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.
Do you even read the thread?
We are talking about 200/200 roaches @ 12 minutes. What on earth makes you think you're defending that with 3 immo, 8 sentries and 6 zealots
I'm talking about the point in the build where you have the option to take a third base or go ahead with the timing push. This comes at 10:00 which means you get at least 3 additional full warp-ins to prepare for the timing off of 8 gates. You should have more than enough to stop it.
Ah ok, sorry I thought you were talking about 12mins .
So you mean at 10mins, you either do your timing, or take a 3rd?
On March 20 2012 14:13 Stoopid0boi wrote: Sorry if you guys think what I'm saying is totally inappropriate. But if you're having trouble with a 12 min roach bust then wouldnt the best solution be to not let the game get to that stage?
The game development has reached a point where a 12 minute game is SHORT. Trying to finish the game before the 12 minute mark will leave you with a 20% win rate against good opponents.
I'm not telling you to all in or anything but just stronger pressure or a different type of expand style. The current pvz meta game is about ffe and zergs droning due to no pressure. Tbh I don't think a toss is legitly ahead unless if the 3rd is taken down.
Yeah, a lot of people think that as well, that's why the 4 gate +1 zealot pressure and such things were invented, but now that they're defended by zergs Protoss find themselves still too far behind economically due to how fast Zerg drones. One thing is certain is that trying to end the game earlier isn't the solution, because trying to end the game earlier is where we started 1.5 years ago (everyone 4-gating.)
Sorry to bring this up but I really love a 3 gate expo against a Zerg. My transition is usually 5 gate pressure off 2 gas, loads of sentries into robo. Although I'm only midto high masters I can confidently say that due to the greedy mindset of most zergs due to the current meta game, alot of them just fold over when I pressure with 5 gates. I'll upload a couple of replays later when I get home
3 gate expo against zerg stopped working because zergs stopped overreacting to the sentry poke, and droned up really hard, and then Protoss enters a very awkward stage in the game where if they went robo and Zerg went spire Protoss auto-losses in a macro game, and the timing of Zerg's third can't be countered with a 2 base push reactively, but only if you guess ahead of time when he's gonna take it, and you start preparing for it then, but if you aren't preparing a push then you take a huge disdvantage to a very early third.
There were a few fundamental problems with your answers I believe. For one, everything I wrote was intended to be read all together and not be answered seperately, which led to your misunderstanding of my idea.
I am not telling anyone to end the game earlier with an all in. I am proposing a method to shift the style the Zerg will have to play. For example, as I have proposed before, I don't believe that ffe is advantageous against a Zerg unless the third is effectively denied. And with you saying that zergs have adapted to the +1 zealot timings, it makes ffe a less advantageous opening. Furthermore, my proposal of the 3 gate expand into 5 gate pressure actually punishes the current Zerg style of droning until the 8 or so minute mark. Even if they react to the pressure perfectly (5 gates are a lot of production) the style the Zerg has to play will be modified and the game won't reach the 12 minute 200 food roach push.
My main conclusion is that by Doing a ffe, Protoss players are pretty much inviting the Zerg to use this strategy which seems like it is damn effective... So if you have trouble with it... Don't force the Zerg to do it
3 gate isn't even viable anymore. The 3 gate into 5 gate push falls under the category of pushes that you have to prepare ahead of time, and can't use reactively. If a zerg doesn't get a very early third, then you won't do any damage, and will be far behind in tech.
The point of the 5 gate pressure is to apply pressure. I agree that 3 gate expo isn't viable done in the old style where it is only soft pressure applied and then the Protoss techs and backs off doing no damage at all.
Thing about the 5 gate pressure I do is that if they have a 3rd it is easily punished. If they don't have a third a soft contain can be set up an you as the Protoss can probe and tech freely without the Zerg taking an early third. It is a build that you are not ahead at the point of execution but will be ahead in the future
On March 21 2012 03:06 kcdc wrote: I'm not a big GSL spectator, but from what I've seen, MC wins a lot because he's really really good at 2-base timings and he has immaculate control that wins him games even when he's way behind after a failed timing attack.
