Now that Brood War has matchmaking, and I'm not the cheesy player I used to be as a teenager. I've been trying to master the more safe standard builds for each matchup when playing protoss. This because I actually want to get to the long games so I can improve my (horrible) macro skill.
From what liquipedia tells me, gate into core into expand is the most standard and safe PvT build. But when facing a good terran player doing a properly timed fake double push, I just die, every game.
I have like 3 dragoons with range at the terran base and maybe 2-3 more will have popped out once the terran reaches my base.
Meanwhile the terran is able to push out with 2 tanks, 8 marines, 1 vulture with mines and sige mode on its way getting finished shortly after the push reaches my base.
It just feels unwinnable. I know it isn't otherwise this build wouldn't be the standard PvT build.
But am I really supposed to hold against that onslaught with just 3 goons plus eventual reinforcements, or am I just doing something horribly wrong that makes me have less units than I'm supposed to?
If I'm supposed to have more units, than how many goons am I supposed to have if I'm doing it right?
It's worth to note that the guy I'm playing against is much better than me. I think he managed to get C or higher on Iccup while the best I ever achived for a short period was D without the minus. So there is a large skillgap.
I also managed to either gas or supply block myself in some of the games and I bet that had an impact too, since the terran probably timed everything perfectly.
Also the terran does the trick where he moves his army close to the first dragoons before attacking to get lots of free hits. My multitasking isn't completely up to par so I keep falling for it. But I'm aware that I need to get better at avoiding that.
first of all I would say, if you want to prevent this situation you can open with zealot before cyber, second zealot after cyber then goons
then you really want to avoid letting the T hit your goons with marines+tank(s) when he goes towards your base so don't let him know where your goons are and actually avoid trying to poke at his units until he gets to your base, that's when you have a little more strength compared to him cause your last goon just came out and also you might use your probes if needed
add a shield battery at your nat if you want^^
I dont rly open nexus after gate blind like this, i think its risky, T is rly strong at this point if you have only 1 gate and nexus, its hard
but if you just dont let your goons take damage when he comes out his base, and then you try to reach for the tanks in the micro rather than just damage the rines, hit the rines only if your goons are out of range of tank if possible, otherwise if you have the strength you can move forward hit a tank once or twice, need accuracy
but yeah you could just open 2 zeal before goon go his base he may need to make vult before machine shop, or open 2 gates, or open 1 gate 1 robo and go reaver, also using probes if necessary and/or shield battery can help, its just a major thing that in all 3 or 4 reps I've watched you lose 1 or 2 goons before he gets to your base, or lose so much hp on a few goons, that's nearly game over, T is strong in this situation
You really need to clean up your build order. In most of the replays I looked at you had probes queued up and delayed your opening pylons/gates/ assimilator for no real reason. Late or no dragoon range and really aggressive expand with limited information.
My workaround is delaying the expo a bit and being offensive with 2 gate goon with range, with a delayed robo. I push forward when i have 4 dragoons (1 shots marines, 2 shots tanks) and with some micro i can easily defend an expo by just being out on the map.
I find with 3 dragoons with range i can just kite the terran units from his base to my base, by the time he gets there hes lost a bunch of marines or even a tank, used all his mines or lost a vulture, and ive got 2-3 more dragoons
21 nexus relies on good dragoon control, so given the skillgap between you and your practice partner, opting for a 2 gate build might help you get to the macro stage of the game that you want to practice.
On August 29 2017 07:57 KungKras wrote: From what liquipedia tells me, gate into core into expand is the most standard and safe PvT build.
1 gate expo is certainly not the most safe PvT build. You have to have very good build order and micro to pull this off without dying. I wouldn't recommend it if you were D on iccup. 2 gate range into expo is MUCH safer against terran and it also gives you opportunity to punish FE. As others mentioned, you can try playing 1 zealot before goons. If you hurt his marines its much easier to fend off FD push and sometimes you will scout unexpected 2 fact switch with it.
2 gate openings are much safer, for sure, but if you want to become the next Bisu, 1 gate goon probably is good practice.
Three things after watching two of your games:
1) Work on your build order execution (in the single player).
In one game you got supply blocked by missing your second (!) pylon. In the other game your first (!) pylon was late because you queued up your 9th probe before building the pylon on 8. There were a bunch of other "little" mistakes before the FD even hit you.
These are unpardonable build order mistakes, you have nothing else to worry about in the first few minutes. With a game so old, even mediocre players hardly make any mistakes in their build order in the first 5-10 minutes.
Practice in the single player at least a few openings every time you sit down to play. Better would be if you played 10-15 minutes until your build order is complete or until you're maxed out. Never queue up workers in the first 10 minutes of the game, only right before the worker that is currently produced finishes and you send him to mine. Work on being super precise about everything in your build order in the first 5 minutes of your game - because pretty much everyone else is even on mediocre level.
