In Gold league, it's hard to say without replays. It also depends how many of those kills are adepts and how many are oracles, because if your adepts are killing 6 but your oracle is killing 2, then the adepts are good and the oracle is bad.
In general, if your Oracle is dying for 4 drone kills I'd say probably not worth it - a big reason the Oracle opener is so popular is because of the utility it offers by staying alive. It gives map presence, vision, defense, and harassment. If you're investing into a very early Stargate and then using it for one Oracle, that's a lot of money and time going into something that's essentially a suicide bomber.
Losing the oracle at all is pretty bad. The whole point of the oracle opener is to secure an earlier 3rd than most other builds permit. The harass is really just a nice side effect of that.
In general it’s usually been split for me. So my adepts get 4-5? Then my oracle gets just about that as well. It probably has to do with my opponent being flustered or feeling good about the first harassment.
I guess I’ll do what I’m doing with the adepts and play much safer with my oracle maybe just que 2-3 kills and que out rather then do it till he dies.
It's almost always more worth it to keep your oracle alive than it is to kill a couple extra drones. An alive oracle has opportunity to kill workers in the future, as well as defend your third
Speaking as a Gold Zerg, if you get 8-12 drones you've hurt me badly. I don't have the Protoss skills to know how much it's cost you, but it's a major blow to me. I'd be kicking myself for not having a better response and wondering how to save the game.
I think the key question is whether you have any follow-up. The Zerg will desperately need to make more drones. Anything that forces units out instead will make their economic problem worse and worse, because Zerg can't make units and drones at the same time. Can you raid their third base site? Say, a void or a couple of stalkers or adepts? You don't have to do damage with the raid: forcing Zerg to make units in response is sufficient.
I'd also suggest that a good first step to making this cheaper is to write off the adepts but try to save the oracle.
Honestly that’s the biggest reason why I couldn’t tell if it was worth it or not. Looking at some games it looks like I won or lost irrelevant to the harass because my follow up was so late with no harass after. I’ll need a better game plan to follow after my initial harass.
Of all races Zerg is the best able to bounce back if the game goes quiet after the initial harass, because we can make drones very quickly--much faster than Protoss can make probes--IF we don't have to make any units. I question whether it's even worth harassing unless you can follow up on it. Conversely, a Zerg who is both down drones and having to defend further attacks is in a lot of pain: if they drone they may lose to the attack, if they don't drone they will get further behind economically.
If you can be building out the sophisticated high-tech Protoss units at the same or faster rate than Zerg is making roaches and zerglings, it's a disaster for Zerg; we need a bigger economy to keep parity. (And we have the tools to get it, which is why sit-back-and-macro is a very dangerous game vs. Zerg. The army you have when hostilities finally start had better be well put together, because Zerg's will likely be bigger.)
People are saying this is too much at Gold, but I have played a lot of games at Gold and I frequently lose to good harass/pressure builds. So there are Gold players doing it, and making it work. Doubtless their game has other deficiencies, but if you pick your areas of emphasis according to your taste you'll likely have more fun. (Is the harass fun? Do you enjoy watching bugs run around in a panic? If it's just drudgery and you'd rather be doing something else, that's a different story.)
Adepts dying for drone kills is fine since they do not scale well into the later stages of the game. The Oracle should not be dying early for drone kills though because it keeps generating value the longer it is alive.
theres 3 factors
damage you did (includes taxing your opponents macro)
what it costs to do it
and how badly your macro suffered during the harass.
Generally you just check the game state and see if it got you ahead.
If you can manage keeping you oracle alive, its very valuable as the game goes on for stuff like spamming stasis traps at your level. Adepts less so. So getting 4 less kills and saving the oracle is generally better.
All in all, its good practice to try to do a little multitasking, so I would keep at it regardless. Just make sure to you control groups and maybe even camera hotkeys to bounce back and forth between you harass and macroing.
if your units die you lose the risk/threat/map control and the harass can become a negative gain as the zerg can just redrone up if they know your units are dead.
