Any many of you know, Zergs in sc2 have been complaining heavily about the imbalance in the PvZ matchup. If we look at how PvZ is played in BW compared to SC2, we can see a lot of the differences between the state of the match ups.
Here are the facts about the matchup that are true in both of the games:
Maxed protoss army will beat a maxed zerg army (clarification: Archon/Dt/Reaver/Dark Archon/HT/Dragoon support maxed toss army).
Zergs need to rely on a heavy economy if they want to beat a protoss in a head to head fight by keep ramming units into it and trying to disrupt the unit composition
Zergs need to keep the number of protoss's expansions lower than their own.
I think focusing on the late game aspects of the game would be more relevant because most of SC2 zergs are complaining about the deathball.
In bw lategame, a zerg's main goal is to deny the protoss from expanding and trying to destroy the 3rd base of the protoss (which is most likely to be up and running). In most cases, zergs try not to engage the protoss in a full-on head-to-head assault because their army will be crushed by the reaver/ht/dragoon mix. Because the toss's army is only efficient when it's in a large ball (much like sc2's toss army). The zerg will attack in multiple areas and engage in many micro battles where the zergling/defiler mix is potent at killing a small group of units. Also, zergs will drop onto expansions and use the swarm ability to nullify the cannons and lings will be used to snipe nexuses. They will also drop into the main to buy time as the main army of the protoss will need to defend the main before moving out. This will give time for the zerg to either expand or set up another attack.
The protoss's late game plan is to maintain the number of reavers/hts/dragoons and have a solid economy for the late game. Toss's main goal is to obtain 4 bases or even 5 and push out with the deathball while harassing with ht drops and dts. Toss will try to maintain the map control to deny counterattack routes and to pressure the zerg into fighting the army head-on. Toss needs to always be careful of the zerg switching tech into mass mutas at almost all points of the game try not to get caught off-guard.
the goals of the races are the same in both games. The difference is in the units/maps.
Because the maps in sc2 are smaller compared to BW, the protoss has a easier time defending 3rd bases. Also the warp-in mechanic allows the protoss to warp-in zealots to deal with zerglings trying to snipe a nexus. In many maps, the 3rd base is easily defended with cannons and forcefields. This makes it difficult for the zerg to try and kill a protoss's 3rd base because even if they force their way into the 3rd and destroy the nexus, they will most likely be greeted with a huge protoss army with another set of forcefields ready to cut the army in half. If a zerg loses most of their units in the early/mid game stage, it has a critical impact because they will need to make more units instead of drones (their mid/late game suffers). Also, zerglings are tremendously weaker compared to zerglings in bw that zerglings have a hard time killing even cannons. It takes a very long time to even kill the nexsus. The adrenal glands don't help much either and zealots are basically hard counters to a zergling in sc2 while bw adrenal zerglings were the most powerful unit in the game. Drops to the 3rd/4th base of the protoss are pretty ineffective due to the warp-in and the proximity of the bases. Also, size of the maps make it very difficult for the zerg to be able to drop into the main and do much critical damage or buy a bit of time because the protoss is easily able to defend. Also, playstyles of the protoss and the maps allow the protoss to sit back and mass up the death units such as the coll/void ray because they don't need to worry about having map control to deter attack routes for the zerg. Also, the zerg needs to invest heavily into drops into a main of the protoss because the lings do too little damage and just warp-in zealots could take them out with ease. Zergs need to drop using roachs and hydras but they consume a lot of resources and food and compared to a crackling/defiler drop in bw, they are not as cost efficient.
Thread's Thoughts
Zergs don't have early game pressure units. Roaches require lair for speed and without it, they are vulernable to the quicker moving stalkers and forcefields.
Hydras don't have mobility.
Zergs don't have the time buying mechanics such as swarm/lurkers/observer sniping with scourge
Zerg staple units cost 2 food and drone saturation requirement of each base makes zerg even more food hungry.
Zerg on 4 base need 24 drones on gas alone... in BW, you would only need 12. Those 12 drones could have been mining minerals.
TLDR: in bw, lings are actually good units to use to destroy bases because they do a great amount of dps and they go so well with defilers. lings are great against any unit in bw (except reaver duh)
In sc2, lings are crap in late game. Period. Lings don't have any spellcaster to compliment their low hp/high dps unit function such as defiler. Only reason people get them is because they don't have gas to make roaches.
Protosses have warp-in which make drops less effective. Also, drops are costly to zerg because u need to use roach/hydra for it to do any damage (since ling so crap).
Protoss don't need to maintain map control to deny zerg attack routes and they don't really need to bait the zerg into a frontal confrontation because lack of units such as lurker/defiler. Also, toss can force engagements in sc2 easily and protoss can control the terrain using forcefield.
Zergs can't deny 3rd bases because of the risk of losing all their units even if they kill the 3rd, and cannons/forcefields/warp-in make it even more difficult.
Personal Conclusion Since it's wasted effort in complaining about the units themselves... What needs to be focused on is the way the units you're given are used. Even though drops are not as good in SC2 as in BW, it's still a valid tactic. Just because scourges existed, it didn't stop people from developing dropship plays and Science Vessel heavy SK terran because they made up for it by unit management. Also, where would the modern day bw pvz be if there isn't a corsair/scourge dynamic? I think we need to discover these dynamics between units that initially seem one sided but are actually "dynamic". Although lings aren't as good for destroying buildings and fighting units, lings still need to be used and they just need to avoiding fighting when there are AOE units around. Like the ling defiler/plague vs zealot/dragoons in bw, lings should fight in micro battles around the map and force the protoss to divide the army. Current build orders and unit compositions don't really need to be changed to change Zerg, I think we just need to change the way the matchup is approached and see how that goes.
EDIT: infestor buff doesn't really help out the zerg too much because their role doesn't really fit into the way zerg should be played imo.
Current strategies in sc2 seem to focus on getting a heavier economy and then getting a zerg deathball to deal with the protoss deathball.
Once toss does any kind of push, creep spread is pretty much dead though. It's really hard to maintain the creep spread when they just push and kill all the tumors.
I'd also add that unit such as the hydra should be more of a weak/mobile/cheap force than a dps monster. In sc2, hydras are only good because their dps... but zergs shouldn't really be fighting toss army head to head all the time.