I want to make it clear that I think Protoss can win games against Zerg. 2-base timing pushes are really strong and it's hard for Zerg to know which one is coming. And if Protoss is able to secure a third and enter lategame on even footing, I think Protoss has a big advantage because mothership+carrier+archon+templar is unbeatable. It takes 25 minutes to get the perfect composition, but if Zerg doesn't stop Protoss from getting there, Protoss wins almost every time.
So there are exploits on both sides of the match-up, and a lot of how well the exploits play out depends on the map. On Entombed Valley, for instance, Protoss should just take a fast third, defend with forcefields and get mothership+carrier+archon for the win. It's boring as hell, but there's no reason Protoss should lose on that map. On Korhal Compound, Zerg can prevent Protoss's third seemingly indefinitely, and Zerg should just focus on defending 2-base timings and win every time.
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.
Thank you for posting this link. I didn't notice any significant mistakes in the mass roach strat by Stephano. He stopped droning at 61, which seems ideal against 2base +1 protoss pushes. He also had creep spread out nicely. What should Stephano have done differently, assuming that he should still be doing the 3base roach strategy?
Not sure, there's no way he can get burrow in time to deal with the Blink Stalkers w/ no Obs, and it's obviously going to be an uphill fight with MC constantly kiting Stephano's Roaches all the way back to his base. Obviously if you do no damage you're going to be behind big time, but I felt that this +1 Blink build has some merit because although it is very all-innish feel, it does hit a very crucial timing right as the Roaches pop out with +1/Speed before critical mass of 180-200 supply of Roaches. With good micro/macro off of 42 probe economy, it looks like MC is simply able to overwhelm the Z player with constantly blink repositioning/kiting.
I'm sure it is very beatable, but from what I've been seeing MC is just abusing the living shit out of his +1 Blink build vs players that tend to play Roach heavy around the 12 minute mark. It's obvious that it will be VERY difficult for Z to hold this since he's gonna be sitting heavy on drones around the 10 minute mark, with the Protoss player being extremely high on army supply WITH blink. Yes, the Z will be able to heavily produce Roaches, but it will be very difficult to overcome so much poking and prodding by the P player. Once he takes out that 3rd he's way ahead now, because he can easily branch out into Robo tech or Templar play.
7 gate +2 blink is a very well-known 2-base timing. It's a kill move that's really strong, and MC's particularly good at it. But it can be defended. In that game, Stephano had a little less supply than he usually has (I'd need to analyze a replay instead of a VOD to find out why), and he probably could have waited another 20 or so seconds for one more production round before engaging. As it was, he very nearly killed the push in the first engagement, but came up just a couple units shy, and then the fight snowballed in favor of MC. That's what tends to happen with blink stalkers--Zerg either has enough to crush the push the first time, or Zerg has just barely too little and trades his army for shield damage.
MC's really good tho. He'll probably always be able to take games off of top tier Zergs with his 2-base timings. But I'll bet that if he did that timing against Stephano 10 games in a row, MC might win the first couple, and then Stephano would win the vast majority of the rest.
It's definitely a +2 build designed to hit in a timing right before Roaches hit critical mass. There's no way Stephano is ever going to have enough army supply to fight this unless he hits his injects/larvae build times perfectly, and even then it's an extremely hard uphill battle. Not the usual +2 because that should come a little later. He's cutting huge big time on economy, and it's really hard all-in.
I've seen him do a more economic variation that is designed to pressure and kill the 3rd while taking a 3rd, and that comes a little bit later. He also has done 2 base DTs to contain and stall a Z, not sure how much merit there is in that.
