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The one unit I hate, except for Siege Tank, Colossus, Phoenix, Zealot and Sentry, is the High Templar. I can deal with the other units I mentioned with the exception of perhaps the Siege Tank and the Colossus, but High Templar is the one unit in the game I fear the most as a Zerg Player.
Of course a bunch of High Templar without the support of a smexy ground force is no big deal but they are seldom seen without the close proximity of their fellow Protoss buddies which makes them harder to beat.
So where exactly do I struggle with them? Well, the standard protoss force consists of a little bit of everything. Usually there's one predominant unit which varies, but usually it's the stalker. When I see a huge blue blob of stalkers, I want to go Zerglings unless they have a few too many colossi behind them. Zerglings OR Hydras, that is. Hydras are of course the better choice if you're struggling with larva and have a decent economy. But really, it doesn't matter as High Templars kill them all.
So what units do we have left?
Roaches Ultralisks Mutalisks Infestors Brood Lords Banelings
Roaches are of course the unit you WANT to make against those High Templars but let's discuss the other first since I want to take a moment to discuss Roaches.
Ultralisks - If you can get them, great but getting them isn't always an option. I'll explain why when I discuss Roaches.
Mutalisks - You'd think that if they have zero stalkers, Mutalisks would be a good option. Well, I have tried and my opponent simply made his HTs into Archons who of course obliterated my mutas. So mutalisks - nicht nicht.
Infestors - They are good to have against the colossi but I can't see them being useful when dealing with High Templars.
Brood Lords - I personally hate Brood Lords since they're so slow and sure, they're probably the best unit to use against a protoss ground army. However, it takes forever to tech up to them.
Banelings - lol.
Soooo, what about those roaches? Roaches are OK against a Protoss army. I think they do well against Stalkers, Zealots and Colossi. They do, however, have a couple of negative qualities. The first one being of course that they are not really supply efficient. If you were to throw your 200/200 homogeneous roach army against your opponents mixed ball of units, your roaches would fail. And if your army consists mostly of roaches, you can bet your ass that the protoss is gonna have a good amount of Immortals in front of his units. The same goes for ultralisks. Ultralisks would have been AWESOME against any protoss army, had it not been for those Immortals. So when going roaches, you want to mix in some other units as well. The overall best unit combo Zerg has is of course Roach/Hydra but my hydras die soooo damn quickly when he has high templars. In fact, if my opponent has like 7-8 HTs, my roaches will die very fast as well. I'm not even gonna mention Zerglings because they all die before they can do anything at all.
I know a good way to deal with psistorm is to move your units away from the storm. BUT I CAN'T because of those force fields which, by the way, very often splits my army into two so he can take one half out without having to bother with the other half. And even when I actually can move my units, they still suffer terrible damage because it takes a short while to get out of the storm and they get shot at by other units while doing it.
With that said, ALL would be good if it weren't for those ugly high templars. My Zerglings wouldn't die before they could even do the day9 scream, my hydra/roach combo would actually work and my infestors could probably mind control those retarded colossi.
So, fellow zerg players, how do I actually deal with them?
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One of the primary mistakes I see in these Infestors vs HT vs Ghost arguments is people think you're meant to build some unit, wave a magic micromanagement wand and then never have to worry about them again. You don't counter them directly. You get casters of your own (Infestors) and just plain fuck his world up just as badly.
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High Templars illustrate the necessity for zerg to flank effectively. I almost always keep a large number of speedlings detached from my main force. When they move out toward me I simply back up my main force until their army is in a good place to flank, then engage while simultaneously bringing the speedlings right into the high templar blob. Smart players keep their casters separate from their main force which almost makes it easier for lings to surround and kill.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Don't look for a unit counter, just flank well and micro well. That's all there is to it. You can use fungal growth too since if HT are fungal'd they can't cast storm.
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On August 08 2010 05:35 Nightbiscuit wrote: Banelings - lol. ?
