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hrmmm well first replay definitely was not decided by the openers at all. The second game is a closer comparison but still, in that game, whitera didnt even get his 2nd and 3rd stalkers out until like 5:30 so it wasnt really the same build. It wouldnt have held off anything. Game 1 was won by the hidden expansion. I think judging the strength of the build by these games is a humongous theoretical leap. If anything, the fact that he uses the build against a korean gamer in a high profile tournament when koreans are known for their awesome 4 gate timings is a testament to his confidence in it.
edit: I kind of have to renege a little bit on the above paragraph regarding game 1. Though the build order didnt determine the outcome, if you watch the full game on the regular speed from Ace's perspective, you can see just how many corners he cuts based on how he scouts whitera. Its pretty remarkable. I also dug how he handled the expansion. He kept his army count high by restricting himself to only building one probe at a time at the hidden expo rather than what most of us would probably do and try to build 2 at once. He kind of eased the expansion in rather than having it be some huge deficit putting whiteras army miles ahead.
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On March 03 2011 11:34 Heston wrote:Hi Cecil I've been trying out this build, but I seem to fail with it. Here is the replay down below, i dont mind any criticism considering I blow PvP and seriously need some help... My current track record PvP is like 1-17 O_O I'm suprised I'm still in diamond... http://topreplays.com/Replays/Details/4984/Oreo_vs_Heston Okay I watched the replay. Here are some things...
1) He 10 gated against you. This is something you should have noticed immediately upon entering his base. To verify this, when you enter your opponents base the next time, click on their gateway and look at where its HP is at...then hit your hotkey for you own gateway. Did you drop your gateways at the same time? Since you 12 gated you would have known that he must have 10 gated based on how far along his building was. You can measure it against the cybernetics core if you scout him too late as well. Its important to know his gateway timing as it often tells you how aggressive he is planning on being. A 10 gate is always aggressive.
2) After seeing the 10 gate you should have assumed either some kind of very heavy early zealot pressure or that he was doing the korean 4 gate. Either way, it is at this point that you should have abandoned this particular 3 stalker opening. In order to stop both zealot rushes and K 4gate you will need units on the ground ASAP. At this point you should have built a zealot and then checked to make sure he wasnt adding more gateways or something forcing you to match him.
3) Since he wasnt adding gateways and he went cybercore right after gate (as opposed to maybe 1 in base gate and 1 proxy gate or something) you can tell he was going to do a K4gate. Another 'tell' is that he built no units in his base iirc. Thats a good sign of a K4g and not a zealot rush. With this information you should have been able to decide "KR4gates coming". Now all you have to do is respond to it. Again, abandoning a 3 stalker opening is a good start for stopping KR4gate.
4) The proper response to Korean 4 gate is to constantly build units from your gateways while adding additional gateways until you get to 4 (usually). You'll be too far behind in tech (~30 seconds) to compete with his 4 gate with your own 4 gate. The key is to have army on the ground and in your base to dps down the pylons and do damage to the units as they warp in. Its important that you limit where he can actually warp in. You will have a chance to kill one or two while theyre warping in so its important you choose to kill the pylons that will put you in a good spot strategically. If he has pylons by your probes that should be priority. If you can take it out, great, if not do your best to damage the units themselves as they warp in. His warp ins will tend to be zealot heavy and you will need zealots to combat that as stalkers kill them too slow in general. If you build units all early game you can stop this specific 4 gate, but you will lose to a normal style 4 gate so you cant just use this approach vs. everything.
5 and 6 refer to your execution of the 3 stalker opening 5) lets assume he did a normal 12 gate 20 probe aggressive 4 gate (The build this opener is designed to shut down). You made a couple big mistakes executing this opener. First, you didnt add a second gas. The second gas is supposed to come after you queue up the very first stalker. Its important because when you do shut down the 4 gate you will have that extra gas for teching. Otherwise you have no advantage. At a point early on you had almost 400 minerals and no gas.