The Roach build is really hard to defend though if u can't micro like MC X_X Even with near perfect execution/good timing MC still almost lost that attack rofl. The reasoning for him going out to attack earlier is that he knows if MC takes position up on the 3rd it's gonna be real difficult for him to break MC off that platform. The way Roaches funnel up the ramps on this map is rage inducing if you've ever played Z.
The ideas given by the OP and ranged are awesome, kudos to you guys.
In the past few weeks I've also been having pvz problems and have been trying a variant of sases opening (i believe atleast) with 4g robo into fast 3rd(9-9.5min). Just as a general outline my build involves 4g robo, 6-8 sentries, hallucination and faking pressure with sentries after clearing 3rd + cannoning. Immortals are cbed to completion and I generally can get a few out by the time the ball hits my base. However, I have been having issues holding and have only had probably about a 50% success rate also (And obvs I'm also not playing players near stephanos caliber only high masters/lowgm so please take my opinion minimally). But I'm sort of the opinion from my failures that the only way Protoss is really going to be able to deal with this ball is to quickly rush colossus after 4g robo on 3base. I personally don't think that 200/200 roach with TC + burrow is going to die without some sort of extra splash damage. I've been recently trying the rush to colossus off 6 gas and it seems pretty decent, but often I'm still having to fight off/delay a wave of roaches before my first colossus is out. Having that 1 colossus with FF and a few immortals seems to greatly help fighting off the ball in my experience. Maybe if someone can figure out/greatly refine some way to quickly reinforce P with splash on the f3rd there could be an increase in success vs stephano style.(Note before anyone going to yell "MUTAS". I am scouting with halluc pretty frequently for spire. So I haven't really had troubles vs muta when I take 6 gases + robo bay very quickly.." still need to refine this more though)
Watched those JYP vs Stephano practice games from earlier today. JYP went 0-4. He went single SG -> fast third in 3 of the games. In the one on Antiga, JYP had his third base killed multiple times by the trademark Stephano roach pressure. On Daybreak, JYP took major economy damage to the pressure, but kept his nexus alive. On Cloud Kingdom, JYP got a little lucky and killed 3 or 4 queens which disrupted Stephano's timing, so Stephano didn't attempt the pressure and instead went straight into BL+infestor. That game was close-ish, but Stephano won. The 4th game was the most crushing defeat--JYP tried a +1 zealot timing and after it failed, was never even close to holding his third.
I've been trying alej's 3 base colossus push, and either getting the third denied repeatedly over and over or having my army crushed by theirs when I push out. I'm with the OP on this one, with early 3 base from zerg there are enough queens to deny air (not to mention early evo chamber for spores), and the 7 minute warren means any 2 base timing I try gets crushed.
From what I've seen from Stephano lately in addition to my own defeats, I feel PvZ is so broken. Late game comes down to a lucky vortex for the Protoss to stand a chance, and the timing attack window to prevent Zerg's mass roachspam econ is so small.
I was a little bummed that JYP didnt try any fast immortal expands. I was curious to see how it faced up to the build, and also in general just how Stephano would have reacted to seeing the play. (As I'm still not convinced that if you try for this fast immortal type style at an attempt to counter the pressure, that you are very safe vs other builds even if it is possible to hold the infamous pressure that way, which we still haven't seen if it is.)
I still don't understand why RSVP's stalkerss PvZ is not discussed in here.
You are getting 2 voidrays and +1 zealots for harass, if he defends properly you'll have storm behind it, and once storm is done you get a third base, and can hold mass roach spam because you'll have 5-6 storms at the 11 minute mark, even more at the 12 + rally time form the roach spam. Once you have your third in production, you start adding in immortals, more voidrays and get charge up and running.
at the 12 minute mark you'll have around 10 storms, 3-4 voidrays, 2-3 immortals and +2 attack chargelots and you can hold this without FF's.
If he sees the build and then gets burrow, you'll have more voidrays and immortals out to deal with it, and i don't know about you but at the 14 minute mark i have +3 attack done, making immortals do 65 damage per shot, and i'll have 5-6 of them with a bazillion chargelots.
