[Maynarde]

Just merged sneak's thread with this one.

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by sneak

Hi I tried banshee opener agains a protoss. and I always get rolled when i do it. Could someone check my production and give me some feedback please.

Whenever you do a 1-1-1 opening, you are vulnerable against a 4gate. If you don't know what a 1-1-1 or a 4gate is, I suggest you research them as they are common builds which you should know the terminology for.

To beat a 4gate, you need 3 things:
1. Bunker(s)
2. Wall.
3. SCVs


There are a lot of things to know about executing a 1-1-1, but for now focus on not dying before banshee control.

I suggest looking at how the best terrans do it, if you can find any recent 1-1-1 replays on youtube or a terran stream.

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Nice and short :)

[mGGmetaStatic]

your first mistake was not vetoing Tal'Darim

you need to be more active with your scouting, that pylon outside your base is so common it should spawn there. check for it every game.

When your scv got to his base he had gas which you didn't see and he was saving chronoboost. sometimes they're just bad but more often than not they will be dumping it all into warpgate.

also he wasn't making a zealot so you could delay a bunker, but you do need a bunker when doing a 111 regardless because 1 Zealot can ruin your day

also check out happy's 1-1-1, it's the whole reason I choose terran

You Tube

You Tube

Quick Comments

Nemo:

Nice advice but it's preferable not to veto.

[Trinion]

Hi everyone
I'd like some advice/tips/criticisms on my play.
Here is a game I just played on the Korean/Taiwanese server, diamond PvT (Decided to practice on KR to improve!) : http://drop.sc/214231

Watching the replay myself, I can clearly see my engagements were poor and basically trading extremely inefficiently. I have not come across this style of play before and during the game I couldn't really figure out a way around it so I just chucked units at him Would immortals have worked better?

I am sure there are tons of other mistakes and things I can improve on, reactions, army placements, hotkey efficiencies etc, and if someone (anyone ) could point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful

And if anyone regularly plays on KR/TW who can play practice games with me, please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Trinion

Hi everyone
I'd like some advice/tips/criticisms on my play.
Here is a game I just played on the Korean/Taiwanese server, diamond PvT (Decided to practice on KR to improve!) : http://drop.sc/214231

Watching the replay myself, I can clearly see my engagements were poor and basically trading extremely inefficiently. I have not come across this style of play before and during the game I couldn't really figure out a way around it so I just chucked units at him Would immortals have worked better?

I am sure there are tons of other mistakes and things I can improve on, reactions, army placements, hotkey efficiencies etc, and if someone (anyone ) could point me in the right direction I'd be very grateful

And if anyone regularly plays on KR/TW who can play practice games with me, please let me know!

Thanks in advance!

When you scout something different to what you are used to, you have to try and think "what is my opponent trying to do, what is he gaining from being a hipster, what is he losing?"

In this case, rushing for tanks and taking a super fast third CC. He was completely sacrificing map control and the ability to attack in exchange for economy. As soon as you saw his third CC and only one barracks, you should have taken your third.

You did take it fast, so that's good, but you could have taken it faster.


Against these mech plays, once he takes a third base, get a warp prism and throw some zealots in his main base. Even though he'll probably take out the warp prism and all of the zealots after a minute or two (vikings), you should be able to do a little bit of damage anyway. If you can kill an armory that's huge. If you get a couple of SCVS and some addons, that's fine as well.

Also against these mech plays, you pretty much want to have as few zealot stalker sentry as possible. They just won't do very well against tanks. You want to have units like archons, immortals, colossus, 3-4 HT, but not void rays or carriers since he is making vikings. If he isn't making vikings, you can have an air transition, but most of the time he will. Void rays would do well vs the planetary walls, though.

The thing to notice about that composition is that it's all gas. You'll have like 2k minerals and 0 gas. That's why it's fine to throw away the minerals as zealots and warp prisms. With these extra minerals you can also expand. It doesn't matter if you don't have enough probes to mine from them, just put the nexus down anyway, and some cannons in case of hellion harass. It's 20 mins in this replay atm, and he has attacked you a total of 0 times.

Against tanks, you have to attack where the tanks aren't. Otherwise, as you noticed, you won't be trading efficiently. It's not easy, of course, since he has planetaries and walls of missile turrets, but there are always places where you can break through. In this game, you could have had a warp prism fly around his 4th and warp in zealots at his third, (and his natural and main, since he had no missile turrets at the back of his base). Imagine if you had 10 zealots in his main. He has like one tank to defend, the rest of his army is camping at his 4th. How is he going to deal with it? He has to run all of his hellions back, and suddenly his tanks don't have a buffer anymore.


