[G] PvZ Zealot Dance Party Build

This build is something I came up with after doing a lot of thinking about the current PvZ metagame of FFE vs gasless 3rd into 12-minute roach-ling max. While watching the MLG Winter Arena, I saw HuK do a very strange 9-gate attack vs Liquid’Ret, in the 3rd game of their series. You can view this game, if you are so inclined, here:

http://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/videos/82742-winter-arena-wr3-huk-vs-ret-g3

Anyways, the crux of HuK’s strategy with this 9-gate attack was warping in TONS of zealots everywhere and preventing the roaches from ever hitting a critical mass. At first I was expecting such a simple strategy to fall flat on its face – roach ling usually is pretty cost-effective at dealing with gateway all-ins, right? To my surprise, however, Ret got overrun as HuK warped in zealots everywhere – the standard gas + roach warren timings for Zerg didn’t seem adequate at defending such insane, multi-pronged aggression. Important to note also is that HuK focused on hitting hard and fast – he used his first warp-ins to take down as many queens + drones mining gas as possible. This subtle move wound up crippling Ret’s production, and Ret was left producing very small clumps of roaches + lings that were quickly overrun. As his roach numbers dwindled due to lacking gas and larva for continuous production, HuK’s zealot numbers continued growing and growing. A minute or two later, Ret was only able to afford small clumps of lings at a time and shortly afterwards was forced to GG out when those got cleaned up by the zealots with ease.

Anyways, one thing I noticed at the time was that HuK’s resource allocation didn’t seem entirely optimal for this attack – specifically, he mined more gas than he was able to spend. 9 gates and an early probe production cut means that you’re essentially all-in – so why even bother mining gas at all? What if we took the core idea of this build but boiled it down to its most basic element and focused on hitting hard, hitting fast, and hitting efficiently in order to punish the current metagame of Zerg players taking a gasless 3rd hatch in response to an FFE?

The resulting build I came up with consists of mining only 200 gas (100 for the +1 attack upgrade, 50 for warp tech, and 50 for a stalker), hits before the 8 minute mark, and has around an 80%-90% winrate vs GM and professional players on the NA ladder (I know it’s a cliché to include winrates in such a guide, but I wanted to emphasize that the build is rather successful versus relatively skilled players), even GM’s who I had already done the build to.

The infrastructure for this guide is very simple – you’ll be FFe’ing into a very strong all-in, producing off of 10 gates starting between the 7:40-8:00 mark (depending on how well the build is being executed – even I get a decent amount of variance in my games, the biggest factors for how fast the build hits are how quickly you get your gateways down and how many times you chronoboost warp tech once you are done making probes and chronoboosting your stalker out). You’ll be warping in zealots exclusively of course. As with my last build, saturation is very important – you need to be sure you wind up with 16 probes per mineral field at each of your bases. I recommend hitting 16 probes in your main base before rallying your main nexus to your natural expansion – this has always seemed to provide the smoothest income and most natural way to manage your economy to me.If saturation is a relatively new concept to you, please feel free to check out the paragraphs on saturation in the “Infrastructure” section of my previous guide:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=325014

Like most PvZ builds, we start off with a standard forge fast expansion (FFE). There’s a few stylistic differences in how people FFE, so don’t feel like you have to use my version of the build – it’s just the version I’m most comfortable with / think is best right now.

9 pylon (@ low-ground) – Scout with the probe that builds this pylon.

13/14 forge (chronoboost probes twice, then build forge) – If it’s a 4-player map AND your first scout hasn’t figured out where the Zerg lives, you need to scout with this probe also in case he’s 6 or 7 pooling.

@25 Nexus Energy: Chronoboost probes again (this will be your 3rd chronoboost on probes)

17 Nexus (you should’ve scouted the Zerg, if he’s early pooling [anything faster than an 11 pool] you might need to either drop a pylon + cannon in your main mineral line or rush to complete the wall before building the nexus, thus abandoning this build. Additionally, if he is taking a gas, I probably wouldn’t recommend this build – the goal of this build is to punish gasless Zerg, so it wouldn’t make sense to do this build in that scenario)

17 Cannon

17 Gateway

17 Pylon (Note: the cannon + gateway + pylon should either complete your sim city and leave you with a 1-hex hole that can be plugged by a probe or zealot, or on maps with wide-ramps like Antiga set you up to complete your sim city when you add the cyber core)

*Build a probe*

18 2x Assimilator (I like to build these with the probe that made the 17 pylon, and then use my scouting probe to plug the wall when he gets home)

*Pylon finishes, your supply should be 18/26 now*

Chronoboost probes (constant chronoboost, constant probe production!), put workers on gas when the assimilators finish, etc

*Nexus finishes, Gateway finishes*

Build your cyber core

@100 gas – Start +1 ground attack upgrade at forge

@~70 gas. It’s time to start pulling probes off gas – the easiest way to do this is just bounce between geyseys, select 1-2 probes at a time, and move command them to the side of your nexus away from your mineral field. Once you have all 6 out, make them deposit any gas they’re still holding and transfer them to your natural expansion – you should have 16 probes in your main mineral line already.

