A month or so ago one night as I was drifting to sleep the thought occurred to me that I crush Terran. This was an odd thought because I had been practicing almost purely ZvP for my Challenger match, and I felt pretty sloppy with my muta-lingbane. However mech was the craze and all over ladder I was facing it in 90% of my games. It felt like I almost never lost games, even when experimenting with mass mutas, I could normally win by forcing heavy Thors and swapping back to SH.
I tried mass muta for the first time after seeing Leenock pull it off in his GSL group. Luckily SH make up for horrible muta-usage
It occurred to me that since my endgame was unrivaled I should only lose to mech if I fall enough behind to let them mass BC-Raven (Terran need a good hour left alone for this to happen ). However vs bio my play was getting little practice and I was struggling, even when I'm on form I feel bio vs muta-ling is a very evenly matched mechanical contest. So as I began to drift to sleep I started fantasising about finding a way to force a match vs bio to the point where I have Hosts, infestors and vipers. Oh how awesome it would feel, if a bit dirty
I quickly forgot about these idle thoughts and didn't think about it again until a week or so later when I was streaming a game vs some nonstop helion-banshee aggression. Assuming my opponent was going mech and being too lazy to double-check it, I went straight for double upgraded roach-hydra and teched for my hive + enduring locusts. I was shocked to see bio walking across the map, and began to laugh at how badly I'd misread the game. I figured I'd just have to play roach-hydra-SH and see how it goes!
Figuring it out on the fly
My opponent quickly swapped into tanks seeing my composition and began expanding aggressively and trying to find holes in my defence, I had already realised I would need to be airtight against drops though, and had spore-batteries on the exposed flanks of my far bases. 3-4 Hydralisks were on mobile patrol plugging gaps as they spotted drops coming in, and not a drop was able to land.
Often the Terran will try to hit before you get SH, or many SH out. 12:34 is what the fight looks like
I quickly realised that with the fast bio and medivacs boosting around the map there was no way to secure a 5th and began adding static on 4-base. I needed a strong economy to afford the static D and high-tech composition, but with roaches in my composition this left me with little army supply. I needed to use my units perfectly to survive. I quickly realised the key points of making this work were not over-building SH, just enough to wittle down frontal pushes. Most important was adding quick infestors to limit the mobility of the bio, which otherwise can stim right by the slow locusts. I also needed to add spine fortresses on common attack paths so that if the larger terran army splits I can defend multiple locations with my tiny yet elite army of locust-fungal-abduct. As soon as the tanks came anywhere on creep I would abduct them mercilessly. If the marines try to shield I would chain fungal them to death. It was beautiful, horrible, disgusting and imbalanced all at once.
Even when you're down on bases if you don't let drops in you're fine...
Should Terran attack or defend?
One of the key reasons you can tech so high is the way roach-hydra can absolutely crush an aggressive bio player. It forces bio-players to defend, and there's no way for them to confirm if you're going to all-in at 2-2, or just stop at 160 supply and add SH-infestor-Hive. Terran are caught in a really tight place against this. Their best option is still to drop and counter-attack and find the holes in this intricate zerg setup. The zerg needs masterful defensive positioning and control to be airtight. On maps where you can zone out drops relatively easily, I feel it's actually completely broken and I'm not sure what Terran can do to win: Daedalus, Habitation.
Thanks Dayvie
So here I was, figuring out this abusive and powerful way to crush Terran with roach-hydra at its core, and then my boy D-Kim gave Hydras +10% attack speed. Thnx bro :D
I think getting a pack of ravens and going to heavy BC to win slowly with PDD/HSM/Yamato is the way. I don't think bio can hold up vs fungal + free units at all.
On March 11 2014 23:04 Squat wrote: Would it be possible to upload the replays somewhere Pig? My poor colour vision combined with the high brightness makes it rather difficult for me to see what's going on, and I'm actually quite interested in this.
Hi Squat I'm sorry about my weird gamma settings on my stream, I'll upload a replay from today: http://ggtracker.com/matches/4825880 I was a bit slow on adding the SH - you can tell I don't really practice this much, I really enjoy exciting muta-ling ZvT . This is just fun to mix in once in a while and laugh at it's ridiculousness.
On March 11 2014 23:08 Aveng3r wrote: Would you rather fight a maxed Terran army with bcs or no bcs and more Vikings/ravens?
On March 11 2014 23:54 avilo wrote: There is already a counter to this i figured out, which is mass bio, + mass medivac (12+ medivacs) with avilo raven accumulation™ lategame. You end up with a pure bio army and 15+ ravens which can fight against roach+hydra without tanks or mines.
OP is right though - roach/hydra is incredibly strong, and completely underestimated vs Terran at the moment. Hydras especially were already very good pre-patch vs bio (not many knew this) but now are very good vs bio into lategame post-hydra buff.
I will say, this style is not 100% new vs Terran bio because i know of one player that was doing this months ago and apparently still is but not sure if he is 100% active or not. That guy is of course fitzyhere except he does it off of terrible 2 base economy with mass queens and no expansions.
Even so, it's still pretty powerful because tanks are utterly useless vs this style, widow mines even more useless than tanks, so the only good things to spend gas on for the Terran player are medivacs, mass marauders, and ravens.
Bio-raven fails miserably vs well-used fungals. This will only work if the Zerg lets you sit un-touched for way too long.
On March 12 2014 00:15 Tyrhanius wrote: Is it really the swarm host which make you win ?
I see rather than the fungal + cloud is way more decisive vs bio/tank.
Moreover you have to consider this style is not very known, so the terran players who face you are learning to deal with you during the game ^^.
In game three, we can see you're very dependant on viper, because when you have lost one, you decide to sacrify your base and wait for more vipers to engage. In my opinion, a good way the terran can counter you is to make something to kill viper like vikings. Ghost can be a very good option too, as bio will crush your army if you have no energy for fungal and cloud.
And when we're on your view we can see you have very good mecanisms, very good micro and you anticipate drops very well, so i don't think it's really imba in sense you have easy win. From what i've seen, it rather a different way too play vs bio which interesting too, and i rather compliment you to play this over than Muta/baneling/zergling. Muta/baneling vs bio is interesting, but more variety is better.
So in my opinion it's not really imba : vikings/ghost, mass drop can counter this.
You're right viper-infestor is absolutely vital. At the top-level this was used heavily in early WoL but your army supply is too small to fight unless you can get really good spells off and you slowly lose all creep-spread and multi-prong + drops + the sheer size of the terran army would overwhelm your small, supply-inefficient roach-hydra-infestor-viper army.
The reason I make out like this is a new thing is I've taken an old style and found a way to transition into some SH to push back those slow, spread out frontal pushes and contest Terran in the lategame.
The reason I think it's imba is it's a strategy the zerg can do every game that can work against everything (on certain maps).
On March 12 2014 02:18 ymir233 wrote: I think the line about the infestors being able to trap the bio from moving quickly past the locusts (or even worse, ONTO the locusts at a bad time) should be put in bold. The thought of trapping the mobile army with a small number of infestors (akin to Life's early 3base-2base infestor/spine/ling counters to Parting's immortal all-in) and then the rest is just cost-efficiency is really the key here (as simple/"obvious" as the thought may have been).
I agree, good fungals controlling the map and threatening/punishing Terran movement is integral
On March 12 2014 03:33 loft wrote: Thanks for sharing your games. Nice infestor / viper control ~~
In the end Terran rules the sky... I think.
Looks like close games even when the Terran isn't responding the best way possible to your build. (As you say, SelecT doesn't do what you would suggest)
Select not doing what I would suggest actually allows him to gain a greedy 3rd base and a good advantage. Keep in mind I've barely practiced this and could have executed much better with practice.
On March 12 2014 03:55 chairmobile wrote: Well obviously once you get sh out against bio, they have to go tank because fighting sh without aoe is like trying to arm wrestle the pacific ocean. But if you don't stay on line/bane for a while, the first push at 9:30 or so straight up kills you, no? And if you make blings and commit to ling/bane speed (which you absolutely need against any aggressive bio player, aka any good bio player) how will you have the gas to go SH? Drops and stuff will rape you in the meantime unless you commit to a lot of static D at which point the terran can just out expand you and start making that BC/raven mix. I understand how the composition is ridiculously good against bio once it's out. I don't understand how the hell you get/transition to the composition without dying or getting behind economically.
If you watch the vods you see that I am doing it how Soulkey used to in season 1 2013 WCS KR is very solid and doesn't die to ling-bane. You're 3rd is saturated much later but you force lots of bunkers and deny their 3rd base for a long time. I might not have done this in the game vs Select but if you see my response above to Squat I linked a replay of me doing the opener a lot more textbook
Bio could just do with a buff. Mech every game is killing my interest in the matchup a lot and I really don't agree with your statement about bio vs muta bane. Most of the times bio seems to win lately is either the Terran was a lot better or pulled something wonky/risky. Just doesn't really seem to be much to replace the hole the old mine left.
Would be nice to see some plays where the terran just techs out of bio into mech and air as quickly as possible while doing no more than containing you to 4 bases. Both those vods have pretty key fights where the terran pushes into this setup which is suicidal for any race, but the compositions a lot weaker at putting pressure back on your opponent to stop them going into lategame ahead of you. Though I'm still never going to use this just based on the enjoyment of the game factor.
On March 11 2014 20:08 Iksf wrote: Bio could just do with a buff. Mech every game is killing my interest in the matchup a lot and I really don't agree with your statement about bio vs muta bane. Most of the times bio seems to win lately is either the Terran was a lot better or pulled something wonky/risky. Just doesn't really seem to be much to replace the hole the old mine left.
Would be nice to see some plays where the terran just techs out of bio into mech and air as quickly as possible while doing no more than containing you to 4 bases. Both those vods have pretty key fights where the terran pushes into this setup which is suicidal for any race, but the compositions a lot weaker at putting pressure back on your opponent to stop them going into lategame ahead of you. Though I'm still never going to use this just based on the enjoyment of the game factor.
Unfortunately I haven't actually mass-gamed this style as I still enjoy muta-lingbane a lot, and could only find a few vods of me playing it. However the idea is that your swarm-hosts are constantly applying pressure, albeit in small amounts. It becomes a battle of creep-spread pushing forward and infestor/hydra covering your forward movements to apply pressure whenever you're opponent is being defensive. You try to force them into aggressive mode and if they commit a lot then you fall back to easier positions to defend.
Even with all this you're right the Terran can often secure a faster 5th base if they realise what's up, and make quite a smooth transition to air, the issue is that Terran production takes so long to get out a decent raven/BC count and for them to build energy. As they trade off bio supply, or stop going hyper-aggressive the zerg very quickly starts attacking, and the bio, or bio-tank army gets picked away at very quickly by abduct + locusts + fungal. I'd be curious to see how it goes in super refined games. I do feel there would be much Terran rage.
You made Select balance whine out of a game with Swarm Hosts. Either Select should retire or you could quite possibly have broken TvZ with a unit previously thought only viable against Mech players.
Would it be possible to upload the replays somewhere Pig? My poor colour vision combined with the high brightness makes it rather difficult for me to see what's going on, and I'm actually quite interested in this.
Just watched that game vs Select, my god I had no idea zerg could perform so well against mmm in the mid game with roach hydra. But the infestors and swarm hosts behind the locusts appear to be what was giving select the biggest troubles. And it feels like us terrans have been refusing to identify the ghost as a unit in this matchup. I feel like this needs to be explored. Nukes from flanks could work occasionally, but emps and snipes(?) against the infestors and vipers need to be tried. Infestors are 2 shotted by snipes and I think you need 3 for vipers.
