I'm looking for Protoss players above my skill level (silver) for advice on what to do in PvT in the current meta game. My PvT has suffered a little since I strayed from MCs style 1 oracle 1 gate FE vs T in to just FE vs T.
My playstyle vs T is currently safe/macro naniwa 1 gate expand.
I need a solid build that's current in the meta game, and some general advice on 2nd and 3rd base gas timings. What is greedy and what is not in this match up.
I know the following off the top of my head. Phoenix can be used to deal with vikings. 3 is a power number for colosi, feedback and zealot warp ins are good for stopping drops. placing important buildings out of reach of drops is important. and probe scout is important to check the gas.
If someone could help me out in anyway, that would be awesome.
step 1. make probes and chronoboost them
step 2. don't get supply blocked
step 3. spend money on other stuff
as a silver you need to worry about the basics of the game (ie macro). If you can't get the probes right builds become redundant and even detrimental.
If you can macro right and have a general idea of what sort of style you want to do, the "proper builds" just sort of happen.
Thanks for the advice. I can get 16 probes on each base, and I don't get supply blocked often at all. I'm able to easily spend all my money. From my replays I can see that my T opponents that beat me with 2 and 3 bases have a harder time with supply blocks and spending their money than I do.
I also use base camera hotkeys and like 10 control groups.
I wish that I could just not get supply blocked out of my league but it doesn't seem to be the case. I'm 4 times ex gold stuck in silver atm.
From my replays I can see that my T opponents that beat me with 2 and 3 bases have a harder time with supply blocks and spending their money than I do.
well post a replay so we can see what is the reason that they manage to beat you
you do a decent ish job of making probes early on with not too many gaps but once you get on two bases you have lots of gaps in probe production. In fact you even fall behind in worker count to the enemy terran which should never happen. the gaps in probes are really really bad, hurting your economy a lot
you aren't floating too much at the start although you definitely need to work on it, the problem is that your income is really low (less than half his mineral income at 18 minutes) this is partially due to missing a lot of probes and partially because your third is really really late.
when you decisively won that battle near your natural you should have started playing a lot more aggressive since you destroyed most of his army and still have a large army yourself. With your smaller income you really can't afford to play passive and let him build back up. same thing when you defend his second attack.
nearing the end your floating resources get's quite high.
Then he just keeps smashing forces into you with his superior income and eventually breaks through. (you should have made about 75% of those ht's that you made into arcons)
So the reason you lost is because you had worse income and played passive. i'd say your macro is ok for a silver but you will most definitely have an easier time if you improved it considerably. You have lots of major supply blocks and you just don't make probes once you are on two bases. You need to keep up constant probe production until 60-70 if you are playing passive like you seem to like to do. You float quite a lot of resources especially as the game goes on, even before you are maxed. your build and composition is ok but you really need to focus on probes. If you are planning on doing a big attack on two bases then by all means cut some probes but being passive means you have to go for the superior income.
Wow. Firstly, This is really, really good advice. I didn't expect such good advice.
You are absolutely right about having lower income and playing passive, and my late 3rd base. My mindset was "okay, I crushed his 1st attack, continue to tech and make more units rather than risk going all-in". But basically what you're saying is I should have attacked and expanded? playing agressive + greedy vs T is not something I usually do so it's definitely something I can try out
In general, playing aggressive vs T usually ends poorly for me, because often times it turns in to an impossible to win base trade with 4-5 medivac maruader drops in my main.
I guess I'm over safe, I hate moving out against T because I often get dropped when I do, and it puts my army out of position.
The reason I stop worker production on two bases is because I'm not even sure I'll survive until 3 bases most games. And often times when I try to take a 8:30-9 3rd it gets killed off, or I get dropped or sometimes BOTH at the SAME TIME.
When I do decide to do it anyway, I end up over saturated on two bases while T contains me.
I guess I sorta feel like because of drops. T just automatically gets the map and I have to play safe, but at the same time it feels near impossible to take my 3rd base. So I build up workers only when I'm about to take a 3rd.
In this game I focus on worker production and supply more, and try to stay on top of what my opponent is doing. I consistently have higher worker count but I still lost. I improved, don't really care about losing.
But the interesting thing is I think I lost to the two base MM stim+shells attack because I took gas too early on my natural, which limited my ability to make more gateways earlier and thus slowed down my unit production because I was unable to hit my warp in rounds.
