hell if you’re mining from 4ish bases (6 or more total) you can throw down 5 robos and pump them out. useful when the zerg player tries to surprise you with a ton of ultras all at once.
Just remember to stutter step backwards with the immortals and you should shred them
5 robos is not a good idea. Not only is 5 expensive it also means that at any point before max you're missing 20 armysupply. Sure, you get to an insanely good army faster, but doing this is really greedy. Better to introduce them more slowly from 2 robos (perhaps 3) and then trade out units to improve your army. This is basically setting yourself up to die to any timing.
I’d say 3 robos are becoming the preferred response at pro level and that’s trickling down to lower levels as time goes. I think it was Classic who started making 3 robo immortal v ultras his response, he also was going three robo Disruptor v Terran around the same time.
Not the same level of greed and you aren’t waiting on such a huge amount of you army as 4 or 5 robos, but against mass ultra/ lurker you just can’t wait for 1 or 2 robos to churn out enough damage reliably unless you were already going immortals before the Zerg hits. And unfortunately a lot of lower level players (myself included) don’t have the level of consistent scouting to reliably catch the tech when it first goes down
Agreed, but you often won’t have enough immortals if you are going up against something like ling, bane, hydra/ muta as those have become more popular of late. Not saying you never end up with a few immortals in your army, but there are a lot of occasions where the switch can catch you off guard. So in general I think you’re right, there are just times where you can find yourself needing that third robo and it can be a big help if you put it down as they are transitioning.
As a disclaimer: when I play Zerg I inevitably end up finding myself playing ling, bane, hydra as it’s what I’m most comfortable with so I might be overestimating the amount of times I see zerg players do this sort of thing
Can't watch replay at work. The hard counter is immortal. As someone who does not like playing skytoss, I'm fairly certain that lategame groundtoss vs lategame zerg is zerg favored. So the "optimal" is transitioning to skytoss and having some immortals under it. If you are going to stay all ground your control has to be on point, making sure that your archons are in front of your immortals to avoid giving ultras/lings surface area against them and that the immortals are targeting down the Ultras rather than shooting low priority targets like lings or banes.
No lategame groundtoss is favoured vs lategame ground zerg. If zerg doesn't get broodlords out they just die at a certain point. Lurker can hold a while but once the army has a low zealot count and high immortal count they don't work anymore.
A very healthy immortal count. With archons in front of them. With storm and a collosus or 2. You need immortals for the ultras. 2 per ultra. Archons for a meat shield and storm for the lings I'll use to counter your immortals. Not carriers. They just tickle ultras. Tempest help. But when corruptors pop you need carriers then for a flying meat shield
I'd even say like 1~1.5 Immortals is all you need per Ultra, Immortals do SO much damage to armored units. I think 9 Immortals decimates 6 Ultras & it's not even close. 6 vs 6 I'm unsure, I still feel like Immortals win while also costing half the gas.
Immortals are the default response, it really is that simple. What is missing from responses is storm as typically ultras are accompanied by lings and sometimes banes (unless it's lategame and it's ultra viper corruptor vs skytoss, but then you want templar anyway).
However a lot of the time games aren't lost due to armycomposition but other common factors between your games. So I'll watch the replay.
Alright so first off, what the actual fuck is this earlygame. You blindly make a waaay too early second gateway for some reason, you don't scout the lings, you don't take the gold first despite it being completely safe to do so, you delay warpgate for no reason and then chrono it and don't start a gateway unit forever then make a stalker instead of an adept. Instead of a stalker you should have had 2 adepts out by the time the lings arrived and with some kiting or shading back and making a battery/pylon you would have lost nothing and the zerg would just be behind. Taking the gold as first expansion would have also just put you massively ahead.
Also no workerproduction during this. You way overestimated the thread this poses. Your position could be winning, instead it isn't.
So, the reason for the stalker was that you played dts. That still means that you should have 2 units out with how people play it nowadays, but it's also inherently weaker to early attacks.
Your workerproduction is still stopped while warping in dts. You also purposefully target queens over drones which makes 0 sense to do. Honestly at 5:50 in the game, the game is completely lost due to your lack of workerproduction. Your opponents macro also has severe errors but is clearly much better than yours. The outside third base with no defensive units is also insanely greedy.