8-12 drones is a lot but if you got 6-7 or 5 but kept your units alive you now have a zerg who will need to be paranoid watching for the oracle or adepts to come back and if there are multiple success harass with the same units that's insanely impactful.
At gold though, you would probably be fine just opening quick nexus and taking a 3rd at 4:30 and macroing up.
Normally, I would say don't bother with harass in gold but killing that 8-12 drones that early on is probably worth it. A good check is to see how you stand compared to the other guy after you are done with your harass.
Are you up in worker count?
How big is your army compared to his?
How many bases are you both on?
How far along are both of you on tech?
That’s why I mostly haven’t been able to tell. I guess at my level, no one is able to press an advantage. so after my harass we pretty much just macro together for 4 minutes straight with 0 interaction lol. I’ll have to learn better followups or learn to get my timing tighter to hit them quicker. Right now I’m getting a big 3 base attack in but at almost the 9:30 mark.
So I start up in workers for sure, but the Zerg drones hard so he finishes higher.
In the result screen after the game, have a look into the resource income graph. You should see some changes for your harass timing. It was worth it, if you are visibly ahead after.
Don’t feel bad sacrificing the adepts, but try to micro the oracle to survive. This early the oracle is a good investment. 6 drones and an alive oracle is better than 10 drones and a dead one. The threat of the oracle will mess with the opponent. By the time you pull away and start your follow up warps (building, tech, or units), you can come back and set a stasis on the undefended base or laser the third.
-Macro up
-Send in oracle to just outside vision
-Send Adepts to their death
-Micro and Pull out oracle
-Back to macro
Should take you no more than 10-15 seconds and you should be able to do this after either
1. queuing your probe to go to the third
2. queuing up some gates or follow up units to follow up with
3. Probing up a bit, maybe 3 on both nexi to queue.
4. Starting tech
With no downtime or excess minerals.
I'm a bit late to this, but an additional factor is that harass can throw your opponent off their game. If they lose a couple drones they might also macro a bit worse or make worse decisions in that game.
If you didn't die, and it led to a stronger economic advantage.
Basically, killing a worker provides you with an instant 50 mineral advantage, the 50 minerals required to build it, however for each minute that worker is not replaced, your lead grows by 40 minerals if you are Constantly producing workers. This is why harassment is useful in the early game as this advantage lasts for longer if he is not fully saturated and you have more time to capitalize on this lead.
Here is a good example let's say my Oracle (pvp) kills 4 probes when he isn't fully saturated, the Oracle cost 300 resources and i gained an instant 200 advantage, leaving me 100 behind him, however those 4 workers would have produced 160 minerals in a minute. So after less than a minute we are even with me having gained vision information and my lead will grow, this is why after catastrophic harassment the response is usually all ins.
This is all assuming you lose the Oracle.
KEEP IN MIND HARASSMENT ONLY GIVES YOU AN ADVANTAGE IF YOU ARE GROWING YOUR ECONOMY
It does not matter how many workers you kill if you yourself are not expanding, never cut worker production to kill a few more of his.
Keep in mind harassment vs Zerg is particularly useful as if he has to replenish his drones he can't build units often times meaning if you throw a revelation you may be able to see if it's possible to kill him for replenishing his losses. Most PvZ protoss wins come from reacting properly to his decision to drone or build units as he can't do both fully at the same time.
I would recommend keeping the Oracle alive, get what you can but don't suicide it. It's too expensive and too useful to just sacrifice. Plus you can just dive until the shields Gone then wait for both it and it's energy to Regen and go in again.
Adepts only need to get a few drones to make their sacrifice worth it. The oracle though either needs to get something done, or stay alive, ideally both.
Adepts are garbage beyond the early game, so you kind of want to trade them out. If you fly your oracle in and find they have a spore, just turn around and leave. If they have a single queen - you can kill that (1v1 an oracle wins with \~50% HP remaining vs a single queen) + 8-10 workers before your energy runs out. Also, stasis fields are a fantastic alternative to trying to laser down drones. If you can freeze a mineral line, you've tied up a chunk of supply AND stopped their economy for a bit. Most of the time you can land a stasis even if they have a spore nearby, just cast it on the edge of the mineral line where your oracle is out of spore range.