Please tell me I'm right, so I know I'm on the right track ^_^;
From a Terran perspective
Looking at your game, you should not go 1 base double gas unless you want to play aggressively (oracle, 4gate, blink stalker, DT attacks etc.); you had a huge gas stockpile.
Taking 1 gas is enough for early game essentials such as Warp Gate, MSC and a stalker or two to take map control and scout, and you'd have enough minerals to expand early. If you do not Fast Expand or do any damage, your mid game will be vulnerable to attacks simply because you do not have enough income to support a strong enough army and tech tree.
If you had a Collosus or two when he made that 11min attack, things would be much different.
Things I look out for when I attack
In the mid-game your focus should be playing/positioning defensively and getting AoE tech (i.e. Collosus or HT) to secure your 3rd.
Place a few stalkers in your main to deter drops and make sure your observers can spot any aggressive plays (i.e. in front of base, drops coming from flanks).
Once you get 2-3 Collosi with ETL you should be able to cut collo production and focus on expanding and balancing out your tech tree.
When I make my mid game MMM push, I'm always looking for where the Collosi/HT are. The moment I find them out of position, I load up and boost into the back of the Protoss base (as far away from Collosi/HT as possible).
Quote:
I guess I'm over safe, I hate moving out against T because I often get dropped when I do, and it puts my army out of position.
I guess I sorta feel like because of drops. T just automatically gets the map and I have to play safe, but at the same time it feels near impossible to take my 3rd base. So I build up workers only when I'm about to take a 3rd.
+1. The risk of playing aggressively/pushing in the early to mid-game is Terran counter-attacking with drops, which will be a lot more cost effective if you do not have AoE units to deal with them.
Your key units - Collosus and HT, cannot be out of position to deal with drops.
Some key tips for unit roles in PvT according to early-mid macro game flow
Reaper: Early game scouting and harass
Stalker: Deter Reaper/scouting, map control, harass
MSC: Defends all early game aggression
Marine: Defends against early game aggression, build up for mid game army
Marauder: Balances out army, counter stalkers, stronger drops
Zealot, Sentry: Balances out army, puts bio-ball out of position
Medivacs: Gives bio-ball superior mobility and positioning, delays 3rd Nexus, enables drops; punishes bad position from aggressive plays
Collosus: Counters MM, enables toss to defend and secure 3rd, positional long-range, forces Vikings
Viking: Counters Collosus
HT: Counters MM, enables toss to defend and secure 3rd, slow and costly, forces Ghosts
Ghosts: Counters HT, soft-counters all toss units
PvT is all about a stronger, death-ball army vs a faster, squad based army
Team eMp
ZnC.
Last edited by ZanC; Tue, 24th-Sep-2013 at 2:12 AM.
I ran a little macro test without taking the extra 2 gas.
by 10 minutes I ended up with 55 probes. But the most important part was by 11 minutes (when the attack came). I would have had 3 more zealots, 3 more stalkers, and 2 more sentries, and 5 more probes. If I was building out of my robotics I would have had an immortal as well.
Also if my 3 gateways were up at my main and I had a little better positioning, I would've been able to make proper use of photon overcharge. I could've even sent a few probes in to the battle and still had more workers.
Simply by force fielding and trapping ANY number of units I would have easily won that battle and been in a solid position to take a 3rd and push out with a much larger army.
The reason I took gas 1 and 2 was because I was doing something similar to
9 – Pylon
13 – Gateway
15 – Assimilator (x2)
16 – Pylon
18 – @100% Gateway, start Cybernetics Core
21 – Pylon
21 -@100% Cybernetics Core, start Warpgate Research and 1st Stalker (Chronoboost Stalkers)
23 – Mothership Core
25 – @100% 1st Stalker, start 2nd Stalker
@100% Mothership Core, move out with 1st Stalker and Mothership Core, and rally 2nd Stalker to fight
Benchmark: @5:30ish, you should get to your opponent’s base with 2 Stalkers and a Mothership Core on most maps.