This will take a while (it's actually an eternal work-in-progress...) but it's the foundation for everything else in all of your future games.
2) Work on your Dragoon-Micro for this specific situation: You (3-4 goons) vs 4+marines/tank/1-2 vultures.
After you have your build order down (see 1)), ask a friend to just produce a bunch of those units and repeat the FD-push over and over again. Be fully focussed on this situation and nothing else, practice kiting against the marines/tanks, practice focus-firing the tank and the mines when they're placed aggressively in between your goons.
Practice this seperately first, later in real games. After a while you will do very well against most of the standard FD pushes, they won't reach your natural (the FD actually just gives the Terran the fire-power to leave his natural for a few seconds to place mines defensively between his base and Protoss; only if Protoss messes up can he go all the way to the natural).
3) The FD-push is 4rines, 1 tank, 2-3 vultures.
An 8 marine/2tank/vultures push is something different, it's a variation of the FD-build that cuts SCVs (or some strange 2Factory push), thus Terran has to do a lot of damage with it or he'll be behind economically. Against this, micro is a little different I think, you have to kite a bit, but more importantly get as many gates up as possible asap, build a distraction-pylon in the natural (to soak up shots), maybe pull probes.
You can prepare for such a push by scouting it in time. The normal FD-push always looks the same, get used to counting units and know the exact time (relative to your build-order) when the FD-push should come down the ramp. If you see anything strange (a very early factory, more than 4 marines on top of the ramp, most importantly: his tank/4marines not coming down the ramp at the usual time), throw down 1-2 gates immediatelly, maybe cancel the nexus if it's not too late. It could also be a fast vulture-drop or said 2 factory timing, but there is not that much variation in what Terran can do, over time you'll learn to see the signs of something more aggressive than the usual FD-push.
I think what you need is just more practice overall, the guy you faced probably played something like 5x or 10x or even much more times as many games as you, takes a few points from you in almost every situation in the game, makes it hard to pinpoint it down to one thing.
Yeah my micro was atrocious in some of those games.
But isn't there some timings where you're not building anything anyway and it's ok to queue workers just to not miss building them if I need to micro my scout, or is that bad because it just becomes a bad habit?
As it stands now when I've tried to really multitask and keep my scouting probe alive while going back to build stuff it almost works but I keep messing stuff up like supply blocking myself. But perhaps I should just eat the performance loss and try to get better att not queueing things anyway, to get better in the long run.
So far I can survive in ladder at my current MMR. It's when I play vs friends that are better than me when I get destroyed. Which is good because you learn a lot from getting destroyed and trying to improve to deal with it.
I'll do as you say and try to focus on optimizing the build order and microing vs early pushes. I'll probably play a lot more of these practice games. I think one of my biggest weaknesses so far is multitasking. It's hard to keep the scout alive and not mess up small things in the build at the same time.
EDIT: Oh also, since the liquipedia page for one gate core doesn't say when to build anything after the cybernetics core, I am completely in the dark as to when I should expand and stuff. It would be nice if the liquipedia page was updated with some follow up information just so I know what timings to aim for after the cyber core.
1gate expand relies on micro but also the timing. If you queue probes you ll miss your window for the nexus and the 2nd gate, and your reinforcements dragoons will be delayed as well. This can be the difference between deending and dying. Also the point of your micro is to delay the push for you to have more goons. If they are delayed (the goons i mean) it ll become really difficult really fast.
So do basic delaying micro and focus on macro/timings first and foremost. Tough on multitasking so if it s too hard just run around with golns to delay him, nothing fancy. One hit, run, macro, repeat.
It's possible to hold a joyo off 1gate FE (although pretty damn hard, requiring properly timed probe cut to add extra gates, shield battery, great goon micro, and mineralwalking probes to a distant vision's minerals).
FD should be a standard hold without any adjustments, more of a question of how much ground T can get with the mines.
Probe queue early is fine if you're 100% sure it won't delay the next step in your build order; otherwise, it is not.
Watching first game... 1)Work on gate timings - @ 150 minerals at 10. 2)Work at building positioning, you want that gateway close to nexus in a way that f.e. blocks vulture access to nexus, not siege-able from below ramp or easily bunkered by a BBS, but still rallied directly to natural with as little delays as possible. In other words, steal building positioning from pro streams.
3)11 gas is crucial, compared to 12(or even later in case of some of the replays). You need that 11 gas to get range and goon asap, if you take 12 your goon will be delayed.
4)15 scout at earliest, the build is resource-sensitive.
5)Mine gas ASAP. Ideally you want probes coming up to gas one by one as gas is finishing, if you can't do that - send 3 at once, when gas is finishing. But do not delay.