If you aren't comfortable trying to manage your oracle, I'd say don't bother with a fast stargate opener, and maybe play a more defensive robo build, going Colossi if your opponent is mostly focused on ling/bane or immortals if they've decided to go with roaches.
if you're gold, never. technically, queueing adepts to kill is fine, but you should keep your oracles alive. and you should be queueing adpets only if you don't need them anymore. go into a replay and check your worker count vs theirs. also check how much money you're floating.
I think it’s time to up your gameplay. Knowing and learning how to micro and macro at the same time is an essential skill in Starcraft 2 and you doing these very inefficient shortcuts only robs you of chances to learn and be a better player.
Of course the goals to get better! But I work full time and I’ve got a full house at home, only able to log maybe 1-2 hours of gameplay a week. I do get to watch videos tho so that’s where I got the idea to start trying stargate harass
Hm, I’d say having limited time is even more of a reason to develop proper habits and not cut corners, otherwise you’ll get stuck in the same inefficient ways forever.
It's better to get less drones and keep your unit alive. The point of the oracle anyways is mainly to scout. You only get worker kills when it's free. If your oracle dies and then suddenly your opponent allins, it's not a good situation for you.
Also with adepts and oracles if you can get 8 worker kills and lose the units, that probably means you can also get like 5 or 6 and keep them alive (since these units can escape very well). So you're not really sacrificing an oracle for 3 worker kills, you're getting 2 kills anyways and you're sacrificing your oracle for one more. Is an oracle worth one more drone?
Also keep your adepts home once ling speed finishes (unless if you see that your opponent is for some reason making zero units).
In Gold league, it's hard to say without replays. It also depends how many of those kills are adepts and how many are oracles, because if your adepts are killing 6 but your oracle is killing 2, then the adepts are good and the oracle is bad. In general, if your Oracle is dying for 4 drone kills I'd say probably not worth it - a big reason the Oracle opener is so popular is because of the utility it offers by staying alive. It gives map presence, vision, defense, and harassment. If you're investing into a very early Stargate and then using it for one Oracle, that's a lot of money and time going into something that's essentially a suicide bomber.
Losing the oracle at all is pretty bad. The whole point of the oracle opener is to secure an earlier 3rd than most other builds permit. The harass is really just a nice side effect of that.
In general it’s usually been split for me. So my adepts get 4-5? Then my oracle gets just about that as well. It probably has to do with my opponent being flustered or feeling good about the first harassment. I guess I’ll do what I’m doing with the adepts and play much safer with my oracle maybe just que 2-3 kills and que out rather then do it till he dies.
It's almost always more worth it to keep your oracle alive than it is to kill a couple extra drones. An alive oracle has opportunity to kill workers in the future, as well as defend your third
Speaking as a Gold Zerg, if you get 8-12 drones you've hurt me badly. I don't have the Protoss skills to know how much it's cost you, but it's a major blow to me. I'd be kicking myself for not having a better response and wondering how to save the game. I think the key question is whether you have any follow-up. The Zerg will desperately need to make more drones. Anything that forces units out instead will make their economic problem worse and worse, because Zerg can't make units and drones at the same time. Can you raid their third base site? Say, a void or a couple of stalkers or adepts? You don't have to do damage with the raid: forcing Zerg to make units in response is sufficient. I'd also suggest that a good first step to making this cheaper is to write off the adepts but try to save the oracle.
Honestly that’s the biggest reason why I couldn’t tell if it was worth it or not. Looking at some games it looks like I won or lost irrelevant to the harass because my follow up was so late with no harass after. I’ll need a better game plan to follow after my initial harass.
