Why does scouting seem difficult in pvz?

On November 24 2021 06:31 [Phantom] wrote:
Scouting is tricky in PvZ and it's one of the biggest problems Protoss has. Many zergs bulds look pretty similar and your only scouting optins are the early probe, the 1 adept.

Depending on the build, you may or might not have 1 sentry, which you could use to hallucinate phoenix, however you also want to save enegy for guardian shield. You won't have more than 1 sentry as you need gas for other units.

Going startgate doesn't mean you'll go oracle, because, again, you might need the gas for other units. If you decided to go double stargate VR for example, you won't make an oracle.

Now, you can scout with the VR as well, and they are good at killing overlords, but they aren't as good as an oracle at scouting so the Zerg can delay or move things around to more easily deny the scout. Even then, most pros are good at suspecting the queen walk is coming, but then the problem is Queens are pretty good agaisn't VR. Protoss take a long time to tech switch, so if the zerg managed to delay your scout, you're in trouble. In fact, even if you scout perfectly, you are in trouble. Queen walks are incredibly hard to stop even with good scout and it will depend a lot on micro, targetting, batteries available, if you have cannons and even building position. Finally due to how slow queens are maps are also a big factor and queen walks will be stronger on shorter maps.

So yeah, tl;dr is that you won't always scout with sentries/oracles even when goping startaget due to gas cost. Even if you do scout, Queen walks are very strong specially on shorter maps.

On November 24 2021 15:36 angry_maia wrote:


Thanks for the answer! So for a queen walk, how early does toss have to "know it's coming" to be fully prepared?

On November 24 2021 21:18 MJG wrote:
On the one hand, Protoss players want to cut corners so that they don't waste gas on midgame units they don't intend to use for their endgame composition. Units like Disruptors are great at stopping Queen walks, but producing them heavily delays the transition into the Skytoss/Templar army that Protoss needs for the lategame.

On the other hand, Zerg players don't need to make any major changes to their regular build in order to perform a Queen walk. The main (macro scale) difference between a Zerg who intends to Queen walk and a Zerg who doesn't intend to Queen walk is choosing to hold down the R/Z key or the D key during a given round of production. This means that a Zerg who sees something like Disruptors being made can easily choose not to Queen walk instead.

Scouting isn't really the problem because there isn't anything to scout prior to the Zerg deciding to commit to an attack; Protoss players can't justify making defensive units pre-emptively because they know that Zerg players can easily adjust their build if they see those defensive units being made. The best that Protoss players can do is throw down static defence the moment a Queen walk moves out and hope that they have enough of it finished in time.

On November 25 2021 23:19 RKC wrote:
Yes, most answers have it spot-on. The problem is that Zerg builds are incredibly flexible. A single building is all that is required for a tech switch (whereas Toss and Terran needs to build multiple production buildings). That's why busts and fake busts are so common in BW and SC2.

Queen walk is almost like hydra bust in BW. The timing of the bust is super sharp. Toss has to keep scouting non-stop to know whether the bust is incoming or Zerg is faking and simply droning behind. A bust is a slight deviation from their normal build order.

Contrast this with DT and double Statgate. Toss has to commit, and can't really transition and fake as well as Zerg.

On November 27 2021 12:34 RKC wrote:
Yes, there's always some element of scouting imbalance between races (especially BW). Zerg can basically park an ovie in Protoss base in early game, or hide safely on a cliff.

Hallucinations is a big help in SC2, but easily die to Queens.

One difference between both games is that BW's build orders are more linear and predictable (one can make a good tell from timing of second gas, building placement, etc). Whereas LOTV's faster economic scale obscures a lot of early game builds.