First game, your core was already late(as gateway was late), but you still had 130 gas when it finished. It should be about 176-ish for non-late core. That way you instantly start range, and as soon as you have 50 gas you'll have 125 minerals, and that's early goon. You want non-stop goon production early, but range takes priority of course.
6)Yep, you started goon before range. You want range first in PvT, rangeless goons don't do much.
7)watch the pylon production
8)normally, for this build it is 29/33 nexus. You got stuck on 25 in first game by missing a pylon, had extra cash and started it early...but overall your execution will likely be a goon short and late for good 20-30 gametime seconds on range. Late range means you won't be able to delay push/poke rines against a fast terran.
Your gate position also makes your goons walk through mineral line on their rally and that takes forever, so reinforcements will also be late.
9)you either go for 30/33 robo -> goon -> pylon -> probe, or for 30/33 pylon -> goon -> 32/33 robo -> probe first option is mostly used when scouting rax CC, and delays 4th goon a bit for a faster robo; second is standard in general and used vs FD both options cut probes for a bit for the robo
2nd gate is like...36/41, not immediately and not before robo(although 2tank+scvs+lots of rines pushes or fac cc fac can be hard to stop without proper micro)
either way, 1st game you have 3rd goon finishing at 04:52
10)poke terran as he goes down or whenever your range finishes, take some potshots if you can if you cannot get free shots on rines, do not trade 2 goon shots on rines for a tank shot, but 3 goons are fine, so long as rines aren't shooting
11)get ready to transfer probes as your natural finishes, and best case, split the probes to individual mineral patches
it can be hard initially to juggle ordering robo/transferring probes/starting 2nd gate, while controlling goons, but eventually you'll be able to do that in between retreating, etc
12) you aren't using rally points in 1st game rally points are good
Aim for: ~3 goons done(3rd popping out) and goon range finishing around 04:20-25 ~4 goons done at 04:48-53
That should be fine to hold.
Another note: don't worry tooo much about scouting 'inside' the terran base with 1gate goon FE & keeping the probe alive. You aren't really supposed to get in there with this build. You pretty much want to check if they're 14CC/rax CC'ing/if there's a wall(perhaps rax flashings)/what timing of their moveout is and when their CC can be seen either building or floating, and drawing conclusions on what you're facing from that.
Watching game 2, there are various errors(early scout and way way way late gas), my comments on the above posts hold true. Just going to check the benchmarks I've outlined.
Note that T has his tank reached his ramp at 04:20(had to get there, distant-ish factory). That seems like a decent timing(I'm meh at T times), as usually terran going down ramp coincidences with range finishing or a bit before range finishing. He'd probably have easier time getting down vs possible goon pressure with factory closer to ramp, but it's a minor thing.
You have 3 goons at 04:26 which is fine, but this is at the cost of very delayed range. Also no rally points again.
04:57 you're hitting 4 goon count + range finishing, but your goons are out of position. Terran's moving out with 2 tanks/scvs/8 rines, and this can be hard to stop; you'll likely have 5 goons only by the time he reaches your nat, even when everything done right. (if you went robo before 2nd gate, that is) That's not exactly an FD that he's doing, but a more dangerous variation - usually called 'strong FD'
However, that is a playable fight. You can add a batterry(and start shuttle instantly too which helps a lot as he's starting siege moving out and sieging up your nat eventually is an option in this situation) f.e.; but what's important is that he brings 2 scvs, and that he delays his CC a loooot. He doesn't have money to start it as he moves out, and he'll have to rally vultures, too.
Note that at 05:20-25-ish your nexus is supposed to finish, and you barely cut any probes during the build. You'd be at 27-28 probes normally at this time, with double probe production later.
At 05:20 - terran has CC not started(and that's 5-6 workers production long if you do it non-stop), pulled 2 scvs, and 23 scvs total. He doesn't exactly have 400 minerals for a CC already.
I'm not entirely sure how pro P's handle this exact T opening, if they cut probes for faster gates when not spotting the 1 tank moveout/CC (so they'd need to expect either 2tank or 3tank from a joyo etc). But from the worker count comparison, you can see that 1gate nex puts you massively ahead; so it's probably fine to cut probes and pull probes once T reaches your nat...and lose some in the fight, etc, against this opening.
Yeah you're probably fine going gate nex gate -> robo if you know opponent prefers this opening, but I'd rather work on micro and learn to hold it off of a robo and a delayed 2nd gate
1 gate goon nex is popular mostly because it handle a lot of T openings, without investing too much into gateways/whatever that you'd be too behind vs rax CC openers. But it does require precise execution and good goon and/or probe micro.
