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Hi,
So I just fought my highest opponent (I mean in term of ladder points: he was 3800 master) and lost again against a specific strategy that I never really found a way to counter it well.
My PvZ is already not my best matchup at the moment but I really got trouble against this:
- Zerg expand, then turtle (6-7 crawlers) He have lings and roaches also.
- Since it's not really possible for me to attack, Zerg drone up.
For the moment, I tell myself it's time to expand and try to take the map, trying to profit of the turtle. But on two bases a zerg can actually do a good number of mutas.
Even without scouting I was seeing that strat coming. I go for blink stalkers and I'm starting a forge. I really can't attack, he just got too many crawlers.
- Zerg attack with mutalisks to my main. My stalkers are down to my entrance. They are here to support zealots in case of attack with roaches and lings, I can't really see them coming in advance because he alway take control of watch tower. If I send a few zealots and/or stalkers whatever to kill the ling at the watch tower, he can send a lot of lings to kill them. If I send my whole army to kill the ling, he can try to counter attack my base and actually do some big damage.
- So by the time my stalkers go up to my main, even with blink, the zerg kill quite a good number of probes. Then you know the story, turn around, harass here, go to my expand, kill others probes. Mutas go back to their base and I'm like 14-15 probes behind in economy. It's hard to not be pessimism in this situation, I'm like: Ok I'm so down in economy I'm gonna lose unless some miracle or something.
But yea I'm still trying to figure out the best way to PvZ. My PvT is good, same for PvP, but for months now I just can't figure out PvZ. So here a replay:
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/148963-1v1-protoss-zerg-gutterhulk
I know it was not my best game but he did some mistakes too. Feel free to give me tips on anything, I really want to beat those zergs! : )
I'm still glad thought. I don't feel he's an impossible opponent to beat at all even if he's 3800. I just need to find the trick. Are Phoenixes the only way here? I feel like he could just focus on roaches and then phoenixes would be way less useful.
Sorry for my bad english btw and I'm around 3400 master if you want the info.
Thanks in advance for the help!
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If he's dedicated to mutas, phoenixes are worth getting. Just keep them with your army until you have enough of them to go out and harass his mutas. If you know the mutas are coming, you're best off splitting your stalkers and sentries between your main and natural unless he has so many that he'll be able to overwhelm your forces. Finally, don't be afraid to build a tonne of cannons in this situation. Sometimes you just have to do it to be secure.
Edit: Just to clarify, mutas are quite an investment, so if he's going for them either he'll have very few zerglings and roaches, or the mutas will be very late. Either way, you shouldn't need all your army to defend your front, and can spare some stalkers to watch your mineral line.
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I would say firstly you were banking a lot of gas until 11 minutes in when you spent it all on sentries. I think you should have just gotten 1 gas if you were going to expand and not make any sentries. This is just a general issue, not specific to your problem.
I think you just reacted wrong. Its like Jumbled said, mutas are quite an investment. He cant have spines + equivalent ground army + mutas. You need to scout and decide how you are going to beat him. Spines and mutas means that you can slack on your ground army and still be fine. I would suggest pheonix. I think you should have dropped the starport as soon as you saw the spinecrawlers because you know he isn't going to be in a position to push on ground for a while.
Extra crap because im long winded:
On pheonix vs voidrays: pheonix would put you in a more defensive position and you should probably proceed to getting colossus. Alternatively you could just get some voidrays and start pressuring with heavy stalker counts and using the voidrays to kill the spinecrawlers. That route might turn into base race, but 6-8 mutas aren't going to win a base race i think.
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Salut Draco!! 
I play Zerg, and there is absolutely only one thing that Protoss can do to counter a well executed Muta build; Psionic Storm. Stalkers simply do not do enough DPS to take out an aggressive Muta ball, and even if you have enough stalkers, the mutas can dance around the map, never engaging directly.
When I make 40 mutas, and they get stormed once or twice and I lose 20 of them, I don't make any more mutas. By getting out the Psi Storm and Amulet you automatically force the Zerg to stop production of light units. I warn you now, any good Zerg will transition out of Muta/Ling in a real hurry once you storm them, so be ready to face roaches en masse.
Bonne Chance mon homme!
P.S. Phoenix do really well against Muta, but you need to have started Phoenix production either before the Zerg, or while he is massing the Muta ball. If you try to use Stargate as a response to a Zerg already having mutas, you will die.
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I haven't watched the replay because I'm at work, but as soon as you scout a lot of spine crawlers at the natural he's most likely going for muta. Throw down a council and start upgrading blink, as well as teching to templar. Storm + blink is the best counter to mutas. And like stated before, don't be afraid to get cannons at your bases to defend. It's worth the cost.
