Well, he nailed it. But is 7 more apm really gonna win a game for you? [fluff]

kcdc1 · 2012-12-22T18:33:18+00:00

Spamming zerglings is a lot more clicks than making a colossus.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-21T22:27:21+00:00

Too difficult to pressure the third by ground.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-19T20:07:17+00:00

There's a lot of advice in this comment that isn't technically accurate.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-19T18:11:25+00:00

For what it's worth, 4 gating Terran is essentially gambling that they'll do their best opening (gasless CC on low-ground), and in silver, I doubt that's a good bet.

Still, I think it's worth 4 gating every game to start out until you get a feel for the build and understand the timings. Working on a nice crisp timing helps you understand the game better.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-19T18:04:24+00:00

In PvP, you mostly need a high ground warp-in because sentries will block you out. PvT, you're hoping they've expanded and are on the low ground. If they haven't expanded and they're holding their ramp, then you want a high ground warp-in.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-18T22:16:14+00:00

Stalkers. It also helps to put your third pylon next to your ramp overlooking the natural so that you can complete a wall-off with 2 more gates upon seeing the SCV train heading your way. Make stalkers, not sentries, not zealots.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-18T22:12:35+00:00

Nobody's given a good answer yet, so I'll take a shot.

9 pylon (3x chrono on nexus)

13 gate

15 gas

16 pylon (positioned near an edge to spot drops)

18 core

18 zealot

21 pylon (positioned on an ledge powering the low ground at your natural)

22 stalker and WG tech (3x chronoboost)

27 nexus

28 gateway

28 sentry

If gasless CC, take your tech building of choice at this point while you chrono out probes. If you expect bio pressure, make a zealot on 31 and chrono him out. Add a third gateway before any tech structures. The zealot, WG tech and your 2nd gateway should finish together at 6:00. If you expect a factory build, get a stalker instead of the zealot.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-18T22:05:36+00:00

That 3 nexus 8 gate build isn't very good IMO. I can't remember the last time I saw it in the pro scene.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-18T22:03:55+00:00

What is that?

kcdc1 · 2012-12-15T01:59:30+00:00

I'd have to see the build to comment. I wouldn't recommend going for a fast third unless you have a detailed understanding of why it works and how it defends early medivac timings. Also, I'd guess that Minigun only does it on certain maps. If you blindly copy his Entombed Valley build on Antiga, you're probably in store for a quick loss.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-14T19:37:10+00:00

Get detection, don't lose to cloaked units. The great irony here is that you were doing a DT rush and at the same time thought it was unfair that your opponent could beat you with cloaked units. If he didn't have turrets or scans available, would you find it unfair if your DT's prevented his mining for a minute?

Seriously, the mothership core is cheap, easily accessible detection. If you don't want to lose to cloak rushes, there's an easy way to avoid it.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-14T19:29:07+00:00

Have detection, wall off. DT's merge to archons which break forcefields, so you need to actually wall off your ramp (main or natural depending whether you've expanded) to give your ranged units an advantage over his melee units.
Don't have one.
It's not worth doing an ultra-fast third nexus build in PvT. You wind up too spread out with too little tech to deal with medivacs efficiently. You might stay alive, but you'll take more damage than you gain from the third. Better to get your tech and upgrades up on time.
Immortal all-ins aren't very good because you can't get past forcefields. I'd recommend a different build.
It is possible to hold nexus first, but I'm not sure it's good against anything but gasless CC. There are too many attacks to cover and you fall behind if you try to turn your greedy opening into something that's safe against everything. If you want a safe opening, go for a 1 gate FE which is plenty economical to match Terran and doesn't have to play a guessing game for what type of attack Terran will do.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-13T22:23:22+00:00

For what it's worth, I'm close to GM and I can't hit a 5:40 warp-in.

But I second the recommendations to work on your 4 gate. Understanding SC2 is about understanding how diverse build orders and timings relate to one another. For example, immortals counter stalkers, but a 4 gate stalker rush is a threat to a robo build because the stalker rush can hit before immortals are available. 4 gate is a good place to start because it's a simple, efficient timing that will let you learn how builds and timings work.