Get warp prism, + speed and then go harass the crap out of him. If he adds in hydra/infestor/corrupter, you'll have storm. If he muta switches...again you have storm and you can churn out phoenixes for defense, and the chargelots do extremely well against zerglings.
Storm, stargate and robo also sets you up for the late game perfectly, you can add in your fleet beacon rather quick, transition to carriers if you want, you get the robo bay for warp prism speed, so you can switch to colossi if you want.
Yes this is extremely apm tasking, because you will be independently moving your army, and you will have to sometimes pull back the zealots/voidrays to get off key feedbacks/storm, but hell, your army composition can handle ANY zerg combo.
On March 21 2012 11:35 TechSc2 wrote: I still don't understand why RSVP's stalkerss PvZ is not discussed in here.
You are getting 2 voidrays and +1 zealots for harass, if he defends properly you'll have storm behind it, and once storm is done you get a third base, and can hold mass roach spam because you'll have 5-6 storms at the 11 minute mark, even more at the 12 + rally time form the roach spam. Once you have your third in production, you start adding in immortals, more voidrays and get charge up and running.
at the 12 minute mark you'll have around 10 storms, 3-4 voidrays, 2-3 immortals and +2 attack chargelots and you can hold this without FF's.
If he sees the build and then gets burrow, you'll have more voidrays and immortals out to deal with it, and i don't know about you but at the 14 minute mark i have +3 attack done, making immortals do 65 damage per shot, and i'll have 5-6 of them with a bazillion chargelots.
Get warp prism, + speed and then go harass the crap out of him. If he adds in hydra/infestor/corrupter, you'll have storm. If he muta switches...again you have storm and you can churn out phoenixes for defense, and the chargelots do extremely well against zerglings.
Storm, stargate and robo also sets you up for the late game perfectly, you can add in your fleet beacon rather quick, transition to carriers if you want, you get the robo bay for warp prism speed, so you can switch to colossi if you want.
Yes this is extremely apm tasking, because you will be independently moving your army, and you will have to sometimes pull back the zealots/voidrays to get off key feedbacks/storm, but hell, your army composition can handle ANY zerg combo.
you have like 2-3 storms @ 11 minutes. The TC gets put down @ 8:00, storm takes 3 minutes from when you start your TC.
Storm finishes @ 11minutes, I don't see how you're going to afford more than 3 templar @ 10:20, while still producing voids. It takes a templar roughly 40 game seconds to get from 50 to 75 energy.
It's not like Stephano style goes 'ok I made 200/200, attack and win or lose'. Reinforcements keep coming, it's quite constant pressure if he decides to forsake getting hive tech or infester.
Just like Sentries, when you use templar you're on a timer. Especially more-so because you can't warp-in and storm, compared to warp-in and FF.
On March 21 2012 11:35 TechSc2 wrote: I still don't understand why RSVP's stalkerss PvZ is not discussed in here.
You are getting 2 voidrays and +1 zealots for harass, if he defends properly you'll have storm behind it, and once storm is done you get a third base, and can hold mass roach spam because you'll have 5-6 storms at the 11 minute mark, even more at the 12 + rally time form the roach spam. Once you have your third in production, you start adding in immortals, more voidrays and get charge up and running.
at the 12 minute mark you'll have around 10 storms, 3-4 voidrays, 2-3 immortals and +2 attack chargelots and you can hold this without FF's.
If he sees the build and then gets burrow, you'll have more voidrays and immortals out to deal with it, and i don't know about you but at the 14 minute mark i have +3 attack done, making immortals do 65 damage per shot, and i'll have 5-6 of them with a bazillion chargelots.
Get warp prism, + speed and then go harass the crap out of him. If he adds in hydra/infestor/corrupter, you'll have storm. If he muta switches...again you have storm and you can churn out phoenixes for defense, and the chargelots do extremely well against zerglings.
