Hi, So i havent been able to find a decent strategy to defend against the 7RR as protoss. Scout with probe reveals spawning pool and no hatch, but 1 pair of zerglings chases probe away. Once gone roach building goes up, spawn larvae, pump 7 roach and push. Tried to forcefield ramp, but only 1 sentry out at that time. Warp gates not done . How? Thanks.
it's simple, fast robo and immortal. till this few zeal#stalkers and warp. Scout - one gas or evolution
Ste's got it right. I've done 7RR on my friends. 3 early sentries work very well. Getting an immortal @ 5:00 is not going to happen.
You can get zealots, stalkers, and immortals out, complete with warp gates, in the time it takes me to do a 7RR? Lol, funny.
What I did to counter this was to scout with probe right after building first pylon, and if he chases you, just act as if you are running away, and about 1-2min later send the probe again. At the same time you should be pumping out zealots as fast as possible. If the enemy has 2-4 zerglings/building spine crawlers, it is a sign that the enemy is trying to rush roach or mutralisks. If the enemy builds some zerglings instead of building spine crawlers, send all your zealots to attack, as the number would be managable as the enemy is pumping their resource into teching up. If the enemy has 1-2 spine crawlers, get an immortal, tank the damage and let your zealots do the rest. If the enemy builds lots of spine crawlers, go early void ray rush before the zerg can overwhelm you with roaches. So basically what you do is to rush your enemy before he can get his roaches out. It would most likely be possible to get immortal/go early void ray rush if the enemy has spine crawlers as it means that he is spending some of his resources in defence and will slow down in teching up. If they goes pure tech and leaves no defence at their base except 2-4 zerglings, your zealots would be enough to finish him off early.
What we as protoss and terran really have to watch out for is a 7 roach rush AND they bring 2-3 queens along. Thats a real problem, especially if they use an overlord to gain sight. I have yet to beat any zerg rush when they bring queens along and or all their drones. of course its only happened to me 3 or 4 times.
How would they bring 2-3 queens along? I can understand the drones but even 1 extra queen wouldnt even go close to arriving at the same time... not unless it was at least a minute or so delayed...
The most potent rush is the one that includes the 1 queen. Just inject the larvae needed for the roaches and send the queen moving towards the enemy base. Then bring up the drones together with the roaches and have them soak up damage while roaches and the queen dish it out. If well timed, I think it's somewhat of impossible to defend against(it's 1 queen,7 roaches and something like ~15 drones right at the 5 minute mark at your door). It's hard to have almost anything to defend against it by that time, BUT because of the all-in-ish nature of the build, I think that the best way to go with is early sentries. Get as many as possible and keep your ramp blocked for as long as humanely possible, and let your better economy and production kick in since his will be severely handicapped(or in the all-in variant non-existant). Also remember to block the bottom of the ramp to deny line of sight so you can use those sentries to do damage without taking any in return - every little bit helps...
Yeah I got hit with a fairly early Roach push playing P (not a true rush, since the OP sent lings first to harass) but I was no where near ready for it and got owned. Sentries are key against Z in early game for the forcefield. You need to try to get them so you can only let 1 or 2 lings in at a time, let your Lot kill them, then let more in. Against roach it's even more important since you need at least 1 or 2 stalkers to do damage. I'm not godd with timings and whatnot but is it feasible to get a Lot, 2-3 sentries and 2 stalkers within 5 min? Figure if you can time FF to only let in 2-3 units at a time and keep building Stalks as quickly as you can and you should have a good shot of surviving.
Btw, check this video on the all-in version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH1ucvJomlY&feature=player_detailpage#t=231s As you can see, the push has arrived by the 5:22 mark and it was not perfectly executed too, I believe there is an even faster build I've seen which gets the roaches roughly 25-30 seconds faster... I don't know, but I'm terribly afraid of this specific build since I'm pretty sure that even with very good sentry play I'll be unable to beat it... I haven't been 7RRed yet, but I haven't thought of a way to beat it other than delay it with sentry FF...
Good building placement combined with sentry FF and a stalker or 2 is generally enough to hold off 7 roaches straight up, im not a huge fan of the full on all in style 7RR with my queen and drones along for the ride, generally i just use the roaches to pressure / force the toss player into defending against them. If they cant defend, sweet, game over.. if they do, just pull back and keep the toss on their toes while you drone up as your natural pops (if u time it perfectly you can drop your expo hatch just as the first 3-4 roaches of the 7 arrive at toss's base, pretty easy to move into drone mode from this
