[xGKingdelete]

going to do QEDSchnitzel's first game. will edit this post soon

PvZ on metalopolis

Game Summary
You 4gate. He holds it off, and takes the high yield expansion while you take your natural. You push out and force a cancel, so he takes his natural third. You go for collosus on two base, while he goes muta ling with some banelings. He doesnt do substantial damage with muta harass. You take your third, he tries to deny it but does 0 damage and loses a lot of his ground forces. You move out immediately to counter attack, but your force is mainly comprised of zealots, and your only anti air are sentries and a 7 stalkers without blink. You lose your entire army. 20 minutes in. The game goes on for 10 more minutes, but I'm going to stop here.

Game Analysis and Tips
Okay, you lost this one purely because of your unit composition. Simple as that. If you scout mutas, throw down twilight council straight away and start getting a decent amount of blink stalkers. Archons also help a lot as well. Pretty much all the top protoss players will suggest high templar as well. for storm, although I personally don't get them.

So yeah. That's pretty much it, I'll analyse the way you played and give you some more tips, but you ultimately lost because of your lack of anti air.


1)You guys have a bit of a chat at the start, and he seems like a nice player, which he is. Unfortunately, you tell him that you aren't going FFE, and that you hate mutas. That's pretty much scouting for him, and telling him how to win!

2)At 14 supply you plant a pylon in his base, for the 4gate which you will be doing later. I don't suggest doing this. Zergs usually check in and around their base with their first set of lings. His first lings came out at 3:45, and your warpgate tech finished at 6:20. He had plenty of time to find that pylon, which he did.

A side note: you can get warp tech a lot faster than 6:20 for your 4gate, if you plan to continue doing this. You had the build order right, but you were late to build your buildings. At 1:50 you had 150 minerals, but you had no probe waiting at the ramp to build the gateway. You build it at 1:55. Your gateway finishes at 3:00, but you build your cybernetics core at 3:22. That means that your warp tech is already 27 seconds slower, so your 4gate timing is 27 seconds slower. Which is a lot of time. Zerglings take 24 seconds to build. Spine crawlers take 50.


Unfortunately, it's not easy to transition out of a failed 4gate. Because you commited to the 4gate, you were playing from behind. Keep that in mind. You weren't necessarily playing bad, it's just that he started out with an advantage.


3)After this, your unit composition is zealot sentry. I strongly advise against this in almost any PvZ game. Most zergs go for roaches, which are very effective against zealot-sentry armies. While some zealots are good to have to deal with zerglings, you want to focus more on having stalkers. You can still protect your army from zerglings with forcefields.


4)Next issue is scouting. With your observer, you want to look around the zergs entire base so you know exactly what tech he has (and doesn't have). Your observer sees that his lair isn't done. But you don't scout behind the mineral line. Granted, there was nothing behind the mineral line. But that's still intel that you need. If you look behind the mineral line and see no roach warren there, or anywhere else, you know for sure that he isn't going to have any roaches, and that he's commited to ling/baneling. The most common followup for mass speedling against protoss is mutas. So you could have prepared for the mutas right then, if you had that information. This is at 11:57.



Your observer goes back and camps over his army for a while. Be active with the observer. By now, his lair has to be done. You should have went back into the main, to see what lair tech your opponent has added on. He builds his spire at 12:25. You check in his main again at 13:15. If you spotted it straight away, that's 50 more seconds you would have to prepare for mutas. However, you don't actually end up spotting it. You don't check behind the mineral line. Make sure you do.



You end up checking behind his mineral line at 14:16, but by now his spire is complete (it finished at 14:05), and he has 4 mutas in production. If you scouted it earlier, you would have had plenty of time to warp in a good amount of stalkers and to begin researching blink.

Thankfully, this game, he only killed 5 probes with those mutas. Good cannon placement


5)Army management and positioning.
You have your army running as a stream of units. Try to avoid this, otherwise the fight might begin before the majority of your army arrives.