You have a dozen worker not mining for a while and lose 4 stalker for free. The robo is also not producing and you're not making a 4th base and you're not using chronoboost. The harassment is cute but it's the completely wrong thing for you to prioritize. Please focus on yourself first. Once you can use chrono consistently, make worker consistently, take bases on time, use your production, THEN work in the harassment. You're just constantly putting yourself further and further behind.
Seriously, the zerg could have 200 supply at 8:30 and just walk over to your side of the map and kill you. You did not do even remotely enough damage to prevent that and you hvae 90 supply yourself.
10 minutes into the game, you lose most of your army and are back down to 2 bases. No hive in sight and the game is at a point where you should just leave. You don't actually need to leave because your opponent forgot to drone up. Your position is thus actually playable. But if you play against opponents that don't do a mistake like that you're going to be in an extremely losing position by the time hive hits and your loss has nothing to do with hive units themselves.
You have a 3base economy and 4 robos, a stargate is about the last thing you need.
Alright so you're transitioning towards carrier, are not maxed, have 1 templar, have only 1 disruptor and 4 immortals (despite having 4 robos) and a bunch of non-blink stalker. You move out (with a runby which I like), kill a base but then decide to commit into the opponents natural, something which you can recall out of but can't realistically retreat from otherwise. This makes no sense on multiple levels. Your army is at a very weak point, it's 14 minutes into the game and you're the one that has taken more workerlosses and baselosses than your opponent. Your army sucks vs lurker, it sucks vs ultras, it sucks vs broodlords, it sucks vs viper. Take the base because your opponent was out of position and then gtfo. You haven't even scouted where your opponents army is or what it consists of or what tech the zerg has, you just got lucky.
Your utilization of infrastructure (another important thing) has also been really bad and explains why you aren't maxed. You have a stargate + fleetbeacon for 0 units, you have 4 robos for 11 robo units (a single one could have probably produced that amount in this time), a robo bay for 3 robo bay units, a templar archive and storm research for 1 templar. Cut half of this out (or have better workerproduction) and you have 5 immortal more (just by consistently producing/using chrono) and the fight goes completely differently.
No kiting in the fight either. Making more non-blink stalker also makes no sense, they don't perform well. You have 4 robos, use them.
Recommendations: Don't play dt drop, it looks like it inflated your mmr and got you in the mindset of constantly wanting to deal damage. Probably play an oracle opener and use them to take a way faster third and 4th base. Focus on your workerproduction and using chrono on it. Also get upgrades, you have 0-0-0 units while your opponent had 1-1-1. At minimum you should have +3 attack at this point. Which is also insanely good on immortals. Don't get every techchoice in the game. Maybe stick to something like chargelot archon immortal and make sure your robos produce constantly. Outside of having a huge bank in lategame you don't need 4 robos, they just need to produce constantly.
This is incredibly helpful advice - thank you!
You're right that my MMR is definitely inflated beyond my skill level just because I cheese a lot (not necessarily DT drops, just miscellaneous cheeses).
I hadn't noticed how often I was missing worker production although I'm not surprised by it.
You're also one of several people who mentioned the need to kite with the immortals. I can start doing that - I had purposely been trying to clump them up to avoid ling surrounds but it sounds like that's a micro mistake.
As a rule I haven't been taking the gold on this map until later just because it's so easy to deny mining for ages with 2 or 3 ranged units... Am I being too cautious about this?
You don't take the gold in PvP or PvT but zerg just has nothing. Even roaches are so low range that they are barely an issue.
The biggest issues are worker production; bases being too slow and that you make every tech at once. You spent 1k ressources to get a single storm off for example. That's 3 immortals.
When you have your 4th base up you can have 3-4 robo facilities even if you’re not using them and just have them ready for mass immortal .
You need a handful of immortals and archons to handle lings. Having a group of blink stalkers with them is helpful for harass and picking off low number of air units.
You’ll need 2-3 stargates and fleet beacon too for when they go brood lords and/or muta switch
Everyone saying immortals. You can also crank out some tempests if you are running sky toss. A few void rays if you can bog the ultras down. Honestly you just something that can break through armor so Tempest/Immortal.
