On May 26 2012 06:11 Nyast wrote: First of all, I think it's a BO loss against stuff such as 4-gate warp prism. You're only on 2 gates at that time. I'm also sceptikal about the early blink timings ( the greedy one, 1 gate blink that hits before 8' ). Do you have replays versus that ?
4gate warp prism punishes tech builds and other builds that rely on sentry to hold off any early aggression. It does poorly vs a 2gate opener that focuses on chrono'ing out a ton of units very early in the game. If he is in his base to defend, he will snipe/repel the prism before you get more than 1 round of warp ins. The advantage that you have 4gates and he only has 2 is not realized if you can't warp in more than 1 or 2 rounds within his base.
I recall hero vs squirtle in the semis of GSL were these exact build orders (either game 2 or 3). Squirtle pressured off 2gates while hero went up to 4gates with a proxied robo. The 2gate pressure hit too early and hero was forced to use his first warp in round defensively. You will not have sentries to prevent his early pressure from just walking up your ramp.
It is possible for a base trade like scenario to occur, but I don't think it's terribly likely. Even if it does I don't think it favours the 4gate'ing player. he will unpower your gateways before you get more than one warp in cycle, and army vs army in that scenario he should win.
On May 25 2012 19:24 fanvadmeck wrote: In the DT defense replay, you didn't scout anything else than 3 stalkers before you put down your robo, it seemed like you knew before that he was going dts. According to chat it was probably because he told you he is going dt chargelot and you should have tried to defend it with a 2 robo build. If not what gave you the information to build a robo thinking he is going dts?
We discussed a double robo follow up as a midgame strategy, so that you can start your double robo way before your opponent. Also he wanted to know the utmost safest follow up after i got my nexus up. besides that, entombed valley is a no go with blink, so most reasonable follow up would be a ultra fast colossus with an even faster double robo colossus if he expo's We didn't discuss the DT rush untill he actually did it.
a double robo follow up is only possible once you confirmed he is expoing as well. With my obs i saw no expo, thus i could only conclude a chargelot archon bust off 1 base[/QUOTE]
So you are basicly saying that the build isn't safe vs fast dts? Only if you put a robo directly after expanding as you did in that game?
On May 25 2012 19:24 fanvadmeck wrote: In the DT defense replay, you didn't scout anything else than 3 stalkers before you put down your robo, it seemed like you knew before that he was going dts. According to chat it was probably because he told you he is going dt chargelot and you should have tried to defend it with a 2 robo build. If not what gave you the information to build a robo thinking he is going dts?
We discussed a double robo follow up as a midgame strategy, so that you can start your double robo way before your opponent. Also he wanted to know the utmost safest follow up after i got my nexus up. besides that, entombed valley is a no go with blink, so most reasonable follow up would be a ultra fast colossus with an even faster double robo colossus if he expo's We didn't discuss the DT rush untill he actually did it.
a double robo follow up is only possible once you confirmed he is expoing as well. With my obs i saw no expo, thus i could only conclude a chargelot archon bust off 1 base
So you are basicly saying that the build isn't safe vs fast dts? Only if you put a robo directly after expanding as you did in that game?
yes, that's basically what i'm saying.if you cannot make a safe assumption you have to put down the robo right after expanding to not die to DT rushes
On May 26 2012 06:11 Nyast wrote: Watched the replays, and although I kind of like the opening ( til ~5'30 ) I'm less than convinced about that early expo.
First of all, I think it's a BO loss against stuff such as 4-gate warp prism. You're only on 2 gates at that time. It's not that likely to happen in ladder, especially since you're pressuring, which forces your opponent on the defensive. But against somebody who scouts and recognizes that build ( the 2 zealots and delayed core sell it ), I think the best you could do is attempt a base trade, and even that I don't think you'd win.
I'm also sceptikal about the early blink timings ( the greedy one, 1 gate blink that hits before 8' ). Do you have replays versus that ?
If opponent plays greedy he will die or at least suffer lots of eco damage. If for some reason you do no damage with your push to a 1 gate greedy tech build, you still have barely enough time to get back home and get 1 immortal out before his blink timing hits.
Warp prism 4 gate i didn't face for a long long time, so that might have some good potential so once i will face it, i will add it to the OP
Good point about the 1 gate blink, he's most likely going to suffer heavy damage when you pressure. What about a 3-stalkers rush with a relatively fast blink then ? Like getting the twilight around 4'45-5', while producing non-stop stalkers out of the 2 gates ? Most likely you won't be able to do any eco damage vs that and it still hits relatively fast, but both sides should trade more or less equally, meaning if he tries to counter/harass he most likely will have a very low amount of stalkers, and your immortal should already be out.. but I think it's worth of a test/confirmation.
