[Apth]

Originally Posted by IAmOrion

I'm not sure if I've done this right but here's a link to the file i uploaded to the site, i hope it works

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=707

You played well man. Despite being behind in the earlygame after his initial push, you were definitely still in it in the mid/lategame.

Things I Liked
The harassment/prods while you were droning after his initial push - perfect.

Scouting
25 minutes into the game - hadn't scouted his main base for tech. It's always good to do this.
It's also a good idea to have lings at most - if not all - the expo's, so you know when your opponent is being greedy.

Maxed/Remaxed
Don't forget lings when you remax. Protoss players tend to have stalker-heavy collossus deathballs towards the end of the game, because they want to spend all that gas they have piling up. Early Adrenal Glands and +3 Melee work wonders.

Drops/DTs
It's not a bad idea to put a couple of spines and a spore at each base to defend drops and DTs. A very small investment on the part of your opponent ended up doing a lot of economic damage.

Deathballs
Protoss deathballs are very difficult to deal with. Some alternatives to tackling it head on;

• Win before your opponent gets maxed, or
• Constantly deny expansions/do economic damage so that by the time your opponent is maxed, your economic advantage is too much for him to overcome

Summary
The game looked fairly even until your opponent deathball'd up and just walked into your base. My suggestion, should you get into this situation again, would be

• Put a lot of effort into denying his third while taking your fourth
• Keep up those multi-pronged attacks
• Get upgrades up a bit quicker so your lings are more effective

As a Zerg player, attacking things head on usually results in your opponent coming out on top.
Don't let your opponent sit back and macro - Ling counters, drops and nydus worms are all good tools for harassment.

Hope that helps

Quick Comments

	IAmOrion:	thanks for the feedback :)
	cruxBsK:	Apth these write ups on peoples replays are outstanding you are a great asset to the site!

[IAmOrion]

Originally Posted by Apth

It's also a good idea to have lings at most - if not all - the expo's, so you know when your opponent is being greedy.

this sort of thing seems obvious when you state it but i never thought of that playing or watching the replay, definitely going to start working more zerglings into my zvp lategame. it should especially help with my lousy map awareness cos lings will auto attack expanding probes plus cos they're so fast they'll synchronize well with static defense as well

i suddenly feel super encouraged to play more ladder

[Apth]

Originally Posted by IAmOrion

i suddenly feel super encouraged to play more ladder

Well awesome. Go ladder man, glhf, smash some nerds.

[theFatty]

hey guys need some help regarding tvz
diamond level
thanks

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by theFatty

hey guys need some help regarding tvz
diamond level
thanks

the Fatty vs kotbullar

League :
Map : Shakuras Plateau
Length : 25:36 m
Version 1.4.2

Replay Analysis

• 9:25 :
  • You make a early 3 tank push, that's quite a quick timing, that's good. But you have too much minerals and not enough gas and tech. You're only beginning your tech lab on the rax, no Starport yet;
  • Taking a third CC and still having 600+ minerals. I think you could take your 3rd and 4rth gas quicker. Medivacs, upgrades, Shield, Steam, Thors if needed are really needed after 10 minutes;
  • You have no engineering bay, then no upgrade and the risk of being murdered by Mutas in 30 sec
• 9:54 : You're sieging to late. You could have won this battle if sieged before and not clumped up. You were 10 food ahead at that moment and on the same number of bases. Use your hellion to scout the path of the tanks and siege them in advance when they see the army arrive from far. You must have your army selected on "tanks" and hit the "siege hotkey nearly by reflex when your hellions spot the army arriving.

• 10:10 : Now 15 food behind just because a bad engagement.

• 12:04 : One of the biggest problems at your level is your lack of production of units. Watch your replays and the amount of time you're production facilities are not producing. Watch your resources. Queue your resources in your production facilities as long as you don't have perfect production.

• 12:14 : 34 SCVs in your main vs 12 in your natural and in consequences a lower income in spite of the mules on the same number of bases.