That aside, the difficulty with the ZvP matchup in SC2 as opposed to BW, is that in SC2, zerg hive tech is a lot worst than it was in BW, also their staple mid game units, aka roach ^.^, are fine, but their effectiveness diminishes exponentially as P builds up his death ball, compounded by the fact that Z maxes far too fast, limiting the Z to different unit compositions. Eventually the zerg will have to engage the protoss in order to free up supply, but getting a different effective composition as Z, basically broodlords, since arguably ultras suck vs P general army comp, takes far too long, whereas the P reinforces on the fly.
The matchup is pretty complex and it's hard to say how to "solve" whatever problem there is, because as I've noticed, Z has the power to absolutely surpass the protoss in terms of eco, and max out extremely fast, yet their mid game units are pretty shit. In BW ling/hydra/lurk could fight almost any P ball, although eventually you mix in ultra/defiler, in SC2 it just doesn't work that way, because there is no unit that can properly compliment the existing mid game army, ultras blow, and broodlords take way too long to build.
My short version of my own opinion, even if I don't play Z SC2 ^.^
Yea, I agree it was the same dynamic as it is now. Protoss max army > Zerg max army, so Zerg has to kinda be everywhere and slow chip away at it, drop etc. The only difference is, like you said, Zerg tools were way more powerful for wearing away at a Protoss army. 3/3 cracklings were just ridiculous. Swarm + lurker offered amazing defensive options so you could actually expand and drop without dieing cause ur army was elsewhere, and I don't need to touch on how amazing plague was compared to fungal.
Also, another 1: Ultra / ling combo. This was just RIDICULOUSLY cost effective in BW on top of being incredibly mobile.
besides zergling damage, another big difference you didn't talk about is Z's hive tech options. BW dark swarm and lings are scary, but perhaps SC2 fungal+ultra on stalker/colo clumps is quite dangerous as well, plus baneling drops?? (of course this is ridiculously gas intensive, but hey we're talking lategame here when Z could be mining off 5 bases of gas)
On April 27 2011 04:23 palanq wrote: besides zergling damage, another big difference you didn't talk about is Z's hive tech options. BW dark swarm and lings are scary, but perhaps SC2 fungal+ultra on stalker/colo clumps is quite dangerous as well, plus baneling drops?? (of course this is ridiculously gas intensive, but hey we're talking lategame here when Z could be mining off 5 bases of gas)
That could work but those situations don't come up that often. Also, the voidray makes it so that anything involving ultra has a major downside. Also, it doesn't fair well with the general game plan that zergs should have because toss will adapt to ultra/baneling/infestor (if it gets mainstream), then zergs will have the same issues again.
A problem with PvZ is that in BW a Zerg has agressive options, which are the result of the Hydralisk, the hydralisk in BW deals explosive damage(good against goons and buildings)), is ranged(and as thus can be microed to kill zealots), it is cheap(75min/25gas) and when upgraded fast it is a very good unit. In fact it is so good that Protoss can only move out once he has high templars out on the field usually(Except if you are Bisu ofcourse).
In SC2 the zerg his aggressive options are limited, in SC2 you need speed on roaches which only come with lair tech and even then Roaches are not as strong against stalkers as hydralisks are against Dragoons. Not to mention that a roach is more of a tanky unit and not a damage unit, the zerg has no real damage dealer early on save for lings, who also don't deal that much damage and are ''countered'' by force fields. This coupled with the fac that Zerg needs to get more expo's/drones(as their army is less efficient) leads to lack of an incentive to be aggresive, because a true SC2 aggressive Zerg in the PvZ matchup is usually allin(Think drops). Idra has also stated that one of the problems of the Zerg right now is the lack of an aggresive early threat.
Z has no threat in early to mid game save for an allin.
Ow yea, lategame Z indeed does not engage the Protoss ball headon usually, only when clearly ahead. For example the Snow vs Jaedong series(INSANE SERIES) ultimately forced Jaedong to do drops on the Protoss his expansions and sacrificing a expo on his own for that. The thing is, as there is little defensive advantage with which you can stall your opponent(Dark swarm/Lurkers) in SC2 if you do not engage the deathball headon, you will die. He will A-move(oke thats a bit condescending) his deathball into your base, if he did this in BW, then you would be able to stall for a very long time with Dark swarm/lurkers, sure he would bust it in the end. But by then you have killed a numerous amount of Protoss Expansions and have decreased the size of the deathball, leading to the downfall of the Protoss in the end as he will be severly outmacroed.
Another to thing consider is the warpgate advantage, although you won't see it often in ZvP due to creep spread, in BW your forces could be picked off apart from your deathball during their ''run'' to the deathball, in SCBW you can reinforce instantly anywhere on the map(this incidentely also makes it harder for Zerg to harass effectivly) this once again nullefies the defenders advantage that Zerg has while in fact increasing the defenders advantage that Protoss has.
On top of this due to the power of the deathball and the Zerg its inefficiency there is no real incentive for Protoss to move out either, I know that it might be a nitpicked example but Idra vs Cruncher was an excellent example, in SCBW you don't let a zerg go up to 6 bases if you are on 3 (ARE YOU MAD?YOU WILL GET OVERRUN), in SC2 you can sit back and macro up a deathball strong enough to destroy basically anything, the incentive to attack is low. Why risk your not competed 200/200 deathball to do some damage while you can just sit back and get 200/200.
Here is to hope HoTS brings some Zerg defensive options .
Edit: Added sum more stuff.
Pelipodas his point btw is pretty good. The amount of workers to saturate a base is also very important.(Zerg gets 80 drones most of the time or something, leaving them with little army with roaches costing 2 supply)
Another very important thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the greater number of workers required to saturate bases in Starcraft 2. This means that Zerg is not fully able to take advantage of their potential for a more powerful economy then protoss, and thus is not able to outmacro Protoss no matter how many bases they take once Protoss is on 3 bases. This is probably the greatest problem with Starcraft 2 at the moment and leads to the efficiency of so called death balls.
Anyways, I think the meta game has shifted significantly, and in the very near future we will see a Zerg favored ZvP meta game. With better usage of infestors, and banelings.
On April 27 2011 04:34 Kipsate wrote: A problem with PvZ is that in BW a Zerg has agressive options, which are the result of the Hydralisk, the hydralisk in BW deals explosive damage(good against goons and buildings)), is ranged(and as thus can be microed to kill zealots), it is cheap(75min/25gas) and when upgraded fast it is a very good unit. In fact it is so good that Protoss can only move out once he has high templars out on the field usually(Except if you are Bisu ofcourse).