As you can see here



Try to keep your army together. All of your sentries and stalkers fight the mutas (and die, you really need a less zealot-focused army composition). You needed those forcefields against the banelings. His banelings were doing 43 damage to your zealots. Almost 3 hit kill. You clean up the ground army anyway, but you have no answer for his 17 mutas, and your army dies anyway.


But in reality, even with perfect micro, you couldn't have won that fight. Since you didnt have enough stalkers, those mutas alone would have killed your entire army.

In Summary
There are a lot of little things that I pointed out above, but it all came down to your unit composition. Make sure you build the right composition against what you scout. Zealot immortal collosus sentry would absolutely decimate a ling/roach army, but he went for ling/bane/muta. Against that you need archons, (high templar), blink stalkers, and sentries.

So yes. It looks like you don't know the proper response to mutalisks. There are a lot of things you need to know against mutas, but that takes a long time to explain and read, I'm sure there are many threads on the SC2SEA and the rest of the internet about them (I made one myself!). But for now, just remember that you need blink stalkers, archons, and high templar for storm.

Quick Comments

	Nemo:	You have lucky guys to have such good work !
	asdfSchnitzel:	Thanks for the help =D
	cruxBsK:	Man this is awesome I love this way cause i cant watch games at work

[Paroxysm]

Do you guys need some more help with this thread? I'd love to lend a hand

[aLtMrFool]

So much love for replay analysis

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

Do you guys need some more help with this thread? I'd love to lend a hand

Dude, jump in. Even if someone's already done an analysis for a rep, if you think you can offer some helpful advice, go right ahead.

Looking forward to it

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

Do you guys need some more help with this thread? I'd love to lend a hand

Yes, all help is gladly accepted.

[asdfSchnitzel]

After taking the advice from your analysis of my pvz on Metalopolis i tried to fix the point you mentioned on a pvz on antiga shipyard. I thought i played well, hard countering his mutas and making him stay on 2 base while taking my third, but for some reason i cannot identify, i lost the game. What did i do wrong?

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by ThePandarine

Hi there Need a replay analysis for a friend He has recently run into problems with which I find a little bit strange since he plays (). Both of us are in the same league though he's Top 8 whereas I'm climbing my way to Top 25 one game a day I decided to play him to see what's up.

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=686

Anyways, a quick recap of what happened on my end is that I decided to do my usual TvP opening (which I think most of my clanmates would recognise) but with a twist as I decided I wanted to play a little bit more safer this time around. Please ignore the blatant !@#$ed up macro, lack of buildings and lack of drops (which is something he has a problem with too)

It was a constant to-and-fro battle with me almost losing if it weren't for upgrades kicking in and some luck on my side.

So, yeah. Looking forward for the analysis. I'm sure he would like get past this recent block

GLHF and Thanks

After passing the week battling to fix my stream. I hoped it will work, but it's still awfully bad sound quality. There what I have done nonetheless if you can hear it : http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/305378443. I might have seen this game 3 or 4 times now trying to do it so I won't do more on it, sorry. I think you can't get the message even if it's painful to hear.

To make it short:

• Maverick:
  • Very good economy
  • You don't build enough army (warp and Robo)
  • Not teching enough( Templar for storm and upgrades)
• Panda:
  • Better econ now but still not perfect
  • Still very good army management but no drops
  • Very good upgrade and bio Medivac, double starport
  • Forgot the Ghosts that are usefull even without templar

If anyone has a good idea for my sound tell me, I'm desesperate now. When pausing the game it's better.

[xGKingdelete]

Originally Posted by QEDSchnitzel

After taking the advice from your analysis of my pvz on Metalopolis i tried to fix the point you mentioned on a pvz on antiga shipyard. I thought i played well, hard countering his mutas and making him stay on 2 base while taking my third, but for some reason i cannot identify, i lost the game. What did i do wrong?