Make sure to rally both nexus to your natural mineral fields, and make sure to count your probes so you stop at 16 probes per base (32 total).

@Cybernetics core completion: start warpgate research, and chronoboost out a stalker!
After starting the stalker, build a pylon someplace in your main – your supply should be approaching 36/36 (you want to have 32 probes mining, 16 per base, your stalker, and one or two probes to build proxies with – it’s ok to be off on your saturation with an extra probe or two, just make sure you aren’t undersaturated), this pylon is not to build supply but for making a gateway flower, so make sure you build it someplace where the entire pylon radius can be utilized.



Pictured: Gateway flower (also, one hell of an Artosis pylon)

This is the part where the build gets a little bit tricky – your stalker pops out, you need to send it on the map to do two things – first, scare off Zerglings from the watchtower and clear a path for your probe and second, confirm that the Zerg is not doing a roach-ling all-in. If your stalker scouts roach-ling all-in, just drop a ton of cannons, make a tight wall-off, and with a little bit of crisis control and microing your macro, you should be able to hold. I would probably resume gas mining as soon as I saw no 3rd and no creep spread (creep spread = he is using his queen energy on things besides inject, or built an extra queen probably not an all-in coming your way in either of those cases) and just play a macro game or go for a more standard 2-base timing to follow-up a failed roach-ling.

While that’s going on and you’re taking map control with your stalker, you want to be adding gateways like a mad man – you’re going up to 10 gateways total, and usually I build the extra 9 gateways all around that one pylon (it’s optional to spread the gates around, but since both of your first two pylons are on the low-ground by your wall, there’s not always a ton of space there. If you do split the gates and have space, I’d probably build 3 in the main and the rest on the low-ground). It’s very important to add gateways ASAP when you have the money – this is one of the biggest factors towards hitting on time, and can be the difference between awkwardly sitting at a proxy pylon waiting for gates to finish or having 10 zealots warping in as the Zerg’s brain explodes.

You’re going to want to build 2-5 proxy pylons, depending on the map, and how many different angles of attack are available to you. Generally, I find 3 to be totally sufficient on most maps (TDA is a bit of a special case, you might want to build 4 on TDA, 2 by the Zerg’s third and 2 by his natural). With these pylons, you want to spread them out far enough that you can warp zealots close to his natural, close to his 3rd, and in between the two. Here’s a sample pylon set-up on Shakuras Plateau:


Pictured: Top pylon close to his natural, middle pylon between his 3rd and nat…


Pictured: …and bottom pylon very close to his 3rd.

Your warp tech should be 80-90% done as you start planting down the proxy pylons – as soon as warp tech finishes, morph your gates and start warping in zealots. I recommend splitting your first group of zealots about 50-50 (4-5 to his nat, 5-6 to his 3rd). If he has roaches and spines already in place at one base, pull those zealots back and send them to the other base to force the roaches away from that spine. You can send a new hit squad of zealots to the old, previously well-defended base with your next warp cycle.

Keep your zealots spread out with each subsequent warp cycle until you either kill all the drones + queens + static defense at a base – then, you can just leave a few zealots there to clean up any spawning units from that hatch and bring the rest to the next target. This build is the PvZ equivalent of a groin punch – you’re making stupid amounts of zealots, and putting them everywhere the Zerg does not want them to be. Make sure your zealots don’t get kited endless by a pack of roaches – let’s say we have 12 zealots chasing 8 roaches in a circle. That’s no good – they’ll die inefficiently and we’re not putting the maximum amount of pressure on the Zerg that we could. Instead, move command 4 of those zealots to the nearest mineral line. Then, the Zerg has to keep microing his roaches while also keeping his drones alive against the zealots. 4 zealots work through a field of drones incredibly fast, and even if he is forced to transfer, your work is done – he’s not mining from that field and is losing a lot of income. Also, try and focus down any drones mining gas with harassing zealots – if you can force the Zerg to not make roaches because he has no gas, you’ve already won the game.