In SC2 the zerg his aggressive options are limited, in SC2 you need speed on roaches which only come with lair tech and even then Roaches are not as strong against stalkers as hydralisks are against Dragoons. Not to mention that a roach is more of a tanky unit and not a damage unit, the zerg has no real damage dealer early on save for lings, who also don't deal that much damage and are ''countered'' by force fields. This coupled with the fac that Zerg needs to get more expo's/drones(as their army is less efficient) leads to lack of an incentive to be aggresive, because a true SC2 aggressive Zerg in the PvZ matchup is usually allin(Think drops). Idra has also stated that one of the problems of the Zerg right now is the lack of an aggresive early threat.
Z has no threat in early to mid game save for an allin.
Ow yea, lategame Z indeed does not engage the Protoss ball headon usually, only when clearly ahead. For example the Snow vs Jaedong series(INSANE SERIES) ultimately forced Jaedong to do drops on the Protoss his expansions and sacrificing a expo on his own for that. The thing is, as there is little defensive advantage with which you can stall your opponent(Dark swarm/Lurkers) in SC2 if you do not engage the deathball headon, you will die. He will A-move(oke thats a bit condescending) his deathball into your base, if he did this in BW, then you would be able to stall for a very long time with Dark swarm/lurkers, sure he would bust it in the end. But by then you have killed a numerous amount of Protoss Expansions and have decreased the size of the deathball, leading to the downfall of the Protoss in the end as he will be severly outmacroed.
Here is to hope HoTS brings some Zerg defensive options .
Hydras are definitely something that should be looked into by blizzard.
It's not that zerg is such a terrible race... it's just that the design of the protoss makes a lot of the zerg's units seem terrible/useless. In zvt, at least there are some dynamics. Just a matter of time before terrans use ghost and helions in all their unit comp though and zerg tears shall fill the teamliquid forums once again.
When i think pvz and these zerg units... this pops into my head
Baneling drops are indeed terrifying... but honestly, they're not too cost effective. They're so expensive!
Zergs definitely need something that allows them to buy some time... Extend that hour glass!!!
On April 27 2011 04:35 Pelopidas wrote: Another very important thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the greater number of workers required to saturate bases in Starcraft 2. This means that Zerg is not fully able to take advantage of their potential for a more powerful economy then protoss, and thus is not able to outmacro Protoss no matter how many bases they take once Protoss is on 3 bases. This is probably the greatest problem with Starcraft 2 at the moment and leads to the efficiency of so called.
Anyways, I think the meta game has shifted significantly, and in the very near future we will see a Zerg favored ZvP meta game. With better usage of infestors, and banelings.
I think this could do a lot of the map design. In bw, it was pretty safe for the zerg to take a natural of another main base and then expand onto the main later on in the game. it was pretty safe because the naturals in bw maps had decent chokes where u can place buildings to wall and sunken colonies to defend with. Also, your units are all mobile units so defending the 3rd was not a painful task. with 4 bases, they can have that drone saturation on the gas with just 3 drones too. 4 bases = 12 workers on gas. In sc2, 4 bases = 24 workers on gas... 12 drones wasted on gas that could be just used for minerals!
Map design and core game design is another negative effect on the zerg...
Doesn't help that roach/hydra are both 2 food units. Maybe we can see 1.5 food units in the future. I really think that hydras need to be 1 food unit that costs 75/25... have better mobility. Just try being the bw hydra or something.
Playing with the gameplan of not engaging the toss army until you have a good lead should remedy the food problem a bit but still, hive tech units are still pretty bad. Also, in bw, while doing harassment, zergs often chipped away at the toss army. How can this be done in sc2... question of the year...?
On April 27 2011 04:35 Pelopidas wrote: Another very important thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the greater number of workers required to saturate bases in Starcraft 2. This means that Zerg is not fully able to take advantage of their potential for a more powerful economy then protoss, and thus is not able to outmacro Protoss no matter how many bases they take once Protoss is on 3 bases. This is probably the greatest problem with Starcraft 2 at the moment and leads to the efficiency of so called.
this is really true combine it with the roach being the staple zerg unit and being a 2 supply unit and you have covered some of the reason why late game zerg basically sucks with the exception of brood lords.
Sorry, but generally speaking maxed zerg > max protoss in bw, perhaps only late late game where you find archon/reaver/ht armies, etc. However the typical mid to late game P max isn't as strong as the Z max.
Yep. At any point but the late late game (where the portoss is on more than 4 base with reavers / archon / ht all in production), letting a zerg have more supply than you usually spells trouble.
maxed vs maxed would lead to protoss winning if he had a decent unit composition in bw, but maxed vs maxed would also very often mean that zerg was actually in the lead, because it was possible for zerg to defend with lurker+swarm, use plague to wittle down army while dropping main/killing exps etc.
actually it mainly depended on who attacked. zerg attacking into a protoss ball in bw generally lead to zerg losing his units, protoss attacking into a defense including lots of lurkers would generally lead to protoss losing his units.
On April 27 2011 04:35 Pelopidas wrote: Another very important thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the greater number of workers required to saturate bases in Starcraft 2. This means that Zerg is not fully able to take advantage of their potential for a more powerful economy then protoss, and thus is not able to outmacro Protoss no matter how many bases they take once Protoss is on 3 bases. This is probably the greatest problem with Starcraft 2 at the moment and leads to the efficiency of so called.
this is really true combine it with the roach being the staple zerg unit and being a 2 supply unit and you have covered some of the reason why late game zerg basically sucks with the exception of brood lords.
Also keep in mind that zerg rarely saturate their bases in BW. Since they are the most gas heavy race, they tend to expand a lot, put three guys on gas per base, and just have a few mining minerals.
On April 27 2011 04:35 Pelopidas wrote: Another very important thing that I don't think has been mentioned is the greater number of workers required to saturate bases in Starcraft 2. This means that Zerg is not fully able to take advantage of their potential for a more powerful economy then protoss, and thus is not able to outmacro Protoss no matter how many bases they take once Protoss is on 3 bases. This is probably the greatest problem with Starcraft 2 at the moment and leads to the efficiency of so called.
Anyways, I think the meta game has shifted significantly, and in the very near future we will see a Zerg favored ZvP meta game. With better usage of infestors, and banelings.
