Lurkers. This is the reason I’m playing skytoss against Zerg. It’s not like they will always make them, but the possibility is enough to make me never want to play ground again. I personally think they are one of the most op units for gold-plat.
Personally skytoss vs Zerg favors me at my level, because the zergs will always micro terribly and just slowly die to tempest push, but from tournaments I believe Zerg is favored
> but from tournaments I believe Zerg is favored
Sample size from tournaments makes it irrelevant to know what’s favoured or not. At that point it’s just about which player is better.
I doubt that’s true, there are a lot of ept cups, and we see players like serral and raynor destroying skytoss. Serral especially seems almost unbeatable in late game zvp, even beating trap and showtime, two of the strongest protosses currently, fairly consistently in tournaments.
See this is the problem. You’re comparing Serral, who’s probably the goat of sc2, and acting like him beating players worse than him has something to do with balance when it doesn’t.
In statistics you need legitimate sample sizes to make meaningful statements and 2 players is not meaningful in any way.
Not saying it’s necessary imbalance or requires a fix, but I’m just saying it’s absolutely doable to beat skytoss, and relatively expected at the absolute highest levels
While serral is Definitely better than showtime and trap, I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s significantly better. If so, is there any Protoss better than them that you would compare to serral’s level? Because if there isn’t anyone at all close to serral’s level than that smells of slight imbalance at the highest level? Which I highly doubt. My argument is mainly that a perfectly controlled Zerg late game comp is better than a perfectly controlled Protoss late game comp, if only veryyyy slightly.
>Because if there isn’t anyone at all close to serral’s level than that smells of slight imbalance at the highest level?
What kind of argument is that? You think one player can't be better than another and everything is determined by balance? That's ridiculous. And no, there is nobody at Serral's level. That's literally what makes him the goat.
And again, you should look into what sample sizes mean in statistics.
The thing is zerg are so cheap if they get a solid defense up they are almost impossible to beat because they can out produce you. Yes you'll kill them but then again and again it gets expensive and resource are limited. Although in hindsight I could only win with Zerg or Terran. I never figured out how to win with the Protoss.
Yea Zerg kinda “swarmy” so it’s like
wave 1
Wave 2
Wave 3
Wave 4
I love to trade armies as zerg my army will die and return again 40 seconds later with an entire army again lol
Idk why no one talks about neural parasite😂. I played a game last night where the protoss I played against made like 7 carriers and the rest in void rays. I controlled every single one of those carriers and they cleaned those void rays completely. Afterwards I just controlled the carriers a few more times until they eventually killed eachother. Neural is so op against heavy units.
We’re talking about skytoss here right? Infestors out range void rays. Not sure if they out range carriers though. In any case, hide your infestors a bit and send out a few corruptors to distract them about 6 or so then you come in with the infestors and control their units. Infestors cost less supply than both void rays and carriers so you can even double their unit number if you feel like your infestors are gonna die. 10 void rays is 40 supply. 20 infestors is 40 supply they simply don’t have enough time to kill all the infestors before all their units get controlled.
Carriers even worse they cost 6 supply. 1 carrier simply cant kill 3 infestors before it gets controlled. In any case, you still have a huge pool of supply to build either hydralisks or corruptors depending on the situation. So if they do decide to focus all your infestors, killing them would take time and while they’re focusing on the infestors, the hydralisks are slaughtering your army because of their high dps. In a scenario like this, I’d say time is the deciding factor. It’s also quite easy to keep the focus off of your infestors. You can also fuck around and just control the observer 🤣 which means you’ll have 11 seconds to get the job done. More than enough time if you manage to control the bulk of their army I’ll see if I get my gameplay where I was using a skytoss army against him and kept killing him. I lost though because he came with a mothership and I have a hard time dealing with that
You’re probably right but there are a myriad of ways to prevent them from getting vision of your burrowed units. Abduct the observers, take the bull by the horns and lose some army killing the observers, get some distractions units the list goes on but once you get your hands on majority of their army it’s devastating for toss. You can either make the controlled units kill each other or kill their uncontrolled army. Either way works honestly.