• 17:34 : You're reacting too slowly to muta attack. From that point, you're too far ahead and pinned in your base. You must look before for reasons of your defeat.

Strong points

• Good opening. You were 10 food ahead at your first push.
• Will to expand often.

What could be improved

• Bad positioning of tanks and army when pushing. Scout with the hellions in front of your army and never ever get caught unsieged, never.
• Produce for each of your buildings. Each of them, all the time unless you're completely broke. Better queuing your money than not producing.
• Beware of Mutas, react quickly to their presence spreading your marines in each of the base exposed. React more quickly to their presence. Use different hotkeys for that.
• Don't rage quit

[theFatty]

Thanks for the feedback, will improve on the points u raised in my future games. Really appreciate ur analysis

[TABottles]

Hey all, I have waited a little while for feedback on my replays.

Today i've been playing on the korean server. I feel I play best there since the skill difference is very high and i'm way more motivated to play better. Here's a replay against a on the korean ladder.

I'm asking for feedback on this particular one because I feel it's one of my more solid games. If anyones nice enough to tell me what else i can do to push up the ranks it would be appreciated.

http://drop.sc/110395

Quick Comments

breadfan:

You can get a dedicated practice partner for TvT. I volunteer

[TABottles]

^yeah breadfan that would be helpful, thanks dude! i'll add you up and shiz!

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by TABottles

Hey all, I have waited a little while for feedback on my replays.

Today i've been playing on the korean server. I feel I play best there since the skill difference is very high and i'm way more motivated to play better. Here's a replay against a on the korean ladder.

I'm asking for feedback on this particular one because I feel it's one of my more solid games. If anyones nice enough to tell me what else i can do to push up the ranks it would be appreciated.

http://drop.sc/110395

I made the replay analyze on stream tonight after having fixed it thanks to Joshboy : http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/308486462

You can watch my assassination of proper English and some advice for you that I hope will be useful.

Post lost games, it's 2 times better ! When you makes mistakes but it has no importance because you win, the advice won't stick as well.

[Nemo]

Bottles, having 0 feeback when you do an analysis for someone is unpleasant and discouraging. It makes me feel that you didn't even bother to watch it.

I would like to know if :

• You could understand when I speak in the stream;
• It's not unpleasant to listen to (bad sound, bad english, to much "euh", etc);
• If you prefer screenshots analysis and if so if this one is still OK (take far less time to do)
• If the advice are pertinent.

If someone else have watch it and could tell me on those points, I would be interested.

[asdfSchnitzel]

Hey guys, this is a thread i just played on ladder versus my diamond opponant. I found this style very infuriating to deal with and i was wondering if you had any feedback on what i could do to counter it better/do damage earlier. Thanks

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by QEDSchnitzel

Hey guys, this is a thread i just played on ladder versus my diamond opponant. I found this style very infuriating to deal with and i was wondering if you had any feedback on what i could do to counter it better/do damage earlier. Thanks

Diamond . Delete, that's a job for you.

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Nemo

• You could understand when I speak in the stream;
• It's not unpleasant to listen to (bad sound, bad english, to much "euh", etc);
• If you prefer screenshots analysis and if so if this one is still OK (take far less time to do)
• If the advice are pertinent.

If someone else have watch it and could tell me on those points, I would be interested.

• Sound quality is a lot better than when we were trying to record (what did you change, just out of interest?)
• Video quality is good
• Your English is fine
• Can't speak to the feedback as PvT isn't a matchup I'm familiar with

What I might suggest is opening up Word or something at the end of the cast and typing out your main points just to reinforce them.

Good cast

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Thanks !

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Nemo

Diamond . Delete, that's a job for you.

will get around to it tomorrow

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Apth

• Sound quality is a lot better than when we were trying to record (what did you change, just out of interest?)
• Video quality is good
• Your English is fine
• Can't speak to the feedback as PvT isn't a matchup I'm familiar with

What I might suggest is opening up Word or something at the end of the cast and typing out your main points just to reinforce them.