People would do less drone saturation on the minerals and have more bases for the gas if the zerg was able to get a faster 4th base but it's pretty dangerous for the zerg to expand so much because you will have to deal with the protoss attacking the expansion. Your choices would be to either try to fight head-on with the protoss army (which would be superior to yours because you've just expanded and you'd probably only have roaches) or do a counter attack. Since zergs like taking close proximity bases, the 3rd is probably exposed if the zerg decides to do a counter attack.
Most zergs tend to stick to 3base play until later in the game and i think that's hurting the zerg's options but zergs can't do much about it imo.
Doesn't help that gas saturation takes 6 drones instead of 3 T_T
Great thread so far, personally after reading most of the stuff in this thread. Wouldn't something like making it that you only need 2 workers per patch mabey make all the problems with 3 max bases go away and players be more proned to go for the sweet spot at 4-5 bases ? Just a thought.(not trying to derail just hit me while reading trough it all)
On April 27 2011 05:34 Buffy wrote: Great thread so far, personally after reading most of the stuff in this thread. Wouldn't something like making it that you only need 2 drones per patch mabey make all the problems with 3 max bases go away and players be more proned to go for the sweet spot at 4-5 bases ? Just a thought.(not trying to derail just hit me while reading trough it all)
well, you still need to make drones for the economy but it's just that most of the time, it's almost impossible to get a 4th base in the mid stages of the game to get use of the gas. People do the 2drones per mineral patch but that's still 8x2 + 6. 22 drones per base. 88 drones are needed to fully saturate 4bases. Protoss with 3 bases most of the time produces a better army than the zerg with 4 anyway. it's pointless to get a 5th base fully saturated because you can't get a decent army size with that many drones.
In bw, zerg can survive with small # of units because they can buy time and wither away the toss army and they can actually retreat from a fight. Imagine sc2 hydra running away from a toss army. You can't. Forcefields don't help also. If you fight, you fight to the death in most cases. burrowed roaches are great time buyers but zerg doesn't have anything realistic to snipe observers to buy time.
Zergs really need something to snipe observers so that the toss can't push out. They should just get like 4 corruptors to 1 shot obs or something... cut away with immortal/coll build time too since they'll have to make obs! but is it something they can afford to do...?
On April 27 2011 05:34 Buffy wrote: Great thread so far, personally after reading most of the stuff in this thread. Wouldn't something like making it that you only need 2 workers per patch mabey make all the problems with 3 max bases go away and players be more proned to go for the sweet spot at 4-5 bases ? Just a thought.(not trying to derail just hit me while reading trough it all)
The problems run much deeper then that sadly, The Zerg which we know from BW will most likely never come back and perhaps we should accept that, however The Zerg does need something to make up for the losses which came from SC2. I always wondered why Blizzard decided to go from 1 gas to 2 gas a base, do you have any idea how many drones you need on gas on 6 bases ?36, compared to 18 in BW. Ofcourse 6 bases is a overexgerated thing but yes it costs you alot of drones.
Something more subtle would be to increase the the amount of minerals you lose get when you mine with 3 workers on a mineral patch(therefore increasing the incentive to expo, as you will not mine effectivly, at all. But even then the problem also lies with the 2roach food and more units neccesary in general.
This map is a great example of some of the difficulties that zergs face.
Even though it's one of the larger maps, the zerg is forced to have direct engagements. Same with almost all the other GSL maps too.
Even though you get 3 easily defendable expansions early on and a decent 4th and 5th bases, you really can't hinder the protoss from taking his 3rd that much. The protoss doesn't even need to invest that much into cannons to defend the 3rd because it's so close to the natural. Even if the zerg takes 5 bases, the drone limit is around 80-90. You will need 30 drones to fully mine the gas... That allows for 50-60 drones on the minerals. Each base needs 24 drones to fully saturate. That's like having 2 fully saturated bases for minerals.
the protoss with 90 probes will have 18 on gas, 72 on minerals. 24 x 3 = 72. 3 fully saturated bases for minerals and 6 gas. Zerg is just 2 mineral saturation with 10 gas.
On April 27 2011 05:52 T0fuuu wrote: Wasnt pvz before bisu ridiculously favouring the zerg? Shit can change.
While this is true, these problems stated have always been there, yet with large maps recently it changed drastically in the P its favor, so that the Protoss can go to 3base, and lets not forget that with limited scouting information, a Protoss is both deadly with or without its turtle play. On top of that SC2 rapidly advances much further, people are doing much better analysis with more RTS knowledge and even advanced mathmathics. However due to the nearly perfect AI in SC2 the chances of an ''exploit''' which would make Zerg powerfull against Protoss is simply not there, hence it must come from strategies, the ''Ice Fisher build'' has been having some moderate successes though. Apart from this all, a Zerg has nothing to micro against a Protoss in which a good player will gain a advantage.
I do think that perhaps the solution lies in the Ultralisks, Corruptor and the Infestor, with proper buffs they will be able to attack the Protoss headon, but both units take incredibly long to produce and therefore can not be remaxed quickly. Will it be solved?I highly doubt it, but maybe infestors are the answer. Nothing changes from the fact though, that Zerg has no defenders advantage at all and that you either have to attack the Protoss deathball headon or die.
One thing I don't know if you mentioned in your run-down of BW PvZ is that the perfect Protoss army relies more on the fact that it hosts a ton of gas rather than a maxed supply. There are several instances where a maxed supply Protoss army is straight-up inferior to a maxed supply Zerg army with the same gas content. However, it is true that certain maxed Protoss compositions are almost impossible to deal with (usually Archon/Reaver/HT/DT are the core of these, though sometimes Protoss air with ground support is also a bitch for Zerg to deal with.) This requires a LOT of gas though, far more than just 3 geysers (though 3 is definitely more threatening than 2), so you really only see this in extremely late-game situations where the Protoss is allowed to turtle efficiently.
Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod
where Stork played rather badly and overreacted to Alone's hydra all-in, allowing Alone to drone up, Alone never once needed to counterattack or drop or divert any attention away from Stork's army. He simply rammed hydras and lurkers down into Stork's army to whittle it away.
I don't like speaking to the state of SC2 but I'll just say as a BW Protoss that it's rather silly that P has basically been given control of space and time in SC2. Allowing drastic manipulation of such fundamentals just throws so many parameters out the window when dealing with Protoss strategy.
