Don’t die to cheese and forge wall in correctly, skip heavy sairs if he isnt going muta and turtling with lurkers and spores. A 5 base toss vs Zerg can be very hard for Zerg to stop unless you let Zerg get to 7-8 -9 bases. Toss often runs into trouble if they can’t presusure Zerg in the mid game. Lose their first army/ too many probes do to harass, and gets denied third. If toss can scout aggressively and play reactively and proactively they hold a strong Advantage over Zerg in the mid- late game. Understand a Zerg will be able to hurt your armies badly if you let them tech to 5/3 ultras or lings and get defilers and swarm. Dark archons with maelstrom can be a game changer in this matchup , along with storm Templar archon 3/3 speedlots and possibly goons. Don’t hesitate to upgrade that ability if you have the multitask and bank to mix it in.
[H] Scouting and responding in PVZ for beginners - Page 2
Forum Index > Brood War Strategy |
funnybananaman
United States830 Posts
Don’t die to cheese and forge wall in correctly, skip heavy sairs if he isnt going muta and turtling with lurkers and spores. A 5 base toss vs Zerg can be very hard for Zerg to stop unless you let Zerg get to 7-8 -9 bases. Toss often runs into trouble if they can’t presusure Zerg in the mid game. Lose their first army/ too many probes do to harass, and gets denied third. If toss can scout aggressively and play reactively and proactively they hold a strong Advantage over Zerg in the mid- late game. Understand a Zerg will be able to hurt your armies badly if you let them tech to 5/3 ultras or lings and get defilers and swarm. Dark archons with maelstrom can be a game changer in this matchup , along with storm Templar archon 3/3 speedlots and possibly goons. Don’t hesitate to upgrade that ability if you have the multitask and bank to mix it in. | ||
Moopower
126 Posts
On March 22 2018 02:18 Golgotha wrote: This is a great thread for Toss players. I have a question regarding how to react vs. hydra all in. If you scout fast hydra den and you know he is massing hydra, what is the best way to prepare for the break out? I understand that you are supposed to place like 4-5 cannons at your natural, but I am not sure if I should tech to fast storms or mass gates. So far, whenever I see hydra all in, I make my cannons and focus on getting leg asap and a large zealot army built up. I don't really prioritize storm since I think having upgraded speedlots are enough to overpower someone who went fast hydra. I make like 6 gates off two base and try to hit as soon as leg and +1 finish. I get storm once I have my zealot army. I don't feel the need to get storm asap since zealots with mass cannons are more than enough to stop a bust. But I want to learn the more balanced and standard approach. After placing the cannons what do I start working towards? how many gates do I make and when do I start my templar archives? What is a good amount of gates and when is a good time to get storm? I try to get leg speed asap of course. I also constantly produce sairs when I can. The reason why I am reluctant to start storm so quickly in this scenario is because I want to punish the zerg as soon as possible since his econ is weak due to going fast hydra. Why let him keep the initiative and wait for a tech (storm) that takes so long? However, I understand that overdoing it on speedzeals and delaying storm too long is not a good approach. Is there a balanced way I can go about this? What I have been doing: -place 4-5 cannons -citadel -4 gateways inside my main -lots of sairs -late templar archives. Is this alternative path better?: -place 4-5 cannons -citadel -make 2 more gates in your main for a total of 3 (you will lose 1) -templar @100% citadel -less sairs due to gas heavy tech. you obviously cannon up for immediate def, and then research storm and legs very quickly. don't keep building corsairs because his hydras will negate your air unless you can contest his hydra force. The DT sair combo only works if the hydras have to pick and choose what to atk with your sairs or your ground army. You should've been building citadel a bit after you start your stargate. So it should've been done by this point of him trying to hydra bust you. All you do is get temp archive and then upgrade legs in the meantime while making sure your cannons are sufficient. keep producing from the 1-2 gateways you have, and then warp more gateways once you have the money. | ||
ArvickHero
10387 Posts
The goal is to essentially cut as many corners as possible on your end, while punishing the Zerg for any shortcuts they take. This starts from the very beginning. Want to know why top Protoss players skimp out on cannons, even when they get 3hatched over and over? Because that extra cannon will push back your timings just enough that you fall behind on timings, and then lose control over the midgame. If your timings and reactions are extremely well polished up to the 12 minute mark, then, in my experience, you will steamroll over any zerg up until around C rank (whatever the equivalent is now). here is a UMS that can help build that multitasking skill. Try not to get tunnel visioned, do your best to keep aware of your base, the scouting worker, your minimap, and your resource count. | ||
chozen86
United States60 Posts
Just wanted to share an example of what I think it looks like for beginners to start getting the hang of scouting and responding, even if not everything else is working super well (my macro still needs work, and my build order isn't super crisp either). Here's the replay: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1K_0jgNiVuMPq8EdaTkgqKMBy4mqgn8fC This was a very comfortable PVZ where I successfully predicted/scouted and countered a:
