On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Please explain to me how Zerg players would control large amounts of zerglings, banelings, etc.
How would Terrans control 60+ marines w/ tanks, ghosts, thors...
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Don't think it would solve the death ball problem. A lot of players already hotkey their units in different hotkeys, maybe not 12 units in each though. Mutas in 3 control groups would still be possible, 1a2a3a.
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Please explain to me how Zerg players would control large amounts of zerglings, banelings, etc.
How would Terrans control 60+ marines w/ tanks, ghosts, thors...
By having 1/10th of the skill needed to be a code B broodwar player I guess.
On November 07 2011 08:23 headdshot wrote: [quote]
So he lost to an all in that he didnt scout and now you comparing banshees to mutas ? what.
Of course he didn't scout it. sC was turtling and fended off any possible overlord scout with marines all around his base's perimeter.
I'm not talking about mutalisks.
lol then this has nothing to do with the muta,were talking about 30 mutas and how stupid it is trying to defend againts it while putting pressure on the expanding zerg, not some gimmicky 1 base all in.
you said how "i cant just mass banshees and win so zerg shouldnt be able to mass mutas" at whcih point we proved you wrong by providing a game where mass banshees let a lower level player beat a higher level player (nestea), that is why it's relevent.
mass banshees is no where near as viable as mass muta, its gimmicky how many people you see doing it? nestea got cought with his pants down, how does a 1 base banshee all in even compare to mass muta.I
If you are letting Zerg get "mass mutas" to the point where you think it's OP. You haven't been pressuring him enough in the early game, hence already lost. It's not like Zerg can pop 3000 gas out of his ass at any given time.
That is such BS, the only reason people say that nowadays is because people like yourself have spouted that nonsense since the beta. I have witnessed hundreds of games where Zerg got 30+ mutas, his opponent pressuring him or not doesn't mean shit if Zerg just plays well and focuses on eventually making mutalisks.
Stop for a moment. Think logically. You're saying that if Z plays well enough, they can mass up 30 mutas despite pressure.
I'd like to point out that if Z plays well enough, they can do pretty much anything. This is obvious: if somebody (P, Z or T) plays well enough, they can win the game.
That was the point I was trying to make, dunno why you appear to think I was saying something else.
I also wasn't trying to imply that after Zerg makes 30 mutalisks they autowin. That's obviously not true (Terrans don't win as soon as the tech lab on their starport finishes in TvP); I was simply trying to dispel the myth that "If you play properly (E.G. Pressure Zerg) you can prevent him from making mutalisks, period."
The "Well if you let him get 'X' you just lose" idea is simply not true, at least not in the manner most people use it. People used to say "If you let Protoss too many Void Rays AND Collosus, you just lose." That's obviously not true now and it wasn't true at any point in time, it's just at that certain point in the metagame (Whether due to patches or not I'm not going to argue, I don't really care) if Protoss DID happen to get to that point in the game, they usually had a very high likelyhood of winning. In my opinion PvZ is in a similar situation, except with mutalisks. Obviously it's a bit different, because you can base race and stuff, but from my experience unless Zerg is silly and A-moves into a full Toss army with storm and archons, Zerg has a very high likelyhood of winning.
Oh, I wasn't trying to argue that you were implying that 30 mutas auto-win the game. I was just saying that since somebody who outplays their opponent sufficiently can win the game, then there will be a lesser level of play at which they could build 30 mutas instead (which is obviously not as strong of an action as winning the game). It all comes up to gaining enough advantage.
So... let's go for a logical analysis of the situation.
I will assume that Z can't suddenly pop 30 mutalisks out, because letting Z pile up 3k/3k resources when they are not miles ahead is not proper play (and if any player is miles ahead, then it's perfectly fine for them to be able to build a crushing army - in fact, I'd like the fact that this specific crushing army is not of the a-move sort). I'm also putting this as an axiom - if anybody disagrees with this, I'm not going to discuss it. So... in order to get there, Z has to start with small amounts of mutalisks; in order to fix a pattern of thought, let's say that they have to get to a point where they can afford to invest 850/800 (lair+spire+mutas, consider it 700/700 if you don't want to include lair tech) into units that have little direct combat value. In abstract, there could be two options for achieving that: 1) defending cost-effectively, using the margin to tech; 2) get a larger economy and use the extra income to tech.
