I can’t stand watching PvZ anymore, it used to be my favorite match up to watch and play. But now every single PvZ I see is just glaives all in or DTs, vs roach ravagers. There is nothing exciting about watching roach ravager, and its even worse now with battery overcharge. Instead of Toss having an actual way to fight it, its now just a hope to stay alive for an extra minute ability. I haven’t even seen the new interaction between HT and Vipers, as the game never gets to that point. Never do I see lurkers, or swarm hosts, or infestors anymore. Its just roach ravager vs a couple of immortals that the toss needs to do everything in the world to protect, while roaches and ravagers just continually stream across the map. It’s just so boring and predictable.
It might just be a meta thing. Protoss will find an adaption and drive the meta somewhere more exciting. I don’t ever want to see swarm hosts though.
Zerg players are not gonna mass ling against an Adept all-in, so as long as Protoss players choose that playstyle, they have to accept Roach Ravager from the Zerg.
There was whining when Zergs went lings, Infestors, Swarm Hosts, Mutas, Brood Lords, Banelings, Hydras… now it’s Ravagers to counter the Protoss-dictated aggressive meta and… more whine.
There’s always gonna be a “meta”. In this case it’s the Protoss players that are dictating it first with Adept cheese and all-ins. It’s not fair to blame Roach Ravagers when all Protoss players can come up with is something weak to it… 
No i don’t think so. PvZ is nothing short of an abomination in terms of balance and gameplay. The PvZ winrates at premier events are just so bad in 2020. and btw the meta has formed since IEM for PvZ. Certainly enough time for pros to figure out the best way to win.
I counted the Protoss winrate across all premier events including homestory (big boys play there) and ignored team championships. PvT looks almost dead even.
PvZ was 41.1% ( 152 for toss, 218 for Zerg)
PvT was 49.7% ( 205 toss, 207 Terran)
Like good lord that PvZ winrate. If thats not enough sample size I don’t know what to say. I don’t get the people who try excuse that win rate.
I’ve been following pro starcraft for one and a half decades. PvZ goes through this meta trend as one side “solves” the matchup then the other changes it.
idk the fact that roach, ravager looks OP against toss is signs of something deeply wrong in PvZ. We all get the point that Protoss is supposed to be more “cost efficient” against Roach, Ravager but when i see games Protoss either trades evenly or slightly better.
If anything the charge nerf has been detrimental to early midgame protoss in PvZ. SInce Defensive warp ins with zealots are worse against Roaches. (since 0 damage impact) Not to mention lategame is another can of worms to open where the Zerg army is flat out better than protoss at every single regard. Idk why its hard to say that lategame Zerg> lategame Toss but it is.
Now i might be biased since we don’t have many lategame PvZ to see. But I saw the game of DNS vs Sortof and i saw that Dns was up in army supply, 175 vs 160 and DnS straight up lost against sort of with Sort of having 20 ish surviving coruuptors and 80 army supply.
Like my heart just sank. Its not even a competition at this point. Not to mention I think DnS had HT,Archon, Voidrays.
I’ll break down the meta problem for you as simple as possible. Protoss need fat tech unit dps, probably AOE, to work out roach ravager. However Protoss don’t feel able to get something like disruptor mass fast enough because they also feel they must harass zerg economy early and force zerg to react, which pulls them into alternative tech directions.
They will either optimize their harass, optimize their economic play, or optimize their acquirement of fat tech dps, and zerg will begin the cycle of complaint about X protoss being impossible to hold and they will create various offshoot pre-emptive allins until they perfect the hold.
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Brovagers or ravagebros? I can’t decide.
Roaches are the only opening option for zerg.If P does adept printer,do you need roaches.If protoss does chargelots,you need roaches because lings are not efficient , banelings are bad if P splits and you can micro the roaches.Blinkstalkers?,roaches,lings are good but not very efficie t since stalkers have a high mobility.Inmortal pushes?,roaches,they are the unit that can hold those pushes.Archons?,roaches.
You rarely see other compositions because the do not work very well,hidras get destroyed by charge-storm-archon,Lurkersbare very situational,but once P has archons and guardian shield,they do nothing against the army,and the can be chased by chargelots.
The problem with skytoss is that the skill ceiling is too low.
Anyone in diamond / plat can a-move and storm clumps of units or rapid fire - feedback vipers & infestors or queens - the problem is getting there.
So in diamond, gold armada with archons and high templars seems op and ez toss a-move and in big tournaments, the protoss pros are bored and are helpless.
Same with banelings - you have to build them vs. nearly every protoss strategy or you can’t trade efficiently imo.
So there’s that one protoss that chops up my roach/ravager army with force fields and just walks over me and I’m like “wtf?!”.
And there’s the other protoss with adept/sentry/immortal/voidrays and he just gets obliterated by a baneling flank because he didn’t have vision and went on creep.
There was a protoss in d2 with like 64 apm and he only build voidrays with stuff on purity and industry and wrote “zerg op” because I microed with ravager/queen and then banling/corruptor/viper (against voidray collossi + ground stuff).
I also lost to a 3 base protoss with voidray expand for 3rd into voidray/carrier/archon because I didn’t abduct the carriers on by one into hydra/queen + buffer or something like that.
I also feel that ZvT is way more complicated because of the speed of the units and the range. Like banelings off-creep are a grave of an investment and tanks in certain positions are just an auto-loss.
In ZvP however, you just to roaches into ravager/bane + roaches or you go for corruptors + stuff but it’s always droning up 2 bases and if you don’t scout a stargate, it’s 2 base allin and you need 4-5 banes because of the first adept/chargelot wave or 4 DTs trying to snipe the spore at your 3rd and then you get roaches off of 3 gas.
TL;DR:
For me, the main difference between a good and a bad protoss has always been building placement.
So maybe use the oracle traps more when you take a 3rd base. Like on the path between natural and 3rd and then one trap below your 3 adepts with pylon & shield battery.
Or maybe the 2 voidray expand could become a thing.
Does a 4-5 speed voidray push to deny the 4th base get easily stomped on pro level?
Edit: I also had a game where toss defended without a wall at the natural.
–> A cannon behind the mineral line and a shield battery near the ramp. Always walked the probes through a couple of stalkers if I moved in with banes.
Seems like the meta is try and do some kind of massive damage to the zerg before their economy is out of hand and you lose. That means the only thing you see is adept all ins and dts
Yeah At my level thats the logic to, born out of experience.
I do also sometimes a stargate + very early third + ~7 minute IAC timing attack. But the truth is as i climb up the ladder, (d2 now) this more macro approach works less and less. It seems they got so many ravagers already its very hard to break them, best thing is mark up the attack while prism + zealots do eco dmg on other side, but its quite hard to pull off and not get defeated in detail.
And personally i cant imagine not putting pressure on Zerg all the time, so they dont get the time to switch to mass mutas. I hate playing against this, probably becasue i loose then:).
Are you kidding me right now?
THEY’RE CALLED DISRUPTORS, BUILD SOME!
The level of 'tism on this forum is too damn high for me
Now you know what Terran felt for 2 years (since Charge and Stalker was buffed and MC replaced with SB).
Also I completely agree with you regarding state of PvZ.
And, if you read the whole post rather than only the OP’s post, you’d understand that: