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LotV Crash Course for a Beta Masters?

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guitarizt United States1492 Posts December 15 2015 00:26 GMT #1 Practically all my knowledge is from beta. I was random masters then, but I feel like I went into a time machine and arrived at LotV. I've been catching up the past couple of weeks. I went from silver to plat, but I feel like my builds and knowledge are starting to hold me back versus the mechanics. Anyone have any advice, or just keep watching and playing games?

vJehoelv United States103 Posts December 15 2015 02:21 GMT #2 Im not sure if this should be in blogs or gen. discussion.

guitarizt United States1492 Posts December 15 2015 03:57 GMT #3 I didn't want to put it in the simple Q&A thread to get one reply and have it buried forever. I did start out posting my strongest match ups and where I'm strong and weak, but I'm like no one wants to read all that. Here's the tl;dr version: I mained zerg after beta so that's my strongest race. ZvX seems easy and ZvZ has stayed pretty much the same I think so that's my strongest matchup. When I play WoL style ZvT and ZvP I win. When I'm way ahead and I stray from that I waste units. I seem to have a hard time getting ultra to work, and I haven't made lurkers that much yet. PvP is by far my worst matchup. I have less than a 40% winrate with PvX and a 70% win rate with ZvX. TvT is a nightmare and my second worst matchup. TvX all I know are bio opens, but I'm running into problems with late game army use, too. I'm just trying to drop and get far enough ahead and usually win with bio. I'm starting to run into problems TvZ once they have a ton of lings out mid game. It's all downhill from there. Bio is working really well TvP though.

pEcul!Ar 52 Posts December 15 2015 11:48 GMT #4 Just focus on unit composition. Lotv is new, a lot of build orders are still to be invented so don't hesitate to improvise. Personally as zerg, the only real build order I keep in mind is the 13 gas 12 pool and fast expand before pool, all the other stuff I'm not too worried about, rather invent my own openings, creating my own versions of the build orders that're already out there etc.. Recognizing a build order is important when you're scouting though (so knowing the current meta and build orders is a must), but imo, be creative, innovative,.. been playing as zerg since bw, tried other races on sc2/ lotv, but zerg is just second nature, and that's another advice I'd give, stick to 1 race. Going random is fine when you're already more than decent with one of the three. Right now you're in a timeframe where not everything has been defined yet, one year from now people are gonna be like oh aye, you have those build orders and the only correct way to do them is THAT way (which imo isn't completely true), so have fun, don't worry.

nanaoei 3358 Posts December 15 2015 12:35 GMT #5 just watch some streams man. you will pick up quite a bit from players like snute or solar even if zvx is the least of your worries right now. definitely the flavor of the month is the bile + infestor combination. by watching the ravager style you can understand the small frames you have to be aggressive. for example, taking a 3rd or fourth on certain maps off an aggressive opening. double evo is usually timed with this so this is a great time to try and get drop damage done with 1-1 with bio. another example in tvp, and as seen in games TY just played against hero in the pre-season of gsl: the oracle and singular adept pressure is common enough. at that point you may have 5 marines off your reactor barracks at your wall. he hikes his adept up to the wall to hit any marines trying to deter it and it makes the 2nd oracle much stronger because the initial pack of marines are dealt with. fast cyclone openings can deal with a number of things quite nicely, it stalls their tech and forces them to take a risky third if their pressure (warp prism, oracle) is rebuffed. you're also kind of dead if you take damage as you can no longer pressure in time. in my opinion, tvt is the same as always. control changes a little due to medi-tanks and it's slightly more aggressive but the only real difference is that your tanks are perpetually sieged and kept in medivacs when moving. the most common style is still bio tank in which the starport is still kept active after your first 6 or so medivacs. they're just producing 2 libs. at the time for 300/300 which is fine at this point because you're on 6 gas with a third. libs are used to eventually break out and force a situation after enough damage has been done. they're basically using the same range as your siege tanks, so i typically plant the zones slightly outside their army range and just within range of your tanks. ideally, they are in range of their tanks as well, so you can target fire. once you know what you can die to i'm sure you can figure out a way to play in the way that you want. against ravager attacks, i'm not sure. i just make tanks and make sure they do not die to bile. others use widow mines which is not very reliable against better players imo.

guitarizt United States1492 Posts December 15 2015 18:42 GMT #6 It's funny I actually watched some of gsl last night for the first time in probably like 4+ years and it was pretty crazy. I was really surprised they were going fast third and roach rav solar vs life, and then drg did some good stuff vs life. I saw the first game of ty vs hero. I picked up a lot from state's stream last night, too. Everything is way way diff now. I started maining zerg again last yesterday just so I could see where I maxed out, and my win rate overall is still 70%. I'll probably bounce back to protoss and terran once I feel like I've plateaued with zerg. It's such a change in mentality going from the old school style of looking out for 2 rax rine and two gate zealot to feeling extremely safe early game. Thanks for the advice it's already helped like 10x more than what I've been reading on the forums. I was trying to copy what I've seen in the guide and help me threads, but for some reason watching the very top level player games is helping way more. I thought it'd hurt me at first since they're in a completely different league, but they're also going to be faster at figuring out the game.

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