I have always hated the PvZ matchup. It's so much harder for Protoss than for Zerg. People complain about PvT, but I'll take a PvT over PvZ any day. The thing is, after 12 years the PvZ matchup hasn't changed at all--it's all about muta ling. What are you guys doing to beat this strategy? Is there an aggressive Protoss strategy that works, or do we have to play reactively? Here's a typical game for me: 8 pylon 12 gateway scout 13 or 14 gas 15 or 16 pylon cybernetics when the gateway is up 2 probes on gas when assimilator is up Second gateway Depending on what my scout reveals, the game changes from here on. For the most part, I am seeing speedlings followed by mutas. I have reacted by going +1 chargelots, with mixed results. The early speedling rush is brutal, so I always assume it's coming. Because you have to get the +1 attack going early, I have started going forge after my second gate. I put one cannon between my minerals and my nexus. It serves a dual purpose--anti speedling early and anti-muta later. I build all of my buildings close to the nexus and I keep all of my armies there, too (in other words, I don't block the choke, but my cannon offers reasonable protection to all of my buildings). When I get the +1 chargelots, I expand and attack. The problem is, by this time the Z usually has an expansion and a spire. So, I need to bring some anti-air with the +1 chargelots. So, questions for the seasoned PvZers: 1. How do you scout when the Z puts the speedlings outside your main? I find that when I go out to kill the lings, he runs them past my armies back to my nexus and kills my economy. But if I leave the lings alone, I can't get a scout past to see what he is doing. If I split my forces (send some but keep some back in case he runs for my probes), he surrounds the troops I do send and kills them. How do you beat this strategy? 2. How do you handle the mutas when you're not sure they're coming? Do you use stalkers or phoenixes? I assume that a Z going speedling is going muta next, but I can't know for sure without a scout. I am hesitant to go all-out phoenixes, because if he goes roaches or hydras I am hosed. (Am I wrong about this?) Stalkers are more versitile than phoenixes, but they aren't spectacular against mutas and they are chewed up by lings. 3. If you go air, how do you balance your buildings/army/upgrades? On one base, do you go 3 warp gates and 1 stargate? Do you ever build a second stargate? If you go air, do you go chargelot, too, or +1 slow zealots? If you go chargelot, when do you build your shadow council compared to the stargate? Do you get charge ASAP (my preference) or do you crank phoenixes and get charge when you have extra resources? I assume you go straight phoenix/chargelot and ignore stalkers and sentries. Am I wrong? I miss corsairs and the old templars/archons!
2 colossi melt away any number of lings. Also, some sentry with nicely placed walls will do the trick. There was this replay I dont remember, from HDStarcraft I believe, who showed an amazing work of sentry walling against a roachling army. Colossi should do just fine against lings, you just need the stalkers (or 3-4 lots walling em, while the stalkers hit the air units.
I, as a zerg, hate pvz matchups, I nearly always loose them. What usually kills me is a damn proxy pylon, sentries which wall off the ramp and a stalker/colossi combination.
sadist what i go for is blocking the choke early game with an early zealot. by the time they get the first lings to ur base you have one phocan and 1 zealot, which beats the lings easy. Next u make 2 or 3 more phocans on the choke and then i put phocans at my mineral fields. The next step is stalkers to take care of any mutalisks. i try and get the mutas to attack my stalkers near phocans so they dont kill as many of my units. Ok im not sure if im answering ur questions so ill start again. for Q1, if they are pooling lings outside your base try and lure them in closer to the choke with your zealots. if you do this every so often you should kill off a good number of lings. while your doing this get some colossi and then use zealots as a meatshield as you take out lings with ur colossi. You can also use the cliffwalker ability to put the lings at a disadvantage. Really you should just send out an observer ASAP. the only way i can think of them stopping you scouting is early game when you have no observers, and it takes longer to get an army built than it does to get an observer. Q2 u can use stalkers against mutas in a defensive position, with phocans to back you up. when it comes to phoenixs he can get more mutas than your phoenixs in less time. so phoenix aren't going to work by themselves. what you can do is use 6-8 phoenix to lure the mutas in to your stalkers or phocans at your base. If the mutas are not close enough to your base for this to work, u can use gravbeam to take out several lings before the zerg has time to react. Q3 toss cant really go air effectively, as all their air units require support to be effective (unless they are being used for harassment purposes) and if you try to support your air units with air units you will find you have taken up an expensive enterprise. So if you wanted it to work you would have to fast expand. i might be rong and i might be right, feel free to correct me
Block off your ramp with a Gate-Core, 1 Zealot. Sentry's forcefield can solidify your wall even more. I'd go for an early Stargate, after the second Gate. Get a Phoenix or two, start harassing OLs/Drones + Scout, get more Phoenix if it's successful. If I see a Spire, and suspect mutalings, I'd go into a 4gate for a Zealot/Stalker heavy build - maybe even tech up to HT Storm if he has the macro advantage.