Storm, stargate and robo also sets you up for the late game perfectly, you can add in your fleet beacon rather quick, transition to carriers if you want, you get the robo bay for warp prism speed, so you can switch to colossi if you want.
Yes this is extremely apm tasking, because you will be independently moving your army, and you will have to sometimes pull back the zealots/voidrays to get off key feedbacks/storm, but hell, your army composition can handle ANY zerg combo.
you have like 2-3 storms @ 11 minutes. The TC gets put down @ 8:00, storm takes 3 minutes from when you start your TC.
Storm finishes @ 11minutes, I don't see how you're going to afford more than 3 templar @ 10:20, while still producing voids. It takes a templar roughly 40 game seconds to get from 50 to 75 energy.
It's not like Stephano style goes 'ok I made 200/200, attack and win or lose'. Reinforcements keep coming, it's quite constant pressure if he decides to forsake getting hive tech or infester.
Just like Sentries, when you use templar you're on a timer. Especially more-so because you can't warp-in and storm, compared to warp-in and FF.
You stop voidray production till you have at least 5-6 templar, you only start up more voids and immortals once you have your third put down.
You are not on a timer like FF's, you don't "miss" storm like you can miss FF's, and FF's need stalker support to be effective, storm doesn't.
After a normal FFE you can get 8 sentries without cutting into teching at all, 8 sentries is almost 6 templar. You warp in 4 templar the instant your archive finishes, so the energy is way higher Since i've been doing this style i don't get my third denied ever, unless they go for a 3 base roach hydra all in, which i just stop dead in it's track 1 minute later, and i wait a minute more to take my third
Storm just gives you so much defensive potential over colossus or blink stalkers. If they want to come up to you, you'll storm and if you are a little bit decent with your storms the DPS is just insane. and everytime they try to "dodge" a storm 3-4 immortals are barreling down on their retreating roaches, not to mention chargelots that are gauranteed to hit once they charge.
I'm not only talking about theory here, but the zerg will trade horribly if they really want to deny your third hardcore due to the huge DPS your army has against roaches. And like i said you don't have to account for a muta switch that might kill you, because you already have the tech up to deal with that in 2 ways, either you get fleet beacon and get phoenix, or you get blink and you already have storm.
Going muta's is actually completely suicide against this, because you have that many storms you can instantly demolish the first wave off muta's, and even counter attack because the zergs econ hasn't kicked in yet to deny/base trade, they are forced to engage you head on, and trust me that 2 well placed storm demolish his ling count, and then storm the muta and morph to archon for the finishing blow.
On March 21 2012 11:35 TechSc2 wrote: I still don't understand why RSVP's stalkerss PvZ is not discussed in here.
You are getting 2 voidrays and +1 zealots for harass, if he defends properly you'll have storm behind it, and once storm is done you get a third base, and can hold mass roach spam because you'll have 5-6 storms at the 11 minute mark, even more at the 12 + rally time form the roach spam. Once you have your third in production, you start adding in immortals, more voidrays and get charge up and running.
at the 12 minute mark you'll have around 10 storms, 3-4 voidrays, 2-3 immortals and +2 attack chargelots and you can hold this without FF's.
If he sees the build and then gets burrow, you'll have more voidrays and immortals out to deal with it, and i don't know about you but at the 14 minute mark i have +3 attack done, making immortals do 65 damage per shot, and i'll have 5-6 of them with a bazillion chargelots.
Get warp prism, + speed and then go harass the crap out of him. If he adds in hydra/infestor/corrupter, you'll have storm. If he muta switches...again you have storm and you can churn out phoenixes for defense, and the chargelots do extremely well against zerglings.
Storm, stargate and robo also sets you up for the late game perfectly, you can add in your fleet beacon rather quick, transition to carriers if you want, you get the robo bay for warp prism speed, so you can switch to colossi if you want.
