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I played Air only on ladder for quite some time and I would guess that my PvZ is at 90% with it. I am just diamond, but hopefully you won't disregard this strategy too quickly.
Currently a lot of protoss players have problems with with a lategame Zerg, that techs to Broodlord/Infestor/spines. When going mass air this is not a problem at all.
The typical look of a game
The opening is a very delicate time. I usually build only one zealot adn completely skip warpgate tech and go for air upgrades instead. Thus it may be hard but not impossible to defend early attacks just with this zealot and building placement. Afterwards I build one Voidray and a phoenix and send them to the Third. Then I harass a bit, kill one or two queens and overlords and force 1-2 spores at each of his bases. Meanwhile I build a mothership and start building carriers and take my third. I build 5 cannons in its mineral line to deny zergling attacks (probe hold pos). You can sopport 5 stargate voidrays on 3 bases. Around the 23 minute mark (Depending how agressive your opponent was you then can attack with a 3/3/3 upgraded toss Air army. But let us now look at things more specifically,
The opening
It starts with a forge-fast expand. The probe that places your first pylon should be send out to scout his pool timing and his expansions. So we get several cases:
6-7 pool: place a forge at the front, a plyon behind your mineral line and sacrifice the forge. This is basically how you have to play vs a 6- pool with forge Fe.
8-10 pool: Of course we have to go forge first. Now I would try to build the cannon in the front and stop worker production to get up your wall, Depending on the map, and your building placement, there you might have to pull probes to prevent him from entering your base.
Standard pool:[13-14]: Then i usually go nexus first. Go block his natural a bit with your probe. Don't loose that probe. I usually pull it away when its shields are down and scout again his main base. Look how many larvae he has when his pool a finishes and whether he took gas. If he has 3 larvae and he makes all of them at the moment when his pool finishes, it usually means that he will harass you a bit with lings. Sacrifice economony to complete your wall. You really should scout whether he places his natural and his third.
At home your basic buildings will be Nexus forge, gateway, 3 Assimilators, Cybernetics Core and a Stargate. Against some early attacks it can be helpful to have a pylon on top of your ramp, so tht you can save the probes and build an emergency wall in up with 1-2 cannons behind it(usually such early attacks mean that he canceled his third; even if you loose some economy you are still OK, sometimes even loosing the natural is not a big problem).. When the cybernetics core finishes I go for a stargate and 1-1 air upgrades cronoboosted, a voidray and a phoenix. and send them to his potential third. If your probescout him taking a gas you should send it over the way which a protential roach/ling attack would take, so that it can immediately turn around.
The Mid-game:
At home you should now I build my Fleet Beacon, a second stargate and 4-5 pylons. You should have 1-1 air upgrades as soon as the Fleet beacon finishes so that you can continue upgrading air attacks, your money is already quie high now, you can build a mothership(Chronobosst) and two carriers. A short time before it finishes, I take my third. I would place my rmy now on a cliff between the natural and the Third. At that time several things can happen:
Speedlings arrive: Cancel your third and really place it only when your mothership finishes.
A big roach attack : Due to your early void ray harass, it will usually never happen as early as usual; if it happens at the 13 minute mark it is still early. All your buildings are cloaked. Thus he either can immediately turn around, or he has to bring some Overseers with him. Depending on the number of overseers you can either snipe them, or just fight the roaches. One overseer means 2 less roaches, so if he has around 5 of them, his attack is already much smaller.
Hydras arrive: Carriers are really good against Hydras. It might look a bit scary, but just try to fosu some hydras down, if he starts focusing a Carrier pull tat one back, and if it might look as if he could snipe one of your Carriers you can use Vortex. this gives your shield time to regenerate and your Carriers time to replace lost interceptors. 2-1 Carriers are stronger than one might think.
If your third finishes place 5 cannons in the mineral line, add starports until you have 5 of them.
Mutalisks arrive. 3 cloaked carriers can easily take out 20 mutalisks. If it looks as if you mothership might go down just use a vortex. try to add cannons in all of your mineral lines and add the phoenix range. If he keeps going mutalisks, you can build some phoenixes, though it is most of the time not neccessary. he pretty much ran into a hard-counter.
Build up to 5 Carriers and then transisition into mass voidrays. For some time I always wanted to scout whether he goes for infestor/hydra/corruptor and adjust my composition correspondingly. However at some pouint I realized that 5 Carriers are the rioght number no matter what he does.
