding wave after wave of those roach/Hy/Corrupters into the ground, because he kinda needs to finally put out some pressure, before adding those or more robotics/stargates.
The Zerg, despite having a spire and airupgrades already for those corrupters and almost always a Hive, refuses to SUDDENLY build a mass of muta/ling (sniping the colloxxen) and feast on all the rest of the dead ball. The Zerg might be happy loosing all the mutas in the process, when he can take out all collossi and voidrays, so he can freely jump between techs as the Protoss struggles to adept to the new thread with HTs/more stargates, just to face roach/Hy/corrupter again. I just think that Z-Pros simply dont use what i think is the strength of the Zerg: hardcore techswitch on the fly instread of ramming the roaches head against those balls over and over again. Even if they kill everything, that can be hit by those corrupters and see that the Protoss is reinforcing only stalkers to instantly kill the Zerg, those always try to get enough roaches/Hys instead of crackling/muta
Don't you agree, that its way easier for a Zerg to switch tech due to the fact everything is build out of the Hatch, contrary to the Protoss who needs thousand of unitproducing structures to compete in the speed and flexibity of a Zerg?
Make 10-12 infestors. Mondragon said it already but he said he knew it too late. I guess infestorplay is gonna swarm in soon and the problems of the deathball are solved. gg.
On April 19 2011 19:35 Flummie wrote: Make 10-12 infestors. Mondragon said it already but he said he knew it too late. I guess infestorplay is gonna swarm in soon and the problems of the deathball are solved. gg.
You really think no Zergs have tried using more infestors? Heck, Idra massed up quite some infestors in some of his MLG games in ZvP. But it's just not a solid counter.
No buff is needed. A lot of zergs are switching their styles, with fairly good results. Mouzmorrow using ling bling drops against forge fast expand builds, Mondragon, dropping roaches everywhere, GGnaugrim dropping your main while assaulting and cancelling your third, Spanishiwa taking out rootMinigun in a bo7 with his own special style, Hell, even Idra has been experimenting with infestors vs Huk at MLG with good results. Zerg had a too passive mentality for too long, wich protoss exploited well. But soon it will turn around.
No, it was a tremendous buff to zerg in ZvT. Some people (correctly) predicted it would also be a huge, if not bigger buff to Protoss.
Just as frequently however I'm seeing a rapid increase in zerg that don't take advantage of the fact that these are macro maps. Instead, they take the huge maps, looking at Tal'darim specifically here, and get a Trollface grin on their face and say, "Hey, there's no ramp, and he can't scout me in time..." and they immediately all in, be it a fast pool or an all in roach rush.
A lot of Zerg seem to be suffering from the Terran syndrome of extremities.
They think it's either ALL roaches, or ALL hydras or ALL mutas, or ALL in, or ALL macro.
They don't think of pressure, mixed unit types, or even tech switches any more. They don't think of pumping units to do some damage, and then droning, and then keeping up the pressure in much the same way as the ridonculous marine pressure style against Protoss.
The same thing goes for drops. They don't drop, snipe, and leave, they drop and suicide, baneling drop, or doom drop.
There's no moderation in Zerg play, and if you invest so much into an extreme attack you can't bounce away from it, and more importantly, one need only devote to an extreme defense. There's as much value to force someone to overcommit to a defense when you're not devoting much more beyond a poke as there is to actually doing "straight" damage.
On April 19 2011 05:49 Antedelerium wrote: Sooner or later, someone figures out how to counter a specific type of strategy.
Well if you were right no patch changes would have been necessary since the start of beta because your statement could be applied anytime not just now. The truth is "imbalances" are of different nature. OP did a good job showing imba can get fixed with metagame but he didnt look into the nature of those "imbalances" which is very different.
On April 19 2011 19:51 Anomandaris wrote: No buff is needed. A lot of zergs are switching their styles, with fairly good results. Mouzmorrow using ling bling drops against forge fast expand builds, Mondragon, dropping roaches everywhere, GGnaugrim dropping your main while assaulting and cancelling your third, Spanishiwa taking out rootMinigun in a bo7 with his own special style, Hell, even Idra has been experimenting with infestors vs Huk at MLG with good results. Zerg had a too passive mentality for too long, wich protoss exploited well. But soon it will turn around.
Clearly zergs can win zvp, but it doesnt prove it is balanced. I remember Idra and Artosis discussing pvt. Point was made that maybe early game advantage for tvp and lategame advantage for pvt is ok as it evens it out. As much as I dont like Idra he made a very good counter argument: it is very bad actually as one race will be desperately trying to survive early game with a mindset to get to the late gate for a free win, all stages should provide even possibilities for races in a balanced game. This is what is wrong with zvp. Lategame strength of protoss deathball pushes the zergs to finish the game in mid-stage. Yes, zergs can win, but it doesnt make lategame zvp more balanced.
i actually disagree - i dont see zergplayers using their biggest advantage: their flexebility - due to their kind of macro (hatches build any kind of fighter), they could easily throw one wave of roach/Hy/corrupter at the protoss, followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
Thanks OP. I've been meaning for a while to make a TL-post about this.
Zerg has a metagame problem, and imo not a "unit problem". I don't think the Zerg army as a whole needs buffing. Starcraft is actually completely impossible to balance perfectly by just tweaking units like this, but it is possible to balance Starcraft by altering the metagame. The Starcraft metagame, when balanced, works a bit like Poker, where a weak hand can win over a strong one, by using mindgames and risky play.
The cause of the "metagame disease" in Zerg after the beta nerfs, is that:
1) the risk involved in each Zerg option is too high 2) the destruction potential of each option is too low 3) the amount of options are too few. 4) scouting disadvantage - your opponent knows more about you - ie mindgames are more difficult.
In fact, 3) - the amount of options ("option count") is crucial here - each viable option will strengthen all the other options.
Like OP says, from time to time, new options arise - making Zerg look good for a short while. Each time this happens, people conclude that Zerg isn't underpowered anyway, and we should stop discussing it ("Tyler syndrome"). As the novelty effect of these new builds fades out, people in stead blame losses of Zerg players at mistakes ("doing it wrong").
Some typical symptoms of a weak metagame, that we can observe in Zerg, are: - forced to defensive, predictable, "cheap-skate" play - short-lived waves of "breakthroughs" where the race seems to work just fine or where individual players do very well. - small margins of failure. - consistently faced with aggressive, greedy, hard to punish play - builds and timing pushes against the race are potentially game-ending. - experimental playstyle is punished; see Fruitdealer, Moon, TLO.
The "Tyler approach" of encouraging Zergs to practice in stead of whining, is nice and dandy (especially if you, like Tyler, don't play Zerg) - but the huge problem right now, regardless of whether you play Zerg or not, is the lack of Starcraft 2 entertainment value in a 2-race game, and the lack of entertainment value of watching a bound and gagged Zerg playstyle when a Zerg game happens.
PS: I'm not going to go into the lack of micromanagement refinement potential of Zerg, as this is another discussion, and this effect will get stronger over time.
On April 19 2011 20:12 Cheerio wrote: Clearly zergs can win zvp, but it doesnt prove it is balanced. I remember Idra and Artosis discussing pvt. Point was made that maybe early game advantage for tvp and lategame advantage for pvt is ok as it evens it out. As much as I dont like Idra he made a very good counter argument: it is very bad actually as one race will be desperately trying to survive early game with a mindset to get to the late gate for a free win, all stages should provide even possibilities for races in a balanced game. This is what is wrong with zvp. Lategame strength of protoss deathball pushes the zergs to finish the game in mid-stage. Yes, zergs can win, but it doesnt make lategame zvp more balanced.
Don't try to balance the stages. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
Blizzard has been only buffed zerg from the release and will eventually fix this game.
But guess what? it is ALOT BETTER if you discuss about it in battle.net forums instead of here. Blizzards doesnt follow this forum as much as battle.net forums.
I am serious, leave the balance discussions in battle.net forums. Dont try to talk about things here.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
On April 19 2011 09:13 pockie wrote: Spanishiwaa's play (especially on his stream yesterday) was showcasing the funday monday for day9, which was 12 lings, and nothing elsee except corruptors, infestors, ultras, and broodlords. Though it is a funday, it shows that zerg has the units to crush the so called protoss deathball, and its a matter of time before these strategies work their way into tournaments. Even with the most recent balance changes, its like trying to point out to zerg that they have this unit called the infestor, and they should use it. So to the original poster - I disagree with you that the game needs a balance change to fix protoss. It's like calling the 1 base immortal push on scrap station invincible (the unstoppable build from beta lolll).
Post like this show why these kinds of threads are pointless. Do you think spanishiwa owning people on the ladder who don't respond at all to what he's doing with an extremely silly build says ANYTHING about balance?
Personally I think Zerg could use a defensive siege unit, like the Lurker. If we could have a decent defense in the midgame we might be able to get far enough ahead.
I have a question for high-ish zerg players that have tried harass/drop heavy play against P. Do you feel like it's realistic to actually save the roaches/hydras you dropped (say, from 2 ovies tops), kinda like a terran does? Or are overlords just too slow/fragile to realistically expect that? Thinking about drop-heavy play, in one of day9's dailies he mentions how often times players will drop a lot, but lose their drops, which means they don't do that much relative damage after all. To me, that's the biggest limitation of zerg drop play, when you look at it in pro games: eventually the drop always gets killed. So, is it realistic for zerg to actually save his drops, and if so, would that be what makes aggressive play superior to defensive macro?
On April 19 2011 20:48 Teoita wrote: I have a question for high-ish zerg players that have tried harass/drop heavy play against P. Do you feel like it's realistic to actually save the roaches/hydras you dropped (say, from 2 ovies tops), kinda like a terran does? Or are overlords just too slow/fragile to realistically expect that?
Yeah usually ovies are too slow to retreat. But main thing is that zerg usually defends his drops with ling/blings/roaches, right? And all those units do not shoot air so of course terran is going to pick up his units. Now terran and protoss have easily accesible anti-air units that's why zerg do not try to retreat with drops.
On April 19 2011 20:48 Teoita wrote: I have a question for high-ish zerg players that have tried harass/drop heavy play against P. Do you feel like it's realistic to actually save the roaches/hydras you dropped (say, from 2 ovies tops), kinda like a terran does? Or are overlords just too slow/fragile to realistically expect that?
Yeah usually ovies are too slow to retreat. But main thing is that zerg usually defends his drops with ling/blings/roaches, right? And all those units do not shoot air so of course terran is going to pick up his units. Now terran and protoss have easily accesible anti-air units that's why zerg do not try to retreat with drops.
Thanks for the answer however, even in pvt against stalkers, terran drops have a shot at surviving...i guess it's different in pvz with void rays out though. Anyway, in that case a sensible change would be to speed up overlords a bit, both to help zerg scouting early, and to be a bit more effective when playing aggressive. But hey, i'm just platinum
On April 19 2011 20:48 Teoita wrote: I have a question for high-ish zerg players that have tried harass/drop heavy play against P. Do you feel like it's realistic to actually save the roaches/hydras you dropped (say, from 2 ovies tops), kinda like a terran does? Or are overlords just too slow/fragile to realistically expect that? Thinking about drop-heavy play, in one of day9's dailies he mentions how often times players will drop a lot, but lose their drops, which means they don't do that much relative damage after all. To me, that's the biggest limitation of zerg drop play, when you look at it in pro games: eventually the drop always gets killed. So, is it realistic for zerg to actually save his drops, and if so, would that be what makes aggressive play superior to defensive macro?
I'd suggest it's foolhardy to drop Hydras, considering how expensive they are. Zerglings have much more HP and DPS/cost, and most of the POINT of a drop is it prevents Protoss from fighting in the sort of formation (and with FF) that denies Zerglings/Roaches from finding targets.
On April 19 2011 09:13 pockie wrote: Spanishiwaa's play (especially on his stream yesterday) was showcasing the funday monday for day9, which was 12 lings, and nothing elsee except corruptors, infestors, ultras, and broodlords. Though it is a funday, it shows that zerg has the units to crush the so called protoss deathball, and its a matter of time before these strategies work their way into tournaments. Even with the most recent balance changes, its like trying to point out to zerg that they have this unit called the infestor, and they should use it. So to the original poster - I disagree with you that the game needs a balance change to fix protoss. It's like calling the 1 base immortal push on scrap station invincible (the unstoppable build from beta lolll).
Post like this show why these kinds of threads are pointless. Do you think spanishiwa owning people on the ladder who don't respond at all to what he's doing with an extremely silly build says ANYTHING about balance?
Personally I think Zerg could use a defensive siege unit, like the Lurker. If we could have a decent defense in the midgame we might be able to get far enough ahead.
Spine Crawlers, Infestors, and Broodlords all have superior range to the Lurker.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
Especially when most Zerg players are considerably higher level than P and T players.
I think that is the same thing Mondragon was getting at when he said Roach/Infestor will beat Protoss deathballs... eventually transitioning into Broodlord Infestors, except you do it with lings and get the "deathball killer" army out much faster
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
Especially when most Zerg players are considerably higher level than P and T players.
Untrue, and pretty much doing exactly what the guy you're quoting said is stupid to do.
On April 19 2011 20:39 Kirigix wrote: Blizzard has been only buffed zerg from the release and will eventually fix this game.
But guess what? it is ALOT BETTER if you discuss about it in battle.net forums instead of here. Blizzards doesnt follow this forum as much as battle.net forums.
I am serious, leave the balance discussions in battle.net forums. Dont try to talk about things here.
pretty sure they've proven that they read TL actually O_O
On April 19 2011 20:39 Kirigix wrote: Blizzard has been only buffed zerg from the release and will eventually fix this game.
But guess what? it is ALOT BETTER if you discuss about it in battle.net forums instead of here. Blizzards doesnt follow this forum as much as battle.net forums.
I am serious, leave the balance discussions in battle.net forums. Dont try to talk about things here.
pretty sure they've proven that they read TL actually O_O
On April 19 2011 20:58 Severedevil wrote:Spine Crawlers, Infestors, and Broodlords all have superior range to the Lurker.
Do any of those units hold off aggressive low-tech midgame pushes?
Your question is too vague to answer.
Obviously Spine Crawlers will defend a low-tech 'midgame' push if you're on two base vs. two base. If you're defending three, you will need mobile units, although Spines might supplement. How many obviously depends on what push you're talking about and when and what map and which third... >_<
Infestors w/75 mana take a very similar amount of time and money to tech as Lurkers did in BW. But Zerg players usually delay Lair much longer in SC2.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
Especially when most Zerg players are considerably higher level than P and T players.
Untrue, and pretty much doing exactly what the guy you're quoting said is stupid to do.
I realize this is a stupid thing to do when I posted a very reasonable, objective "you don't have to nerf P and T to fix Zerg"-post on page 10, but I feel like saying this - so here I go:
1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
On April 19 2011 20:39 Kirigix wrote: Blizzard has been only buffed zerg from the release and will eventually fix this game.
But guess what? it is ALOT BETTER if you discuss about it in battle.net forums instead of here. Blizzards doesnt follow this forum as much as battle.net forums.
I am serious, leave the balance discussions in battle.net forums. Dont try to talk about things here.
pretty sure they've proven that they read TL actually O_O
On April 19 2011 20:39 Kirigix wrote: Blizzard has been only buffed zerg from the release and will eventually fix this game.
But guess what? it is ALOT BETTER if you discuss about it in battle.net forums instead of here. Blizzards doesnt follow this forum as much as battle.net forums.
I am serious, leave the balance discussions in battle.net forums. Dont try to talk about things here.
On April 19 2011 20:12 Cheerio wrote: Clearly zergs can win zvp, but it doesnt prove it is balanced. I remember Idra and Artosis discussing pvt. Point was made that maybe early game advantage for tvp and lategame advantage for pvt is ok as it evens it out. As much as I dont like Idra he made a very good counter argument: it is very bad actually as one race will be desperately trying to survive early game with a mindset to get to the late gate for a free win, all stages should provide even possibilities for races in a balanced game. This is what is wrong with zvp. Lategame strength of protoss deathball pushes the zergs to finish the game in mid-stage. Yes, zergs can win, but it doesnt make lategame zvp more balanced.
Don't try to balance the stages. That's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.
There are no stages.
stages of the game is an accepted fact, accepted by Blizzard, community, pros. Why dont you elaborate your point?
Baneling drops are really cost effective against deathballs. Try it out. I swear I took out 4k mins with only 1k banes, checking the units lost tab it was masssive, usually Zergs trading armies always end up a little behind, but I was way ahead. (can provide replay).
I only lost when I started trying to make roaches, I realised that I would simply never match the Toss's ball cost effectively with roaches, and I died with an inferior force as his last attack came, despite coming out ahead in the last few engagements, so I lost that game, but I learned a lot from it.
On April 19 2011 06:34 M1cha84 wrote: The OP made many good points here, but from a Zerg perspective I have to say this: As Zerg being the macro race, the main goal for the other races should be to harass the Zerg, so he cant macro up and kill you with the overwhelming meat ball. Terran for example has reapers/had reapers, Hellions, Banshees and Drops, etc. Protoss has Cannon rushes, void rays, phonix, DTs, etc. When the Zerg manages to defend all of this, he is in a good position against Terran. The game is nearly balanced in the late game in ZvT, in my opinion. Against Protoss, fighting against a 200/200 army is in most cases an auto loss. And here is the design flaw! Zerg should be by definition mightier in late game than the other races, thats why P and T have soo many possibilities to harrass Zerg in early and mid game!
There are two major flaws in your post:
1) Zerg is not the macro race. That is a made up term that players have applied to the earlier Zerg playstyle. The only reason Zerg is considered "macro" is because they expand relatively for free - you need additional Hatcheries to produce the same amount of units as other strong 1-base Terran and Protoss builds - so why not put your hatchery down at your expansion? Might as well!
2) Even in Brood War, races were very different late-game. Not every race is going to be supreme at 200/200 flat out army ball vs. army ball combat. That's why Brood War does NOT feature army ball vs. army ball combat! In Brood War harassment and multi-pronged attacks were key. We will probably eventually see similar techniques so that these inevitable racial imbalances (e.g. Protoss winning all 200/200 fights with equivalent micro and proper composition) don't shine through.
On April 19 2011 06:34 M1cha84 wrote: The OP made many good points here, but from a Zerg perspective I have to say this: As Zerg being the macro race, the main goal for the other races should be to harass the Zerg, so he cant macro up and kill you with the overwhelming meat ball. Terran for example has reapers/had reapers, Hellions, Banshees and Drops, etc. Protoss has Cannon rushes, void rays, phonix, DTs, etc. When the Zerg manages to defend all of this, he is in a good position against Terran. The game is nearly balanced in the late game in ZvT, in my opinion. Against Protoss, fighting against a 200/200 army is in most cases an auto loss. And here is the design flaw! Zerg should be by definition mightier in late game than the other races, thats why P and T have soo many possibilities to harrass Zerg in early and mid game!