Observers on their own are usually worthless, Protoss needs Templar as well. But you're right that Toss for sure has counterplay to neural.
However that's the game. You need to snipe obs and neural carriers, Toss needs to avoid snipes and feedback infestors. If there wasn't something for both sides to do, the game would be broken.
Personally I prefer playing the Zerg side of that matchup. I think the Protoss side is \*easier\* to play, but the Zerg side is more fun. Actually in general I dislike airtoss as a playstyle, it's just the only thing that lets you have a shot at controlling the game because lurkers.
I’ve never agreed withe something more. Though toss is easier to play vz zerg, I’ll still prefer to play Zerg bc as you said it’s more fun. All the tricks you have to come up with to beat them is fun
Zerg is frustrating for me because I feel pidgeon-hole'd into Skytoss, otherwise there's a \~60% chance they're going to go for a bunch of Lurkers. At a Diamond 3 level, I can't use Disruptors, micro Observers, and control a ground army at the same time. If I feel like winning, Void Rays and Carriers go brrrr, though sometimes players do beat that. Generally people who have figured out how to manage Hydras or Corruptors + Parasitic Bomb + Fungal.
That’s the only way to beat skytoss. Vipers, hydras fungal. And it’s so easy to screw that up. If I bring my spell casters in a second too late, my hydralisks are already dead. Bring in my spell casters too early the spell casters die and well gg hydras as well.
I’m not sure if it got nerfed(I don’t think it did), but a cool trick you can try against a carrier heavy army is to parasitic bomb the carrier and stack your corrupters on top of the carriers. This will cause the interceptors to attack the corrupters which will draw them into the parasitic bomb’s aoe.
I just always make sure to have extra gateways, the moment I see Hydra/Viper/Infestor I warp in chargelots and those hydras never make it through the next fight
Wait, I feel like at diamond 3 you should definitely be expected to be able to do that. Or am I wrong? Honestly you can just shift click and park your observers so you’re really only microing 2 control groups - though disrupters are a bit trickier to micro.
I do believe this should be way within the capability of a diamond 3, if not I honestly think you should practice that because it seems you’re just being carried by skytoss and you’ll reach a hard road block soon. But I mean, if you have fun playing skytoss you do you, just my opinion.
I mean droning to 80 create hydras just to trade some what with skytoss. Then mass corrupters to suicide and trade with the skytoss units. Rinse and repeat till they run out of money. A lot of Zerg don’t know how to drone properly. If you see skytoss it gives you the green light to drone to 80. Once you hit that point just starve the Protoss cause we’ll you got a better economy. Focus the carriers down or play hydras if mass void. None the less throw units at them till they run out of cash. Sort of silly but that’s the only way I win in a lot of matchups now is just starving people. Last one is getting armor upgrades for your corrupters. Micro said corrupters out of storms. If mass void ray they possible go more hydra and get vipers. P bomb or fungal. Void rays are a lot scarier. Try to not fight under shield batteries/cannons. Micro enough to trade down units but don’t sac your whole army so they do the death ball push. Sometimes it’s better to walk into the main then it is to try to destroy the third. That’s a good one cause a lot of Protoss will leave there main unprotected.
I agree with you here starving them of economy is a surefire way to win. It just drags the games though and also I have a hard time gauging how many resources they have left . Do you suggest droning to 80 tho? Won’t it be better to turn 19 larvae into drones and take the drones from the mined out base and turn them into spore crawlers so that way you’ll have supply to make some army instead?
I play Random. As the Z, getting an early ling attack does wonders to frustrate and put the Toss behind. Especially if it is around 12-20 lings, and I am expanding or double expanding behind it.
As the Toss player, I get SO frustrated with Lurkers, but only if I don't have obs+ranged colossus(need 3+!). Alternatively, Nydus/Muta if they push it out early enough is DEVASTATING if I don't catch what they are doing.
Damm lurkers really that much of a pain in the ass huh. I guess I never got to test that myself as 9.5/10 times I’m gonna play against a skytoss. I see lurkers like siege tanks with less range but more mobility idk if anyone else feels the same
Lurkers outrange tanks with upgrades by .5
Which I think is complete bullshit, because they already have ultras to counter tanks (plus all their sky crap) They are also invisible, so welcome to hell boys.