Usually at that times zergs will go for mass corruptors. Indeed Void-Rays are increbilily cost efficient versus corruptors, specially if they have better upgrades. But this indeed means that his ground army is weaker and that you can take more expansions. Just add 5 cannons to each mineral line and they are completely safe. Furthermore this means that he simply cannot counterattack, if you attack, because almost of his supply is in corruptors and drones.
Some timings/ a buildorder
9 Pylon 0:51, 15 Nexus 2:34, 16 Forge 2:59, 17 Pylon 3:14 , 18 Gateway 3:34, 19 Cannon 3:56, 20 Assimilator 4:11,22 Assimilator 4:27, 22 Assimilator 4:32, 22 Cybernetics Core 4:45, 28, 5:40 Stargate, 31 Air Weapons1(CB) 5:55 31 Pylon 5:55, 36: Void Ray(CB) 6:42, 39 Assimilator+Cannon 6:49, 40 6:59 Pylon, 45 Phoenix 7:24, 48 Fleet Beacon+Stargate+3 Pylons 7:45, 52 Air Armor (CB) 8:25, 62 Mothership (CB) 8:48, 64 Carrier 9:16, 72 9:51 Carrier 81 Air Weapons2(CB) 10:32, Nexus+ 2Pylons 10:43, 11:07 Carrier, 5 Cannons@3rd 11:45
12 Min: 61 Probes, 1 Void, 1 Phoenix, 1 Mothership, 2 Carrier, 7 Cannons
The attack/The late game:
The basic idea is now to attack and win the game. But of course, Life is not that simple. I either fly my army to his main and kill his tech, so that I do not have face his bank. If the zerg lets this happen, it is basically over. Thus he has to fight earlier with his whole army. I am basically only afraid of a combinations of mass spores (around 30) Infestors and corruptors. His basic goal is to get increbily fungals. This can be quite hard If you do not see where my army is.
The best situation for him is when my carriers are clumped up and all the Interceptors move out at the same time and he catches all of them. But I never played against a zerg who could do that. Otherwise you should use your carriers to focus the infestors before they can throw of fungals. they still have a longer range. Sadly at my level most zergs just run infestors in and loose all of them.
When corruptors come you should move your carriers back a little bit and put the voidrays in front and just fight. You might use vortex on half of his army. Then he has to pull back and you get some bonus damage. If you know that he has now fungals left, and he moves all of his corruptors in the vortex, you can just move your void rays in, too. After such final engagementy you might be down to 160 supply at most. Those 40 supply can easily be replenished quickly and he should run out of money much faster than you do. If you are over some (former) hatchery after such a fight and see a lot of eggs morphing, it might be worth to wait there. It might like 20 corruptors that you could pick up before they unite with those coming from the other hatcheries.
What beats this:
The early defense is really thin, a missed nydus worm on the minimap is pretty much game over. If the zerg plays really agressively wwith lings and than immediately builds 30 corruptors very early and he manages to catch yur air army when it is now over a bunch of cannons, you might have hard times. Continuously baneling busting your expansions can decrease you gas income so much, that you never reach your armysize. If the zerg goes really early for double spire and mass upgrades, you might have hard times. But I basically think zerg cannot skip hydras after seeing 2 stargates.
Meta-game considerations:
So the goal uis to get a very gas heavy army with 9 upgrades. So your basic goal is to trade minerals for gas and kill of as much gas as possible. Cannons are a great late game unit since they do not cost supply. Void rays fight better versus corruptors the larger the numbers are, since they can change the target so quickly, i.e. it might happen that 20 corruptors shoot at the same void ray, although only 10 shots are needed to kill it. Furthermor it is much harder to use corruption effectively in large numbers.
Replay or it never happened
I uploaded some replays to my Drop.sc account. Since they all got renamed, here a short list of the content:
vs early pool vs Baneling bust Loss loss2 vs early hydra attack (I played awfully, didnt place the stargate in time etc)
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Problem in late game is that zerg will trade rounds of corruptor and infestor very cost efficently, you need Ht and archontes.
User was warned for this post
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Hydras arrive: Carriers are really good against Hydras. It might look a bit scary, but just try to fosu some hydras down, if he starts focusing a Carrier pull tat one back, and if it might look as if he could snipe one of your Carriers you can use Vortex. this gives your shield time to regenerate and your Carriers time to replace lost interceptors. 2-1 Carriers are stronger than one might think.
Carriers are not good vs hydras. You just hold position and kill the interceptors. 25 minerals per interceptor.