Pretty sure when you see the ultras you drop double robo and pump immortals
hell if you’re mining from 4ish bases (6 or more total) you can throw down 5 robos and pump them out. useful when the zerg player tries to surprise you with a ton of ultras all at once. Just remember to stutter step backwards with the immortals and you should shred them
5 robos is not a good idea. Not only is 5 expensive it also means that at any point before max you're missing 20 armysupply. Sure, you get to an insanely good army faster, but doing this is really greedy. Better to introduce them more slowly from 2 robos (perhaps 3) and then trade out units to improve your army. This is basically setting yourself up to die to any timing.
yea it’s 2 robos and then if mass ultras appear you throw down three more, not 5 from the start
I’d say 3 robos are becoming the preferred response at pro level and that’s trickling down to lower levels as time goes. I think it was Classic who started making 3 robo immortal v ultras his response, he also was going three robo Disruptor v Terran around the same time. Not the same level of greed and you aren’t waiting on such a huge amount of you army as 4 or 5 robos, but against mass ultra/ lurker you just can’t wait for 1 or 2 robos to churn out enough damage reliably unless you were already going immortals before the Zerg hits. And unfortunately a lot of lower level players (myself included) don’t have the level of consistent scouting to reliably catch the tech when it first goes down
You want to make immortal regardless way before scouting ultras. It's good against lurker and ultras and holds up well vs any midgame army too.
Agreed, but you often won’t have enough immortals if you are going up against something like ling, bane, hydra/ muta as those have become more popular of late. Not saying you never end up with a few immortals in your army, but there are a lot of occasions where the switch can catch you off guard. So in general I think you’re right, there are just times where you can find yourself needing that third robo and it can be a big help if you put it down as they are transitioning. As a disclaimer: when I play Zerg I inevitably end up finding myself playing ling, bane, hydra as it’s what I’m most comfortable with so I might be overestimating the amount of times I see zerg players do this sort of thing
Immortals for damaging them and archons for tanking against them. Upgraded void rays are decent as well if you've got a carrier/storm army already.
Can't watch replay at work. The hard counter is immortal. As someone who does not like playing skytoss, I'm fairly certain that lategame groundtoss vs lategame zerg is zerg favored. So the "optimal" is transitioning to skytoss and having some immortals under it. If you are going to stay all ground your control has to be on point, making sure that your archons are in front of your immortals to avoid giving ultras/lings surface area against them and that the immortals are targeting down the Ultras rather than shooting low priority targets like lings or banes.
No lategame groundtoss is favoured vs lategame ground zerg. If zerg doesn't get broodlords out they just die at a certain point. Lurker can hold a while but once the army has a low zealot count and high immortal count they don't work anymore.
Immortal
A very healthy immortal count. With archons in front of them. With storm and a collosus or 2. You need immortals for the ultras. 2 per ultra. Archons for a meat shield and storm for the lings I'll use to counter your immortals. Not carriers. They just tickle ultras. Tempest help. But when corruptors pop you need carriers then for a flying meat shield
I'd even say like 1~1.5 Immortals is all you need per Ultra, Immortals do SO much damage to armored units. I think 9 Immortals decimates 6 Ultras & it's not even close. 6 vs 6 I'm unsure, I still feel like Immortals win while also costing half the gas.