If 2) is what happens without superior play from Z, then the alleged balance problem isn't with mutalisks. Since that would transcend the scope of this discussion, I'm going to ignore this possibility (read: if people really think that there's a problem with economy growth, it would be better to open another thread). If 1) is what happens without superior play from Z, then I would assume that crawlers are involved. While creep and the support of one queen per hatchery are a significant form of defender's advantage, they should not account for 850/800 worth of resources. If we're talking about spine crawlers, that is another 150 minerals of resources per crawler - I'd dare to say that you'd need four for 600 minerals, but the exact amount is debatable. Point is, P should be able to decide to put 400 minerals in a nexus, then 450/450 in three stargates, then add as many cannons as the amount of the crawlers they forced. This should be enough to ward off small amounts of mutas. In fact, I think that P could afford to put 400 some of those resources into buildings before pushing out, then cancel them for extra warp-ins if they see that they see that Z cut corners in their defense - but this is just an idea. With the gas from 3 bases, P is able to support 3 boosted stargates with a little surplus (a stargate pumping phoenixes with a single chrono per minute eats up exactly 200 gas). Now... I know from previous tests that phoenixes win against mutalisks at a 2:3 ratio without micro, in large numbers (and get only better if microed correctly or if mutalisk bounces become negligible due to smaller numbers). So, in order to get enough gas to beat phoenixes from 3 bases, Z has to control 9 geysers. This means 5 bases - and Z needs to secure them before P can rake up the phoenix count. If both sides pump 600 gas per minute in flyers, then the catch-up takes (at most! Remember, I'm still going with the 2:3 figure, which is probably not the best that P can do) 20 seconds per every 100 gas that Z had over P when the stargates finished (either in mutas or waiting to be spent in mutas). Once that happens, mutas become useless.
This is all theorycraft and there are a lot of details that need refinement and polishing. However, it's an effort to be vaguely more constructive and analytical. I'd be curious to see if a gameplan like this works, but I'm a Z player and I'm nowhere near GM/pro level anyway.
Having a lot of phoenix is cool and all, so lets say you win the air battle (which you won't if they add in some corrupters or infesters) then you have a ton of useless phoenix that can't kill hatcheries which is all the zerg was making while you were defending. Also if you blindly go 3 stargate you die to hydra/ling aggression
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Yea sure, lets change one of the core rules in the game cause of a couple problems... Man i am glad some people here aren't from the balance department, who knows what might change in the middle of the game.
On November 08 2011 04:23 JustTray wrote: Ironically, Mutas have been nothing but nerfed since beta, when I insisted they were horribly OP.
And now even after numerous Turret/Phoenix/other changes to make them weaker, they're still considered OP.
And people are finally realizing Zerg has been the strongest race to begin with? Full economic and production control will always have the advantage in equal skilled match-ups.
Also, could someone instead of doing a meaningless "tournament wins" breakdown, just list off the players records and their races? I'm guessing we';ll see the same 10 players bringing up certain races and bringing down others.
Clearly your balance knowledge is impeccable, how could we not have seen it.
To begin with? You're retarded if you think Zerg was the strongest at the release of SC2.
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Please explain to me how Zerg players would control large amounts of zerglings, banelings, etc.
How would Terrans control 60+ marines w/ tanks, ghosts, thors...
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Yea sure, lets change one of the core rules in the game cause of a couple problems... Man i am glad some people here aren't from the balance department, who knows what might change in the middle of the game.
Well, new expansion is a nice time to change some of the rules if they are bad and create boring games. Much better than adding ridiculous units to "take supply away from the ball of death" or to "deal with mass mutas(read annihilate them in 2 seconds.)" That's my opinion on the matter
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
Yea sure, lets change one of the core rules in the game cause of a couple problems... Man i am glad some people here aren't from the balance department, who knows what might change in the middle of the game.
Well, new expansion is a nice time to change some of the rules if they are bad and create boring games. Much better than adding ridiculous units to "take supply away from the ball of death" or to "deal with mass mutas(read annihilate them in 2 seconds.)" That's my opinion on the matter
You obviously didn't watch the matches from last night, they were anything but boring
On November 08 2011 04:34 Pr0wler wrote: There is one simple solution for the "OP" mutas -12 units per control group. The muta harass will still exist but it will be much harder and the better players will be rewarded. Also that will solve a bunch of problems with that game... 1a death ball is one of them.
