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I'm aPs, currently a 704 Masters protoss on the NA server, 3828 last season, so don't expect this to be coming from a super pro or anything like that. This is a DT expand build modified from what oGsMC used against July in game 4 of the GSL finals from last season.
Build Order + Show Spoiler + 9 pylon 14 gate 15 gas 16 gas 17 pylon 18 cyber 19 zealot Priority of units on the first gate is zealot-> sentry -> sentry, all chrono on gateway. Only make 2 sentries.
Twilight council between 4:20-4:40 depending on when you get the drone out of your base, if it comes.
2 more gateway @ 30 supply.
DT shrine immediately after twilight council finishes.
Expand to nat by 6:30.
3 DTs warp in between 7:10-7:30, head towards zerg base with DTs.
From here you may pursue many routes. My most common one is 3 gate 2 robo.
Goals + Show Spoiler + With your first 3 DTs, take 2 to whichever base has a lair going up, and 1 to the other. Your goal is to kill as many drones as possible. Once you start fleeing, proceed to take out the lair. If this does not appear to be possible, take out the roach warren if it is possible/exists. Your goal is to preserve the life of your DTs so as to keep the threat up as long as possible.
Your aim is to use the mobility of the DTs to stall for as much time as possible, and slow down the zerg econ as much as possible. Kill all the building creep tumors that you can, and try to slow down the zerg 3rd. If the zerg takes too much of their army and their overseer to take a 3rd, try to sneak a dt into the main, wait for the army to go up the main ramp, then sneak another dt into the nat, and the 3rd dt should start hitting the 3rd hatch as it is going up. Always pull out before the overseer gets within range of your dt - of course the dt that sneaks into the main will undoubtedly die, but you should be able to buy enough time to make it worth it.
While this is going on, you may either prepare a strong 2 base push, or expand faster than normal, depending on what the zerg is doing.
If you plan on playing aggressively, 3 gate 2 robo is probably the strongest response - however, if you want to strongly attack with no intention to expand behind the attack, then you should aim to have 2 more gateways finish as the push is hitting the zerg nat. You will then rely on immortal stalker sentry + multiple observer in order to deal with the zerg army, which may have burrowed roach. You need multiple observers in case one gets sniped.
General Followup + Show Spoiler + At this point you should be able to delay any creep spread/3rd even if your DTs did not really do any damage. Now you must decide whether to go for a 2 base timing attack or expand to your 3rd.
2 base 3 gate 2 robo is probably the strongest version, wherein you attack with stalker sentry immortal with multiple observers. If you intend to pin all your hopes on this push killing the zerg, then you should build gates so that you have 2 more gateways coming online just as your push is hitting the nat, because immortals take a very long time to arrive from your robos. So, once your initial push hits, you will be transitioning from 3 gate 2 robo into 5 gate with the intent to finish the game.
You can also incorporate stargates if you would like, though I do that more rarely, so not too sure on how stargate variants work.
Expand If you expand, you will have to be VERY active with your dts, to delay any threat of a push. You will be relying on stalker sentry immortal in this case to defend and get colossus, unless of course you went stargate, in which case you will have void rays and less immortal.
vs Specific Builds + Show Spoiler +Fast spore w/ defense+ Show Spoiler + This is obviously one of the most dangerous builds to come up against, as you will pretty much do 0 damage. Of course, once the zerg eventually takes his nat gas, it is sometimes possible to sneak in and snipe a drone or two before backing off, but this is dangerous since speedlings could surround you.
The exact response to this I am still testing, mainly by telling my opponent exact what I am going so that they blind counter me without scouting.
If your dts run into this, then you must prepare for the possibility of a 2 base drop timing around 11:00 to 13:00, the later the less potent in comparison to what you can have. You will have to start a robo at 7:30 as gas and minerals permit, and quickly build an observer and prepare to go 5 gate 1 robo colossus. Your DTs must not die, and preferably not take any non shield damage. They need to fan out and scout for any expansion attempts and also to snipe creep tumors. It will be very very bad for you if the zerg sneaks a hidden 3rd on you, and you assume that the zerg is 2 basing the entire time.