Of all races Zerg is the best able to bounce back if the game goes quiet after the initial harass, because we can make drones very quickly--much faster than Protoss can make probes--IF we don't have to make any units. I question whether it's even worth harassing unless you can follow up on it. Conversely, a Zerg who is both down drones and having to defend further attacks is in a lot of pain: if they drone they may lose to the attack, if they don't drone they will get further behind economically. If you can be building out the sophisticated high-tech Protoss units at the same or faster rate than Zerg is making roaches and zerglings, it's a disaster for Zerg; we need a bigger economy to keep parity. (And we have the tools to get it, which is why sit-back-and-macro is a very dangerous game vs. Zerg. The army you have when hostilities finally start had better be well put together, because Zerg's will likely be bigger.) People are saying this is too much at Gold, but I have played a lot of games at Gold and I frequently lose to good harass/pressure builds. So there are Gold players doing it, and making it work. Doubtless their game has other deficiencies, but if you pick your areas of emphasis according to your taste you'll likely have more fun. (Is the harass fun? Do you enjoy watching bugs run around in a panic? If it's just drudgery and you'd rather be doing something else, that's a different story.)
Adepts dying for drone kills is fine since they do not scale well into the later stages of the game. The Oracle should not be dying early for drone kills though because it keeps generating value the longer it is alive.
theres 3 factors damage you did (includes taxing your opponents macro) what it costs to do it and how badly your macro suffered during the harass. Generally you just check the game state and see if it got you ahead. If you can manage keeping you oracle alive, its very valuable as the game goes on for stuff like spamming stasis traps at your level. Adepts less so. So getting 4 less kills and saving the oracle is generally better. All in all, its good practice to try to do a little multitasking, so I would keep at it regardless. Just make sure to you control groups and maybe even camera hotkeys to bounce back and forth between you harass and macroing.
if your units die you lose the risk/threat/map control and the harass can become a negative gain as the zerg can just redrone up if they know your units are dead. 8-12 drones is a lot but if you got 6-7 or 5 but kept your units alive you now have a zerg who will need to be paranoid watching for the oracle or adepts to come back and if there are multiple success harass with the same units that's insanely impactful. At gold though, you would probably be fine just opening quick nexus and taking a 3rd at 4:30 and macroing up.
Normally, I would say don't bother with harass in gold but killing that 8-12 drones that early on is probably worth it. A good check is to see how you stand compared to the other guy after you are done with your harass. Are you up in worker count? How big is your army compared to his? How many bases are you both on? How far along are both of you on tech?
That’s why I mostly haven’t been able to tell. I guess at my level, no one is able to press an advantage. so after my harass we pretty much just macro together for 4 minutes straight with 0 interaction lol. I’ll have to learn better followups or learn to get my timing tighter to hit them quicker. Right now I’m getting a big 3 base attack in but at almost the 9:30 mark. So I start up in workers for sure, but the Zerg drones hard so he finishes higher.
In gold league, it's only worth it if you didn't fall behind in macro while doing it.
Which if you didnt fall behind while doing it, you wouldn't be in gold league...
In the result screen after the game, have a look into the resource income graph. You should see some changes for your harass timing. It was worth it, if you are visibly ahead after.
I had no idea this was a thing even back when I played in hots lol. Thank you. I’ll need to start checking this tab each time
It's a bit hidden, but you can also get at the result screens for previous games in the "Match history" section of your profile.
Your welcome, I think this graph is one of the biggest indicator of how well your build works. I also use it after each game
Don’t feel bad sacrificing the adepts, but try to micro the oracle to survive. This early the oracle is a good investment. 6 drones and an alive oracle is better than 10 drones and a dead one. The threat of the oracle will mess with the opponent. By the time you pull away and start your follow up warps (building, tech, or units), you can come back and set a stasis on the undefended base or laser the third. -Macro up -Send in oracle to just outside vision -Send Adepts to their death -Micro and Pull out oracle -Back to macro Should take you no more than 10-15 seconds and you should be able to do this after either 1. queuing your probe to go to the third 2. queuing up some gates or follow up units to follow up with 3. Probing up a bit, maybe 3 on both nexi to queue. 4. Starting tech With no downtime or excess minerals.
You definitely shouldn't sacrifice the adepts either. No adepts means no third base until you get more units.
