ZvP Skytoss is completely out of hand

General Discussion
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I’m a Protoss fan and I’m going against some people here. But yeah PvZ lategame is not fun from the Zergs perspective. While void rays are good, they kinda need to be because without it we are back at PvZ pre voidray buff where Protoss struggles with

1, Map control

2, Ability to pressure the Zerg without requiring the entire army.

3, Ability to threaten the Zerg in midgame macro games where Protoss can slow down the forth or threaten to snipe a base.

These things combined with voidrays and super batteries allows safer greedier openings. Now that voidrays transitions very well in lategame made Protoss enter lategame with much more of an even position before Protoss has little to no options and the Zerg can just go 90 drones and overwhelm with 100 banelings due to the economy. Oracles get shooed away by a queen and 1 spore and kills what, 4 drones max and this is too little to slow down the Zerg. This is how Serral won vs Trap in dreamhack masters Summer. This is how Rogue won vs Stats on Deathaura on GSL season 2 and why they looked extremely overpowering in their matches. Its the economy. Blizzard knew this and they highlighted the core issues of midgame PvZ in their patch notes.

In lategame Protoss is favored for sure its just that it never reached that point since Zerg was massively favored in the midgame due to the problems i highlighted above and overwhelms Protoss anyways. and excusing that “Protoss players can just make 4 more High templars if he does…” is stupid especially when all Protosses seem to struggle with midgame Zerg and overwhelms Protoss anyways regardless on how good defensively the Protoss is.

Date back even further its more horrible when Zerg was favored at viper hightemplar interactions where Protoss can’t do anything but hemorrhage units to Vipers with no counterplay. Thats why Blizzard buffed it and this buff was huge in lategame.

I’ve highlighted what I think is wrong with lategame PvZ in an earlier long post and to summarize is that Zerg looks incredibly weak vs Carrier storm especially when Zerg is relying on hydras. Protoss will say why can’t Zerg make 10 corruptors or why can’t he MicrObiAl shrOud, first of all shroud is an abysmal spell and is massively underpowered and you can’t just make 10 corruptors or 10 infestors when Protoss is also doing zealot runbuys. I’ve suggested buffing the shroud massively to make it relevant but locking it behind a 100/100 hive upgrade so that its not stupidly op (imagine no need to research dark swarm). Some disruptor changes but at least from what i know this is the major weakness of Zerg and its why Protoss gets a reputation for being a-movey because yeah you can literally a-move your carriers and storm storm storm and you lose 3 carriers but Zerg loses 30 hydras. Its terrible from the Zergs point of view.

When it gets to ultra lategame of Zerg spellcasters with mass spore Its far less lopsided from what i see. Its still hard for Zerg but its also much more difficult for Protoss to win. I’m not saying its P favored, Its still looks slightly better for P but when it gets to a war of attrition P relies on disruptor/Tempest/HT and these units ARE NOT A-MOVE UNITS they take a lot of skill and micro and control groups to play and Protoss players like Trap show why he’s good in the Trap vs Dark series. Check the trades of PvZ when Zerg has the setup of mass spore its pretty darn even and not lopsided by any means it seems like the better player tends to trade better at this stage. I’ve seen some Zergs win as well in this stage but 0 Zergs win in the situation i described in the previous paragraph. Buff the shroud I’m a huge proponent for this change because it has potential for making ZvP more back and forth something the matchup lacks for ages.

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On the other hand, if there is no AOE for protoss on the table, amove Z>amove P

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A lot of people seem to misunderstand my response, so I’m going to clarify…

My response is primarily aimed at his distress over the voidray buffs. If Protoss techs up to voidray/high templar, what’s stopping Zerg from making hydra infestor? This is what I mean by my response. Hydras hard counter voidrays. Same for queens. It’s not the game’s fault people have no clue how to deal with voidrays.

I swear, some Zergs just want to play the easy game where they can counter adept push/allins with roaches. God forbid Protoss has an alternative opening other than adepts. When Protosses get all their strategies deleted from the game, no one bats an eye, but when Zergs get some of their strategies deleted, the whole world goes wild. I’ve seen too many games in the past where Zerg just 60-66 drone rush and ravager ling bane allins the Protoss, and the Protoss just starves out. I could go on, but this whining is just ridiculous. One of the weakest units in the game gets a buff and people go crazy. People ARE crazy.

To clarify, read my top response. Hydras hard counter voidrays. And to add onto my response, you can still keep making hydras when carriers are starting in production. You can still beat zealots with hydras. I’m not saying keep building hydras when Protoss has a maxed out fleet + high templar.

If this is in reference to voidrays flying around and killing things, welcome to the meta 1-2 years back when Zergs would sneak out 10+ mutas and fly around and kill everything, forcing Protoss to defend and tech up, and possibly getting screwed over by a large roach ravager follow up. Similar situation with nydus worms. Welcome to defending stupid things at home.

Then transition off hydras. It takes time for them to max out on skytoss… Use your brain

If they are that far in the game, I wouldn’t recommend mass hydra anymore. To clarify, read my top response. Obviously if they are maxed out, you want corruptor/ultralisk/lurkers, something at least as tech-y as their army. Use your brain.

Read my top response for clarification. But in any case, if they have carrier storm, you should be working towards ultralisk/corruptor or something better than just mass hydra.

If they have ONLY 8-9 carriers, you should have or be able to make enough hydras to counter that, even better with infestors. If they are taking advantage of terrain, you can kill interceptors. If they are out in the open, you can run up and start sniping down carriers easily (you shouldn’t be behind on upgrades too - if you have 2/2 and he also has 2/2 and you are nowhere close to 3/3, you have messed up severely).