There are two major flaws in your post:
1) Zerg is not the macro race. That is a made up term that players have applied to the earlier Zerg playstyle. The only reason Zerg is considered "macro" is because they expand relatively for free - you need additional Hatcheries to produce the same amount of units as other strong 1-base Terran and Protoss builds - so why not put your hatchery down at your expansion? Might as well!
2) Even in Brood War, races were very different late-game. Not every race is going to be supreme at 200/200 flat out army ball vs. army ball combat. That's why Brood War does NOT feature army ball vs. army ball combat! In Brood War harassment and multi-pronged attacks were key. We will probably eventually see similar techniques so that these inevitable racial imbalances (e.g. Protoss winning all 200/200 fights with equivalent micro and proper composition) don't shine through.
1) Agreed completely.
For 2) to eventually end up in a good way, Zerg needs more initiative and options. Zergs need to be able to take risks, and be able win even with a weak "hand".
Like you say, multi-fronting, surprises and harassment is what balances the game, together with feints and similar. Right now, this part of the game is heavily underpowered for Zerg.
I'd say the fungal was pretty helpful, especially when they get void, but all in all I am pretty sure spines and nydus can do what we are looking for and in fact, are tailored for this exact scenario.
I should think protoss would want to leave their base before 200, in the future metagame. Otherwise blizzard has to do something because this is really wierd, when you take 5 bases and he just gets 200 pop on two, and only that fact makes you lose, it dosen't feel quite right.
This is one of the stupider things I have read on TL.
In a game of skill, if one player makes zero mistakes, they should win 100%. No mistakes means playing perfectly, and if you can play perfectly and still lose, that's when the game is broken.
The reasonable way of reading what you quoted is of course to take it to imply that *both* players make no mistakes. Because then it makes perfect sense, and is congruent with the overall point made in the post. But it´s easier to assume the silly interpretation (I.e. "100% perfect Protoss vs. Flawed Zerg") while calling the post "stupid", I guess...
On April 19 2011 06:17 Incognoto wrote: I believe Fungal Growth has a range of 9 which is the same as Thermal Lance Colossi. I was surprised to learn that Fungals had that much range actually.
Recently I'm starting to wonder if Infestor/Baneling wouldn't do well against the deathball. The problem is that to survive up until that point is really difficult as Zerg, Infestor/baneling is really gas heavy. I'm not even sure if it's that effective. Especially with forcefields. It's really hard to say. ;s
Banelings and infestors work great against the deathball, they can completely obliterate it, I have been trying to say this for a few days now. I've also been using it as my staple ZvP build on the ladder.
Forcefields aren't too much of an issue, as long as you have good creep spread you can easily use the speed of a ling/bling/infestor army to force them to use up their energy in the middle of the map, and the baneling ball is so potent that they literally have to surround their entire army with FF (if you catch them in the open, some maps won't allow this, but it's still manageable) so the energy does not last long. By the time you get ultras out they become irrelevant, but then hallucinate can potentially be a big problem but at least in that situation you only have to find a way to kill the sentries once and then toss will never have enough to be effective with it. Fungal is good for splashing damage (means less banes have to kill themselves) and locking everything down to prevent the potential gosu toss from splitting his army.
Like you said the problem is getting up to that point, surviving a 6 gate or 5 gate robo timing is difficult but I believe it can be reliably done with the right timing. That is if he stops attacking after the first attempt. The real bitch is if he forces you to trade armies during that mid-game timing. Banelings are flat out inefficient and more so the more stalkers toss has, I don't think it is possible to keep up. In a maxed situation the inefficiency doesn't matter because after you kill the deathball once it takes so long to rebuild, but in the mid game the gateway units will reinforce much faster than the larva and baneling morph can keep up with.
I think some form of a tech switch is needed to deal with this, perhaps going ling/bling/infestor to deal with the potential deathball, and then if he hits with a mid game timing obliterate the first push with the banes and then reinforce with roach/ling or roach/hydra to fight the now smaller toss army efficiently. Is this affordable or feasible? I don't know yet.
On April 19 2011 23:08 osten wrote: I'd say the fungal was pretty helpful, especially when they get void, but all in all I am pretty sure spines and nydus can do what we are looking for and in fact, are tailored for this exact scenario.
I should think protoss would want to leave their base before 200, in the future metagame. Otherwise blizzard has to do something because this is really wierd, when you take 5 bases and he just gets 200 pop on two, and only that fact makes you lose, it dosen't feel quite right.
As I said in my post above, ling/bling/infestor does in fact force him to want to leave his base, if he tries to turtle to 200 it will be a free win, but when he leaves his base that creates more problems that need to be (and can be) solved.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
As i said: i am not a good player. So i dont dare saying Zergplayers are stupid, i just want to understand, why they dont use their ability to switch their unit-composition/tech within seconds, in order to break a protoss army, that is lacking some kind of tech (templar), or lacking (enough) unit-producing structures to react accordingly in time(3+ stargates/robos).
Why dont they kill mainly the collosi in the first engagement and then, when the Protoss reinforces only stalker to go funking kill the Zerg, switch their army-composition, that is able to kill the stalker ball.
No offense anywhere, just the same i have written before, so thanks for grabbing a line of my post, just to blame me have the wrong tone ...
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
As i said: i am not a good player. So i dont dare saying Zergplayers are stupid, i just want to understand, why they dont use their ability to switch their unit-composition/tech within seconds, in order to break a protoss army, that is lacking some kind of tech (templar), or lacking (enough) unit-producing structures to react accordingly (3+ stargates/robos).
Why dont they kill mainly the collosi in their first engagement and then, when the Protoss reinforces only stalker to go funking kill the Zerg, switch their army-composition, that is able to kill the stalker ball.
No offense anywhere, just the same i have written before, so thanks for grabbing 2 lines of a my post, just to blame me have the wrong tone ...
Switch to what? To mass unupgraded lings and blings? Mass unupgraded mutalisks against blink stalkers? Pure hydras? None of these are actually any good against huge stalker blobs with one or two reinforcing robo or twlilight units.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
As i said: i am not a good player. So i dont dare saying Zergplayers are stupid, i just want to understand, why they dont use their ability to switch their unit-composition/tech within seconds, in order to break a protoss army, that is lacking some kind of tech (templar), or lacking (enough) unit-producing structures to react accordingly (3+ stargates/robos).
Why dont they kill mainly the collosi in their first engagement and then, when the Protoss reinforces only stalker to go funking kill the Zerg, switch their army-composition, that is able to kill the stalker ball.
No offense anywhere, just the same i have written before, so thanks for grabbing 2 lines of a my post, just to blame me have the wrong tone ...
The problem is zerg going roach/hydra/corrupter, it is so inefficient that zerg might only kill 20 supply worth of units while losing the entire 130 food army, when you are in that situation you simply cannot reinforce in time to deal with it, regardless of what units you are trying to use - on top of that if toss macros up a good 3 base economy, gateway units aren't exactly slow to reinforce with either.
The mindset of just throw units at him and win the reinforcement battle is part of the problem, IMO. It only works in mid-game with a mondragon style play. Back when roach/hydra/corrupter worked, zergs knew they needed to to start the army trade *before* the toss hit 200 for it to be effective, incontrol even says this in a early episode with mrbitters. Then toss learned to keep his army safe at all costs and we are in this situation now.
The games i remember, the fights were in the middle of the map or closer to the Zerg, and as the Zerg types GG there were a pure blinkstalkerball ripping him off. If the Zerg attacks the Protoss right when he leaves his base (yes it is mapdependent) and gets the deathball down to pure stalkers, rushing in for the kill it might be better to build muta/ling
Also i assume you need spines buying some time at your base.
I dont know, but i think u have armorupgraded your roach/Hy-army, so at least armor is covered(if you choose so). Together with the upgraded mutas (assuming you upgraded at least corrupters attack before) its maybe a better option to "surround" stalkers and give them way more targets then they can handle, while raining terror from above, than taking away the shields from every single stalker with roach/hydra while dying.
I have to say i only know it from a gametype that is commonly seen as retarded bullshit and i am way to bad at this game to have experiences as Zerg noone might laugh about, but as far as i know stalkers have a very short time to laugh about a ocean of zerglings - prepare enough larvea plz^^
obviously the Zerg will most likely loose every mutalisk, but then the Protoss also has to rebuild his whole dead ball, while only mining from his 3rd.
I dont root for Protoss nor Zerg, i really try to figure it out - so please be patient with me O_o
A very well written post, I definitely like it. One thing to consider is how the maps actually affect balance at the moment. This game is still very young, I'm sure the end of the Protoss deathball is somewhere near. Obviously, I don't think any of the races are imbalanced and I find imbalance talk ridiculous as Blizzard are doing a fine job at producing and maintaining a balanced game, all the while keeping the contribution to it so much. Oh well, I still pity Zerg's recent tournament results.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
As i said: i am not a good player. So i dont dare saying Zergplayers are stupid, i just want to understand, why they dont use their ability to switch their unit-composition/tech within seconds, in order to break a protoss army, that is lacking some kind of tech (templar), or lacking (enough) unit-producing structures to react accordingly in time(3+ stargates/robos).
Why dont they kill mainly the collosi in the first engagement and then, when the Protoss reinforces only stalker to go funking kill the Zerg, switch their army-composition, that is able to kill the stalker ball.
No offense anywhere, just the same i have written before, so thanks for grabbing a line of my post, just to blame me have the wrong tone ...
People already do that, in theory you'd want to kill the colossus and then remax in Hydralisks to kill this whole stalker ball, the problem is that if he gets one or two colossus out before you can go and kill that stalker ball, you're fucked, it's just soo fragile....
I believe that the future of zerg is somewhere in Spanishiwas playstyle, alot of nyduses, queens and ling/bling with drops.
protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
Especially when most Zerg players are considerably higher level than P and T players.
Untrue, and pretty much doing exactly what the guy you're quoting said is stupid to do.
I realize this is a stupid thing to do when I posted a very reasonable, objective "you don't have to nerf P and T to fix Zerg"-post on page 10, but I feel like saying this - so here I go:
1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
The zerg players i face at masters level are far less refined in general than even my terran opponents. Zerg had a long comfort zone where their key to winning with a decent rate was just macroing up and getting bases. They are not complete players at this point and very few seem to understand the importance of timing. Additionally, most of the best and fastest players actually picked terran at the onset of sc2. Your facts are as wrong as your opinion is stupid
I think people should just look at what they got and use it on how it is. Blizzard needs to take a break from patching and just let the players develop the game. I play terran so I am not bias on zerg nor protoss.
People need to stop blaming races and start blaming themselves for losing. If they don't like their race on how it is now they should gain more perspective on how its like for the other race by offracing a few games and looking for wholes in the other race's perspective..
This is one of the stupider things I have read on TL.
In a game of skill, if one player makes zero mistakes, they should win 100%. No mistakes means playing perfectly, and if you can play perfectly and still lose, that's when the game is broken.
The reasonable way of reading what you quoted is of course to take it to imply that *both* players make no mistakes. Because then it makes perfect sense, and is congruent with the overall point made in the post. But it´s easier to assume the silly interpretation (I.e. "100% perfect Protoss vs. Flawed Zerg") while calling the post "stupid", I guess...
Which is of course an impossible scenario. You can't both play perfectly.
To play perfectly is to make every decision the best possible decision, and to control every single unit in the best possible way for the best possible results, as well as never queue, spend all your money, etc.
Only, that's not even theoretically possible for both players, because decision making is responsive. Your decisions are influenced by what your opponent has done, and vice versa. Somewhere, someone is going to make a decision that will have a negative impact on their side of the field, and that means they could have made a better decision, thus not perfect.
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
Really? Cause I haven't seen a deathball containing carriers/mothership/hts in a while... though even a few HTs integrated into the standard collosus deathball will absolutely demolish a high food Z army in seconds.
And lol at the people saying remax with a "counter" to the P army, when you can barely remax with your basic roach/hydra in time (and on most maps, the deathball can camp between some of your expos and your units never get together and are slaughtered so you lose instantly). It is the equivalent of being given a task to create an endgame zerg army in the time it takes the P to waltz over and start destroying your bases: those units take too long to build, morph, and cost too much for this to be effective.
On April 20 2011 02:04 Penecks wrote: Really? Cause I haven't seen a deathball containing carriers/mothership/hts in a while... though even a few HTs integrated into the standard collosus deathball will absolutely demolish a high food Z army in seconds.
Thats because those units arent even close to toss strongest. Templar or Colo are basically the same thing. HT are even worse now. You get 1 storm where colo gets unlimited shots. Pretty obvious you never played toss seriously if you throwing out the carrier/mothership as the strongest units
I suspect the limited number of Zergs placing in the higher end of tournaments is a conspiracy put into place to keep to a minimum the probability of there being a ZvZ semifinal and final.
It happened once a year ago or so in BW. We saw both the MSL and OSL feature ZvZ grand finals. It was pretty bad.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
As i said: i am not a good player. So i dont dare saying Zergplayers are stupid, i just want to understand, why they dont use their ability to switch their unit-composition/tech within seconds, in order to break a protoss army, that is lacking some kind of tech (templar), or lacking (enough) unit-producing structures to react accordingly in time(3+ stargates/robos).
Why dont they kill mainly the collosi in the first engagement and then, when the Protoss reinforces only stalker to go funking kill the Zerg, switch their army-composition, that is able to kill the stalker ball.
No offense anywhere, just the same i have written before, so thanks for grabbing a line of my post, just to blame me have the wrong tone ...
and the switch will go from which combo to which?from roach/hydra/corruptor to ling/bling/infestor?so i have to build all tech buildings and research all technologies while getting the extremely "cheap" roach/hydra/corruptor combo to be able to switch?i really dont understand why everyone thinks zerg can switch so easily as they need a lot of different structures and most of all lots of upgrades and enough time to research (the switch to ling/bling/infestor is 450/450 for their upgrades alone and you will also want to have OL upgrades for another 300/300)
its also very doubtful that a good protoss player would go forward with nothing but stalkers; in a realistic scenario all you can add immediately are speedlings
and yes - Zergs have the hardest time to switch tech ... -.-
btw - u can stockpile up to 19 larvae on one hatch - should be easy to get 200/200 if u have 2 Marcohatches and queens in your main (assuming you are on 4 bases)
so if u have 74drones and 6 queens u can have 114 suppply worth of Zerglings, that beeing 228 Cracklings with some armorups within 30 seconds - good luck stalkers O_o
On April 20 2011 02:28 SweetenemY wrote: look up some posts i already wrote it
and yes - Zergs have the hardest time to switch tech ... -.-
btw - u can stockpile up to 19 larvae on one hatch - should be easy to get 200/200 if u have 2 Marcohatches and queens in your main (assuming you are on 4 bases)
so if u have 74drones and 6 queens u can have 114 suppply worth of Zerglings, that beeing 228 Cracklings with some armorups within 30 seconds - good luck stalkers O_o
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. And the protoss would actually use blink micro, and not engage somewhere where the ball can get entirely engulfed in lings. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
On April 20 2011 02:28 SweetenemY wrote: look up some posts i already wrote it
and yes - Zergs have the hardest time to switch tech ... -.-
btw - u can stockpile up to 19 larvae on one hatch - should be easy to get 200/200 if u have 2 Marcohatches and queens in your main (assuming you are on 4 bases)
so if u have 74drones and 6 queens u can have 114 suppply worth of Zerglings, that beeing 228 Cracklings with some armorups within 30 seconds - good luck stalkers O_o
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
Try it again with Infestors and speed/cracklings and post the outcome here.
On April 20 2011 02:28 SweetenemY wrote: look up some posts i already wrote it
and yes - Zergs have the hardest time to switch tech ... -.-
btw - u can stockpile up to 19 larvae on one hatch - should be easy to get 200/200 if u have 2 Marcohatches and queens in your main (assuming you are on 4 bases)
so if u have 74drones and 6 queens u can have 114 suppply worth of Zerglings, that beeing 228 Cracklings with some armorups within 30 seconds - good luck stalkers O_o
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
Try it again with Infestors and speed/cracklings and post the outcome here.
I'm sure with infestors it'd be great but that's not what was suggested (and we all know mass lings with infestor support wrecks mass blink stalkers, that's why nobody goes mass blink stalkers if they can help it).
On April 20 2011 02:28 SweetenemY wrote: look up some posts i already wrote it
and yes - Zergs have the hardest time to switch tech ... -.-
btw - u can stockpile up to 19 larvae on one hatch - should be easy to get 200/200 if u have 2 Marcohatches and queens in your main (assuming you are on 4 bases)
so if u have 74drones and 6 queens u can have 114 suppply worth of Zerglings, that beeing 228 Cracklings with some armorups within 30 seconds - good luck stalkers O_o
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
Try it again with Infestors and speed/cracklings and post the outcome here.
I'm sure with infestors it'd be great but that's not what was suggested (and we all know mass lings with infestor support wrecks mass blink stalkers, that's why nobody goes mass blink stalkers if they can help it).
Ok ok, I was a bit wrong there and guess I didn't grasp the full context
But yeh infestors + cracklings are pretty awesome vs deathballs I heard
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. And the protoss would actually use blink micro, and not engage somewhere where the ball can get entirely engulfed in lings. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
You do realize that Protoss Stalker army has over twice the cost of the Zerg Zergling army. Kinda hard to call that a fair comparison when the Protoss has to spend so much more.
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. And the protoss would actually use blink micro, and not engage somewhere where the ball can get entirely engulfed in lings. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
You do realize that Protoss Stalker army has over twice the cost of the Zerg Zergling army. Kinda hard to call that a fair comparison when the Protoss has to spend so much more.
Yea but the point was those mass zerglings AFTER your original army got killed by the deathball and you killed the collosus. So we are comparing 1army to 2 armies.
Go to the unit tester and try 130 food of stalkers against your maxed unupgraded ling army. I gave stalkers 2/2 (no shield) and lings 3 armour (no melee) with adrenal glands. It's not even close. Unupgraded lings are not good when they cannot get a surround.
In reality, there will be at least one collosus reinforcing the stalkers so it's even more ridiculously in favour of Protoss. And the protoss would actually use blink micro, and not engage somewhere where the ball can get entirely engulfed in lings. How can you play the game and actually think these armies would be close?
You do realize that Protoss Stalker army has over twice the cost of the Zerg Zergling army. Kinda hard to call that a fair comparison when the Protoss has to spend so much more.
Another reason why it's dumb to max out on zerglings. It's not my bright idea.
On April 19 2011 20:29 SweetenemY wrote: followed by a wave made of any other unitcombo that fits the outcome of the first fight best, but instead they get roach/hy/corrupter again.
well arguing the point that zerg players are kind of stupid is not a step in the right direction
Especially when most Zerg players are considerably higher level than P and T players.
