This is a PvZ I just played on icc. The Zerg said he was B+ high in previous seasons and I believe him. I got a big advantage early on with corsairs and dts followed up by hardcore macro but I don't think I could have broken into his bases easily and rather than risk map control I opted to play safe and continue to exp, macro and harass. Maybe I should have just thrown everything at his 3rd but it seemed unnecessarily risky when I was that far ahead. My control really, really let me down and I made a few bad strategic decisions, wasting armies and attacking the wrong points at the wrong times but I think it was his continual plague + cracklings under swarm with a solid lurker/plague defence that got me. Destination can be split pretty easily and the ramps camped.
So, firstly, how to I combat someone who uses defilers so effectively? Plagued zealots go down so fast and my dragoons weren't much more use. I'm thinking I went reavers too late but storm 'should' have been enough. Secondly, if there are any other holes in my game people want to point out please do so. I know my control is pretty awful and my macro slipped at times but anything else lol?
I'd appreciate people watching the rep before advising me on my gameplay but high level players please feel free to comment on the theorycraft of dealing with constant plague harass and swarm lurker defence without watching it.
BTW Disclaimer: I am not as good as you Kwark, lol.
There were small windows at 15 minutes and 23 minutes where you could have done the following:
At the 15 minute mark you could have went with your two control groups in the center right for the 1st natural and try and distract him, then use the templar + zealot at your 3 expansion to go for the lurker contain at 2. Make him choose what to defend and what to lose. He had a lack of lings up until the point where you finally decided to go for the natural. I see you combined your groups, but you could have just forced him to go back to the main. Just bring your groups over the bridges and then make sure he cant pass.
At the 23 minute mark you could have taken out the 9 expansion if you saw it more quickly. I guess all that you could do to solve that is to keep a DT or obs around that area. Yah you went for the 9 expansion right as he put his lurkers down. You could've attacked that for like a minute without any lurker support and prevent that expansion.
Reavers probably would've helped instead of relying so heavily on storm to save your 5 (ish) base.
Also you don't use Archons mid game? There was a lack of archon and an abundance of dead templar that I noticed. You lost almost every templar you created that was part of your army at every point of the game. Idk if you had merged some into archons and replenished your army with new templar maybe your army would be stronger, especially since at a certain point he turned on his mass zergling mode. The reaver + a couple templar would permanently keep him from getting at your cannons. Maybe if you had placed a couple of gateways at your 3 base in front of the cannons he wouldn't be able to reach them so easily, but he only went for it after he was ready to swarm so the lack of reaver would once again be the cause for your losses there. Also the reavers probably wouldve helped your mineral count stay steady. It spiked at a certain point and I was going to suggest making more gateways, but in the position you were in it seems like additional gateways would just make more ling/lurker/hydra chow.
I'm still watching, but it seems like at about the 25 minute mark the game turned around in his favor. His lurkers on his cliffs and major choke points seems to have pushed you back to your half of the map, which is going to leave you at a disadvantage since he has access to that expansion at the top left (11), which was untapped up until the point of the game where you were pushed back to your half of the map.
EDIT: I am going to rewatch it again to see specifically what could have been done to attack at the 15 and 23 minute marks, and if I have those times exactly.
Out of curiosity can you post the previous game you played? I'm intrigued to see it
i am not able to watch the replay at the moment because this laptop doesn't have starcraft installed. i'll just share some basic theorycraft and what i personally like to do. lately, i have been mixing in dark archons in my pvz lategame more and more, mainly to snipe defilers with feedback. i recommend watching free vs ych from last week, where free demonstrates how effective dark archons can be. it's also a great game. feedback has a ridiculously long range, which makes it pretty practical and easy to use. i have had good results with them, although it's still a process in the making.
i think the key to playing against the defensive defiler/lurker style is avoiding bad frontal attacks, and using corsairs/drops to deal economical damage. corsairs, as you probably know, are very lethal versus ling/lurker/defiler style. it's hard to comeback if you lose your main army. use corsairs to harass and kill overlords while dropping dark/high templars at various places. particularly on destination, make sure to never let him set up on ramp expos. always have obs there watching. set up solid defences with cannons/storms - losing expos to lings/defilers is complete bullshit. start reaver production and build about four before using them to move out with your main army. i know i am making it sound easy, but i hope this helps.
theorycraft with dealing with constant plague harass and swarm lurker = get DA for attacking (use it like they use plague - feedback defilers before you engage, storm during battles, so it doesn't detract from the micro you need elsewhere) then when they dont have swarmed lurks you can march in with goon templar, trying to kill a lot of lurkers with anything involving zealots is a doomed enterprise. reavers for defending, in fact you need that for defending vs defiler, not just defiler lurker sometimes a zerg defense is so properly camped that you either need to ignore it (often the only valid option) or you need reaver to take care of it. considering you made a lot of sairs during this game, and you like incorporating it in general, dweb might be a good choice for you - but only if they dont have swarm somewhere. sairs are however also good because you can scout for defilers before attacking somewhere with them.