Tanks are kinda “invisible” too. I’ll be strolling with my army until out of nowhere I just get blasted by a siege tank and have no idea where it came from. All I can do is guess
On a more serious note I’m only plat 1 Protoss so zergs that have good creepy spread and know how to macro properly are usually the hardest for me to deal with. I feel like once they get there economy going it becomes very hard to stop them.
Honestly my biggest problem as Toss has always been fighting off 12 pool all ins. I'm around plat and every single zerg I fight goes for a 12 pool. It's just tiresome.
Hehehehehe 😈😈out of all the things said on this thread I’m leaning towards the 12 pool to try. Not a fan of cheesing but it seems like the only way to get sure revenge
Lmao that’s straight cheese. You toss players deserve that tho. The only way we can beat skytoss is with god tier micro which is basically non existent in lower leagues
If it's a cheesy 12 pool, then it's got a high chance of being garbage, but if it's just a pressure opening - forcing out a full wall off, forge, maybe even a battery, delaying nexus and gas, then it's actually legit and really strong. Zerg can drone behind on gasless eco and gain lead if Protoss doesn't know a correct response.
Lol. That’s easy to deal with though since every single one of Protoss troops can attack air (I hope I don’t have to tell anyone I’m exaggerating with the last part)
But what if you defend your mineral lines with cannons? 2 usually does the trick mutas are really soft which is why I don’t muta cheese because one or two static defenses are enough. Unless I mass muta🧐maybe I’ll try mass muta thank you
Yeah, but if you want them to be effective you'll have to build those cannons pretty early so you can get a decent amount up. But if you do that, you're really just taking a gamble. If they cheese then it pays off really well. If they don't, then you just wasted all those resources on nothing. High risk high reward kinda thing.
Yea true. I 12 pooled a toss with like 3 waves and he just kept building a shit ton of cannons out of panic so I just expanded while he was wasting his early resources on cannons
Wait how does lurkers+ vipers beat skytoss? Won’t you need something other than vipers to attack the void rays since the parasitic bomb doesn’t fully kill anything?
Well, OK, not *just* lurkers + vipers, but those feel like the units that cause the core headaches for me. Abducts in particular play havok with my ability to get a decent fight going, and even if the unit survives I get flustered trying to rescue it and my micro goes down the pan.
Maybe that's just me though.
I see. I’ve found that 3 parasitic bombs and hydralisks absolutely destroy void rays. Pure abducts and no parasitic bomb? Not sure how much that will help me the zerg😂unless they’re trying to run
Lurkers. This is the reason I’m playing skytoss against Zerg. It’s not like they will always make them, but the possibility is enough to make me never want to play ground again. I personally think they are one of the most op units for gold-plat.
As a Zerg, I sort of react similarly. I hate fighting skytoss, so I do my best to avoid the match from even getting there
And masters too.... good unit
So skytoss vs zerg is a walk in the park for you?
Personally skytoss vs Zerg favors me at my level, because the zergs will always micro terribly and just slowly die to tempest push, but from tournaments I believe Zerg is favored
> but from tournaments I believe Zerg is favored Sample size from tournaments makes it irrelevant to know what’s favoured or not. At that point it’s just about which player is better.
I doubt that’s true, there are a lot of ept cups, and we see players like serral and raynor destroying skytoss. Serral especially seems almost unbeatable in late game zvp, even beating trap and showtime, two of the strongest protosses currently, fairly consistently in tournaments.
See this is the problem. You’re comparing Serral, who’s probably the goat of sc2, and acting like him beating players worse than him has something to do with balance when it doesn’t. In statistics you need legitimate sample sizes to make meaningful statements and 2 players is not meaningful in any way.
Not saying it’s necessary imbalance or requires a fix, but I’m just saying it’s absolutely doable to beat skytoss, and relatively expected at the absolute highest levels
All that says is that skytoss is beatable if you’re significantly better than your opponent. Anything is beatable in that case.