In summary:
-warp prisms (with speed upgrade)
-stop making zealots and stalkers with your main army
-try not to attack into planetaries

Quick Comments

	TAEdgE:	You're awesome for doing these posts
	Trinion:	Thank you sir! Very informative :D Re-reading now :)

[Pocshi]

Hey, i always seem to lose my pvps atm i'm a gold protoss and wishing to improve, any help?

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by Pocshi

Hey, i always seem to lose my pvps atm i'm a gold protoss and wishing to improve, any help?

That wasn't too bad. Here are some things that you need to know.

If you get to the midgame in PvP, the player with colossus almost always wins. The only thing colossus is weak to is a timing before there are 3 or more colossus. These timings (chargelot archon allins) are beaten by having a gateway wall at the natural.

If both players get colossus, the player who gets more colossus almost always wins. When you attacked him at 18 mins, he had 9 colossus and you had 6. 9 is more than 6, therefore you lose.


So how did he get more colossus? He made his robotics bay a lot earlier than you. (he made it at 9 mins, you made it at 10:40). Then he made a second robotics facility at 12:30. You didn't make a second robotics facility.

There are more intricate parts of PvP when both players go double robo, but they're less important until around +.


In this game you opted to go twilight tech first, while he went for colossus tech first. Charge zealots are very strong until they get 3+ colossus. After that, charge zealots are completely useless. Almots completely useless. So if you go for twilight tech, you have to make something happen before he gets 3+ colossus. You can do a gateway all in with archons. You can take a fast third base, knowing he can't attack until he gets 3+ colossus. But if you sit back on 2 base and just macro with twilight tech, you can't win.


Gateway all ins tend to be weak as well, which is why most people just go for the double robo. If you want to do the same:

1. 2gate robo
2. expand
3. add robotics support bay after expand (also you should have 3 or more immortals)
4. go up to 5 gateways, and add a forge
5. when you have enough money to produce colossus constantly from your first robo, add a second robo
6. chronoboost colossus and win

A crucial thing you need to do is actively scout with your observer. I noticed you just flew your observer over his base and forgot about it. You need to know those crucial bits of information such as:

• does he have a stargate? if so, I need to go up to 8gateways and attack him very soon with a colossus/stalker army
• does he have only one robo, while I have two? If so, I can't lose this game
• does he have any forges? if so, I need to match his upgrades. If not, I can defend all game and hit a timing where I have +3 attack and he doesn't

There's a lot of things you need to consider, but the main thing you need to do is go for that double robo and win the colossus war.

Quick Comments

Nemo:

"9 is more than 6, therefore you lose." ^^

[TheGentleman]

Originally Posted by Pocshi

Hey, i always seem to lose my pvps atm i'm a gold protoss and wishing to improve, any help?

Well, I'm no expert but there are definitely some things which stand out.

First some general knowledge:

+ [General Knowledge!] +

In mirror matches taking your first expansion is always a risk (for either player). It's during this time that the player who expands is down 400 minerals worth of units which can be the difference between victory and defeat. In this case your opponent decides to expand at around 7 minutes after receiving no pressure giving you the choice of either going all in and ending him or expanding yourself (you decide the latter).

In the macro game a lot of the time the match comes down to who has more colossi (when you attacked he had 9 you had 5 (plus one on its way)). It's also important to note that as the game goes on it's the gas units that are more valuable. Knowing what units your opponent has before you attack can help you determine the result of combat prior to combat commencing and if necessary gives you time to fix it so that combat will be in your favour when you do eventually engage.

So now that I've covered a very (very) basic overview of PvP it's time to point out some of your mistakes.

• Just prior to the engagement (18:16) you have 2 immortals, 6 collosi, 6 stalkers, 4 sentries and 27 zealots (he has 2 immortals, 9 colossi, 7 stalkers, 3 sentries and 21 zealots)
• You did not know what his composition was prior to attacking (if you did you would have known you needed more colossi.
• You didn't have enough production facilities (and weren't producing from your robos continuously to keep up on colossi count)
• You had NO UPGRADES he had +2 attack (so even he was sloppy with the upgrades but he was ahead of you which is all that matters)
• Towards the end of the game the zealots (and to some extent stalkers) mean less than they did at the start of the game (especially once you max out) at this point in time you can start throwing away these units to replace them with more valuable tankier units such as archons, voidrays or more colossi (gas heavy units).