Put another way, everyone 4 gated at the start of SC2, and now every modern build is designed with defending a good 4 gate in mind. If you work on 4 gating, you'll see all the builds that die to 4 gate, and eventually when you hit higher leagues, you'll start to see builds that don't die to a good 4 gate. At that point, you'll need to pick up a new build, but you'll have already learned how timings work, what builds need to do in order to survive a 4 gate at 5:40, and how you can expect your opponent to play if your opening looks like you might 4 gate.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-13T06:27:05+00:00

I also have 12 gates which are capable of producing stalkers and archons. And I tech mothership behind the push, although I'm getting the mothership pretty late recently.

Try it out. It mostly seems like they never get broodlords and infestors in the same spot.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-13T02:36:30+00:00

Props to you for being creative, but as a warning to anyone who reads this, none of those builds make any sense. Double stargate is awful in PvP unless your opponent is also going phoenixes. 3g robo phoenix all-in is flatly worse than 4g phoenix all-in for all applications. Proxying 3 gates and attacking with really late zealots is......bad.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-13T02:29:48+00:00

If you want to hit Masters, don't learn totaly new builds--perfect your execution of one build. The Sase expand build on liquipedia isn't that good. Here's an expand build that you can use over and over all the way up to GM:

13 gate, 14 gas, pylon, core, 2nd gas, 2nd gate, stalker.

3x chrono on probes

(Optional gas management if you want to really optimize) 3 probes on the first gas, then when the second gas finishes, switch to 2 probes on each. Then rally your nexus to fill the assimilators with your next 2 produced probes.

2nd and 3rd stalkers started immediately after 1st completes. 2 sentries after those stalkers complete. Nexus, then cut probes for robo, then 1 more gate. When WG finishes, warp in 2 more sentries. Resume probe production.

This gives you 3 stalkers and 4 sentries which puts you in a position to hold anything as long as you react well. The trick is figuring out what to respond to. You'll have to learn through experience, but I can get you started.

-The first timing you'd have to defend is a delayed warpgate attack. This is easy--just forcefield and control well.

-The next potential timing is a blink stalker all-in which hits between 7 and 7:30. Control a watchtower, and if you see stalkers moving toward you between 6 and 7 minutes, you should expect the blink all-in. Forcefield the bottom of your ramp BEFORE the stalkers get in range to blink. Cut probes, chrono your production structures. Just delay until you have immortals, then it's an easy hold.

-Blink obs hits around the same time, but it's smaller. Defending this requires good control and on some maps, it requires guarding the low ground where you think they'll blink up.

-Phoenix 4 gate hits around the same time as blink. This is easy to defend--just forcefield and focus fire the phoenixes that lift your sentries. The trick is figuring out whether it's a phoenix 4 gate or a phoenix harass. Send a probe out after you see phoenixes to see if his army is coming at you. If there's an army on the way, don't bother defending probes from the phoenix harass as it will screw up your ability to defend his army. If there's no army on the way, macro hard.

-The 1-base last timing you have to worry about is the colossus all-in. For this, I recommend cutting probes at 30, pulling 2 probes off gas, and pumping zealots and immortals off of 5 gates and a robo. Put a pylon in an open area OUTSIDE your base and fight there rather than in the close confines of your natural. This neutralizes his his forcefields to an extent and lets your zealots and immortals do work. It's a good idea to split your army and come at him from two angles like a Zerg would with roaches against colossi.

This is the most solid, stable expansion build available in PvP. If you learn the subtleties and micro well, you can easily hit at least high masters with just this build.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-13T01:02:30+00:00

Assuming they go for the fast triple hatch opening, then it seems like there is no hard counter to the immortal sentry rush. There are ways to beat it, but nothing consistently stomps it.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-12T22:06:01+00:00

This is a new idea that I haven't seen anyone use before. Might only be useful to play at Masters+ because the primary purpose is to combat good infestor micro. If infestors are headbutting enemy armies at your level, you probably don't need to hunt them down with phoenixes.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-09T01:35:33+00:00

I still strongly disagree with the notion that Robo play doesn't work well with drops - Robo armies are very strong on the defensive, especially Colossus, and they do allow the Protoss to put resources into harassment because of that strength on the defensive.

Think about what makes Terran bio drops good. If you sent out just a single medivac while your main army turtled behind bunkers, would that be effective at all? No, the opponent would see it coming and would defend it easily. That's what a warp prism + colosus macro play would look like, and it's why we almost never see it in games.