Yes this is extremely apm tasking, because you will be independently moving your army, and you will have to sometimes pull back the zealots/voidrays to get off key feedbacks/storm, but hell, your army composition can handle ANY zerg combo.
you have like 2-3 storms @ 11 minutes. The TC gets put down @ 8:00, storm takes 3 minutes from when you start your TC.
Storm finishes @ 11minutes, I don't see how you're going to afford more than 3 templar @ 10:20, while still producing voids. It takes a templar roughly 40 game seconds to get from 50 to 75 energy.
It's not like Stephano style goes 'ok I made 200/200, attack and win or lose'. Reinforcements keep coming, it's quite constant pressure if he decides to forsake getting hive tech or infester.
Just like Sentries, when you use templar you're on a timer. Especially more-so because you can't warp-in and storm, compared to warp-in and FF.
You stop voidray production till you have at least 5-6 templar, you only start up more voids and immortals once you have your third put down.
You are not on a timer like FF's, you don't "miss" storm like you can miss FF's, and FF's need stalker support to be effective, storm doesn't.
After a normal FFE you can get 8 sentries without cutting into teching at all, 8 sentries is almost 6 templar. You warp in 4 templar the instant your archive finishes, so the energy is way higher Since i've been doing this style i don't get my third denied ever, unless they go for a 3 base roach hydra all in, which i just stop dead in it's track 1 minute later, and i wait a minute more to take my third
Storm just gives you so much defensive potential over colossus or blink stalkers. If they want to come up to you, you'll storm and if you are a little bit decent with your storms the DPS is just insane. and everytime they try to "dodge" a storm 3-4 immortals are barreling down on their retreating roaches, not to mention chargelots that are gauranteed to hit once they charge.
I'm not only talking about theory here, but the zerg will trade horribly if they really want to deny your third hardcore due to the huge DPS your army has against roaches. And like i said you don't have to account for a muta switch that might kill you, because you already have the tech up to deal with that in 2 ways, either you get fleet beacon and get phoenix, or you get blink and you already have storm.
Going muta's is actually completely suicide against this, because you have that many storms you can instantly demolish the first wave off muta's, and even counter attack because the zergs econ hasn't kicked in yet to deny/base trade, they are forced to engage you head on, and trust me that 2 well placed storm demolish his ling count, and then storm the muta and morph to archon for the finishing blow.
You know the guy who wrote about rsvp's Stalkerless PvZ, is the OP for this thread?
Stalkerless PvZ doesn't work vs the Stephano build. You can't protect the third against roach spam.
It used to work when Zergs got roach warren later and the zealot+void timing disrupted their macro substantially, but now any good Zerg knows how to deflect the attack with a handful of roaches and an extra queen or 2. And if you don't disrupt their macro, they roach spam you with more than you can defend.
I watched the JYP games as well and he took quite a late third as far as im concerned. He also tried to pressure with some zealots that was wasteful instead of just making units or infrastructure at home. There are two options that I can see really. Either you only make one void ray and one phoenix and just do light harass and attept to slow down roaches while take a super fast third and tech to blink with robo immediately. Or you can make 3-5 phoenix and harass queens with a slightly more delayed expo but you must do damage. Ive found the most success with just going fast stargate off 2 gas one void 1 phoenix. Then 5 gates twilight robo. take the gases when you can afford them usually after I plop down my third and set up 2 more gates there with cannons if ling heavy or gates in main if roach heavy to allow for better surface area. The point of the supppper fast third is that you have enough time to tech and build up your forces so you are on even footing. Blink denies almost any type of roach pressure while you are building immortals. This also allows for a super strong midgame push with blink immortal if the zergs tries anything risky.
