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So, this is my first RTS that i'm playing with any interest so I wanted to share some of the experiences I have with learning zerg. I started terran in the beta, changed to protoss near the end of the beta and have been playing zerg for the last month.
So here are some things I learned so far as zerg.
1. Injecting isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I learned how to inject much faster than I learned how to use chrono boost properly.
2. Hotkeying is a lot easier for zerg. As protoss I feel cramped with all the hotkeys, but zerg I can hotkey about 4 seperate groups of units no problem
3. It's hard to know when to make drones and when to make units. Making drones at the wrong time has cost me games already.
4. Mutas with +2 are really really good.
5. Forcefields on my ramp are annoying.
6. Sacrificing like 40 lings to destroy an expansion is definitely worth it in the mid/late game.
7. Creep and overlords are really powerful tools for scouting. Once ovie speed kicks in, I feel like i can scout the protoss forever
8. My queens like to go run off in battle and chase things. Maybe i need to set em on hold position or something near the hatch. Not having queens is annoying
9. Roaches are bizarre. 75/25 2 supply?!?!
10. Infestors are amazing, but zerg is really gas limited.
11. Protoss I spend a lot of time microing my units since 1 missed forcefield is death. As zerg I feel a lot safer not babysitting my units 24/7. My apm with protoss is usually around 80, with zerg it's around 100.
12. Zerg tech switches are amazing. It's nice to be able to suddenly respond to an opponents build
13. banelings are difficult to use properly, they tend to die before getting to their target.
14. As zerg I think zvt seems like the easiest matchup, zvz is just like pvp, zvp seems micro dependant.
I think my biggest insight is that I think it will really help my pvz. Kill off overlords early game and faking pressure really makes zerg overreact. Also, if protoss can scout when the queen injects, protoss can find a tiny timing window (like 5 seconds) where they can kill of a hatch no problem. Zealots are really good against zerg unmicroed, so I think i'll be using zealot sentry more instead of stalker.
Overall i'm liking zerg a lot, it's a fun race to play. I feel like it's missing a unit (the hydra seems like it's missing something) specifically anti-air before infestors come out. Corrupters dont seem like a good unit choice at all since they are basically useless once the air is dead. Protoss have a medium dps high ranged fast anti-air (stalkers), terran have a high dps, good ranged fast anti-air (marines) but zerg only have a high dps good range slow anti-air(hydra) that are bad against typical protoss and terran compositions (tanks and collosus).
Hopefully I'll get some lessons and start laddering (only playing customs and 3's) and see the results there.
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United States889 Posts
I noticed you didn't say anything about 4gate. Been 4gated yet? Cannon rushed yet? Bunker rushed yet? Dealing with those is about half of playing Zerg in diamond. The rest is just learning how to hotkey your hatches, inject your larva, and then spam s+rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
as a side note, i'm not bashing zerg. this is how i play zerg in diamond. it works pretty well. survive the 4gate, then spam roaches to victory! it's beautiful.
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On April 30 2011 04:15 Arrian wrote:
I noticed you didn't say anything about 4gate. Been 4gated yet? Cannon rushed yet? Bunker rushed yet? Dealing with those is about half of playing Zerg in diamond. The rest is just learning how to hotkey your hatches, inject your larva, and then spam s+rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
as a side note, i'm not bashing zerg. this is how i play zerg in diamond. it works pretty well. survive the 4gate, then spam roaches to victory! it's beautiful.
I haven't had much problem dealing with those (also switching p to z in master), but my friend does this thing in TvZ where he goes for non stop blue flame hellion harass into cloaked banshees. It's seriously the most annoying shit I have ever encountered in sc2 and even when I simcity and build a bunch of spines in anticipation of it, I get rolled so easily. T_T
Also turtling protoss because I tend to max out on the wrong composition. I agree that zerg macro is pretty easy though.
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United States889 Posts
On April 30 2011 04:30 hifriend wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2011 04:15 Arrian wrote:
I noticed you didn't say anything about 4gate. Been 4gated yet? Cannon rushed yet? Bunker rushed yet? Dealing with those is about half of playing Zerg in diamond. The rest is just learning how to hotkey your hatches, inject your larva, and then spam s+rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
as a side note, i'm not bashing zerg. this is how i play zerg in diamond. it works pretty well. survive the 4gate, then spam roaches to victory! it's beautiful. I haven't had much problem dealing with those (also switching p to z in master), but my friend does this thing in TvZ where he goes for non stop blue flame hellion harass into cloaked banshees. It's seriously the most annoying shit I have ever encountered in sc2 and even when I simcity and build a bunch of spines in anticipation of it, I get rolled so easily. T_T Also turtling protoss because I tend to max out on the wrong composition. I agree that zerg macro is pretty easy though.