Watching game 3, it's more of the same. He's mid-map at 05:26 already going cross spots; you didn't transfer probes as you were microing; he's going so fast because he almost doesn't need to watch his formation, because you don't have enough goons. When you tried to slow him down it was mostly unfavorable exchanges, as you only had 2 goons firing and taking shots from 2 tanks.
But yeah.It's still a 05:50-ish CC(not sure if he needs siege before CC actually). Faster range/precise goon production, slow down the moveout by making T babysit rines/tanks. Rines get in front, they get shot at for free, same for scvs, etc. Once you have 4 goons you can attempt to snipe tanks, 2 volleys will take a tank down if you can; just don't sacrifice too much to do so.
Pylon in front, shield battery. pull probes (ideally on a mineralwalk to distant minerals, which your scout can put your 2nd or 3rd pylon at).
Probes can focus mines(and prevent placement), perhaps mineralwalk-stagger a tank, and they also act like a fodder between goons and rines, rines can't get in range to shoot at goons, so goons can snipe at them or even the tank; probes also can force retreats of parts of the force from T, or get free shots off at rines, and so on.
As far as micro goes, your goons should not take shots from rines, unless you're sniping a tank(and they only get to fire at you when you step in for a second volley, chasing a retreating tank or something).
Just remember: it could be a 2fact, with an extra 3rd tank in the force you're fighting, and pros still hold that somehow.
Edit: Hmm, actually, if T doesn't move out when your range finishes and didn't go siege CC, you probably can just add 2nd gate before robo. Good thing is, robo start timing is around 04:25-ish, anyway...it would get you a 6th goon either by the time T reaches your nat, or during the fight there(at ~05:45-06:00...probably mid fight or something). Not so good vs port openings... But I could be wrong about this reaction. Wish I could watch afreeca VODs with no lag...
That's a lot of in-depth analysis. Thanks a lot for writing all that.
The continuation of the story is that I don't usually survive when playing vs explosionman. But I did manage to survive two times and when I do this build vs people on my mmr, I do great in the early game vs every terran i've faced because they don't micro their push as well. I think it's true that a great way to get better at starcraft is to get crushed over and over again and learn from it.
One thing I've learned is to target fire the marines and vulture instead of hold position microing, to really try and reduce their numbers. I'm still bad at not taking tank shots though.
On August 29 2017 09:18 ProMeTheus112 wrote: first of all I would say, if you want to prevent this situation you can open with zealot before cyber, second zealot after cyber then goons
then you really want to avoid letting the T hit your goons with marines+tank(s) when he goes towards your base so don't let him know where your goons are and actually avoid trying to poke at his units until he gets to your base, that's when you have a little more strength compared to him cause your last goon just came out and also you might use your probes if needed
add a shield battery at your nat if you want^^
I dont rly open nexus after gate blind like this, i think its risky, T is rly strong at this point if you have only 1 gate and nexus, its hard
but if you just dont let your goons take damage when he comes out his base, and then you try to reach for the tanks in the micro rather than just damage the rines, hit the rines only if your goons are out of range of tank if possible, otherwise if you have the strength you can move forward hit a tank once or twice, need accuracy
but yeah you could just open 2 zeal before goon go his base he may need to make vult before machine shop, or open 2 gates, or open 1 gate 1 robo and go reaver, also using probes if necessary and/or shield battery can help, its just a major thing that in all 3 or 4 reps I've watched you lose 1 or 2 goons before he gets to your base, or lose so much hp on a few goons, that's nearly game over, T is strong in this situation
I would say that this advice is completely wrong!
First of all this bo is the standard at progamer level, not at our level.
Second: You usually solve this situation by micro. You should have 3 goons parked down his ramp by the time he has 1 tank (witch is the normal timing for pushing out). If he push out when he have 2 tanks you should have more goons. The reason why you are at his ramp is that you fight while retreating. If the tank is in front you can snipe the tank and then you are good. If the tank is behind (normal situation) you use hold position micro and try to pick up marines if possible. Do not get scvs near or behind you. When the first mines pops out try to target fire them.
On September 19 2017 23:23 Silentenigma wrote: You can try 2 gate expand against T if you have problems with terran pushes.
Yeah I know. But it sort of bothers me that people can do things that I can't. And I'm getting better at it, so there is a feeling of growth that is really fun.
On September 20 2017 01:57 Dead9 wrote: I don't know if you've seen this, but day9 has an episode that goes into 1 gate goon vs FD
Yeah, I wonder if Day{9] saw this thread in the strategy forum before making that :D It's a really well done video.
On September 21 2017 05:33 niteReloaded wrote: since when is 2tank 8 marine = FD?
Apparantly it's called "strong FD". And it's the kind of push that usually kills me when good players do it. On my MMR I think I can usually deal with it now. It's when I play friends that are above my skill level that I die. I think I can survive 4 marines + 1 tank just fine in most cases.