more general comments on this game
you didn't lose this game vs a lurker / defiler combination, you mostly lost it (well, you completely lost your advantage) while he was still in hydra lurker phase. you cannot attack 8+ burrowed lurkers with zealots, ever, and absolutely need to build goons earlier than you do when zerg makes this many lurkers. second, you took both third and fourth and fifth gas too late. you had huuuge advantage after your dts killed his hatch, when you get this kind of advantage you need to capitalize expansion wise. third, I know you've read me state this before because you have posted shortly after me when I have typed it before : build robotics in any frontier-expansion, if he has his defense close to this (and thus the ability to reinforce constantly) then templar/cannon is never enough to kill defiler / ling. reavers were integral to you holding 3. (once you lost that exp, there was no coming back for you. ) fourth ; you split up your armies too much during combat. vs a zergling hydra army, which is what he had during some fights early on, your army needs to be together. zealots have a lot more hp when the damage is spread out over all of them. fifth, somehow you had very few units through most of the game, even though you were not that rich (cept some parts of the game), but you just seemed very low on units. it leads me to believe you didn't build enough probes, maybe you lost some I didn't notice. sorta looked like you fell through after 13 minutes or something, a lot of idle probes, control became a lot worse, you rarely if ever had more than 24 ground units in one army.. also dts can be very nice, but there's hardly ever any point in having 12 of them in one army, if you have 8 they pretty much deal the same punch (once they are detected, whether they are 8 or 12, they get killed) but you get another archon and templar and some zealots.
Im not a great player but I watched the rep and I'll make two small comments.
First, nice job with sair dt. You took out that hatch. But I suggest you should have attacked the hydras that were there when you had the chance. You targeted the hatchery over the hydras, which was a mistake IMO. You could have kept the sairs around and caused him even more trouble if you had used those 3 dts to kill the hydras and lings real quick and then moved on to the hatch.
Second you lost the game when you made that messy attack (right before you made the joking comment about the rally point in the game chat) and then lost the expansion at 4 o clock. You had a big adv from the sair dt harass and you should've either gotten your units together and made a coordinated attack on his nat or 2 o clock, or (preferably IMO) just regrouped and expanded and reinforced your exps defences, and gotten bigger with upgrades and cannons and reavers. You were behind the whole time after losing your army to his burrowed lurks outside the 2 o clock base and then losing the 4 o clock exp. He did make good use of swarm in the mid-late game but I think you were behind anyway because of that key battle.
you did damage with your first dt sair attack you are way ahead. you do damage with your zealot ht combo attack but after both attacks you have failed to secure a third... and your opponent let you sneak it when you were weak... a better zerg could have raped you because of this... very easy concept expand while attacking. because of this your midgame is very weak. you also decide to add an early 2nd forge but the problem is you have no gas for dragoons meaning his lurks get cost effective on you.
his defiler control is pretty good... on destination at the 3 o'clock expo its really good to move your canons more towards the ramp and have like 2 zealots or an archon with HT behind it which should give you enough time to react and storm properly. feedback is pretty good for sniping defilers.. and you should time that accordingly to your scouting... hint hint you lost all your corsairs and had no idea when his hive was on its way
I would say you didn't lose because of defiler control but because you didn't expand at proper timings and because of that could not form a midgame killing push.
also your follow-up to dt-sair is theoretically bad in this circumstance. because you invested so much in corsair to do this attack your ground army is small. you killed one of the zergs 5 hatches meaning he can still pump at 80% production until the 5 hatch is rebuilt. he still has all his drones because all you killed was the hatch... therefore the zerg can only do 1 thing at this point: mass hydra. so here is your theoretic mistake you get to 7 gates off 2 bases and keep pushing into him? that makes no sense to me... his army is gonna be smaller than usual but because you invested so much in corsairs that your army is also going to be smaller than usual. this means that all you can accomplish is trade armies with the zerg which is useless in my eyes as I am a firm believer in getting a big protoss death ball. i think you could have gotten away with getting your third off of 2 gateways only and play defensively with storm than roll him with 3 bases... he shouldn't be able to kill you because he needs to defend your dt-sair still.
anyways I know you are a better player than me but that's how I see that game. if you see flaws in my views do tell im always willing to admit i am wrong
On September 26 2009 08:04 fast ball player wrote: Im not a great player but I watched the rep and I'll make two small comments.
You took out that hatch. But I suggest you should have attacked the hydras that were there when you had the chance. You targeted the hatchery over the hydras, which was a mistake IMO. You could have kept the sairs around and caused him even more trouble if you had used those 3 dts to kill the hydras and lings real quick and then moved on to the hatch.
It's been said already, but getting a single Dark Archon for feedback really helps, because Defilers are always running around with more energy than health.
The biggest thing in this replay, and people have already mentioned it, is that you didn't expand after killing his hatch at his 3rd base. That was definitely the best thing to do when you get an advantage like that. There is no way he will be able to take down your 3rd expo when hes slowed from that hatch kill. The attack on his nat soon after when he had lurkers, and you killed his one sunken was a bad attack TBH (sorry watched the replay a few hours ago ...) if i remember correctly, i was saying "no no no, expand!!".
