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Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:40 am
I'm getting whammied on ladder by Protoss players who open FFE and then go into Skytoss. I'm already training myself to grab a fast third when I see a FFE but after that I don't know what to do. My staple up until now has been Roach/Hydra/Swarm Host but that's not cutting it. Hydra feels right to me cuz I don't think Muta could hold up against what I'm seeing. So what I'm thinking is Ultras to deal with the ground army, some Hydras backing them to deal with the air, and Vipers to grab the capitol ships. I know it's stupid gas heavy but that's why I'm asking for help developing it. Any Protosses on here feel like kicking my a** for a while? xD
If so message me in-game Biohazard#638.
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Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 7:14 pm
I feel like PvZ is the most changed match up in hots, that requires A LOT of tech swapping.
I race changed to toss for hots, because I liked the stuff they got in hots, and I love the way they play now, also I was getting sick of playing as zerg and hating myself for it all the time.
So as a protoss, I will always scout it see if they're going pool or hatch first, if they go hatch first, I will likely just cannon rush the nat, and that in itself is usually enough to win a game sadly enough, but if they go pool, I will usually open up, 1 gate expand.
I then follow up with 2 gate, warp tech, and into skytoss, but the thing is, you can't focus on skytoss for very long, because hydras are actually very effective against skytoss with good upgrades and in good enough numbers they thwart phoenixes, voidrays, oracles and poorly positioned tempests. So I go into 4-5 phoenix, and try to harass and do as much damage as I can, also using them to control the map a bit, sniping overlord and what have you, the basic goal is to FORCE hydras.
Once hydras have come out, you have one of two options, and it ALL depends on scouting, you can go into collosus, or you can go into templar. I favour collosus first, as this will get you observers, which you can use to keep tabs on armies, tech and bases, and I try to make 3-4 of these over time around the map, it also gives you the detect you need against swarmhosts. Charge becomes important around the same time as collosus, as because you have the obs, you can have a decent idea of the composition, in order to determine favouring immortals or more collosus, in either case, you have to be ready for 1 of 2 things once again.
Zerg will go for either swarmhosts and vipers, or airtech, both are effective against collosus, and are all around good choices in any setting. So when this happens, you need to have templars ready, with storm researched, and stop robo production, and go back into air, the air is required to deal with swarmhosts, specifically the tempests, robo can continue to make obs, but you need the tempests and voidrays, your composition now favours, zealot, voidray, tempests and templars, with the remnants of what is left of your robo, preferably the collosus. and it just becomes a game of watching you opponent tech swapping correctly, and not getting overwhelmed.
My advice to you, is play it the same sort of style, at first protoss will dicatte your tech paths, but then you dictate protoss tech paths, and remember it's always easier for zerg to swap tech than it is protoss. I play really patient, macro heavy, safe styles, and if that's the way you want to play you're gunna have to do a variety of things.
A) Creep spread is a huge must, map control is harder now in hots I feel than it was in wol against protoss due to the new skytoss style, spreading creep gives you free map control, so you might as well use it.
B) Overseers are really important now, you need detect, and you need scouting, unless you're using that overseer energy for something else, you might as well constantly be trying to sneak changlings into their base, so that you too can see the army compositions, tech levels, and so forth. You also need to deny protoss from getting as many obs into your base as you can. While zerg has an easier time tech swapping, it takes them longer to reach a critical mass with those units, and it gives protoss a chance to properly counter those units before they can reach critical mass, so you need to delay them from seeing your compositions and tech for as long as you can manage.
C) Don't allow yourself to get stuck on 3 bases, always be ready to expand when you have the opportunity, keeping 3 bases fully saturated is really important, if you fall to two bases, it's because you're not taking expansions aggressively enough.
D) Do like Life as use lings effectively for counter attacks, by spreading creep and keeping vision on his army as they move around, you can exploit protoss' poor mobility using moderate (key word MODERATE) numbers of lings to counter attack undefended paths, making even moderately cost effective lings can put you miles ahead.
E) When engaging in late game, make sure you have lots of larva piled up, and a healthy bank, and pay attention to what units are left to the protoss after an engagement, and choose appropriately the right counter against those, and you will inevitably overrun your opponent in sheer numbers and the right units. For example, you engage the protoss, with your swarmhosts, hydras and roaches, you obliterated the ground with the roach and locusts, the hydras killed whatever phoenixes and few voidrays, but he's still sitting on a frightening number of tempests, and maybe a few voidrays, spend that larva now on corruptors, and then lings, the corruptors will smash against the air doing adequate if not terrible, terrible damage, while lings rampage through the bases, spreading them out to make sure protoss has to split their attention, void rays and tempests are terrible against lings, and it's going to take a lot of warpgate warp ins to deal with lings spread across so many locations.
Of course that's a specific circumstance sort of thing, but it's something you need to apply no matter what the composition is.
So in the tl;dr of it all I would have to say: Lots of vision, lots of detect, deny scouting, be active with lings, expand, 300/300 pushes using tech swaps to directly counter unit compositions that will be remaining after the engagement.
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Posted: Thu Mar 28, 2013 10:20 pm
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Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:47 am
yyyyyeeeah, hots has really complicated things, I personally think for the better...It creates much more interesting games that require are wider range of utilizing the tools available to you with each race (besides arguably terran as they basically just play the same sort of way they did in WoL just with faster medivacs now).
But I like how much more important map control, and scouting has become, how protoss has evolved from being predominantly 2 base robo tech collosus snorefests, and the slow, zerg macro grind has had to change to something that needs more multitasking, planning and activity.
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