Yes, my opponent has way less APM than me and is sort of doing a sequence of all-ins, but I'm still happy because I've died to one or more of these soooooo many times before. | ||
XenOsky
Chile2142 Posts
http://www.mediafire.com/file/oz1ltjmwzmt/(1)Hotkey Trainer Protoss.scx keep ur probe alive while u try to bust a zerg base u have 5 tries. | ||
y2kid
87 Posts
Sort of new here, saw the thread and loved it. Here's my question: how do you break a lurker heavy(10-12 lukrs at all times even after a reset) zerg army where they are aggressively sniping your observers all the time? Disclaimer: Do not know if there's a specific PvZ thread (please point me to that if there is) so I thought here would be a good place. Also if you could link me to some good threads for beginner to a bit advanced Protoss players I'd be thankful. Cheers | ||
badpenny
Canada54 Posts
| ||
y2kid
87 Posts
| ||
iopq
United States732 Posts
On November 11 2017 02:21 rackdude wrote: Honestly when playing at a low level, it's so hard to use corsairs correctly that it can be a good idea to skip it. Only if you go hard one gate expand and force them to slow down their tech. They can't get mutas or lurkers out in time. So you end up forcing sunkens. | ||
XenOsky
Chile2142 Posts
On September 28 2018 04:17 y2kid wrote: Hi all, Sort of new here, saw the thread and loved it. Here's my question: how do you break a lurker heavy(10-12 lukrs at all times even after a reset) zerg army where they are aggressively sniping your observers all the time? Disclaimer: Do not know if there's a specific PvZ thread (please point me to that if there is) so I thought here would be a good place. Also if you could link me to some good threads for beginner to a bit advanced Protoss players I'd be thankful. Cheers Get observer Sight upgrade, then slowly storm lurkers as efficiently as possible, try to send 1 / 2 zealots or dragoons to snipe weak lurkers, when u feel u have a good shot at breaking the contain go for it. do not lose observers freely tho. Most important part of breaking a heavy lurker contain is keeping a cold head, do not 1a2a3a4a into the lurker field. just play it step by step, if u can break the contain u're most likely going to win the game with ur army, so try not to waste zealots/dragoons stupidly, keep calm and storm over and over.. if u're on 3 gas, 1/2 reavers may be a good option. | ||
iopq
United States732 Posts
| ||
Moopower
126 Posts
| ||
Jealous
9972 Posts
On October 01 2018 08:40 Moopower wrote: i think corsair d-web is a good option to break lurker contain or reavers, instead of losing thousands of resources on wasted units, why not invest in fleet beacon and d-web research? If you kept corsairs alive that is. Have you ever seen this be used? If so, rep/VOD? | ||
Moopower
126 Posts
| ||
Jealous
9972 Posts
On October 02 2018 12:01 Moopower wrote: I've seen d-web being used in sair reaver builds, but it's not too much of a stretch to invest in some fleet beacon tech if you're going to suicide a lot of units to break lurker contain anyways. You're racing against the clock to not get a death grip contain so why just ram goon ht storm attempts when you can supplement with d-webs as well making your army survivability longer to give your army more strength to break contain and give zerg less time? If you've never seen it done I think there is a reason for it, is the argument I'm making. The answer is to bust better, not look for sly answers that no pro ever used. | ||
Moopower
126 Posts
On October 02 2018 12:22 Jealous wrote: If you've never seen it done I think there is a reason for it, is the argument I'm making. The answer is to bust better, not look for sly answers that no pro ever used. I'm challenging your argument of authority. You say there must be a reason why pros don't do it. I'm taking the approach that is possibility based. If in PvZ the protoss player still has his corsairs saved, would it be too much of an investment to get a fleet beacon and then d-web research vs trying to trade front line lurkers with goons and hts? By your logic if pros weren't doing a strat by 2004, it isn't viable. We see that isn't the case. We still see some innovations from pros especially in TvZ with the 1-1-1 builds and from Zergs in ZvT with the usage of queen ability of broodling sniping tanks. We haven't seen much innovation from the protoss side in PvZ since the Bisu build. Just different variations of speedlot attack timings or occasional double stargate into sair reavers. In PvT we see the speed shuttle timing attacks coming back around from the old days. If protoss loses a considerable amount of his army to a lurker contain, you are essentially trying to beat the clock. The further time passes, the further zerg is going to be ahead in economy and map control. So you either have to have reavers that stay alive and kill his front line lurkers to the point where your army can engage in more efficient trades or suicide your army to try to buy you more time and hope your macro will outpace his contain. Reavers even with shuttle are hard to break contain because reavers have a range of 8 they aren't like siege tanks where they fire consistently and from far enough range, reavers take considerable time to fire before you can pick them back up before they fire in relation vs hydras vs goons, and with hydra speed and range they can close in easily to snipe reavers , delaying your attempts to break the lurker line, not to mention scourge coming in with the hydras to screen out the shuttle. I will say though all this depends on the map and positions and overall army production at that time. If d-web can solve that niche of giving the protoss player more time without having to suicide his army to buy time against the contain, then why not explore that option? I'd also argue that Protoss's strengths comes from their special abilities. They aren't the most cost efficient units in a head to head fight unless you factor in their abilities. 