I thought I played fairly well this game, but I just ended up behind. I went for a 1 gate nexus into 3 gates and a robo, then to colossi to hold the 10/11 minute medivac push. Could anyone take a look at this game and critique me? I wish I could pick out a specific thing that was wrong to help, but I'm having trouble with it. I suppose my engagements weren't ideal. I don't know, But I got stomped.
Do I need to tech sooner? Later? Go storm instead of colossus? Poke? I just don't know how to improve my PvT.
Last edit: 2012-06-30 10:41:46
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Kommatiazo United States. June 30 2012 11:22. Posts 352
I'm a little below your level but also a P player, but I can help a bit I guess. The thing that keeps me afloat in this kind of PvT is early pressure (7:00ish) before stim/conc shell/medivacs when the T fast expands. Then just enough scouting to see when stuff is going down and counter. I can't give that great of advice like I said, but I can point you to the place where I learned the openings I use and the mindset I go into PvT's with: http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-468-p1-huk-and-sase-fantastic-pvt-openings-6162409
Game specific things that I noticed(i'm not sure how common these things are in your whole PvT experience): You kept your ob in pretty good position, but he ended up getting ahead of you in bases pretty easily. If you're like me and don't have the APM to use army pokes/ob movement to check around enough, I just build 3+ obs and try to see everything I can. My the time you took your third he had 8-9 more scvs than you had probes, you should be way ahead of him with chronos and such. And your engagements weren't THAT bad IMO, you had useful (not perfect, but passable) forcefields, but you let your stalkers die (or maybe he was really good at taking them out :\, either way) without hurting his viking numbers so your colossus were helpless when you reinforced zealot-heavy. Some of those trades near your 3rd could have gone your way if you went stalker-heavy I think. Once your colossus numbers are depleted and his viking numbers are too high and unchecked, plus being behind in income (he had taken a fourth by this time), you're pretty much up shit creek without a paddle. Your templar switch was solid, but maybe that extra gas investment in the templar tech was what made you stray away from stalkers(?). Then from taking so many heavy hits, your army was a ragtag group of tech units + zealots, so you didn't have high colossus numbers or lots of templars and no real gateway unit count save for one or two warp ins worth.
Despite all that, I would guess that some more confidence/execution early game will help you stay even/get an advantage which in turn will fix most of what was going wrong for you in that game because you look like you would have been doing fine had you been on slightly more even footing and likely walking away with it with an advantage over the T.
Thanks, I'll watch that daily. Never hurts to watch a daily =]
I agree with the stalker count. I'm always so scared to produce stalkers because they are such crap in a straight up fight, but I know how important they are for taking out vikings. I'll try to mix in a few more and see if I can do some pressure, too. I think I just need to play some more PvT.
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Mesha Bosnia-Herzegovina. June 30 2012 13:22. Posts 434
I have a right to be completely wrong and you have every right not to listen my advices. ^_^
You scouted an early expo by terran. This is almost certain gassless expand. Right response is ASAP nexus and chrono on probes. Some wouldn't mine gas, some would cancel zealot if there is no scv, some would wait to start warp gate research, anything for little extra minerals to throw down nexus. But your nexus timing was also fine. After all this stalker/zealot poke to see what else is new... I don't like your small probe cuts so early in the game. That's a no no. You should be constantly making probes and the 2 gates thrown down when minerals allow. Between this you make units from your one gate. What you produce depends what you saw and where you want to go. You saw gasless. That means marines. It's good to make stalkers from your gate for opening you scouted. You lost the poking stalker. Selfexplanatory. Terran has worker lead. This is what counts the most when the level of play go up. The most. You want to avoid that. Constant probes and chrono greed when you can. You going collosus is legit strat. Good thing with colosus is that it forces vikings and then you can transition to storm/archon/chargelot, or mix both. Whenever you can, your goal is to have collosus and storm. You are inactive with your observer. He just stands there. You should always check the front of natural to see army composition. Then chech main for buildings and stuff. And then if its allready 10+ min third. When he killed your obs you could have seen vikings starting production. That means - watch your collosus, position them well. Think allready about transition to templar/chargelot. I like you are anticipating the drops. That's something every toss should know and take care PvT. It's powerfull terran trait. But if you shut it down, they lose so much from their arsenal. 5 gate in 12-13 minutes is too small number. Also 4th gas should be running. Fight at 14. Protoss likes to go to a fight even if it shouldn't. Your micro back and forth is costing you DPS. Guardian on sentries should be on. Wait charge! if its already researching. Try to think this way - if you allready have balls to go and fight terran - that means you have decent army and probably could secure your third. Fight at 16 30. Perfect for you. But unfortenatelly it wasn't enough. If you check the supply you see major difference . His macro was simply better. From now on its pretty much waiting for his macro to overwhelm you. Shakuras is also known by its imposible third base securing . You want to incorporate that in your strategy.
Basically your PvT isn't that bad. You need more active scouting. You shouldn't push the fight if you aren't 100% positive it will be better for you.