6)The point of your stalkers are to prevent the proxy from being too near your base. Anything beyond this is bonus. If you can just slow down the push by 30 seconds or so you will have an immortal. At that point you're golden. The sentry that is supposed to be a part of the build also helps get that immortal out before they are up your ramp. You arent killing the 4 gate player with this opener or shutting down his attack... you are delaying it long enough to get the shit you need to hold it and gaining a tech advantage simultaneously. In your game, instead of looking under every rock for the proxy, you just sent a stalker into his base.
The bottom line with your game is that you didnt use the information you got from scouting to do the proper response to his korean 4 gate. The information was there... you missapplied it or ignored it and continued trying to execute a build that will not hold off your opponents build. Its not a testament to the strength of the build, but rather an indicator that you should study some replays and learn responses to these types of things and how to scout them. Good luck
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wow I tried this build and it helped wonderfully... after I held off his 4-gate rush, I just proceeded to roll him over with collosi. :D
thanks for this.
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this build is soooooooo TIGHT!
everything is timed out until very last seconds and STRONGLY do not recomended for non-master players. If you over make a probe -> die to 4 gates. pylon 5 second late-> die to 4 gates....
compare to a normal 4 gates, this is MUCH harder to execute.
another point is that its REALLY easy to know this build coming: no 1st zealot and fast early 2nd gate. This means that the player who use this strat is vulnerable to anykind of mind game early on: 1 gate robo, 1 gate expand blah blah. And even if you get robo out, you wont be able to start colossus right away (need immo).
conclusion: freaking unbelieveable hard to execute but once you hv done it, you have to start to think about the mind games which is FUCKING inception.
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Maybe it is just me, but it seems that this build is starting to lose steam, people are starting to be very "sneaky" with thier probes, on a map like Typhoon it is so hard to find it in time since there are a million places it can hide so you have to split your Stalkers, but if it drops a pylon then you can't DPS it down fast enough since your stalkers are spread out
Then you have players who cut a ton (well mostly their first Zealot) and build 3/4 Pylons at your ramp, if you don't cancel your robo, pull probes off your 2nd gas and drop 2 more gates you seem to die, but thankfully if you do it seems you can win since their first few warpins are delayed a bit and they don't quite have the money to warpin from all 4gates at once
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I now use this build religiously in PvP. It works great!
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On March 06 2011 15:50 Dommk wrote: Maybe it is just me, but it seems that this build is starting to lose steam, people are starting to be very "sneaky" with thier probes, on a map like Typhoon it is so hard to find it in time since there are a million places it can hide so you have to split your Stalkers, but if it drops a pylon then you can't DPS it down fast enough since your stalkers are spread out
Then you have players who cut a ton (well mostly their first Zealot) and build 3/4 Pylons at your ramp, if you don't cancel your robo, pull probes off your 2nd gas and drop 2 more gates you seem to die, but thankfully if you do it seems you can win since their first few warpins are delayed a bit and they don't quite have the money to warpin from all 4gates at once I would like to see a replay, but judging from what you said they sound rather vulnerable to your initial stalkers that come out, so I don't know why you're letting a probe even get to your ramp to lay down the pylons.
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On March 07 2011 04:35 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2011 15:50 Dommk wrote: Maybe it is just me, but it seems that this build is starting to lose steam, people are starting to be very "sneaky" with thier probes, on a map like Typhoon it is so hard to find it in time since there are a million places it can hide so you have to split your Stalkers, but if it drops a pylon then you can't DPS it down fast enough since your stalkers are spread out
Then you have players who cut a ton (well mostly their first Zealot) and build 3/4 Pylons at your ramp, if you don't cancel your robo, pull probes off your 2nd gas and drop 2 more gates you seem to die, but thankfully if you do it seems you can win since their first few warpins are delayed a bit and they don't quite have the money to warpin from all 4gates at once I would like to see a replay, but judging from what you said they sound rather vulnerable to your initial stalkers that come out, so I don't know why you're letting a probe even get to your ramp to lay down the pylons. It happened to Minigun while he was streaming. It happens during the time after you have checked your base and start moving out to deny any probes, but a hidden probe sneaks in and it is too late. Some maps it isn't hard to stop, but others like Typhon/Xel'Naga there is a million different places where that one probe can hide. To be fair, both players have to be on the ball, you have to catch it and the 4gater has to time it right to dodge your Stalkers. You can stop it, that is for sure, but it is one of those things that will always catch you off guard once every so often and on maps like Xel'Naga/Typhon, there is an air on uncertainty on catching it, regardless of how focused you are
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Bosnia-Herzegovina439 Posts
Great build. The four gate is the only build that most diamond and lower ranked players do. PvP has become a horrible match up for me, because of this fact. I just don't want to 4 gate, but every time i am waiting for my robo or sentry here he comes with his 4 gate climbing my ramp. If you are a protoss and see this i bet you think "OMG ... not again?!" I ll practice this build and use it, if anything i won't do the goddamn 4 gate and ruin nobody's day and also bore myself to death.