If there is one UI thing I could take from BW, this would be the one. (Well that and no smart cast and thus increasing the damaging power of spells- so it doesn't take 4 seconds to do 80 damage to 120 health muta on the move wheeee.) Simply having having to use multiple hotkeys would spread the armies a bit and would actually force separate hotkeys for the various units. Unlimited selection promotes sloppy play, but as seen from the Muta harass, the power of the muta harass snowballs when everything can be on one hotkey. It makes it far easier to simply hotkey snipe.
Because I actually love the power of muta harass and actually wish muta micro was even stronger, but you can't with unlimited selection. Blizzard's solution seems to be some pretty one dimensional massive splash damage units for HotS. So whereas there used to be a small strike force of muta dodging and sniping and being chased by fast air, held off with cannons, and have godly storms or archons, now it ends up being a giant flock that can easily snipe cannons and that will soon be countered by giant splash units like Tempest. Hero makes it look epic, but the tempest is more air ball vs air ball.
The biggest problem with unlimited selection is certain units power can snowball into a critical mass that is far to easy to one shot entire buildings off the map.
Edit. Oh and how to deal with a larger army then you have hotkeys? I think it was an old Day9 podcast where you have groups of 12 units non-hotkeyed towards the back and your hotkeyed towards the front. When you move in, you tell the back ones to go in first and then select your hotkeyed units forwards. It's the sort of skills that would favour the Idra and Tyler/Nony type of players.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
See WhiteRa vs Ret game 1, it's typical of what I'm speaking about:
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
In BW you had the possibility of maelstrom also which let you land storms, also corsairs were better vs mutas than phoenix are. Also goons are better than stalkers.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Well at 112 damage, if you could ever catch the muta, it was worth it. But I agree that storms seem rather useless in SC2. Even if the muta's sit under it for the full four seconds, they keep 1/3 of their health. But what is more likely is that they'll just fly through it taking minimal damage. But do archons even help once they get that giant flock? Because with unlimited selection it seems they could just outright snipe Archons too. Whereas in BW that splash was just killer for the 11 muta that would actually be forced to take a shot or two to the face.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
In BW you had the possibility of maelstrom also which let you land storms, also corsairs were better vs mutas than phoenix are. Also goons are better than stalkers.
Maelstrom was rarely used. Very rarely. It got popular for like 2 weeks when tosses were having problems with 5 hatch hydra into delayed mutas. That's all. Corsairs were indeed better, but many opted to go the goon/archon route instead as corsairs were often picked off by scourge. Storm was also far more damaging in SC1.
Quite simply, more blink stalkers + archons are going to be a far better counter vs mutas than trying to tech to storm. Eventually get it, yes, but far far later on.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Well at 112 damage, if you could ever catch the muta, it was worth it. But I agree that storms seem rather useless. Even if the muta's sit under it for the full four seconds, they keep 1/3 of their health. But what is more likely is that they'll just fly through it taking minimal damage. But do archons even help once they get that giant flock? Because with unlimited selection it seems they could just outright snipe Archons too. Whereas in BW that splash was just killer for the 11 muta that would actually be forced to take a shot or two to the face.
The higher the count of mutas, the more effective archons become... it's the same with Thors. If you force them to magic box you, they take substantially more damage from the stalkers than they would have otherwise. It's the exact same concept as ZvT. Mutas can easily pick off Thors/Archons alone, but if there is Thor/Marine or Stalker/Archon the mutas simply can't engage unless in overwhelming numbers, to which you should simply have more stuff.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Muta acceleration is worse in SC2. If mutas actually slow down to fire, they will take substantial damage - and storm is the only protoss splash tool that can threaten the entire group of mutas. It's one thing to skim 20hp off 11 mutas, another to take it off 30 at once - that causes caution, and caution limits effectiveness.
Archons function kinda like thors with worse range. They are superb in the army, but an archon will do nothing vs a swarm of mutas - 2 hts with banked energy can. As we discussed earlier in the thread, there's phases for each, and I'd say archons are better until the muta count gets higher, where cannons/ht provide more secure defense simply because the splash effect has better range, better radius, and more potential damage for your supply.