Untrue, and pretty much doing exactly what the guy you're quoting said is stupid to do.
I realize this is a stupid thing to do when I posted a very reasonable, objective "you don't have to nerf P and T to fix Zerg"-post on page 10, but I feel like saying this - so here I go:
1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
I find that this entire post is a troll.
If we're going to argue with 100% anecdotal evidence then here is mine in response. I play random and surprisingly enough zerg is the easiest race that I have found to play. I don't even have to select other buildings to make various units... I can end most games on one base trivially. Most people I talk to agree.
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
The issue here is that protoss can turtle while they slowly amass their "best units" while zerg couldn't do that. Try rushing to broodlord/infestor on 2-3 bases as zerg and see what happens. It's the scaling as you build your armies, zerg has to react to the potential of a 3-4 gate pressure, then 5-6 gate pressure, then air harass, dt tech so we're building our lower tier units and what happens? the protoss can either "shark mode" as inControl puts it or even just sit and turtle.
Zerg options? Keep the units and try to engage eventually with them while teching/expanding or throw the units at the protoss via harassment. But it's so easy for the protoss to defend while taking minimal losses. Every unit the protoss gets along the way (sentries, then stalkers/void ray/colossus in any order) contributes immediately to their army AND adds to their deathball.
On April 19 2011 20:58 Severedevil wrote:Spine Crawlers, Infestors, and Broodlords all have superior range to the Lurker.
Do any of those units hold off aggressive low-tech midgame pushes?
Yes.
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: 1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
1. No it's not. It's a delusion of grandeur coming from zerg players. 2. I'd argue Terran requires the highest APM at the absolute top level. 3. Pointless and subjective. Nada and Boxer play Terran, MC plays Protoss. Doesn't mean a single thing. 4. Also untrue. In fact, the most common thing for zergs to do on ladder is just to pump out drones and have no units and thus die to an attack (or baneling bust). 5. What the hell is this, is this an actual argument?
Your entire post is so biased that it's actually disgusting.
In zerg late game, when you've got all that creep spread so nicely and toss is hunkered down in its own base, and Z is entirely maxed at 200/200 with 80 some drones, I don't understand the lack of spine crawlers. I mean why just suicide your units at them, why not turn 20 of your drones into moveable defense and free up additional supply for army count?
I mean think about it right, you already have creep everywhere, they are more cost effective than any unit in the game, and they free up supply!
If you combine them with spore crawlers I don't know how a toss ball breaks that position without losing too many units of their own. In the first game where Idra played crunch, amongst other things, Idra could've done this, he could've thrown down spine crawlers with all the extra minerals he had. And it would'nt have been hard mixing in spore crawlers to deal with the void rays.
Remember, you don't have to kill toss, just wear it down. If they get caught up in a back and forth battle they lose because their base gets mined out...
We are all asking the wrong question if its how does Zerg burn through the ball, the question we should be asking is how can Zerg trade units at an efficient clip.
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
The issue here is that protoss can turtle while they slowly amass their "best units" while zerg couldn't do that. Try rushing to broodlord/infestor on 2-3 bases as zerg and see what happens. It's the scaling as you build your armies, zerg has to react to the potential of a 3-4 gate pressure, then 5-6 gate pressure, then air harass, dt tech so we're building our lower tier units and what happens? the protoss can either "shark mode" as inControl puts it or even just sit and turtle.
Zerg options? Keep the units and try to engage eventually with them while teching/expanding or throw the units at the protoss via harassment. But it's so easy for the protoss to defend while taking minimal losses. Every unit the protoss gets along the way (sentries, then stalkers/void ray/colossus in any order) contributes immediately to their army AND adds to their deathball.
this is borderline theorycrafting. I can make up stuff too. Zerg can baneling bust, 6 pool, roach rush, nydus all kinds of stuff. Don't say every unit the protoss has and say you have to worry about them. Every unit you kill as zerg takes away from the toss death ball.
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: 1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
1. No it's not. It's a delusion of grandeur coming from zerg players. 2. I'd argue Terran requires the highest APM at the absolute top level. 3. Pointless and subjective. Nada and Boxer play Terran, MC plays Protoss. Doesn't mean a single thing. 4. Also untrue. In fact, the most common thing for zergs to do on ladder is just to pump out drones and have no units and thus die to an attack (or baneling bust). 5. What the hell is this, is this an actual argument?
Your entire post is so biased that it's actually disgusting.
Indeed it is....and point 5 is the most hilarious one
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: 1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
1. No it's not. It's a delusion of grandeur coming from zerg players. 2. I'd argue Terran requires the highest APM at the absolute top level. 3. Pointless and subjective. Nada and Boxer play Terran, MC plays Protoss. Doesn't mean a single thing. 4. Also untrue. In fact, the most common thing for zergs to do on ladder is just to pump out drones and have no units and thus die to an attack (or baneling bust). 5. What the hell is this, is this an actual argument?
Your entire post is so biased that it's actually disgusting.
4. Maybe cause it is much harder for the zerg to choose inbetween workers and units ?
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
The issue here is that protoss can turtle while they slowly amass their "best units" while zerg couldn't do that. Try rushing to broodlord/infestor on 2-3 bases as zerg and see what happens. It's the scaling as you build your armies, zerg has to react to the potential of a 3-4 gate pressure, then 5-6 gate pressure, then air harass, dt tech so we're building our lower tier units and what happens? the protoss can either "shark mode" as inControl puts it or even just sit and turtle.
Zerg options? Keep the units and try to engage eventually with them while teching/expanding or throw the units at the protoss via harassment. But it's so easy for the protoss to defend while taking minimal losses. Every unit the protoss gets along the way (sentries, then stalkers/void ray/colossus in any order) contributes immediately to their army AND adds to their deathball.
this is borderline theorycrafting. I can make up stuff too. Zerg can baneling bust, 6 pool, roach rush, nydus all kinds of stuff. Don't say every unit the protoss has and say you have to worry about them. Every unit you kill as zerg takes away from the toss death ball.
That is absolutely not theorycrafting, it's what happens every single game. Zerg have shitty scouting and CANNOT attack a Protoss who has a few sentries up unless they invest a huge amount of money into drops and a bunch of suicidal overlords to do the dropping, which makes the attack somewhat of an all-in. Force fields and choke points are actually kinda good. Yeah you can nydus into his base, but that relies on the Protoss not bothering to get vision of those dark corners, which anyone competent will do.
This massive defensive advantage allows the Protoss to turtle on 3 base and make whatever the fuck army he wants, because he has infinity time to make it. Zerg, on the other hand, have absolutely no defender's advantage thanks to proxy pylons, and since their scouting is terrible they need to be constantly ready for an attack that may never arrive. How many times has a Zerg player lost to a Protoss attack because he made nothing but drones? A shitton. And every time we see that people say "omg playing idra style make nothing but drones so greedy noob". How many times does a Protoss flat-out lose to an attack that wasn't even all-in? Pretty much never. As soon as that first sentry pops there is no way for Zerg to attack. Ultralisks and broodlords, the high tier Zerg units that we're apparently supposed to rush to, cost ridiculous amounts of money and take about 10 minutes to get out even if they were free. Infestors are cheaper and faster to get out, but you simply can't have sufficient infestors out fast enough to defend against any timing attacks, and if you try to tech to them fast rather than making a ton of roach/hydra you will flat out die to a thousand different builds. Zerg simply cannot go straight for a deathball.
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
I generally agree with this, although I don't think beta zerg was good - It still had a lack of micro, and less units and special abilities than the other 2 races— it just won more games.
You reminded me of another point though. As far as I know, it's very hard or impossible to beat an insane AI terran or protoss as a zerg player (aside from very high micro with a 7 pool), while it's quite easy to win 1 vs 2 insane AI zergs as a terran or protoss.
On April 20 2011 05:35 willyallthewei wrote: In zerg late game, when you've got all that creep spread so nicely and toss is hunkered down in its own base, and Z is entirely maxed at 200/200 with 80 some drones, I don't understand the lack of spine crawlers. I mean why just suicide your units at them, why not turn 20 of your drones into moveable defense and free up additional supply for army count?
because it costs 100 more minerals. Combine that with the fact that spine/spore crawlers get outranged by colossus and siege tanks, and it becomes a somewhat wasted 100 minerals. It doesn't really help much at all if they have those units.
On April 20 2011 05:35 willyallthewei wrote: In zerg late game, when you've got all that creep spread so nicely and toss is hunkered down in its own base, and Z is entirely maxed at 200/200 with 80 some drones, I don't understand the lack of spine crawlers. I mean why just suicide your units at them, why not turn 20 of your drones into moveable defense and free up additional supply for army count?
because it costs 100 more minerals. Combine that with the fact that spine/spore crawlers get outranged by colossus and siege tanks, and it becomes a somewhat wasted 100 minerals. It doesn't really help much at all if they have those units.
But you're already maxed and this frees up supply without wasting units.
And most importantly, you can now safely retreat when you see the battle is not in your favor and Toss cannot walk right to your main base and kill you, this slows them down considerably while you build up more units.
Think about it this way, does Terran stop building bunkers when Colossus come on the field?
On April 20 2011 07:43 Xapti wrote: You reminded me of another point though. As far as I know, it's very hard or impossible to beat an insane AI terran or protoss as a zerg player (aside from very high micro with a 7 pool)
Don't buy that you can't beat an insane AI 1v1 as zerg if you use infestors and banelings.
Most of the guy saying anything here are just clueless about zerg's point of view in ZvP, you just have no clue at all.
I should just summit my own replay, the replay of a lonely nooby 3k5 master zerg that TRY, because I try, we try, we ALL TRY as zerg players. Most of you just don't watch IdrA's stream: there are infestors everywhere, broodlord reached a lot, he switch tech a lot, ling bling / burrowed roach / roach hydra / ling roach, he tries everything. It is like the protoss community is here saying you just suck just make "nydus" and "infestOrZ". Myself, at my own level, I make a lot of infestor, my most recent ZvP style is some kind of modified aquanda's style: I start with a fast 3rd and ling bling upgraded, then I had roach, hydra and I try to harass while teching to infestor / corruptors / upgrades / T3 into ultras. I use almost all my units (except mutas for some reasons), I tech switch a lot. We all try, we all use all our units.
The freaking death ball is and has NEVER been the problem in ZvP : the guy talking about that are just clueless about the match up / are not good enough. The deathball is just very very cost effective, but the death ball can be countered with the right unit mix / the right economy / the right tech. But here is the problem about zerg, and the problem in ZvP in my opinion. Zerg are weak to scout until overlord speed, so we can just guess and act on the guess that we have AND the zerg have NO DEFENSIVE UNIT. There is no, NOT ONE, unit that help zerg defend cost efficiently. The lurker is no more, so the only way to defend is to OUTMUSCLE your opponent: you need to build a shitload of unit. In fact, the best way to understand is to watch ZvZ: in ZvZ, the moment you tech to infestor is actually a weird moment because you're weak for a short moment, because making the infestor pit, upgrading the infestors, mean more or less 4-5 less roach than your opponent and THAT IS BIG in a match were it is most likely roach vs roach for a bunch of time. So the only way is to delay infestorz, almost nobody just rush to infestor after having like 10-15 "safe" roach. No the "safe roach" spot is more likely around 30.
That's why so many Zerg just stay in Lair for so long: because we all had this experience trying to tech and getting just roflcrushed by a useless 6 gate / 4 gate or any 3 rax pressure. It's a game with no defensive advantage, were zerg have lost their only mid game strong cost efficient defensive unit. Protoss have sentries, Terran have tank and MMM that are still very cost effective, we have none of that. Even the last most "original" play, like mondragon or spanishiwa, are all MADE to compensate that weakness: spanishiwa just mass spine and queen so that he can tech up without having to make a shitload of roach/hydra or ling/baneling and keep all his gaz to tech, but to do that he just cripple his agressive capacities early game (and in my opinion it's a shitty "style" that should not work because you just let go any kind of early agression). Mondragon on the other side just counter that by being very agressive with the most cost efficient unit the zerg have: the roach (you know, if you don't want to defend, just play agressive). But zerg is also shitty to play agressive: we have no units with high range high speed that are great to harass (we have one high range and slow, one fast and low range).
I will even say something maybe a bit harsh: the current protoss community is pretty weak and just dont understand shit about ZvP. They feel more or less "ok" with the current death ball that they just don't see the zerg weakness and don't abuse it. MC understood since some times now, and just roflstomp every zerg he sees.
So to sums up: we can tech to infestors every game, but by doing that, we will just get crushed one game every 3 game by a noob that just come at our door at the right time. The only and most efficient way to play ZvP is still to stay on roach / ling bling / hydra roach for a while just to defend or play agressive while teching.
Spanishiwa has been demolishing protoss with bane speeldings drops in expo's mineral line before they get more than 2 colossus, and then getting ultras, queens, bane, ling, infestor. Poor protoss "deathball" lol. It's really no match for that composition. The use of nydus just shows that even though it costs 100 gas more than a pylon, it's also much better. You're not limited to the number of gates to warp in units, and they can be sent back home. Toss units warped in as harass, are generally there to die. He even uses it just to transfer drones to far off bases lol. He abuses the mobility of zerglings with upgraded attack, either massing them or dropping on top of colossi / sentries, totally nullifying forcefields and the range of the colossus. Colossus are only good because of their 9 range and splash with clumped units. Dropping attack upgraded zerglings on top of colossus (or some times ultras O_o) is a very sad thing to see. It's by far a more cost-effective counter than corruptors.
I think a lot of zerg players are not abusing many of the good qualities of the race. Be it nydus, mobility, mass transfuse, fast tech switches. I see zerg players using their armies like they were P or T. engaging in small chokes, not flanking, not coming from behind, not making archs, not abusing their higher mobility and attacking from various sides at the same time and then just retreat when the big slow ball army arrives to defend. They just make a full frontal attack. True, it's not as easy, and probably that's one of the reasons we don't see it yet, but it's guaranteed to be more effective. As you should know, the more mobile a unit is, the weaker its strength, and i don't see players using that mobility, they watch a 200 vs 200 a mobile army vs a slower one and get surprised that the slower one wins, then complain about imbalance. Ridiculous.
If i had to bet, the next nerf would be on Z vs P.
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
The issue here is that protoss can turtle while they slowly amass their "best units" while zerg couldn't do that. Try rushing to broodlord/infestor on 2-3 bases as zerg and see what happens. It's the scaling as you build your armies, zerg has to react to the potential of a 3-4 gate pressure, then 5-6 gate pressure, then air harass, dt tech so we're building our lower tier units and what happens? the protoss can either "shark mode" as inControl puts it or even just sit and turtle.
Zerg options? Keep the units and try to engage eventually with them while teching/expanding or throw the units at the protoss via harassment. But it's so easy for the protoss to defend while taking minimal losses. Every unit the protoss gets along the way (sentries, then stalkers/void ray/colossus in any order) contributes immediately to their army AND adds to their deathball.
this is borderline theorycrafting. I can make up stuff too. Zerg can baneling bust, 6 pool, roach rush, nydus all kinds of stuff. Don't say every unit the protoss has and say you have to worry about them. Every unit you kill as zerg takes away from the toss death ball.
That is absolutely not theorycrafting, it's what happens every single game. Zerg have shitty scouting
Zerg have the fastest, cheapest ground unit in the game, which can turn invisible while stationary. This provides a shitload of scouting. Zerg have the cheapest flying unit in the game. This provides a shitload of scouting.
You, not the Zerg, are holding you back.
On April 20 2011 08:12 WhiteDog wrote: But here is the problem about zerg, and the problem in ZvP in my opinion. Zerg are weak to scout until overlord speed, so we can just guess and act on the guess that we have AND the zerg have NO DEFENSIVE UNIT. There is no, NOT ONE, unit that help zerg defend cost efficiently. The lurker is no more, so the only way to defend is to OUTMUSCLE your opponent: you need to build a shitload of unit.
Queens and Spines are efficient defensive units, available very early in the game.
Even the last "original" play, like mondragon or spanishiwa, are all MADE to compensate that weakness: spanishiwa just mass spine and queen so that he can tech up without having to make a shitload of roach/hydra or ling/baneling and keep all his gaz to tech, but to do that he just cripple his agressive capacities early game (and in my opinion it's a shitty "style" that should not work). Mondragon on the other side just counter that by being very agressive with the most cost efficient unit the zerg have: the roach (you know, if you don't want to defend, just play agressive). But zerg is also shitty to play agressive: we have no units with high range high speed that are great to harass (we have one high range and slow, one fast and low range).
That's the right attitude by dismissing other styles and saying shit is broken and needs to be patched. Maybe that's the reason zergs aren't really doing progress.
Players that are pursuing their own ZvP style (spanishiwa / mondragon / sheth) seem to do quite well in that matchup.
On April 20 2011 08:20 Apolo wrote: [...] I think a lot of zerg players are not abusing many of the good qualities of the race. Be it nydus, mobility, mass transfuse, fast tech switches. I see zerg players using their armies like they were P or T. engaging in small chokes, not flanking, not coming from behind, not making archs, not abusing their higher mobility and attacking from various sides at the same time and then just retreat when the big slow ball army arrives to defend. They just make a full frontal attack. True, it's not as easy, and probably that's one of the reasons we don't see it yet, but it's guaranteed to be more effective. As you should know, the more mobile a unit is, the weaker its strength, and i don't see players using that mobility, they watch a 200 vs 200 a mobile army vs a slower one and get surprised that the slower one wins, then complain about imbalance. Ridiculous. [...]
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: 1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
1. No it's not. It's a delusion of grandeur coming from zerg players. 2. I'd argue Terran requires the highest APM at the absolute top level. 3. Pointless and subjective. Nada and Boxer play Terran, MC plays Protoss. Doesn't mean a single thing. 4. Also untrue. In fact, the most common thing for zergs to do on ladder is just to pump out drones and have no units and thus die to an attack (or baneling bust). 5. What the hell is this, is this an actual argument?
Your entire post is so biased that it's actually disgusting.
I made that post extra provoking to get some responses.
My background is I've played RTS for many years, including on pro level. For years, replays, mainly WC3 and SC:BW, was my main sparetime entertainment, and I estimate I've seen about 1500-2000 pro replays in my time. In other words, I have sufficient metacognition about RTSing to know the dynamics, estimate risks / potential / effort / concentration involved in RTS exchanges.
In your post here, you seem to be mixing two concepts:
1) Zergs "required skill", where Zergs always need an extra layer of multitasking for expanding, queens and larvae, on top of everything else they want to do. Also, the tiny margin of error which requires perfectionism in every attack. 2) Terran (and Protoss') "opportunity skill", where the micro and harassment has a refinement potential (stim / kite / blink / forcefield / drops / etc) that does not exist for Zerg.
To illustrate, Zergs improvement over time curve is slow at the beginning, then rises fast, until the curve flattens out where Protoss and Terrans curves continue rising due to having more opportunities for refinement.