Mutalisks arrive. 3 cloaked carriers can easily take out 20 mutalisks. If it looks as if you mothership might go down just use a vortex. try to add cannons in all of your mineral lines and add the phoenix range. If he keeps going mutalisks, you can build some phoenixes, though it is most of the time not neccessary. he pretty much ran into a hard-counter.
there is no point in trying to fight toss head on with mutas. Zerg should poke around see if he can do damage and expand.
Zerg can remax on corruptors after losing units. Fungals work on interceptors and void rays take full damage from fungals.
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I dont want to directly critice you but as master player that is also searching for new build ideas it is kinda annoying when diamond players post their builds in the strategy forum because you can´t take it serious or play it at your own MMR level. Furthermore this is more of an advice thread "What to do when this and this happens" but i as an Reader dont really know any timing on "when to build stuff?" Maybe you could post some bo or execution part ?!
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This feels much more like a blog than a guide.
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I am sorry but this works for the same reason 2gate zealot often won me games when I was diamond, its cause the opponents don't know how to deal with it.
I play a sort of air style, but what I play is based on a good guide from TL, its called stalkerless and uses mostly Void Rays in combination with HT's, this is cause Carriers suck hard versus Corruptors, and Void Rays stand a chance versus them. A good opponent will simply overrun you with Corruptor ling roach and you will stand no chance in hell to survive unless you go heavy Void Rays, preferably with HT's as support.
Check this guide: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=300535 It might be old but its still valid in high masters.
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there can be 40 roaches at your door at the 11 minute mark even with your voidrays doing dmg and being on the map.
Also, hydras do pretty well against carriers.
You say carriers and a mothership beat mutas - but keep in mind u wont have the mothership out in time against a 2 base muta tech. Also, carriers are very, very slow. u cant prevent him from keeping u in your base without killing a shitton of eco - therefore, he is free to build tons of spine/spore on numerous bases.
It is a 1 time strategy to play. once ur opponent knows what u might do, he will simply build corruptors or at least have a spire up earlier then he normally would. u cant beat corrupters as air toss when they have the same amount of money spend into it.
Another thing: what about a baneling bust? even with a 3rd hatch going down (which u sometimes cant even scout), he can still stop droning and baneling bust u hard. u have like no sentry, not even a warpgate tech - u cant possibly hold it with voidrays and cannons only.
Last but not least, a 2 base queen/hydra nydus even kills u when the worm goes up outside of your base, u cant do anything vs it killing the wall and later on u, unless u somehow know about it / scout it and u build 3-4 cannons blindly (your wall will go down anyway, obviously).
so yeah, more of a "fun" strategy then a real competetive one. it might still work in some cases obviously, but its abusing the metagame hard and is very unsafe against many responses the zerg could do. I wouldnt recommend to skip the warpgate tech btw - the earlier upgrades is not worth it to be able to warp in sentrys when needed.
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Of course this argument, that my diamond opponents (and those master players I play against) are too bad to deal with this always applies.
unless you go heavy Void Rays Yes that is pretty much what I do after the first Carriers. so the difference is that the other guide wants storm to deal with early hydra attacks and I want to use carriers.
A good opponent will simply overrun you with Corruptor ling roach
I am not so sure about that. My whole army can attack that part of his army which actually attacks. Meanwhile the lings and roaches will attack an expansion and maybe take it out. There is no way how this can be cost efficient. It all depends on when his overrun starts and especially on how many void rays I have at that time.
Let me just say, that this is not a strategy that I played for two weeks or so, but rather 4-5 months. Yet these are the only two lossreplays that I have in this time (I think there was also one unscouted 6 pool on a 4 player map in November or so, where I did not save the replay). Again could all be my opponents faults,
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give the guy some credit, he did put effort into the guide.
I'm in diamond as well and I'd like to try this because I'm getting bored of immortal sentry all in at this level.
I'll probably try it out on ladder later today.
Thanks
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I see this post as a loose theorycrafted idea, with a very slim chance to work.
Me being a Terran player, I think of the Stargate opener for PvZ in the same style as a standard Hellion Banshee opening in TvZ. You are trying to kill the queens, make the creepspread recede, wither some roaches that are heading your base, abeit slowing down an all-in or roach pressure. It's a solid opening to set you up for a very good 2 or 3 base timing, but as much Stargate / Hellion Banshee openings you differentiate away from it after your initial few units. Terran can plant down two Engeneering Bays and swap around addons for a very good tank marine medivac follow-up. In my opinion, as demonstrated by MC and Rain, a stalker sentry colossi followup with good upgrades seem to break the Zerg before the third base has kicked in fully. All this while being on equal bases as the Zerg, who whoulda thunk?