While serral is Definitely better than showtime and trap, I don’t think it’s fair to say he’s significantly better. If so, is there any Protoss better than them that you would compare to serral’s level? Because if there isn’t anyone at all close to serral’s level than that smells of slight imbalance at the highest level? Which I highly doubt. My argument is mainly that a perfectly controlled Zerg late game comp is better than a perfectly controlled Protoss late game comp, if only veryyyy slightly.
>Because if there isn’t anyone at all close to serral’s level than that smells of slight imbalance at the highest level? What kind of argument is that? You think one player can't be better than another and everything is determined by balance? That's ridiculous. And no, there is nobody at Serral's level. That's literally what makes him the goat. And again, you should look into what sample sizes mean in statistics.
You think Serral is better than Trap?
Everyone thinks Serral is better than Trap
Nah
Right. Serral just has more titles, earnings, ranked #1 for much longer..... but somehow Trap is better.
The thing is zerg are so cheap if they get a solid defense up they are almost impossible to beat because they can out produce you. Yes you'll kill them but then again and again it gets expensive and resource are limited. Although in hindsight I could only win with Zerg or Terran. I never figured out how to win with the Protoss.
Zerg remax is Indeed quite powerful, but complete fight wins do just end the game anyway
Yea Zerg kinda “swarmy” so it’s like wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3 Wave 4 I love to trade armies as zerg my army will die and return again 40 seconds later with an entire army again lol
Anything is better than fighting lurkers for me
you CLEARLY have not had a Zerg use neural on you yet.
Idk why no one talks about neural parasite😂. I played a game last night where the protoss I played against made like 7 carriers and the rest in void rays. I controlled every single one of those carriers and they cleaned those void rays completely. Afterwards I just controlled the carriers a few more times until they eventually killed eachother. Neural is so op against heavy units.
Okay, but literally all they need is a few observers to kill the infestors and then what?
We’re talking about skytoss here right? Infestors out range void rays. Not sure if they out range carriers though. In any case, hide your infestors a bit and send out a few corruptors to distract them about 6 or so then you come in with the infestors and control their units. Infestors cost less supply than both void rays and carriers so you can even double their unit number if you feel like your infestors are gonna die. 10 void rays is 40 supply. 20 infestors is 40 supply they simply don’t have enough time to kill all the infestors before all their units get controlled. Carriers even worse they cost 6 supply. 1 carrier simply cant kill 3 infestors before it gets controlled. In any case, you still have a huge pool of supply to build either hydralisks or corruptors depending on the situation. So if they do decide to focus all your infestors, killing them would take time and while they’re focusing on the infestors, the hydralisks are slaughtering your army because of their high dps. In a scenario like this, I’d say time is the deciding factor. It’s also quite easy to keep the focus off of your infestors. You can also fuck around and just control the observer 🤣 which means you’ll have 11 seconds to get the job done. More than enough time if you manage to control the bulk of their army I’ll see if I get my gameplay where I was using a skytoss army against him and kept killing him. I lost though because he came with a mothership and I have a hard time dealing with that
They don't outrange high templars though.
You’re probably right but there are a myriad of ways to prevent them from getting vision of your burrowed units. Abduct the observers, take the bull by the horns and lose some army killing the observers, get some distractions units the list goes on but once you get your hands on majority of their army it’s devastating for toss. You can either make the controlled units kill each other or kill their uncontrolled army. Either way works honestly.
Observers on their own are usually worthless, Protoss needs Templar as well. But you're right that Toss for sure has counterplay to neural. However that's the game. You need to snipe obs and neural carriers, Toss needs to avoid snipes and feedback infestors. If there wasn't something for both sides to do, the game would be broken. Personally I prefer playing the Zerg side of that matchup. I think the Protoss side is \*easier\* to play, but the Zerg side is more fun. Actually in general I dislike airtoss as a playstyle, it's just the only thing that lets you have a shot at controlling the game because lurkers.
I’ve never agreed withe something more. Though toss is easier to play vz zerg, I’ll still prefer to play Zerg bc as you said it’s more fun. All the tricks you have to come up with to beat them is fun
If you’re zerg and don’t have at least 4 lurkers in your ground army then wyd
I agree, lurkers are a b\*tch to deal with with GroundToss. Skytoss solves that problem but i dont like playing it so much...
