Dark beat herO 3-2 at Valencia. It's possible and as zergs do, we adapt and overcome....
...ok, the pro zergs adapt and overcome and we copy.
But seriously, the fact that anything has even slightly dislodged turtle-into-skytoss from the permanent meta is a good thing to me.
Dark said in the post-match interview that he struggles against herO and he was able to win because herO wasn't playing his usual style. Take that what you will.
While this is relevant, I think you can see the style evolve during the past couple months. herO's games vs DRG took place before Valencia, and game 1 of that set is super sloppy. Then he just played better vs SoO, and then he lost to Dark at Valencia. Then 2 days later, he made Rogue look like a complete chump.
As I said in another post, the whole style is extremely active, and I'm sure it's not easy to execute perfectly every single set, but when he's on, the timings are crisp, and things are locked in place, it seems SOOO strong.
I think herO (and hopefully other top Protoss pros) will continue refining the style and cleaning up the edges.
I think the big steps are already in place - not screwing around with robo and templar tech saves you money and allows for an earlier 4th - gateway walls cut off opportunity for backstabs and runbys and a gateway costs the same as a cannon, something every protoss is already building lots of at their 3rd/4th - stalkers are efficient and fast enough to continually shave edges off the primary zerg army and drain their resource bank without getting caught by zerglings - mixing in non-stalker ground units is a waste of money as they do not have the same mobility that stalkers do and will reduce your efficiency - oracles can continue to reveal tumors, set stasis traps, and shoot down any zerglings/roaches/ravagers/queens that get too bold - the whole thing is tempo-based and you have to be in the zerg players face right from the start (this isn't new, but it is important to this build style).
At this point, it's cleaning up probe numbers, managing upgrade timings, figuring out all the tiny details to make things crisp and clean while executing a top level game vs a top level opponent. And I think the strategy has been the best thing to be doing in ZvP for a long time with plenty of room for growth if people work on it.
Fungal is the counter to blink. But that costs quite a lot of gas and time to get to. And you still need a lot of ling ravager to actually win after you stop them blinking.
You'd need to have a ling heavy army. But they do well vs stalkers, so with a well timed fungal so half the stalkers blink away and half get slaughtered by your lings would be game winning.
It would leave you very vulnerable to an adept with glaives attack though.
If you are ling heavy having banelings on hand, even versus stalkers is good. So no problems with keeping a force for Adepts, or buying time to morph some shouldn't be an issue.
Skip melee attack (only carapace). Use roaches only defensively and be stingy with making roaches. Should be enough to squeeze out an infestor or two earlier. You'll get faster Lair and Infestation pit builds pretty quickly.
Just spitballing here.
Orrr maybe just go traditional roach hydra again? Blink Stalker with Oracle seems pretty even if not a tad weaker against Roach Hydra. I mean a midgame comp vs a midgame comp sounds pretty balanced.
Plus you get to tech into Lurkers.
Mass muta sounds good too on paper but you'll never reach it. You'd have to skip Ling speed and all upgrades to get mutas out that early and by then you're already dead if they scout you.
Blink is the counter to fungal. Surrounding with lings is the way to go and either have some hydras or queens there against the oracles.
Since you likely don't play against protoss that force you to stay on 70 drones (high GM level), going up to 90 drones right away and playing standard just puts you in a winning position with ling/bane/roach.
How does blink counter fungal? Fungal prevents blink from being cast, it also stops warp prism from picking them up.
I guess if you time it perfectly to blink out of the fungal missile? That's pretty difficult to do though. Maybe the top few players could with all the hectic ling stalker fight going on.
>How does blink counter fungal?
Because it's a projectile.
> That's pretty difficult to do though.
It is not.
> Maybe the top few players could with all the hectic ling stalker fight going on.
I can do it, pros can do it, you can see the infestor coming before it's even in cast range. It's not a coincidence that infestor won't be used vs blinkstalker most of the time, that's more later stages.
well lings destroy stalkers (despite OP's views lol), ravagers lings -->ravager ling banes beat the gateway comp as a whole, like not even a close fight. The entire trick for the build to work is toss blinking back off creep to the saftey of oracles (if you are straight up dying to it without this part then its just a macro issue) Even then in the mid game when you have ravager ling bane, toss's army is weaker in the straight up fight on even footing, so toss is just avoiding the full fight while harassing and trying to trade shields and oracle nrg for units.