There is already a counter to this i figured out, which is mass bio, + mass medivac (12+ medivacs) with avilo raven accumulation™ lategame. You end up with a pure bio army and 15+ ravens which can fight against roach+hydra without tanks or mines.
OP is right though - roach/hydra is incredibly strong, and completely underestimated vs Terran at the moment. Hydras especially were already very good pre-patch vs bio (not many knew this) but now are very good vs bio into lategame post-hydra buff.
I will say, this style is not 100% new vs Terran bio because i know of one player that was doing this months ago and apparently still is but not sure if he is 100% active or not. That guy is of course fitzyhere except he does it off of terrible 2 base economy with mass queens and no expansions.
Even so, it's still pretty powerful because tanks are utterly useless vs this style, widow mines even more useless than tanks, so the only good things to spend gas on for the Terran player are medivacs, mass marauders, and ravens.
I see rather than the fungal + cloud is way more decisive vs bio/tank.
Moreover you have to consider this style is not very known, so the terran players who face you are learning to deal with you during the game ^^.
In game three, we can see you're very dependant on viper, because when you have lost one, you decide to sacrify your base and wait for more vipers to engage. In my opinion, a good way the terran can counter you is to make something to kill viper like vikings. Ghost can be a very good option too, as bio will crush your army if you have no energy for fungal and cloud.
And when we're on your view we can see you have very good mecanisms, very good micro and you anticipate drops very well, so i don't think it's really imba in sense you have easy win. From what i've seen, it rather a different way too play vs bio which interesting too, and i rather compliment you to play this over than Muta/baneling/zergling. Muta/baneling vs bio is interesting, but more variety is better.
So in my opinion it's not really imba : vikings/ghost, mass drop can counter this.
Cool games, I remember seeing Stephano beat Happy's bio with SH once, but Happy was really sloppy throughout. Feel like you are requiring your opponent to make a lot of mistakes, can't see this being viable versus high level bio players. Though fungal/blinding cloud is pretty good
I think the line about the infestors being able to trap the bio from moving quickly past the locusts (or even worse, ONTO the locusts at a bad time) should be put in bold. The thought of trapping the mobile army with a small number of infestors (akin to Life's early 3base-2base infestor/spine/ling counters to Parting's immortal all-in) and then the rest is just cost-efficiency is really the key here (as simple/"obvious" as the thought may have been).
Vipers are basically why you can't be aggressive with bio/tank armies. Blinding cloud makes tanks completly useless and when your strongest units are unable to contribute anything to the fight, that's not a good thing. When they come out you lose all aggressive potential and must either lose slowly or sigh and commence raven turtling (with some vikings to prevent abducts, of course). That's why dayshi loses his game, he missed his window. If he'd attacked as soon as 2/2 finished he'd have the best chance of getting somewhere.
Prepatch my counter to roach hydra was to try and soak up the first few attacks with bunkers and micro and then add a ton of tech lab rax for many marauders. Mass marauder medivac (with marines of course, since I've already made 4 reactors and I'll be buggered if I'm lifting those off) beats most zerg ground compositions and unlike using tanks I could still attack once vipers are out (vipers still fuck with a good concave, they'er not nothing but at least I can play around it unlike with Siege tanks). It often wouldn't win by much but it worked pretty alright and I was happy with that. With the hydra buff, I'm not so sure I can do that anymore and might have to make tanks.
I do not like making tanks vs Zerg. Or protoss. Blizzard put in a lot of ways to make a terran look really fucking stupid for attacking with siege tanks (thanks guys!)
Thanks for sharing your games. Nice infestor / viper control ~~
In the end Terran rules the sky... I think.
Looks like close games even when the Terran isn't responding the best way possible to your build. (As you say, SelecT doesn't do what you would suggest)
Well obviously once you get sh out against bio, they have to go tank because fighting sh without aoe is like trying to arm wrestle the pacific ocean. But if you don't stay on line/bane for a while, the first push at 9:30 or so straight up kills you, no? And if you make blings and commit to ling/bane speed (which you absolutely need against any aggressive bio player, aka any good bio player) how will you have the gas to go SH? Drops and stuff will rape you in the meantime unless you commit to a lot of static D at which point the terran can just out expand you and start making that BC/raven mix. I understand how the composition is ridiculously good against bio once it's out. I don't understand how the hell you get/transition to the composition without dying or getting behind economically.
When swarm host catch me off-guard its incredibly difficult. Especially if I'm going two reaper+hellion to kill the zergs third base. A lot of times I don't get to scout in the main for fear of losing hellions and unable to take a 3rd of my own, I should probably figure out a way to remedy that...
On March 11 2014 23:29 TBone- wrote: Just watched that game vs Select, my god I had no idea zerg could perform so well against mmm in the mid game with roach hydra. But the infestors and swarm hosts behind the locusts appear to be what was giving select the biggest troubles. And it feels like us terrans have been refusing to identify the ghost as a unit in this matchup. I feel like this needs to be explored. Nukes from flanks could work occasionally, but emps and snipes(?) against the infestors and vipers need to be tried. Infestors are 2 shotted by snipes and I think you need 3 for vipers.
It takes 4 snipes to kill a viper and you have to hit the PERFECT emp to emp a viper without getting abducted (assuming they have vision of you). Ghosts are okay vs infestors but they are trash at dealing with vipers
I'm not sure that it's Swarmhosts being too strong here so much as it is that Vipers shut down tanks so damn hard. The combination of blinding cloud and abduct just means that terrans have no good aoe options left to deal with the loctus.
On March 11 2014 21:42 TaShadan wrote: More free units for every faction will be awesome! DK DO IT!
What? Are you crazy?! Or just bad with design? Clearly, Zerg needs more free units. We've started with Hive tech free units, and now we have Lair tech free units. CLEARLY, the next correct step is to give Zerg free units at hatch tech.
At the same time, we will also give Terran more cost efficient bullshit that will be nerfed (or removed) within a few months of release, after the unit has been figured out to the point where players can easily defend against them.
