[D] PvZ Beating Stephano Style Roaches - Page 31

On March 21 2012 04:41 Roynalf wrote:

well JYP survived the mass roach part but in result of that he didnt have fast enough tech to counter Stephanos smaller army of broodlord, corruptor, infestors and it ended up growing too large

On March 21 2012 04:59 tooleman wrote:



This just isn't true. He had the perfect army to deal with Stephano but he decided to mass recall his army into the main and as a result he lost nearly the whole thing to take out the hive and spire among other infrastructure, saving only small portion of his army with a second recall. This left him with no energy on the mothership and a severely decreased army with which he could not deal with the counter attack.

More relevant to this discussion JYP went SG after his FFE for a quick VR (and later 1 phoenix for scouting) used for map control and fake VR +1 zealot pressure. He then got a robo and four gates for sentry/stalker/immortal in order to defend a fast third with immaculate army splitting and control in conjunction with more gates and cannons for a sim city at the third.

He follows this up with a TC for blink and +2 attack (up to +1/+1 at this point) and colossus tech (tries to stay at about 3-4 i believe), eventually also getting templar and mothership tech after a fourth.

This was game 1 of the practice sessions which I am sure you were talking about as game 2 had not been played when you wrote that.

On March 21 2012 05:03 Roynalf wrote:

There is no way he could have fighted Stephanos army head on anyway, Stephano had secured 5 bases anyway he only needed to wait.

On March 21 2012 05:11 Friend23 wrote:
jyp y u no immos?

i just dont get it how and why do people prefer stalkers over immortals against roaches, its like people think yea super duper blink micro crap, in reality its impossible to pull off

and at the same time i dont think that ive ever seen 5+ immortals on the same screen in any so called pro game

why are people stuborn and just dont use the tools the game is giving to them

On March 21 2012 02:29 KiF1rE wrote:


tbh... The only PvZ games i could find of MC recently. are similar to 8 gate 1-1 upgrades, with alot of sentries, crushing violet. IEM WC.... And if he doesnt kill the zerg or denies a 3rd he loses... He seems to always go for a quick aggressive timing regardless.

On March 21 2012 05:17 hzflank wrote:


Build time.

Immortals take 45 seconds to build even if you use a chrono on them. If immortals came from the gateway then you would never see stalkers, but as it is protoss has no choice. Nothing from the robo shoots air units, robos cost gas and dont benefit from the warpin mechanic so making more than one of them is a big investment and making three of them is outright suicide. Also, observers take up robo build time.

On March 20 2012 18:05 RaNgeD wrote:


Thanks for sharing. This may sound obvious to some, but i'm of the opinion that to play against zerg you have to choices:
1) Aggressively expand in order to keep up with their economy; or 2) Do timings or harass to kill them or at the very least, slow them down before hive tech. If you choose to play passively against zerg I think you need to be playing aggressive economically.

That being said, I really like what SaSe was doing in Game 1 against ret. I don't know how viable it is, and I don't know how zergs will react to a fast 3rd like that once they've played against it a few times and have had the chance to sit down and study it out a bit. But the general idea is amazing to me.

In my last 100-200 pvz games I've done the fast 3rd off of 4 gates/robo like mentioned earlier in this thread, and from my experience I can say this:
The times when zerg decide to max on roaches at 12 minutes and kill me, 50% of the time I die. And the games that I do win, it was usually that the zerg made some critical mistake, like letting me cut off 1/2 of 1/4 of his roaches and kill them for free. I've made a lot of adjustments to the build to try and survive that 12 minute wave of 200/200 roaches, like getting hallucination instead of an obs, that way i'm able to get an extra immortal out, and just use cannons and detection. Keep in mind that these are ladder games; if I could find some customs against good zergs it would be nice, but for the most part, these players aren't even near the calibre of stephano. I can't say for sure, but i'm coming to the conclusion that I think the 3rd base with this current build is too slow. The 3rd base doesn't kick in enough before you are over-run with roaches.

Another thing I wanted to say here. I don't find non-FFE builds very good at all. I used them for the first year and eventually came to the conclusion that FFE is much much better. Maybe that comes down to my style or something, but I don't really see how doing a less economic build is going to solve this issue. Even if it did, with gate expands you run into a completely different set of problems.

What SaSe is doing is really good, even if it doesn't end up working in the long run. We can sit here and do the same builds over and over again, expecting different results; OR, we can make new builds, study and refine them, and hopefully stumble upon a better way to play. I like the latter.

On March 21 2012 05:50 Nikoras wrote:
take a third with the minerals you would use for the next warp in, and that leaves you with 3 immortals 8 sentries 6 zealots (you get a partial warp-in) and a stalker and an observer. More than enough to hold off any sort of roach timing and your warp prism already forced units, scouted, and potentially cleared creep for you.

On March 21 2012 02:38 buldermar wrote:


Looking at games from this year only, he is 12-0, defeating Stephano 2-0 and Nerchio 3-0 at Home Story Cup, Nerchio 2-0 and Violet 3-0 at IEM and Idra 2-0 at Iron Squid. The point is he doesn't lose, so the question that remains to be answered is why? What you pointed to is only that he succeeds with strats that other people apperently fail with. Why is this? What is he doing differently? Stephano crushing protoss players was mentioned in this thread. MC is 4-0 against Stephano, with 2 games being from this year.

On March 21 2012 03:09 superstartran wrote:


I found that MC's most consistent play vs Z is +1 Blink Stalkers that allows him to pressure very quickly right before massive amounts of Roaches hit the field. It allows him to defend against Roach busts and Muta tech switches, all while pressuring to secure a 3rd.


His ghetto +1 Blink Attack that hits around 10:30 is pretty funny to watch.

On March 21 2012 05:51 Nikoras wrote:


Watch MC's game on daybreak vs Darkforce from IEM. He looks bulletproof all game long. of course that is vs muta/ling--> broodlord style which isn't relevant to the topic.