Lots of excellent points made in this thread and there are lots of different ways to look at the problem.
The way Zergs stay alive in SC2 is by making Hydra / Roach. There is no key unit that can stall midgame pushes, Mutas come out too late and in most cases the threat of a Zerg counterattack isn't big enough to prevent the push, so you deal with it by making an army large enough to defend it. The Roach / Hydra army is unfortunately bad at applying counter pressure. A top level macro Zerg can max on Roaches while the Protoss is still at 150-ish supply, and from that point on the Protoss just gets a bigger and bigger lead.
I think there are ideal Zerg compositions that could deal with a 200/200 Protoss army but they're so hard to get to, as in they take longer to get than the Protoss composition, and again, the Zerg can't buy time.
The Roach / Hydra / Corruptor style is conceptually very similar to the MMM / Viking style that's standard in TvP, but on paper it's worse in most ways:
The anti-Colossus unit for Terran, the Viking, has 50% more rage than the Corruptor, 33% more DPS (10% more after Corruption) and costs 25 gas less. It does have less armor and health though, but I think the range more than makes up for that. Furthermore the ground army for Zerg is less supply efficient (Roaches) than Terran's, and to top it all off Terran can get by with less workers and therefore gets more army supply.
Looking at it on paper doesn't tell the whole story of course, but I still don't think it's strange that the Roach / Hydra / Corruptor style isn't doing well when I think it's so much worse than the equivalent unit composition for Terran, and it's not like Terrans roll Protosses left and right, but they can at least have a stand up fight.
Also, I think a lot of the frustration people feel with the matchup is that if you win it's often because the Protoss player did bad forcefields or some other kind of unforced error. You want to be able to force the win yourself, not engage and hope that the other guy does a mistake.
On April 27 2011 06:12 EchOne wrote: One thing I don't know if you mentioned in your run-down of BW PvZ is that the perfect Protoss army relies more on the fact that it hosts a ton of gas rather than a maxed supply. There are several instances where a maxed supply Protoss army is straight-up inferior to a maxed supply Zerg army with the same gas content. However, it is true that certain maxed Protoss compositions are almost impossible to deal with (usually Archon/Reaver/HT/DT are the core of these, though sometimes Protoss air with ground support is also a bitch for Zerg to deal with.) This requires a LOT of gas though, far more than just 3 geysers (though 3 is definitely more threatening than 2), so you really only see this in extremely late-game situations where the Protoss is allowed to turtle efficiently.
Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod
where Stork played rather badly and overreacted to Alone's hydra all-in, allowing Alone to drone up, Alone never once needed to counterattack or drop or divert any attention away from Stork's army. He simply rammed hydras and lurkers down into Stork's army to whittle it away.
I don't like speaking to the state of SC2 but I'll just say as a BW Protoss that it's rather silly that P has basically been given control of space and time in SC2. Allowing drastic manipulation of such fundamentals just throws so many parameters out the window when dealing with Protoss strategy.
BW toss can't really survive on 3 base and they'd probably lose before achieving the endgame toss ball. In sc2, their only gas heavy unit to mass produce is the coll and they're pretty easy to use/save/micro. They don't really need much tech structures either to get to it also. Zerg's direct engagements in bw is drastically different from sc2 though. In bw, you are allowed to do some damage, then retreat. Often times, it's mostly the protoss that's trying to break a lurker line in bw. Zerg buys time with observer snipes while droning up/teching/expo/making units/etc. In sc2, you often see the zerg throw all their units to reduce the coll count and then rely solely on the reinforcements to be able to hold off the incoming attack with no coll.
On April 27 2011 06:14 hugman wrote: Lots of excellent points made in this thread and there are lots of different ways to look at the problem.
The way Zergs stay alive in SC2 is by making Hydra / Roach. There is no key unit that can stall midgame pushes, Mutas come out too late and in most cases the threat of a Zerg counterattack isn't big enough to prevent the push, so you deal with it by making an army large enough to defend it. The Roach / Hydra army is unfortunately bad at applying counter pressure. A top level macro Zerg can max on Roaches while the Protoss is still at 150-ish supply, and from that point on the Protoss just gets a bigger and bigger lead.
I think there are ideal Zerg compositions that could deal with a 200/200 Protoss army but they're so hard to get to, as in they take longer to get than the Protoss composition, and again, the Zerg can't buy time.
The Roach / Hydra / Corruptor style is conceptually very similar to the MMM / Viking style that's standard in TvP, but on paper it's worse in most ways:
The anti-Colossus unit for Terran, the Viking, has 50% more rage than the Corruptor, 33% more DPS (10% more after Corruption) and costs 25 gas less. It does have less armor and health though, but I think the range more than makes up for that. Furthermore the ground army for Zerg is less supply efficient (Roaches) than Terran's, and to top it all off Terran can get by with less workers and therefore gets more army supply.
Looking at it on paper doesn't tell the whole story of course, but I still don't think it's strange that the Roach / Hydra / Corruptor style isn't doing well when I think it's so much worse than the equivalent unit composition for Terran, and it's not like Terrans roll Protosses left and right, but they can at least have a stand up fight.
Also, I think a lot of the frustration people feel with the matchup is that if you win it's often because the Protoss player did bad forcefields or some other kind of unforced error. You want to be able to force the win yourself, not engage and hope that the other guy does a mistake.
Zergs are trying to find new compositions that work such as broodlord/infestor/ling/etc but broodlords are such fragile units due to their immobility and need for constant care and reinforcements to support it. Infestors aren't really that great dps as people think they are and i think their role should be to protect the broodlords and hold the enemy units in place. Maybe the stun duration should be longer except the last few seconds don't do any damage.
I think that most people are looking to the composition/ball vs ball method to overcoming pvz because the points I've mentioned in the OP. Zergs can't really play in the way that they should be played so they're forced to find pseudo-answers. If a zerg figures out a way to beat the current protoss army composition, protoss simply just need to change either their playstyle or change the unit composition themselves. If zergs find a good mix of units that do well against the toss deathball, it will be a short lived composition.