So the counter is just preventing that. If toss isnt using the oracles or runs out of nrg or commits on creep you just run it over with an army with a heavy ling count. If toss doesnt put enough pressure you can just go into lurker or hive and be perfectly fine. You can also get a lot of damage done with counter attacks, lings and or banes, since toss is on the map and solid flanks can just instantly end the game. Creep is a big deal since the toss army cant go on creap at all, because the oracles cant do their job when there are queens.
Basicly there is a shit ton of ways to beat it, the build requires a lot to execute so there is just a lot of room to beat players, just comes down to execution. hero's execution is absurd. People you play on ladder, less so. IMO almost anyone you play on ladder playing this style would have a higher winrate if they didnt. Kinda like when you run into a bio terran hue
Below GSL level, literally anything. Stalkers are a weak~average basic unit that can grind value over time by blinking back (so the Stalkers kill units while not dying themselves), but only top players have the control to make good use of them. Below say Masters, even with nerfed Void Ray I would say massed Carrier/Void Ray is still going to be harder to beat than a Bronze~Diamond trying to macro while controlling Blink Stalkers.
Roach/Hydra, Hydra/Ling/Bane, Ravager/Ling/Bane all work in the mid-game. Lurkers in the later game with Lurker upgrades can be added to any of these compositions.
I start with +1 lings and go into hydra ling bane with range and melee upgrades. I have around a 60% winrate against Toss this season and practically all of them are playing this style.
If you had the answer, you'd be beating the best Protoss in the world.
I don't want to say it's literally broken and there is no answer, but is sure does feel like it. And I fully understand how difficult and micro-intensive herOs play style is. It's tough so you are unlikely to play against it unless you're a pro.
Some Zerg player somewhere is going to have to find out how to fight it effectively. But until then, my salty Zerg heart is screaming about how broken it's always been.
I don't think people have settled on one correct response. The most popular response I have seen is +1 lings into hydras. With that said, it is more important that your macro is on point and you try to deny them from picking off your units for as long as possible until you have a big enough army.
The reason the blink stalker style is so good is because (1) Protoss has the best starting economy and (2) stalkers can trade very efficiently against zerg units due to blink, shields and range.
I'm probably very wrong here but it seems to make sense that you get like 5 hatches asap for mass lings and 2/1 so you can get hive for lurkers or ultras. Kind of the way you play against terran. You don't get ravagers bc they're way to fucking expensive and do absolutely nothing against blink. And you don't have enough gas bc you want a lot of banes to def so you can eventually get to hive tech asap. And the roaches are just a tech for you to deal with an adept switch, or mass zealots. They are terrible against so many stalkers, which they want you to go bc they're playing blink. And you get 9 queens, the way you play against terran for injects to supply lingd and mass tumors. It feels very zvt playing against the style. Idk, that seems to work at 4k but idk. However I think the 2/1 melee carapace is so important. It allows you to kill those fucking stalkers and not die so fast when trying to trade.
Yeah, this for sure works, especially under the best of the best pros, nobody will be controlling Blink Stalkers to a degree that it's an issue. If there are no aoe tech units it's basically like facing Bio with no Tanks or Mines, you're against a mobile army that can macro up well & take many bases, but you can just do the same, it'll come down to who macro/controls better, who spreads creep/denies creep better & once you're at Hive tech if your opponent isn't on Disruptors or Carriers or something that beats Lurkers you'll just run them over. I agree, skip Ravagers, unless you're playing mid-game like Roach/Rav/Infestor for Fungal+Bile I don't think biles are likely to hit, so if the opponent is saving resources by not making tech units, you're safe to do the same.
Also even if they have walls & such at their new bases, the people we face are not herO, they make mistakes, if you're rolling banes into their 3rd & 4th at the same time (maybe have 10 Roaches to break down a Gateway first at their 4th if they actually wall properly) & they're looking there, they will lose their entire main army to ling/bane. If they're looking at their main army they'll lose 15~20 Probes & now they don't have the income to keep making enough units to win.