Good cast

Apth, my hero !

Thanks for the feedback ! Ok got it for the short summary at the end.

• Sound quality is a lot better than when we were trying to record (what did you change, just out of interest?)

I bought a new laptop at work and it's more powerful than my tower at home. Same Microphone. So it was the sheer processor power and RAM I guess. I have the same Internet broadband.
I think I have now sort of 6 or 8G RAM and an Intel icore 7.
As soon as we both are awake and free we will be able to cast something.

Thanks delete.

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by QEDSchnitzel

Hey guys, this is a thread i just played on ladder versus my diamond opponant. I found this style very infuriating to deal with and i was wondering if you had any feedback on what i could do to counter it better/do damage earlier. Thanks

Game Summary
PvZ on Cloud Kingdom
FFE vs a fast third. You do a warp prism +1attack 4gate but it doesn't do significant economic damage. He goes for 3base mutaling with double spire, you stay on 2base with a blink stalker immortal composition. You attack his third, but he gets a good surround on your army with muta ling and kills all the stalkers. You get away with some units and snipe his 4th base. However, after this he keeps you on two base. You move out again and kill his third and fourth bases, but he intercepts your army on the way home and you lose everything.

I think you played that pretty well, you're a lot better at dealing with muta harass than before

Game Analysis and tips

+ Show +

You lost because of a combination of factors.

• opening
• expansion count
• unit composition

Opening
Your opening is good, but you need to refine it. You want the attack to hit as fast as possible, with as much force as possible. Every second counts, because your opening sets you up for the rest of the game.

Nexus first or forge first?
Your opponent went for a no gas opening: 16pool, 15 hatch. Against a late spawning pool, you should go nexus first, then forge, then gateway. Especially on maps with a long rush distance such as this map, Cloud Kingdom. He won't be attacking you with a 16pool. If he wanted to, he would have made an earlier one.

Against earlier pools (from 6-12), you should get the forge first, because he's 100% sure to be attacking you. Otherwise he would have done a 16pool.

for the standard 14pool into gas, it can go either way. They might be doing a speedling opening into heavy macro style, or they could be preparing for an all in. You can't really tell so you have to come back to scout later, to check whether he has taken a third by the 5 minute mark (if he hasn't it could be an all in or a 2base muta rush).

But anyway, in this game, he opened with 16pool. So you should be taking advantage of this and playing greedily.


You get the cannon before your gateway. In my opinion, you could have just built the gateway first, since it's such a long rush distance on this map. If you spot 4-6 lings trying to run into your base, you can just fully wall off with a second gateway, buying enough time for the cannon to finish.
His drone comes and harasses your building probe. This delays your gateway even more. I think there was still an opportunity to build the gateway if you microed around a bit, because his drone was just following your probe on an attack command.

(I'm focusing a lot on the gateway timing because the faster you get the gateway, the faster you get your cybernetics core, and the faster your rush will be)

If you built gateway before cannon, it would have been at 3:15.
If you built gateway as soon as you had 150 additional minerals, it would have been at 3:30.
You end up building it at 3:45. That's 30 seconds slower than it could have been.


Just another note on your opening, it's better to build 17 probes before stopping, instead of 15. It's because you just want to have as many probes as possible at this stage, because each probe makes a big difference. 18 is too many (you want to resume probe production once you put down the gateway, and 18 will supply block you). So 17 is the magic number.


Gateway finishes at 4:50. Cybernetics core should have been dropped within 5 seconds of this. It takes you 12 seconds. It might not seem like a big deal, but it all adds up in the end.


If possible, try to get the warp prism out faster. Your warp gates are done warping at about 8:20, and your first warp prism spawns 10 seconds after. Ideally, your warp prism would be about halfway to his base at this time (when gates are done, enter phasing mode, warp in 4 units, then go back into transport mode. once you get to his base, your gates should be ready for a second warp in).