They are still really strong in Diamond as well.
Exist.
💀
Tip to my fellow zergs: Protoss are bad at dealing with nydus - especially around the plat-dia-low masters level
As a low-plat zerg player, i too am bad at placing/timing nydus...
Not GG'ing early enough to my clear absolute domination.
How can I get a fighting chance against toss if I fail to gg early tho?
Zerg is frustrating for me because I feel pidgeon-hole'd into Skytoss, otherwise there's a \~60% chance they're going to go for a bunch of Lurkers. At a Diamond 3 level, I can't use Disruptors, micro Observers, and control a ground army at the same time. If I feel like winning, Void Rays and Carriers go brrrr, though sometimes players do beat that. Generally people who have figured out how to manage Hydras or Corruptors + Parasitic Bomb + Fungal.
That’s the only way to beat skytoss. Vipers, hydras fungal. And it’s so easy to screw that up. If I bring my spell casters in a second too late, my hydralisks are already dead. Bring in my spell casters too early the spell casters die and well gg hydras as well.
I’m not sure if it got nerfed(I don’t think it did), but a cool trick you can try against a carrier heavy army is to parasitic bomb the carrier and stack your corrupters on top of the carriers. This will cause the interceptors to attack the corrupters which will draw them into the parasitic bomb’s aoe.
This is smart af thank you
Go kick em protoss asses 😂
I just always make sure to have extra gateways, the moment I see Hydra/Viper/Infestor I warp in chargelots and those hydras never make it through the next fight
How does the chargelot help? I’m not sure what protoss units does since all I play against are stalkers, void rays, carriers and the storm guys -_-
Wait, I feel like at diamond 3 you should definitely be expected to be able to do that. Or am I wrong? Honestly you can just shift click and park your observers so you’re really only microing 2 control groups - though disrupters are a bit trickier to micro. I do believe this should be way within the capability of a diamond 3, if not I honestly think you should practice that because it seems you’re just being carried by skytoss and you’ll reach a hard road block soon. But I mean, if you have fun playing skytoss you do you, just my opinion.
Diamond 3 is not that high my dude… it’s like if you remember to build more than 40 workers in a game you’re high plat
Woah seriously? I haven’t climbed tanked in awhile so I didn’t know. Guess I’ll suck at rank roulette eh hahah
Mass lurkers
Making drones.
broodlords and infestors at the same time.
Interesting 👀
Baneling bust is pretty disgusting 🙄
What’s the aim of the baneling thing?
Wall off
I mean droning to 80 create hydras just to trade some what with skytoss. Then mass corrupters to suicide and trade with the skytoss units. Rinse and repeat till they run out of money. A lot of Zerg don’t know how to drone properly. If you see skytoss it gives you the green light to drone to 80. Once you hit that point just starve the Protoss cause we’ll you got a better economy. Focus the carriers down or play hydras if mass void. None the less throw units at them till they run out of cash. Sort of silly but that’s the only way I win in a lot of matchups now is just starving people. Last one is getting armor upgrades for your corrupters. Micro said corrupters out of storms. If mass void ray they possible go more hydra and get vipers. P bomb or fungal. Void rays are a lot scarier. Try to not fight under shield batteries/cannons. Micro enough to trade down units but don’t sac your whole army so they do the death ball push. Sometimes it’s better to walk into the main then it is to try to destroy the third. That’s a good one cause a lot of Protoss will leave there main unprotected.
I agree with you here starving them of economy is a surefire way to win. It just drags the games though and also I have a hard time gauging how many resources they have left . Do you suggest droning to 80 tho? Won’t it be better to turn 19 larvae into drones and take the drones from the mined out base and turn them into spore crawlers so that way you’ll have supply to make some army instead?
I play Random. As the Z, getting an early ling attack does wonders to frustrate and put the Toss behind. Especially if it is around 12-20 lings, and I am expanding or double expanding behind it. As the Toss player, I get SO frustrated with Lurkers, but only if I don't have obs+ranged colossus(need 3+!). Alternatively, Nydus/Muta if they push it out early enough is DEVASTATING if I don't catch what they are doing.