Upon completion of the robo, build an observer asap and find his tech path. While the obs is building/in transit, you can poke in and out with your DTs and try to see the zerg's unit mix. If you see a lot of roaches (and there will probably be speedlings with them), then it is safe to assume for a moment that a roach ling push with possible drop and burrow is coming, so start pumping out immortal stalker sentry. If you see hydra, you will need to head towards colossus asap. The drop will likely come when you only have 1 colossus. In this case, your goal is to scout for when the drop is being prepared with your obs while denying the 3rd as long as possible with DTs, then pull the DTs back in time to morph 2 archons for his push.
Either way, the threat of a drop leading to a multi pronged front is dangerous. You will need to start a new cyber core at 9:30 in some place that does not block your ramp, and kill the cyber core you currently have at the ramp, as the choke created by your ramp wall will create an extremely unfavorable bottleneck for your units.
If the zerg is still on 2 base, then your goal is simply to defend with minimal loss. Do that and you will be able to counterpush the zerg so long as your colossi do not die - the colossus count is key to your counterpush success.
Thus far, it seems that stargate play is too risky with regards to a hydra ling elevator, and mass gateway play does not fair very well, though I have not tried heavy archon blink stalker mixes yet, which theoretically might do well vs hydra ling if I keep my initial sentries alive, stock up their energy, and throw down some amazing forcefields (assuming 2 base hydra ling).
If you scout that the zerg is intending to expand rather than 2 base you, then you must harass as much as possible with the DTs, take a fast 3rd (in some cases depending on what you scout, you can expand even at 10:00) which is defended by 3 gate 2 robo into 5 gate 1 robo production. Once the 3rd is up, you will be relying on warp prism play to delay the zerg's economy and buy more time for you to max out or otherwise have an army capable of applying serious pressure.
The way you do this varies based on what the zerg is doing. Some zergs go mass sling/bling. In this case, you can do a 2 sentry 2 zealot drop behind the mineral line of 1 base, and use FF + zealot positioning to force drones off mining. Meanwhile, you should have a proxy pylon near the 3rd to warp in DTs or other units to attack that, place your warp prism so that it can warp in both in the main and nat, and generally harass all 3 bases simultaneously as much as possible with care to lose as little as possible.
Once your 3rd is up, you will be going 9 gate 2 robo, with probe production halted around 70. Once your 4th completes around 22:00 you will adding more gateways and researching warp prism speed, with the aim to have 2 speed prism flying around the map and allowing you to harass every zerg base simultaneously, forcing static defense which cuts from either their drone count or army count.
But again, this branch has not been well tested yet - still in the process.
For instance, not sure yet when is the best time to start upgrade research with this build, as you are a bit unit/gas starved at the beginning.
An extra note - it is important to start blink the moment you feel safe. Hopefully you're not wrong about being safe.
Strengths of the build + Show Spoiler + 1. Mobility DTs have a movespeed of 2.8125. Overseers are 1.875(+0.875). Thus, no matter what your dt will be faster than the overseers which will be pursuing you. Therefore, as long as you start retreating before the overseer enters vision range of your dt, you cannot be caught.
2. Unconventionality Most zergs do not expect this build. As such, they may have an overseer but not spores, or spores, but only one, or in the wrong location (placed for void ray/phoenix rather than dt). With good control, this will usually allow you to get an advantage even with minimal drone kills, since you will be able to force drones off mining for some amount of time in most cases.
3. Archons Even after the useful life of your DTs end, sometimes the zerg will make many lings. In these rarer branches, you will find that a couple (literally 2) well placed archons can vastly increase the strength of your army.
Weaknesses + Show Spoiler + Fast mass roach pushes (~just before 10 minutes) with overseer+burrow can be difficult to hold off if you did not do any damage at all with your dt, as my roommate discovered vs StrifeCro. A faster robo may work well against that though, and similarly it should be possible to backstab the zerg's main/nat once the push leaves creep.