And we will also give Protoss more weird and broke air units that deny the viability of the most economic openers, shut down the idea of going into certain late game tech paths, and give frustratingly powerful mid-game attacks.
Oh, and we gotta give Mutas more random and totally unnecessary buffs to promote their use over a unit that was blatantly overpowered in the previous version of the game but got nerfed, just to promote the use of Mutas. This time, I'm thinking we'll make them faster than Stimmed Speedlings on creep, +2 range, and +40 health. Mutas are expensive, and they're not making a big impact in the game, so this seems to be a good chance while I'm wearing my Blizzard Design Team glasses.
Oh, Ravens aren't coming out quickly enough, so we're buffing their movespeed and cutting the gas cost by 50. But they no longer have HSM, because otherwise they'd be broken.
Contrary to popular belief, Tanks are too supply efficient, so we're raising the supply cost to 4 (sucks for you Flash), but we're decreasing the time required to siege to 2 seconds to compensate.
Thors are in a good place against air now, except when trying to chase them, so we're giving them a ground version of Ignite Afterburners that allows it to both fly and move much faster. Hopefully, this also promotes proxy Thors in tournament play, cause they're not used enough.
And if you thought Stalkers were trash before, we agree, so we gave Immortals the ability to shoot up AND Blink. Blink will be unlocked by researching it at the Twilight Council (the exact same one that was used for Stalkers, so now you can do Stalker+Immortal Blink timings!). We also thought that, like Siege Mode, Zealot Charge should come prepackaged into the Zealot unit, so we're removing charge and having it available from the start. The same with Warp Gate. I mean, why waste the 50 minerals and gas. The cost is so low, and we all know you're going to get it eventually, and proxy 2 Gate was just too committed of an attack that if you lost the Pylon, you lost the 2 Gates, so we're making Warp Gates available from the start. Oh, and Void Rays are too strong, so we're nerfing their speed to 2, and their range to 5.
And we're still not touching the Corruptor, because we think it's a fantastic, fun, interesting, and well-designed unit.
You heard it here first guys! All the critical changes that will be made in the LotV expansion!
On a serious note, Mutas are annoying as fuck to deal with. Now Swarmhosts are viable against Bio too? Come the fuck on.
Well, hopefully, in LotV they'll remove the concept of free units and do a bunch of neat things that lead to good gameplay, and over the course of 3-4 years after its release, the game will be balanced with tons of cool and viable strategy (or at least 3 per race per matchup; hell even 2 is nice). But I won't hold my breath, and I'll just keep playing, praying, raging, and crying.
On March 11 2014 21:42 TaShadan wrote: More free units for every faction will be awesome! DK DO IT!
What? Are you crazy?! Or just bad with design? Clearly, Zerg needs more free units. We've started with Hive tech free units, and now we have Lair tech free units. CLEARLY, the next correct step is to give Zerg free units at hatch tech.
At the same time, we will also give Terran more cost efficient bullshit that will be nerfed (or removed) within a few months of release, after the unit has been figured out to the point where players can easily defend against them.
And we will also give Protoss more weird and broke air units that deny the viability of the most economic openers, shut down the idea of going into certain late game tech paths, and give frustratingly powerful mid-game attacks.
Oh, and we gotta give Mutas more random and totally unnecessary buffs to promote their use over a unit that was blatantly overpowered in the previous version of the game but got nerfed, just to promote the use of Mutas. This time, I'm thinking we'll make them faster than Stimmed Speedlings on creep, +2 range, and +40 health. Mutas are expensive, and they're not making a big impact in the game, so this seems to be a good chance while I'm wearing my Blizzard Design Team glasses.
Oh, Ravens aren't coming out quickly enough, so we're buffing their movespeed and cutting the gas cost by 50. But they no longer have HSM, because otherwise they'd be broken.
Contrary to popular belief, Tanks are too supply efficient, so we're raising the supply cost to 4 (sucks for you Flash), but we're decreasing the time required to siege to 2 seconds to compensate.
Thors are in a good place against air now, except when trying to chase them, so we're giving them a ground version of Ignite Afterburners that allows it to both fly and move much faster. Hopefully, this also promotes proxy Thors in tournament play, cause they're not used enough.
And if you thought Stalkers were trash before, we agree, so we gave Immortals the ability to shoot up AND Blink. Blink will be unlocked by researching it at the Twilight Council (the exact same one that was used for Stalkers, so now you can do Stalker+Immortal Blink timings!). We also thought that, like Siege Mode, Zealot Charge should come prepackaged into the Zealot unit, so we're removing charge and having it available from the start. The same with Warp Gate. I mean, why waste the 50 minerals and gas. The cost is so low, and we all know you're going to get it eventually, and proxy 2 Gate was just too committed of an attack that if you lost the Pylon, you lost the 2 Gates, so we're making Warp Gates available from the start. Oh, and Void Rays are too strong, so we're nerfing their speed to 2, and their range to 5.
And we're still not touching the Corruptor, because we think it's a fantastic, fun, interesting, and well-designed unit.
You heard it here first guys! All the critical changes that will be made in the LotV expansion!
On a serious note, Mutas are annoying as fuck to deal with. Now Swarmhosts are viable against Bio too? Come the fuck on.
Well, hopefully, in LotV they'll remove the concept of free units and do a bunch of neat things that lead to good gameplay, and over the course of 3-4 years after its release, the game will be balanced with tons of cool and viable strategy (or at least 3 per race per matchup; hell even 2 is nice). But I won't hold my breath, and I'll just keep playing, praying, raging, and crying.
More styles being viable is a good thing. Rest of what you wrote hurt my head, not going to comment, just going to lay in a corner and try to recuperate.
Haha! That'll do PiG, that'll do. I love that you find this and decide to share it with all of us instead of being selfish and keeping it a secret for as long as you can. Next Stop Premiere!
Holy wow those games were sick. Viper pulls and fungals and positioning. Very different than watching a muta/ling/ bane game. I thought you were dead when the third base went down.