Against the warp prism 4 gate, he'll definitely have to warp his first cycle in house to defend, but after that his prism is in your main and can warp 4 units while you're still on 2 gates.
On May 26 2012 06:11 Nyast wrote: Watched the replays, and although I kind of like the opening ( til ~5'30 ) I'm less than convinced about that early expo.
First of all, I think it's a BO loss against stuff such as 4-gate warp prism. You're only on 2 gates at that time. It's not that likely to happen in ladder, especially since you're pressuring, which forces your opponent on the defensive. But against somebody who scouts and recognizes that build ( the 2 zealots and delayed core sell it ), I think the best you could do is attempt a base trade, and even that I don't think you'd win.
I'm also sceptikal about the early blink timings ( the greedy one, 1 gate blink that hits before 8' ). Do you have replays versus that ?
If opponent plays greedy he will die or at least suffer lots of eco damage. If for some reason you do no damage with your push to a 1 gate greedy tech build, you still have barely enough time to get back home and get 1 immortal out before his blink timing hits.
Warp prism 4 gate i didn't face for a long long time, so that might have some good potential so once i will face it, i will add it to the OP
Good point about the 1 gate blink, he's most likely going to suffer heavy damage when you pressure. What about a 3-stalkers rush with a relatively fast blink then ? Like getting the twilight around 4'45-5', while producing non-stop stalkers out of the 2 gates ? Most likely you won't be able to do any eco damage vs that and it still hits relatively fast, but both sides should trade more or less equally, meaning if he tries to counter/harass he most likely will have a very low amount of stalkers, and your immortal should already be out.. but I think it's worth of a test/confirmation.
Against the warp prism 4 gate, he'll definitely have to warp his first cycle in house to defend, but after that his prism is in your main and can warp 4 units while you're still on 2 gates.
5 stalker "rush" the the hardest "counter" to this build, but it delays the blink by a fair amount since he will spend 100 extra gas on stalkers, and 2 extra chrono's on them. against another teamate of mine we just fooled around a little bit with him doing weird builds, and the 5 stalkers into blink was the most potent one in defending the harass and being even in terms of who could win the game. It basically comes down to execution of both sides who comes up ahead.
Yes warp prism 4 gate i think can be very difficult, but 1 warp in at home means i can have 5 gateways up once you warp in at my base. with a good probe pull and some decnt micro i don't know who will come ahead in that fight. But so far this is what i think is the hardest to deal with. I will have to test that and see what happens. If you are up for some test games let me know and we can post ther eplays here for analyses. on EU tech.129 and on NA Tech.264. whisper me which server you are on and i'll log in whenever i have time.
On May 26 2012 23:30 Fus wrote: I dont recommend this in league below high master skill as most people will go 1 base. I recommend defensive 2 gate expo
Not true. I'm in gold and I regularly play plats and golds when I hit up ladder. Maybe 1 out of 10 PvPs is a 1base all-in. The most common builds I run into are some kind of Robo expo (expo is just really late).
If I were to give any advice to my low level brethren, I wouldn't recommend the 5 gate blink follow up. I personally always go blink but I'm laboring under the assumption that I'm working on my mechanics. I've thrown away games where I was ahead because my decision making/unit control wasn't up to par.
Tech, here's a game of me vs 1 gate greedy blink. I thought I could do damage before he got blink, but in fact it seems it's not that easy. He got blink at 7' while I was still in his base, and lost all my units due to that. I couldn't get an immortal in time to defend the counter:
Any advice ? Did I do a major mistake somewhere ? Should I have not attacked at all, just threaten ? When do you decide you should attack or not ?
Couple of things can be smoothened out in the build order for you.
1. your second chrono should start as soon as your first one wears off
2.You do not scout on 2 player maps at all, or if you feel uncomfortable not scouting, scout after your second gateway is down. you need those extra minerals to get everything right on time
3.You forget to spend the third chrono on probes
4.as a result you can only get a pylon on 24/26 which result in you not building probes for an extended period of time and your second gateway is about 20 seconds late. This is kinda huge for the agression since you delay 2 stalkers.
5. you spend chrono on your wapgate tech when it starts, which you should be spending on your stalkers
6. you had a probe in his base, DROP A PYLON
at 6:00 mark your last two stalkers should be halfway the map and you should have your second and third stalker already with your army at his front. These macro slipups are a landslide towards worse in this build. your amcro has to be spot on.
those are the things that made you lose that game, if you had everything spot on you would have 3 stalkers and 2 zealots against his 3 stalkers, and two more stalkers joining up about 10 seconds later, and two more from warpins which meant you would have a solid control on his unit count and on his econ. your expo didn't go down till the 7 minute mark, which is 1 minute too late, which means your robo was 1 minute too late as well. at 7 minutes you should be able to start an immortal, and then you would been fine.