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It's quite telling that nowhere in this guide mass corruptors are really mentioned....
Any rushed Mothership should be an immediate tell for a Zerg to double/triple expand, take all gasses and just max on Corruptors & start trading. The only way this works is when the Z doesn't really understand the build and lets the Protoss max on Carrier/VR, in which case obviously Protoss has a big advantage.
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Mana tried something similar against Snute recently. As soon as Snute figured out what was going on (pretty late), he just made ling roach corruptor and kept attacking till Mana died.
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Broodlords struck me as a boring unit to play against a long time ago, and as such I started opening sky toss every vZ since then. Fight fire with fire, right? I've only got 1 replay on hand since I just got a new computer.
http://drop.sc/291787
Much like protoss complaining about BL/infestor being unbeatable, I think Protoss can build the same composition with the same style of play. (mass static defense and turtley play). The hardest part is knowing when to build carriers or void rays, and always keeping templar with your army late game. Always keep your mothership and your army on opposite sides of the map as well, so you can 'be' 2 places at once despite your immobility.
Generally, when a zerg is building up after they see carriers, they'll mass corrupters, and as such you should be producing void rays, regardless of your carrier count. In the big engagement you will likely lose your void rays and not your carriers (if your micro is good), and after that engagement you should make a round of carriers, then resume void rays. The key is to build the carrier count slowly until you have around 12-15, at which point, with storm and upgrades, you're unbeatable with good micro.
The worst thing to deal with is a burrowed ling at your third before you can take it. A denied third means you will accumulate a shit ton of minerals and your army won't grow fast enough and the zerg can just trade before you hit >160 supply. Don't let that happen, and win.
Always funny to see zerg players' frustration vs a turtley style, considering the meta game. I'll find some more replays if anyone is interested.
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I ended the last season around 1k pts master NA, and I played this style every PvZ for all of last season and most of the season before it, with winrate around 65%. It's quite legit, and I've done it countless times to people that have played against me before. I NEVER play anything else.
I do my build a bit differently than the opening post. -Forge in base, don't have to sac vs early pool but wall takes longer to build -2 stargates as soon as cy core is done -5 phoenix to harass, rally first phoenix to zerg to be sure there's no early roach aggression which can outright kill you when you don't make any gateway units until the 20 minute mark ^^ -4-6 void rays before carrier switch
That said, there are some difficulties: -Holding the third is very difficult, there are many timings against it and you need to see whether its an infestor timing, hydra timing, pure roach timing, etc, in order to react appropriately. This is why I open 5 phoenix instead of straight into voids. With good micro and good decision making, you can hold, but it's fragile to the earliest timing. -It is hard countereable.....if the zerg wants to gamble. If the zerg makes no offensive units after the first 4 lings, then gets 8-10 corruptors asap and kills the mothership, pure ling will forever deny your third and you just lose. BUT the zerg must make this decision before scouting the fleet beacon, although after double stargate. The problem is there's many double stargate builds, some of them paired with gateway allins, so if the zerg doesn't see a fleet beacon and tries to counter with only corruptors, then zerg just dies.
Still it's quite a strong ladder build, but it will take about 50 games to work out the timings on the third and how to hold them, how to micro mothership, etc. If it would help I can drop some replays in here too.
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I was rank 1 masters last season, and I use this mass air in pvz every standard game and have been since the beta. However my path to mass air has changed alot over time. I used to do like you explain just go straight for it, however at higher lvls of play you will find lots of problem. atm I am having lots of success going 1 gate stargate into 4 phoenix harass with 1 void ray to deny 4th, then 5 gates into 3rd and dropping fleet beacon. after gas finish at 3rd I add 3 stargates and start the carriers. for upgrades i get +1 ground weapons and for rest of game shields and then when warpgate finishes I start air attack. Be sure to make lots of cannons, once 3rd is secure and carriers are making start recall harass and leftover gateway units to deny 4th/5th bases from zerg, very important to limit zerg econ and most importantly DO NOT LOSE CARRIERS and do not take a 4th till at least 180 supply even then set up cannons first. Now once 4th is take you should be in commanding position and now just get HT tech and make sure zerg does not take any bases on your side of the map. Once maxed and with 4 HT (i find that ideal number) start splitting the map in half and make alot of gates and hopefully you have gotten ground upgrades. Once map is split in half and you got everything you want just do small harasses I find wondering HTs and feedbacking queens/infestors works pretty well, also DTs and recall harrass, just make sure you dont get mind controlled. Also deny creep, you do not want spores right outside your bases. These will be very long but in the end you should win and lots of times zergs with get inpatient and attack, then you win really easy. Only way to really throw a game away from here is attack and have zerg get a good arc on you, so my advice is not straight up attack.
