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In an interview made after winning his Ro16 group NesTea said the following:
Q. How do you feel about the 1.2.0 patch as a Zerg? A. It's depressing. There is a strategy I'm worried about, and if the Protoss uses that strategy, it will be a worse pressure than facing a Terran player.
What kind of strategy could he be thinking of? It probably involves either Hallucination or Pheonixes. What do you think? In what way can you use the lowered production time to the fullest?
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nexus first into 2stargate phoenix + chronoes gets a shitton of phoenix out very fast i imagine.
cant really think of anything else that would be so hard to deal with and become 'a new build' with the patch.
Or maybe he wants his opponents to go nexus first 2 stargate so he can out macro them.. who knows
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What about 1stargate Phoenix + Hallucination straight into Colossus?
That way, you see the fleet of phoenix, assume he went 2 gate phoenix and make Hydras, and the Colossus punish your assumptions?
I saw it in a custom game today, it really sucked.
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It obviously has something to do with phoenixes. You can't have a whole build/strategy based off hallucination. Phoenixes are also a transition unit, not something you mass, so I would imagine it would be some sort of stargate opener.
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On January 13 2011 06:33 KingRajesh wrote: What about 1stargate Phoenix + Hallucination straight into Colossus?
That way, you see the fleet of phoenix, assume he went 2 gate phoenix and make Hydras, and the Colossus punish your assumptions?
I saw it in a custom game today, it really sucked.
I'm not sure that is sustainable, if there a liar there is a good chance of an overseer. And there is the far more obvious tell of not taking dmg and no harras dispite having shown mass phonix.
I can see getting tricked once, but it's not what someone like nestea is going to be worried about
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possibly pump out 3 phoenixes really fast to snipe off the queens and then make a warpgate timing attack with 2 void rays? complete guess, sounds deadly tho.
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On January 13 2011 06:35 Skyro wrote: It obviously has something to do with phoenixes. You can't have a whole build/strategy based off hallucination. Phoenixes are also a transition unit, not something you mass, so I would imagine it would be some sort of stargate opener.
Phoenixes can totally be massed. I bumped into a game with 8-10 phoenixs harassing my expos while he blocked off his entrance with 4-6 cannons, transitioning into stalker/colossus/phoenix. Even though I hit him straight up with roach/hydra/corruptor, which I thought I should win, the excessive amount of phoenixes specifically targeting my hydras proved devastating.
This game was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Large amounts of Phoenixes are really good against pretty much everything except maybe lings, when they can be produced as quickly as they can now, they're really hard to deal with.
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It's gotta be Phoenix into Colossus/Void Ray. It's what I've been doing, and it's pretty damn awesome.
The sheer amount of Phoenixs you can build is pretty deadly. They're forced to get Hydralisks and then they easily die to the ball of Void Ray/Colossus because Roaches get eaten alive by Void Rays and are probably more effective at killing them than a standard ground army, while Hydras get eaten alive by Colossus too.
Voidray/Colossus is a very strong unit composition with little answers for Zerg. The Phoenix buff has made it much, much more viable too.
Once they get to the point of having huge clumps of Corruptors you will definitely want to integrate Stalkers back into your mix, usually after taking your 3rd so you have the gas to do so. The Corruptors eat alive Voidray/Colossus in a critical mass, so you need to quickly mass up Stalkers to support it.
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fast expand with hallucination scouts. Pretty much that in itself is just good as fuck. Make proper counters and win.
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I think its the combination of phoenix buff and infestor nerf. If you were a smart zerg player you didnt go hydras against phoenix player as you know he will transition to collossus. Therefore, you got infestors which are great anti air because of funghal growth and marines. It was also good vs the collosus death ball as you could FG it in the open when it is out of position. Now with FG not working for air, infestor is far less effective as anti-air.
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On January 13 2011 06:47 Jermstuddog wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2011 06:35 Skyro wrote: It obviously has something to do with phoenixes. You can't have a whole build/strategy based off hallucination. Phoenixes are also a transition unit, not something you mass, so I would imagine it would be some sort of stargate opener. Phoenixes can totally be massed. I bumped into a game with 8-10 phoenixs harassing my expos while he blocked off his entrance with 4-6 cannons, transitioning into stalker/colossus/phoenix. Even though I hit him straight up with roach/hydra/corruptor, which I thought I should win, the excessive amount of phoenixes specifically targeting my hydras proved devastating. This game was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Large amounts of Phoenixes are really good against pretty much everything except maybe lings, when they can be produced as quickly as they can now, they're really hard to deal with.
