Today I thought I'd write about ZvZ, and my thoughts and ideas about it. Feel free to join me in my thinking. Note: I am a platinum ranked player, these are the kind of builds and games I play.
As always there are a few different builds being used, but it feels like they get switched around some. For example, the baneling builds are now a lot less frequent, and now revolves around either the roach, or the mutalisk.
Roach builds
There's a few different openings that lead in to roach, but the most common is to go pool&gas, roach warren and get a few roaches before you expand. Normally Zergs want to expand as soon as possible, but in ZvZ that's hard to do.
The best counter to roaches are roaches. You either tech to hydras or infestors, but roaches are always the bulk of your army.
Now, one of two things happend. The player who goes mass roach (and infestors) attacks early and beats the roach/hydra player, or the roach/hydra player manages to survive and wins lategame.
I think I need to rely on scouting, really. What I want is an expo. If we both go roaches, we both get an expansion. Then its a fight for the third base, and ultimately one player does an early attack with roaches, or the teching player wins.
One last thing I've been thinking about. The roach/infestor builds have all used FG for the snare. If the PTR patch goes live, the FG will last half the time it does now, doubling the damage! It will also do an extra 30% damage to armored units (like the roach). While it wont be very good as a snare, it might actually get viable as a damage dealer, which would be kick-ass, cause I love me some infestors.
Mutalisk builds
There's just one mutalisk build. Really, there's just one. And I hate it, I really do.
The build is very simple. Get a metric shit-ton of lings so your opponent can't do shit, and then tech to mutas. Either they then get mass mutalisks, or start mixing in other units, but mass muta is the most common.
My problem with the build is the map control.
The player going mass ling/muta gets such huge mapcontrol, he can expand freely while I'm one-basing, and the reason for this is that I've always tried to avoid banelings, I think they are kind of unreliable. Trying to get an expansion up with only roaches to defend is a bitch in early game. What ends up happening is that my expansion is a lot later than his, he gets better economy and just kills me.
What I've come to realize is that banelings fucking rule.
Aww, he's just a wubbly wittle guy
In theory, a baneling/hydra composition would be the perfect counter to ling/muta. There's only one catch.
The second he sees that I have banelings, he gets roaches.
For those of you who didn't know, roaches wreck hydralisks. It's like putting a frenzied, chainsaw-wielding grizzly bear against a toddler, it's just ugly.
The conclusion is, I have to get banelings to counter his lings, hydras to counter his mutas, and roaches to counter his roaches. Eventually we're back at the roach builds, with my opponent going mass roach and me going roach/hydra.
I guess its doable, but if anyone has any better ideas, please share them.
An afterthought: what if you skipped hydralisks and instead got some extra queens? Yes, the idea is day[J] inspired, but still. The queens deal with mutas quite well, if you're good with transfuses and he hasent got too many mutas (like 25+). You could then tech to ultralisks, just imagine 10 queens transfusing 2-3 ultralisks, it would absolutely DEVASTATE any roach play.
I think I'm gonna try that out. Get banelings to deal with early ling pressure so I can expand, keep producing queens while getting roaches, and use the spare gas to tech to ultras. If you can survive his lings and mutas, you'd be in great shape. He eventually has to get roaches, and then you smash his face with transfused ultras.
I have been trying this in the wood league ladder of mine, also inspired by day[9]:
I open 14 gas 13 pool, if I scout speedling build or baneling build, I go straight into day[9] build. If I scout pool before gas, I go speedling expand and map control. In both conditions, I tech to lair as soon as possible and get a spire while spending my minerals into lings if I 1 base or drones and crawlers if I did speedling expand into map control build. I get 5 mutas and go roach warren. If he overkills on air defense, I roll with roaches. If he sticks with roaches, I muta-ling and roll. Note that if I scout an aggressive build, I throw my roach warren right on, if I scout a non-aggressive macro orientated roach build, I delay my roach warren and may even get +1 carapace for my lings in case he goes +1 roaches and attack.
Generally doesn't go wrong if I actually scout, but this is wood league. I will probably get away with 6 pool into brood lord rush.
diamond: i lose most of my zvzs to speedling all-ins. i mostly open speedling expo into roaches, cause i feel it's safe vs fast roaches cause 2 hatches spamming lings will hold and i should be able to get roaches in time to deal with banelings (although this can be tricky)
mostly i make a small micro error and loose queens or drones to some kind of ling runby.
i don't really worry about mutas, if i see him 1 basing i get extra queens just in case and put down a hydra den, which i don't use unless i actually see mutas. if i see mutas, i make hydras and get infestors then kill him with a push.
mostly unless i lose too many drones to speedling/baneling i'm fine, but that's probably cause i'm greedy with my openings.
Master: ZvZ is almost always roach for me, it all depends what maps. On xelnaga, typhoon, slagpits and in general maps with a natural who have quite a long distance to ramp i do speed into roach expo.
The only time i would go speedling expand is on scrap and the maps mentioned above if my opponent goes hat before pools.
On LT, meta, shakuras and in generals maps with a short distance to ramp i always go 15 hat. Whatever i scout with my OL (IE. Speedling expo, 15 hat, baneling) i respond with a proper timing on my Roach den. If its baneling i rush to roaches, and if its 15 hat i get more drone greedy.
The general factor in which i think a lot of lower league players fails is that they tech to lair way to fast. I almost never tech to Lair before having a general good drone saturation in both my main and expo. If you want to in general play a really safe zvz, never tech to lair before you have a good drone saturation on both places. If your opponent is staying on one base and you are afraid of mutas, sacrifice an OL or two as you already being on two base own his one base.
If you die to speedling all-ins on one base while you have your expo, please try to scout the amount of lings you have and create a line with your roaches from your expo to your natural ramp. Lings are really good against roaches in low numbers where they can surround easilly, but once you reach midgame they die so fast to roaches and cant surround that ball, which means that all money that the guy invested into zlings is almost useless.
OP: Mutas are actually a joke if you dont get suprised by them. If you are two base you throw down some spores, make two infestor and hydras and just wait for 200/200. If he continues to make mutas just fungal them and rape, if he just makes 6/7 and then goes roach/hydra like you he will have fewer units then you as spending around 800/800 on mutalisk is a heavy investment. If he, even more takes a third before you? Then hes even more starved for units making your push work 100% if your macro isnt terrible
On March 04 2011 05:36 JoxxOr wrote: On LT, meta, shakuras and in generals maps with a short distance to ramp i always go 15 hat. Whatever i scout with my OL (IE. Speedling expo, 15 hat, baneling) i respond with a proper timing on my Roach den. If its baneling i rush to roaches, and if its 15 hat i get more drone greedy.
This sounds impossible to me. How can you survive with 15 hatch on meta? My first thought is that an early ling run-by would just kill the entire expo before you can get more than 4-5 roaches out. If you move out to attack, he'll just run his lings into your main or back off.
There's just so much space on meta, so you cant block your expo with roaches like you can on Shakuras or LT.. How do you survive?
On March 04 2011 02:45 Djagulingu wrote: Generally doesn't go wrong if I actually scout, but this is wood league. I will probably get away with 6 pool into brood lord rush.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.deviantart.com/download/135395289/StarCraft_II_Roach_by_Frejm.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.creepcolony.com/forums/images/avatars/SCIIMutaliskPortrait.png)
![[image loading]](http://sclegacy.com/forums/images/avatars/zergunits/baneling.gif)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamerdna.com/uimage/full/queen_portrait-gif.gif)