Delusions of grandeur - where would Zerg players get that from? Hardly winning any tournaments? Being beaten by simple build orders? You argue that Zergs often lose to over- or underdroning - that's how the game goes when you are forced to play to someone else's tune.
I am not saying that players like MarineKingPrime, MVP or oGsMC are bad. They are very, very impressive players. But they have opportunities that their Zerg opponents do not, and they have a lot more attention available in their games, than their Zerg opponents do. Creative, high-level micro Zerg players like Fruitdealer, face defeat after defeat that they don't deserve, against inferior players.
The fact is, for each day P / T's deny that Zerg underpowered state remains a problem, Starcraft 2's potential is losing momentum, by tournaments being 2-race mirrorfests, and by players not being rewarded for their actual skill in terms of wins.
On April 20 2011 08:12 WhiteDog wrote: Most of the guy saying anything here are just clueless about zerg's point of view in ZvP, you just have no clue at all.
I should just summit my own replay, the replay of a lonely nooby 3k5 master zerg that TRY, because I try, we try, we ALL TRY as zerg players. Most of you just don't watch IdrA's stream: there are infestors everywhere, broodlord reached a lot, he switch tech a lot, ling bling / burrowed roach / roach hydra / ling roach, he tries everything. It is like the protoss community is here saying you just suck just make "nydus" and "infestOrZ". Myself, at my own level, I make a lot of infestor, my most recent ZvP style is some kind of modified aquanda's style: I start with a fast 3rd and ling bling upgraded, then I had roach, hydra and I try to harass while teching to infestor / corruptors / upgrades / T3 into ultras. I use almost all my units (except mutas for some reasons), I tech switch a lot. We all try, we all use all our units.
The freaking death ball is and has NEVER been the problem in ZvP : the guy talking about that are just clueless about the match up / are not good enough. The deathball is just very very cost effective, but the death ball can be countered with the right unit mix / the right economy / the right tech. But here is the problem about zerg, and the problem in ZvP in my opinion. Zerg are weak to scout until overlord speed, so we can just guess and act on the guess that we have AND the zerg have NO DEFENSIVE UNIT. There is no, NOT ONE, unit that help zerg defend cost efficiently. The lurker is no more, so the only way to defend is to OUTMUSCLE your opponent: you need to build a shitload of unit. In fact, the best way to understand is to watch ZvZ: in ZvZ, the moment you tech to infestor is actually a weird moment because you're weak for a short moment, because making the infestor pit, upgrading the infestors, mean more or less 4-5 less roach than your opponent and THAT IS BIG in a match were it is most likely roach vs roach for a bunch of time. So the only way is to delay infestorz, almost nobody just rush to infestor after having like 10-15 "safe" roach. No the "safe roach" spot is more likely around 30.
That's why so many Zerg just stay in Lair for so long: because we all had this experience trying to tech and getting just roflcrushed by a useless 6 gate / 4 gate or any 3 rax pressure. It's a game with no defensive advantage, were zerg have lost their only mid game strong cost efficient defensive unit. Protoss have sentries, Terran have tank and MMM that are still very cost effective, we have none of that. Even the last "original" play, like mondragon or spanishiwa, are all MADE to compensate that weakness: spanishiwa just mass spine and queen so that he can tech up without having to make a shitload of roach/hydra or ling/baneling and keep all his gaz to tech, but to do that he just cripple his agressive capacities early game (and in my opinion it's a shitty "style" that should not work). Mondragon on the other side just counter that by being very agressive with the most cost efficient unit the zerg have: the roach (you know, if you don't want to defend, just play agressive). But zerg is also shitty to play agressive: we have no units with high range high speed that are great to harass (we have one high range and slow, one fast and low range).
I will even say something maybe a bit harsh: the current protoss community is pretty weak and just dont understand shit about ZvP. They feel more or less "ok" with the current death ball that they just don't see the zerg weakness and don't abuse it. MC understood since some times now, and just roflstomp every zerg he sees.
So to sums up: we can tech to infestors every game, but by doing that, we will just get crushed one game every 3 game by a noob that just come at our door at the right time. The only and most efficient way to play ZvP is still to stay on roach / ling bling / hydra roach for a while just to defend or play agressive while teching.
^ 2) Opportunity skill is there for Z. Baneling drops, fungal drops, Burrow micro (much like blink), NP, multiprong fighting (were the BEST at pushing multiple areas at once, given how durable/good roaches are, and all the tools we have early)
Not to mention contaminate, nydus worms, burrowed banelings.
Theres opportunity for micro, just maybe not int he terms YOU see it (blink, ff, stim)
On April 20 2011 01:54 TheResidentEvil wrote: protoss use their strongest units and zerg dont. Pretty easy to see how this got one sided. I mean people complain about the Void Ray/ Colo and its the Toss STRONGEST units.
The issue here is that protoss can turtle while they slowly amass their "best units" while zerg couldn't do that. Try rushing to broodlord/infestor on 2-3 bases as zerg and see what happens. It's the scaling as you build your armies, zerg has to react to the potential of a 3-4 gate pressure, then 5-6 gate pressure, then air harass, dt tech so we're building our lower tier units and what happens? the protoss can either "shark mode" as inControl puts it or even just sit and turtle.
Zerg options? Keep the units and try to engage eventually with them while teching/expanding or throw the units at the protoss via harassment. But it's so easy for the protoss to defend while taking minimal losses. Every unit the protoss gets along the way (sentries, then stalkers/void ray/colossus in any order) contributes immediately to their army AND adds to their deathball.
this is borderline theorycrafting. I can make up stuff too. Zerg can baneling bust, 6 pool, roach rush, nydus all kinds of stuff. Don't say every unit the protoss has and say you have to worry about them. Every unit you kill as zerg takes away from the toss death ball.
That is absolutely not theorycrafting, it's what happens every single game. Zerg have shitty scouting
Zerg have the fastest, cheapest ground unit in the game, which can turn invisible while stationary. This provides a shitload of scouting. Zerg have the cheapest flying unit in the game. This provides a shitload of scouting.
You, not the Zerg, are holding you back.
Zerglings and overlords are indeed good at scouting, you're quite correct. The problem is that it's pathetically easy to negate that scouting. Zerglings can only see what your opponent lets them see. Anything out on the map they'll spot quickly, sure. But anything inside your opponent's base? Not a chance. Overlords are the same. Sure, you can suicide them into the enemy base, but they're slow as fuck. Unless your opponent is bad, they'll be shot down before they see anything other than a few pylons or supply depots. Yes, overlord speed will help with that, but overlord speed comes out stupidly slowly. Lair tech takes forever. Imagine if all your tech structures took as long as a Dark Shrine to build. Any sort of timing attack will have already hit by the time overlord speed (or burrow, for that matter) is finished.
The problem with Zerg scouting is that, if your opponent actively tries to block your scouting attempts, they will 100% succeed. If IdrA he says that "no amount of creativity will get a zergling past a wall or an overlord past a marine", he's probably right. He gets a huge amount of flak for refusing to adapt and doing the same thing every game, but anyone who's watched him stream or, indeed, paid any sort of attention to him rather than just reading what his detractors say will know that he doesn't do these things because he's tried them many, many times and they simply don't work. How many Zerg pros have ever said that their scouting is perfectly fine and they can see cheeses and timing pushes coming fairly often? None that I've seen. How many have said the exact opposite? Pretty much every pro who's ever been asked about the game's balance. And almost no Terran or Protoss players have ever complained that they can't see anything coming. There's a reason for that, and it's not that every Zerg player in the world is a whiny little bitch who never tries anything other than roach/hydra and 1a.
On April 20 2011 16:28 Malpractice.248 wrote: ^ 2) Opportunity skill is there for Z. Baneling drops, fungal drops, Burrow micro (much like blink), NP, multiprong fighting (were the BEST at pushing multiple areas at once, given how durable/good roaches are, and all the tools we have early)
Not to mention contaminate, nydus worms, burrowed banelings.
Theres opportunity for micro, just maybe not int he terms YOU see it (blink, ff, stim)
In the main phases of the game, drops require an investment and timing that Zergs find it difficult to afford, or plan towards, because they are mostly waiting for the opponent's initiative. If drops were easier available, I would completely agree. The same goes for nydus worms.
Both P and T have too many tools available to counter burrow micro. As for burrowing hurt units, Zerg battle math requires numbers, and it is usually better to let a unit die. Zerg units have a low attack rate, which make them easier to micro against, and Terran units have high attack rates, which means it is harder to micro against them.
The reason why blink, ff, stim, slow (marauder), drops, high movement speed, big range, high attack speed, have a strong refinement potential, is simply because these are among the ultimate abilities in RTSing. If you watched some WC3, these abilities are basically what RTS micro is built around, and Zerg have poor access to all of these.
On April 19 2011 21:24 partysnatcher wrote: 1) Zerg is more difficult to just play "normally" - this is a fact, and few people will deny this. 2) When SC2 was refined to require less APM, a lot of fast, skilled players looked towards Z because they thought they would get more out of their fast fingers with Zerg. 3) Most people I know that were high level in other games, now play Zerg. Ie - better, higher quality RTS players have picked Zerg. 4) It is a common experience for Zergs on ladder to play harder, sneakier and more tactical than their opponents, and lose to simple, mindless, cookie-cutter builds by P and T. 5) Most intelligent commentators and people with insight in SC2, are Zerg players.
We have some awesome Ts and Ps out there, by all means, but most Zergs are playing on "very hard"-mode. Zergs have tried to master the game on "very hard" mode for almost a year now, and are of course in the face of repeated defeat, much better trained than most Ts and Ps.
Based on player skill alone, Zerg should be the dominating race as it was in the early / mid beta.
1. No it's not. It's a delusion of grandeur coming from zerg players. 2. I'd argue Terran requires the highest APM at the absolute top level. 3. Pointless and subjective. Nada and Boxer play Terran, MC plays Protoss. Doesn't mean a single thing. 4. Also untrue. In fact, the most common thing for zergs to do on ladder is just to pump out drones and have no units and thus die to an attack (or baneling bust). 5. What the hell is this, is this an actual argument?
Your entire post is so biased that it's actually disgusting.
1. So according to you, it's easy for Zerg to play laid back macro while being safe from all the different early aggression and cheese that a Terran or Protoss can do, but it's hard for a Protoss to just sit on 3 bases with FFs and cannons and mass up a deathball? Give me a fucking break.
I'm not gonna argue with rest of his points since they are stupid as hell and, as you said, pointless. But the fact remains, almost every pro Zerg has complained about Zerg being UP one way or another, while Boxer is basically only Terran who's ever complained his race, and that was way back when Fruitdealer was somehow considered the top player in the world. There was never a time when Zerg was considered "strong" except when Roaches got a range buff. Zerg has been consistently underrepresented at top levels since the game's release and if anyone's delusional, it's you.
On April 19 2011 16:59 AzureD wrote: People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
LMAO, im guessing you play toss, when you figure out the unstoppable 200 food zerg army, pls promise me, you'll make a post and solve all our zerg troubles.
I actually play Zerg these days. Against Toss that let me macro who just sit back and build their army to 200 food I beat pretty easily. Let me give you an example.
This is the Toss composition. Colossus, Void Ray, Stalker, Sentry that gets reinforced by Zealot warp in.
This gets crushed by Ultra, Infestor, Hydra with maybe 50 food army left over in favor of Zerg. If instead it is more Zealot heavy it gets smashed by Ultra + Baneling + Infestor.
Although at all times the Infestors are the most critical units as they have the power to change your army requirements on demand. They have AA capability, AoE attack, the ability to stop kiting, the ability to break FF, the ability to have certain enemy units fight for you, the ability to pull enemy units away from their ball, and the ability to harass in multiple ways.
Other things I learned form using the Infestor a lot is that the unit becomes more effective in armies that do damage rapidly so NP works better with Zerglings, Hydra, Ultra, or Banelings. While NP does not work well with Roach, Muta, Corruptor, or Broodlord. Same deal with Fungal. Works well when you can kill in the time frame of a Fungal. For example a Fungaled Stalker will die in 3 hits from an Ultralisk or about 2 seconds.
Yes these Zerg death balls are high on gas and not easy to get in a timely manner but that's part of the process. Most of the most dangerous Toss death balls are also high on gas and I am going to have more expansions that him which are actually there mostly for the gas.
Having 5 expansions is not very effective when it comes to minerals but they are effective when it comes to gas as the first thing I grab on my 4th and 5th expansions are the gas.
Also at high economy Nydus play does work when you can replace Nydus worms faster than his warp cool down because that is the most mobile part of his defense.
On April 19 2011 16:59 AzureD wrote: People keep saying the 200 food Toss army is stronger than the 200 food Zerg army but this seems like an assumption to me. To me it is more like Zerg has problems getting the 200 food army that can beat the 200 food Toss army.
I am pretty sure I can come up with a mix of Zerg units that will beat any mix of Toss units at 200 food.
My prediction is that harassment style play while teching will become the way to fight Protoss deathballs.
LMAO, im guessing you play toss, when you figure out the unstoppable 200 food zerg army, pls promise me, you'll make a post and solve all our zerg troubles.
I actually play Zerg these days. Against Toss that let me macro who just sit back and build their army to 200 food I beat pretty easily. Let me give you an example.
This is the Toss composition. Colossus, Void Ray, Stalker, Sentry that gets reinforced by Zealot warp in.
This gets crushed by Ultra, Infestor, Hydra with maybe 50 food army left over in favor of Zerg. If instead it is more Zealot heavy it gets smashed by Ultra + Baneling + Infestor.
Although at all times the Infestors are the most critical units as they have the power to change your army requirements on demand. They have AA capability, AoE attack, the ability to stop kiting, the ability to break FF, the ability to have certain enemy units fight for you, the ability to pull enemy units away from their ball, and the ability to harass in multiple ways.
Other things I learned form using the Infestor a lot is that the unit becomes more effective in armies that do damage rapidly so NP works better with Zerglings, Hydra, Ultra, or Banelings. While NP does not work well with Roach, Muta, Corruptor, or Broodlord. Same deal with Fungal. Works well when you can kill in the time frame of a Fungal. For example a Fungaled Stalker will die in 3 hits from an Ultralisk or about 2 seconds.
Yes these Zerg death balls are high on gas and not easy to get in a timely manner but that's part of the process. Most of the most dangerous Toss death balls are also high on gas and I am going to have more expansions that him which are actually there mostly for the gas.
Having 5 expansions is not very effective when it comes to minerals but they are effective when it comes to gas as the first thing I grab on my 4th and 5th expansions are the gas.
Also at high economy Nydus play does work when you can replace Nydus worms faster than his warp cool down because that is the most mobile part of his defense.
I was testing some unit compositions with a friend yesterday and also found that Ultra/Hydra/Infestor is one of the few cost effective ways of beating Colossus/Voidray/Stalker. (We both had 120 supply army and realistic upgrades)
Even the last "original" play, like mondragon or spanishiwa, are all MADE to compensate that weakness: spanishiwa just mass spine and queen so that he can tech up without having to make a shitload of roach/hydra or ling/baneling and keep all his gaz to tech, but to do that he just cripple his agressive capacities early game (and in my opinion it's a shitty "style" that should not work). Mondragon on the other side just counter that by being very agressive with the most cost efficient unit the zerg have: the roach (you know, if you don't want to defend, just play agressive). But zerg is also shitty to play agressive: we have no units with high range high speed that are great to harass (we have one high range and slow, one fast and low range).
That's the right attitude by dismissing other styles and saying shit is broken and needs to be patched. Maybe that's the reason zergs aren't really doing progress.
Players that are pursuing their own ZvP style (spanishiwa / mondragon / sheth) seem to do quite well in that matchup.
I'm sorry, I was not intending to say that their style was bad or unskill at all, that's the opposite, mondragon is awesome and spanishiwa too. (I edited because the word are harsh for such a good player as spanishiwa) But when i say that spanishiwa's style is "shit", what I mean is that making a shitload of spine and queen and just decide to let down any kind of early agressive play by sitting back is not what zerg "should" be, it's a style that I don't want to play because it did not match my playstyle at all: you just let go the first half of the game and the opponent CAN abuse it.
About mondragon's playstyle, playing agressive is so good and goddamn impressive, but : it ask for a damn good mechanics, and still, as I said, zerg early agression is weak because we do not have that fast / high range unit that can take down canon. Roach, with 4 range attack, are hella bad against canon and wall in (our agression is not cost effective in the end). July playstyle is most likely the same but more ling/bling focussed and more all-inish. By the way, I do pretty good against protoss, but sometime I get roflstomped by a weird timing attack that I had not prepared for, and preparing for it mean letting something else go: delaying your tech (in a way that if the protoss step back and death ball it up you're dead) or just letting go any kind of early agressive play, so that. Protoss player just don't seems to understand that yet, and don't abuse it.
I will have a bold statement: in protoss vs zerg, the most undiscovered race is the protoss.
On April 20 2011 08:12 WhiteDog wrote: But here is the problem about zerg, and the problem in ZvP in my opinion. Zerg are weak to scout until overlord speed, so we can just guess and act on the guess that we have AND the zerg have NO DEFENSIVE UNIT. There is no, NOT ONE, unit that help zerg defend cost efficiently. The lurker is no more, so the only way to defend is to OUTMUSCLE your opponent: you need to build a shitload of unit.
Queens and Spines are efficient defensive units, available very early in the game.
Exactly, Queens and spines. But when you build them, you just let go any kind of early agression: why does the protoss just don't abuse that by expanding a lot ? They did not have figured it out yet. The future of ZvP will more about be denying scout, abusing weird timing attack or death ball it up in a way that zerg will have to prepare to counter everything and, in the end, just die because of the lack of tech unit / good enough economy.