Lastly, remember, this is an all-in: don’t make probes back home, do use extra chronoboost on your warp-gates between cycles, and don’t expect to transition out of this build if it fails. Even if you kill his 3rd hatch, if he can defend his natural and main while keeping 40~ drones or more, he’s way, way ahead of you. In order to even consider transitioning, you’d have to kill two of his mining bases and probably 30-40 drones. If at that point he somehow gets enough roaches to stabilize, just go home, drop a few cannons, resume gas mining + probe production, and go for a any standard 2-base all-in as a follow-up timing attack. He should be far enough behind from losing so many workers and hatches that he won’t be able to hold it.

Good luck and have fun!

Queen sniping: Queens are the most important units to kill early on, without inject larva, Zerg’s production becomes laughably stunted. Snipe them whenever you get the chance, but don’t ever lose excessive zealots trying to chase down a Queen. Zealots are better used chasing roaches than Queens because then the Zerg has to constantly stutter-step in order to keep the roaches alive, rather than queuing up move commands for the Queen.


Pictured: The importance of sniping Queens

Tricking the Zerg: At higher levels, tricking the Zerg can be more important than just cleanly executing the build. I try to always be aware of where overlords could be coming from, scout for their positions around the corners of my base with a probe, and if necessary, use the stalker to deny scouting. Additionally, if an overlord is on a flight path towards your main once you’ve pulled off gas, you can temporarily resume mining gas in order to prevent him from seeing that you weren’t mining gas. A truly gosu Zerg will count on the assimilator and see how much gas you’ve mined, but I don’t think 99.999% of the players on NA ladder, even at the highest level, have that kind of awareness and intelligence. Don’t worry about stuff like this until you can execute the build decently well, are comfortable with the timings and ideas behind it, and have a good feel for the Zealot micro involved.

vs vVvToXSiK (Top masters): http://drop.sc/143526

vs wzp (GM): http://drop.sc/157169

vs LaGTTPhierz (Former GM): http://drop.sc/157170

vs NMxhendralsk (GM): http://drop.sc/157171

vs xLsOdiN (GM – he does a hatch-block forcing a slightly non-standard opening out of me, but it transitions fine into the normal all-in, we played twice in a row and I did this build both times and won both times – even though he built 4 spinecrawlers and units pre-emptively this game without taking a 3rd): http://drop.sc/157173

vs LiquidTLO: http://drop.sc/157175:

vs ClashZaiZai (GM, one of the few players who held it off – he scouted me not mining gas and reacted by building lots of spines, I think I could have broke him if I executed and micro’d better; I lost many zealots for free unfortunately): http://drop.sc/157176

This build is still very young and has plenty of potential for being refined. As a full-time college student, I don't have as much time as I'd like to test things out rigorously, so here's a few things I've been considering and I invite anyone interested to test these out and share their experiences in this thread:

-Instead of taking 2 assimilators, just take 1! This might be a more logical thing to do, given how little gas we're mining. Downside is it's slightly less subtle than building both assimilators and pulling probes off of them.

-In line with the above, try taking only 1-gas but don't pull probes off of it - would the potential of a sentry or stalker with your warp cycles be worth the investment? What would be more useful, an early sentry for guardian shield later or warping in a few stalkers with your first warp cycle and microing them throughout the battle?

-Is 10 gates even the optimal number? I've had games where I used 12 gates and it still worked beautifully. I genuinely have no clue what the best number is, maybe 12 is even better because it would make your first two warp-ins exceptionally strong - however, the obvious drawback is you'll run out of steam faster and you are investing in even more production that you won't be able to sustain for very long?

-That's all I have for now, but if you guys come up with any questions or points you'd like me to include, I'd be happy to add it up here! Just send me a PM and I'll update this post.

I’m RemarK.406 on the NA server, a top masters Protoss who comes from a FPS background (Halo specifically) with no RTS experience prior to SC2. Feel free to message me on TL (soLremarK), reddit (mmkramer), or battle.net with any feedback or thoughts about my guides. I also stream tournament and ladder games at http://www.twitch.tv/tsremark , often with commentary as well. Lastly, I have also just today released a replay pack consisting of ~170 ladder and tournament games versus GM players, professionals, and other top masters players (there’s also a sub-folder containing 15 of the best games). You can grab the replay pack here:

http://drop.sc/packs/829

Thank you for reading and I hope this guide was helpful!