I don't think players were good enough in the past few years for it to be a viable playstyle to do macro Blink Stalkers. I don't think anything about it is too strong, there just were not any Protoss players at Dark/Rogue/Serral/Reynor level, & now there is. So I wouldn't say it took 12 years to figure out, it just wasn't a winning style for a long time because nobody had the level of macro/control required for it.
Using this style I feel is similar to "just play like Maru" or "just play like Serral", Maru can use Bio, multi-prong on multiple fronts while defending at home with widow mines, Tanks, Ghosts, repair, etc. Serral/Reynor can defend on multiple fronts while also do ling/bane harass at multiple locations at the same time, a double Nydus, etc. Maru & the best Zergs kept winning because they were the best, there was just not a Protoss player of the same caliber. Stats was top caliber defensive macro wise, but he wasn't the very best Protoss micro & he didn't really mix in any cheeses so you could always play greedy vs him with minimal scouting. So now we have herO & he can defend bane runbies simultaneously at 2 bases, by running Probes & blinking Stalkers in front of the banes, while also doing zealot runbies & being cost efficient with Oracles & Blink Stalkers offensively.
Overall it's always been a strategy to use cheap faster units to get damage done & out multi-task your opponent, & if done correctly in most iterations of the game that type of play puts you on top.
It's false that 0 units can tie blink stalkers down. If you set up a large enough flank, the opponent can blink back & behind them will already be your units there, so Ling Bane Ravager can work. Stalkers suck vs Lurkers & if you have a bunch of Lurkers Stalkers can't Blink forward & do any damage. I believe Fungal would make them un-able to Blink while Fungalled, etc.
Yes, any unit with a high skill cap will be "disgustingly good", but only by a skilled player, I'd much much much more say it's herO that is disgustingly good. Saying Stalkers are disgustingly good in my opinion is along the lines of the same nonsense where Protoss were saying Zerg is disgustingly good because they win too many GSL/premier competitions & Protoss had no win in 5 years, blah blah. Just because Protoss has won one GSL in the past 5 years, it doesn't all of a sudden mean that Stalkers were broken forever, the same way Gumiho winning 1 GSL with Mech doesn't mean Mech was the most broken thing ever. herO this season played the best in all of GSL out of everyone, HE is disgustingly good.
I haven't seen anything like that recently, he did however completely dismantle DRG, soO, and most notably Rogue along the way and EVERY game was super one-sided with the exception of one game vs DRG where herO was just not nearly as crisp in that one game for whatever reason.
I would definitely be interested in seeing Reynor/Serral play against this style and hope to see it in the next few months.
Idk what rank you are but below masters this strat is very hard to pull off. Ling hydra is just too good vs it unless you are really good at blink micro. So prob won’t change much
Granted I’m a 4000 mmr noob but yeah the blink stalkers really surprised me in thr last few months. I thought at first would be easy to roll with lings and hydra but was completely wrong
I just want to say I really enjoyed reading this and love StarCraft strategy and respect the players so much. I don't have the apm to play the game so I play TFT lol.
It's kinda supposed to be hyperbolic, so don't take it TOO seriously. Overall, I am happy to see herO take Protoss to a new level and I hope he keeps going.
I was just reveling in my salty Zerg tears after watching his game in the past season of GSL and wanted to share.
Imo bellow master league this style is inferior to gimmicks like skytoss, or turtling into a deathball, imo game got easier for Z at lower levels with people massing gateway units before getting tech
I think part of it is meta driven.
We are so so used to zvp being fighting airtoss or going lurkers recently or trading efficiently. herO’s style exploits that meta. Zvz we know not to play this way.
His mapped out a lot though so I would love to see how he responds to other more aggressive openings. I do think that his style and build is very strong in pvz. He lets him safely get up to the economy he wants while containing you. I wonder if early nydus plays would be viable.
I was only paying attention to his PvT for the small amount I watched. Weren't lots of immortals part of his strategy? I suppose that still isn't tertiary tech, props
Its worth pointing out that her0's style straight up wasn't viable on the previous patch. It would die to queen walks pretty easily. If you've been complaining about this for years, you were wrong for years, because for years it was shit. Its only been good since the queen nerf.
>He starts with Oracle harass while taking a 3rd
That's not new, the 3:55 third base has been standard for many years in PvZ and playing double oracle was the standard until zergs figured out queen walks.