Hey guys, Intersting discussions. This is theory crafting around a fundamental idea of utilising the mothership. Would a mothership to cloak cannons at third by 12min and some ground forces be the answer to pure roach. The stargates would produce early pheonix to scout and deny overseers during the push. The phenoix will also allow you to observe the tech switch if zerg scouts the fleetbeacon or motherhip building. Their response would be lair tech: hydras, mutas or corruptors to deal with mothership. Of which you would also respond by tech switching to robo units to counter their choice.
ok, I just want to input why I think that this is a problem for the toss. This is just my opinion, but I feel like it is valid. Every other race as soon as their first production building is down (spawning pool, barracks) can throw down tier one anti ground static defense. Now protons can not do this because the cannon rushes would be almost unstopable with a zealot pressure with them.
Due to this problem toss has to get a forge early to be safe or a ton of sentries. Both hurt the first game push that could have come or the tech in the mid stages of the game. I the pvt matchup most people go for the sentry style while against z we go for the static defense with the cannons. This delays the gateway and cyber core, so any attacks that come are 30 seconds or more later than they should be, and also tech is stunted because of this extra huge comentment in a building in the very early game.
Now this is no way of fixing the super roach problem, but I just wnated to say an opinion I had and why the zerg can pressure so hard and quickly. The toss has to take either an economic loss w/ the gate expo or an early pressure loss with the forge expo.
Protoss ground is balanced around the existence of sentries and force fields.
That means that in most engagements both offensively and defensively, forcefields decide who wins or loses.
That is pretty much the case until you tech up.
And that makes it very hard to discuss overall balance and builds, because unlike ZvT, in both PvT and PvZ, how the protoss use forcefields, pretty much decides the viability of many builds.
There are 4 ways I know of at the moment to deal with stephano type build: - Very fast 3rd, and defend it. Requires good micro, excellent forcefields. - +1 4 gate into 7-8 gate variant (+2? blink? or not?) all in. MC style. Or into expand, turtle mode (require excellent micro). - 7-8 gate all in. Brown vs Lucky GSL up and down matches day 4 for an example. - 10:30 3 immortals, sentries, zealot, stalker reinforcement, 2 base all in. With or without +1 4 gate pressure.
If you prepare for a 7-8 gate all in, you won't hold the 10:30 attack. You won't have enough drones to get the right force. If you prepare for the 10:30 followup to +1 4 gate, you won't hold an 8 gate followup that hits faster.
All of those 4 variants are successful at the highest level of play, if you are good enough.
I also see Genius succeeding with stargate based opening, but the micro requirement for that is very high for it to be successful.
However, if you never do a 7-8 gate variant, so you as the zerg player don't have to take that into consideration (with or without tech), it's very easy to play against everything else.
It's also the 2 builds his style is weakest against if he doesn't change things around based on scouting: straight up 8 gate, or +1 4 gate into 7 or 8 gate with or without blink and +2.
Since i feel that there's a need to get a few things straight, i will just go on and type them.
Protosses are not noobs. We do not want to go into games and "hope" for our cheeses to work. We want to play solid, macro games where we rely on our skill and not the "supprise" factor to win games. The tactics theorycrafted in this thread should reflect that. The 2 base timings are all sort of figured out, we got the blinkstalkers, we got the immortal pushes, we got the +1 zealots, we got the 7 gates, the 9 gates etc etc. Unless you have something completly new to bring to the table i really really do not belive that slight alterations on these all-ins are going to solve our issues.
2 Base timings, regardless of of which one you pick have a theoretical disadvantage vs a zerg going stephano style. It doesn't matter who wins with them, how many replays you post of players winning with them or how or any kind of stats including recent win history.
Let me clarify; Zerg has overlords, If a 2base timing is scouted (Which we have to account for, since it's a possibility) he has ample time to prepare for it and if he does, it SHOULD be a free win if you have two equally skilled players (Unless the execution of this all-in is differnet from what all other protosses are doing, and then it's still just a matter of getting used to it to be able to defend it)
Cute tactic won't work, putting down effort into cute tactics , designed to snipe the roach warden at critical times or other such plays just won't do. Even if it did work, there'd just be a meta-game shift where the zergs started placing two, and the past month of practice in a tactic would be null and void for you.