All in all, ZvP will not be balanced until the next expansion, because what zerg needs is a new unit with a very cost efficient defensive power like the lurker. If you just tweak the zerg in a way that the match up is not imbalanced anymore, then Z will be overpower.
theory zvp i think its a combination with 2 things
reason 1 protoss has figured out the early game more, how to expand safely and getting a greater economy than zerg. (forge expand gets more economy than a pool expand or gas pool expand, at the same time it can punish a hatchery first with cannon rush). so then zergs option to catch up is to take a extremely fast 3rd base but this has been prooven many times to die to 6warpgate +1 timing attacks or the simple voidray +streamline of phoenixes.
the 3warpgate expand has its own beauty on smaller maps but also maps without as wide chokes. the units themselves are sentrys which not only defends any allin zerg does, also they build up energy to be great in mid and late game. on top of this creating these units themselves forces zerg to build defenses. and not a too uncommon strategy is to cancel the nexus and go for an allin, which zerg has no possibility to scout in time to prepare, so zergs only option is to overmake defenses every time he see 3warpgate expand.
so to sum it up the only way you dont fall behind vs a 3warpgate expand on rather small maps is too take huge risks and hope he dont cancel the nexus and did a 4/5gate fake nexus strategy.
and on big maps they can comfortably forge expand without any risk what so ever of cheese if they scout well and always get a unfair lead.
reason 2 protoss used to be this timing attack race off of 2 or 3 bases but recently they have figured out all they have to do is max out on 200 food and only turtle because no matter how many bases zerg has he still cant get a huge economic lead because u cant literally produce over 80 drones. zerg became the timing attack player instead, using his "economic lead" on 3-4 bases and trying to break down the protoss before his army gets too big, or simply damage it alot and rebuild and go for it again, while expanding. but this is extremely hard when protoss gets an easy 3rd base (tal darim, terminus etc). zerg is the race that wants to army trade on an even field so protoss has simply realized that there is never a reason to attack unless zerg gets too overgreedy. (and ofcourse toss has even the option to respond with another expansion aswell so again protoss attacking is always a threat to zerg but its never a must for protoss).
and once protoss gets 3 bases up and running for 1-2 minutes the zerg overpower style (attack, rebuild, attack, streamline) doesnt work anymore because protoss can rebuild at an almost equal rate. plus the larger protoss army it gets the less units they lose in fights)
so when it comes to 200 food deathballs. protoss should in theory always win, everyone knows that. so zerg is the race that wants to battle kill the majority of protosses army and then rebuild (using his bigger saved up money to his advantage).
now ive written down the way zvp should be, disregarding how hard it is for each race to execute their play so here comes the skill requiring part so not only is protoss the stronger race right now in theory. it is also easier to play the race which is widely known for anyone thats high level to know. to be the aggressor throughout the game and find ways to break the protoss is alot harder for zerg than for protoss to just figure out how to defend. also mechanically speaking the race is vastly harder aswell. and when it comes to mistakes you can make it your macro (money growing up, forgetting injects or chronoboost zerg is alot more unforgiving). if i play vs midlevel protoss users who only play the turtle style i cant even tell a difference from our best protosses in europe, except for maybe the microcontrol. whenever you see zvp on TSL or NASL or GSL, people are always judging the zerg what he is doing wrong, what he should be doing you can note if he forgets to spread creep or when his money gets high you call thats why he lose. protosses is like 80% of the case the one thats executing more badly than the zerg but nobody is mentioning that because its harder to see and it doesnt matter because the toss end up cleaning up anyway. i know i come off as extremely biased because i havent been doing too well in tournaments lately vs protosses but keep in mind. i dont ladder, all my zvp practice comes from literally only playing progamer protosses and talking to them about the game and how this matchup works (mainly with naniwa). i wouldnt come here and say toss is alot easier to play than zerg if they wouldnt tell me the same. im not a toss progamer but they say themselves zerg has to be vastly superior to compete on the same level. i have alot to improve on in zvp but i dont see myself worse than any other zerg in this matchup and i hope you can trust my word for that. ive been practicing this matchup almost exlusivly the past weeks and still my winratio in zvt is about 20% higher than in zvp. ive practiced mutalisk play, ive tried multipromt attacks and nyduses. and high infestor play. but the overpower style is the absolute best way (and most solid imo) to play this matchup
On April 20 2011 18:23 MorroW wrote: theory zvp i think its a combination with 2 things
reason 1 protoss has figured out the early game more, how to expand safely and getting a greater economy than zerg. (forge expand gets more economy than a pool expand or gas pool expand, at the same time it can punish a hatchery first with cannon rush). so then zergs option to catch up is to take a extremely fast 3rd base but this has been prooven many times to die to 6warpgate +1 timing attacks or the simple voidray +streamline of phoenixes.
the 3warpgate expand has its own beauty on smaller maps but also maps without as wide chokes. the units themselves are sentrys which not only defends any allin zerg does, also they build up energy to be great in mid and late game. on top of this creating these units themselves forces zerg to build defenses. and not a too uncommon strategy is to cancel the nexus and go for an allin, which zerg has no possibility to scout in time to prepare, so zergs only option is to overmake defenses every time he see 3warpgate expand.
so to sum it up the only way you dont fall behind vs a 3warpgate expand on rather small maps is too take huge risks and hope he dont cancel the nexus and did a 4/5gate fake nexus strategy.
and on big maps they can comfortably forge expand without any risk what so ever of cheese if they scout well and always get a unfair lead.
reason 2 protoss used to be this timing attack race off of 2 or 3 bases but recently they have figured out all they have to do is max out on 200 food and only turtle because no matter how many bases zerg has he still cant get a huge economic lead because u cant literally produce over 80 drones. zerg became the timing attack player instead, using his "economic lead" on 3-4 bases and trying to break down the protoss before his army gets too big, or simply damage it alot and rebuild and go for it again, while expanding. but this is extremely hard when protoss gets an easy 3rd base (tal darim, terminus etc). zerg is the race that wants to army trade on an even field so protoss has simply realized that there is never a reason to attack unless zerg gets too overgreedy. (and ofcourse toss has even the option to respond with another expansion aswell so again protoss attacking is always a threat to zerg but its never a must for protoss).
and once protoss gets 3 bases up and running for 1-2 minutes the zerg overpower style (attack, rebuild, attack, streamline) doesnt work anymore because protoss can rebuild at an almost equal rate. plus the larger protoss army it gets the less units they lose in fights)
so when it comes to 200 food deathballs. protoss should in theory always win, everyone knows that. so zerg is the race that wants to battle kill the majority of protosses army and then rebuild (using his bigger saved up money to his advantage).
now ive written down the way zvp should be, disregarding how hard it is for each race to execute their play so here comes the skill requiring part so not only is protoss the stronger race right now in theory. it is also easier to play the race which is widely known for anyone thats high level to know. to be the aggressor throughout the game and find ways to break the protoss is alot harder for zerg than for protoss to just figure out how to defend. also mechanically speaking the race is vastly harder aswell. and when it comes to mistakes you can make it your macro (money growing up, forgetting injects or chronoboost zerg is alot more unforgiving). if i play vs midlevel protoss users who only play the turtle style i cant even tell a difference from our best protosses in europe, except for maybe the microcontrol. whenever you see zvp on TSL or NASL or GSL, people are always judging the zerg what he is doing wrong, what he should be doing you can note if he forgets to spread creep or when his money gets high you call thats why he lose. protosses is like 80% of the case the one thats executing more badly than the zerg but nobody is mentioning that because its harder to see and it doesnt matter because the toss end up cleaning up anyway. i know i come off as extremely biased because i havent been doing too well in tournaments lately vs protosses but keep in mind. i dont ladder, all my zvp practice comes from literally only playing progamer protosses and talking to them about the game and how this matchup works (mainly with naniwa). i wouldnt come here and say toss is alot easier to play than zerg if they wouldnt tell me the same. im not a toss progamer but they say themselves zerg has to be vastly superior to compete on the same level. i have alot to improve on in zvp but i dont see myself worse than any other zerg in this matchup and i hope you can trust my word for that. ive been practicing this matchup almost exlusivly the past weeks and still my winratio in zvt is about 20% higher than in zvp. ive practiced mutalisk play, ive tried multipromt attacks and nyduses. and high infestor play. but the overpower style is the absolute best way (and most solid imo) to play this matchup
Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Even the last "original" play, like mondragon or spanishiwa, are all MADE to compensate that weakness: spanishiwa just mass spine and queen so that he can tech up without having to make a shitload of roach/hydra or ling/baneling and keep all his gaz to tech, but to do that he just cripple his agressive capacities early game (and in my opinion it's a shitty "style" that should not work). Mondragon on the other side just counter that by being very agressive with the most cost efficient unit the zerg have: the roach (you know, if you don't want to defend, just play agressive). But zerg is also shitty to play agressive: we have no units with high range high speed that are great to harass (we have one high range and slow, one fast and low range).
That's the right attitude by dismissing other styles and saying shit is broken and needs to be patched. Maybe that's the reason zergs aren't really doing progress.
Players that are pursuing their own ZvP style (spanishiwa / mondragon / sheth) seem to do quite well in that matchup.
On April 20 2011 08:12 WhiteDog wrote: But here is the problem about zerg, and the problem in ZvP in my opinion. Zerg are weak to scout until overlord speed, so we can just guess and act on the guess that we have AND the zerg have NO DEFENSIVE UNIT. There is no, NOT ONE, unit that help zerg defend cost efficiently. The lurker is no more, so the only way to defend is to OUTMUSCLE your opponent: you need to build a shitload of unit.
Queens and Spines are efficient defensive units, available very early in the game.
Exactly, Queens and spines. But when you build them, you just let go any kind of early agression: why does the protoss just don't abuse that by expanding a lot ? They did not have figured it out yet. The future of ZvP will more about be denying scout, abusing weird timing attack or death ball it up in a way that zerg will have to prepare to counter everything and, in the end, just die because of the lack of tech unit / good enough economy.
All in all, ZvP will not be balanced until the next expansion, because what zerg needs is a new unit with a very cost efficient defensive power like the lurker. If you just tweak the zerg in a way that the match up is not imbalanced anymore, then Z will be overpower.
Forge FE is the standard Protoss opening in BW PvZ, and it's quite common in SC2 if the map is amenable. Protoss players apparently do not find it necessary to apply early pressure if they can pump workers on two early bases from behind a static defense (which they grow as appropriate to the level of threat from the opponent, given somewhat limited but highly valued scouting information). Why do Zerg?
And Protoss's defense doesn't spread creep, or relocate itself...
I'm also not convinced a double expand would counter the Ice Fisher style. The Zerg's economic boost will kick in long before the Protoss's, and then Protoss is strewn out defending three bases with far fewer units.
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Lol...
Deja vu anyone?
This sounds like threads made for protoss back in the day... and for terran too..
I say people need to stop complaining so much and start practicing the un-practiceable. Start playing that 'unplayable' strategy. Start doing that 'unmicroable' micro.
That's how we got gosu sentry ff skill. That's how we got gosu marine split micro. That's how we overcome current 'metagame' problems.
Remember, it's always undoable/unplayable/broken... until that one person shows us that it isn't. =)
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Lol...
Deja vu anyone?
This sounds like threads made for protoss back in the day... and for terran too..
I say people need to stop complaining so much and start practicing the un-practiceable. Start playing that 'unplayable' strategy. Start doing that 'unmicroable' micro.
That's how we got gosu sentry ff skill. That's how we got gosu marine split micro. That's how we overcome current 'metagame' problems.
Remember, it's always undoable/unplayable/broken... until that one person shows us that it isn't. =)
Read my post, we have no cost efficient way to defend our bases except for static defense. Sentry, marine are cost efficient in almost every situation and great for defense (not to mention tank, wall in and photon canon). This is not a deja vu, because we have 9 units.
I did not say it is undoable, unplayable or broken, just said this match up is and will still be a gamble for a long time.
Forge FE is the standard Protoss opening in BW PvZ, and it's quite common in SC2 if the map is amenable. Protoss players apparently do not find it necessary to apply early pressure if they can pump workers on two early bases from behind a static defense (which they grow as appropriate to the level of threat from the opponent, given somewhat limited but highly valued scouting information). Why do Zerg?
And Protoss's defense doesn't spread creep, or relocate itself...
I'm also not convinced a double expand would counter the Ice Fisher style. The Zerg's economic boost will kick in long before the Protoss's, and then Protoss is strewn out defending three bases with far fewer units.
Yet you can easily defend as protoss, Cruncher basically double expanded on shakuras and defended quite easily against a heavy roach agressive play with no spine crawler / queen at all (which means more roach ?). You are not "convinced", that's funny, just try out and perfect the build, that's basically what everyone is saying to us zerg when we say that nydus are not the solution.
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Lol...
Deja vu anyone?
This sounds like threads made for protoss back in the day... and for terran too..
I say people need to stop complaining so much and start practicing the un-practiceable. Start playing that 'unplayable' strategy. Start doing that 'unmicroable' micro.
That's how we got gosu sentry ff skill. That's how we got gosu marine split micro. That's how we overcome current 'metagame' problems.
Remember, it's always undoable/unplayable/broken... until that one person shows us that it isn't. =)
What unmicroable micro? Zerg don't have any microable units. Like, none. At all. There's a very good reason that stutter step, marine splits and FFs have been invented and perfected while Zerg has done nothing of the sort. Protoss is designed to have lots of micro possibilites, Terran is half/half and Zerg is a race designed to macro hard and 1a a lot. They have no real abilities to speak of, and all have sub-par range, which prevents any sort of fancy kiting micro. There just aren't any fancy micro tricks to discover other than burrow micro, which has already been discovered and is rendered entirely useless by a single detector.
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Lol...
Deja vu anyone?
This sounds like threads made for protoss back in the day... and for terran too..
I say people need to stop complaining so much and start practicing the un-practiceable. Start playing that 'unplayable' strategy. Start doing that 'unmicroable' micro.
That's how we got gosu sentry ff skill. That's how we got gosu marine split micro. That's how we overcome current 'metagame' problems.
Remember, it's always undoable/unplayable/broken... until that one person shows us that it isn't. =)
Read my post, we have no cost efficient way to defend our bases except for static defense. Sentry, marine are cost efficient in almost every situation and great for defense (not to mention tank, wall in and photon canon). This is not a deja vu, because we have 9 units.
I did not say it is undoable, unplayable or broken, just said this match up is and will still be a gamble for a long time.
Read my post, I've read well reasoned arguments for why toss and terran were too weak in early game or mid game or late game since the beta up until a two gsls ago. Guess what? None of it matters until every possible style of play, every avenue of play, the highest skill ceiling of each race has been reached.
And it hasn't. Until then, you can't say with absolute certainty 'OH OH, we can't win because of X, or because of Y or blah blah'.
Unless you're a gosu sc2 player from the future who's figured it all out? But I'm guessing the answer to that one is... no.
OH and PS. Blizzard is still patching. There are still expansions coming up. I don't get the whining -_-
On April 20 2011 18:29 WhiteDog wrote: Morrow, don't you think that, if we had some kind of lurkerish unit that could defend cost efficiently against any kind of 4/6 gate push, we could tech up and beat the death ball with a mix of infestor / high tech units ?
Also, I saw you using baneling bomb against socke, did you let go that idea ? You made none against you compadre HasuObs.
I dont think this is a good place to discuss what kind of units Zerg needs. Rather think about how to beat Protoss in the current patch.
That's my point, the match up will always be a gamble on zerg side because we do not have a defensive unit and we have limited knowledge due to lack of scouting early game (before overlord speed).
Lol...
Deja vu anyone?
This sounds like threads made for protoss back in the day... and for terran too..
I say people need to stop complaining so much and start practicing the un-practiceable. Start playing that 'unplayable' strategy. Start doing that 'unmicroable' micro.
That's how we got gosu sentry ff skill. That's how we got gosu marine split micro. That's how we overcome current 'metagame' problems.
Remember, it's always undoable/unplayable/broken... until that one person shows us that it isn't. =)
Read my post, we have no cost efficient way to defend our bases except for static defense. Sentry, marine are cost efficient in almost every situation and great for defense (not to mention tank, wall in and photon canon). This is not a deja vu, because we have 9 units.
I did not say it is undoable, unplayable or broken, just said this match up is and will still be a gamble for a long time.
Read my post, I've read well reasoned arguments for why toss and terran were too weak in early game or mid game or late game since the beta up until a two gsls ago. Guess what? None of it matters until every possible style of play, every avenue of play, the highest skill ceiling of each race has been reached.
And it hasn't. Until then, you can't say with absolute certainty 'OH OH, we can't win because of X, or because of Y or blah blah'.
Unless you're a gosu sc2 player from the future who's figured it all out? But I'm guessing the answer to that one is... no.
OH and PS. Blizzard is still patching. There are still expansions coming up. I don't get the whining -_-
I've never said it is impossible, i said it's a gamble zerg have to take. Play zerg, come again. You are actually theorycrafting and just refuse to see the game: we have 9 unit, one caster that is slow offcreep and deal 0 damage, one caster that is in T2 and useless to defend any kind of early game attack. Our unit to defend are : ling bling roach hydra. Without high ground miss rate: not cost-efficient.
And yes, I'm actually saying patch will just ruin the balance, what we need is the expand and one good cost efficient defensive unit.
lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
On April 20 2011 19:31 andrewwiggin wrote: lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
On April 20 2011 16:17 partysnatcher wrote: I made that post extra provoking to get some responses.
My background is I've played RTS for many years, including on pro level. For years, replays, mainly WC3 and SC:BW, was my main sparetime entertainment, and I estimate I've seen about 1500-2000 pro replays in my time. In other words, I have sufficient metacognition about RTSing to know the dynamics, estimate risks / potential / effort / concentration involved in RTS exchanges.
In your post here, you seem to be mixing two concepts:
1) Zergs "required skill", where Zergs always need an extra layer of multitasking for expanding, queens and larvae, on top of everything else they want to do. Also, the tiny margin of error which requires perfectionism in every attack. 2) Terran (and Protoss') "opportunity skill", where the micro and harassment has a refinement potential (stim / kite / blink / forcefield / drops / etc) that does not exist for Zerg.
To illustrate, Zergs improvement over time curve is slow at the beginning, then rises fast, until the curve flattens out where Protoss and Terrans curves continue rising due to having more opportunities for refinement.
Delusions of grandeur - where would Zerg players get that from? Hardly winning any tournaments? Being beaten by simple build orders? You argue that Zergs often lose to over- or underdroning - that's how the game goes when you are forced to play to someone else's tune.
Expanding is something the other races have to think of, and is harder to pull off with the other races. The zerg larva and queen mechanic is in no way harder than the other races macro mechanics. There is a lot of room to perfect it, but the basic gist of it is pretty simplistic, keep your larva injects up and you can macro easily.
2. We have seen very few zergs use "opportunity skill" harassment methods, but when they do, it's surprisingly effective, i.e high econ baneling busts, ling counter attacks, hydra/ling/bling drops, fungaling mineral lines etc, and you can't conclude that zerg can't do it.
Also, you playing/watching 1500 games doesn't mean much. It's yet again a subjective point. Idra is arguably one of the best players in the world, but he's still extremely biased and subjective.
Also, zergs delusion of grandeur comes from a circle jerk of "we da best larva so hard" mindset, nothing to do with actual achievements.
On April 20 2011 16:57 ppdealer wrote: No they don't. Infestors are limited to their energy; Broodlords are T3.
So what that Infestors are limited by energy? So are sentries, which are protoss main defensive unit.
On April 20 2011 16:57 ppdealer wrote: 1. So according to you, it's easy for Zerg to play laid back macro while being safe from all the different early aggression and cheese that a Terran or Protoss can do, but it's hard for a Protoss to just sit on 3 bases with FFs and cannons and mass up a deathball? Give me a fucking break.