Yes, you did play pretty well by forcing him to stay on two base, but you lost because the mutalisks still did a lot of damage (killing 18 probes), and because of the way you engaged his army. A lot of people complain about protoss being too powerful because of forcefields and psi storm. It's true, in a way. Protoss is a lot more micro-reliant than the other two races. If you can place good forcefields and be quick with psi storm, then you can still beat an opponent who is macroing better than you. However, if you struggle with micro, you can still lose even if you are macroing better than your opponent. I think that's what happened in this game.

Game Summary
He does a gasless expand, you do a 3gate expand. He goes for a low economy 2base mutalisk rush. You tech up to blink stalkers, and prepare for mutalisks with cannons in your mineral lines. He picks off 18 probes with the mutalisks, and transitions out of mutalisks into roach hydra. You deny his third base and tech up to both high templar and collosus. He retakes his third. You take your third. He attacks, and wins.

Game Analysis and Tips
1)Okay, so the first issue I have with this game is scouting. Aside from your first probe scout, you didn't scout his main base for the entire game. So you didn't scout his early roach warren, which he could have used for an all-in but didn't, and you didn't scout his spire, or the nydus network.

You did end up doing the right thing (blink stalkers and cannon in the mineral line), but you did this blindly. If he went for a roach hydra timing attack, blink stalkers wouldn't have been enough to hold that off, or to put pressure on him if he decided to macro up and take more bases.

Make sure you scout what he's doing before you choose your army composition. If you scout an early spire, then you know you have to prepare for mutas. If you scout a hydralisk den, then you know you should go for your standard collosus deathball. If you scout a roach warren and no other tech, then you know you'll need a few immortals to deal with mass roach.

So after you 3gate expand, you have to either:
-add a robo and get a quick observer OR
-research hallucination and use hallucinated phoenix to scout

Another thing to remember: If he isn't taking his third base and it looks like he isn't planning to, he's most likely going for mutalisks off two base. Or, he could be going for some 2base timing attack. Either way, you have to scout his base and prepare to defend accordingly.


2)When mutalisks start to harass your mineral line, you have to run your probes away as soon as possible. A lot of people think "nah, I'm only going to lose 2-3 probes, I should keep mining so I don't lose mining time". But that's wrong. Any probe you lose has to be remade, which costs time and 50 minerals per probe. Mining time is simply not mining from the mineral patches for a short time. The minerals are still there, it's just that you haven't mined them. You're probably only going to not mine about 200-300 minerals, anyway.

Remember that the one cannon that you had wasn't to kill all 11 of his mutalisks. Its purpose was to buy time so you could run your probes away and get your stalkers back to chase the mutas away.

So run your probes away. He killed 18 probes, and lost one mutalisk. If you ran your probes away, he would probably have only killed at most 5.

3)After chasing away his mutas, you counter attack. This could have gone really well, and won the game for you, because he wasn't expecting the attack. However, you don't engage as well as you could have, and he manages to hold it off.

Don't run up his ramp until your whole army is there. Otherwise your sentries' guardian shield won't help you. Also, you want to have zealots first, so they can tank some of the damage and do a bit of their own. If the zealots are stuck at the back, they aren't participating in the battle at all.


Forcefields. Sometimes you only have seconds to react, but you just have to learn how to react and forcefield quickly. His mutas are coming from behind, attacking into your stalker sentry anti-muta ball. So what you should have done was to forcefield to block his roaches, and take out all of his mutalisks. Try to have 2 guardian shields up at all times during the battle, so your entire army gets shielded.



Afterwards, you attack again, but his hydra reinforcements spawn and you're forced to run, losing all of your sentries. This is really unfortunate, since you needed that gas for the ht and collosus you were making at home. But it's still good that you remade some sentries.


From here, you both macro up. Amazingly, you both have 38 workers, as he was doing a low economy play. Imagine how far ahead you would be if you didn't lose those 18 probes. Also, 38 probes is too low for 2 base. You want a minimum of 22 probes per mining base (6 on gas, 16 on minerals). So make sure you remake your probes, especially after being hit by mutalisks.