I think you didn't have enough gateways, as well. If you built 2 extra gateways earlier, you would have 6 gates to work with, instead of just four. The three that you did build were too late and didn't help in the fight.


Expansion Count
A rule that zergs tend to follow is "stay one base ahead of protoss". By this logic, if the you are on equal bases, you're in a good position. This is why zerg gets a fast 3rd vs a FFE, and why many transitions out of FFE are usually pushes designed to kill the third, or do significant economic damage.

So if you end up taking out his third, or doing a lot of damage, you should stay on two base for a while. You're comfortable being on equal bases.
But if, like in this case, you don't kill the third or do significant economic damage, you have to expand as soon as safely possible.
When the zerg holds off your push, they're likely to drone up and add more tech, as opposed to doing a huge counter attack. So most of the time it's safe to get a third, as long as you build a good amount of cannons (3-4). The extra gas can be used for sentries, which are always good, and/or tech/upgrades.

What ultimately end up costing you the game was the fact that you didn't have a third base. You were pretty much on one mining base after the 17 minute mark. I suggest aiming to have a third base completed by the 16 minute mark, at the latest. Preferably earlier. A protoss on 3 mining bases with 70+ probes is very hard to beat in the lategame.


Unit Composition
When you do your attack, you spot his spire halfway done. You already have a twilight council done and you research blink, which is good. But then you build immortals. Immortal/blink stalker is a good composition against roach based armies, but against mutalisks and zerglings, immortals are actually the most useless unit in the protoss tech tree. You can use the robo to build a few observers instead. If you just have them spotting the area around your base, you'll be prepared for mutas with blink stalkers no matter where he attacks from.

Ideally you want to have your army to have lots of gateway units. Zealots for the lings. Stalkers for the mutas. And high templar, archons and sentries, which just help a lot. If you cut the immortals, you'll have enough money to afford to tech up and expand (third base is crucial).


After a while you make a transition into double stargate phoenix. I don't recommend this. Phoenix are only good verse mutalisks when you already have a few before the spire is complete. 4 phoenix still won't beat 24 mutas (but maybe this will change in the next patch!). For now, it's better to focus on gateway units and templar.

engagement/positioning in battles

Unfortunately your forcefields were late here, and he gets a surround. But don't stop forcefielding. You still had enough energy for a lot more. If you forcefielded around where the red line is, you could have prevented a lot of damage from the lings.
Also, try to keep your warp prism in a safe place for warping in. You should have had it more north west, away from the mutas. This ends up costing you, as he snipes the warp prism while you are warping in 7 stalkers.


important: When you have an engagement like this, you should blink all of your stalkers under the mutas. That way, you have all of your stalkers attacking mutas, and his zerglings will be attacking zealots.
It's not so bad for this battle, since he didn't have enough lings anyway.

In Summary

• refine opening to be faster and stronger
• keep up in expansions
• no immortals vs muta ling

Really, I think it was just being stuck on 3 bases that lost you the game. You dealt with everything else pretty well

Quick Comments

	Stallion:	baws analysis bro ^_^
	Apth:
	Nemo:	Wow wow wow !
	asdfSchnitzel:	Thanks for the help! Will take on board when i see this style again ^^

[Fenner]

Hey guys, I really struggle with ZvP.

In this particular replay i go 3 hatch and he goes ffe into 8 gate, I macro well and realize that hes going 7/8 gate so I cut on drones and had 10 more drones than him. The problem is he completely rolls me and I have no idea what I can change here to make such a big difference.

One thing I did badly this game is to not get my ovies in position quickly enough for saccing, which is something I will focus on in the future but I knew he was going for some heavy gate allin anyway so in this replay is it semi-irrelevant.

Also my spawning overlords go into the middle of the battle, I need to focus on putting my ovies in safe spots as soon as i build them to save me from this happening.