In general, very tight detection setups coupled with a fast push may be difficult to hold.
This build is not intended to be a 'do this every game' type build like the usual 3 gate expand is for most people. This is more of a surprise build that you mix in to your repertoire.
And lastly.... It is hard to get the maximal life and use out of your DTs while doing every else without making your timings late, since you want all your DTs to be in different places and all active simultaneously as much as possible.
FAQ + Show Spoiler + What was modified from MC's build? MC got his gateway at 12, and gas at 14/15. This results in less mineral income, albeit slightly faster gas income. However, as MC expanded at 6:50 as a result of the lower mineral income, with only 1 stalker 1 sentry for gas units, it should have been a build that is extremely suspicious. The goal of this build is to expand by 6:30 and have two sentries out early, to allay some zerg suspicions. Of course you will still only have 2 sentries, so if you are playing a boX, you should hide sentries as much as possible when doing more normal builds, to leave an element of uncertainty. Also, MC followed up his build with 6 gate blink stalker sentry at 13:00. He had no obs, and by then the zerg should have many roaches with burrow and burrow movement, which means the push should not have worked. July unfortunately double teched hydra and spire, but went roach, got burrow late, and went roach speed before burrowed movement.
Replays + Show Spoiler +This replay shows the avoidance of overlords, and using this build against early roach/ling pushes. Bubba makes a 2nd roach warren by accident, which certainly affected his chances. Will add more replays as I play them, I keep forgetting to save my 1v1 replays, so have none atm
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Awesome. Gonna give this a few tries after I catch the replies but wanted to say thanks before I started.
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Nice evaluation and explanation of the build... I'll test it out and i'll come back to tell me results :O
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Hm, this isn't anything terribly new but thanks for the write up! I've had quite a bit of success with this build.
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Watched the replay, very cool. Definitely puts the zerg on the back foot whilst letting you get your expo and army going. I'll start doing this on the ladder, for sure. Thanks for the post, Brotoss.
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Just added a replay of my roommate ElParamedico playing VTZerker with this build. Zerker went ling/bling.
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I can only see this being effective on some maps where:
A) It's harder for the zerg to get sacrificial ovies in position in time, and B) The zerg can't defend both his main and natural with a single spore/overseer (and his third with an additional spore or OS)
For example, I don't think this would be very effective on maps like Shakuras or Scrap.
Honestly, if I scout a twilight council with my first sacrificial overlord at 5:00, I'm going to know it's either this or blink stalkers, and if I can't scout your unit composition, I'm throwing down a spore at my natural choke and morphing in an OS as soon as my lair's done.
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On April 16 2011 17:41 Dellward wrote: I can only see this being effective on some maps where:
A) It's harder for the zerg to get sacrificial ovies in position in time, and B) The zerg can't defend both his main and natural with a single spore/overseer (and his third with an additional spore or OS)
For example, I don't think this would be very effective on maps like Shakuras or Scrap.
Honestly, if I scout a twilight council with my first sacrificial overlord at 5:00, I'm going to know it's either this or blink stalkers, and if I can't scout your unit composition, I'm throwing down a spore at my natural choke and morphing in an OS as soon as my lair's done.
From most angles you can kill the overlord before it sees your dark shrine/twilight, and the overlord will scout 2 sentries (and you can throw in a stalker too if you dont care about your 3rd dt being late by about 10 seconds), so usually this doesn't arouse too much suspicious. On larger 4 player maps, there are all sorts of places you can proxy it based on opponent habits, which is something that is more reliable if you know who you are playing. There are a number of general areas that zergs tend to not scout depending on spawn positions and map though, but that's taking a risk.
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Looks good, I'll probably be trying out. Just a quick question on your follow up, I've always found 2 robos to be extremely all-inish vs Zerg. After the point of the game when immortals lose their efficiency, you can only use them to build collossi, and I've found that constant collossi off 2 robos (on three bases) usually produces a protoss ball that is too collossi heavy and very easily counterable. Do you just build the second robo for the immortal push and then stop using it or does it have other uses later in the game ?