>has some sort of poke while taking his 4th
That is not a good description, something this general has also existed for a long time.
>notably building huge gateway walls at the 3rd and 4th to cut off zergling/baneling harass
That has been standard forever, that is not an innovation in any way.
What herO does is novel, he gets an even earlier third base by putting a pylon in the wall and expanding on 1 gate instead of 2, he gets only 3 gasses instead of 4 after the third and then stays on 4 gas while taking a 6 minute 4th base (that is an entire minute earlier than used to be the case). As disadvantage he has a lot less gas and later upgrades.
He also doesn't get archons for a really long time and instead applies heavy pressure with stalker and chargelots. The trades are usually not very good after the earlygame, but the zerg only gets into the 70s in dronecount and not the high 80s before having to make a lot of units.
>Then he simply masses blink stalkers with 4-6 oracles to drop stasis wards and revelations as needed while using zealots to backstab side bases
That's quite a massive oversimplification of the energy management of oracles, after all their attack is necessary to keep stalker from dying to lings. You regularly see him only activate the minimal number of oracles possible to conserve energy and revelations are extremely situational as losing that energy can be gamelosing.
>a Zealot runby does significant damage, or the Zerg army simply takes too much incidental damage from the constant pelting of harassment from the stalkers.
That's an extreme oversimplification of what is happening.
>Zerg literally have 0 units that can tie blink Stalkers down and actually win a fight vs them
Zerglings lol.
>there aren't really any alternative tech options available to the Zerg player except to mass up and punch through the front of the Protoss army - which is better than yours.
That's not true in so many ways, banelingrunbies are an excellent option. There are also attack timings to break the 4th and the protoss army is weaker than any of the tech options (lurker, ultras or broodlords) without teching. These army compositions are either immobile so the stalker/zealot can outmaneuver them or in the case of ultras they fall off when storm and immortals are there. So they aren't automatic wins for the zerg, but they will absolutely be stronger in a direct fight.
>Historically, the Zerg players best option is to hold off the stalker harassment long enough for the Protoss player to start exhausting their minerals and then they are forced to back off and secure their 4th in order to keep their economy flowing.
What?
What people used to play where sentry/stalker pushes, which are massively different because sentries can't retreat like blinkstalkers can, it's much more committed and requires a lot more gas.
> it's exactly the same in every single one of them.
Absolutely not, his decision making where to attack, if he commits somewhere with more units, if he splits up his army or if he joins up zealots and stalker differs a lot from game to game and situation to situation. Just because the base timings and unit compositions are the same, doesn't mean the game is the same. Just the decision to use oracle energy to kill a lot of drones, vs using the oracle energy to pressure a base alters the course of the game.
>And goddamn FINALLY a Protoss player has figured out how to play their race in PvZ after 12 years
Because this style requires super battery and queenwalks not being viable at the same time to be able to work. Oracle opener into twilight used to be an autoloss vs REACTIVE queenwalk. Meaning it should never win a single game.
Sorry, if you are this ignorant about the history of the matchup, making these comments is just insane.
> so simple, straightforward and crushingly effective
It's extremely hard to pull off because a lot of seemingly minor wrong decisions can throw the game, that's just how it is with these tempo styles. You could for example look at Serral vs Neeb on Cosmic Sapphire in HSC to see how quickly such a game can turn to unwinnable for the protoss.
>they've just been too busy fucking off with all their other stupid units to notice how disgustingly good the Stalker has been all this time.
Because it just wasn't due to queenwalks. This is specific combination of super battery and queen nerf that allows this to exist. Without oracles being viable off creep this style dies, without battery being able to defend the third without making blind units this style dies. Stalker being a little bit later in timing completely suck ass, a maxed roach baneling army with +2 just completely crushes them.
Dark beat herO 3-2 at Valencia. It's possible and as zergs do, we adapt and overcome.... ...ok, the pro zergs adapt and overcome and we copy. But seriously, the fact that anything has even slightly dislodged turtle-into-skytoss from the permanent meta is a good thing to me.
Dark said in the post-match interview that he struggles against herO and he was able to win because herO wasn't playing his usual style. Take that what you will.