100 minerals = 4 lings vs 1 zealot, and with crackling upgrade in late game even 2 lings can take out a damaged zealot. So storm and splash damage and crowd control is cruicial. In PvT you need stasis and storm to equalize a terran army. So why not add another ability to the equation to help Protoss's sustainability instead of trying to trade inefficiently? I see games where hydras bait out storms or where protoss is forced to storm lurkers while the hydras can take advantage of less storms and pick off the protoss army while pulling back the injured lurkers. So storming a few lurkers at a time isn't always enough. Ideally protoss would be able to storm both hydras and lurkers or clear the lurkers before the hydras can punish the protoss player. Also if the reaver is in front of the goons, the reaver is susceptible to hydras sniping it easily, even with a shuttle their dps can take a considerable amount of the shuttle HP before it can accelerate away. Hydras aren't like goons where their fire is more dodgeable to quick pick ups. If the reaver is behind the goons, the reaver often paces back and forth until it's in range because the goons are in the way, so unless the reaver is hugging the goon line and right behind them, they won't be in range of the lurkers unless your goons are reaver behind 1 goon vs 2 goons = reaver can't get in range unless you want your goons to take considerable dmg while waiting for your reaver to fire, then also their scarabs are more susceptible to dudding, if they are behind something or just taking a long time to reach the lurker or not do full damage, this makes you focus on positioning your goons just right so the scarab can go in between them. A goon reaver army vs hydras even in an open area is a very different equation than facing a lurker concave defense line with hydras coming in to snipe the reaver. The reaver has to focus on sniping lurkers that it can reach, but it can't focus both on hydras and the lurkers at the same time, so zerg players can take advantage of this. Goon dps is slow so even if they manage to kill the hydras eventually, your reaver shuttle is sniped and your push again is delayed enough where they have time to get more lings and hydras to back up lurker line. Again reavers might be all that the protoss player need to break the contain with goons to help back the reaver when hydras try to come in to snipe it, but it's really dependent on the game and context of what already happened. So that's why I offered to say IF protoss still has his corsairs and he has to take some time to break it why not invest in d-web while he's at it then trying to ram into a wall. And generally in this context if Protoss can't expand as freely, he is sitting on thousands of minerals unspent unless he wants to burn out quickly with more mass gateways. Trust me I've seen plenty of games where Protoss pros try to bust out with more mass gateway units and they dry up quickly and lose in later game even if they manage to eventually break out. Generally when you're on 2 bases and contained you have a surplus of resources unspent because normally you'd invest those resources to multiply and expand with bases and get more workers to compound it to later game. What's the harm in investing in that UNSPENT resources anyways at the current time with some crowd control ability like d-web? So again to reiterate the problem is obviously to break the lurker contain while being in a position to have a chance to still win the game. The possible solutions are A. Mass gateway units add more gateways in hopes that it will be enough to outpace his contain, I'd argue even if you did outpace the zerg, that just points back to how incompetent the zerg was in his macro in keeping up with his lurker line and management. So depending on the zerg to be a worse player than you is hopeful at best. I can point out specifically in games where a protoss breaks a lurker contain and usually the reason was for the incompetence of the zerg in some fashion whether it'd be macro, or dealing with harassing from dt/ht drops. B. Have reavers earlier but again they take time to build by the time you're contained you'd have to pre-emptively start robotics unless you started with reaver tech but again zerg wouldn't likely do a lurker contain if you started on reaver tech because they'd be busy map patrolling with hydra. You also have to pump out observers and replace both shuttles, reavers and obs or invest in making 2 robos. And when you do have the reavers you have to micro perfectly and depending on the context you may be successful in breaking the lurker line to allow your army to get in a better position to trade. So this option is viable, but again depends on context. C. If you still have corsairs saved, make fleet beacon get d-web. So this would be along the same time line as getting reaver tech if you haven't already started it. the difference being it's less susceptible to getting sniped and having your resources wasted with the scarabs and shuttle investment with reavers while also having to get observers pumped out as well. Your goons survive a lot longer since they can freely shoot while not gettting damaged by lurkers and hydras under the web. So your army will grow bigger while not having to spend quite as much to replenish. Making you able to break the