Now if my army control was half that good i would try that style!
I remember playing a random high masters ladder match against roach hydra into swarm host quite a few months ago, defended vs the roach hydra push with tanks and bunkers and thought I was in an extremely favorable position, only to get whittled down by the swarm host followup and solid drop defense. Completely boggled my mind how powerful it was. Now that a progamer has his hands on it, hope you can make it work in some broadcasted matches!
Since the patch, roach hydra is definetly better at surviving the mid game vs bio terran.
Tbh, i think overall terran bio is too weak, even vs zerg right now. ( and im zerg, and before widowmine nerfed i cried imba at bio mine alot). Even a super strong ling bane muta completly crush any form of bio if both players play around the same quality of game ( no1 plays perfect).
It seems to be a problem of synergy between marines, marauders, and siege tanks. The problem is: Fights including Marines and marauders vs their counter responses are usually way too fast for siege tanks to get enough shots in. In bw, fights were slower so siege tanks got more shots off, and also did alot more dmg.
It seems to me like if you get enough siege tanks to be worthwhile; and also have enough medivac to heal stimmed marines and marauders, your army gets really really small...
Cant reduce siege tanks supply cost for the obvious mech turtle tvz and tvt, but maybe...
Medivacs 1 supply??? It would help tvp and tvz bio.. and would def not break the game i dont think.... Maybe the first 3-3 vs 2-2 of zerg high supply battle would be too strong.. but then maybe if you make medivac 1 supply, you make 3-3 available after infestation pit, not hive.
A unit that cant attack or dmg anything or has any usable cast ability probably shouldnt be 2 supply? If too strong at 1 supply tweak them so they are not.
I think getting a pack of ravens and going to heavy BC to win slowly with PDD/HSM/Yamato is the way. I don't think bio can hold up vs fungal + free units at all.
On March 11 2014 23:04 Squat wrote: Would it be possible to upload the replays somewhere Pig? My poor colour vision combined with the high brightness makes it rather difficult for me to see what's going on, and I'm actually quite interested in this.
Hi Squat I'm sorry about my weird gamma settings on my stream, I'll upload a replay from today: http://ggtracker.com/matches/4825880 I was a bit slow on adding the SH - you can tell I don't really practice this much, I really enjoy exciting muta-ling ZvT . This is just fun to mix in once in a while and laugh at it's ridiculousness.
On March 11 2014 23:08 Aveng3r wrote: Would you rather fight a maxed Terran army with bcs or no bcs and more Vikings/ravens?
On March 11 2014 23:54 avilo wrote: There is already a counter to this i figured out, which is mass bio, + mass medivac (12+ medivacs) with avilo raven accumulation™ lategame. You end up with a pure bio army and 15+ ravens which can fight against roach+hydra without tanks or mines.
OP is right though - roach/hydra is incredibly strong, and completely underestimated vs Terran at the moment. Hydras especially were already very good pre-patch vs bio (not many knew this) but now are very good vs bio into lategame post-hydra buff.
I will say, this style is not 100% new vs Terran bio because i know of one player that was doing this months ago and apparently still is but not sure if he is 100% active or not. That guy is of course fitzyhere except he does it off of terrible 2 base economy with mass queens and no expansions.
Even so, it's still pretty powerful because tanks are utterly useless vs this style, widow mines even more useless than tanks, so the only good things to spend gas on for the Terran player are medivacs, mass marauders, and ravens.
Bio-raven fails miserably vs well-used fungals. This will only work if the Zerg lets you sit un-touched for way too long.
On March 12 2014 00:15 Tyrhanius wrote: Is it really the swarm host which make you win ?
I see rather than the fungal + cloud is way more decisive vs bio/tank.
Moreover you have to consider this style is not very known, so the terran players who face you are learning to deal with you during the game ^^.
In game three, we can see you're very dependant on viper, because when you have lost one, you decide to sacrify your base and wait for more vipers to engage. In my opinion, a good way the terran can counter you is to make something to kill viper like vikings. Ghost can be a very good option too, as bio will crush your army if you have no energy for fungal and cloud.
And when we're on your view we can see you have very good mecanisms, very good micro and you anticipate drops very well, so i don't think it's really imba in sense you have easy win. From what i've seen, it rather a different way too play vs bio which interesting too, and i rather compliment you to play this over than Muta/baneling/zergling. Muta/baneling vs bio is interesting, but more variety is better.
So in my opinion it's not really imba : vikings/ghost, mass drop can counter this.
You're right viper-infestor is absolutely vital. At the top-level this was used heavily in early WoL but your army supply is too small to fight unless you can get really good spells off and you slowly lose all creep-spread and multi-prong + drops + the sheer size of the terran army would overwhelm your small, supply-inefficient roach-hydra-infestor-viper army.
The reason I make out like this is a new thing is I've taken an old style and found a way to transition into some SH to push back those slow, spread out frontal pushes and contest Terran in the lategame.
The reason I think it's imba is it's a strategy the zerg can do every game that can work against everything (on certain maps).
On March 12 2014 02:18 ymir233 wrote: I think the line about the infestors being able to trap the bio from moving quickly past the locusts (or even worse, ONTO the locusts at a bad time) should be put in bold. The thought of trapping the mobile army with a small number of infestors (akin to Life's early 3base-2base infestor/spine/ling counters to Parting's immortal all-in) and then the rest is just cost-efficiency is really the key here (as simple/"obvious" as the thought may have been).
I agree, good fungals controlling the map and threatening/punishing Terran movement is integral
On March 12 2014 03:33 loft wrote: Thanks for sharing your games. Nice infestor / viper control ~~
In the end Terran rules the sky... I think.
Looks like close games even when the Terran isn't responding the best way possible to your build. (As you say, SelecT doesn't do what you would suggest)
Select not doing what I would suggest actually allows him to gain a greedy 3rd base and a good advantage. Keep in mind I've barely practiced this and could have executed much better with practice.
