Hey guys, I picked this game up about a week ago. Despite the fact that I'm pretty worthless(The only reason I made it into bronze is because some guy left instantly during one of my qualifiers, haha), it's a decent amount of fun when the games are close. I've been having a good amount of trouble with Terran specifically, partially because I'm not quite sure how to know whether they're going to MMM spam rush or turtle up with siege tanks and laugh. I realize now that I should be getting void rays for siege tanks, but I've been especially been having trouble with marauders. I was reading the counters list on sc2guidereviews and it says that the counters to marauders are Immortals, Zealots and Void Rays. Void Rays aren't always an easy option when I'm getting MMM rushed, from what I can tell Immortals and Marauders are kind of even since they're both armoured and both deal bonus damage to armour except that Immortals require 3 buildings whereas Maras require 2(I think?). And from what I've seen my zealots get butt plugged by marauders(although they make nice work of marines). What would you guys suggest for Maras? I've watched some of the movies that Husky has on Youtube. Those definitely helped a lot to at least know what I was looking at and could use. I find that I like to be aggressive but that I always end up getting pushed back, I make more units and that the process continues ad infinitum until my opponent decides to leave their base. I try my best to spend my resources as quickly as I can but I know that I'm pretty bad about doing that while I'm attacking I also really have no idea when I should expand. I usually grab an expansion after the first push or two. Is there a super special time when I should be doing this? I don't have any good replays saved at this point. I'll upload some if I get a chance to play tonight. The one I do have though is of me getting photon cannon rushed and having no idea what the hell to do. Looking back though, I should have expected it when I scouted and only saw a Forge in his base. I tried to make zealots to kill off the pylons but it didn't really work out. What did I do wrong? I guess in hindsight building that second assimilator was a stupid idea. Should I have gone for a second gateway or just tried to chrono boost out 2 zealots and a sentry and gone after the cannons?
True, but immortals have special shield points that can only take up to 10 damage from a single attack. So marauders deal 10 damage to their shields instead of 20, effectively removing the marauders' vs armor bonus. This makes a zealot + immortal mix ideal for defeating marauders. However if you want to get fancy you could just get zealots and sentries, using sentry force field to block the marauders' escape so they can't do their obnoxious kiting micro (stim - attack - run - attack - run - attack - run.)
Mkay, I have no idea how this makes sense. This player makes nothing but hydras and zergs and I make nothing but zealots and sentries(both of which according http://www.sc2guidereviews.com/starcraft-2-protoss-counters.html are counters to both of those units). I really don't understand what I did wrong here. My original goal was 4 gate to phoenixs for overlords and harassment. I blocked off the inital rush. That map is fantastic for zerg IMO and I really didn't see a good place for a proxy pylon since everywhere was in plain sight of his base, natural, obvious overlord send points or where his units were chillin. Any thoughts?
Haven't watch, but: Zealots may counter zerglings, but they get eaten by hydras. If you can macro your sentries great (guardian shield for one and force fielding his army into multiple smaller pieces), you should be ok, but that's really hard to do. What you should've done is make collosi, with range upgrade they absolutely demolish hydras and zerglings, with your zealots being the meat shield. It's also great if you manage to force field them then so they stay in place, but you won't be able to make so many sentries, since collossus takes gas. Generally if zerg goes for hydras, you should always make collosus (note that if you win the big battle you should end the game as soon as possible, before he goes corruptors).
How does making T2.5 units to counter T1 and 1.5 spam make any sense really? Should certain T1 and 1.5 be able to counter other certain T1 and 1.5 units or is toss really just forced to tech up if they ever want to counter? The way I see it, teching to Colossi would have given my opponent the chance to expand once or twice or just mass an army and overrun my base before I could even get them out
Zerg can always fast expand, that's part of the race mechanics, you shouldn't be worried about that too much. Hydras are tier 2, not 1 or even 1.5, but what's your point? I promise, it's more frustrating for zerg, to have dozens of hydras burned in few seconds by 5 collosi. And i think you're overestimating the time it takes to get collosus out, you should easily be able to do it before he masses anything reasonable. Edit: And to add sth. to point 1, if you want to see how OP protoss is, if he expands early but keeps his army in the main make a few zealots, a few stalkers and 2 sentries. Go to his natural when it's a bit saturated (you can get observer to spot it) and forcefield the ramp between his base and natural. That's pretty awesome.