The higher the count of mutas, the more effective archons become... it's the same with Thors. If you force them to magic box you, they take substantially more damage from the stalkers than they would have otherwise.
The problem isn't engaging mutas with your army, it's deflecting harass damage. The more you leave behind, the less you can actually move out with.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Muta acceleration is worse in SC2. If mutas actually slow down to fire, they will take substantial damage - and storm is the only protoss splash tool that can threaten the entire group of mutas. It's one thing to skim 20hp off 11 mutas, another to take it off 30 at once - that causes caution, and caution limits effectiveness.
Archons function kinda like thors with worse range. They are superb in the army, but an archon will do nothing vs a swarm of mutas - 2 hts with banked energy can. As we discussed earlier in the thread, there's phases for each, and I'd say archons are better until the muta count gets higher, where cannons/ht provide more secure defense simply because the splash effect has better range, better radius, and more potential damage for your supply.
But my point is that it's best to have almost completely archons regardless, maybe 2 templar tops for storms. Templars to defend from mutas are just awful and a waste.
On November 08 2011 00:36 Velr wrote: I see why you could end up having a problem if your Z enemies SUDDENLY techswitch to 40 2/2 Mutas and after that SUDDENLY have BL/Ultras.
But these problems have not much to do with Mutas... It's probably that you let them Bank 10k Gas and never ever pressure them and all the while are getting outplayed like crazy...
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
I still think it was a mistake to not keep making phoenixes. I know the argument of "he's a progamer, he knows better" is difficult to argue against, but : - he had 5 (or 6 ?) phoenixes when the muta production started - he had 2 stargates I won't talk about how, if he scouts the muta switch, just having 6-8 phoenix is enough to totally nullify it (you camp the hatcheries and kill every spawning muta, the ball can't grow), but even then, if you keep pumping phoenixes until you have 12, you'll be able to weaken the muta ball enormously, in addition to the ball being unable to harass you. Phoenix micro is hard but possible, it's exactly the same dynamic as unstimed marines vs banshees (it is, really), except it's in an accelerated state so it's harder (but watching marine vs banshee micro is helping to understand what to do in phoenix vs muta, the phoenix being the marines). The real problem is that it's an intensive micro, which basically prevent any macro unless you retreat.
"The phoenixes can't kill hatcheries", true, but the phoenixes can kill everything else. 12 phoenixes are ravaging 30 drones in 15 seconds. They're good vs any ground army except pure lings. The usual problem is that the muta switch will include upgrades and 30 mutas, the phoenix defense will be 6 0-0 phoenixes, and the conclusion will be "phoenixes sux against mutas". I don't have a lot examples of mutas switch successfully defended by phoenixes, because usually the protoss make stalkers and lose, which seems to be the preferred option over making phoenixes. (but I have at least one game in mind, it was Oz vs ? on Fortress last code A season, he kept pumping phoenixes, and when you have enough, the mutas can't dive into the stalkers to fight them anymore because they'll get destroyed, and the muta harass is hard because the phoenixes are scouting).
I wrote all this thinking it's possible that mutas are slightly OP in this matchup, but I still think that even pros aren't reacting well. All the money that Hero spent in HT, archons and storm today would have allowed him to make a flock of phoenix big enough to amove the mutas...(in a LOT less time)
Are people seriously giving the Hero vs CrazymoviNG game as an example?
It was 125 vs 200 supply, when the mutas hit(and it's not like if all of it was roaches), hero tried to move out after the initial harass, but he got his units stuck at the natural wall and by the time he reacted and his army left his natural the mutas were back and in larger number and he decided to return to defend.
Hero's storms were absolutely horrible, again and again and again he was storming empty ground, instead of the mutas, there were only like 2 decent storms out of the first 10-15, which brought the first group of mutas to low hp. He also stormed and blinked his own stalkers under the storm and he almost hit his own stacked probes with another storm(which would've ended the game right there), he let multiple templars get sniped without casting a storm or moving them back when it was lings/roaches sniping them.