Everything you theorycraft has to work vs everything else a zerg can dish out. There's plenty of different builds then stephano style out there, and since you in theory do not have a scouting possibility until hallucination kicks in, they have to be versitile (Doubble robo for example, gets absolutly destroyed by the good olé bling drop style, fast mutalisks and so on). Since you cannot depend on scouting information,if you want to play a solid, macro game, you are forced down a very narrow path in terms of what units you can make, and how you can use them.
I do however think there are a few possible solutions out there. I've never actaully seen the Sase quick third build, and right off the bat i think that it must be horribly map dependant (I'd like to see it on tal'darim for example) but it is at least a step in the right direction (I'm so not looking forward to the 50-100 games lost becuase i'm figuring out what i need to be afraid of though). Right now, i'm experimenting with different kinds of cannon "rushes" , not becuase i want to, but because i'm in the frame of mind right now that a PvZ is not about me winning the game, it's about the zerg loosing it. Not designed to kill him, but provoke some kind of respons so that we're more even then we would be otherwise.
kcdc, I know you said don't post gateway expand builds, but I'd be obliged if you just hear me out first.
I want to mention that FFE encourages a fast 3rd hatch. While it lets Protoss keep up economically for a bit, Protoss is also somewhat committed to doing a timing push that *needs* to do damage. If the Zerg holds it off, one ends up in the situation where the Protoss is somehow trying to get the third up and defend it while wave after wave of Roach/ling rolls in until the Protoss cracks.
I've been playing around with gateway expand, followed by mass sentries, as few zealots as necessary, and a very fast 3rd base to match the Zerg's 3rd base. I feel like FFE lets you defend your natural very well, but the investment into immobile cannons means it's a lot more difficult trying to establish the third.
I posted a few pages back that got lost in the shuffle; I really think we should look into 2 Stargate play with Phoenixes, rather than getting VRs at all.
- They come out a lot faster and move much more quickly. You can snipe Queens (thereby slowing production greatly) more easily, and there is less forgiveness for a slightly out of position Queen due to the nature of Gravitron Beam.
- The bigger numbers of Phoenix are a lot more microable than the lower/slower VRs. Even the regular 1 VR flanked with a few Phoenix is rarely effective: the VR does cursory damage, and you're left with 5 Phoenix that almost always pick off a couple Queens, Drones, OLs. It's a consistent trend.
- So then the question goes to: why not turn those 5 Phoenix into 7 or 8 at the same speed as you getting 5 from one Stargate? Bigger starting investment, but it negates Spores to a certain extent: IIRC 8 Phoenixes kill a Queen in 1 lift before the lifting Phoenix gets hurt too badly. Small micro adjustment, and you'll force MULTIPLE Spores per Hatch.
- Phoenix are effectively Sentries when the counter shove happens. You're essentially locking down at least a handful of units each time, coupled with forcefields, and you can be amazingly efficient with a small group of units. The rate at which a VR becomes effective during a fight takes A LOT longer than the fight usually occurs. Yes, you can hound (Roaches) as they traverse the map, provided the VR lives during the Queen harass phase (which it seems to rarely do), and provided it's pre-placed on the path of attack rather than scouting edges of the map for OLs.
- Map control and awareness goes without saying, as does shoving OLs out of the map.
- Activity with Phoenix is strong because the Zerg counters take a little longer to get and must have decent numbers. Camp near the far Hatch when you know Infestors/Hydras are popping out, and you're guaranteed to pick off several if the Zerg is not individually microing which Hatch produces what (which I haven't seen in the midst of harass too often even at the pro level)
sorry if i am wrong. But I tell you what worked against me. I am just a low Master zerg player so i could have failed myself. If the protoss opens with 2 robos and pumps immortals, roaches become rather useless. I know its kind of a blind counter to the build but its in every case a build that counters the roach aggression very well.
EPT
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