Should I be getting more stalkers against zerg and in general? I've been playing some 1 v 1s against a friend from school who happens to be in platinum(I'm in bronze), and as you could guess the games weren't very close, haha. He seems to have a lot more stalkers than I have. Should I have like 4-5 zealots to go in, block guys and tank and then have a buttload of stalkers in the back to FF? I've been using more stalkers than I usually do and I've won my last two matchups, although the first was against a terran that moved his command center right off the bat to his natural expansion, effectively wasting his first minute of play. The second was on that one 1 v 1 desert map that has a main ramp and then a backdoor ramp with destroyable rocks blocking the backdoor one. I backdoored him and totally took him by surprise, so I don't know if that's really a fair judgement of whether this strategy was better or not. How would getting a more stalker heavy army fare against Zerg? My platinum friend also tells me that zealots don't actually counter stalkers, despite what sc2guidereviews says. Who's right?
There's no simple anwser to this. To anwser one of your questions, player who makes stalker / zealots mix would win against pure stalkers, if the armies are near equal. Against roaches and banelings make more stalkers. Against zerglings make more zealots Against hydras you should tech to collosi nad make stalker / zealot mix (probably more zealots to save gas) Against mutas blink stalkers obviously, although you may need to get pheonixes if he commits to it. If you're asking about sentries (they have force field), if you don't have enough micro skills you shouldn't rely on them too much. They do cost 100 gas and if you don't use them good enough, they aren't worth the price on their own. But you can always use, like 2, for guardian shield, especially against mutas and hydras (just press g).
Shoot zealots can counter hydras just research charge and mix in some sentries. Goodbye Hydras. As for marauders immortals and sentries do good mix it with Czealots and shouldnt be to bad. If terran is going MMM get psistorm and pwn them badly. Since im a zerg player massing stalkers is not the awnser vs zerg. Since i can get lings out faster and cheaper then your stalkers.
So it seems like vs zerg I have to play more on the reactionary side than dictating the flow of the game. When should I be scouting to find out how I should be teching? I always scout after I drop my first pylon at 9 but I usually don't learn anything from it. Should I go for a straight up 4 gate and then transition to Robo tech/HTs/Air depending on what I see? Should I go 2 gate and then pick a tech? I realize that these all depend on the situation but I really have no trick up my sleeve other than 4 gate at this point and I find that when I try to tech to counter whatever I'm seeing it's usually too late and I'm already overrun. How do DTs fit into all of this?
Vs zerg i would suggest 2 gate robo, with a strong early Zealot push. Zerg is the reactionary race as protoss you should be trying to force the zerg to do a certain build. For instance, if you strong push on zealots he will have to invest in roaches or alot more spines. In which case you can tech to stalkers/Immortals and catch he in the mid game. As for scouting it is usually to get the following information. First if you scout at 9 supply(which is pretty standard) you want to look for a couple things. An early gas/double gas is usually a fast tech to somekind gas heavy unit. As a zerg player i scout for early gas/double gate/early pool/wall in/proxy rax/cannon rush. It is pretty much the same for all classes. Just keep your probe alive inside their base, untill they start building more structures. Either they will use the units they made first to chase and kill you or they will delay their tech so you dont see what they are going for. DT's are not meant to win you the game they are meant to compliment your army mix up front line or do raiding attacks. If you mix a couple dt's when you push out for an engagement it will make a huge difference if they have no detection, simply because they are so hard to notice while cloaked. Lets see vs zerg i would suggest 2 gate vs terran i would suggest 1gate 1 cyber, vs protoss its really a mix depending on what you opponent goes for. But i find proxy starport and voids works pretty good
Mkay....the one thing that's really giving me a hard time in 2 v 2s(and in general) is mutalisks. Try as I might, I cannot seem to effectively counter them. I dislike phoenixes since they can't do much of anything besides snipe overlords/random single units once the mutas are dead and require committing to two stargates to even come close to having enough phoenixes to effectively counter mutas(and thus committing to void rays for tech the way I see it which are roflcountered by both hydras and mutas). And because the zerg player is going to spawn a bunch of hydras right after and roflpwn the phoenixes. I haven't gotten the chance to tech to blink stalkers yet. What makes blink stalkers so much more special than regulars other than that it's slightly harder to run away from them if you want to? I also haven't gotten the chance to try psi storm...but I really don't see why it would be useful. Mutas are ridiculously fast and have 125 health iirc. With that speed, there's no excuse for standing in storms for any longer than a tick, and 20 health/storm in a small area is a small dent in the muta's health. Plus mutas are fairly spread out so a small fraction of the force will be hit and it kills your units in the process. Is there something that I'm missing here?