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On April 16 2011 18:15 Geiko wrote: Looks good, I'll probably be trying out. Just a quick question on your follow up, I've always found 2 robos to be extremely all-inish vs Zerg. After the point of the game when immortals lose their efficiency, you can only use them to build collossi, and I've found that constant collossi off 2 robos (on three bases) usually produces a protoss ball that is too collossi heavy and very easily counterable. Do you just build the second robo for the immortal push and then stop using it or does it have other uses later in the game ?
Just for immortal + backup obs. Once you go colossus you won't be supporting 2 generally unless you are about to get a 3rd, which you do take behind the push, if you don't put up 2 more gateways that finish as you as arriving at the zerg nat, because if you don't make those gateways, you are going to have 3 instead of 5 stalkers reinforcing per wave, which isn't very effective. Generally zerg should be able to defend that, albeit be forced to make units, and so you expand.
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I just used it and it was like a miracle appeared from the "standard" 3-gate sentry expand builds. Thank you so very much! Going to be using this a lot more often in PvZ on ladder wherever possible!
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On April 16 2011 17:53 EtherealDeath wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 17:41 Dellward wrote: I can only see this being effective on some maps where:
A) It's harder for the zerg to get sacrificial ovies in position in time, and B) The zerg can't defend both his main and natural with a single spore/overseer (and his third with an additional spore or OS)
For example, I don't think this would be very effective on maps like Shakuras or Scrap.
Honestly, if I scout a twilight council with my first sacrificial overlord at 5:00, I'm going to know it's either this or blink stalkers, and if I can't scout your unit composition, I'm throwing down a spore at my natural choke and morphing in an OS as soon as my lair's done. From most angles you can kill the overlord before it sees your dark shrine/twilight, and the overlord will scout 2 sentries (and you can throw in a stalker too if you dont care about your 3rd dt being late by about 10 seconds), so usually this doesn't arouse too much suspicious. On larger 4 player maps, there are all sorts of places you can proxy it based on opponent habits, which is something that is more reliable if you know who you are playing. There are a number of general areas that zergs tend to not scout depending on spawn positions and map though, but that's taking a risk. I guess it's only as good as your word verse mine, but I think you're playing over zerg's ability to scout this. I agree that this build might be effective on big 4 player maps (Typoon, TDA, Terminus) where the zerg might scout you last, but on Scrap, Shakuras or close-air metal/shattered, a zerg is going to be able to scout your entire base with multiple overlords peaking in at once, and will probably only lose one. Remember that you're only killing the overlord with two sentries, which will take forever.
This leaves you with the option of proxying, which is obviously a huge risk.
Not to mention that a good zerg player is probably going to notice you only have two sentries and wonder where the gas is going - which is usually either Stargate/s or this.
Oh, and a gas steal will just ruin your day.
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nice build, thx for sharing
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On April 16 2011 18:28 Dellward wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2011 17:53 EtherealDeath wrote:On April 16 2011 17:41 Dellward wrote: I can only see this being effective on some maps where:
A) It's harder for the zerg to get sacrificial ovies in position in time, and B) The zerg can't defend both his main and natural with a single spore/overseer (and his third with an additional spore or OS)
For example, I don't think this would be very effective on maps like Shakuras or Scrap.