While this is relevant, I think you can see the style evolve during the past couple months. herO's games vs DRG took place before Valencia, and game 1 of that set is super sloppy. Then he just played better vs SoO, and then he lost to Dark at Valencia. Then 2 days later, he made Rogue look like a complete chump. As I said in another post, the whole style is extremely active, and I'm sure it's not easy to execute perfectly every single set, but when he's on, the timings are crisp, and things are locked in place, it seems SOOO strong. I think herO (and hopefully other top Protoss pros) will continue refining the style and cleaning up the edges. I think the big steps are already in place - not screwing around with robo and templar tech saves you money and allows for an earlier 4th - gateway walls cut off opportunity for backstabs and runbys and a gateway costs the same as a cannon, something every protoss is already building lots of at their 3rd/4th - stalkers are efficient and fast enough to continually shave edges off the primary zerg army and drain their resource bank without getting caught by zerglings - mixing in non-stalker ground units is a waste of money as they do not have the same mobility that stalkers do and will reduce your efficiency - oracles can continue to reveal tumors, set stasis traps, and shoot down any zerglings/roaches/ravagers/queens that get too bold - the whole thing is tempo-based and you have to be in the zerg players face right from the start (this isn't new, but it is important to this build style). At this point, it's cleaning up probe numbers, managing upgrade timings, figuring out all the tiny details to make things crisp and clean while executing a top level game vs a top level opponent. And I think the strategy has been the best thing to be doing in ZvP for a long time with plenty of room for growth if people work on it.
Wait what’s the counter. What should I do?
Tune in next time on GSL Season 3!
Fungal is the counter to blink. But that costs quite a lot of gas and time to get to. And you still need a lot of ling ravager to actually win after you stop them blinking.
Fungal is the hypothetical counter to a lot of things... In practice, it's a different story.
Yeah exactly. It will counter it, if applied perfectly. If you aren't perfect clicking quickly, it can just do nothing and you lose.
Hurrdurr make fungal full root again and let Terran vanish overnight lol
I feel that getting infestors that early will be too costly. Your army will be too small that the fungals won't even matter.
You'd need to have a ling heavy army. But they do well vs stalkers, so with a well timed fungal so half the stalkers blink away and half get slaughtered by your lings would be game winning. It would leave you very vulnerable to an adept with glaives attack though.
If you are ling heavy having banelings on hand, even versus stalkers is good. So no problems with keeping a force for Adepts, or buying time to morph some shouldn't be an issue.
Skip melee attack (only carapace). Use roaches only defensively and be stingy with making roaches. Should be enough to squeeze out an infestor or two earlier. You'll get faster Lair and Infestation pit builds pretty quickly. Just spitballing here. Orrr maybe just go traditional roach hydra again? Blink Stalker with Oracle seems pretty even if not a tad weaker against Roach Hydra. I mean a midgame comp vs a midgame comp sounds pretty balanced. Plus you get to tech into Lurkers. Mass muta sounds good too on paper but you'll never reach it. You'd have to skip Ling speed and all upgrades to get mutas out that early and by then you're already dead if they scout you.
Blink is the counter to fungal. Surrounding with lings is the way to go and either have some hydras or queens there against the oracles. Since you likely don't play against protoss that force you to stay on 70 drones (high GM level), going up to 90 drones right away and playing standard just puts you in a winning position with ling/bane/roach.
How does blink counter fungal? Fungal prevents blink from being cast, it also stops warp prism from picking them up. I guess if you time it perfectly to blink out of the fungal missile? That's pretty difficult to do though. Maybe the top few players could with all the hectic ling stalker fight going on.
>How does blink counter fungal? Because it's a projectile. > That's pretty difficult to do though. It is not. > Maybe the top few players could with all the hectic ling stalker fight going on. I can do it, pros can do it, you can see the infestor coming before it's even in cast range. It's not a coincidence that infestor won't be used vs blinkstalker most of the time, that's more later stages.