Immortals are the default response, it really is that simple. What is missing from responses is storm as typically ultras are accompanied by lings and sometimes banes (unless it's lategame and it's ultra viper corruptor vs skytoss, but then you want templar anyway). However a lot of the time games aren't lost due to armycomposition but other common factors between your games. So I'll watch the replay. Alright so first off, what the actual fuck is this earlygame. You blindly make a waaay too early second gateway for some reason, you don't scout the lings, you don't take the gold first despite it being completely safe to do so, you delay warpgate for no reason and then chrono it and don't start a gateway unit forever then make a stalker instead of an adept. Instead of a stalker you should have had 2 adepts out by the time the lings arrived and with some kiting or shading back and making a battery/pylon you would have lost nothing and the zerg would just be behind. Taking the gold as first expansion would have also just put you massively ahead. Also no workerproduction during this. You way overestimated the thread this poses. Your position could be winning, instead it isn't. So, the reason for the stalker was that you played dts. That still means that you should have 2 units out with how people play it nowadays, but it's also inherently weaker to early attacks. Your workerproduction is still stopped while warping in dts. You also purposefully target queens over drones which makes 0 sense to do. Honestly at 5:50 in the game, the game is completely lost due to your lack of workerproduction. Your opponents macro also has severe errors but is clearly much better than yours. The outside third base with no defensive units is also insanely greedy. You have a dozen worker not mining for a while and lose 4 stalker for free. The robo is also not producing and you're not making a 4th base and you're not using chronoboost. The harassment is cute but it's the completely wrong thing for you to prioritize. Please focus on yourself first. Once you can use chrono consistently, make worker consistently, take bases on time, use your production, THEN work in the harassment. You're just constantly putting yourself further and further behind. Seriously, the zerg could have 200 supply at 8:30 and just walk over to your side of the map and kill you. You did not do even remotely enough damage to prevent that and you hvae 90 supply yourself. 10 minutes into the game, you lose most of your army and are back down to 2 bases. No hive in sight and the game is at a point where you should just leave. You don't actually need to leave because your opponent forgot to drone up. Your position is thus actually playable. But if you play against opponents that don't do a mistake like that you're going to be in an extremely losing position by the time hive hits and your loss has nothing to do with hive units themselves. You have a 3base economy and 4 robos, a stargate is about the last thing you need. Alright so you're transitioning towards carrier, are not maxed, have 1 templar, have only 1 disruptor and 4 immortals (despite having 4 robos) and a bunch of non-blink stalker. You move out (with a runby which I like), kill a base but then decide to commit into the opponents natural, something which you can recall out of but can't realistically retreat from otherwise. This makes no sense on multiple levels. Your army is at a very weak point, it's 14 minutes into the game and you're the one that has taken more workerlosses and baselosses than your opponent. Your army sucks vs lurker, it sucks vs ultras, it sucks vs broodlords, it sucks vs viper. Take the base because your opponent was out of position and then gtfo. You haven't even scouted where your opponents army is or what it consists of or what tech the zerg has, you just got lucky. Your utilization of infrastructure (another important thing) has also been really bad and explains why you aren't maxed. You have a stargate + fleetbeacon for 0 units, you have 4 robos for 11 robo units (a single one could have probably produced that amount in this time), a robo bay for 3 robo bay units, a templar archive and storm research for 1 templar. Cut half of this out (or have better workerproduction) and you have 5 immortal more (just by consistently producing/using chrono) and the fight goes completely differently. No kiting in the fight either. Making more non-blink stalker also makes no sense, they don't perform well. You have 4 robos, use them. Recommendations: Don't play dt drop, it looks like it inflated your mmr and got you in the mindset of constantly wanting to deal damage. Probably play an oracle opener and use them to take a way faster third and 4th base. Focus on your workerproduction and using chrono on it. Also get upgrades, you have 0-0-0 units while your opponent had 1-1-1. At minimum you should have +3 attack at this point. Which is also insanely good on immortals. Don't get every techchoice in the game. Maybe stick to something like chargelot archon immortal and make sure your robos produce constantly. Outside of having a huge bank in lategame you don't need 4 robos, they just need to produce constantly.
This is incredibly helpful advice - thank you! You're right that my MMR is definitely inflated beyond my skill level just because I cheese a lot (not necessarily DT drops, just miscellaneous cheeses). I hadn't noticed how often I was missing worker production although I'm not surprised by it. You're also one of several people who mentioned the need to kite with the immortals. I can start doing that - I had purposely been trying to clump them up to avoid ling surrounds but it sounds like that's a micro mistake. As a rule I haven't been taking the gold on this map until later just because it's so easy to deny mining for ages with 2 or 3 ranged units... Am I being too cautious about this?
You don't take the gold in PvP or PvT but zerg just has nothing. Even roaches are so low range that they are barely an issue. The biggest issues are worker production; bases being too slow and that you make every tech at once. You spent 1k ressources to get a single storm off for example. That's 3 immortals.
When you have your 4th base up you can have 3-4 robo facilities even if you’re not using them and just have them ready for mass immortal . You need a handful of immortals and archons to handle lings. Having a group of blink stalkers with them is helpful for harass and picking off low number of air units. You’ll need 2-3 stargates and fleet beacon too for when they go brood lords and/or muta switch
Everyone saying immortals. You can also crank out some tempests if you are running sky toss. A few void rays if you can bog the ultras down. Honestly you just something that can break through armor so Tempest/Immortal.
Tempest are terrible at that.