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There already is a very long thread about Skytoss in PvZ. I would start there:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=333403
Most of the issues with a skytoss composition come from infestor play, which is the standard in this day and age. Infestors are a hard counter to Void Rays, fungal can crush interceptors, and infested Terrans are an insanely efficient anti-air unit. This doesn't make the composition impossible; it just makes it really challenging to use against strong zerg players.
I'm of the opinion, after months of playing various air and air/ground mixes and builds, that the best way to get to Skytoss is to play a standard game, then set up an air transition in the mid-game. There's no reason to rush to that kind of army when you can do just fine with basic gateway units and take your third behind pressure. I'm OK with 0-1 Voids and a squad of phoenixes on 2 base, but more than that should only be made as a reaction to things like scouted 2-base all-ins from the zerg, or just really, really greedy play.
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by skipping sentries, this dies to a zerg going for a baneling bust, i know you included a replay defending it, but that zerg played horrible. he couldve busted your 'upper wall' aswell but decided to waste all his banelings on the cyber core instead. also. i also highly doubt u can defend a 2 base roach ling.
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Tried this when i was diamond, you never get to put up a 3rd versus a competent opponent. He will just deny it forever with lings, if you keep a force large enough to fend off lings while nexus/cannons are building he just double expands and will sit on 5 bases with spores getting infestor tech / hydra / upgrades, once 8 gases are saturated he will be able to crap infestors all over the place and you will simply get contained. Only way this works imho is versus a much worse opponent, or low apm not being able to deal with initial harass.
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I played really bad versus the baneling bust. I scouted his third and thought there was no quick attack and thus I sent my first voidray straight o his base. If I sent it over his attack path, saw the attack and kept it back for defense I would have easily held the attack I guess, Additionally I lost wayto many probes there.
Versus a 2 base ling roach attack it is basically the same, I would just try to save my probes and buy enough time for my Voidrays. I think even if I loose my natural (without the probes), I am still OK, sicne he does not have a third and his tech is delayed.
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On January 07 2013 17:23 hecticSc wrote: Tried this when i was diamond, you never get to put up a 3rd versus a competent opponent. He will just deny it forever with lings, if you keep a force large enough to fend off lings while nexus/cannons are building he just double expands and will sit on 5 bases with spores getting infestor tech / hydra / upgrades, once 8 gases are saturated he will be able to crap infestors all over the place and you will simply get contained. Only way this works imho is versus a much worse opponent, or low apm not being able to deal with initial harass.
Well, this is why in the skytoss thread we realized you had to take a fast third and then power up quickly, because a good player would just double expand and force a bunch of cannons with speedlings sent to cancel the protoss third. And that's why it's much more reliable to play a standard game, then eventually have a transition point to go from a regular protoss composition into a skytoss composition.
On January 07 2013 17:46 Garifeld wrote: I played really bad versus the baneling bust. I scouted his third and thought there was no quick attack and thus I sent my first voidray straight o his base. If I sent it over his attack path, saw the attack and kept it back for defense I would have easily held the attack I guess, Additionally I lost wayto many probes there.
Versus a 2 base ling roach attack it is basically the same, I would just try to save my probes and buy enough time for my Voidrays. I think even if I loose my natural (without the probes), I am still OK, sicne he does not have a third and his tech is delayed.
At 3:20ish you saw a gas go down in the zerg's main. When you're playing the FFE, if that isn't a tell about some kind of ling-based aggression, I don't know what is.
There is only one reason why you lived through this baneling bust: your opponent was being stupid. He a-moved and his banes tried to bust through the cannon and 150 mineral-cost buildings, instead of your squishy zealot and pylon at the north of the wall. Even if you have your void ray playing defense and target-firing banes, you aren't surviving this attack if a competent player is controlling the zerg pieces. You need more defense here: you need a bolstered wall-off and/or sentries.
And I can't fathom that the zerg decided to kill your irrelevant buildings at the wall-off, when he could have just gone for your main, killed all your probes, and ended the game. And then one measly void ray scared his entire army off? What the...??!?
You could literally beat this caliber opponent with a ham sandwich. If you really want to convince people on this forum that you have found an awesome, strong strategy for PvZ, show us replays where your opponent does things right, but you still kick his ass. Don't show us zerg players who are playing aggressive baneling cheese, but are somehow too afraid to go upstairs and kill your main.... :/
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