Zergs need to rely on a heavy economy if they want to beat a protoss in a head to head fight by keep ramming units into it and trying to disrupt the unit composition
This isnt very true in BW. The kind of sacrificial playstyle isnt that effective as zerg. Instead, the mobility and damage advantage is critical to giving zerg winning as zerg(outside of timing attacks which are plentifully used): the use of multiprone attacks, abusing the higher damage to cost ratio units for very efficient harassment and drops
Also about the maxed army: zerg supply count is generally LOWER than that of terran and protoss(in an even game), zerg units are remarkably supply efficient in BW.
Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod
where Stork played rather badly and overreacted to Alone's hydra all-in, allowing Alone to drone up, Alone never once needed to counterattack or drop or divert any attention away from Stork's army. He simply rammed hydras and lurkers down into Stork's army to whittle it away.
Uhh.. Alone used the superior speed and damage output of zerg units to bypass storks ball and take down his third and to wreak havoc with the drop later on.
Zergs need to rely on a heavy economy if they want to beat a protoss in a head to head fight by keep ramming units into it and trying to disrupt the unit composition
This isnt very true in BW. The kind of sacrificial playstyle isnt that effective as zerg. Instead, the mobility and damage advantage is critical to giving zerg winning as zerg(outside of timing attacks which are plentifully used): the use of multiprone attacks, abusing the higher damage to cost ratio units for very efficient harassment and drops
Also about the maxed army: zerg supply count is generally LOWER than that of terran and protoss(in an even game), zerg units are remarkably supply efficient in BW.
I think I've said all those things. lol
And you're right, sacrificial play and not using mobility is what SC2 zergs are doing right now. It isn't very effective but it's the only method right now for them that seems to be working. Infestors are being tested out but the results aren't game changing in pvz.
Just wanted to say that having an easy to secure 3rd is not giving the toss any sort of advantage going into lategame in BW. With high ups, zerg army gets very potent against the zealot so the toss must transit into gas heavy archon reaver etc army, goons are doing pretty well vs ultras as well, but again, zealots are useless in lategame PvZ in BW. So naturally toss needs to take a 4th base to make a smooth transition to gas heavy combo. You often see games with big ball of toss units just doing nothing vs a 5 base zerg with good ups, cause toss still doesnt have map control and cracklings raid stuff so fast. One of the maps that comes in mind is Fighting Spirit which many people consider balanced but its really difficult for late game PvZ cause toss basically cant take a that 4th gas w/o having a huge lead in the midgame. Fast zealots with legs changed that recently and toss is actually aiming to kill the zerg before the late game.
On April 27 2011 06:52 disciple wrote: Just wanted to say that having an easy to secure 3rd is not giving the toss any sort of advantage going into lategame in BW. With high ups, zerg army gets very potent against the zealot so the toss must transit into gas heavy archon reaver etc army, goons are doing pretty well vs ultras as well, but again, zealots are useless in lategame PvZ in BW. So naturally toss needs to take a 4th base to make a smooth transition to gas heavy combo. You often see games with big ball of toss units just doing nothing vs a 5 base zerg with good ups, cause toss still doesnt have map control and cracklings raid stuff so fast. One of the maps that comes in mind is Fighting Spirit which many people consider balanced but its really difficult for late game PvZ cause toss basically cant take a that 4th gas w/o having a huge lead in the midgame. Fast zealots with legs changed that recently and toss is actually aiming to kill the zerg before the late game.
3 base timing attacks are still pretty scary for zergs to deal with but at least they can buy time with lurkers and observer sniping and dropping hydra lings at the protoss.
In sc2, protosses are pretty content with having 3bases since coll are such good units and most of the time zergs barely have 4 bases and protosses aren't that scared of drops because it's such a big investment for the zerg.
TLDR: There's not much benefit from keeping drones less than the number of patches in SC2.
So you guys are saying, because the 3rds are so easy to take in the new maps in SC2, there is no way to abuse the slowness of the collosi by attacking two fronts at once, forcing the collosi to choose which place he needs to attack? If that's the case, they may need to make the distance between 3rds and nat a greater distance, or make taking the 3rd force the protoss to engage with a larger choke.
If a deathball is so hard to defeat, than shouldn't the current strategy involve harassment and delaying the protoss economy by using the mobility of Zerg? Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
The last SotG podcast talked about abusing the mobility of zerg, maybe you can get some ideas from there.
On April 27 2011 07:56 Nazza wrote:If a deathball is so hard to defeat, than shouldn't the current strategy involve harassment and delaying the protoss economy by using the mobility of Zerg? Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
That's valid conclusion to draw, but it's hard to do in practice.
First of all, Mutalisks are great at containing and harassing Protosses and they have been popular in the matchup but Zergs had to stop using them because Protoss players found midgame 2-base timings that straight up kill Zergs that try to go for them. If you get the Mutas out in decent numbers they're great, but if the Protoss plays it right you're not going to.
You can do drops but the main problem is that Zerg doesn't have a good unit to drop (Roches have very low DPS, Hydras fragile, slow and very expensive, there's no Hydra speed upg in SC2 :sadface: ). You tend to only see all-in doom drops because there's nothing you can drop in small numbers that will do enough damage to justify the cost, plus small drops are easily dealt with through the warp-in mechanic and blink Stalkers. Baneling drops on mineral lines have a lot of potential though. Probes are only (very) slightly slower than speed Banelings, so it hard to force them to work, but it does force situations where the Protoss player has to react well, which is good.
Here's a game where the Zerg tries to harass non-stop, but it's not cost effective and he ends up getting rolled.
On April 27 2011 06:12 EchOne wrote: Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod.
That made me realize one more thing -- one part of BW PvZ is that engagements in the field (and even when the protoss is hitting the outlying expo simcity) do not force the Zerg to seriously commit his army. Hydralisks can often run in, trade a bit of supply, and run off. Even in a large 30 v 30 supply engagement, the hydralisks can easily leave the field should the battle go awry, since only zealots can chase them down. Thus, the Zerg isn't forced to sacrifice 10 hydras (when the battle is not going well) for no cost against a large protoss army.
On the other hand, Stalkers are damn fast, and severely punish the Zerg running in the middle of a battle. It doesn't help when the roach, a low-ranged unit, makes up the backbone of the Z army comp.
Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
A common theme of some player's ZvP (RorO is one I recall), is to cross-counter the Protoss main / natural when confronted with a large army assaulting his 4th, aiming to destroy his production, and then to kill the Protoss field army through attrition.