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Can't wait to try this when I get home from work. Build seems solid and Artosis' video helped greatly.
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Has anyone done this build but used a blink stalker followup instead of robo? I feel this build works quite well for stopping the 4 gate (if the map is big enough) but since it is so easily scoutable and uses quite a bit of gas on non-tech (stalkers and sentry) it is always behind against another techer. For example against a 2 gate robo player you will be much later with colo and will have wasted way more gas. You might have started to collect gas a bit earlier but that still doesn't make up for that. Also the build cuts a fair amount of probes.
I feel that if it follows up with blink stalkers instead the build gets much stronger, blink stalkers are great on the maps where this build shines anywy (large maps) and then the massive amount of gas into stalkers isn't as much off a waste. It just doesn't make sense to follow this up with robo play imo. The only weakness of not following up with robo would be DT but that really isn't much of a problem. You can simply make a forge and if DT come you can just FF the ramp to buy time for a cannon, since your stalkers see the DT coming in time anyways.
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On March 13 2011 01:56 Mesha wrote: Great build. The four gate is the only build that most diamond and lower ranked players do. PvP has become a horrible match up for me, because of this fact. I just don't want to 4 gate, but every time i am waiting for my robo or sentry here he comes with his 4 gate climbing my ramp. If you are a protoss and see this i bet you think "OMG ... not again?!" I ll practice this build and use it, if anything i won't do the goddamn 4 gate and ruin nobody's day and also bore myself to death. It doesn't get better the higher you go -__- Getting 4gated by someone who has amazing micro like Kiwikaki is probably the most stressful thing that can happen, even if you are 4gating yourself
Has anyone done this build but used a blink stalker followup instead of robo? I feel this build works quite well for stopping the 4 gate (if the map is big enough) but since it is so easily scoutable and uses quite a bit of gas on non-tech (stalkers and sentry) it is always behind against another techer.
You don't have to follow this build right down to every unit. If there is no sign of aggresion and/or you see them get double gas then just not make that Sentry/Immortal. You can be quite greedy with this build.
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On March 16 2011 02:11 Markwerf wrote: Has anyone done this build but used a blink stalker followup instead of robo? I feel this build works quite well for stopping the 4 gate (if the map is big enough) but since it is so easily scoutable and uses quite a bit of gas on non-tech (stalkers and sentry) it is always behind against another techer. For example against a 2 gate robo player you will be much later with colo and will have wasted way more gas. You might have started to collect gas a bit earlier but that still doesn't make up for that. Also the build cuts a fair amount of probes.
I feel that if it follows up with blink stalkers instead the build gets much stronger, blink stalkers are great on the maps where this build shines anywy (large maps) and then the massive amount of gas into stalkers isn't as much off a waste. It just doesn't make sense to follow this up with robo play imo. The only weakness of not following up with robo would be DT but that really isn't much of a problem. You can simply make a forge and if DT come you can just FF the ramp to buy time for a cannon, since your stalkers see the DT coming in time anyways. It isn't always behind. If you watched the GSL match that YongHwa played, he went for a blind support bay before his observer spotted blink. Once he saw the other guy going blink he went blink himself, and the immortals + blink made his army overall much stronger than just a rabble of blink stalkers. I did this once against lagrangian (iamke55 on TL) and won pretty convincingly.
The blind robotics facility gets you colossus so fast that you'll be able to survive a two colossus push from the enemy even if they went for a 1 gate robotics. Plus if they go for one gate robotics you should be able to deal a lot of damage with your first three stalkers, making a 1 gate robo very risky.
You just have to know what to do once your observer is out.