I'm not gonna argue with rest of his points since they are stupid as hell and, as you said, pointless. But the fact remains, almost every pro Zerg has complained about Zerg being UP one way or another, while Boxer is basically only Terran who's ever complained his race, and that was way back when Fruitdealer was somehow considered the top player in the world. There was never a time when Zerg was considered "strong" except when Roaches got a range buff. Zerg has been consistently underrepresented at top levels since the game's release and if anyone's delusional, it's you.
Zerg early game volatility has nothing to do with their macro mechanics/difficulty or required skill to play the race, and is mainly a product of stupid design. Their macro mechanics are not that hard. As far as people complaining about being UP. Since when is balance whine a legit argument? Terrans have been whining about protoss endgame since forever by the way, and zerg right now is considered strong once it reaches the mid-endgame against terran. Not that it matters, as is has nothing to do with my point to begin with.
You need to understand what delusions of grandeur actually means...
@Morrow, if Protoss is so much easier to play, and you can barely note differences between top, and mid protoss players, how come we don't see almost any flunctuation at all between the players that win tournaments?
On April 20 2011 20:24 Apolo wrote: @Morrow, if Protoss is so much easier to play, and you can barely note differences between top, and mid protoss players, how come we don't see almost any flunctuation at all between the players that win tournaments?
Because now that PvP has stabilized into 4gate vs 4gate 'better' Ps tend to win that MU a lot.
On April 19 2011 06:57 azarat wrote: I'm not sure I agree, and the core of my disagreement lies in the way in which the PvZ metagame developed compared to the same of ZvP.
If you cast your memory back to the early days of GSL and other tournaments, much of Protoss play in PvZ (and PvT too) was one-base or two-base in nature. There were numerous one-base plays that Protoss could make, from straight up 4-gates to mixtures of gates, Robo, Stargate, or Twilight Council/DT tech plays. Most were fairly easy to execute and hard to defend well, meaning that this style was deemed the most practical for use in tournament play. This style, as has also been ably pointed out by other posters, was reinforced by the map pool of tiny and abusable maps.
The ZvP mindset was, as you pointed out, geared toward economic plays. Though there was some usage of cheese tactics, Protoss could relatively easily fend this off, and the most successful type of Zerg player was the one that had strong mechanics and a macro-oriented style. Even hyper-aggressive Zergs like Kyrix and to some extent Fruitdealer were far more successful in longer games than in shorter ones, shorter games in which they were almost invariably the defender against some 1-base timing attack. Essentially, the ZvP style was as you say it was: macro oriented and focused on mid-to-late game pushes reinforced with a superior economy.
Fast-forward 6 months and what has changed? I think the major change, one which you refer to kind of obliquely, boils down to this: Protoss players have learned what they can get away with economically and still be safe against most or all attacks. What makes me most fear for the state of ZvP is that yes, they have learned better ways of punishing Zerg for being too greedy, but I think that's actually the result of a shift at a more fundamental level. When your style is 1-base, or limited at most to 2-base, there are inherent limitations on what you can accomplish, and what compositions can be reasonably expected. However, when you learn that you can get 3 Gateways and a bunch of low-mineral units and be impervious to all non all-in strategies so that you can get up an expansion not that far behind the Zerg, a whole bunch of other possibilities open up. Thus, the reason for the Protoss being able to punish Zergs in the early mid-game is not because of magical new strategies that involve massively different units (though Sentry usage has obviously improved immensely in the case of someone like MC), but because the economic foundations of PvZ play have fundamentally altered: you learn how few units you can get away with at the start of the game so that you just have way more shit than your opponent a few minutes from now.
This is what makes me fearful of development potential in the ZvP metagame, and its what Lalush was pointing to in his post a while back on the economics of base and drone saturation. A Zerg can't truly react to an increased Protoss economy by being even more macro-oriented. In this case, I mean "truly" in the sense of a robust metagame shift. Yes, its possible to take a super fast third like some Zergs have been doing, but this is always going to be risky. With Chrono Boost, a Protoss is going to match a 3-base Zerg with a 2-base economy for a substantial period of time. With Warp-In and Chrono Boost, a Protoss can very quickly amass an army to punish a risky third Hatchery. As Lalush pointed out, the gain you make in SC2 in going from 2-base to 3-base is much less than it was in Brood War, thus making it riskier to take these earlier expansions because your economy is not going to be clearly superior to your opponent's for much longer.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that Protoss players are quickly learning to push the boundaries at when you can take expansions and still be relatively safe. Instead of seeing third bases at 14 or 15 minutes into the game, you're seeing them at the 10 minute mark instead. However, unless you want the ZvP metagame to devolve into a series of risky all-ins to try kill off a Protoss who might have tried to push the envelope a little too far, there is an end-point in the development of Zerg economic plays.
Maybe I'm being too doom and gloom, or overly pessimistic, but I think we're already beginning to see this. Many top Zergs, the most obvious of which is Idra, have concluded that even if with incredibly strong macro mechanics they feel its dicey to push a late-game engagement with Protoss. Instead, they're opting for risky 2-base drop plays to try cripple the Protoss early on, or Roach/Ling all-ins.
Maybe some revolutionary macro-play will come along that means that late-game Zerg will again have a clear economic advantage, but I don't feel it is likely. The lack of scouting and the prevalence of strong timing attacks that will outright kill you if you don't prepare perfectly mean that boundaries exist for these types of plays.
Anyway, thats my 2c.
This is an amazing post that has truly expanded my knowledge of the meta game in general. The same can be said of Mules for Terran in TvP and TvZ as Mules allow the Terran to over mine an already fully saturated base, meaning that they can survive longer on less bases. I never really saw the chrono boost mechanic in that light before but it makes sense. Basically it means we can make units faster (and thusly keep up with larva inject for a brief period of time on 1 less base) than Terran if we spend our chrono boosts on units. I will never chrono research or upgrades again (Probes all the way! :-) This means that Protoss should always have a worker advantage and a population advantage and should be expanding sooner than Terran.
I know this is a thread about the PvZ Meta game but I think I just made a huge mental breakthrough in my PvT :-)
On April 20 2011 20:24 Apolo wrote: @Morrow, if Protoss is so much easier to play, and you can barely note differences between top, and mid protoss players, how come we don't see almost any flunctuation at all between the players that win tournaments?
Because now that PvP has stabilized into 4gate vs 4gate 'better' Ps tend to win that MU a lot.
I don't know where you get you information from but PvP definitely does not revolve exclusively around 4gate vs. 4gate. I know plenty of styles by pros that are superior to the 4gate. (Cough, Cough, Adel Scott's PvP) They just require a large learning curve that many pros still have not put the time into mastering.
On April 20 2011 18:23 MorroW wrote: theory zvp i think its a combination with 2 things
reason 1 protoss has figured out the early game more, how to expand safely and getting a greater economy than zerg. (forge expand gets more economy than a pool expand or gas pool expand, at the same time it can punish a hatchery first with cannon rush). so then zergs option to catch up is to take a extremely fast 3rd base but this has been prooven many times to die to 6warpgate +1 timing attacks or the simple voidray +streamline of phoenixes.
the 3warpgate expand has its own beauty on smaller maps but also maps without as wide chokes. the units themselves are sentrys which not only defends any allin zerg does, also they build up energy to be great in mid and late game. on top of this creating these units themselves forces zerg to build defenses. and not a too uncommon strategy is to cancel the nexus and go for an allin, which zerg has no possibility to scout in time to prepare, so zergs only option is to overmake defenses every time he see 3warpgate expand.
so to sum it up the only way you dont fall behind vs a 3warpgate expand on rather small maps is too take huge risks and hope he dont cancel the nexus and did a 4/5gate fake nexus strategy.
and on big maps they can comfortably forge expand without any risk what so ever of cheese if they scout well and always get a unfair lead.
reason 2 protoss used to be this timing attack race off of 2 or 3 bases but recently they have figured out all they have to do is max out on 200 food and only turtle because no matter how many bases zerg has he still cant get a huge economic lead because u cant literally produce over 80 drones. zerg became the timing attack player instead, using his "economic lead" on 3-4 bases and trying to break down the protoss before his army gets too big, or simply damage it alot and rebuild and go for it again, while expanding. but this is extremely hard when protoss gets an easy 3rd base (tal darim, terminus etc). zerg is the race that wants to army trade on an even field so protoss has simply realized that there is never a reason to attack unless zerg gets too overgreedy. (and ofcourse toss has even the option to respond with another expansion aswell so again protoss attacking is always a threat to zerg but its never a must for protoss).
and once protoss gets 3 bases up and running for 1-2 minutes the zerg overpower style (attack, rebuild, attack, streamline) doesnt work anymore because protoss can rebuild at an almost equal rate. plus the larger protoss army it gets the less units they lose in fights)
so when it comes to 200 food deathballs. protoss should in theory always win, everyone knows that. so zerg is the race that wants to battle kill the majority of protosses army and then rebuild (using his bigger saved up money to his advantage).
now ive written down the way zvp should be, disregarding how hard it is for each race to execute their play so here comes the skill requiring part so not only is protoss the stronger race right now in theory. it is also easier to play the race which is widely known for anyone thats high level to know. to be the aggressor throughout the game and find ways to break the protoss is alot harder for zerg than for protoss to just figure out how to defend. also mechanically speaking the race is vastly harder aswell. and when it comes to mistakes you can make it your macro (money growing up, forgetting injects or chronoboost zerg is alot more unforgiving). if i play vs midlevel protoss users who only play the turtle style i cant even tell a difference from our best protosses in europe, except for maybe the microcontrol. whenever you see zvp on TSL or NASL or GSL, people are always judging the zerg what he is doing wrong, what he should be doing you can note if he forgets to spread creep or when his money gets high you call thats why he lose. protosses is like 80% of the case the one thats executing more badly than the zerg but nobody is mentioning that because its harder to see and it doesnt matter because the toss end up cleaning up anyway. i know i come off as extremely biased because i havent been doing too well in tournaments lately vs protosses but keep in mind. i dont ladder, all my zvp practice comes from literally only playing progamer protosses and talking to them about the game and how this matchup works (mainly with naniwa). i wouldnt come here and say toss is alot easier to play than zerg if they wouldnt tell me the same. im not a toss progamer but they say themselves zerg has to be vastly superior to compete on the same level. i have alot to improve on in zvp but i dont see myself worse than any other zerg in this matchup and i hope you can trust my word for that. ive been practicing this matchup almost exlusivly the past weeks and still my winratio in zvt is about 20% higher than in zvp. ive practiced mutalisk play, ive tried multipromt attacks and nyduses. and high infestor play. but the overpower style is the absolute best way (and most solid imo) to play this matchup
Posting just to say thanks for your insight, it's really valuable.
On April 19 2011 06:57 azarat wrote: I'm not sure I agree, and the core of my disagreement lies in the way in which the PvZ metagame developed compared to the same of ZvP.
If you cast your memory back to the early days of GSL and other tournaments, much of Protoss play in PvZ (and PvT too) was one-base or two-base in nature. There were numerous one-base plays that Protoss could make, from straight up 4-gates to mixtures of gates, Robo, Stargate, or Twilight Council/DT tech plays. Most were fairly easy to execute and hard to defend well, meaning that this style was deemed the most practical for use in tournament play. This style, as has also been ably pointed out by other posters, was reinforced by the map pool of tiny and abusable maps.
The ZvP mindset was, as you pointed out, geared toward economic plays. Though there was some usage of cheese tactics, Protoss could relatively easily fend this off, and the most successful type of Zerg player was the one that had strong mechanics and a macro-oriented style. Even hyper-aggressive Zergs like Kyrix and to some extent Fruitdealer were far more successful in longer games than in shorter ones, shorter games in which they were almost invariably the defender against some 1-base timing attack. Essentially, the ZvP style was as you say it was: macro oriented and focused on mid-to-late game pushes reinforced with a superior economy.
Fast-forward 6 months and what has changed? I think the major change, one which you refer to kind of obliquely, boils down to this: Protoss players have learned what they can get away with economically and still be safe against most or all attacks. What makes me most fear for the state of ZvP is that yes, they have learned better ways of punishing Zerg for being too greedy, but I think that's actually the result of a shift at a more fundamental level. When your style is 1-base, or limited at most to 2-base, there are inherent limitations on what you can accomplish, and what compositions can be reasonably expected. However, when you learn that you can get 3 Gateways and a bunch of low-mineral units and be impervious to all non all-in strategies so that you can get up an expansion not that far behind the Zerg, a whole bunch of other possibilities open up. Thus, the reason for the Protoss being able to punish Zergs in the early mid-game is not because of magical new strategies that involve massively different units (though Sentry usage has obviously improved immensely in the case of someone like MC), but because the economic foundations of PvZ play have fundamentally altered: you learn how few units you can get away with at the start of the game so that you just have way more shit than your opponent a few minutes from now.
This is what makes me fearful of development potential in the ZvP metagame, and its what Lalush was pointing to in his post a while back on the economics of base and drone saturation. A Zerg can't truly react to an increased Protoss economy by being even more macro-oriented. In this case, I mean "truly" in the sense of a robust metagame shift. Yes, its possible to take a super fast third like some Zergs have been doing, but this is always going to be risky. With Chrono Boost, a Protoss is going to match a 3-base Zerg with a 2-base economy for a substantial period of time. With Warp-In and Chrono Boost, a Protoss can very quickly amass an army to punish a risky third Hatchery. As Lalush pointed out, the gain you make in SC2 in going from 2-base to 3-base is much less than it was in Brood War, thus making it riskier to take these earlier expansions because your economy is not going to be clearly superior to your opponent's for much longer.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that Protoss players are quickly learning to push the boundaries at when you can take expansions and still be relatively safe. Instead of seeing third bases at 14 or 15 minutes into the game, you're seeing them at the 10 minute mark instead. However, unless you want the ZvP metagame to devolve into a series of risky all-ins to try kill off a Protoss who might have tried to push the envelope a little too far, there is an end-point in the development of Zerg economic plays.
Maybe I'm being too doom and gloom, or overly pessimistic, but I think we're already beginning to see this. Many top Zergs, the most obvious of which is Idra, have concluded that even if with incredibly strong macro mechanics they feel its dicey to push a late-game engagement with Protoss. Instead, they're opting for risky 2-base drop plays to try cripple the Protoss early on, or Roach/Ling all-ins.
Maybe some revolutionary macro-play will come along that means that late-game Zerg will again have a clear economic advantage, but I don't feel it is likely. The lack of scouting and the prevalence of strong timing attacks that will outright kill you if you don't prepare perfectly mean that boundaries exist for these types of plays.
Anyway, thats my 2c.
This is an amazing post that has truly expanded my knowledge of the meta game in general. The same can be said of Mules for Terran in TvP and TvZ as Mules allow the Terran to over mine an already fully saturated base, meaning that they can survive longer on less bases. I never really saw the chrono boost mechanic in that light before but it makes sense. Basically it means we can make units faster (and thusly keep up with larva inject for a brief period of time on 1 less base) than Terran if we spend our chrono boosts on units. I will never chrono research or upgrades again (Probes all the way! :-) This means that Protoss should always have a worker advantage and a population advantage and should be expanding sooner than Terran.
I know this is a thread about the PvZ Meta game but I think I just made a huge mental breakthrough in my PvT :-)
no they can not if anything mules just mine out your bases faster, also other races always have more workers, good rule of thumb for terran is to have the same amount of bases as your opponent
This game had a number of different deathballs in it.
Destiny im sure made alot of mistakes... which i think was him ignoring the idiot who told him what iNcontrol was doin and then paying the price.
But hyrda broodlord seemed to be really effective when positioned right. It was good of him to sacrifice the roaches though to a bunch of cannons.... but im sure he couldve been more effective.
I just worry that if the only way to beat this is to prevent it, then it can never be balanced. Again though... that is if its the only way, hopefully there is a composition that will work. And if there is, im sure the people of TL will find it .
This game had a number of different deathballs in it.
Destiny im sure made alot of mistakes... which i think was him ignoring the idiot who told him what iNcontrol was doin and then paying the price.
But hyrda broodlord seemed to be really effective when positioned right. It was good of him to sacrifice the roaches though to a bunch of cannons.... but im sure he couldve been more effective.
I just worry that if the only way to beat this is to prevent it, then it can never be balanced. Again though... that is if its the only way, hopefully there is a composition that will work. And if there is, im sure the people of TL will find it .
I would say he needed something to tank for his Hydras after the first engagement. Something like Ultralisks. Fungals also came too late and really did not do anything. Losing 3 expansions to DT probably did not help though. Actually 5 expansions throughout the game. All from DT. For that matter there was barely any scouting. No drop play, no effort at Nydus at all.
Earlier in the thread there was someone complaining, that dropped units will most likely die and have to deal even more damage as they are rarely picked up and saved.
So I wonder if one of the best uses for the Nydus network would be to provide the escape for dropped units. Drop them, draw attention and start the nydus. Worst case the opponent kills it which gives your drop more time to deal damage. Best case the worm gets through and you can either reinforce or just retreat. 100/100 to save my dropped units seems like a pretty good deal and as soon as they enter the worm they are save and there is no limit how fast units can enter.
On April 19 2011 06:06 dere wrote: This entire post does not even account for the map changes. Which I personally believe has the largest impact on gameplay.
I agree but if anything Zerg should be doing better now with these maps since zergs across the board wanted bigger maps. They got what they wanted but things have either stayed the same or gotten worse statistically.
The problem with big maps when you're comparing races is that on huge maps both T and Z have huge rush distances, and aggressive styles are heavily punished.
However, warpgate tech means that rush distance is completely nonexistent for Toss, and every map is the same "how far is my proxy pylon from his main?"
Combine these 2 factors and it means that in PvT and PvZ, the Protoss CAN rush, but can't get rushed back! Or not nearly as effectively at least.
This has majorly affected the strategies used in PvT and PvZ, and swung the balance in Toss's favor, in my opinion.
There are a lot less similarities in the Zerg an Protoss play styles then there may appear to be at first glance. While both races may favour more economically focused openings, the goal that they want to accomplish with them are vastly different.
A Zerg game plan will generally revolve around expansions. An economic lead in resource intake must be backed up with a sufficient amount of hatcheries to be transformed into a military advantage. Later in the game, Zergs will win by forcing big engagements and then rebuilding their army faster then the opponent, possibly in several iterations. This goal cannot possibly be accomplished of a 2base play, which is why the next step after securing ones natural always is establishing 3rd and 4th bases. Zergs do not turtle in the same sense that T and P do, they have a harder time establishing strong easily defensible positions and also have less of an interest in doing so, preferring to be spread across many bases an reacting to aggression by pumping units instead of drones only shortly before an attack hits.
The Protoss on the other hand is much more comfortable sitting on two bases and can focus an entire play style around this. With good building placement and FF, P can deny most harassment from a Z until lairtech. The usual rationale of harassing against an economy focused build cant be applied as easily. Once the deathball composition is established, the P will try to lose as few of his units as possible, requiring less production facilities and less economic strength to sustain his push.
