Yeah I predict the marine or stim will get nerfed sooner or later, it's just stupidly good at almost everything. You can get like one dropship full of marines clumped up against your minerals so you can't surround them, and they will kill your hatch/lair before you ever have enough lings to kill them. You have to already have banelings or you're SOL.

Logo

United States7542 Posts

January 31 2011 16:54 GMT

#22

On February 01 2011 01:45 Jermstuddog wrote:
^

I'm not even trying to talk about delayed pushes like stim, which is part of the problem but I'm trying to keep the scope narrower than that. Though I will agree that Marines in general are slightly too good in SC2, and I think that is largely where the problem comes from.

If I didn't have to get blings AND bling speed ASAP, Roach/ling or ling/muta would be realistic and marauder/hellion pushes wouldn't be nearly as scary.

If you scout a factory and rax and see a reactor on the factory or techlab on the barracks then you should be able to delay baneling speed until after spire. Worst case is he pushes and you have slow blings, but it's not possible for him to have a crazy # of marines + something from a factory + stim with the way he's put his add-ons so slow banelings on creep should be fine so long as you lead and surround with lings first. Since you can morph banelings as he moves out (or keep just a few morphed until you confirm his composition), you can have ling/muta if he moves out with hellions, marauders or banshees.

EDIT: The big thing to is to not lose drones at your natural if he pushes with something stronger than you can handle. Even if you lose the nat itself, if you save the drones and crush the attack with reinforcements then you're not out of the game yet since he's delayed his expansion so much.

dcberkeley

Canada844 Posts

January 31 2011 16:58 GMT

#23

I feel like Z has scouting problems in the early game which is basically what most people already think. I disagree though that you play a fair game after that, a Z fending off one of those attacks is quite ahead while if they don't, they're dead.

Treemonkeys

United States2082 Posts

January 31 2011 17:04 GMT

#24

On February 01 2011 01:58 dcberkeley wrote:
I feel like Z has scouting problems in the early game which is basically what most people already think. I disagree though that you play a fair game after that, a Z fending off one of those attacks is quite ahead while if they don't, they're dead.

This is true at all, even in pro level games, it isn't uncommon for zerg to actually be slightly behind after executing a perfect defense. This is because zerg mid/late game depends so heavily on building up an econ in the early game. Terran can send his army off to die, but because zerg was forced to not make drones, terran still might be ahead, and he is still basically un-attackable after sending his army to die.

Treemonkeys

United States2082 Posts

January 31 2011 17:06 GMT

#25

On February 01 2011 01:54 Logo wrote:

Show nested quote +

You lose your natural hatch and it's gg unless your opponent is flat out terrible at macro.

Jermstuddog

United States2231 Posts

January 31 2011 18:41 GMT

#26

On February 01 2011 01:54 Logo wrote:

Show nested quote +

The best way to deal with the hellion/marauder push to get early mutas: drop your first 100 gas on Lair, 2nd 100 gas on Roaches to hold off the hellion harass, no bling nest, and drop a spire as soon as Lair finishes. You should have ~4 mutas, your roaches, and some slowlings ready just as the marauder/hellion push reaches your natural.

The problem is this dies to just about any of the strategies that involve marines because marines are just so damn good.

Back to the Hellion/Marauder:

Getting a bling nest, even after the Lair is 100/50 + drone wasted (blings are so important though, its almost laughable to recommend skipping this tech, even for the minute or two where you know it's not critical). If I have terrible scouting and start bling speed that's another 150/150. Sure, I've had games where I get both and hold off the push anyway, but things are significantly harder when you're investing in the wrong tech. And things are even worse when this wrong tech is pretty much required BEFORE you get into the mid-game with stim timing pushes.

To reinstate my position, I have no problem with pushes in this timing of the game, I just wish they weren't so incredibly variable with such a high possibility of ending the game right there.

Servius_Fulvius

United States947 Posts

January 31 2011 19:05 GMT

#27

It sounds like you run into this a lot, so do yourself a favor and see how the Terran sets up their play. You should see a lot of similarities, like for a marine rush they may get 1-2 reactors on 3-4 rax, or cloaked banshee play could have two geysers taken early. You should also notice timing windows before the strategies kick in (and a lot of them should be similar) - this is the time you send an overlord in without hope of coming back. Sure, they can have roving marines or hide their tech, but either way you learn SOMETHING! You should also be poking at the front door to get a feel for the marine count. You learn something if there are a lot of marines at the wall (an early rush is coming, get a baneling nest).

Instead of illustrating this example further, I'll turn to another, better-known matchup - BW ZvP. Most Protoss fast expand. There's a lot they can do with a fast expand - mass corsair to kill all the overlords, a 10 minute timing attack, corsair/reaver play, storm drops, corsair/dark templar play, a delayed 2 gate rush or all-in 4 gate (plus a ton more, but these were the most common I found from experience on the iccup D ladder). When you watch the pros you see the 10 minute timing attack a lot, many beginner zergs will blindly prepare for it by doing the standard macro-heavy opening. These leads to a lot of defeats by lower level protosses who recognize the blind preparation and kill your economy with a handful of zealots (if not beating you outright, beating you when their economy kicks in, which is before the zerg economy kicks in, btw). Without overlord scouting and zerglings keeping tabs on the front, you have no way of knowing what is coming. More often than not, the scouting overlord plus one or two more will die to corsairs, so the expectation is built into the strategy. Moral of the story: your lack of scouting doesn't make ZvT a crapshoot. It's not perfect, but it's not as bad as you're making it seem.

Comeh

United States18919 Posts

January 31 2011 19:10 GMT

#28

On February 01 2011 00:36 Chill wrote:
Why don't you scout with a Zergling & Overlord? What you're saying is similar to ZvT in BW, and yet people have managed to deal with it...

Well, in SCBW, it was much much much easier to defend your natural, thank you to chokes. In SC2, this isn't so true - the rush distance and difficulty of defending makes it a little random in its current state.

or, in other words, the current map pool sucks.

Asparagus

United States269 Posts

March 13 2011 06:12 GMT

#29

TvZ Terran can do w.e he wants because he knows the zerg must adapt or we die.

I've never seen a terran react to what i'm doing until his army got beat besides the fact that I drop a roach warren which is GG most of the time early game anyways.

It sucks where the first 10 minutes of the game is dictated by my initial scout, poking zerglings, and sacing an overlord at 5-6 minutes. any later and you're playing with fire by giving even less response time.

oh and better terrans know where overlords come from so they don't get anywhere past 3-4 screen inches into his base if you wait after 6:00, and any earlier you'll see 1-2 rax wall in and a building factory, whooo! LOL.

oh, add the fact that terran's tech tree is a simplified joke compared to zerg's midgame, not having 1 building can screw you (spire sniping lol)