My mindset was "okay, I crushed his 1st attack, continue to tech and make more units rather than risk going all-in"
this is a good mindset however the problems with it are that you need to tech (better than him) and make more units (than him). which you were doing neither of. Also being aggressive doesn't mean going all-in. you just walk to his base while still macroing, get a forward pylon. You have sentries so that if he does have an army you can't beat you can always just retreat or force a really favourable engagement. but since you dominated his attack you would easily just be able to roflstomp him at that point especially with all the higher tech units you had. The point of being aggressive isn't just to smash your army into his base and hope for the best (ie. an all in) it's to see what's happening, to try and pick off some units/buildings with your longer range (collossus). Attack one of his outer bases and force him to sacrifice it, or have a really bad engagement against you. You know he can't be aggressive because he has no army and if he were to drop you. you would 1. be closer to his base so be able to have a shorter distance to travel to his base than him to yours as well as being able to see when he leaves since you are dancing around with his army. 2. be able to deal with his small drop with a warp in and overcharge 3. be able to 1a his base since he split up his forces too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IXLluRe
In general, playing aggressive vs T usually ends poorly for me, because often times it turns in to an impossible to win base trade with 4-5 medivac maruader drops in my main.
it's important to know WHEN to be aggressive. and when you are being aggressive it doesn't mean you can't be defensive simultaneously. The key here is to know where his army is. You can know this by having good map vision (pylons and probes and observers around the map) or by being aggressive, like as I said before if you are at his base already, he can't really drop you without you noticing and being able to react and dominate his smaller army. the problem is likely he drops you when you are on your way to his base and you were unaware of where his army was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IXLluRe
The reason I stop worker production on two bases is because I'm not even sure I'll survive until 3 bases most games. And often times when I try to take a 8:30-9 3rd it gets killed off, or I get dropped or sometimes BOTH at the SAME TIME.
When I do decide to do it anyway, I end up over saturated on two bases while T contains me.
not a good reason to cut probes, being oversaturated or even long distance mining for a little bit is fine, the longer you have a probe the more it pays itself off.
If he goes for a 2 base attack on your third you just need to learn to defend; you have more income, you have sentries which are the best at defending, you have defender's advantage.
if he is containing you while he gets his own third and you are still on 2 bases, you should have a far superior army since he spent a lot of his money onto his third base. So you should just be able to kill off his contain easily, dance around until you can land some good forcefields and destroy his army with minimal losses.
As for drops have 4 stalkers ready to intercept if you think he could drop. 4 stalkers will be able to quickly kill off the medivacs and if he does manage to land you can still warp in another wave as well as overcharge.
You lose here partly because you are floating so many resources, over 1k of each. if all that money was spent on units you would have fared far better.
Your building placement, the fact you wasted your sentries energy, that you didn't engage within range of your nexus overcharge. all also contributed to losing that fight.
If you waited until he was within range of nexus then you can forcefield in the middle of his army trapping half of it near your army and had a guardian shield during the fight you would have destroyed his army.
Quote:
Originally Posted by IXLluRe
But the interesting thing is I think I lost to the two base MM stim+shells attack because I took gas too early on my natural, which limited my ability to make more gateways earlier and thus slowed down my unit production because I was unable to hit my warp in rounds.
this goes back to not spending your resources. You were already floating over 600 gas constantly while starved for minerals. So spending more minerals to get more gas doesn't make sense since it just compounded your problem. Try and keep both types of resources low. if you are getting too much gas already don't get more until your mineral income is scaled suitably. find something to spend gas on (sentries are good early game) or just take some workers off mining gas. if you decide you still have too much gas, maybe try mining from only one gas in your main until you have expanded? or try mining with only 2 on each gas? Just try different solutions until you find something that works.
Thanks for the advice. I'll post some replays later to show how exactly I'm going while trying to apply these concepts. Maybe some other lower league Protoss players could benefit from this thread.
I ran another couple of macro tests vs AI. By focusing on less gateways (adding them on two at a time after 1 gate fe robo) I was able to get 55 probes, 2 observers, 13 zealots, 5 stalkers, 6 high energy sentries, a mothership core, 5 gateways, robotics, a twilight council with charge research (finished at 11 minutes), 2 nexi, and 2 forges (over halfway complete). by 11 minutes which is when that attack hit.
The sweet thing is the observer came out early and my unit count steadily grew. As I added on two gateways at a time, up to 5.
And that was with some probe production gaps and some pylon blocks (very few).
Phew, I just won a back and forth macro game vs plat T! (2 times diamond) -it wasn't easy
My opponent opened with a widow mine drop. I guess he wasn't keen on playing a macro game vs a silver.
It was an intense game but I was up on workers all game I think. I was under a lot of pressure and I made some mistakes. Had a fair amount of floating resources because I was too freaked to add more gateways. Basically my macro slipped under pressure.
But I kept making probes and pylons and I was able to hold my 3rd base vs constant aggression and trading worse %90 of engagements.
Overall it was really, really good practice for me.
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