On May 26 2012 23:30 Fus wrote: I dont recommend this in league below high master skill as most people will go 1 base. I recommend defensive 2 gate expo
The best defense is good offense. You use your early units to pressure your opponent and force him to defend on 1base instead and probably force 1-2 sentries, which means taking an expo is safer than with defensive 2gate expand.
Couple of things can be smoothened out in the build order for you.
1. your second chrono should start as soon as your first one wears off
2.You do not scout on 2 player maps at all, or if you feel uncomfortable not scouting, scout after your second gateway is down. you need those extra minerals to get everything right on time
3.You forget to spend the third chrono on probes
4.as a result you can only get a pylon on 24/26 which result in you not building probes for an extended period of time and your second gateway is about 20 seconds late. This is kinda huge for the agression since you delay 2 stalkers.
5. you spend chrono on your wapgate tech when it starts, which you should be spending on your stalkers
6. you had a probe in his base, DROP A PYLON
at 6:00 mark your last two stalkers should be halfway the map and you should have your second and third stalker already with your army at his front. These macro slipups are a landslide towards worse in this build. your amcro has to be spot on.
those are the things that made you lose that game, if you had everything spot on you would have 3 stalkers and 2 zealots against his 3 stalkers, and two more stalkers joining up about 10 seconds later, and two more from warpins which meant you would have a solid control on his unit count and on his econ. your expo didn't go down till the 7 minute mark, which is 1 minute too late, which means your robo was 1 minute too late as well. at 7 minutes you should be able to start an immortal, and then you would been fine.
Hope that helps Nyast
Thx, I definitely do not execute the build well enough yet, but that's expected since it was only my fourth try.
I'm a bit confused about the first chrono on warp, and timings of the robo. I watched some of your replays and I'm pretty sure you did the same. Was that a mistake ? So I should spend no chronos at all on warp ? When should I get that robo ? In one of your replays you put it around 6'50.
In which replay would you say you have a good execution of the build, so that I can compare with what I do ?
Edit: if I take for example your "5 gate blink follow up http://drop.sc/185596", you spent a chrono on warp, and at 6' you have 2z 3st in the center of the map, and your additional 2 stalkers are at 80% ( this is basically identical to in my replay ). That's pretty far from what you mentionned in your point 6).
I really like the 2 zealot first and then stalker openings. It's the strongest early game unit composition when you have only 3 units, and it is really good to not let enemy to proxy pylons when he 4 gates.
I understand that the early nexus give you a huge economy advantage so that you will be safe against late pushes no matter if it's robo, blink or phoenix. So I don't doubt the safety of the build against that.
However, I think that if he does a 3 gate or 4 gate and doesn't proxy pylon near your ramp and then banks units until his unit count become higher than you, simply because you're only on 2 gates so you produce less units and then he hits just before your additional gateways are up. That timing would probably destroy you or force you to cancel the expo or destroy it too. I would like if you could give additional explanations on this issue.
Hello I'm high master protoss player and i play 2gate expo long time beacuse i see it on GSL some months ago. I dont have got replay but i will learn on my wrong's. My style it's too realy save but it must be more execution. I dont realy forum man so i cant write very well. I send replay agnist passiv protoss, massiv blink stalker player and phoenix player. Key in this style is offensive first 6 minute's. passive toss: http://drop.sc/186898 blink toss: http://drop.sc/186901 phx toss: http://drop.sc/186902 I'm streaming some time's enjoy on TL: http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/bugi (every help link down video window)
On May 28 2012 05:08 Sirverik wrote: You can place down the cyber core before the third pylon without hitting any bumps.
your second zealot will get supply blocked,a nd you will not line up the stalkers after your second gateway finishes. It's not always about getting everything as fast as possible, but as efficient as possible.
@Nyast I'll gonna take a long look at both our replays, and gonna see where the timings are different. I will do that tomorrow and post back here.
@Adonminus with proper chrono's on your 2 gateways the unit difference isn't big at all, and since you will have forcefields and he will not you can cut him in half, or even FF him out at your secondary ramp. byt the time you FF'ed him out twice and you are out of energy, you should be on 5 gateways already, and if you spend all your chrono on your two gateways, you'll suddenly completely stomp over him. also you should be able to pick off his first zealot/stalker without losing anything on your side
On May 28 2012 05:08 Sirverik wrote: You can place down the cyber core before the third pylon without hitting any bumps.
your second zealot will get supply blocked,a nd you will not line up the stalkers after your second gateway finishes. It's not always about getting everything as fast as possible, but as efficient as possible.