I feel like I'm missing something much bigger here as I don't even get close to holding it off. I'm not looking for any really in-depth analysis but I would appreciate if someone would skip through and see if they can see anything major I'm missing to get crushed so hard by this push.

Thanks guys

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=773

[Apth]

Originally Posted by fenner

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=773

First off, I'd like to ask any higher level Zerg players around to take a look at this, as doubtless there are several things I'm going to miss because of the level of play.

hok -

Spines
This is pretty much the only solution I have to your problem. You macro'd well, you scouted what was coming, there were no positioning or compositional errors.
Yet he ate your head.

I think a line of spines at your natural would have given you the extra damage output you needed to kill that Stalker/Zealot ball. It would have meant losing your third, putting you on even bases, but I don't think your opponent would have been in a good position to expand had his aggression failed.

He had no 'control' tech, so to speak - Voids, DTs, Blink - so if you had bounced that aggression you would have been in a really good spot. I think spines would be worth the drone/resource investment.

Again, if any higher level Zerg's could have a look at this, I'd appreciate it.

Cheers yo.

Quick Comments

Fenner:

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by fenner

Hey guys, I really struggle with ZvP.

In this particular replay i go 3 hatch and he goes ffe into 8 gate, I macro well and realize that hes going 7/8 gate so I cut on drones and had 10 more drones than him. The problem is he completely rolls me and I have no idea what I can change here to make such a big difference.

One thing I did badly this game is to not get my ovies in position quickly enough for saccing, which is something I will focus on in the future but I knew he was going for some heavy gate allin anyway so in this replay is it semi-irrelevant.

Also my spawning overlords go into the middle of the battle, I need to focus on putting my ovies in safe spots as soon as i build them to save me from this happening.

I feel like I'm missing something much bigger here as I don't even get close to holding it off. I'm not looking for any really in-depth analysis but I would appreciate if someone would skip through and see if they can see anything major I'm missing to get crushed so hard by this push.

Thanks guys

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=773

few things to note:
-6 drones mining from your third. in this particular game, the third cost you more than you got from it
-worst map for fast 3base against FFE

If you can't take on his army and he's knocking at your front door, pull drones. They hard counter stalkers. Don't fight a battle that you can't win.
I think you needed spines, although on this map they wouldn't really help since he can go either to your third or natural. Whenever I do gateway pushes, I usually back off if there's 2-3 spines up, with roaches behind.
I don't know exactly how you could do it, but if you could somehow got a good amount of lings to flank from behind, there were no forcefields to stop them.
Would like to see an overlord here

He did an extremely greedy FFE in response to your opening. If you moved in with a couple of lings at the start, you could have harassed his mineral line and forced a second cannon at the least.

That's all of the little things I can think of. Maybe you should do a speedling opening on this map. I don't think a fast third before gas will work against this, no matter what.

Quick Comments

Fenner:

[Fenner]

Thanks for the responses guys.

Honestly I never think to use spines because splitting them between bases seems terribly inefficient, I have never actually tried them though. I will definitely experiment with them a bit more to see if they're stronger than I think they are, probably better than spamming lings either way

@Apth Saccing the third is definitely an option but I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with it. But I like what you said about tech, I could sac it then come out with a timing of either roach hydra or roach infestor before he manages to turtle back up into some tech which will be very strong against some gateway composition with a very low aount of sentries.

@delete I never thought about that overlord spot haha, thanks! I know fast 3rd on this map isn't ideal however I'm not fond of any 2 base macro opening styles. I do like 1 or 2 base allins however

Actually thinking about it even more, since my 3rd is so far away from my nat and i was going somewhat heavy on the lings, counter attacking whilst saccing the 3rd and spining up my natural may well be a good option. I think this could work really well in fact. This actually sounds like a great response at least in theory and in my own head!

Thanks for your responses, they got me thinking about it in more details. Always nice to hear other peoples views.