On March 12 2014 03:55 chairmobile wrote: Well obviously once you get sh out against bio, they have to go tank because fighting sh without aoe is like trying to arm wrestle the pacific ocean. But if you don't stay on line/bane for a while, the first push at 9:30 or so straight up kills you, no? And if you make blings and commit to ling/bane speed (which you absolutely need against any aggressive bio player, aka any good bio player) how will you have the gas to go SH? Drops and stuff will rape you in the meantime unless you commit to a lot of static D at which point the terran can just out expand you and start making that BC/raven mix. I understand how the composition is ridiculously good against bio once it's out. I don't understand how the hell you get/transition to the composition without dying or getting behind economically.
If you watch the vods you see that I am doing it how Soulkey used to in season 1 2013 WCS KR is very solid and doesn't die to ling-bane. You're 3rd is saturated much later but you force lots of bunkers and deny their 3rd base for a long time. I might not have done this in the game vs Select but if you see my response above to Squat I linked a replay of me doing the opener a lot more textbook
On March 12 2014 11:13 Snake.69 wrote: Since the patch, roach hydra is definetly better at surviving the mid game vs bio terran.
Tbh, i think overall terran bio is too weak, even vs zerg right now. ( and im zerg, and before widowmine nerfed i cried imba at bio mine alot). Even a super strong ling bane muta completly crush any form of bio if both players play around the same quality of game ( no1 plays perfect).
It seems to be a problem of synergy between marines, marauders, and siege tanks. The problem is: Fights including Marines and marauders vs their counter responses are usually way too fast for siege tanks to get enough shots in. In bw, fights were slower so siege tanks got more shots off, and also did alot more dmg.
It seems to me like if you get enough siege tanks to be worthwhile; and also have enough medivac to heal stimmed marines and marauders, your army gets really really small...
Cant reduce siege tanks supply cost for the obvious mech turtle tvz and tvt, but maybe...
Medivacs 1 supply??? It would help tvp and tvz bio.. and would def not break the game i dont think.... Maybe the first 3-3 vs 2-2 of zerg high supply battle would be too strong.. but then maybe if you make medivac 1 supply, you make 3-3 available after infestation pit, not hive.
A unit that cant attack or dmg anything or has any usable cast ability probably shouldnt be 2 supply? If too strong at 1 supply tweak them so they are not.
O_O As a zerg player my opinion on medivacs is that they are terrans strongest unit.
My main reason to get mutas is to kill the medivacs because they are generally the core of the terran army.
Medivacs 2 supply is the most well spent supply in the game in my opinion, of course besides MSC and queens =P
It doesn't really matter is its a "castable" ability or not medivacs are still extremely much paying for themselves, if thats your arguement I propose we make healing a castable ability of the medivac instead. xD Imagine the micro
lol bc with yamato as counter...as if theres enough resource for that when u have to deal with locusts that slowly eat away units and buildings. and the massive bank zerg have means they can just replace any lost unit almost instantly.
i dont think pig knows how difficult it is for terran to deal with that kind of swarmhost/infestor/viper/corruptor composition, its essentially the hots version of broodlord infestor with vipers. the vipers/infestors are the key in this composition that allows u to snatch tanks/vikings/raven as easy free kills with bio gets raped by fungal. trading energy and free units (zerg) for resource (terran), terran have to do something or they will flat out die. ghosts? lol 200/100 going to waste if the zerg have just an ounce of micro and awareness before the snipe/emp land. plus u need 4snipe for vipers
even if they killed some vipers/infestors they are not going to get past the wall of locusts anytime soon while the gas bank is tapped into for replenishments. zerg have to make a very big blunder to lose this.
imo the best way is to hit a 2/2 timing with bio/tank after holding against the roach/hydra timing and just when zerg is trying to get swarmhost. ala soul train. when zerg get their setup going, good luck to that terran.
personally i would like this zvt style more used in gsl/premier tourneys and let the whining intensifies hue.
Man I've felt for a while that SH were viable against Terran bio players. What do you think about just going ling/bling/SH? You can use the ling/bling for mobile drop defense (I mean come on, lings have like 6.1 speed) and use the SH to blunt bio pushes/set off mines to allow banes to be more cost efficient. Then of course you can still tech to vipers to help deal with the growing tank count.
On March 12 2014 19:45 Probemicro wrote: lol bc with yamato as counter...as if theres enough resource for that when u have to deal with locusts that slowly eat away units and buildings. and the massive bank zerg have means they can just replace any lost unit almost instantly.
i dont think pig knows how difficult it is for terran to deal with that kind of swarmhost/infestor/viper/corruptor composition, its essentially the hots version of broodlord infestor with vipers. the vipers/infestors are the key in this composition that allows u to snatch tanks/vikings/raven as easy free kills with bio gets raped by fungal. trading energy and free units (zerg) for resource (terran), terran have to do something or they will flat out die. ghosts? lol 200/100 going to waste if the zerg have just an ounce of micro and awareness before the snipe/emp land. plus u need 4snipe for vipers
even if they killed some vipers/infestors they are not going to get past the wall of locusts anytime soon while the gas bank is tapped into for replenishments. zerg have to make a very big blunder to lose this.
imo the best way is to hit a 2/2 timing with bio/tank after holding against the roach/hydra timing and just when zerg is trying to get swarmhost. ala soul train. when zerg get their setup going, good luck to that terran.
personally i would like this zvt style more used in gsl/premier tourneys and let the whining intensifies hue.
Oh I realise how hard it is to get BC-Raven, I think the zerg has royally fucked up if they let it happen. I was responding to a question re: composition. But I agree with you that killing/limiting/damaging the zerg earlier on is a better plan. However the 2-2 bio-tank timing people have spoken of, really does revolve around the zerg doing a failed 2-2 roach-hydra timing first. Otherwise I do believe there is no timing before viper-festor is out. Of course if Terran can find a safe way to secure a fast 3rd vs the initial 1-1 roach pressure than they might be able to make it happen with that early econ boost.