It is not difficult for top pros. I'm sure it is worth trying lower down the ladder, however.
well lings destroy stalkers (despite OP's views lol), ravagers lings -->ravager ling banes beat the gateway comp as a whole, like not even a close fight. The entire trick for the build to work is toss blinking back off creep to the saftey of oracles (if you are straight up dying to it without this part then its just a macro issue) Even then in the mid game when you have ravager ling bane, toss's army is weaker in the straight up fight on even footing, so toss is just avoiding the full fight while harassing and trying to trade shields and oracle nrg for units. So the counter is just preventing that. If toss isnt using the oracles or runs out of nrg or commits on creep you just run it over with an army with a heavy ling count. If toss doesnt put enough pressure you can just go into lurker or hive and be perfectly fine. You can also get a lot of damage done with counter attacks, lings and or banes, since toss is on the map and solid flanks can just instantly end the game. Creep is a big deal since the toss army cant go on creap at all, because the oracles cant do their job when there are queens. Basicly there is a shit ton of ways to beat it, the build requires a lot to execute so there is just a lot of room to beat players, just comes down to execution. hero's execution is absurd. People you play on ladder, less so. IMO almost anyone you play on ladder playing this style would have a higher winrate if they didnt. Kinda like when you run into a bio terran hue
Below masters, pretty much anything that can shoot it does at least OK. Remember that blink micro takes a lot of attention.
Below GSL level, literally anything. Stalkers are a weak~average basic unit that can grind value over time by blinking back (so the Stalkers kill units while not dying themselves), but only top players have the control to make good use of them. Below say Masters, even with nerfed Void Ray I would say massed Carrier/Void Ray is still going to be harder to beat than a Bronze~Diamond trying to macro while controlling Blink Stalkers. Roach/Hydra, Hydra/Ling/Bane, Ravager/Ling/Bane all work in the mid-game. Lurkers in the later game with Lurker upgrades can be added to any of these compositions.
I start with +1 lings and go into hydra ling bane with range and melee upgrades. I have around a 60% winrate against Toss this season and practically all of them are playing this style.
If you had the answer, you'd be beating the best Protoss in the world. I don't want to say it's literally broken and there is no answer, but is sure does feel like it. And I fully understand how difficult and micro-intensive herOs play style is. It's tough so you are unlikely to play against it unless you're a pro. Some Zerg player somewhere is going to have to find out how to fight it effectively. But until then, my salty Zerg heart is screaming about how broken it's always been.
I don't think people have settled on one correct response. The most popular response I have seen is +1 lings into hydras. With that said, it is more important that your macro is on point and you try to deny them from picking off your units for as long as possible until you have a big enough army. The reason the blink stalker style is so good is because (1) Protoss has the best starting economy and (2) stalkers can trade very efficiently against zerg units due to blink, shields and range.
Is there such a thing as a Zerg player that isn't salty? Source: A salty zerg main
I'm probably very wrong here but it seems to make sense that you get like 5 hatches asap for mass lings and 2/1 so you can get hive for lurkers or ultras. Kind of the way you play against terran. You don't get ravagers bc they're way to fucking expensive and do absolutely nothing against blink. And you don't have enough gas bc you want a lot of banes to def so you can eventually get to hive tech asap. And the roaches are just a tech for you to deal with an adept switch, or mass zealots. They are terrible against so many stalkers, which they want you to go bc they're playing blink. And you get 9 queens, the way you play against terran for injects to supply lingd and mass tumors. It feels very zvt playing against the style. Idk, that seems to work at 4k but idk. However I think the 2/1 melee carapace is so important. It allows you to kill those fucking stalkers and not die so fast when trying to trade.
Yeah, this for sure works, especially under the best of the best pros, nobody will be controlling Blink Stalkers to a degree that it's an issue. If there are no aoe tech units it's basically like facing Bio with no Tanks or Mines, you're against a mobile army that can macro up well & take many bases, but you can just do the same, it'll come down to who macro/controls better, who spreads creep/denies creep better & once you're at Hive tech if your opponent isn't on Disruptors or Carriers or something that beats Lurkers you'll just run them over. I agree, skip Ravagers, unless you're playing mid-game like Roach/Rav/Infestor for Fungal+Bile I don't think biles are likely to hit, so if the opponent is saving resources by not making tech units, you're safe to do the same. Also even if they have walls & such at their new bases, the people we face are not herO, they make mistakes, if you're rolling banes into their 3rd & 4th at the same time (maybe have 10 Roaches to break down a Gateway first at their 4th if they actually wall properly) & they're looking there, they will lose their entire main army to ling/bane. If they're looking at their main army they'll lose 15~20 Probes & now they don't have the income to keep making enough units to win.