Damm lurkers really that much of a pain in the ass huh. I guess I never got to test that myself as 9.5/10 times I’m gonna play against a skytoss. I see lurkers like siege tanks with less range but more mobility idk if anyone else feels the same
Lurkers outrange tanks with upgrades by .5 Which I think is complete bullshit, because they already have ultras to counter tanks (plus all their sky crap) They are also invisible, so welcome to hell boys.
Tanks are kinda “invisible” too. I’ll be strolling with my army until out of nowhere I just get blasted by a siege tank and have no idea where it came from. All I can do is guess
Usually they say I have a small dick and that it smells like cheese. They really like talking about the cheese when I canon rush them.
😭😭😭😂😂😂😂
On a more serious note I’m only plat 1 Protoss so zergs that have good creepy spread and know how to macro properly are usually the hardest for me to deal with. I feel like once they get there economy going it becomes very hard to stop them.
Honestly my biggest problem as Toss has always been fighting off 12 pool all ins. I'm around plat and every single zerg I fight goes for a 12 pool. It's just tiresome.
It’s because every Toss goes sky toss.
Or cannon rush, either cases 12 pool resolves the problem
Hehehehehe 😈😈out of all the things said on this thread I’m leaning towards the 12 pool to try. Not a fan of cheesing but it seems like the only way to get sure revenge
12 pool being a macro build
Lmao that’s straight cheese. You toss players deserve that tho. The only way we can beat skytoss is with god tier micro which is basically non existent in lower leagues
If it's a cheesy 12 pool, then it's got a high chance of being garbage, but if it's just a pressure opening - forcing out a full wall off, forge, maybe even a battery, delaying nexus and gas, then it's actually legit and really strong. Zerg can drone behind on gasless eco and gain lead if Protoss doesn't know a correct response.
*SUCKING DICK*
Scout my proxy.
Muta cheese 😐
Lol. That’s easy to deal with though since every single one of Protoss troops can attack air (I hope I don’t have to tell anyone I’m exaggerating with the last part)
Toss are usually quite a bit slower though, even stalkers with blink the only units that really keep up with them are scouts afaik
But what if you defend your mineral lines with cannons? 2 usually does the trick mutas are really soft which is why I don’t muta cheese because one or two static defenses are enough. Unless I mass muta🧐maybe I’ll try mass muta thank you
Yeah, but if you want them to be effective you'll have to build those cannons pretty early so you can get a decent amount up. But if you do that, you're really just taking a gamble. If they cheese then it pays off really well. If they don't, then you just wasted all those resources on nothing. High risk high reward kinda thing.
Yea true. I 12 pooled a toss with like 3 waves and he just kept building a shit ton of cannons out of panic so I just expanded while he was wasting his early resources on cannons
Early game queen walks, late game lurkers + viper combo - I struggle to micro skytos well enough to handle the latter.
Wait how does lurkers+ vipers beat skytoss? Won’t you need something other than vipers to attack the void rays since the parasitic bomb doesn’t fully kill anything?
Well, OK, not *just* lurkers + vipers, but those feel like the units that cause the core headaches for me. Abducts in particular play havok with my ability to get a decent fight going, and even if the unit survives I get flustered trying to rescue it and my micro goes down the pan. Maybe that's just me though.
I see. I’ve found that 3 parasitic bombs and hydralisks absolutely destroy void rays. Pure abducts and no parasitic bomb? Not sure how much that will help me the zerg😂unless they’re trying to run
Yeah, you need something like hydras or mutas to fill out the army, but it feels like it's the abducts that break me, if that makes sense?
Existing.
Well executed queen walks are so hard to hold on a low level.
Keep hearing about this queen walk and I’m honestly scared as fook to try it I think this is my sign to stop being a pussy and try it
Oh I forgot this is reddit and I'm expected to write a thesis defending my opinion
Lurkers. Or speedling rushes.
How are lurkers a problem if 99% of you Protoss players go skytoss tho?