Honestly, if I scout a twilight council with my first sacrificial overlord at 5:00, I'm going to know it's either this or blink stalkers, and if I can't scout your unit composition, I'm throwing down a spore at my natural choke and morphing in an OS as soon as my lair's done. From most angles you can kill the overlord before it sees your dark shrine/twilight, and the overlord will scout 2 sentries (and you can throw in a stalker too if you dont care about your 3rd dt being late by about 10 seconds), so usually this doesn't arouse too much suspicious. On larger 4 player maps, there are all sorts of places you can proxy it based on opponent habits, which is something that is more reliable if you know who you are playing. There are a number of general areas that zergs tend to not scout depending on spawn positions and map though, but that's taking a risk. I guess it's only as good as your word verse mine, but I think you're playing over zerg's ability to scout this. I agree that this build might be effective on big 4 player maps (Typoon, TDA, Terminus) where the zerg might scout you last, but on Scrap, Shakuras or close-air metal/shattered, a zerg is going to be able to scout your entire base with multiple overlords peaking in at once, and will probably only lose one. Remember that you're only killing the overlord with two sentries, which will take forever. This leaves you with the option of proxying, which is obviously a huge risk. Not to mention that a good zerg player is probably going to notice you only have two sentries and wonder where the gas is going - which is usually either Stargate/s or this. Oh, and a gas steal will just ruin your day.
Which is why you get gas before your 2nd pylon and before you cyber core. Again, there are tells for this build, there's no guarantee on keeping the zerg from scouting. Just have to try to avoid what overlords you see. If no damage is done, then yes, you will be behind, but you can still utiilize DTs to slow down creep spread/third, and be a bit defensive at first with a faster robo.
And like I mentioned, in a boX series I would be hiding gas when doing normal builds, to make it more confusing what is going on, so that that particular tell is more difficult to rely on.
edit - various trickery has worked on a number of pretty well ranked players. From recent memory, coLRyze and LGSyckness died immediately to the DTs, as they were going some late lair build or something, and completely did not see it coming.
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I think this build is quite strong, the one thing that kinda gives it away a bit is that you dont warp in another 3 sentries at ~6:00ish as you would with the 3 gate expand. So if are able to kill off the scoutling once you move out of your base, its a big win, because the zerg player has to send a new one first, which takes some time, and he wont immidiately notice the low sentry count then.
I think if the zerg goes for blind spore crawlers you've pretty much just lost (ofc comebacks are always possible). On the other hand, if you just delay mining a bit and kill a queen or two and some drones, you're in a pretty comfortable position.
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I like this build a lot for team games. It's fairly safe and packs a good punch. Easy to transition out of as well.
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Weakness should be close position, IMO.
I've tried to do DT 3gate expand (not like the OP's though), after I managed to get 10drone kills the Zerg retaliated by doing Hydra/Ling 2base all-in using Overlords for creep highway + Seers, You spend too much gas on DT tech, so all you have is DT/Zealot/Sentry/Cannon vs Hydra/Ling/Seer as you try tech to Colossus which is always late
I think this build is quite strong, the one thing that kinda gives it away a bit is that you dont warp in another 3 sentries at ~6:00ish as you would with the 3 gate expand.
I think you get destroyed too hard by counter attacks if you skip 3 sentries. They usually get around enough for 6 forcefields for an immediate counter + half way to another 3, which, IMO, you need to survive/delay. My Variant uses an extra two sentries with gas before gateway
Oh, and a gas steal will just ruin your day.
You get gas too quick to be gas stealed in his build..
My advice: Try gas before gateway if you are going for a 14gate, at that point you aren't going to be able to defend a 6/10pool any better, and you get some extra gas for Sentries (which are lighter on minerals too). The drone in your base usually delays your twilight from dropping anyway, so it shouldn't effect the timing of your DT's
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Ethereal this build looks absolutely awesome, I loved the replay and I love DT's. I'm not a high level player but I really lookg forward to trying this, thanks for much for the effort you put into the OP!
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I've been doing some variation of this for quite some time now, and I've also been doing fast DTs off fast expansions where those are "viable" and even though you could get blind countered or scouted, you gain so much mapcontrol that I think it's Alot easier to get a early third up and transition to blink stalker -> HTs providing you with a really mobile army and strong defense (storm+cannons).
I'm just not the biggest fan of robo play though, but I'm sure it's quite strong vs heavy roach play. Thanks for the writeup, I'm gonna delve into it abit more later <3
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