Remember if ever you're behind in something (e.g. upgrades or colossi) you can always get an additional production/research facility to try and catch up (click on enemy units to find out what the current upgrades are).

For most of the game you actually are ok with your resource management and your early game scouting isn't horrid, it's just a few of the basic things which will come with more practice.

In short:

• Upgrades
• Units Production (and your composition)
• Knowing what your opponents composition is

P.S. I just noticed delete beat me to the punch... take his advice more than mine... he's awesome

Quick Comments

	Nemo:	You're awesome too :)
	xGKingdelete:	you make completely valid points as well that i didn't cover

[Pocshi]

Yeah thank you guys, I think the part about opponents composition gets me killed very often and sometimes I get too focused on one part of the game and then my macro slips a lot

[Ghosty]

http://drop.sc/215010



Any advice in general is appreciated, I think my decision making & macro is quite off atm though.
I've been trying to experiment with my style a bit, not going so much for the Roach-max style... I feel like I'm still finding a middle-ground between getting the right amount of army vs. the tech & expos]

Thanks

[mGGAequitas]

Originally Posted by Ghosty

http://drop.sc/215010

Hey ghosty, i'm not zerg but since no one else is answering i'll give it a try. Also the game is quite long which makes it a lot harder to analyse so I probably will stop after a big game changing mistake of yours.

Ok so I'm thinking that you are way too ling heavy trying to go for those counter attacks, which isn't what you want to do because you are losing not only your ling counter attack but the rest of your army as well. So you are sacrificing your army too many times and not trading very well.

You also need to work on spending your resources. you are floating too much and you are lacking in larvae so build some macro hatches and remember to inject.

You have an opportunity to chain fungal his entire voidray army but you don't for some reason.

27 minutes you lose your entire broodlord festor army, because you have no supporting units, these two units are support units and need roach/ling with them to protect them. That counter attack does absolutely nothing. At this stage of the game, the army is more valuable than the economy, so trading your army for his economy with ling runbys isn't a great idea.

You manage to take out his counter attack which is good. But you lose a lot of your army and all your mining bases. Make sure you transfer your idle drones(you have 42 of them at this point).

34 minutes you have a good position in his base but again it's only broodlords. you need some 'meat' to your army. A bunch of roaches and you would just be able to a move him. But you are making lings vs archon/blinkstalker/storm which is really not the best idea

you should scout for his 4th since he must have one by now, and then a bunch of lings to kill all the probes would be great.

He blinks under your broods takes them all out for nothing practically but you have so much more economy you are able to make a lot bigger army.

and then you win? it's probably better to post games where you lose because it's easier to point out why you lost as opposed to games where you win, so you obviously did fine.

Quick Comments

	Nemo:	Nice :)
	xGKingdelete:	gj!

[mGGDrGooSe]

Heya Ghosty, I had a look at your replay and think there are some very basic things you can take care of to roflstomp players like this.
Essentially it comes down to inactive queens and larva early game, and constant supply blocking (like almost completey blocked the entire game past 36 supply or something. You had very small drone count and army count right from the start. I know you were trying to do something other than the roach max style, but I think (personal opinion) all games need to at least start out in that style, just because it pretty much keeps you safe from everything until you can work out exactly what they are doing. Anyway, to get started
Opening - basically you had no economy in the early game

• You pulled 11 drones to kill the scouting probes, 3 actually managed to hit it and it still escaped. This also cost you 50 minerals (when the 14th drone pops you should have had enough to build a pool, but you only had 150)
• I'm not going to comment on they way you dealt with the pylon block. It's not how I would have dealt with it, but others can probably explain the pros/cons of each strat better than me - I don't know that it really makes too much of a difference.
• 3.15 pool pops, 3.30 you start a queen. larva inject pops every 45 seconds, thats 1/3 of 4 larva you have lost - you just killed a drone. Also, you have two idle larva while the 2nd base is building because you are microing lings against pylons - prioritise the larva, only takes a second to spam SD, then you can go back to the lings.
• There is another 10 second gap when the queen pops before you actually inject. That's another lost drone. When the first queen finishes, it looks like you are waiting for the pylon at the nat to die before laying a hatch. I'm assuming you prefer to go hatch before 2nd queen like the koreans? Thing is, the pylon has half life left. Better to have started the 2nd queen, because the hatch would have gone down at the same time.
• 6.42 Two fo your queens have 17 and 19 energy respectively - thats 36 energy combined, which is 1.44 injects or almost 6 larva that havent been built.
• supply blocked at 46 and 54 - just practice really to stop this from happening. Everyone gets them from time to time. But it just compounds your slow start to this game.
• 8.00 43 drones and 10 idle larva - no drones building. 8.10, you now have 22 idle larva. I is sadface TT.