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Has anybody done any extensive testing as to whether or not it's viable to go Stargate instead of Robo if your opponent decides to go 3 Gate Robo after spotting the 3 Stalker build (which is fairly easy to identify).
I've tried it a handful of times and had mixed success but as a Random player who picks Zerg half the time I don't get a whole lot of experience in PvP. But I, like a lot of other people, hate when it boils down to 4 Gate vs 4 Gate.
Thanks for compiling this Cecil it's helped me many a time!
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Yeah I've been messing with stargates instead of robotics. If you're lucky you might found out how I do it here: Reppack I posted
I don't think anyone has perfected anything yet though. If you try I recommend both +1 air attack and a forge +1 or 2 preemptive cannons.
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Anyone know the status of this build in the current metagame? I'm pretty excited to see that there's a good, solid, anti-4gate, macro-oriented build out there, but in watching the latest GSL, no Tosses seem to be using it in the PvP matches. What gives? Shouldn't it be a great counter to a 4gate if done right? Or are there flaws in it?
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On March 22 2011 13:08 HolyArrow wrote: Anyone know the status of this build in the current metagame? I'm pretty excited to see that there's a good, solid, anti-4gate, macro-oriented build out there, but in watching the latest GSL, no Tosses seem to be using it in the PvP matches. What gives? Shouldn't it be a great counter to a 4gate if done right? Or are there flaws in it? When very high level players play, they need to keep information hidden from one another. If one player goes for a 3 Stalker opening like this one, the other may be able to expoit it somehow due to the inability to prevent scouting for a good period of time. Short answer: They either don't know about it, or just prefer something else.
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On March 22 2011 16:06 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2011 13:08 HolyArrow wrote: Anyone know the status of this build in the current metagame? I'm pretty excited to see that there's a good, solid, anti-4gate, macro-oriented build out there, but in watching the latest GSL, no Tosses seem to be using it in the PvP matches. What gives? Shouldn't it be a great counter to a 4gate if done right? Or are there flaws in it? When very high level players play, they need to keep information hidden from one another. If one player goes for a 3 Stalker opening like this one, the other may be able to expoit it somehow due to the inability to prevent scouting for a good period of time. Short answer: They either don't know about it, or just prefer something else.
Yeah, 3-stalker build is VERY easy to scout, and when I spot it and am going 3-stalker myself, it's very easy to augment my build so I can beat his unit composition.
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On March 22 2011 16:13 mizU wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2011 16:06 CecilSunkure wrote:On March 22 2011 13:08 HolyArrow wrote: Anyone know the status of this build in the current metagame? I'm pretty excited to see that there's a good, solid, anti-4gate, macro-oriented build out there, but in watching the latest GSL, no Tosses seem to be using it in the PvP matches. What gives? Shouldn't it be a great counter to a 4gate if done right? Or are there flaws in it? When very high level players play, they need to keep information hidden from one another. If one player goes for a 3 Stalker opening like this one, the other may be able to expoit it somehow due to the inability to prevent scouting for a good period of time. Short answer: They either don't know about it, or just prefer something else. Yeah, 3-stalker build is VERY easy to scout, and when I spot it and am going 3-stalker myself, it's very easy to augment my build so I can beat his unit composition. I'm not believing that you can beat a triple stalker unless you go triple stalker + probe.
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On March 22 2011 16:13 mizU wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2011 16:06 CecilSunkure wrote:On March 22 2011 13:08 HolyArrow wrote: Anyone know the status of this build in the current metagame? I'm pretty excited to see that there's a good, solid, anti-4gate, macro-oriented build out there, but in watching the latest GSL, no Tosses seem to be using it in the PvP matches. What gives? Shouldn't it be a great counter to a 4gate if done right? Or are there flaws in it? When very high level players play, they need to keep information hidden from one another. If one player goes for a 3 Stalker opening like this one, the other may be able to expoit it somehow due to the inability to prevent scouting for a good period of time. Short answer: They either don't know about it, or just prefer something else. Yeah, 3-stalker build is VERY easy to scout, and when I spot it and am going 3-stalker myself, it's very easy to augment my build so I can beat his unit composition.
So what build counters the 3-stalker?
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