Oh, and upgrading armour against mass muta is better than upgrading attack damage because it greatly diminishes the splash damage.
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Turtle too. Get enough cannons and blink stalkers and start storm. Turtle your 3rd base. Push out with enough support units depending on what else zerg is building with their mutas. Your 150+ army should counter his army a lot better for the win.
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Haven't watched the replay as I'm at work, but think i have a good grasp of what you are facing.
I'm not quite sure about the timings and so on, but seeing as he is investing in alot of spine crawlers im assuming he wont be having alot of ground units to defend with?
Could it be a possibility to either:
Place pylon outside his main, get obs out = warp in units from 3-4 gates. Engage when enough units, FF his ramp if he has units coming from exp, and proceed to kill his main/spire.
or
Go for 2-3 gate robo, get out a Prism, drop lots/sentry in his main, FF ramp -> kill stuff.
As stated above, assuming I'm not completely off on the timings of obs/prism vs spire, it should be possible to wipe out his main, or atleast do alot of dmg to tech buildings so that he can't recover easily.
The idea is, if all (or atleast the bulk) of his defense is in front, why not just go in where he has none? Just like you don't HAVE to attack into PF vs terran on Xel Naga, one can actually just go past it and attack his natural or main.
For the record 3100 master protoss here.
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This
On March 11 2011 18:33 Zedromas wrote:
I play Zerg, and there is absolutely only one thing that Protoss can do to counter a well executed Muta build; Psionic Storm. Stalkers simply do not do enough DPS to take out an aggressive Muta ball, and even if you have enough stalkers, the mutas can dance around the map, never engaging directly.
When I make 40 mutas, and they get stormed once or twice and I lose 20 of them, I don't make any more mutas. By getting out the Psi Storm and Amulet you automatically force the Zerg to stop production of light units. I warn you now, any good Zerg will transition out of Muta/Ling in a real hurry once you storm them, so be ready to face roaches en masse.
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And this
On March 11 2011 21:40 McNulty wrote:
Go for 2-3 gate robo, get out a Prism, drop lots/sentry in his main, FF ramp -> kill stuff.
As stated above, assuming I'm not completely off on the timings of obs/prism vs spire, it should be possible to wipe out his main, or atleast do alot of dmg to tech buildings so that he can't recover easily.
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Seem like good stuff ^^
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Feel free to mass phoenix against any muta-based strategy. Phoenix are so underused vs Zerg its not even funny. When people "go for phoenix" they get 4-6 and stop?
Get 10-12. There really isn't anything in the Zerg arsenal that shuts down this many phoenix.
Fungal growth doesn't affect a wide enough area to catch all the phoenix.
Corruptors are too slow to keep up.
Hydras and Queens get eaten alive so long as you don't let them get into a giant ball.
Mutas are lol.
Spore crawlers don't do enough DPS to keep you out of their base.
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Imho Phoenix are the only way to deal with that. If you tech to HTs you are forced to be passive for a far too long time and he probably will mass expand all over the map. Even if you are doing a good job in defending his harass, the game will then end in a basetrade (which you are most likely to lose) once you push out.
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Northern Ireland117 Posts
if you see a zerg turtling hard you might aswell invest in haluicnate and get a phoenix to scout and if you see muta get phoenix and punish him super hard for going muta because pheonix destroy muta so hard its crazy. Plus he will be sooo far behind at that stage you prob could just make a few immortals to break the spines like a timing attack because loosing all those gas heavy units is very devastating to loose it all
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I faced this strat once and lost in the most frustrating manner possible. You'd be surprised how well mutas do against phoenix once they get into a ball of 20+. Unless your micro is perfect , he will stop and you'll lose the first 3-4 phoenix in your fleet in the blink of an eye.
IMO the only way to win this is with storm. You need AOE to take out a muta cloud that big.
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If you want to deal with mutas, you have some options blink stalker, storm, and pheonix. The trick is when to get those. Usually you should get those when mutas harassment is out of your control. With the exception of pheonix, you can focus on them pretty much whenever you want to.
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nobody is mentioning guardian shield, although it is probably assumed and the mobility issue aside, the shield nullifies the effectiveness of the muta bounce, so mixing shield into your strategy from those early sentries seems essential.
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On March 11 2011 18:33 Zedromas wrote:Salut Draco!! I play Zerg, and there is absolutely only one thing that Protoss can do to counter a well executed Muta build; Psionic Storm. Stalkers simply do not do enough DPS to take out an aggressive Muta ball, and even if you have enough stalkers, the mutas can dance around the map, never engaging directly. When I make 40 mutas, and they get stormed once or twice and I lose 20 of them, I don't make any more mutas. By getting out the Psi Storm and Amulet you automatically force the Zerg to stop production of light units. I warn you now, any good Zerg will transition out of Muta/Ling in a real hurry once you storm them, so be ready to face roaches en masse.