Cleaning up these issues, there is no reason you couldnt have 50 drones, perhaps even 52-55. Your opponent hasnt gone immo/sentry this game (although you dont know that because you havent scouted anything except two cannons at the front. Whilst this could indicate a defensive or techy path, it might also just be a weaker all-in that can still kill you), but if they did, IME this would have meant you could have squeezed out another half round of drones. Hitting 60-65 drones before the push comes (at this level, maybe not at higher levels). This makes the all-in so much easier to deal with.

General stuff beyond the opening
Running on 3 gas for quite a while, could have gotten gas up sooner (after a scout, which is another thing you need to work on) and then started teching earlier than you did. As it was you started teching about 11 mins, getting both infestor pit and spire, and then start making infestors, corruptors, roaches and lings all at the same time, whilst not getting upgrades (2/2 starts at the 20 minute mark). IME this kind of production is weak against a protoss. Perhaps a smoother way to go is roach/ling initially to make sure you are safe. When you are safe, start infestors and drones until you have a decent number of infestors (6-8 by preference) whilst getting upgrades. Get some more infestors AND DO SOMETHING WITH THEM. Poke at him, see what he is making, deny expos, etc. Whilst this is occuring, you can get spire and hive and begin getting some corruptors (with some drones).

The idea is, that during this period of the game you are setting up your infestor/corruptor/spine (with whatever roach/ling is still alive) mid-late game, while expanding and keeping tabs on what the other guy is doing. Once you get everything set up, it's a pretty smooth transition into having spines protecting the paths where your broods are not at, and having the infestor/corruptor/broods whaling away on his arse. As Aeq has said, having some lings and roaches with your broods to protect them is pretty important too, but basically i wouldn't waste money on them unless in dire emergency, 3-4 ultras provide the same purpose. You shouldn't need too much of a ground support, as the positioning of your broods and infestor micro should keep them safe. Through most engagements with this comp,I have the ground army at the back, and only run in if they manage to get units around my fungals that could possible threaten my infestors.

A note about the expansions
The 4th you took is directly in the path of his moving army. You know this, and yet you still dont move your army to protect it or get it somewhere more secure. You then take the 5th on the same side of the map. If double expanding like that, Probably better to take them at opposite ends, force him to either split armies to deal with them, or ensure that at least one of them gets up while he deals with the other one. You also push out in a fashion that puts him between your army and your building bases, which makes it a bit harder on yourself as well (especially as you engage in a choke and ffs completely destroy you). Basically, you both have really small armies at this stage of the game. If you had spent all larva, you could have just dealt with his little push and then rallied to his base and killed him with your 3 saturated base economy, except its 16 min, you only have 68 drones 140 total supply. More generally your engagements always favour him as well, engage in some spines when possible - fungals + spine = a dead gateway army.

After the next engage at about 20 min - it's 160 vs 80 supplies - and he still has nothing beyond gateways. Just go kill him! Also it's 20 minutes and you haven't scouted his main...
Summary

• Prioritise injects and larva spending over everything - especially in the early game, but also during engagements, make sure you have units rallying to fight during the fight.
• Have a smoother method of getting to the late game army comp that you want. Think about what you want to build when and in what order and then think about the best way to use that army (offensively or defencesively?). It's a game of transitioning between baby steps in my eye.
• Choose your engagements with more care, ensure that you have the good positioning. Pick a spot on the map that you need to hold, and place your army in a position that can hold it effectively.
• Think about how to expand on each map in a manner that allows you army to be most efffective. Do you want to expand along your/their attack path or away from it? How are you protecting the bases? WIth spines, army or both. How are the other expos protected in this situation?

Quick Comments

	xGKingdelete:	sick analysis!
	Nemo:	Wow

[S2Glow]

http://drop.sc/217955

never mind about what i trying to do , i am just curious how does zerg react when protoss try to canon up on nat. should i send alot of drones? what if he build 3 canon ? i gotta send how many drone.. thanks for helping!