On May 28 2012 05:08 Sirverik wrote: You can place down the cyber core before the third pylon without hitting any bumps.
your second zealot will get supply blocked,a nd you will not line up the stalkers after your second gateway finishes. It's not always about getting everything as fast as possible, but as efficient as possible.
Ignoring the fact that I kinda messed it up with my push out timing at the end, this should convince you of what i stated.
yeah I'm pretty sure cyber can go down before pylon.
I'm kind of dubious of the whole delayed cyber thing as a whole, as so much relies on warpgate timing in pvp.
I'm looking into a more standard 2 gate opening into early nexus that doesn't delay cyber at all. I'll post replays as I get them.
EDIT - Crappy VOD of build in YABOT. Same principle as Sase, but cuts 1 zealot to get much faster nexus and warpgate timing. This is very much a work in progress, feedback is appreciated. (uploading, should be live in 30 mins or so)
You can get your 2nd gas right after the nexus (not shown in video) and add a robo or other tech in short order. The build is fairly straight forward, most of the timings should be intuitive for any Protoss.
On May 28 2012 05:08 Sirverik wrote: You can place down the cyber core before the third pylon without hitting any bumps.
your second zealot will get supply blocked,a nd you will not line up the stalkers after your second gateway finishes. It's not always about getting everything as fast as possible, but as efficient as possible.
Ignoring the fact that I kinda messed it up with my push out timing at the end, this should convince you of what i stated.
Okay, like i said before you do not get your stalkers lined up. your second gateway doesn't go down till your core is almost done. this build is not about getting 1 stalker faster then another.
Another note, and these are bumps that you might not see. you do not start a stalker on your first gateway for about 10 seconds. this is a HUGE bump. why put down the core faster if you cannot afford the stalker untill 10 seconds after the cyber core is done?
@ quillian, what warpgate timing is there in PvP? only 4 gate, rest is not warpgate timing, it's tech timings i.e. 1 base colossus, blink 4 gate, 3 gate robo blink etc. they all don't rely on warpgates to be chrono'ed to be done at a certain time.
Quick response to your 2 gate expo build before i can watch the video:
the two zealots are the key in this build. zealots are way better tanks and dps units then stalkers early on. without 2 zealots you will most likely die to a 2 probe 4 gate, with 2 zealots it will be no problem to handle any type of 4 gate
On May 28 2012 05:08 Sirverik wrote: You can place down the cyber core before the third pylon without hitting any bumps.
your second zealot will get supply blocked,a nd you will not line up the stalkers after your second gateway finishes. It's not always about getting everything as fast as possible, but as efficient as possible.
Ignoring the fact that I kinda messed it up with my push out timing at the end, this should convince you of what i stated.
Okay, like i said before you do not get your stalkers lined up. your second gateway doesn't go down till your core is almost done. this build is not about getting 1 stalker faster then another.
Another note, and these are bumps that you might not see. you do not start a stalker on your first gateway for about 10 seconds. this is a HUGE bump. why put down the core faster if you cannot afford the stalker untill 10 seconds after the cyber core is done?
@ quillian, what warpgate timing is there in PvP? only 4 gate, rest is not warpgate timing, it's tech timings i.e. 1 base colossus, blink 4 gate, 3 gate robo blink etc. they all don't rely on warpgates to be chrono'ed to be done at a certain time.
Quick response to your 2 gate expo build before i can watch the video:
the two zealots are the key in this build. zealots are way better tanks and dps units then stalkers early on. without 2 zealots you will most likely die to a 2 probe 4 gate, which will be no problem to handle any type of 4 gate
When warpgate finishes makes a huge difference in early game battles... attacking his ramp right after his second round of warp ins is not nearly as good as hitting while his warpgates are still completing. It obviously matters in defense as well. And there are tons of 3 gate or immortal timing attacks in addition to 4 gate that rely on warp gate timing. Being 15-20 second behind his warp ins can mean the difference between holding and dying.
the build I'm looking at has 1 zealot 3 stalker out when he would be pushing to plant his pylon, I don't miss the 1 zealot at all.
Unless he is going for a 4 gate you will be pressuring him with 2 zealots and 3 stalkers before his warpgate is done, you hit at 5:45 with those units.
Warpgate tech without chrono finish up at 6:15, with the delayed core in this build your warpgate tech finish up at 6:30, because you spend 1 chrono on it. you cannot tell me that he can get a full warp in, in 15 seconds. and show me any 3 gate attack or immortal bust that is centered around warpgate timings. a 3 gate agressive build that is a little less all in as a 4 gate is so easy to kill off because you will have more units out then him., and the same as soon as he warps in his first round. which gives you a nexus and him no tech advantage.
And the attack is not designed to kill your opponent, it's designed to force his first warp ins at home, or even force sentries if he was too tech greedy. and because you force defensive mode from your opponent you get a expo up.