The thing is, warp gate negates this sort of play pretty well. Furthermore, BW cross-counter armies were cheap -- hydra / crackling with a defiler or two mixed in could do obscene amounts of damage. Mostly cracklings though, which are cheap and destructive -- I've seen games where they tear down 3 protoss expos in less than 2 minutes (but of course you can't have something as OP as that in Sc2).
This is really key, as you're essentially writing off these units when you send them to hit the Protoss main.
Not saying its completely unviable -- Spanishiwa executes some pretty cool examples of this with varying success -- but lings > roaches for this sort of play.
TLDR: There's not much benefit from keeping drones less than the number of patches in SC2.
So you guys are saying, because the 3rds are so easy to take in the new maps in SC2, there is no way to abuse the slowness of the collosi by attacking two fronts at once, forcing the collosi to choose which place he needs to attack? If that's the case, they may need to make the distance between 3rds and nat a greater distance, or make taking the 3rd force the protoss to engage with a larger choke.
If a deathball is so hard to defeat, than shouldn't the current strategy involve harassment and delaying the protoss economy by using the mobility of Zerg? Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
The last SotG podcast talked about abusing the mobility of zerg, maybe you can get some ideas from there.
yes, drops are the way that zergs should be approaching the matchup but units such as roach/hydras aren't very effective units to use for drops. They cost a lot of resources and they cost 2 food. Because the protoss's general strategy is to mass up to a critical number of coll, they are generally positioned between their natural and 3rd base. Because of this, response to drops is very quick and if it's like a 4roach drop into a mineral line, they can just warp in 6 stalkers to deal with it easily. Just because it's easily stopped doesnt mean that it is never effective. BUT, it's just that the rewards from dropping doesnt justify the cost. In bw, drops consisted of hydras and hydras killed buildings very quickly and they were a huge threat if it wasnt dealt with. While main is being dropped, lings can go snipe a nexus or something. This can also be done in SC2 but once the drop in the main is dealt with, most of toss's army would probably not even be affected by it and the ling attack to the 3rd was probably stopped by zealot warp-ins or something.
I don't really want to sound too negative from the zerg's point of view but it just comes out that way...
Zergs need to rely on a heavy economy if they want to beat a protoss in a head to head fight by keep ramming units into it and trying to disrupt the unit composition
This isnt very true in BW. The kind of sacrificial playstyle isnt that effective as zerg. Instead, the mobility and damage advantage is critical to giving zerg winning as zerg(outside of timing attacks which are plentifully used): the use of multiprone attacks, abusing the higher damage to cost ratio units for very efficient harassment and drops
Also about the maxed army: zerg supply count is generally LOWER than that of terran and protoss(in an even game), zerg units are remarkably supply efficient in BW.
Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod
where Stork played rather badly and overreacted to Alone's hydra all-in, allowing Alone to drone up, Alone never once needed to counterattack or drop or divert any attention away from Stork's army. He simply rammed hydras and lurkers down into Stork's army to whittle it away.
Uhh.. Alone used the superior speed and damage output of zerg units to bypass storks ball and take down his third and to wreak havoc with the drop later on.
Isnt it also said that the closer Zerg is to you in Supply the worse off you are in the game?
Also the primary difference allowing Zerg to fight Protoss on semi equal footing is no longer in the game
That of course being ..wait theres 3 reasons Ultralisks are ASSSSSSSSSSS. Cracklings are more like Marijuana lings than what they used to be and last but not least Zerg is stuck with 3 hive tech choices(these being broodlords/cracklings(sorta..)/Ultralisks) And the key component that made these viable against Terran(broodlords being guardians obviously) aswell as protoss is no longer in the game.
That of course being the Defiler. Without Dark Swarm to combat the giant ranged army of protoss, or plague to soften them up considerably this plus the fact that Broodlords are very weak, roaches are horrible and cost 2 supply, Cracklings are a shadow of their former selves, all adds up to why Zerg has so much trouble against Protoss late game IMO.
Lings are actually pretty good in sc2, they were just incredibly incredibly good in sc1 once they had adrenal.
And yeah the biggest issue with sc2, that completely changes how the game works from sc1 and makes it hard to make comparisons, is mining saturation/efficiency. The fact that it is absolutely pointless to have more than 3 fully operational bases is depressing.
Zergs need to rely on a heavy economy if they want to beat a protoss in a head to head fight by keep ramming units into it and trying to disrupt the unit composition
This isnt very true in BW. The kind of sacrificial playstyle isnt that effective as zerg. Instead, the mobility and damage advantage is critical to giving zerg winning as zerg(outside of timing attacks which are plentifully used): the use of multiprone attacks, abusing the higher damage to cost ratio units for very efficient harassment and drops
Also about the maxed army: zerg supply count is generally LOWER than that of terran and protoss(in an even game), zerg units are remarkably supply efficient in BW.
Also it is not always the case that Zerg refuses to engage the Protoss army in direct confrontations. Sometimes the Zerg wants to keep engaging and whittle down both the Protoss supply and his gas retention (sniping Reavers, Templar, overrunning Dragoons without support) with superior economy and reinforcement in order to retard his progress towards the perfect gas composition. For example, in this game: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/korean/games/64964_Alone_vs_Stork/vod
where Stork played rather badly and overreacted to Alone's hydra all-in, allowing Alone to drone up, Alone never once needed to counterattack or drop or divert any attention away from Stork's army. He simply rammed hydras and lurkers down into Stork's army to whittle it away.
Uhh.. Alone used the superior speed and damage output of zerg units to bypass storks ball and take down his third and to wreak havoc with the drop later on.
Isnt it also said that the closer Zerg is to you in Supply the worse off you are in the game?
Also the primary difference allowing Zerg to fight Protoss on semi equal footing is no longer in the game
That of course being ..wait theres 3 reasons Ultralisks are ASSSSSSSSSSS. Cracklings are more like Marijuana lings than what they used to be and last but not least Zerg is stuck with 3 hive tech choices(these being broodlords/cracklings(sorta..)/Ultralisks) And the key component that made these viable against Terran(broodlords being guardians obviously) aswell as protoss is no longer in the game.
That of course being the Defiler. Without Dark Swarm to combat the giant ranged army of protoss, or plague to soften them up considerably this plus the fact that Broodlords are very weak, roaches are horrible and cost 2 supply, Cracklings are a shadow of their former selves, all adds up to why Zerg has so much trouble against Protoss late game IMO.