A good flank with some banelings can be deadly. ~10 banelings can destroy a front of zealot and some of them can kill a pack of templars.
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On August 08 2010 05:45 Plexa wrote: You can use fungal growth too since if HT are fungal'd they can't cast storm. All I needed to know, thanks
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On August 08 2010 06:07 Nightbiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2010 05:45 Plexa wrote: You can use fungal growth too since if HT are fungal'd they can't cast storm. All I needed to know, thanks
woah woah! I am PRETTY sure that they still can cast Storm if they are fungal'd. they just can't move. (they can't cast the storm farther away than their range.)
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On August 08 2010 05:45 Plexa wrote: Don't look for a unit counter, just flank well and micro well. That's all there is to it. You can use fungal growth too since if HT are fungal'd they can't cast storm.
You sure about that? They won't be able to move into position to cast it outside a range of 9, but surely they can still cast it 9 'units' from where they're stuck?
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On August 08 2010 06:12 Arakash wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2010 06:07 Nightbiscuit wrote:On August 08 2010 05:45 Plexa wrote: You can use fungal growth too since if HT are fungal'd they can't cast storm. All I needed to know, thanks woah woah! I am PRETTY sure that they still can cast Storm if they are fungal'd. they just can't move. (they can't cast the storm farther away than their range.)
Oh ok, then I'm almost back to square one. I mean, I know about the flanking and everything but it's freaking impossible to pull off a perfect flank so that your units attack at the same time from all sides.
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Storm sucks if you keep to the creep and micro well. Or just overwhelm him with roaches/hydra. Or do both.
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you can just make a few mutas & snipe them and still have a ground force to handle the rest
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hydras on creep dominate Zealot and HTs, just shoot backoff shoot and back off. off creep this isnt as effective but on creep god it hurts! shouldnt be hard to go ling hydra broodlord? or ultra if you have to...although archons seems to hurt ultras alot.
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Active creeping and positioning are keys to negating storm damage. If you scout HT - keep your army in a large, creep-filled area (in the middle of most maps, outside of small chokes/naturals). Burrowed units and flanking are effective ways to pick off HT as well.
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if you have an infestor on high ground you can neural parasite an ht and then feedback all of the others, or storm if you feel like it.
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Templar always fall behind b/c they are so slow and zlots charge. If you flank with some speedlings or even use burrowed roaches you can semi-snipe the templar.
That and kite.
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Infestors counter HT really well actually. The trick is to abuse the unit ai, the swarm ai. Units like to clump, and like units like to clump even further (because of speed).
So what I like to do is fungal all the HT (which actually takes off all their shields) and holds them in place. So you can engage the stalker army without fear of HT storm. Or at the least makes it easier to dodge storm because they are limited on the range of it. fungal, back off, engage, back off, engage type of thing.
Burrowed roach and infestor combined can be a really good sniping team.
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I wonder if you can mindcontrol high templars and fuck him up with his own storms
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On August 08 2010 08:36 Piski wrote: I wonder if you can mindcontrol high templars and fuck him up with his own storms you can, but it's not as good vs toss because their units have 150+ hp and are larger.
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As a protoss i love using feedback on those fat little infestors. Infestors are not a very good option vs HT because of this (and blink stalkers can mess 'em up real good like). Also, in my mid/endgame army as toss i like having both HT and collosi as they complement each other very nicely and infestors do not work well against this. If you having problem with HT ultras in front of your hydras and flanking work well against toss.
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In my experience as a Protoss player, I hate it when Roaches show up to my Chargelot+HT party. They have enough health to where killing them becomes inconvenient with Psi Storm, and they're reasonably good at killing zealots. Even worse, when they burrow, they can regen much of their health. Once Ultras come out in force, I feel my chances for victory becoming slim.
Also, if you can ever get a couple banelings to hit a HT ball, you'll kill them all instantly. It's fun/frustrating to behold.
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