Initial damage of storm is instant(people are calling even EMP instant and that one actually has a short casting animation and a missile, unlike storm), so they will wear mutas down no matter how good the muta micro is, as long as the storms are actually cast where the mutas are, instead of where the mutas aren't and in that game the grand majority of storms were where the mutas aren't, which clearly isn't a very effective strategy.
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
In BW you had the possibility of maelstrom also which let you land storms, also corsairs were better vs mutas than phoenix are. Also goons are better than stalkers.
Maelstrom was rarely used. Very rarely. It got popular for like 2 weeks when tosses were having problems with 5 hatch hydra into delayed mutas. That's all. Corsairs were indeed better, but many opted to go the goon/archon route instead as corsairs were often picked off by scourge. Storm was also far more damaging in SC1.
Quite simply, more blink stalkers + archons are going to be a far better counter vs mutas than trying to tech to storm. Eventually get it, yes, but far far later on.
I never said a Zerg suddenly techswitches to 40 2/2 mutas. The way it usually goes is the following: you forge-fast-expand, you drop 6-7 gate and a tech of your choice ( stargate, robo, twilight ), and prepare for a push around 9'. Sometimes I even produce 3-4 zealots around 6'-7' to put a bit of pressure on his third. Anyway, the Zerg sees you coming and drops a huge wall of spines in front of his natural. Like 7-8 spines and 20 lings, nothing you can break with a pure gateway army without immortals or colossi. And 2 minutes later, 10 mutas are out ( that's usually between 10'30 and 12' ). There's no way a Protoss can pressure a Zerg into spending his gas and minerals is basically a non-issue.
From this point, it only goes downhill. My push fails: Either I lose my army, or I retreat by saving most of it: it doesn't matter. Mutas are out on the field, I have to defend my 2 bases. Canons are only static defenses, I absolutely need blink stalkers just to barely survive the harass, and I'm unable to take my third until I have at least a decent soft counter to mass mutas ( like storm or archons ).
Meanwhile, the Zerg continues to grow his mutaball, upgrades it, makes sure to harass left & right to make you remember he's still knocking at your door, and prepares his tech switch along with taking expansions everywhere on the map.
I tried prism and DTs harass to prevent the Zerg from macroing up; those simply don't work against good Zergs, period.
The Zerg will stay at 200/200 for a while, teching and upgrading, accumulating resources on his X bases with tons of larvae. Then when he feels confident, he will do a suicide attack. He will most likely lose to my army, and reproduce stuff I just can't handle with my tech, usually brood lords, mass roaches and infestors. It's gg for me, but in reality I just survived, the game was lost 10' ago when I got contained in my bases.
I'm absolutely confused by what I'm reading in this thread, especially coming from Zergs. Apparently it's easy to kill a Zerg when doing a timing push, but I try that all the time and it never works. I'd really like to see a non-cheesy replay of a Protoss that fast expands and is able to punish a Zerg before he's got mutas. And I'm talking of a decent Zerg that scouts and prepares for the timing push, not one that makes a major mistake.. pretty please ?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Well at 112 damage, if you could ever catch the muta, it was worth it. But I agree that storms seem rather useless. Even if the muta's sit under it for the full four seconds, they keep 1/3 of their health. But what is more likely is that they'll just fly through it taking minimal damage. But do archons even help once they get that giant flock? Because with unlimited selection it seems they could just outright snipe Archons too. Whereas in BW that splash was just killer for the 11 muta that would actually be forced to take a shot or two to the face.
The higher the count of mutas, the more effective archons become... it's the same with Thors. If you force them to magic box you, they take substantially more damage from the stalkers than they would have otherwise. It's the exact same concept as ZvT. Mutas can easily pick off Thors/Archons alone, but if there is Thor/Marine or Stalker/Archon the mutas simply can't engage unless in overwhelming numbers, to which you should simply have more stuff.
But it was a possibility to maelstrom, if toss had it in sc2 they wouldn't care about mutas, maelstrom + storm or maelstrom + archons would solve the problem and it would help in PvT. Stalkers are such flimsy units I hate them, goons were way beefier. Also what "size" unit was a muta, medium?
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
In BW you had the possibility of maelstrom also which let you land storms, also corsairs were better vs mutas than phoenix are. Also goons are better than stalkers.