Your questions: Do I need to tech sooner? Later? It all depends on the game. Player's dream is to have all the tech as soon as possible. But sometimes you have to wait because you can't afford it and have other concerns at that moment. In this game i would say you teched to collosi ok and then went for storm and charge and all that jazz. I would say mistake was not to concentrate on macro and securing the third but you went on the attack altough the terran is the one that needs to do damage at that point not protoss. At least thats what they say, .
Go storm instead of colossus? You need both. Sometimes its harder to first get storm. But in some ideal universe you could get first storm if he is heavy on marines and he is willing to donate.
Poke? Allways poke. At any stage of the game. You just want to avoid your nose cut off in the process.
I just don't know how to improve my PvT. I would say that you don't need to feel bad about your PvT at all. I think you understand the basic matchup. Now try all this with 1.more active scouting, 2.constant!!! probes - even if it kills you sometimes and your money spent on time 3.premtively think about adding gates, taking 3rd etc... 4. When fighting - try to have best possible arc and position for your army.
Improve anything from what i mention in your PvT and you'll deal with this game that you provided and lost.
Good luck! p.s. sorry about weird formating, i copy/paste from notepad.
Great post! It's pretty much just what I need--a list of things to improve on. Yeah, I am too reluctant to spend money on probes sometimes, I'll definitely try to cut them less and be a bit more greedy--within reason. And a less active observer is certainly one of my flaws I need to improve. I'm glad my tech choice/timing is okay, that's the hardest thing for me to assimilate into are new timings. How do you feel about the rule, "only expand when you see terran expand"? Specifically for getting your third.
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Mesha Bosnia-Herzegovina. June 30 2012 14:20. Posts 434
On June 30 2012 13:45 Wyrd wrote: How do you feel about the rule, "only expand when you see terran expand"? Specifically for getting your third.
It shouldn't be rule written in stone but that's the scenario that will happen most of the times. It's very hard for protoss to just build economy and take third without taking care of your army/composition/tech or taking a look what's coming your way. If terran is passive, turtling or taking insane early third toss should also go for it IMO. In most of my games - when i saturate 2 bases ASAP (^_^) - there will be a slight pause to actually see if you can go for third because sometimes terran can have a lot of shit so its not really smart to take the third you simply won't be able to defend for whatever reasons.
Reality hits you hard bro.
ThaReckoning United States. June 30 2012 17:10. Posts 189
Watching your replay, I'm starting to question whether or not you have a plan, which is the centerpiece of understanding a matchup. You always want to be in control of what happens during the course of a match, and play the game according to a style that suits you. Your play feels meandering, and random. I would suggest learning a style like double forge, or parting's style, etc. I choose to mix and match several styles together into something that I understand and works well for me. Some things I noticed:
Your 4th assimilator is excruciatingly late, you need that early in the game (pre 8 minutes, hopefully).
Your upgrades are behind the terrans, and your ~14 minute attack plays right into a 2 upgrade lead for him. You never want to attack a terran with an upgrade deficit, or without charge in the late game.
You never have vision of the terran's third, or knowledge that he has one. You always need to know a terran's base count, to determine what you are able to get away with.
Your first observer never scouts his base, you just park it as a lookout.
Mix in immortals.
Ultimately, the main thing I want you to focus on, is making a plan for PvT, and sticking to it. You commit to early colossi, neglecting scouting and upgrades, but play passively. You can't do that and get away with it, as you saw.
The way I play macro PvT works like this:
I open with the build in the daily Kommatiazo linked to you, and scout with that pressure before 7 minutes. If it's a bio build, depending on what structures he has in his base, I transition to the double forge creatorprime style outlined here:
Diamond Terran player here, I really think you need to scout more. You don't see the third for a long, long long time and he has it established for much longer and as a result, overruns your army simply with more units and better upgrades. You also should really try to keep up on upgrades, once Marines get an upgrade advantage, the DPS they get is simply insane.
Can't really say anything specific for Protoss side, but I feel like you really need to work on getting your upgrades on par, and have to at least expand when he does, or risk falling severely behind.
Just leave a zealot at the third. You'll know when he wants to expand, and you'll probably get the SCV too.
On June 30 2012 17:10 ThaReckoning wrote: Watching your replay, I'm starting to question whether or not you have a plan, which is the centerpiece of understanding a matchup. You always want to be in control of what happens during the course of a match, and play the game according to a style that suits you. Your play feels meandering, and random. I would suggest learning a style like double forge, or parting's style, etc. I choose to mix and match several styles together into something that I understand and works well for me. Some things I noticed:
Your 4th assimilator is excruciatingly late, you need that early in the game (pre 8 minutes, hopefully).
Your upgrades are behind the terrans, and your ~14 minute attack plays right into a 2 upgrade lead for him. You never want to attack a terran with an upgrade deficit, or without charge in the late game.
You never have vision of the terran's third, or knowledge that he has one. You always need to know a terran's base count, to determine what you are able to get away with.
Your first observer never scouts his base, you just park it as a lookout.
Mix in immortals.
Ultimately, the main thing I want you to focus on, is making a plan for PvT, and sticking to it. You commit to early colossi, neglecting scouting and upgrades, but play passively. You can't do that and get away with it, as you saw.