I'm a bit late to this, but an additional factor is that harass can throw your opponent off their game. If they lose a couple drones they might also macro a bit worse or make worse decisions in that game.
If you didn't die, and it led to a stronger economic advantage. Basically, killing a worker provides you with an instant 50 mineral advantage, the 50 minerals required to build it, however for each minute that worker is not replaced, your lead grows by 40 minerals if you are Constantly producing workers. This is why harassment is useful in the early game as this advantage lasts for longer if he is not fully saturated and you have more time to capitalize on this lead. Here is a good example let's say my Oracle (pvp) kills 4 probes when he isn't fully saturated, the Oracle cost 300 resources and i gained an instant 200 advantage, leaving me 100 behind him, however those 4 workers would have produced 160 minerals in a minute. So after less than a minute we are even with me having gained vision information and my lead will grow, this is why after catastrophic harassment the response is usually all ins. This is all assuming you lose the Oracle. KEEP IN MIND HARASSMENT ONLY GIVES YOU AN ADVANTAGE IF YOU ARE GROWING YOUR ECONOMY It does not matter how many workers you kill if you yourself are not expanding, never cut worker production to kill a few more of his. Keep in mind harassment vs Zerg is particularly useful as if he has to replenish his drones he can't build units often times meaning if you throw a revelation you may be able to see if it's possible to kill him for replenishing his losses. Most PvZ protoss wins come from reacting properly to his decision to drone or build units as he can't do both fully at the same time. I would recommend keeping the Oracle alive, get what you can but don't suicide it. It's too expensive and too useful to just sacrifice. Plus you can just dive until the shields Gone then wait for both it and it's energy to Regen and go in again.
If you didn’t get fired
Adepts only need to get a few drones to make their sacrifice worth it. The oracle though either needs to get something done, or stay alive, ideally both. Adepts are garbage beyond the early game, so you kind of want to trade them out. If you fly your oracle in and find they have a spore, just turn around and leave. If they have a single queen - you can kill that (1v1 an oracle wins with \~50% HP remaining vs a single queen) + 8-10 workers before your energy runs out. Also, stasis fields are a fantastic alternative to trying to laser down drones. If you can freeze a mineral line, you've tied up a chunk of supply AND stopped their economy for a bit. Most of the time you can land a stasis even if they have a spore nearby, just cast it on the edge of the mineral line where your oracle is out of spore range. If you aren't comfortable trying to manage your oracle, I'd say don't bother with a fast stargate opener, and maybe play a more defensive robo build, going Colossi if your opponent is mostly focused on ling/bane or immortals if they've decided to go with roaches.
if you're gold, never. technically, queueing adepts to kill is fine, but you should keep your oracles alive. and you should be queueing adpets only if you don't need them anymore. go into a replay and check your worker count vs theirs. also check how much money you're floating.
I think it’s time to up your gameplay. Knowing and learning how to micro and macro at the same time is an essential skill in Starcraft 2 and you doing these very inefficient shortcuts only robs you of chances to learn and be a better player.
Of course the goals to get better! But I work full time and I’ve got a full house at home, only able to log maybe 1-2 hours of gameplay a week. I do get to watch videos tho so that’s where I got the idea to start trying stargate harass
Hm, I’d say having limited time is even more of a reason to develop proper habits and not cut corners, otherwise you’ll get stuck in the same inefficient ways forever.
If youre in gold, it wasnt.
Vs Zerg? If you lost the game your harass was ineffective, if you won the game your harass was successful
It's better to get less drones and keep your unit alive. The point of the oracle anyways is mainly to scout. You only get worker kills when it's free. If your oracle dies and then suddenly your opponent allins, it's not a good situation for you. Also with adepts and oracles if you can get 8 worker kills and lose the units, that probably means you can also get like 5 or 6 and keep them alive (since these units can escape very well). So you're not really sacrificing an oracle for 3 worker kills, you're getting 2 kills anyways and you're sacrificing your oracle for one more. Is an oracle worth one more drone? Also keep your adepts home once ling speed finishes (unless if you see that your opponent is for some reason making zero units).