contain much quicker. I seriously think Protoss pros should consider investing in d-web tech more in the PvZ match ups. If they already invest a lot into making 6+ corsairs in a lot of their PvZ games, utilizing them also for their d-web to crack heavily defended zerg expos of sunk/spore/lurker should be explored at least. What happens most of the time when protoss try to kill an expo especially against a defensive player like larva, is they have 5+ sunks sometimes with buildings in the way. What better way to utilize the goons they have and have zealots in front of them to screen lings while goons go work on the defenses? I think a lot of people underestimate the sustainability that d-web gives a protoss army in context of breaking a zerg expo. It really allows your army to stay alive a lot longer and when zerg depend on their reinforcements to slowly whittle down the protoss army that can actually make you snowball your army into a winning position. When protoss has a huge army that is too big to contest even from a reinforcement and attrition type battle, zerg cannot win against that army, unless they have a certain threshold of enough units to deal enough damage to whittle it down. | ||
EMPaThy789
New Zealand878 Posts
When using reavers against the lurker contain, you don't want to have the reavers at the front by themselves. You want to use the reavers to slowly edge out your army if you are pinned against your wall so you can start hitting lurkers with dragoons at max range backed by reavers + ht behind. Basically the reavers are there to back up the dragoons, not the other way around. They serve more to deter the hydra ling from engaging your dragoons and sniping your obs than to hit lurkers themselves. Obviously hit lurkers with reavers if there is an opportunity but do not walk forward with just reavers into the open. The most important thing is to not do big 1a2a3a into lurkers with your zealots. Storm usage is also very key and 90% of breaking lurker contain is good storm usage. If you exhaust enough of the units protecting the lurkers, then the lurkers themselves become very vulnerable. With regards to getting d-web to break lurker contain, there are a lot of reasons why its a poor idea. - D-web also doesn't actually kill anything where as storm/reaver does. Sure it makes lurkers not able to attack, but it doesn't do anything in the way of actually killing the hydra/ling/lurker, therefore its still up to mainly your high-templar to deal with the hydra ling. - It's true that the protoss generally ends up with a surplus of minerals when they get lurker contained with gas being the main limiting factor in your production. However, fleet beacon + research is 500/400 which is not cheap at all. 400 gas is not something you have in surplus. Having 8 more dragoons, or robo support + 3 reavers, or just more high templars is much better in almost every way. Even after breaking out, there are several reasons why d-web is a comparatively worse choice. - For attacking zerg bases, reavers are better, again because they actually deal damage. Getting your 3rd attacked by zealot goon ht reaver is much more scary than zealot dragoon ht d-web. - Fleet beacon is dead tech (discounting carrier/scout speed memeing) where as a robotics support bay unlocks shuttle speed. - D-web doesn't do anything for defending the expansions you take after you break out whereas a reaver + some cannons at a choke can hold off 2-3 control groups of zerg. - D-web is a spell which means you are weaker after casting. Sure storm is a spell too but again, D-web doesn't actually do any damage so getting your webs baited out is much worse. - D-web doesn't do shit vs the eventual dark swarm. Casting D-web on dark swarm doesn't do anything useful. | ||
Moopower
126 Posts
I've already addressed your points about goon positioning and reavers, I mentioned both scenarios where reavers are in front and in the back. I never suggested 1a2a3a4a5a zealots into a lurker line, if you noticed my previous post i mentioned dragoon + ht and reavers. Never mentioned zealots anywhere. So if you have a good position to have goons in front with reavers with hts, and can protect your reavers then like I mentioned you can have a chance to break the contain successfully, but it depends on the context of who has what and when, and how the map plays in to factor of how wide the natural opening is. If zerg does it correctly, he'd have a concave position not just a straight line. So you poke in with dragoons in the front with reavers trying to get into range, you'd have to make sure your reaver is behind just 1 goon otherwise it'll pace back and forth and not be in range to fire scarabs. So your front line goon will get attacked because in order for your reaver to be in range while also behind your goons your goon in the front line will inevitably get hit. Reavers only have range of 8, lurkers have range 6, goon has range 6 so you only have 2 matrix range to work with, which is why I say your reaver has to be within 1 matrix behind a goon to be in range to hit a lurker. Your point about investing 400 gas being a lot doesn't make sense when you consider the fact that protoss players spend a lot more than that to break the contain with just massing more units,so if you read my previous post again, I address this by saying your response is simply saying you'll mass more gateway units and hope to break out the contain faster than he can contain you. So if you want to sustain your army for beating the clock, it's a wiser investment to have more options to keep your army alive while you have the necessary unit composition to push his contain back while also reinforcing as