He tries to nydus your main, but you stop it. Good work! But you still are playing blind. You should have an observer to watch over his army, so you can prepare for any attack, or see if he's loading units into the nydus network, and prepare for any nydus worms.


Okay, so he attacks again once that fails. The first thing to notice here is that the army supplies are 135-95, in his favour. Zerg naturally make units quicker, and until you are maxed out as well, you have to be very cost efficient with your army.

Your units are not spread out, here. If you don't attack, you want to position your units defensively. So your units should have been spread out evenly in a concave along the red line. This way, all your army is able to attack, and your sentries and high templar will be able to use forcefields and psi storm without being blocked. As you can see, your high templar are too far behind.


You could have forcefield like this to pick off some of his army for free


If you forcefielded like this, all of the units in the green boxes wouldn't have been able to help in the fight. Also, this whole time your high templar are at the back of your army


It turns out you did forcefield and I just paused the game too early. But you trap too many units, and they end up killing all of your sentries. Now you aren't able to forcefield the top half of his army.



While all of this is happening (which is only a matter of seconds, starcraft is hard), your high templar have been at the ramp of your natural. It looks like you were trying to micro them, but they were out of range to storm. Keep your high templar with your army, otherwise when you cast storm, you have to wait for the high templar to slowly float in range, and then cast storm. If those high templar were there at the start of the battle, you could have easily taken out everything with the 6 storms you had available.


In Summary

• Scout better. You can't assume every game that they're going to go for mutalisks off two base. The majority of games, they won't. If you 3gate expand, research hallucination or get an observer to scout their tech so you can respond appropriately.
• Run your probes away as soon as possible. It's best if you can run them away before the mutalisks even hit the mineral line. If you lose probes, remake them.
• Engage better. This is probably the hardest one. Position your units well before the battle. That's easy. 2 guardian shields just before the battle starts. Easy. But placing goodforcefields as quickly as possible without much overlap? That's incredibly hard. Almost everyone can't do it. But you can practise and get better at it. Same with psi storms.

I suggest playing around with that micro trainer map, it's called "Darglein's Micro Trainer (SEA)". Try playing the "forcefield madness" challenge. It's pretty much 10 sentries vs a lot of marines, and you have to guardian shield and forcefield to win. If you can get up to level 5-6, then that's good. I can't remember my personal record, but I think it was level 15-16 . I also suggest the "multi ability control", where you have to forcefield and use psi storm against a large wave of zerglings and banelings.

Quick Comments

	asdfSchnitzel:	Thanks for help :)
	Nemo:	Wow wow wow and you're even improving at that !

[ToRPandarine]

http://www.twitch.tv/nemoulysses/b/305378443

I CANT WATCH IT T_T

yea, my econ is still pretty bad plus no drops :/ didnt get ghost cause i saw no templars or archons in his army.

[ROOTPetraeus]

Hi Guys,
I recently was beaten 2-1 by TADivinity in the SEACoL semi finals. In the last game, I don't really know what happened. I seemed to be ahead in the early game but Divinity got way ahead in drones later on. Not sure how he kept up in army but any analysis of the game would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Petraeus.

Replay here

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by ThePandarine

I CANT WATCH IT T_T

yea, my econ is still pretty bad plus no drops :/ didnt get ghost cause i saw no templars or archons in his army.

Panda. Sorry then. Post a defeat when you don't really see why you lost, I will analyze it.

[Paroxysm]

Im currently on a losing spree of like, 0-5 against protoss, and its all of a sudden that I cant beat any protoss players on the ladder, no matter what I do.

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=693

Please help!

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

Im currently on a losing spree of like, 0-5 against protoss, and its all of a sudden that I cant beat any protoss players on the ladder, no matter what I do.

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=693

Please help!

Parox vs Some Protoss Dude on Shakuras
I'll lead with some basic principles for ZvP -

• Maxed Z vs maxed P = P wins
• Don't attack from a single angle, you will get eaten by FF/Collossi
• A Protoss player on more than 3 bases is terrifying, no matter how many bases you have

Moving on.