Maelstrom was rarely used. Very rarely. It got popular for like 2 weeks when tosses were having problems with 5 hatch hydra into delayed mutas. That's all. Corsairs were indeed better, but many opted to go the goon/archon route instead as corsairs were often picked off by scourge. Storm was also far more damaging in SC1.
Quite simply, more blink stalkers + archons are going to be a far better counter vs mutas than trying to tech to storm. Eventually get it, yes, but far far later on.
On November 08 2011 05:55 Falling wrote:
On November 08 2011 05:47 FabledIntegral wrote:
On November 08 2011 05:44 ZeromuS wrote:
On November 08 2011 04:13 Big J wrote:
On November 08 2011 03:43 AA.spoon wrote:
On November 08 2011 02:55 Big J wrote:
On November 08 2011 02:33 AA.spoon wrote:
On November 08 2011 02:20 Big J wrote: [quote]
just matches that come to my mind immidiatly (because they were played yesterday and today):
contains match results of GSL and asus invitiational whiteRa vs Idra; wins and losses for protoss players vs mutalisks, but in general good play vs mutalisks + Show Spoiler +
-) Asus Invitational Idra vs WhiteRa match 1 -) Superstar vs Brown GSL Code A match 1
furthermore -) Hero vs crazymoving game1 was a very close game, in which hero got behind early, but still held on for something like 25mins vs mutalisks, until crazymoving eventually could kill him -) Hero vs crazymoving game2; hero goes double stargate and blindcounters crazymovings spire tech, who then has to cancel the spire
I really want to emphasize on the WhiteRa vs Idra game, because it showed that even if you're completly unprepared against mutalisks (double robo and charge research), just by scouting the mutalisks and having a good economy (3base vs 3base, with just a little bit of warp prism harass instead of huge gateway semi-allins) you can just power through mutalisk harass until you have the army to crush one of the best mutaplayers in the west
Really, Protoss players have to stop suciding gateway armies into 3base zergs, because that is the best possible scenario for a mutalisk switch, as stalkercount, tech and eco will be low for protoss.
It is kinda funny you mention the first game between hero and CM. Spoilers: + Show Spoiler +
Hero opens stargate with phoenix. He takes a fast third and gets templars and blink. This is a near ideal response one would think. Yet hero got roflstomped.
Yeah i know, the game lasted long and seemed close, but that is always the case in pvz with mutas. The zerg players can't engage head on, so it takes a while to technically win the game, but the game was already won at the 17 min mark. Go rewacht the muta harass at the natural at the 17 min mark ingame. Mutas come in and harass. Mutas destroy cannons phoenix and stalkers (that blunk in to defend). Toss antiair isn't as good as terran marines. Next the templars come in, waste a storm and the mutas fly away with ten health taken which they will regen anyway. That happens all the time. When you go blindly 2stargate after FFE you are in a decent spot vs spire players. But zergs don't have to use there spire. just throw down a roach warren and hydraden and you will be fine in the game.
yeah I know, it's funny how complex situations are sometimes not as easy as "but he opened stargate!" want to have another example for that: Zerg goes roach/hydra which does fine vs gateway, then Protoss goes colossi and zerg goes corruptors which is great vs colossi, yet zerg gets demolished in the direct engagement... Really makes one wonder if the game might be a little more complex + Show Spoiler +
Also if you want to find an early point, when hero lost the game, why don't you point out that crazymoving was way ahead because hero did no damage with his stargate play and no damage with his chargeplay and expanded rather late to a 3rd. One could point out that the only thing that kept hero in the game, was how well blink stalkers, phoenix and storms work against mutalisks, even when zerg has way more of them then in an even situation
CM was way ahead? Lol dude, go rewatch the game. Hero did no damage with stargate? Hero did pretty typical damage : a couple of queens, overlords and forcing spores. Heros third base was definately not late : 11 min 15, which is standard if not a little bit faster then standard. He had good eco and very good tech. What kept him in the game? Two things: 1) Muta play kills your opponent slowly. At the 17 min mark this game was lost. I know it sounds bold too an unexperienced player but it would have been a miracle to win vs a decent zerg that has spines bases and 30+ mutas. 2) CM is really not such a good player tbh, at least in that game there were many crucial mistakes which shouldnt happen at that level (codeA). Let me gives examples: Just before the main nexus dies, CM loses 10 mutas in Heros natural. CM mutas have been stormed afterwards and they are damaged. Instead of gently harassing and waiting to regen his life, he boldly moves across the main, which hero obviously sees: 5 mutas lost. hero places 3-4 stalkers behind one expo at 11 o clock; CM needs 45 sec to react and pull his drones wtf. Overall this game shows how ineffective temps and cannons are vs mutas. Just go watch how many storms were used and how many muta got killed because of the storms.
