StarCraft® II

By the way, someone should start micro-ing Roaches like Blink Stalkers, except you burrow them.

I would love to see you do this when Roach animation lasts 2 seconds while Stalker blink is really a blink.

Other than Collosus, I think ZvP is pretty much fine

The problem is SC2 protoss has been reduced to a level so shallow in term of upgrade and Collosus-noob-friendliness, massing collosus will always be option 1 in any matchups. A group of better players will be able to use high templar and immortal effectively, the rest of protoss players will continue to use collosus (including me).

At my level it seems like it's piss easy to make the death ball and use it effectively but it requires a lot of skill for the zerg player to actually defeat it.

Any bad macro and you're toast.
Any bad unit combination and you're toast.
Any bad micro and you are also toast.

Toss seem to just a-move and then spam forcefields. On top of that, if they do bad placement with forcefields, they just whack a tonne more without penalty because the forcefields last 15 bloody seconds while only using 50 energy.

At low levels, it seems like there is a really low skill level requirement to pull off a successful deathball while having a really high skill level requirement for zerg to survive it. This shouldn't be right imo - not at my level that's for sure.

At my level it seems like it's piss easy to make the death ball and use it effectively but it requires a lot of skill for the zerg player to actually defeat it.

Any bad macro and you're toast.
Any bad unit combination and you're toast.
Any bad micro and you are also toast.

Toss seem to just a-move and then spam forcefields. On top of that, if they do bad placement with forcefields, they just whack a tonne more without penalty because the forcefields last 15 bloody seconds while only using 50 energy.

At low levels, it seems like there is a really low skill level requirement to pull off a successful deathball while having a really high skill level requirement for zerg to survive it. This shouldn't be right imo - not at my level that's for sure.

Feels like that for me at diamond too. But diamond toss are quite susceptible to 2-base roach all-ins, so u cud try that. Kite with your roaches too, ffs

04/02/2011 10:17 PMPosted by dKiWi

Kite with your roaches too, ffs

If only protoss players only made zealots :b

04/02/2011 8:17 PMPosted by Cujo

At my level it seems like it's piss easy to make the death ball and use it effectively but it requires a lot of skill for the zerg player to actually defeat it.

Really?

Mass a bunch of corruptors and 1a them with your army, then press <hatchery hotkey> + s + hold R.

Congratulations, you have beaten a deathball at low levels.

04/02/2011 11:37 PMPosted by nGenXeen

At my level it seems like it's piss easy to make the death ball and use it effectively but it requires a lot of skill for the zerg player to actually defeat it.

Really?

Mass a bunch of corruptors and 1a them with your army, then press <hatchery hotkey> + s + hold R.

Congratulations, you have beaten a deathball at low levels.

Really?

What makes a lower level deathball so much worse than a Master level one?

Same units
Same time frame
Same micro

If a lower level player could macro out the same amount of units in the same timeframe with the same control and reinforce in the same way as a master player, he wouldn't be a lower level player, would he?

He's also not probably going to be pressuring your expansions, threatening you as heavily throughout the game, being adept at changing unit compositions to handle Z unit cycling, keeping up with upgrades, guarding against drops/basetrades - all the little things that create the situation where a deathball wins the game.

P are easy to beat. Hatch before pool. get gas a little bit b4 pool finishes and put 3 drones in. then build roaches as gas is available and drones when its not. Toss have no imagination so they will always 4gate, some times they will throw a single VR in the mix if they are high. you will have to enough to hold it if you keep building roaches and lings during the skirmish (they will attack around 630, if they are late build an extra queen or two for aa [probably high]). Then Toss will 9 out of ten times ragequit without saying gg because they are lame. I'm not even joking.

04/03/2011 6:01 AMPosted by Berwyn

P are easy to beat. Hatch before pool. get gas a little bit b4 pool finishes and put 3 drones in. then build roaches as gas is available and drones when its not. Toss have no imagination so they will always 4gate, some times they will throw a single VR in the mix if they are high. you will have to enough to hold it if you keep building roaches and lings during the skirmish (they will attack around 630, if they are late build an extra queen or two for aa [probably high]). Then Toss will 9 out of ten times ragequit without saying gg because they are lame. I'm not even joking.

I wish my opponents rage quit when their 4gate fails like yours

I just typed a big wall of text that dissappeared >.< f&*k.

Anyway, to make it shorter. Idra's been doing a Roach-burrow rush. it works. worked somewhat in the recent Huk series in MLG, and worked nicely with Socke.

Dimaga did a Lingbling DoomDrop. worked too.

Still searching for July responses to Protoss. working on it.

My personal response to ZvP recently though are 14 or 15hatch builds with Burrow-Roachling, works pretty good with Protoss doing 3gate expands and forge-FEs. A spine crawler or 2 at your natural helps to repel the dreaded sentry push. Sometimes I manage to get to 3 hatcheries - 3rd hatch in main.

If it goes to lategame, I get Mutas to contain, and attempt an econ lead. If he gets Phoenix, I lure his phoenix somewhere and fungal growth. If he manages to assemble the deathball, I get Roach-Infestor (fungal growth on Deathball, no blink yay) and Corruptors and Broodlords. works for me.

Roach-Infestor (fungal growth on Deathball, no blink yay) and Corruptors and Broodlords

This worked for me in both ZvT and ZvP on Taldarim. Safe to call it Zerg's deathball, but it's almost impossible to get in smaller maps though.

yeah I hear you, it's pretty hard to get that far on small maps. But I manage to pull it off on that popular small map, I can't remember it's name for the life of me, the one with a big hole in the middle with lightning thingies. early roachling to spire tech and infestor works pretty good in that map.