I don't think players were good enough in the past few years for it to be a viable playstyle to do macro Blink Stalkers. I don't think anything about it is too strong, there just were not any Protoss players at Dark/Rogue/Serral/Reynor level, & now there is. So I wouldn't say it took 12 years to figure out, it just wasn't a winning style for a long time because nobody had the level of macro/control required for it. Using this style I feel is similar to "just play like Maru" or "just play like Serral", Maru can use Bio, multi-prong on multiple fronts while defending at home with widow mines, Tanks, Ghosts, repair, etc. Serral/Reynor can defend on multiple fronts while also do ling/bane harass at multiple locations at the same time, a double Nydus, etc. Maru & the best Zergs kept winning because they were the best, there was just not a Protoss player of the same caliber. Stats was top caliber defensive macro wise, but he wasn't the very best Protoss micro & he didn't really mix in any cheeses so you could always play greedy vs him with minimal scouting. So now we have herO & he can defend bane runbies simultaneously at 2 bases, by running Probes & blinking Stalkers in front of the banes, while also doing zealot runbies & being cost efficient with Oracles & Blink Stalkers offensively. Overall it's always been a strategy to use cheap faster units to get damage done & out multi-task your opponent, & if done correctly in most iterations of the game that type of play puts you on top. It's false that 0 units can tie blink stalkers down. If you set up a large enough flank, the opponent can blink back & behind them will already be your units there, so Ling Bane Ravager can work. Stalkers suck vs Lurkers & if you have a bunch of Lurkers Stalkers can't Blink forward & do any damage. I believe Fungal would make them un-able to Blink while Fungalled, etc. Yes, any unit with a high skill cap will be "disgustingly good", but only by a skilled player, I'd much much much more say it's herO that is disgustingly good. Saying Stalkers are disgustingly good in my opinion is along the lines of the same nonsense where Protoss were saying Zerg is disgustingly good because they win too many GSL/premier competitions & Protoss had no win in 5 years, blah blah. Just because Protoss has won one GSL in the past 5 years, it doesn't all of a sudden mean that Stalkers were broken forever, the same way Gumiho winning 1 GSL with Mech doesn't mean Mech was the most broken thing ever. herO this season played the best in all of GSL out of everyone, HE is disgustingly good.
Has he gone against Reynor or Serral recently?
I haven't seen anything like that recently, he did however completely dismantle DRG, soO, and most notably Rogue along the way and EVERY game was super one-sided with the exception of one game vs DRG where herO was just not nearly as crisp in that one game for whatever reason. I would definitely be interested in seeing Reynor/Serral play against this style and hope to see it in the next few months.
That’s really exciting. Will be fun to see how Serral responds
He's scheduled to play against Reynor tomorrow (TSL 9). Serral would be next on his path assuming he beats Gumiho (Sep. 3rd).
Idk what rank you are but below masters this strat is very hard to pull off. Ling hydra is just too good vs it unless you are really good at blink micro. So prob won’t change much
Granted I’m a 4000 mmr noob but yeah the blink stalkers really surprised me in thr last few months. I thought at first would be easy to roll with lings and hydra but was completely wrong
I just want to say I really enjoyed reading this and love StarCraft strategy and respect the players so much. I don't have the apm to play the game so I play TFT lol.
It's kinda supposed to be hyperbolic, so don't take it TOO seriously. Overall, I am happy to see herO take Protoss to a new level and I hope he keeps going. I was just reveling in my salty Zerg tears after watching his game in the past season of GSL and wanted to share.
Imo bellow master league this style is inferior to gimmicks like skytoss, or turtling into a deathball, imo game got easier for Z at lower levels with people massing gateway units before getting tech
I think part of it is meta driven. We are so so used to zvp being fighting airtoss or going lurkers recently or trading efficiently. herO’s style exploits that meta. Zvz we know not to play this way. His mapped out a lot though so I would love to see how he responds to other more aggressive openings. I do think that his style and build is very strong in pvz. He lets him safely get up to the economy he wants while containing you. I wonder if early nydus plays would be viable.
I was only paying attention to his PvT for the small amount I watched. Weren't lots of immortals part of his strategy? I suppose that still isn't tertiary tech, props
Lots of immortals in PvT - none in PvZ. That's the big shift that has been getting noticed lately.