On March 13 2014 00:49 Survivor61316 wrote: Man I've felt for a while that SH were viable against Terran bio players. What do you think about just going ling/bling/SH? You can use the ling/bling for mobile drop defense (I mean come on, lings have like 6.1 speed) and use the SH to blunt bio pushes/set off mines to allow banes to be more cost efficient. Then of course you can still tech to vipers to help deal with the growing tank count.
Catz mentioned to me he did this style into ultras, using a few SH spread around his bases actually as drop-defence as well as supporting the frontal army. +a squad of queens reacting to drops. Sounded really cool and definitely viable.
Is there nothing you can't do PiG. Show up at SCS events, crush Terrans, speak French. I'm jelly. Poor Dayshi, he went from having a capable army to nothing in the space of 3 spells.
PIG! first of all: I love you and you need to stream more.
2nd: I have been watching alot of hyun recently (him doing roach hydra 1 1 timings into 2 2 timings) However. I played him the other day on eu (zvz) and he went for speed roach +1 style(one evo) His push with one evo about 45 seconds faster then 2 evo push. and because of the faster push, he was able to fully saturated his third base a bit faster.
Does the +1 style work vs terran? I have tried it a few times on ladder and it seems effective, But I am not playing kids as good as you?
>.<... I was just looking around on TL... and bumped to this thread...
I played 4 games on a row yesterday against the build you have described... (master EU)
Its like a ticking clock for the terran... My solution is build a PF + SCV repair for the SH... poke with banshees/Nukes against the SH and lure the zerg-army...
and drop at 4 bases (each 2 meds with marines) at the same time. keep repeating this... Its a multitasking battle...
the result was... a big army of the zerg... with no tech and a few drones with hatcheries... against a crippled terran with marines & meds...
then I build like a 10 pfs to capture every expo and strategical points on the map... and slowly chips the zerg army away...
The best way to deal with this deadly strategy is guerrilla warfare... This is similar to the Protoss DeathBall...
In a straight up fight against SH+Hydra+Viper, you will lose as terran.... (unless you have a billions bcs and ravens...). Minerals dump army vs a gas heavy army... A ticking bomb...
i wanted to note you caused a diamond zerg on NA to go SH on yeonsu, die to my 3 base 2/2 timing while trying to be aggressive, then claim i was lucky since "this build is unbeatable", messaging me walls of text afterward. no infestors, no vipers, no hive. didn't even have 2/2 done. he directed me to this post. the post was much better than what he did. LOL.
i was wondering why no one has suggested pure bio with lots of medivacs AND GHOSTS. if you snipe/emp infestors and vipers dont you at least stand a chance?
On March 14 2014 02:33 IMBACoaching wrote: You motivated me to try this strat! Are you going to post a replay pack anytime soon? I would love to see your builds vs Terran.
In the near future I'm organising getting subscriber-access for my stream, at which point I'll be releasing a monthly replay pack, but that's still a little while away for the moment sorry!
On March 14 2014 03:27 BuiBui wrote: PIG! first of all: I love you and you need to stream more.
2nd: I have been watching alot of hyun recently (him doing roach hydra 1 1 timings into 2 2 timings) However. I played him the other day on eu (zvz) and he went for speed roach +1 style(one evo) His push with one evo about 45 seconds faster then 2 evo push. and because of the faster push, he was able to fully saturated his third base a bit faster.
Does the +1 style work vs terran? I have tried it a few times on ladder and it seems effective, But I am not playing kids as good as you?
Thanks! I'm trying to stream All weekdays, or Sunday-thursday evenings in the US. Unfortunately this week my net has screwed up really limiting my ability to hit my schedule . I'll be back at it ASAP!
Doing a +1 roach pressure is great in roach wars as attack is a much more important upgrade, I really like that style, similar to the "snute build" (see game 1 of snute vs hyun in seatstorycup finals). However in ZvT I feel that whilst it's completely legitimate, I prefer the 1-1. The carapace has a huge impact on the damage of marines, scvs and helions AND it goes into the 2-2 roach-hydra really nicely. But either could work
On March 14 2014 06:23 ILOVEWAR wrote: >.<... I was just looking around on TL... and bumped to this thread...
I played 4 games on a row yesterday against the build you have described... (master EU)
Its like a ticking clock for the terran... My solution is build a PF + SCV repair for the SH... poke with banshees/Nukes against the SH and lure the zerg-army...
and drop at 4 bases (each 2 meds with marines) at the same time. keep repeating this... Its a multitasking battle...
the result was... a big army of the zerg... with no tech and a few drones with hatcheries... against a crippled terran with marines & meds...
then I build like a 10 pfs to capture every expo and strategical points on the map... and slowly chips the zerg army away...
The best way to deal with this deadly strategy is guerrilla warfare... This is similar to the Protoss DeathBall...
In a straight up fight against SH+Hydra+Viper, you will lose as terran.... (unless you have a billions bcs and ravens...). Minerals dump army vs a gas heavy army... A ticking bomb...
Yeah I agree, it's a huge multitasking battle and on the zerg side it all comes down to their ability to split up and defend + shut down those drops + multiprong. Good fungal + abducts to stop drops escaping is key! Sounds like you played a sick game though and managed to crack it, grats!
On March 14 2014 06:36 nath wrote: i wanted to note you caused a diamond zerg on NA to go SH on yeonsu, die to my 3 base 2/2 timing while trying to be aggressive, then claim i was lucky since "this build is unbeatable", messaging me walls of text afterward. no infestors, no vipers, no hive. didn't even have 2/2 done. he directed me to this post. the post was much better than what he did. LOL.
i was wondering why no one has suggested pure bio with lots of medivacs AND GHOSTS. if you snipe/emp infestors and vipers dont you at least stand a chance?
Haha! That's hilarious! Glad to see I've inspired some people, even if the crazy ones .