Earlygame
No scouts on your opponent's expansions - while it didn't matter too much in this game, as your opponent wasn't especially greedy, scouting your opponents expansions can give you vital timing windows.

Midgame
13min - 180 supply vs 110 supply in your favour. Somewhere around now would have been a good time to start pokes and prods, drops, harassment, and possibly trading armies to delay that deathball as long as possible.

15min - still no expo scouts, you're really blind at this point. It's clearly not a 2base all-in, but you don't know if he's on three or four bases.

16min - Running your Roaches up the ramp like that made me scared. Walking through a choke, blind, is asking to get your army cut in half with Forcefields and melted. Chokes are good to avoid for Zerg in general, but Protoss players are really able to punish you.

Lategame
You kept remaxing on Roaches, and didn't get Brood Lords til around the 24 minute mark. Switching to Brood Lord/Infestor/Ling may have been beneficial, especially against Blink Stalkers. As it was, there was nothing to stop your opponent from blinking under your BL's and eating them.

31min - Engaged with Roach/Hydra through a choke, and got eaten. See above.

Doom-drop at 35 - This should have happened at 13min. You did a TON of economic and infrastructure damage. The reason he didn't turn around is because he knew full well that there was no way he was coming back from that.

36 - Final engagement - your opponent had no way to rebuild his army or his economy quickly enough, and you engaged with half your army in a conga line against Forcefields and seven Collossi. GG.

What Could Be Improved
Engagements vs Protoss
You attacked from a single angle pretty much every single engagement. You were macroing like a boss, but your Roaches were getting continually toasted by the FF/Collossi combination. A small number of Protoss units can take down annoying amounts of Zerg, unless you surround them.

Put your units into different control groups. I'm currently using four, which sounds excessive, however -
1: Lings
2: Roaches
3: Casters
~: Flanking Lings/Roaches
You kind of need all of those, unless you have some boss micro and can box and move units like a demon. I've also started clicking the minimap to set up surrounds and ambushes. Works pretty well.

ZvP Lategame
Don't let the Protoss player get a deathball up. Trying to kill Blink Stalkers backed with Sentries and 6+ Collossi is like throwing fruit into blender.

Start picking away at him early. Don't let him get complacent. Take his mind off his tech tree, and punish him for losing concentration. Drops are fantastic. Nydus worms are pretty good. Map awareness will allow you to prevent expansions from going up.

Hope that helps

Quick Comments

	Paroxysm:	Cheers Apth, quite helpful indeed!
	xGKingdelete:

[ROOTPetraeus]

Originally Posted by Paroxysm

Im currently on a losing spree of like, 0-5 against protoss, and its all of a sudden that I cant beat any protoss players on the ladder, no matter what I do.

http://www.sc2sea.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=693

Please help!

Hope its cool for me to step in and analyse this
Alright lets get this analysis started



Here you pull away from the probe for no reason :/ You always want to keep one Zergling on a scouting probe so no proxy pylons get up! Also taking the watchtowers is good



Here we see you have taken three gases and established a third base. If you are getting a quick third, make sure you delay your gases! You won't be able to afford everything at once. Also remember to transfer drones over to your third.



This is a very important moment in the game. You let the Protoss get his third without any fight. Always keep a ling at the third to see the timing. It is a long time before you realize this is there.



Here we see you have lots of tech and upgrades coming, backed by a good amount of drones. However, you have absolutely no idea what the Protoss is doing. He could be Mothership rushing for all you know xD Its good to send an overseer into his base to see whats up.



This is the first real battle of the game. After sniping his third you also find yourself in a great position for this fight. Lets see what happens next....


Most of your infestors are sniped by some Zealots and don't actually use all their energy. Your roaches stayed in a position that would be favorable for Hydralisks. Roaches like to be close up with their short ranged attacks so try moving into the Protoss army. After the Collosi die, remember to pull back with your corrupters! They are very expensive :S



Your army of roaches have a great engagement but wisely pull back as the Protoss retreats into his Natural. You should take opportunities like these to snipe his remaining bases!