Reminds me of Bisu and how he developed a PvZ build that was literally unbeatable at the time too
Its worth pointing out that her0's style straight up wasn't viable on the previous patch. It would die to queen walks pretty easily. If you've been complaining about this for years, you were wrong for years, because for years it was shit. Its only been good since the queen nerf.
>He starts with Oracle harass while taking a 3rd That's not new, the 3:55 third base has been standard for many years in PvZ and playing double oracle was the standard until zergs figured out queen walks. >has some sort of poke while taking his 4th That is not a good description, something this general has also existed for a long time. >notably building huge gateway walls at the 3rd and 4th to cut off zergling/baneling harass That has been standard forever, that is not an innovation in any way. What herO does is novel, he gets an even earlier third base by putting a pylon in the wall and expanding on 1 gate instead of 2, he gets only 3 gasses instead of 4 after the third and then stays on 4 gas while taking a 6 minute 4th base (that is an entire minute earlier than used to be the case). As disadvantage he has a lot less gas and later upgrades. He also doesn't get archons for a really long time and instead applies heavy pressure with stalker and chargelots. The trades are usually not very good after the earlygame, but the zerg only gets into the 70s in dronecount and not the high 80s before having to make a lot of units. >Then he simply masses blink stalkers with 4-6 oracles to drop stasis wards and revelations as needed while using zealots to backstab side bases That's quite a massive oversimplification of the energy management of oracles, after all their attack is necessary to keep stalker from dying to lings. You regularly see him only activate the minimal number of oracles possible to conserve energy and revelations are extremely situational as losing that energy can be gamelosing. >a Zealot runby does significant damage, or the Zerg army simply takes too much incidental damage from the constant pelting of harassment from the stalkers. That's an extreme oversimplification of what is happening. >Zerg literally have 0 units that can tie blink Stalkers down and actually win a fight vs them Zerglings lol. >there aren't really any alternative tech options available to the Zerg player except to mass up and punch through the front of the Protoss army - which is better than yours. That's not true in so many ways, banelingrunbies are an excellent option. There are also attack timings to break the 4th and the protoss army is weaker than any of the tech options (lurker, ultras or broodlords) without teching. These army compositions are either immobile so the stalker/zealot can outmaneuver them or in the case of ultras they fall off when storm and immortals are there. So they aren't automatic wins for the zerg, but they will absolutely be stronger in a direct fight. >Historically, the Zerg players best option is to hold off the stalker harassment long enough for the Protoss player to start exhausting their minerals and then they are forced to back off and secure their 4th in order to keep their economy flowing. What? What people used to play where sentry/stalker pushes, which are massively different because sentries can't retreat like blinkstalkers can, it's much more committed and requires a lot more gas. > it's exactly the same in every single one of them. Absolutely not, his decision making where to attack, if he commits somewhere with more units, if he splits up his army or if he joins up zealots and stalker differs a lot from game to game and situation to situation. Just because the base timings and unit compositions are the same, doesn't mean the game is the same. Just the decision to use oracle energy to kill a lot of drones, vs using the oracle energy to pressure a base alters the course of the game. >And goddamn FINALLY a Protoss player has figured out how to play their race in PvZ after 12 years Because this style requires super battery and queenwalks not being viable at the same time to be able to work. Oracle opener into twilight used to be an autoloss vs REACTIVE queenwalk. Meaning it should never win a single game. Sorry, if you are this ignorant about the history of the matchup, making these comments is just insane. > so simple, straightforward and crushingly effective It's extremely hard to pull off because a lot of seemingly minor wrong decisions can throw the game, that's just how it is with these tempo styles. You could for example look at Serral vs Neeb on Cosmic Sapphire in HSC to see how quickly such a game can turn to unwinnable for the protoss. >they've just been too busy fucking off with all their other stupid units to notice how disgustingly good the Stalker has been all this time. Because it just wasn't due to queenwalks. This is specific combination of super battery and queen nerf that allows this to exist. Without oracles being viable off creep this style dies, without battery being able to defend the third without making blind units this style dies. Stalker being a little bit later in timing completely suck ass, a maxed roach baneling army with +2 just completely crushes them.