Can't beat protoss, lost like 10 of my last 14 games against them.

Seems if they 3 gate FE, they produce as many probes as I do drones, all the while building an army, while i've got 2 spine crawlers and 4 lings.

Tried 2 base speed roach, but get forcefielded to death, and delayed long enough for colossus to pop out, gg.

Burrow? observers are so cheap to get now, and robo is so common after the 3 gate FE, for immortals or collosus.

Pre-colossus hydra into muta can work sometimes, if they don't pressure early.

Warp prisms.......warping in 5 zealots into your mineral line as they attack the front, gg....man I'll swap you our nydus worm piece of crap for warp prisms anyday.

Most protoss players I talk to in matches say that PvZ is their favourite matchup, I then proceed to get stomped.

It's the macro game they are playing now, Zerg relies on having more econ - it NEEDS more econ to stand a chance, and it's so hard to get that third while defending any early pushes.

end rant.

yeaah... me experience with Nydus worms is also somewhat mixed. it unloads units too slow to properly surprise anybody.

Doom drops work better. I saw a Dimaga game where he did doom drops with lings and blings, dropped in the protoss main, took out all the gateways first so San couldn't reinforce. Idra did it too in the one game against Cruncher where he finally did something cool, and not just macro and max-up and run a deathball against another deathball.

i think the idea is to do a timing drop. take out protoss before they can mass up their ball of death.

I am a diamond player who play both toss and zerg (maybe a master if my micro dont suck and if i focus in zerg), i will giv some of my POV here:

- As a protoss player, the most frightening unit from zerg is roach and mutalisk, roach rape gateway unit and mutalisk rape pretty much rape everything if they reach a critical mass
- As a protoss player, zealot suck except against lings
- As a protoss player, Weapon upgrade is very good
- As a protoss player, if zerg 14 hatch, u nid to do EVERYTHING to stop it (4gate timing attack at 5:00 or cannon them), or u gonna lose miserably unless u go for a forge FE / 14 nexus blablabla
- As a protoss player, the hardest part in PvZ is drone control, there are two timing attack u want to be really really good at it. First one will be 6:00~8:00 (normally after ur expo are placed or done), 2nd one will be 10:00 (wich will be zerg 2nd expo timing normally), so far if u dont pressure zerg within this timing attack, they gonna overdrone and hit u with a strong timing attack with burrow roach that gonna overwhelm u easily


- As a zerg player, the most frightening unit from protoss is.. sentry and colossus. Force field rape before burrow timing and mutalisk timing, Colossus rape everything on ground except mutalisk
- As a zerg player, hydralisk SUCK except vs phoenix / void ray, they are actually extremely good in straight fight against gateway unit but good forcefield just limit hydralisk effectiveness too much, i often see alot zerg get hydralisk in ZvP just bcoz roach + hydra rape so much months ago when the player skill level are still bad, this is .... very stupid.
- As a zerg player, carapace upgrade (armor) is very good, attack upgrade isnt worth
- As a zerg player, the hardest part in ZvP is warpgate control, the concept is simple: u want to force protoss to warp in as much sentry / stalker they can, with roach, trading roach with sentry/stalker is VERY worth, stalker isnt cost effective compare to roach (without upgrade), sentry consume ALOT gas, if u able to force so much gas consume for warpgate, u can delay colossus timing alot. But bare in mind, u dont want to lost that many roach to forcefield, thus u nid a good carapace upgrade + tunneling claw upgrade to engage toss. This concept is nearly simple as drone control
- As a zerg player, if protoss they expand as fast as you do .aka. Forge FE / 15 nexus blabla, YOU NEED TO DO EVERYTHING TO STOP it. Zerg can respond with a 2nd hatch place immediately, somehow i dont see any zerg able to macro a 3 base with such a tight drone-timing. Generally speaking, if u cant being 1 base ahead protoss within 3 minutes (the only timing that zerg gonna overwhelm protoss), protoss with fast 4 gas can easily rape zerg with either 6 gate or voidray-colo. THUS, YOU NEED TO DO EVERYTHING TO STOP A FORGE FE or 15 NEXUS, this is insanely DIFFICULT than protoss stopping zerg 14 hatch with 4 gate. However, i will giv a hints here: fast airdrop, tis come 30 seconds slower than nydus drop with same amount of upgrade cost and CANNOT be stop, however most zerg doesnt seem to realize how effective it can be

Although in the current sc2 scene, people believe that PvZ is a broken matchup that heavily in favor of protoss, somehow, honestly speaking i think it's too early say that as the game are still young and i personally predict that Z is the most broken race within few months once player figure out to play it : )

Ty for reading this wall of text

Is there a reason why the zerg portion of the text from UnagiSushi is much larger than the protoss portion? I thought there was

@dKiwi

So what you exactly dont get? I have been telling you that roach and mutalisk is the way to go

04/03/2011 10:15 AMPosted by dKiWi

Is there a reason why the zerg portion of the text from UnagiSushi is much larger than the protoss portion? I thought there was

Because he used more words, plus wrote an entire extra point? Durr.

Wow. UnagiSushi's analysis is spot on.

I've been seeing trends of Zerg pros do the exact same stuff Sushi has just mentioned. the fast Air-drop he mentioned I've been seeing a lot of lately from July, Idra and Dimaga.

Bro....at your level they would pylon block your expo. Pool before hatch