You basically just agreed with me. I said phoenixes is not really a unit that you mass, e.g. eventually you have to transition into something else.
I've been doing a FE into double stargate opener into void/colossi for months in PvZ on Scrap/Jungle/Shakuras and it was already incredibly potent. The phoenix and void ray buff will only make it moreso.
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Fungal growth still works on air bro.
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what fg not working for air, they reverted that change some time back..
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On January 13 2011 06:56 plagiarisedwords wrote: I think its the combination of phoenix buff and infestor nerf. If you were a smart zerg player you didnt go hydras against phoenix player as you know he will transition to collossus. Therefore, you got infestors which are great anti air because of funghal growth and marines. It was also good vs the collosus death ball as you could FG it in the open when it is out of position. Now with FG not working for air, infestor is far less effective as anti-air.
Fungal growth still works for air, the planned change was reverted early in the test realm already... But NesTea is clearly worried of early game anyway, so this is kind of irrelevant as rushing to infestors is not really a solution to anything. I guess it could be some kind of 2 stargate build utilizing chronoboost for first phoenixes. When you get a few overlords early on in the game, the zerg is basically dead as it's hard to produce anything while constantly supply capped. Maybe followed with some zealot aggression to make it even harder to defend?
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On January 13 2011 06:46 tuestresfat wrote: possibly pump out 3 phoenixes really fast to snipe off the queens and then make a warpgate timing attack with 2 void rays? complete guess, sounds deadly tho.
thats pretty fucking smart, youd do it off 2 base though and with like 5-6 gates. Zerg dies in an almost comic way to 2 base wg all ins without queens.
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On January 13 2011 07:04 mookku wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2011 06:56 plagiarisedwords wrote: I think its the combination of phoenix buff and infestor nerf. If you were a smart zerg player you didnt go hydras against phoenix player as you know he will transition to collossus. Therefore, you got infestors which are great anti air because of funghal growth and marines. It was also good vs the collosus death ball as you could FG it in the open when it is out of position. Now with FG not working for air, infestor is far less effective as anti-air. Fungal growth still works for air, the planned change was reverted early in the test realm already... But NesTea is clearly worried of early game anyway, so this is kind of irrelevant as rushing to infestors is not really a solution to anything. I guess it could be some kind of 2 stargate build utilizing chronoboost for first phoenixes. When you get a few overlords early on in the game, the zerg is basically dead as it's hard to produce anything while constantly supply capped. Maybe followed with some zealot aggression to make it even harder to defend? I've been doing something similar to this, something like gate core stargate gate gate, getting 3-4 phoenix to kill off ovies and harass queens and ending the game witha handful of zealots and sentries. Pretty effective although I've only attempted it a handful of times.
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The pheonix play will really set Z back, limit his options by forcing corrupter's or hydras and attempt to suppress him enough that toss can build up a sick 200/200 army and roll him. Even if Z can get brood lords or Ultras they are now shut down by a small handful of voids... Really doesn't seem like happy days for Z
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I also think it's mass Phoenix.
If 1 or 2 phoenixes could kill some overlords, what about a whole bunch of phoenixes? And even IF zerg can defend the phoenix harrass(you can even call it a push if Protoss kills every singleoverlord that isn't near your base or your sporecrawlers), toss can easily tech up to colossi and rape the *** out of your hydras. I don't see any reason why you shouldn't go for fast Phoenix in PvZ. It owns. I can't think of a way to defend that properly without getting behind in eco and tech too much...
Like... Phoenix harrass was already pretty effective, now it's like saying "I won this game anyway, please leave."
And since this is the only change that is really changing "how to kill" zerg, it has to be phoenix. (Or do you want to kill the zerg with observers? )
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There is a really awesome protoss strategy thats going to get amplified after this patch. It was actually quite popular in BW too:
The toss goes: some sort of expand, could be 3gate expand or cannon expand ->Phoenix -> DT (if you don't win after that then -> Colossus)
Basically the phoenix massacres all the stray overlords. You force the zerg to make hydralisks and play ultra defensive, once you get about 8 phoenix or so you can actually run in and snipe queens greatly reducing the zerg's production. Once you transition into Dark Shrine you attack with your gateway units which have DT sprinkled into it, you snipe the overseer if he has any. The DT is there to surprise, even if he does scout it and makes an overseer you easily snipe it with phoenix. Basically he'll need like 3-4 overseer over his army at all times.
This really catches zerg off guards and is extremely potent.
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The only problem I would see with DT's is that by going with a stargate you might force zerg to build a few spores which are detectors. I would say collosus instead to counter the hydras would be pretty ridiculous.
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