needed. If you concede that you will have the surplus resources, it's like then why not just invest in more tech and get more supplementation to break the contain than just hoping more gateway units will break it and suiciding them? Doesn't matter if d-web doesn't directly kill the lurkers in position for the contain, it effectively gives you more room to deal with them, which is to push back the contain, which is the goal. It still is achieving that goal by having more room without getting fired upon, having your units with more surface room to atk with is good which effectively makes it easier to deal with a contain. D-web not doing damage isn't the point, it doesn't take away from the opponent like storm does, it's role is to protect your units rather than to destroy the enemy which can lead to the same result of your army surviving a lot better and winning battles regardless of the method. And the reaver positioning I've explained already in depth of why reaver shuttle micro with goon support may still not always be efficient depending on the zerg's position in the game and choke points. If they have scourge and hydras waiting to ambush and how much of a contain he already has,etc. Baiting out webs is an obscure situation to pick at because you'd normally use them against static defense and army positions in tight areas where buildings and choke points are going to limit unit mobility anyways. As well as the fact that you're not forgoing storms, you're supplementing them with d-webs. In the context of dealing with a contain and you think a zerg will bait out the d-webs, well it again still achieves its purpose if it pushes their army back a bit, you give yourself more room and seconds to deal with a portion of his army without dying so quickly to mass splash damage. The reason why even if you think zerg is winning by baiting out d-webs is because you need to understand that zerg is trying to CONTROL a specific area in a containment tactic. By making them move, you're again still achieving your goal of breaking it, while also giving you time to deal with a portion of his army. Again if you can deal with the containment with just reavers goons and hts at the front, then by all means do it, but if you find that your reavers and goons and hts are still not enough in your position and you have some corsairs, it might be a good idea to try d-web along side with everything. If you're arguing from the standpoint of saying with the resources you could've gotten with having more HTs and more storm rather than investing in corsairs, again I'd say if you already have the corsairs you might as well utilize their potential to maximum effect and use both d-web and storms, rather than have more useless corsairs in the later stages of the game. Corsair's purpose so far have been utilized for scouting zerg tech in early-mid game, harassing/killing OLs and denying map control and air superiority for deterrent for muta switches or defending against ht snipes. If corsairs have so much utility for these reasons and thats why they are utilized, I'd argue that the ability to break expo defenses adds much more utility to corsairs to have more value even in the later stages of the game, rather than to lose them and forget about them. Seriously consider trying d-webs you'll notice your army survives for a lot longer if you're utilizing them correctly on static defenses, using goons to target while zealots are in position to take other areas that aren't under the web. This again leads to army advantage snowball, where zerg sends reinforcements in streaming lines. If they do that and your army was whittled down they have a chance to take out your army and often do, but if it survives longer and stays big while you're also reinforcing, your army will get exponentially more problematic for zerg, where they have to save up their units before they can mindless reinforce to atk. The reason why corsair d-web AND having storm is a better army composition than just more HTs with your army is because HTs are slow and clunky, often times they are behind your units and when other units are in the way, you have to move your other units out of the way for them to be in casting range, wasting valuable fighting time trying to micro your units to get out of the HT's way to be in range to storm. They also don't kill buildings, so while you may argue that storms kill units, I'd say it's a pro and con, because it doesn't factor in what it doesn't do which is deal with static defense. Also With corsair d-web range being a little further and more accessible to use, that makes a big difference in your army's survivability. It's like the difference of using arbiter stasis crowd control vs HT storms against terran army. Both have similar functions but do it in different ways. Storm gets rid of the enemy units, while stasis simply takes them out of the equation temporarily to keep your army surviving longer to do more damage and snowball army advantage from there to win the fight. The same case can be made for d-web, that it's easier to utilize the ability from a flying unit with a slightly further casting range. and again I repeat you'd use it in heavily fortified positions where there's not much room to maneuver around, so even if a hydra or 2 come out of the web while the lurker is still under,etc, it's purpose has still been achieved in disabling much of the zerg's DPS in the fight because your units will likely prioritize units that aren't in d-web since they aren't seen as a threat its the same concept of fighting one unit at a time, where you try to snipe and pick off your enemy while you maximize your damage output of your units. | ||
| ||