I know everyone can give his input on TL, but it is kinda funny how you, bigJ, explains to Hero, Welmu and myself how to play pvz and spams this thread like a madman.
well I'm sorry for you that I'm not one of the posters who writes "X is shit, Y is right" and then when you confront him, he doesn't answer. You know, some people call this discussing. If you want people to do that, open a thread that's called "Point out reasons why the mutalisk is imbalanced".
If you prefer it, you can think of any of my posts as: "In my opinion...", like as "in my opinion, hero was behind." And like in "in my opinion, Hero knows way better how to play PvZ, which doesn't mean that I can't point out that some of his decisions were rather relying on chance (stargate opening, chargelot harass), then being solid play" or like in "In my opinion, CM didn't make a lot more mistakes than Hero when he was harassing, because losing some mutas is just as natural as missing most storms against mutalisks"
But the thing is, HerO wasn't playing badly or worse than CrazyMoving. If anything Crazy moving was playing worse. He didn't cut off zealots and stalkers as they were picking off far away bases and he lost a whole base of drones to 2 stalkers.
And don't say HerO missed storms because the vast majority hit the mutalisks and did some damage. The issue was that the damage was so minimal that it barely left a dent on the mutalisks. Followed by the fact the stalkers were doing poor damage the mutas just wouldn't die.
As someone pointed out before, if the stalkers were marines then while flying over them Crazy Moving would have lost far more mutas than he did vs. HerO.
HerO did everything you suggest is necessary vs mutas. Storm, leaving templar behind, having well upgraded blink stalkers and taking a not super late 3rd. The 3rd was a bit faster than normal, the opening was standard and he did some mineral damage to the Zerg.
The fact that no pheonix were made even though a stargate was available also says volumes about the viability of pheonix vs Mutalisks. HerO just died a very slow death to the mutalisks since CM didnt let them sit in the middle of a storm to take full damage. That was all he had to do and he did it so he won.
Personally I don't get why Tosses even try to use storm vs mutas, it's an awful counter, it was awful in BW and relied somewhat on luck (almost always they simply used archons). Just morph those templar into archons at the start, don't even bother with storm T_T.
Well at 112 damage, if you could ever catch the muta, it was worth it. But I agree that storms seem rather useless. Even if the muta's sit under it for the full four seconds, they keep 1/3 of their health. But what is more likely is that they'll just fly through it taking minimal damage. But do archons even help once they get that giant flock? Because with unlimited selection it seems they could just outright snipe Archons too. Whereas in BW that splash was just killer for the 11 muta that would actually be forced to take a shot or two to the face.
The higher the count of mutas, the more effective archons become... it's the same with Thors. If you force them to magic box you, they take substantially more damage from the stalkers than they would have otherwise. It's the exact same concept as ZvT. Mutas can easily pick off Thors/Archons alone, but if there is Thor/Marine or Stalker/Archon the mutas simply can't engage unless in overwhelming numbers, to which you should simply have more stuff.
But it was a possibility to maelstrom, if toss had it in sc2 they wouldn't care about mutas, maelstrom + storm or maelstrom + archons would solve the problem and it would help in PvT. Stalkers are such flimsy units I hate them, goons were way beefier. Also what "size" unit was a muta, medium?
You can't say it would be used at all without knowing the situation... mutas were a huge issue in SC1 and it still wasn't used... also, both goons and stalkers deal 10 dmg to mutas, dragoons had a preattack delay substantially larger than stalkers, were far more clunky and large, and couldn't blink. Dragoons were awful counters to mutalisk, if you had mass muta vs only mass dragoon mutas would most likely win. Both also dealt +1 dmg to mutas per attack upgrade.
Don't you remember all the matches on HBR where Tosses tried to use goon/templar and just got annihilated by 9muta switch sniping all the templar then the hydras dying to the goons?
EPT