In summary, the protoss economy focused style is different to the zerg economy focused style and the same principles that work against a macro zerg cant be applied against a macro P. The answer to turtling and building up must be found elsewhere.
This game had a number of different deathballs in it.
Destiny im sure made alot of mistakes... which i think was him ignoring the idiot who told him what iNcontrol was doin and then paying the price.
But hyrda broodlord seemed to be really effective when positioned right. It was good of him to sacrifice the roaches though to a bunch of cannons.... but im sure he couldve been more effective.
I just worry that if the only way to beat this is to prevent it, then it can never be balanced. Again though... that is if its the only way, hopefully there is a composition that will work. And if there is, im sure the people of TL will find it .
I would say he needed something to tank for his Hydras after the first engagement. Something like Ultralisks. Fungals also came too late and really did not do anything. Losing 3 expansions to DT probably did not help though. Actually 5 expansions throughout the game. All from DT. For that matter there was barely any scouting. No drop play, no effort at Nydus at all.
Honestly, I've seen a very similar strategy but instead of just Hydra+Broodlord (you said he needs something to tank for the Hydra) the player used mass Roach + Hydra + Broodlord. Probably 2 Roach for every Hydra. It works pretty damn well; Roaches tank fairly well and between Roaches and Broodlords, ground-based anti-air gets ripped up quickly or at least kept at bay, and any air units are picked off by the Hydras. If there are no air units, you know the kind of damage the Hydras do to ground units; with Roaches in front, they last a lot longer . And Roaches + Hydra damage, in the right ratio, ends up being higher than pure Hydra damage, because the average lifespan of the army is increased so much by the presence of Roaches. Getting armor upgrades first and aggressively is really important for this type of build, though.
On April 20 2011 18:23 MorroW wrote: theory zvp i think its a combination with 2 things
reason 1 protoss has figured out the early game more, how to expand safely and getting a greater economy than zerg. (forge expand gets more economy than a pool expand or gas pool expand, at the same time it can punish a hatchery first with cannon rush). so then zergs option to catch up is to take a extremely fast 3rd base but this has been prooven many times to die to 6warpgate +1 timing attacks or the simple voidray +streamline of phoenixes.
the 3warpgate expand has its own beauty on smaller maps but also maps without as wide chokes. the units themselves are sentrys which not only defends any allin zerg does, also they build up energy to be great in mid and late game. on top of this creating these units themselves forces zerg to build defenses. and not a too uncommon strategy is to cancel the nexus and go for an allin, which zerg has no possibility to scout in time to prepare, so zergs only option is to overmake defenses every time he see 3warpgate expand.
so to sum it up the only way you dont fall behind vs a 3warpgate expand on rather small maps is too take huge risks and hope he dont cancel the nexus and did a 4/5gate fake nexus strategy.
and on big maps they can comfortably forge expand without any risk what so ever of cheese if they scout well and always get a unfair lead.
reason 2 protoss used to be this timing attack race off of 2 or 3 bases but recently they have figured out all they have to do is max out on 200 food and only turtle because no matter how many bases zerg has he still cant get a huge economic lead because u cant literally produce over 80 drones. zerg became the timing attack player instead, using his "economic lead" on 3-4 bases and trying to break down the protoss before his army gets too big, or simply damage it alot and rebuild and go for it again, while expanding. but this is extremely hard when protoss gets an easy 3rd base (tal darim, terminus etc). zerg is the race that wants to army trade on an even field so protoss has simply realized that there is never a reason to attack unless zerg gets too overgreedy. (and ofcourse toss has even the option to respond with another expansion aswell so again protoss attacking is always a threat to zerg but its never a must for protoss).
and once protoss gets 3 bases up and running for 1-2 minutes the zerg overpower style (attack, rebuild, attack, streamline) doesnt work anymore because protoss can rebuild at an almost equal rate. plus the larger protoss army it gets the less units they lose in fights)
so when it comes to 200 food deathballs. protoss should in theory always win, everyone knows that. so zerg is the race that wants to battle kill the majority of protosses army and then rebuild (using his bigger saved up money to his advantage).
now ive written down the way zvp should be, disregarding how hard it is for each race to execute their play so here comes the skill requiring part so not only is protoss the stronger race right now in theory. it is also easier to play the race which is widely known for anyone thats high level to know. to be the aggressor throughout the game and find ways to break the protoss is alot harder for zerg than for protoss to just figure out how to defend. also mechanically speaking the race is vastly harder aswell. and when it comes to mistakes you can make it your macro (money growing up, forgetting injects or chronoboost zerg is alot more unforgiving). if i play vs midlevel protoss users who only play the turtle style i cant even tell a difference from our best protosses in europe, except for maybe the microcontrol. whenever you see zvp on TSL or NASL or GSL, people are always judging the zerg what he is doing wrong, what he should be doing you can note if he forgets to spread creep or when his money gets high you call thats why he lose. protosses is like 80% of the case the one thats executing more badly than the zerg but nobody is mentioning that because its harder to see and it doesnt matter because the toss end up cleaning up anyway. i know i come off as extremely biased because i havent been doing too well in tournaments lately vs protosses but keep in mind. i dont ladder, all my zvp practice comes from literally only playing progamer protosses and talking to them about the game and how this matchup works (mainly with naniwa). i wouldnt come here and say toss is alot easier to play than zerg if they wouldnt tell me the same. im not a toss progamer but they say themselves zerg has to be vastly superior to compete on the same level. i have alot to improve on in zvp but i dont see myself worse than any other zerg in this matchup and i hope you can trust my word for that. ive been practicing this matchup almost exlusivly the past weeks and still my winratio in zvt is about 20% higher than in zvp. ive practiced mutalisk play, ive tried multipromt attacks and nyduses. and high infestor play. but the overpower style is the absolute best way (and most solid imo) to play this matchup
Very interesting post, put these things also on battle.net forum:p.
As much as the turtle style of play from Protoss is a problem, why Protoss do it should also be considered. What Socke said in his PvT "12 weeks with the Pros" is quite true, in SC1 Protoss mineral units were much stronger but in SC2 you rely purely on gas units making it difficult to justify trading armies, the best option is to not trade at all.
But then again, there are styles from Zerg that your only response IS to turtle, name Ling/Baneling, Ling/Infestor +/Baneling, Roach/Infestor +/Ling/Hydra...there is no real way to get map presence against those builds and most of the time the moment you move out you tend to die and everyone I've talked to has told me to turtle against them until 200/200 as there really isn't any other way of dealing with it.
IMO, this isn't a one way street. You could nerf units like Colossus, but that won't make Toss play any less boring, just more cautiously.
I think what Socke said needs to be emphasized, if they want to make Protoss play less turtlish styles then they need to give them better mineral units and rely less on super gas heavy units like Sentries/Colossus, such that trading armies isn't always a bad idea until you've reached 200/200.
I think most people have hit the nail on the spot: protoss is greedier now. Before protoss was all about timing attacks and were more all inish by nature. This required a specific response, but it wasn't hard to deal with.
But now protoss players have learned how to play greedy. Sometimes very greedy, as some sentries, a wall, and a cannon can cost efficiently defend any zerg pressure without any issues. Combine this with the ability to still do extremely strong timing attacks and all ins, you see a fundamental issue zerg faces, as timing attacks and allin requires a completely different response than greed. The fact that protoss can seamlessly flow from one into the other thanks to chrono warp gates, and bad zerg scouting, you have a very difficult game for zerg to play.
In addition, stopping the deathball, we can see, can be easily done. It is not difficult. Even simple ling/bling/infestor can stop smaller deathballs; add ultras for the bigger ones and you can mostly roll over them. This build is also very effective for harass, as bling drops can single handedly for an all in from the toss by killing all the probes. The issue is that the composition required to beat the deathball is very ineffective against builds like 5/6 gate all ins. Getting to that composition is a risk. Meanwhile, being safe against this earlier pressure and allin attacks flows into a composition that greatly struggles against the deathball, aka roaches/corruptors. It also struggles with harass that can slow a deathball build up.
TLDR; toss can too easily move from greed to aggression or just be greedy, and zerg compositions do not flow well enough to deal with this.
Oh yeah and Zerg can't "outmacro" toss anymore. You're essentially limited to 3 bases, maybe a 2 more for gas. The danger of taking a quick third against greedy builds is an example of protoss' ability to seamless and rapidly transition into strong, powerful aggression via warpgates. This inability to outmacro toss means that you can't get the economic lead to launch massive armies because he'll basically be even on you, and can reinforce very quickly as well. Zerg has no response to protoss greed either, as protoss defenses are strong and trying to be greedier has that risk of fast protoss aggression.
On April 20 2011 20:24 Apolo wrote: @Morrow, if Protoss is so much easier to play, and you can barely note differences between top, and mid protoss players, how come we don't see almost any flunctuation at all between the players that win tournaments?
presumably because there are two other matchups for protoss players in this game.
On April 20 2011 20:24 Apolo wrote: @Morrow, if Protoss is so much easier to play, and you can barely note differences between top, and mid protoss players, how come we don't see almost any flunctuation at all between the players that win tournaments?
Because now that PvP has stabilized into 4gate vs 4gate 'better' Ps tend to win that MU a lot.
I don't know where you get you information from but PvP definitely does not revolve exclusively around 4gate vs. 4gate. I know plenty of styles by pros that are superior to the 4gate. (Cough, Cough, Adel Scott's PvP) They just require a large learning curve that many pros still have not put the time into mastering.
uh yeah it does, do you even watch starcraft? 99% of all builds die to even the most basic of 4gate attacks, theres a reason why its the most boring mirror in SC2
On April 19 2011 06:57 azarat wrote: I'm not sure I agree, and the core of my disagreement lies in the way in which the PvZ metagame developed compared to the same of ZvP.
If you cast your memory back to the early days of GSL and other tournaments, much of Protoss play in PvZ (and PvT too) was one-base or two-base in nature. There were numerous one-base plays that Protoss could make, from straight up 4-gates to mixtures of gates, Robo, Stargate, or Twilight Council/DT tech plays. Most were fairly easy to execute and hard to defend well, meaning that this style was deemed the most practical for use in tournament play. This style, as has also been ably pointed out by other posters, was reinforced by the map pool of tiny and abusable maps.
The ZvP mindset was, as you pointed out, geared toward economic plays. Though there was some usage of cheese tactics, Protoss could relatively easily fend this off, and the most successful type of Zerg player was the one that had strong mechanics and a macro-oriented style. Even hyper-aggressive Zergs like Kyrix and to some extent Fruitdealer were far more successful in longer games than in shorter ones, shorter games in which they were almost invariably the defender against some 1-base timing attack. Essentially, the ZvP style was as you say it was: macro oriented and focused on mid-to-late game pushes reinforced with a superior economy.
Fast-forward 6 months and what has changed? I think the major change, one which you refer to kind of obliquely, boils down to this: Protoss players have learned what they can get away with economically and still be safe against most or all attacks. What makes me most fear for the state of ZvP is that yes, they have learned better ways of punishing Zerg for being too greedy, but I think that's actually the result of a shift at a more fundamental level. When your style is 1-base, or limited at most to 2-base, there are inherent limitations on what you can accomplish, and what compositions can be reasonably expected. However, when you learn that you can get 3 Gateways and a bunch of low-mineral units and be impervious to all non all-in strategies so that you can get up an expansion not that far behind the Zerg, a whole bunch of other possibilities open up. Thus, the reason for the Protoss being able to punish Zergs in the early mid-game is not because of magical new strategies that involve massively different units (though Sentry usage has obviously improved immensely in the case of someone like MC), but because the economic foundations of PvZ play have fundamentally altered: you learn how few units you can get away with at the start of the game so that you just have way more shit than your opponent a few minutes from now.
This is what makes me fearful of development potential in the ZvP metagame, and its what Lalush was pointing to in his post a while back on the economics of base and drone saturation. A Zerg can't truly react to an increased Protoss economy by being even more macro-oriented. In this case, I mean "truly" in the sense of a robust metagame shift. Yes, its possible to take a super fast third like some Zergs have been doing, but this is always going to be risky. With Chrono Boost, a Protoss is going to match a 3-base Zerg with a 2-base economy for a substantial period of time. With Warp-In and Chrono Boost, a Protoss can very quickly amass an army to punish a risky third Hatchery. As Lalush pointed out, the gain you make in SC2 in going from 2-base to 3-base is much less than it was in Brood War, thus making it riskier to take these earlier expansions because your economy is not going to be clearly superior to your opponent's for much longer.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that Protoss players are quickly learning to push the boundaries at when you can take expansions and still be relatively safe. Instead of seeing third bases at 14 or 15 minutes into the game, you're seeing them at the 10 minute mark instead. However, unless you want the ZvP metagame to devolve into a series of risky all-ins to try kill off a Protoss who might have tried to push the envelope a little too far, there is an end-point in the development of Zerg economic plays.
Maybe I'm being too doom and gloom, or overly pessimistic, but I think we're already beginning to see this. Many top Zergs, the most obvious of which is Idra, have concluded that even if with incredibly strong macro mechanics they feel its dicey to push a late-game engagement with Protoss. Instead, they're opting for risky 2-base drop plays to try cripple the Protoss early on, or Roach/Ling all-ins.
Maybe some revolutionary macro-play will come along that means that late-game Zerg will again have a clear economic advantage, but I don't feel it is likely. The lack of scouting and the prevalence of strong timing attacks that will outright kill you if you don't prepare perfectly mean that boundaries exist for these types of plays.
Anyway, thats my 2c.
This is an amazing post that has truly expanded my knowledge of the meta game in general. The same can be said of Mules for Terran in TvP and TvZ as Mules allow the Terran to over mine an already fully saturated base, meaning that they can survive longer on less bases. I never really saw the chrono boost mechanic in that light before but it makes sense. Basically it means we can make units faster (and thusly keep up with larva inject for a brief period of time on 1 less base) than Terran if we spend our chrono boosts on units. I will never chrono research or upgrades again (Probes all the way! :-) This means that Protoss should always have a worker advantage and a population advantage and should be expanding sooner than Terran.
I know this is a thread about the PvZ Meta game but I think I just made a huge mental breakthrough in my PvT :-)
no they can not if anything mules just mine out your bases faster, also other races always have more workers, good rule of thumb for terran is to have the same amount of bases as your opponent
I think you miss read my post as you basically just reiterated what I said, so let me restate it.
"Mules allow Terran to over mine an already fully saturated base."
Meaning they can acquire more minerals on equal number of bases OR acquire the same amount of minerals on 1 less base for a longer period of time. Yes this means they mine their bases out faster, but it is far from immediate or crippling. Just look at Empire.Kas who routinely makes a 3rd OC off 2 bases and sits on 2 base with 3 mules just for the bigger push potential. The reason other races have more workers is because the OC mechanic stops worker production and the fact Terran loses mining time for each structure it constructs. (same can be said for Zerg, but larva Inject more than makes up for this and Zerg has less structures in general). But once all of those buildings are up and SCV production has stopped, the Terran economy explodes into the realm of deadly all-in timing attacks. That is why the POLT super late 9-10 min timing attack is possible in TvP or any of the double factory siege tank openings are deadly in every matchup. Terran has that double-edged sword. They can sneak that early expo, and if unpressured, have superior econ for the rest of the game, or they can wait for your expo and do a super late all-in. Either way, for them a win is a win.
Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
On April 20 2011 19:31 andrewwiggin wrote: lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
...
It's been how long since release?
Until there is a viable way to scout and some way to actually be cost effective when defending then yes I fully expect zergs to still be having problems with every none mirror match six months from now.
All races are relatively easy to play. Zerg macro and droning decisions take some skill but the army micro is pretty nonexistant. Protoss has macro and forcefields. Terran imo takes the most skill. Especially in TvZ which is my favourite match up. Terran has to split marines, do drops and guard their tanks with marines.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
Three units counter ultras. Zealots, Immortals and Void rays. Colossus is not one of them.
Yet if you make many zealots with immortalls continious fungals will eat them alive. Thats why Cruncher decided to go collosi instead. It is a fact that zerg needs to use infestors way more than they do right now.
On April 25 2011 17:20 epoc wrote: All races are relatively easy to play. Zerg macro and droning decisions take some skill but the army micro is pretty nonexistant.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
I personally am trying using banlings, lings, mutas, hydras (hand full of hydras if you're getting hit with early air or quick blink stalkers) I personally find it works quite well as the banlings crush through the clumped stalkers because they bunch up. If they have blink and they blink back to avoid banlings anything that can't blink (sentrys, colossi, zelots, etc) will get completely crushed by your other forces. If they to split their army up it easier for zerglings, hydras, mutas to demolish everything that doesn't blink. You can just put your banlings on move command to force the stalkers away from the rest of the units. (think ZvT with banlings moving marines away so mutas can snipe tanks)
Simply playing rather passive doing a bit of poking and harass with lings and mutas you can expand rather efficiently since you have much quicker units to get a decent map control. If you have a better economy then your opponent as zerg you can simply produce near endless amounts of zerglings and banlings. If you don't end up killing them before late game or if you notice they're amassing a large amount of colossi simply make some corruptors then morph them to broodlords and the banlings will keep the blink stalkers away. If they don't go as colossi heavy you can get ultras to crush forcefields as they'll most likely have more sentrys.
I have to say I'm about the same opinion as Logo here, when was zerg ever dominant in the top sc2 scene? The first 2 GSL seasons were won by zergs against all odds and they outplayed their opponents big, big time to do that. Unless somehow my memory is completely failing me, I don't recall other zergs placing anywhere near high in those tourneys.
To be honest, the only reason why there were (and still are) so many "how do i stop zerg" posts in these forums is because there are so many bronze/silver/gold players who have very little clue about the game and simply let the zerg do whatever he pleases. I'm not saying these leagues don't matter as they are players too and need to enjoy the game, but I still believe the game should be balanced around top level players are they obviously are the "end" product in that respect. Any player below that level (such as me) can fix his game by getting better, even though when some balance is broken he will still lose games he shouldn't have.
Also, even though I'm zerg, I'm somehow not that worried about the deathball myself. Even when you watch top level players, you can still see quite a few mistakes in their game or details that aren't optimized. That doesn't really happen with BW anymore (well, not remotely as much) and - correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not the biggest BW expert out there - I've always been under the impression that players in BW have managed to find a perfect balance between "game" balance and "mechanics" (and/or micro) balance.
I'm confident with time zergs will come up with builds that are safer while allowing for economic play and especially that with years (and HotS) people will learn new timings etc. The more I discover BW/SC2, the more I realise it's all about timings. Can't wait for HotS either way
On April 20 2011 19:31 andrewwiggin wrote: lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
...
It's been how long since release?