The way I play macro PvT works like this:
I open with the build in the daily Kommatiazo linked to you, and scout with that pressure before 7 minutes. If it's a bio build, depending on what structures he has in his base, I transition to the double forge creatorprime style outlined here:
This gets me into the late game, where I play very reactively, and usually win.
TL;DR make a plan, get a build, and stick to it. Focus on emphasizing scouting.
Are you talking about opening with SaSe's 3-gate pressure build, and then moving into the creator style? Because I like the sound of that, and if I can use it enough to smooth out the edges I am sure I could get it to transition fluidly. In fact, I want to go try it right now.
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ThaReckoning United States. July 02 2012 14:10. Posts 189
On June 30 2012 17:10 ThaReckoning wrote: Watching your replay, I'm starting to question whether or not you have a plan, which is the centerpiece of understanding a matchup. You always want to be in control of what happens during the course of a match, and play the game according to a style that suits you. Your play feels meandering, and random. I would suggest learning a style like double forge, or parting's style, etc. I choose to mix and match several styles together into something that I understand and works well for me. Some things I noticed:
Your 4th assimilator is excruciatingly late, you need that early in the game (pre 8 minutes, hopefully).
Your upgrades are behind the terrans, and your ~14 minute attack plays right into a 2 upgrade lead for him. You never want to attack a terran with an upgrade deficit, or without charge in the late game.
You never have vision of the terran's third, or knowledge that he has one. You always need to know a terran's base count, to determine what you are able to get away with.
Your first observer never scouts his base, you just park it as a lookout.
Mix in immortals.
Ultimately, the main thing I want you to focus on, is making a plan for PvT, and sticking to it. You commit to early colossi, neglecting scouting and upgrades, but play passively. You can't do that and get away with it, as you saw.
The way I play macro PvT works like this:
I open with the build in the daily Kommatiazo linked to you, and scout with that pressure before 7 minutes. If it's a bio build, depending on what structures he has in his base, I transition to the double forge creatorprime style outlined here:
This gets me into the late game, where I play very reactively, and usually win.
TL;DR make a plan, get a build, and stick to it. Focus on emphasizing scouting.
Are you talking about opening with SaSe's 3-gate pressure build, and then moving into the creator style? Because I like the sound of that, and if I can use it enough to smooth out the edges I am sure I could get it to transition fluidly. In fact, I want to go try it right now.
Yeah, that's usually how I play out most of my PvT unless they cheese or go mech, etc.
If you want to make one goal, to win, you must lose.
Tombomb United States. July 03 2012 01:49. Posts 52
Watching your replay, you don't do anything wrong, per say. Like others state above, you seem to be a little lost as to your game plan. In the replay when the 10/11 medivac stim push didn't hit you, you seemed a little flustered as to what your next step was supposed to be. Ways to solve this problem have been mentioned already, I.e. be more active with your scouting (observers, probes, proxies etc.), and consider experimenting with early pressure builds.
I'd add/emphasize a few things myself (my opinionated, un-objective, personal advice). 1) Dude, make a lot of probes. If you aren't comfortable spending a ton of chronos on your probes, thats fine, but try just having at least one in each nexus production queue constantly. Having a strong economic base will allow you to transition more fluidly between styles as the game progresses, and to better deal with unexpected game flow (i.e. if he doesn't attack when you expect him to). 2) Try something different! Spend some time focusing on learning a new style, or a new take on your current style, rather than on fixing your current style. It can only help your game play. Take a hard look at Creator's style. Go through Monk's recent guide (which is incredibly well done) meticulously, focusing on the finer points/nuances of the build [ThaReckoning linked you to the guide].
Also, try a non-colossi centric approach for something completely different. Have you seen White-Ra's go-to (at least in the last couple games I've watched) style vs terran? Check out the vids linked below if not. He essentially goes 1 gate FE-->3gate robo [uses this for observers] to defend early 3 rax pressure-->a forge and a twilight council for +1 armor and charge-->6-8 gateways-->templar archives ~9-10 minutes for archons/storm (using feedback before morphing the templar in some cases). I like it, I've included a replay of myself (mere mortal) using it. It holds off the stim/medivac push well, deals with drops just fine (lots of gates+access to feedback) and its a pretty flexible build.
Just my advice, usually when I'm having issues with a matchup/have a baffling loss it helps to take a step back and learn some new approach. Critiquing yourself heavily can be helpful too, and is great for addressing pointed weaknesses in your play, but learning a new build/style can't hurt. Often focusing on proficiently executing a build you are unfamiliar with can drive home/make habit improvements in effective APM/mechanics, as well as broaden your understanding of the game.
Perhaps go for the White-Ra esq. style of play in your next few Pvts, than come back to your 3-gate colossus build with a fesh perspective.
Hope this helps, good luck!
Replays/vods:
2 of White-Ra http://drop.sc/212765 1 of me (I get my robo pretty late [after gateways], this was a mistake. Its better, and safer, to get an earlier robo for earlier observers)
Last edit: 2012-07-03 03:56:49
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