I think ghosts if they can land the EMPS/snipes on the infestors/vipers could be devastating, but getting past the locusts and individually micro'd defensive fungals is very hard, as fungal with it's AOE has a very fast cast-range. I'd love to see how the micro-battle plays out though!
One of the key reasons you can tech so high is the way roach-hydra can absolutely crush an aggressive bio player. It forces bio-players to defend, and there's no way for them to confirm if you're going to all-in at 2-2, or just stop at 160 supply and add SH-infestor-Hive.
I have a dumb question, what if the Terran just scans for Hive?
One of the key reasons you can tech so high is the way roach-hydra can absolutely crush an aggressive bio player. It forces bio-players to defend, and there's no way for them to confirm if you're going to all-in at 2-2, or just stop at 160 supply and add SH-infestor-Hive.
I have a dumb question, what if the Terran just scans for Hive?
You get TWO LAIRS, NINA. MIND GAMEZ
EDIT: Sorry, that was super low content. I imagine in a situation like that, the Terran might be able to scan but it's a little too late to react properly since they probably already invested a lot of resources into defense.
On March 11 2014 23:54 avilo wrote: There is already a counter to this i figured out, which is mass bio, + mass medivac (12+ medivacs) with avilo raven accumulation™ lategame. You end up with a pure bio army and 15+ ravens which can fight against roach+hydra without tanks or mines.
OP is right though - roach/hydra is incredibly strong, and completely underestimated vs Terran at the moment. Hydras especially were already very good pre-patch vs bio (not many knew this) but now are very good vs bio into lategame post-hydra buff.
I will say, this style is not 100% new vs Terran bio because i know of one player that was doing this months ago and apparently still is but not sure if he is 100% active or not. That guy is of course fitzyhere except he does it off of terrible 2 base economy with mass queens and no expansions.
Even so, it's still pretty powerful because tanks are utterly useless vs this style, widow mines even more useless than tanks, so the only good things to spend gas on for the Terran player are medivacs, mass marauders, and ravens.
Bio-raven fails miserably vs well-used fungals. This will only work if the Zerg lets you sit un-touched for way too long.
And that would be incorrect. Bio+raven is the counter (one of many), and it's a very good one considering you don't need tanks/mines which were useless vs roach hydra viper to begin with.
I can claim the exact same counter argument "roach-hydra fails miserably vs well-used PDD/seeker, your strat will only work if the Terran let's you sit un-touched for way too long."
Which means, my first post is indeed accurate, and is an objectively a very viable counter because it depends upon both players control and macro. Just like seeker depends on the micro, fungal works the same way.
Every strategy has a counter or a good response in SC2, claiming otherwise is foolish.
I get so sick of people calling stuff 'free units'. Nothing is free in sc2 except your starting 6 workers and main base. If you choose to go orbital, it costs you minerals and forfeits the option for a planetary. If you make investors, swarm hosts, broods, you have to pay for those units. They can become highly cost efficient, sure, but never free. Going that composition is highly gas expensive, if you lost all your swarm hosts you wouldn't say 'Oh well it's free I'll just grab some more for nothing'.
On topic, swarm host vs bio is pretty fun. My friend plays unconventionally as Z and I'm pretty unconventional as T as well, so we have had some funky games like this (admittedly only at diamond/low master level). My answer was to mix in ghosts and Vikings to control the viper/infestor issues and then medivac dump on his swarmhosts between rounds of locusts.
On March 16 2014 09:47 gobbledydook wrote: avilo vs pig grudgematch gogo
someone please make this happen!
That game vs Select reminded me of a mech Terran vs Zerg... only Zerg was the "mecher." You don't typically see zerg's dominating the cost efficiency the way this style seems to. Thanks for sharing! I wish the other matchups allowed for as much variety in play styles as TvZ =(
On March 16 2014 09:47 gobbledydook wrote: avilo vs pig grudgematch gogo
someone please make this happen!
That game vs Select reminded me of a mech Terran vs Zerg... only Zerg was the "mecher." You don't typically see zerg's dominating the cost efficiency the way this style seems to. Thanks for sharing! I wish the other matchups allowed for as much variety in play styles as TvZ =(
Unfortunately it would be just as one-sided as Firecake vs Avilo
On March 18 2014 17:21 VArsovskiSC wrote: This to me looks more like:
--> Look - I made SH work well vs bio
rather than
SH crushes bio
Come on.. If there's anything that's not a part of your build are the SHs
If anything - this is - Roach/Hydra/Infestor crushes bio
Only just saw this response, sorry for the slow reply! (PIG accidentally writing on gf account lol)
Well the thing is the SH is the key new piece of the puzzle. We always knew that if bio/tank is forced to YOLO into roach-hydra-infestor-viper then it will get owned, but the issue was the terran could split up more, could patiently just deny creep-spread and just hold good positions, refusing to go into chokes or clump up for fungal/blinding cloud. The constant nibbling of locusts stops all these things from working. They force the bio player to come to you, and that is when the "base" of the composition becomes viable.
Any more videos / vods / replays with Sh against bio? Especially against constantly dropping bio. I suppose there must be tactic, when Zerg forcing terran to defend instead of trying to drop
On June 05 2014 22:27 Existor wrote: Any more videos / vods / replays with Sh against bio? Especially against constantly dropping bio. I suppose there must be tactic, when Zerg forcing terran to defend instead of trying to drop
Not any vods or replays on hand at the moment, but I will say that you have to be comfortable sitting back and focusing on defend-defend-defend vs drop play. If they don't commit but leave these sections of army on the map you can engage them with your infestors and just a few hydras. The real goal is to keep spreading creep and the moment they stop attacking you, to push out and start pressuring with your infestors, abducting medivacs/tanks/thors and continuing to trade super efficiently. During the drop phase the only deterrent to drops is sick defence and the infestor-hydra catching sections of bio on the map. Gl hf!
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yS1ybsT.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IeBvNX8.png)
. I'll be back at it ASAP!