Pheonixs > mutas 1 Pheonix per 2 mutas Or mass load of blink stalkers. Either way I throw down 2-3 cannons at mineral lines when I see mutas.
If you kill every mutalisk with 10 phoenixes, just take your whole army (including the phoenixes) and attack the zerg main. If he has hydralisks ready (not likely since mutas take up all the gas) then you can lift them with phoenixes and kill them quickly.
I've noticed something in my 1 v 1 games. They usually end in one of two ways: I win in 12 minutes or less or it drags on longer and I end up losing slowly. I'm looking for some pointers on my transition to mid and late game. I'm fully aware that my micro with an army of anything other than zealots, stalkers and sentries is god awful. It's something that I'm working on, although I have a hard time getting zealots not to do silly things, getting sentries on air, keeping sentries force fielding and focus firing, storming and making sure my HTs don't suicide and making colossi burn things all at once. I've attached a replay of a previous game where I ended up winning but I thought I was really sloppy(ended up losing my main and natural in the process) and won mostly on luck. I guess my thought was I saw a big ball of marines and marauders and though...high templars! Then I pushed once, got destroyed and tried to pick up some colossi too since they're fun vs marines and marauders. Should I have made that move? Should I have stuck with HTs and instead got more chargelots and blink stalkers? I also find myself 4 gating pretty much every game because well...it's easy to remember and works more often than not. How do I know when 2 gate robo or 2 gate star gate would be better?
I find that I like to be aggressive but that I always end up getting pushed back, I make more units and that the process continues ad infinitum until my opponent decides to leave their base. I try my best to spend my resources as quickly as I can but I know that I'm pretty bad about doing that while I'm attacking I also really have no idea when I should expand. I usually grab an expansion after the first push or two. Is there a super special time when I should be doing this? --- I'm working on my APM rate to get my first small army out asap. I tend to wait with Toss V Terran but I've noticed that if I leave early and have al new units point to the attack group I end up with just enough units (Mostly walk in to my OP in the middle of the map) to fight it out in the middle, have more ways to tactic and micro out and spare a couple, regroup and attack. It takes practice but worx for me now > I used to get pounded in my base over and over by small terran forces. As for expanding...do it while attacking or ready for att. Shift build nexus + 2 Pylons if you have the money, then Controlgroup your 2 Nex on 3 and 4 and point your new probes to your expansion. This way you pump out a sjitload of probes.. in the meantime build 2 or more gates, regroup all gates and this should help you att the second time or support your army . this way you don't go back and forth to your base, easier micro, more time to attck, more force. A proxy probe near his base would be nice.
This is all really good info for me, I'm extremely new to the game and committed to being a toss player. Keep the discussion coming! Do mutas and hydras generally own void rays? I'm becomming increasingly fond of voids as of last night. Against the computer it's an easy win every time if I can get 4-5 voids early enough. But I realize humans are a different animal (...literally).
At the higher level I rarely see void rays. If you can pull it off 2-3 void rays in under 12 minutes is good for base harashment, but generally they just cost too much to be effective. Your really better off making pheonixs vs zerg, Later in the game if you really need to, void rays can be built to deal with Ultras, battlecrusiers, thors or carriers. But seeing that is also rare.
I see. From what I can tell I feel like early voids (with a few zealots to defend my base) could easily coast me through bronze and maybe silver. But on the flip-side I don't want to coast into gold using a strategy that will be irrelevant once I get there, because I won't be ready for it. Guess I'll just get better at massing stalkers