To clarify my original response, read my top response here.

Zergs are reliant on hydras, but they should eventually transition to corruptors if Protoss is seriously transitioning to skytoss. It’s all about scouting. By the way, why would you make 10 infestors? That’s stupid. Even Protosses at a high level tend not to have that many high templar in one spot.

If this is late game we are still talking about, you know static defense exists right? You know you should still have a handful of forces set aside to deal with runbys right? Even 1 lurker can go a long way, especially with some spines and spores.

Agree here, I think shroud does need some kind of spell resistance, especially considering it costs 100 energy right now.

I don’t want to get too off topic, but I strongly believe disruptors along with swarm hosts should be removed from the game entirely. For Terran, widow mines should either be heavily nerfed or removed from the game as well. Hero units are ridiculous as well as free trading.

These whiners just don’t understand…

The regular forum whiner just refuses to understand the game and goes into a blind rage whenever he sees the word Protoss

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@ciaus. I strongly disagree, and don’t know which recent tourament play you’ve been looking at other than the GSL super tournament which was on this weekend. It is how ever a single tournament where the brackets were in such a way that if trap the tournament favorite played well, it was unlikely we’d see any Zerg or Protoss into the semi-finals.

Zerg still has the most premier tournament wins in the past year. With 11, and protoss only having 4.

Even if you want to look really recently, in the past 2 months. Starleague in December which had basically all the top players ended in a Z v Z finals. This was a tournament that included everyone from Maru, to Trap. Then the most recent Major tournament before the super tournament DH sc2 masters ended in a PvZ finals between Serral and trap which went 4-3 in favour of trap. This is a tournament that finished on the 17th of Jan with Zerg in the finals.

I really don’t know how you can say Zerg has just been getting stomped over and over by protoss of late. That is really not the case outside of 1 tournament.

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We just need another zvz zvt i guess thats he want i p go skytoss it always ultimate greedy

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Stargate is out with in the first few minutes how are Zergs going to get Hydra infestor that early? What’s stopping the Zerg you ask? Well the fact that if they rush up to Hydra infestor to counter voids they die to any push and pokes people need to get it out their heads of this just get this unit to counter it arguments the are intricacies that create the issues people have

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no i’m not misunderstanding you, i do not believe hydras are a good option, and then you mention hydras killing zealots… well, i have news for you, in my experience, it usually doesn’t go that way.

why does it feel like when you post on the forum, you’re playing a completely different game than the other poster.

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Early you can mass queen and you safe

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Hydras have the tiniest window to do something against skytoss and then they become borderline useless. The funny thing is corruptors are somehow the best unit we have while also being hardcountered by voids.

Like 2 of them?

And even without HTs hydras melt to mass carrier.

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i find if you make enough corrupters to one shot everything it’s fine, it’s just a numbers game, which then gives the protoss more time to get to their desired composition, while we are stuck trying to mass ONE UNIT… balance.

protoss casually getting every tech structure and upgrade with minimal units and shield batteries. ya. that’s fine…

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Lol you can mass any unit question is how they gonna trade in fight

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Even if you have enough to one shot the trades usually don’t go well. Every time you poke in you’ll get stormed or swarmed by interceptors. You have to use vipers to snipe efficiently and you usually need infestors to actually kill them.

The problem is you have to significantly out multitask them to have a chance of winning. With the same level of micro on both sides the Zerg doesn’t have a chance.

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If you mass Queens it slows down your lair and you can’t get Hydras out like he’s saying plus massing queens means the Toss is safe to get a third base up and power up to the army they want meaning by the time the Hydras arrive the window to attack has gone because SBs are already in place to help defend.

This isn’t like a reaper rush or 12 pool as if the Voids can’t do damage early on they still have high value for a while and can help GW units defend into Skytoss, by causing you to mass queens they’ve already forced out an intended reaction.

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What stop you do queen all in you had 3 hatch 10 queen bunch ling ravager roach + any sort of units even sb not hold that

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In order to do such an all in you either have to walk all your queens across the map or get a Nydus all of which give the Toss ample time to get enough to defend with the SB.

The Toss is not sitting by idly they’re making more Voids and what ever units to hold any such push and they’re getting a good number of SB as well meaning you need more AA as the clock ticks. Now you suggest a Queen Ravager all in you know how that’s held they simply have their units in position by the SB at where you want to attack, Stalkers can snipe the Queens and even if you lose one or two all of a sudden you have not enough AA against Voids which have high dps and will clean house the only way to bypass that is via a Nydus but Voids can clear OLs that spot for vision much like Vikings do plus people often place Pylons in blind spots of their base. Mind you your Queens are now in an allin so your macro dies because of no injects so if you don’t kill you lose doesn’t matter what damage you do they’ll come across the map and counter push you.

Z is in a catch twenty two situation in that match up.

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Meh, it’s still patch 5.0.5 so I didn’t miss anything. I am up to date then.

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Exactly this… I’m not sure what people are misunderstanding

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I’m just going to leave this here… Lowko also has a nice lurker/ultra microbial shroud comp that works wonders as well.

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Do you realize how the video you shared showcases precisely the problem? Zerg doing INSANE micro to be able to BARELY trade against Skytoss amove.

Protoss (including Skytoss) is obnoxiously easy to play compared to Terran and Zerg. It is actually disgusting.

3 Likes
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oh i know, that’s just what we have. i know all this… you know my MMR lol. that’s just how i’ve been “dealing” with it, it works sometimes, my winrate vs toss is still above 50%