Well, we can't do much about absence of units or lack of certain unit's power... only thing that we can do is try to learn different styles of play and see how the new units affect the gameplay... Zergs are doing the 300food push which isn't working out... infestors are being tried but results aren't game changing. A lot of the professional players are talking about the drop play and chaotic multi attacks for the zerg but it's pretty difficult to be able to pull off when there are things like forcefield and warp-ins. Also, make one mistake and you lose an entire group of units and do no damage...
I think a part of the issue in this matchup is that zerg players and blizzard want to be able to engage a protoss army and come out even. The fungal growth's change reflect's blizzard's attitude towards the PvZ matchup and I don't really think that it is the right direction for the match up because I really don't see how the balancing will work out between micro engagements and huge macro engagements. For example, marines are super good in numbers 20-30ish but they are terrible when they're in low numbers and huge numbers (weak to aoe like other low hp units).
On April 27 2011 09:21 travis wrote: Lings are actually pretty good in sc2, they were just incredibly incredibly good in sc1 once they had adrenal.
And yeah the biggest issue with sc2, that completely changes how the game works from sc1 and makes it hard to make comparisons, is mining saturation/efficiency. The fact that it is absolutely pointless to have more than 3 fully operational bases is depressing.
I think the fake cracklings in SC2 are more easily nullified with collossi. You have a unit with 9 range that can destroy cracklings from a distance. This was the same in BW, but it actually took some work. Both BW and SC2 have storm, which is great for killing lings, but collosi and reaver last longer without the need for energy. Reavers take a lot of micro when compared to BW, making cracklings viable. The advent of the collosus gives you a unit with massive range and the ability to walk over cliffs to escape danger. In general, I think the collosus does the same work as the reaver, but the amount of management for each is vastly different.
Is this ludicrous... or should zergs fully saturate their main and natural with 24 drones on the mineral patches and just have only gas mining from all other expansions... because essentially, that's the same income... And when toss comes to destroy a 3rd, 4th or 5th (that you've made far away), you can counter attack without fear of toss taking out your economy. you'll just be gas hungry for a little bit.
I'm going to go test this. (the resource collection)
EDIT: nvm. this is dumb. haha. After a minute of thinking, it's not the same income as 16/16/16 for minerals compared to 24/24
did test anyway. 25 minerals per sec with 24/24 setup and 31 minerals per sec with 16/16/16 setup.
TLDR: There's not much benefit from keeping drones less than the number of patches in SC2.
So you guys are saying, because the 3rds are so easy to take in the new maps in SC2, there is no way to abuse the slowness of the collosi by attacking two fronts at once, forcing the collosi to choose which place he needs to attack? If that's the case, they may need to make the distance between 3rds and nat a greater distance, or make taking the 3rd force the protoss to engage with a larger choke.
If a deathball is so hard to defeat, than shouldn't the current strategy involve harassment and delaying the protoss economy by using the mobility of Zerg? Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
The last SotG podcast talked about abusing the mobility of zerg, maybe you can get some ideas from there.
yes, drops are the way that zergs should be approaching the matchup but units such as roach/hydras aren't very effective units to use for drops. They cost a lot of resources and they cost 2 food. Because the protoss's general strategy is to mass up to a critical number of coll, they are generally positioned between their natural and 3rd base. Because of this, response to drops is very quick and if it's like a 4roach drop into a mineral line, they can just warp in 6 stalkers to deal with it easily. Just because it's easily stopped doesnt mean that it is never effective. BUT, it's just that the rewards from dropping doesnt justify the cost. In bw, drops consisted of hydras and hydras killed buildings very quickly and they were a huge threat if it wasnt dealt with. While main is being dropped, lings can go snipe a nexus or something. This can also be done in SC2 but once the drop in the main is dealt with, most of toss's army would probably not even be affected by it and the ling attack to the 3rd was probably stopped by zealot warp-ins or something.
I don't really want to sound too negative from the zerg's point of view but it just comes out that way...
Well, at least you got the Protoss to spend 300 gas for a 100 gas drop. Any gas not spent on collosi is good, right?
But the aim of the drop is to drop away from the colossi and also negate any defensive power (forcefields/ g. shield) sentries have. 4 roaches might not work, but 8, 12 ,16 might. But, if the distance between the 3rd/nat/main is not that long, then perhaps some map balance should be considered. Even so, I still think there should be some holes in mid game that you can exploit.
On April 27 2011 07:56 Nazza wrote:If a deathball is so hard to defeat, than shouldn't the current strategy involve harassment and delaying the protoss economy by using the mobility of Zerg? Drops were used to delay the Protoss push in BW. Can't they be used in SC2?
That's valid conclusion to draw, but it's hard to do in practice.
First of all, Mutalisks are great at containing and harassing Protosses and they have been popular in the matchup but Zergs had to stop using them because Protoss players found midgame 2-base timings that straight up kill Zergs that try to go for them. If you get the Mutas out in decent numbers they're great, but if the Protoss plays it right you're not going to.
You can do drops but the main problem is that Zerg doesn't have a good unit to drop (Roches have very low DPS, Hydras fragile, slow and very expensive, there's no Hydra speed upg in SC2 :sadface: ). You tend to only see all-in doom drops because there's nothing you can drop in small numbers that will do enough damage to justify the cost, plus small drops are easily dealt with through the warp-in mechanic and blink Stalkers. Baneling drops on mineral lines have a lot of potential though. Probes are only (very) slightly slower than speed Banelings, so it hard to force them to work, but it does force situations where the Protoss player has to react well, which is good.
Here's a game where the Zerg tries to harass non-stop, but it's not cost effective and he ends up getting rolled.
That game may not have been the best in displaying drop harass from zerg. The last drop did manage to do alot of damage, but the first drop was pretty poorly positioned, dropping when the first collosus had finished, and right int the middle of an immortal, void ray, stalkers.
I'm kindof curious about burrow roach usage. It didn't seem to do much at all. The nat was tightly walled with 2/3 cannons. It wouldn't do anything to negate the air superiority of Cruncher. Was he planning on using it in conjuction with his drops? I would imagine that if so, burrow/drop/transport/ovie speed would not be researched so far apart. ( idk, maybe I'll look at game again). Perhaps if the money had been spent on other things, the game would have turned out differently.
EPT
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and zerg tears shall fill the teamliquid forums once again.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/eVbdh.jpg)