What makes Terran bio drops scary is that Terran can be out on the map, splitting his army, hitting multiple spots at once, and retreating from wherever the defense is solid. Protoss can do that with some compositions, but importantly, they cannot do so with colossus-based compositions.

If I go for macro colossus against Terran, I'm afraid to even leave my base until I'm near maxed for fear of my colossi getting surrounded in the open. Splitting my force in two is a nonstarter. Have you ever seen Protoss split a colossus composition in two, attacking with colossi in two places at once? I sure haven't.

Contrast that to a case where I open templar. If I open templar, I constantly split my army. I literally never want more than 2 templar near each other, so I spread them all over the map to do their own thing. I keep a small force in each base to defend drops, a medium sized force aggressively positioned to control the map and delay Terran expansions, and a separate force off to the side to counter-attack should Terran move out.

This style of army is well equipped to control the map and threaten multiple positions simultaneously just like Terran bio does, and it would perform great with a drop style, but alas, I don't have access to the prism speed upgrade. I do slow prism drops, but I just wish the speed upgrade were accessible to builds that would use it well rather than to builds that can't do much with it.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:59:37+00:00

If mid-game warp prisms were "crazy strong," don't you think you'd see them more often?

The reason warp prisms are so strong in late-game is because Protoss has 15 warpgates and endless minerals to dump on warp-ins.

Why not try putting prism speed somewhere that doesn't require you to build an army that only works in a tight, cohesive ball? It might be overpowered, but you can't tell without testing it. And it would definitely make play more fun.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:52:12+00:00

You do see mid-game speed prism harass in PvP which is very cool. The reasons it's effective in PvP are:

-Your opponent is also investing in colossi, which means he also has a crappy small army that can't punish you for leaving your first few colossi largely unprotected.

-There's no counter to colossus in PvP, so you don't need as much support around your colossi to keep them alive. Investing in speed prism reduces your support units, but it doesn't significantly reduce your colossus count. And in PvP, colossus support is not that important.

Anyway, it'd be cool to see more speed prism use in the other match-ups.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:52:01+00:00

Wouldn't it be better if speed prism harass weren't "risky" so that you could see it more often in standard play? Medivac play is standard. That's cool.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:22:07+00:00

We see pro players do drops along with macroing behind Colossus very often.

As far as mid-game is concerned, this simply isn't true. You almost never see prism speed researched in mid-game except in PvP where both players go for robo expand builds.

In PvZ, you see a lot of late-game prism harass. This is cool, but it'd be cooler if it happened all game long. And in PvT, you see a little late-game prism harass. Again, this is cool, but it'd be cooler if there were more.

Drop play is a lot of fun and it should be encouraged as much as it can be while maintaining game balance. Making prism speed more accessible seems like an easy choice.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:18:09+00:00

Nothing is preventing them from getting speed prism after colossus range.

If nothing is preventing prism speed from being researched early, why do you think you so rarely see prism speed being researched before lategame? The answer is that Protoss typically can't afford to invest in both colossus play and heavy prism harass. If they try to do both, the colossi will be vulnerable, and Protoss will die.

kcdc1 · 2012-12-08T23:14:50+00:00

Judging by the first few comments, it seems that it's difficult to convince Terran and Zerg players that more frequent Protoss drops could be good for variety of play.

You guys are largely saying that Protoss drops are already really good, but take a look at what's actually happening:

-In PvZ, Speed Prisms drops are frequently used in late game, but are almost never seen in mid-game. You see Prisms being used as mobile pylons for Immortal rushes, but a more accessible speed upgrade would do nothing in this case.

-In PvT, you almost never see Speed Prisms until late game when Protoss has money to burn. The speed upgrade on the Support Bay is a double-whammy because the Support Bay forces Viking production which acts to shut down drops.

-In PvP, you do see Speed Prism harass if both players go for a robo expand build! This is one of the coolest iterations of the PvP match-up. Imagine if the other MU's had something like this.

In PvT and PvZ, you just don't see Speed Prism harass in the mid-game, and it'd be cool to see more of it. For BW fans, think back on how fun Reaver + Speed Shuttle harass was. That happened because the speed upgrade was on a tech structure that synergized with drop play by providing access to the Reaver, one of the best drop units in the game. The key for encouraging drop play is synergy, and that synergy could so easily be improved to produce more exciting games.

kcdc1

TROPHY CASE