Anyways, I remember Day9 saying, if u get an advantage, expand. That pushes your advantage even further. Attacking takes a risk (in this case, you lost in this risk, because his unit combination was better than yours, lurk>zeal), and you want to take risks when you are behind, in hopes of catching back up rather than when you are ahead.
On September 26 2009 06:10 Liquid`Drone wrote: build robotics in any frontier-expansion
I put this in a post it note on the corner of my screen. I may no longer be able to see my psi count but I can build a hell of a lot of reavers. Just helped me win a game vs a high level opponent. Could camp exps so easily with a pylon wall, cannons and robo and once I got moving late game I could just pick up a few reavers from any of my 3 robo facilities and have some real firepower. Thanks.
On September 26 2009 06:10 Liquid`Drone wrote: build robotics in any frontier-expansion
I put this in a post it note on the corner of my screen. I may no longer be able to see my psi count but I can build a hell of a lot of reavers. Just helped me win a game vs a high level opponent. Could camp exps so easily with a pylon wall, cannons and robo and once I got moving late game I could just pick up a few reavers from any of my 3 robo facilities and have some real firepower. Thanks.
You should also have 1 or 2 templar at each expansion to defend against drops. Reavers don't do much vs them.
Didn't watch the replay, but still: If you see lots of plague coming, you could skip the 3rd armor upgrade (if it is still possible or reasonable) and focus on shields. You won't have much health left that could profit from armor. Also, Dark Archons for feedback mostly, but maelstrom should be researched just in case.
And since that alone doesn't really allow you to break lurk/swam/plague defense easily, I would try to apply pressure to his main or expansions in the back. If you were able to secure lots of resources and the zerg is really good in defense, consider recall an option (zealot heavy, you shouldn't encounter many lurkers in his main but obviously many zerglings). If you manage to take out most of his tech (pool, den, defiler mound) in a sudden blow that can be enough to win you the game. I would try to hide the arbiter tech and abiter until you get the first recall in or else he might be too well prepared with more scourges than usual.
Well, several things in chronological order, or as close as I can get to that. First, your Sair/Dt had great execution, but following up on it wasn't that great, you ended up losing all of your sairs after the initial dt's had to leave that base? You should have kept your sairs away from the hydras and near your dt's, and you should have chased his small force off with one of your dt's. Later on, when you attack his natural, you let your forces get seperated, your templars and 2 dt's get picked off and don't help the zealots at all. Third, you should have been storming then pulling your templars out and morphing or trying to save them for more storms, treat templar like dropships, after they had served their purpose you still want to preserve them because they can do it again. The storm drop was a great idea, just the first storms killed like 3-4 drones between them, they weren't positioned right. I do like the expanding you do alot, the expanding to the right was great to keep his lurkers from moving up and allowing him to take that expo. Near the 20 minute mark, you threw your entire army into a huge field of lurkers, you needed to break that more slowly if you were going to destroy that base, like using goons to kill the lurks before you sent in everything.
Like above posters you should have transitioned to arbiters with recall, there were several times when a recall could have ended the game for him.
On September 26 2009 08:04 fast ball player wrote: Im not a great player but I watched the rep and I'll make two small comments.
You took out that hatch. But I suggest you should have attacked the hydras that were there when you had the chance. You targeted the hatchery over the hydras, which was a mistake IMO. You could have kept the sairs around and caused him even more trouble if you had used those 3 dts to kill the hydras and lings real quick and then moved on to the hatch.
dont do that.
You're retarded. Here's one of many hundreds of examples of a vod where a top pro gamer chooses to prioritize killing units over buildings with his dts. Think about how much minerals and gas units vs buildings cost.
Pick out which parts of that video that Free has prioritized killing units over buildings in that video with his DTs other than drones.
Secondly, just the fact that you're judging the whole kill units over buildings thing on MIN/GAS PRICES is just mind boggling. Would you rather kill two hydras over an evolution chamber in the midgame? Two mutalisks rather than a spire? 12 zerglings over a spawning pool? Four hydras over a hatchery?
Later on in the video free actually uses maelstrom not to kill ultras, but to give him enough time to snipe the expo hatch. Not really a good game to use as an example of this.
On September 26 2009 08:04 fast ball player wrote: Im not a great player but I watched the rep and I'll make two small comments.
You took out that hatch. But I suggest you should have attacked the hydras that were there when you had the chance. You targeted the hatchery over the hydras, which was a mistake IMO. You could have kept the sairs around and caused him even more trouble if you had used those 3 dts to kill the hydras and lings real quick and then moved on to the hatch.
dont do that.
You're retarded. Here's one of many hundreds of examples of a vod where a top pro gamer chooses to prioritize killing units over buildings with his dts. Think about how much minerals and gas units vs buildings cost. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtm5A4tW3cA&feature=channel_page
wow Just watched that game and every protoss unit (cept scout and arbiter) was used! holy crap...
EPT