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by S2Glow

http://drop.sc/217955

never mind about what i trying to do , i am just curious how does zerg react when protoss try to canon up on nat. should i send alot of drones? what if he build 3 canon ? i gotta send how many drone.. thanks for helping!

since you didn't go pool first, you don't have anything but drones to hold off any cheesy things from protoss. So keep that in mind whenever you 15hatch their natural - you also leave yourself vulnerable to cannon harass.

with your second overlord, leave it at your natural. In this game, you saw the pylon too late. If you saw the pylon when it was halfway done, you could have pulled 3-4 drones to go attack it, and some more if you saw him begin to make cannons. I don't know what you could have done better afterwards - once the cannons are up, they're up.

So send a few drones once you seem him starting the pylon, and send a lot more drones once you see him starting the cannons. Sometimes, if the cannons are placed well, you won't be able to kill it even with all your drones, and you just have to wait until you have enough lings, queens, or roaches.

The easiest way to avoid a cannon rush is to do a pool first opening against protoss.

[Ghosty]

DrGooSe & Aeq, thanks very much for putting the time & effort in to such good replies. I've read through them a few times, still trying to condense them down into manageable chunks and getting custom partners whilst online is another thing but your help is appreciated.

Thanks again

[sneak]

hey i know i should have built a bunker but I am going way too macro heavy and i dont know how to change the path of units/tech labs reactors etc to be able to defend.

I have plans to play aggressive and expoing behind that. can someone help please.

[mGGMueX]

@Sneak:
Game 1:
-You were very late putting 3 scvs on gas.
-You should get your orbital command before the second supply depot.
-If you're going for a tech play like banshees you should wall off to deny scouting, especially on a huge map like TDA.
-You forgot to check the second gas geyser at the protoss's main, if there's no gas it's either a really fast nexus or proxy gates.
-Late putting 3 scvs on the second gas. If you're going banshee you REALLY need that gas.
-Pulling scvs to kill a pylon after you have a marine out is redundant.
-Build the starport right next to the factory and build the tech lab after. Starports take longer to build than tech labs.
-You should be scouting to see if he's expanded. If there's no expansion after 5 minutes, build a bunker.
-You were delayed in building a tank and researching siege mode even though you could afford it.
-Your SCV production wasn't constant.

If you'd been on time with all of these things, you would have had a bunker, a tank in siege mode, and 2 cloaked banshees to crush the push. Note that he had no detection, you still could have won that with cloaked banshees.

Game 2:
-Your opening was a bit delayed with building the factory. With this build you should have just enough money to build an SCV and your factory the moment the orbital finishes, and then a marine. It's best to build the factory/starport off to the side so it's harder to scout.
-Build the starport with the scv that made the factory, right above it, then make a tech lab on the factory to switch over. This can be building while the reactor on the barracks is building and the starport is building.
-You never scouted at all. You should scout with an scv after you've started the first gas geyser.

IMO you were mixing around the addons too much, so you couldn't spend all your money. If you're going 1/1/1, follow the tried and true method of reactored rax for marines, tech lab factory for tanks and tech lab starport for banshees. There is really no way you should have lost that if you followed the correct build, the protoss only had a single gate, no warpgate tech, and a forge but no upgrades and only 15 probes.

Quick Comments

xGKingdelete:

nice! would like to reiterate "reactored rax, tech lab factory, tech lab starport"

[Pocshi]

I'm a gold league protoss player
I usually lose all my pvp games
Thank you very much

[mGGAequitas]

Originally Posted by Pocshi

I'm a gold league protoss player
I usually lose all my pvp games
Thank you very much

Ok so you lost to a weird korean 4 gate, you managed to kill all the pylons before he got warp which was good. but then lost because you couldn't keep him out of your base.

so your warp gate finished at 6:20 and you have 2 gates and a sentry and you know he is being agressive so make sure you turn ur gates into warp gates (you forgot to do this for ages) and then warp in more sentries right away and make sure you keep forcefielding the bottom of the ramp and chronoboost your gateways. Once you get 6 or 7 sentries you can make other units since that number is enough to forcefield the ramp forever with a fair bit of overlap.
Then you could tech to collosus and then go and kill him.

(also make sure you are always mining gas with 3 in each, you forget to put probes in your 2nd gas for ages because your distracted a bit and when you do remember you only put 2 probes in, which may have delayed extra sentries.)

Quick Comments

xGKingdelete:

nice, these are basic mistakes which should be easy to fix as well

[mGGmetaStatic]

I haven't played many 14CC games and usually don't fail so hard on the base race but I would like some external feedback on what I could have done better.