Until there is a viable way to scout and some way to actually be cost effective when defending then yes I fully expect zergs to still be having problems with every none mirror match six months from now.
Why? There is zero detail there. Yes Obs and H phoenixes are effective, but Zerg can scout with workers and scout with Overlords. I just do not see Zerg as being the hugely weakened race in scouting or in defending.
I don't mean to disrespect, but this is coming from a very low level player (plat - diamond) who off races as Zerg and gets great benefit from overlords watching for drops. Sure you can do that with Observers, but those are robo time wasted whereas Overlords are a 'mobile pylon'. I am not saying you are wrong, but the post you made really dose not make the point you are going for to me.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
Three units counter ultras. Zealots, Immortals and Void rays. Colossus is not one of them.
Yet if you make many zealots with immortalls continious fungals will eat them alive. Thats why Cruncher decided to go collosi instead. It is a fact that zerg needs to use infestors way more than they do right now.
Except Infestors still have 90 health. One fungal doesn't make them worth their cost.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
This topic mostly discusses the Voidray/Colossus/Gateway ball. The video you showed didnt include Void Rays.
On April 25 2011 17:20 epoc wrote: All races are relatively easy to play. Zerg macro and droning decisions take some skill but the army micro is pretty nonexistant.
Are you serious? Zerg require most micro of all races by far. Theyre the race which always loses when they attack move because of it.
On April 25 2011 16:57 Apolo wrote: Protoss deathball right? Wrong. More like zerg deathball. Even with all his units clumped up, zerg wins by a good margin. Zerg need to get something other than roach hydra and just a-moving on all games for once.
It's 10 collosus vs. infestors with neural and ultras. I mean it's the worst toss composition vs. absolute counter from zerg. Did you even saw a real toss deathball?
On April 20 2011 19:31 andrewwiggin wrote: lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
...
It's been how long since release?
Until there is a viable way to scout and some way to actually be cost effective when defending then yes I fully expect zergs to still be having problems with every none mirror match six months from now.
Why? There is zero detail there. Yes Obs and H phoenixes are effective, but Zerg can scout with workers and scout with Overlords. I just do not see Zerg as being the hugely weakened race in scouting or in defending.
I don't mean to disrespect, but this is coming from a very low level player (plat - diamond) who off races as Zerg and gets great benefit from overlords watching for drops. Sure you can do that with Observers, but those are robo time wasted whereas Overlords are a 'mobile pylon'. I am not saying you are wrong, but the post you made really dose not make the point you are going for to me.
he is talking about scouting early game, we don't have problem past t2 obviously, but in early game, as soon as the first marine comes out and kill your drone you are playing blind. (any decent player will kill your suicide overlord with 3 marines before you get any information)
every terran's BO requires a different reaction (banshee /hellion /heavy marine for instance) same as protoss ( 4gate, forge FE ,stargate etc but it's easier since stalker doesn't come out too early )
to counter cost efficiently, you have to rely on them making mistakes ( like showing their factory, labo , starport etc near ramp )
On April 20 2011 19:31 andrewwiggin wrote: lol it's useless arguing on the internet. I guess everyone's right then......
But I'd like to call out everyone complaining about zerg and say.. do you TRULY BELIEVE that you'll still be complaining a month, two months, even 6 months from now?
Answer me that one oh great and all knowing zerg theorists.
...
It's been how long since release?
Until there is a viable way to scout and some way to actually be cost effective when defending then yes I fully expect zergs to still be having problems with every none mirror match six months from now.
Why? There is zero detail there. Yes Obs and H phoenixes are effective, but Zerg can scout with workers and scout with Overlords. I just do not see Zerg as being the hugely weakened race in scouting or in defending.
I don't mean to disrespect, but this is coming from a very low level player (plat - diamond) who off races as Zerg and gets great benefit from overlords watching for drops. Sure you can do that with Observers, but those are robo time wasted whereas Overlords are a 'mobile pylon'. I am not saying you are wrong, but the post you made really dose not make the point you are going for to me.
Overlords are terrible scouts as there is no way to get them past marines/stalkers vs a decent opponent until overlord speed finishs which means they are completely useless early game unless you rush lair and rushing lair means you just straight up lose to a lot of BO's. It's the same with zerglings, no amount of skill will get them passed a wall-off and since zerg has to respond wildly differently to the various P/T BO's there is always a gamble which you have to take when playing as zerg about exactly what they are going.
Which leads to the second problem of the lack of cost effective defensive unit, zergs far more then the other races lack a strong defenders advantage and since you can't be sure what the opponent is going then you need to have defenses ready which means you need to put a fair bit of resources into producing potentially useless defences or accept the fact that even a much much worse players will just randomly take games off you by moving out at an odd time or right after you made a round of drones.
There is also another point that many people seem to forget when comparing 200 supply clashes. The great majority of Protoss units cost more than Zerg's for their supply. How is it not fair that 200 supply Protoss should be able to beat 200 supply Zerg?
The Protoss invested much more money in that ball than the Zerg. If something, as soon as Zerg reach or are close to reaching 200 they should attack because that's the time when they have similar amounts of money invested in their army. Unless you see 130-140 supply toss demolishing 200 supply zerg i don't see the problem. If you let Protoss reach 200 supply it's your fault as it's Protoss fault if they let the Zerg tech to mutas without even making spines, or blindly double expo, etc.
Also, OP you might want to update the original post because the trend is actually shifting to terran domination again.
On April 26 2011 03:25 Apolo wrote: There is also another point that many people seem to forget when comparing 200 supply clashes. The great majority of Protoss units cost more than Zerg's for their supply. How is not fair that 200 supply Protoss should be able to beat 200 supply Zerg?
The Protoss invested much more money in that ball than the Zerg. If something, as soon as Zerg reach or are close to reaching 200 they should attack because that's the time when they have similar amounts of money invested in their army. Unless you see 130-140 supply toss demolishing 200 supply zerg i don't see the problem. If you let Protoss reach 200 supply it's your fault as it's Protoss fault if they let the Zerg tech to mutas without even making spines, or blindly double expo, etc.
Also, OP you might want to update the original post because the trend is actually shifting to terran domination again.
its true that the more resource heavy army wins but the margin is/was way too large as the zerg 200 supply army costs way more than the 40-50 supply that it kills - trading 120 supply for not even half of it is terrible
lets take taldarim for example - how could zerg ever stop protoss before they get 200 supply?ofc im talking about protoss who know what they do
Oh yeah, Forge-Expo builds on Tal'Darim altar into two-Stargate play followed by Colossi/VR deathball give me some serious difficulties. What's a good response to that?
On April 26 2011 03:25 Apolo wrote: There is also another point that many people seem to forget when comparing 200 supply clashes. The great majority of Protoss units cost more than Zerg's for their supply. How is not fair that 200 supply Protoss should be able to beat 200 supply Zerg?
The Protoss invested much more money in that ball than the Zerg. If something, as soon as Zerg reach or are close to reaching 200 they should attack because that's the time when they have similar amounts of money invested in their army. Unless you see 130-140 supply toss demolishing 200 supply zerg i don't see the problem. If you let Protoss reach 200 supply it's your fault as it's Protoss fault if they let the Zerg tech to mutas without even making spines, or blindly double expo, etc.
Also, OP you might want to update the original post because the trend is actually shifting to terran domination again.
its true that the more resource heavy army wins but the margin is/was way too large as the zerg 200 supply army costs way more than the 40-50 supply that it kills - trading 120 supply for not even half of it is terrible
lets take taldarim for example - how could zerg ever stop protoss before they get 200 supply?ofc im talking about protoss who know what they do
Notice, however, that sending 20 marines against a High Templar can result in the death of all 20 marines for no damage on the High Templar. Having 10 marines versus a deathball will inflict exactly 0 damage before they evaporate. Simply because Protoss outcosts (and hence "outnumbers") their Zerg opponents the damage inflicted by the deathball would increase drastically, making the outnumbering advantage accelerate.
Is it fair? I think so, if only because Zerg's ability to power economy would make them unfairly good endgame if they could destroy the expensive deathball for cost. Actually, it would probably make them unfairly good mid game too. This is my opinion though, so don't cite it as evidence either way.
I think so, if only because Zerg's ability to power economy would make them unfairly good endgame if they could destroy the expensive deathball for cost.
Midgame certainly, but lategame it's just not true. Protoss has just as much income as Zerg, and once the infrastructure has been placed, just as much production.
I think so, if only because Zerg's ability to power economy would make them unfairly good endgame if they could destroy the expensive deathball for cost.
Midgame certainly, but lategame it's just not true. Protoss has just as much income as Zerg, and once the infrastructure has been placed, just as much production.
The reason it worries me endgame is that the Zerg has the equivalent of (up to) 19 concurrent gateways or robotics facilities or stargates per base (this does decrease once used). Imagine that, for example, 2 waves of Roach/Hydra could completely wipe out a deathball. (I believe the deathball is about 1.5-1.75x the cost of a Roach/Hydra army). This would leave a small residual for the Zerg, which must be dealt with by Protoss. So far it seems ok. However, Protoss only has the choice to remake an army with the production facilities he has. So if his first army was Colossus/VR/Stalker (a la Cruncher) his second army can really only be based on Colossus/Stargate/Gateway in the same proportions.
I realize thats a bit hard to follow, so I'll try and explain it here in a different way. Protoss flat-up dies if forced to tech switch to counter a push that is coming. With Zerg's ability to swap between various tech options, they could force a tech switch from Protoss that may be next to impossible to hold off. Why is this bad? Because Zerg has a slight edge over Protoss in the time before the supply cap hits (examine the efficiency of roaches versus the gateway as an example).
In this hypothetical, the Zerg must only spend as much as the Protoss to win - as the Protoss is stuck with his same unit composition or a very similar one after the army has been defeated, while Zerg has one that is far more variable.
Zerg deathballs are not actually an issue anymore IMO. There are plenty of zerg compositions that can beat all kinds of Protoss deathballs. The classic void/collossus/stalker/sentry stuff is easily broken by infestor/ultra/ling/bling and all sorts of variation of this.
What is the issue is Protoss going from greedy to aggression seamlessly thanks to chrono/warpgate, that makes it hard for zerg to get to the composition they need. Zerg can go roach to be safe early game, but then struggle late game, or try to go for a ling/infestor style that is strong mid/late game but weak early. Trying to go in between again suffers from well timed protoss aggression.
Most lower level protoss don't know how to deal with the late game infestor/ling/ultra stuff; they just sit and turtle like theres no difference and get rolled. But good toss know that seeing this type of composition means that there is a window where zerg is very weak because their tech/upgrades have not kicked in, and can go for the kill.
On April 24 2011 19:56 Zevah wrote: I've been having huge sucess with a build like this the last few days.
what i do is open without gas, drone hard until 40/50 supply and take the 4 gases at once (spanishiwa style) immediatly get a lair, +1melee and +caparace and ling speed. after lair i get something like 6 infestors to help my lings to defend. I get my 3rd and my 4th right after that.
I was having trouble dealing with stalker zealot and colossus until i started getting banelings wich annihilated everything.
then i was having trouble with a 1/2 stargate builds until i started adding mutas into the build when i saw 1 or 2 stargates.
later on i add ultras so i don't need to Neural any colossus to deal with forcefields.
I'm really happy to beat protoss once again =D
I usually don't get more than 6 infestors and i try to keep them on that number.
Here is a small video i've made to show the power of ling bling infestor to a friend against protoss:
In the past 5 GSLs there have been 3 zerg, 2 Protoss and 5 terran's to get to the finals.
Of those races who reached the top 2 Zerg, 2 Protoss and 1 Terran has won the championship.
The Terran only won because it was a mirror. Only one Protoss player won both Protoss trophies. Two seperate zerg's in two seperate metagames won GSL titles.
In the current gsl the two favorites to win the whole damn thing is IMNestea and IMLosira.
That seems like a pretty balanced metagame from where I'm standing. Lots of Terran finalist, repeat Protoss victories and multiple cinderalla stories for the Zerg.
-in all cases, the winners were players who seemed dominant despite their race.
On April 24 2011 19:56 Zevah wrote: I've been having huge sucess with a build like this the last few days.
what i do is open without gas, drone hard until 40/50 supply and take the 4 gases at once (spanishiwa style) immediatly get a lair, +1melee and +caparace and ling speed. after lair i get something like 6 infestors to help my lings to defend. I get my 3rd and my 4th right after that.
I was having trouble dealing with stalker zealot and colossus until i started getting banelings wich annihilated everything.
then i was having trouble with a 1/2 stargate builds until i started adding mutas into the build when i saw 1 or 2 stargates.
later on i add ultras so i don't need to Neural any colossus to deal with forcefields.
I'm really happy to beat protoss once again =D
I usually don't get more than 6 infestors and i try to keep them on that number.
Here is a small video i've made to show the power of ling bling infestor to a friend against protoss:
This post was very inspirational for me, used this unit composition several times effectively to beat the Protoss deathball
Well if protoss does not use FFs at all ofc you can win, but I though we are talking about decent protoss players here. That video is just a fail from toss.
On April 25 2011 17:20 epoc wrote: All races are relatively easy to play. Zerg macro and droning decisions take some skill but the army micro is pretty nonexistant. Protoss has macro and forcefields. Terran imo takes the most skill. Especially in TvZ which is my favourite match up. Terran has to split marines, do drops and guard their tanks with marines.
Can people who don't actually play zerg at a high level stop posting this bullshit. As zerg positioning of your army is a huge deal, attacking from multiple angles and splitting up your important units like banelings. Drops really aren't as hard as you're making them sound, you hotkey a medivac and rally it to unload and just keep an eye on it as it appraoches. How can you really think it takes more skill to do multiple drops than to defend them is beyond me, zerg has relatively weak defense at external locations (cannons are much better because they can be positioned smarter, as zerg you're defending air somewhere OR you're defending ground). I know this because I do a ton of drops as zerg and I never feel like it stretches my multitasking much.
I'm not trying to say other races don't have their challenges, but this "no micro" bullshit has got to stop, yes, there's slightly less focus firing and you don't have to click f, then click your mouse somewhere, but you do have to manually move your units around forcefields, burrow hurt roaches and unburrow them, burrow move then unburrow, flank with lings, all with good timing. I know it's not moving your stalkers behind your zealots with one click or right clicking on a group of banelings with your tanks (which many terran players seem incapable of, they're so focused on getting 1 or 2 extra shots off their marines before they die they're not willing to prevent their death).
Also, somehow you count guarding your tanks with marines as micro or multitasking, you know if your marines are just standing near the tanks, they'll attack mutas.
On April 24 2011 19:56 Zevah wrote: I've been having huge sucess with a build like this the last few days.
what i do is open without gas, drone hard until 40/50 supply and take the 4 gases at once (spanishiwa style) immediatly get a lair, +1melee and +caparace and ling speed. after lair i get something like 6 infestors to help my lings to defend. I get my 3rd and my 4th right after that.
I was having trouble dealing with stalker zealot and colossus until i started getting banelings wich annihilated everything.
then i was having trouble with a 1/2 stargate builds until i started adding mutas into the build when i saw 1 or 2 stargates.
later on i add ultras so i don't need to Neural any colossus to deal with forcefields.
I'm really happy to beat protoss once again =D
I usually don't get more than 6 infestors and i try to keep them on that number.
Here is a small video i've made to show the power of ling bling infestor to a friend against protoss:
This post was very inspirational for me, used this unit composition several times effectively to beat the Protoss deathball
Well if protoss does not use FFs at all ofc you can win, but I though we are talking about decent protoss players here. That video is just a fail from toss.
Yeh I mix in 2-3 Ultras to break forcefields, it's no problem. I've seen several top Zergs use this style now aswell, only one I can recall atm is Lowely, so you could look up some replays if you're interested.
Banelings are really the answer. One well-placed baneling can hit enough stalkers to deal over 200 damage instantaneously--and an Overlord dropping a bunch of them frontloads so much damage that it can simply decimate the army and leave it very vulnerable to whatever Zerg units remain.
I like the Ultra/ling/infestor/bling combo spanishwa did, and if they go void ray cant you just use infested Terrans once you take out the ground army? Not to mention it seems like you can abuse the mobilty of this ball alot.
I think what Socke said needs to be emphasized, if they want to make Protoss play less turtlish styles then they need to give them better mineral units and rely less on super gas heavy units like Sentries/Colossus, such that trading armies isn't always a bad idea until you've reached 200/200.
I think this is pretty much the single most important thing in this thread. Terran and Zerg can realistically walk around the map with smaller groups of units and try and deal damage. If you lose everything for no damage done it's not the end of the world because it's cheap. Protoss' effectiveness is *entirely* resting on senties, templars and collossi and losing multiple 150 or 200 gas units *IS* a big deal.
Trading 4 marauders and 10 marines against 20 zerglings and 6 roaches is smart and will force military instead of drones from zerg.
Trading 5 zealots and 3 sentries for 20 zerglings and 6 roaches will just make you lose the game.
On May 06 2011 03:33 XXXSmOke wrote: I like the Ultra/ling/infestor/bling combo spanishwa did, and if they go void ray cant you just use infested Terrans once you take out the ground army? Not to mention it seems like you can abuse the mobilty of this ball alot.
Yeh, some people like to mix in Hydras or Corruptors or Mutas to take care of the air units, but I've seen Lowely and Spanishwa more or less ignore them and take them out with fungals and infested terrans eventually.
edit: How do you hold off a good 6gate though? I still go Roach or Hydra to be safe vs those...
On May 06 2011 03:33 XXXSmOke wrote: I like the Ultra/ling/infestor/bling combo spanishwa did, and if they go void ray cant you just use infested Terrans once you take out the ground army? Not to mention it seems like you can abuse the mobilty of this ball alot.
Yeh, some people like to mix in Hydras or Corruptors or Mutas to take care of the air units, but I've seen Lowely and Spanishwa more or less ignore them and take them out with fungals and infested terrans eventually.
edit: How do you hold off a good 6gate though? I still go Roach or Hydra to be safe vs those...
I jsut switced to Z heh, so I dont know yet. I was a masters Terran that was to passive so im playing my BW race now that its summer and I have time to learn them.
So far vs Toss, early ling infestor with ups is pretty sick. Using spanishwas build I can drone heavy then pump tons of lings. I am always harassing and poking in as well threatening the backstab so the toss really has to think twice before pushing out. And if he does push out I can just fungal and run(rinse/repeat). Or whats even funnier is if you land good enough fungals in the middle of the map you jsut do a ling run by.
Once 3rd is saturatued I switch to ultra/ling/infestor. If they go collsi void ray I just drop everywhere harass everywhere until I can weaken there economy enough where I can just power through them with 300/200.
EPT
.
. I would transition into Corruptors and get my hive tech, however, this is just theorycraft and I can only say so much. As a Starcraft player you need to adapt to the game and in my opinion that's what separates the pro's from the semi-pro's. 
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