Seriously on what level you play if toss kills you only if he gets storms? Usually you will die until you have 40 muta. No idea what toss was doing if he allowed you to get such numbers.^^
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On March 11 2011 22:55 Brandus wrote:
I faced this strat once and lost in the most frustrating manner possible. You'd be surprised how well mutas do against phoenix once they get into a ball of 20+. Unless your micro is perfect , he will stop and you'll lose the first 3-4 phoenix in your fleet in the blink of an eye.
IMO the only way to win this is with storm. You need AOE to take out a muta cloud that big.
Why don't you have a 15+ phoenix ball if he has that many mutas?
A Phoenix takes 6 shots to kill a Muta.
Mutas take a minimum of 14 shots to kill a Phoenix (this is assuming perfect bounce damage). This can go as high as 20 shots with no bounce.
Phoenixes are faster than Mutas.
Phoenixes have longer range than Mutas.
Phoenixes do WAY more DPS than Mutas.
Phoenixes benefit more from upgrades than Mutas do.
About the ONLY drawback of Phoenix vs Muta is that you can only build one phoenix at a time... Not much of an issue considering it costs less to get the required tech in place and Zerg can't really afford to be making Mutas faster than 1 per 30 seconds or so anyway due to gas constraints (if they go 100% with no upgrades no nothing they can do 1 every 15 seconds off 2 bases).
MAKE MORE PHOENIXES!!!
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A lot of people are suggesting phoenixes. Personally, knowing how quickly zerg can tech switch, I'd prefer blink stalkers (as stalkers or zealots will be in almost any build because, other than cannons, they're the only mineral heavy units you've got).
Something I noticed Axslav doing in his game against Destiny in the most recent Day9 Daily is something I think is really smart when you're on 2-base: keeping your stalkers in 2 groups, close enough together that one blink from both will bring them together in the middle. This way, if the mutas come for your main, or your nat's mineral line, you'll always have a good amount to attack them. If they turn on your stalkers, the two groups are close enough to group together and push them off. You definitely don't absolutely need pheonixes or storm so badly that you need to immediately tech switch upon scouting mutas.
The most important thing to remember is this: if you aren't comfortable using stargate tech against Roach Hydra, you shouldn't make a stargate pre-emptively to counter mutas. And if you don't pre-empt mutas with a stargate, don't bother trying to get one up after you see mutas - as it's usually too late to catch up at this point. If you happen to scout so that the spire is less than half complete and you only see lings and drones, you probably have time to get a few phoenixes in the air, and you might even win the air battle. You'd have to be very precise with your scouting for this, though, as phoenixes are not terribly useful outside of harassment against roach/hydra/corruptor, which is one of the most common ZvP builds.
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I lost to this strat really badly too. As I analyzed the replay, there are actually timings that you can use against him when he's expanding/turtling which, although might not kill him outright, can seriously freak him out and keep defensive for a little while longer.
What you CAN try is pushing out with a stalker/sentry ball trying to counter attack while he hits your base. You'll lose a bit of probes, but you'll force an engagement with his inferior ground army with your superior ground army. With correct FF placement you can kill his roaches and pop guardian shield to deal with his mutas. His mutas will HAVE to pull back to defend and you can just FF his ground army away. (you're gonna need about 8-9 senetries for this)
I tried it in the game I lost and it I actually got to his doorstep before my FFs lagged and I couldnt block out his roaches long enough. It's a viable response imo and it doesnt hinge so much on tech switching like a crazy bastard.
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Some missing information about phoenixes here.
1) If you want to win huge phoenix vs muta fights, you have to magic box your phoenix. Meaning you click behind the mutas on the minimap somewhere far behind them, DO NOT ever try to focus fire or do cute micro like going back and forth. Your phoenix will clump und you will get absolutely destroyed.
2) When u went for phoenix before he started mutas, you can do it this way. However, if you want to do it as a response, you will be raped. Zerg can easily add some corrupters into their mix, tanking a huge amout of damage while also dealing a great amout to your phoenix. Even when you started before him to make phoenix, you will have a huge trouble to deal with that combination.
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As a zerg I can tell you the best thing you can do is build phoenixes. Even if he cuts production on the mutas the phoenixs is still great for scouting, ovi picking and fending off corruptors that are trying to focus down your colossi. I can’t tell you how annoying Phoenixes are, since they tend to give you map control.
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EPT