BroodLords are great units! However, remember to keep an overseer with your army. Not just because of Dark Templars, but Observers that see your exact composition!



Here you move in for the kill. Your Brood Lords start to attack but so do your Roaches! This is a bad idea. When they have nothing but Stalkers to kill your Brood Lords, just keep the rest of your army next to them, forcing a favorable engagement for yourself. Here your roaches are picked off and the Stalkers blink in, killing your Brood Lords.



Its very late into the game right now. Your economy is booming! However you stick with such a low tech composition. Mass roach will not fair well in later engagements. Try adding Hydralisks, Brood Lords and Infestors into your army


Yay! You are using your army's speed to its full potential, sniping valuable mining bases.



Here you add Hydralisks in your army mix. Very good. However, here you attack into a tight choke with added force fields. As you choose to stay and fight, your army is massacred.



A very nice drop into the Protoss's 4th Base. Normally I would suggest the main base when dropping such a large force. You have time and strength to snipe additional tech structures. This however does fine.



Instead of defending, your opponent goes for a counter attack! Very dangerous for you. You have does some economic damage so now is time to pull back your army.



Oh no! You send your army in a long trail and it gets picked off bit by bit Remember to always keep an eye on what your units are doing.



And yeah, with your army dead and his a mighty deathball, you have no chance of coming back. Remember, its not the matchup, its the situation :P

Quick Comments

	xGKingdelete:
	Paroxysm:	SO GOOD. THANKS!

[ROOTPetraeus]

Originally Posted by Apth

Maxed Z vs maxed P = P wins

no
10char

[Apth]

Originally Posted by Petraeus

no
10char

No, I haven't taken unit composition into account.
No, I haven't taken positioning into account.
No, I haven't taken tech or upgrades into account.

I still think that as a general rule, if you go up against a maxed Protoss deathball, your chances of winning are very slim.

Some elaboration on 'no' would also be pretty cool.

[ROOTPetraeus]

Originally Posted by Apth

No, I haven't taken unit composition into account.
No, I haven't taken positioning into account.
No, I haven't taken tech or upgrades into account.

I still think that as a general rule, if you go up against a maxed Protoss deathball, your chances of winning are very slim.

Some elaboration on 'no' would also be pretty cool.

Its kinda hard to explain. The game isn't ridiculously unbalanced which is why no race is stronger than the other. I think the majority of Zergs losing to Deathballs is because its easier to choose a good Protoss army composition than it is for Zerg too. This doesn't mean that the Zerg race is weaker when maxed out.

[Paroxysm]

Ah thankyou so much both of you! I'll work on all of that tonight. So hard to pick my own replays to pieces especially seeing as my laptop wont let me run them at faster x2 or higher speeds. Thank god my new computer is coming in the next month!

[Nemo]

Originally Posted by Petraeus

Hi Guys,
I recently was beaten 2-1 by TADivinity in the SEACoL semi finals. In the last game, I don't really know what happened. I seemed to be ahead in the early game but Divinity got way ahead in drones later on. Not sure how he kept up in army but any analysis of the game would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Petraeus.

Replay here

Replay done with Petraeus online. I will post the Vod when (if) Twitch.tv has recorded it.

ZvZ is not the MU I'm the most familiar with so if someone want to watch it too he's welcome.

Edit : No Vod, sorry, for some reason it didn't recorded

Quick Comments

ROOTPetraeus:

Thanks so much, Nemo!

[MikeTyson]

Damn the feedback you guys give back is pretty insane. Perhaps when I become better I'll try to help you guys out!

I usually don't share replays because I usually know how any why I lost, but this game I'm pretty clueless. I guess my summation of this game would be: my Brood/infestor gets owned by mediocre Protoss mass. It's relatively similar to Paroxysm's game except my comp didn't include T1-2 units.

Thanks guys!

http://starcraft2reps.com/index.php?a=details&id=3450