I haven't been successfully cannon rushed or bunker rushed in a while, but 4gate is like autoloss for me. I can never squeeze out enough drones before the forward pylon goes down to support the number of roaches needed and then if he ff's the ramp i'm screwed.
I think the last time i lost to a hellion opening was the beta. I make it a habit to tech to roaches first, get a comfortable number of queens, then back tech to muta/ling/bling. it slows your third but it handles hellions/hellion drops and banshees very well.
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On April 30 2011 04:50 Arrian wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2011 04:30 hifriend wrote:On April 30 2011 04:15 Arrian wrote:
I noticed you didn't say anything about 4gate. Been 4gated yet? Cannon rushed yet? Bunker rushed yet? Dealing with those is about half of playing Zerg in diamond. The rest is just learning how to hotkey your hatches, inject your larva, and then spam s+rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
as a side note, i'm not bashing zerg. this is how i play zerg in diamond. it works pretty well. survive the 4gate, then spam roaches to victory! it's beautiful. I haven't had much problem dealing with those (also switching p to z in master), but my friend does this thing in TvZ where he goes for non stop blue flame hellion harass into cloaked banshees. It's seriously the most annoying shit I have ever encountered in sc2 and even when I simcity and build a bunch of spines in anticipation of it, I get rolled so easily. T_T Also turtling protoss because I tend to max out on the wrong composition. I agree that zerg macro is pretty easy though. I haven't been successfully cannon rushed or bunker rushed in a while, but 4gate is like autoloss for me. I can never squeeze out enough drones before the forward pylon goes down to support the number of roaches needed and then if he ff's the ramp i'm screwed. I think the last time i lost to a hellion opening was the beta. I make it a habit to tech to roaches first, get a comfortable number of queens, then back tech to muta/ling/bling. it slows your third but it handles hellions/hellion drops and banshees very well.
Good points.
4 gate. I know how to scout for it because I play protoss so I haven't had problems against it yet. Scouting agaisnt protoss is really easy. Count the # of workers, look at energy on nexus and check for chrono on warpgate. It's impossible to transition out of a failed warpgate rush. I usually place an ovie in the middle of the map if possible so that I can see the rush coming and then I put down 2-3 spines. With zerg you can saturate almost instantly so no problems after that. I need to test it on ladder though as I have been playing customs like i said. I'm sure at this point i'm plat zerg at best in pvz,
cannon rush, no one has tried that on me yet, but i think i know how to stop it
bunker rushes are a little problem, but i was mostly reflecting on the pvz matchup.
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Not to sound critical, but you don't have injects down. I only really say it because if you think you have it down you're not likely to improve on injects as much as you should be. Even GM zergs aren't as good at injects as they should be. Also are you backspace injecting or hotkeying queens or what? I find Zerg way more cramped than Protoss in some respects because I end up using 8-9 hotkeys every game. You'll know when you're starting to get good at injects because you'll start to get really annoyed that queens only regenerate 23-24 energy before the larva pops off the hatch.
As for hellions it's about sim city in your base. Use an evo chamber/roach warren to cut off access behind your mineral lines and if you want to avoid making roaches then you can have 3 queens and use 1 spine crawler to cover the nat's mineral line and 1 to cover the ramp to the main. When he approaches with hellions block the ramp with 2 queens and use the 3rd to push away the hellions with the spine crawler's help. Once you hit lair and get infestors/mutas you can just take out all the hellions in one blow. If he only has small numbers you can of course also pick them off with lings.
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Well, no I don't have pro level injects, but i'm at the point where I don't feel like i'm losing games due to not having enough larvae. My queens usually have 40-50 energy at the end of the game.
the method i'm using is
hatch on 5 queens on 4 ~ for camera
so i go ~ 4 v shift(hold) click ~ click ~ click (etc) I've gotten to the point where it takes under a second to complete it.
for protoss chronos it was 445c click c click (for gateways etc) or ~c click ~c click ~ c click for nexus.
I usually put my spawning pool at a choke and a roach warren next to my hatch and form a wall with the pool, extractor, warren.
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On April 30 2011 06:25 darmousseh wrote:
Well, no I don't have pro level injects, but i'm at the point where I don't feel like i'm losing games due to not having enough larvae. My queens usually have 40-50 energy at the end of the game.
the method i'm using is
hatch on 5 queens on 4 ~ for camera
so i go ~ 4 v shift(hold) click ~ click ~ click (etc) I've gotten to the point where it takes under a second to complete it.
for protoss chronos it was 445c click c click (for gateways etc) or ~c click ~c click ~ c click for nexus.
I usually put my spawning pool at a choke and a roach warren next to my hatch and form a wall with the pool, extractor, warren.
I absolutely love that technique for how fast and easy it is but if you don't have a queen for each hatch, or if one queen is at 23-24 energy, you'll be sending random queens on a journey across the map. Pains me to have to use hotkey injects. 
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EPT