I'm beginning to see what you mean. I haven't played 1v1 in a few weeks, but I hopped in a game to try the muta/speedling strategy. I'm currently upper gold league and was playing a platinum league protoss player. He tried an early vr strategy (only sent in one, which I killed with my queen). He managed to charge it, so I lost my queen but killed it in the process. 5 muta came out immediately after and I used these to harass and kill one vr and a few probes, losing 1 muta in the process. After this I continued to build up and easily wiped his base a few minutes later with about 10 speedlings and 9 muta. I love muta harass personally (though I typically don't use speedling). I win quite a few games against terran players simply by harassing their mineral line. Typically protoss players are more difficult simply because they lay down cannons by their minerals and have stalkers with blink. Typically if they make it longer than a few minutes terran players try vikings, but usually I take them out when there are only a few. Typically the one strategy I fear is an all out assault with marines on my main while I am heavy muta. Unless I have enough baneling/spines it's usuallly gg. Such an attack is risky on their part, as it leaves me free to wipe their base with mutas while they attack me, but it has worked before. I don't think I've ever been hit with a similar strategy by toss. Typically they go heavy zealots and only a few stalkers. After the stalkers are down I simply snipe the zealots and finish their base. 1. Leave zealots blocking the choke when you venture out. That way there is a buffer so they can't just run through. Even just 1 or 2 can make a such an attack impossible. 2. The first muta attack is going to be somewhat light. Perhaps 3 - 5 mutas. If you have 3 or 4 stalkers the muta are probably going to avoid them rather than engage. I personally won't engage stalkers unless I outnumber then 2 to 1 in small groups, or 3 or 4 to 1 in large groups (on base harass). Muta's are expensive and they're very squishy without upgrades. 3. I personally don't like phoenix early game unless you are sure they have no other units. If you only have a few, they dominate you. If you have too many, they switch to hydra as fast as possible, or they out-macro you and build corruptors.
like someone else said, Mass stalkers and colsi, mix in some chargelots and maybe some phoenixs harshing with anti grav. That asssuming mass ling and some high tech units.
In my opinion, Mass stalker and 3-4 Colossi are incredibly hard for a zerg to beat. The only hard counter for this are Blords + HydraRoach, and they are soo expensive that unless gassing from 3 bases, they are pretty hard to get.
I think most Zerg go muta in PvZ because they "assume" Toss is going air (mass voids is getting played out, imo) Im not saying it works all the time, but I take alot of wins massing stalkers and making like 4 voids to hit any expansions and mineral line. This seems to limit the number of muta i have to deal with.
If he blocks you in your base with early lings,you can reply by sending some phoenixes to his mineral line.They kill drones almost instantly.
Er imo i rather play a pvz anyday over a pvt but that's not that point now is it xD well In pvZ if he has speedlings outside your base why not get some sentries to forcefield the ramp and get some stalkers When i first start the game usually i would go 2 gate zealots because an early harrass will stop a fast expo and stuff and i mean an early harrass wouldn't hurt he'll be force to one base the game for a while and then after a while i get blink for my stalkers because microing with blink is awesome and you won't lose that many units and after a while i would go for some phoenixes i mean one or two phoenixes doesn't hurt you that bad because you may want to hkill some overlords lurking around the map and you can use it for scouting. because if you tech too hard you can't go that many gateways so i think 2 is best for one base and after some sort of scouting with your phoenixes you can expo when you think it's right or when you owned his wave of army or something ionoooo LOl
One thing i dun understand is, why not you dun try a reasonable amount of Zealots, no need too many, all you need to do is wall them off, FF the side of the engagement, to force the zergs to engage your zealots, and have your stalkers and sentries to pick off some from back row. if you have extra money, you can even have 1 or to collosi or 2 high templars to do the damage QUICK and deadly? personally, i like collosi, but i go HT mainly because they are hard to be picked out from when they are in the middle of a bunch of other units
I play Zerg all the time, and I personally hate mass stalkers... Now with 4 gateway push, I haven't been able to win against Toss for the longest time. I think I have like 7 loss streak against Toss, it sucks... The thing is that stalkers are so effective against most of zerg units when they mass up. The speedlings can't destroy them if you micro stalkers with blinks and stuff like that. Not to mention, mutalisks are pretty expensive so splitting some stalkers to stay with workers to defend while you harrassing their workers with the rest of stalkers work too. And mix some zealots there too. I think phoenix don't work too well unless you know he's going full mutas and broodlords and stuff
I agree with the stalker consensus that seems to be going around in this thread. Personally, if you have stalkers and Collossi together on a single team, you can watch a lot of good things happen. The Stalkers will wipe out moderate level infantry and air and the Collossi will clean up the nasty little zerglings quite handily, which is what most Zerg players like to use.
