I want to record some of my thoughts here since I basically forget and have the same thoughts over and over again. Since improvement is a long term goal, it would be good to use proven memory techniques to learn and recall information that is important to how the game is played.
Broadly, I want to record several different things:
1. Lessons I've learned from practice so I don't have to lose many times to learn them again.
2. Lessons I've learned from watching pros so I don't have to make the same mistakes or wonder how to beat a given build.
3. Some untested strategies that I've been wondering about that nobody ever does. Why not just try them?
An example of a lesson from practice is I never do the big drop strategy when facing a late Terran mech switch so my drops are always weak zergling bombs and that never really stops a meching Terran completely. So I need to either take out a base with a huge drop or the factories. I do prefer the hydra/queen switch vs. mech late in the game, but maybe it's because my drop game sucks.
An example of a lesson I've learned from watching Soulkey is he tried to kill a bunker with one marine in it with just drones and lost too much. If he just went past the bunker with the drones and waited ~15s for lings he would have lost much less, maybe a couple of lings only instead of a couple of drones
An example of an untested strategy is to just put defilers into overlords. For 200 gas you can keep them safe from irradiate. Wonder why nobody has ever tried it defensively and keeps losing defilers. Pays for itself after stopping 2 irradiates.
There's actually been some players who do the overlord drop with defilers to avoid irradiate. As a Terran, it's the most annoying thing in the world. But usually the first few vessels will kill the defilers no matter what, all your gas is being used for upgrades, defilers, and lurkers, so it's hard to justify the 200 gas spend on it for those first few moments when Terran has vessels with irradiate as you scramble to set up and transition into the late game. After that though, I think it's a legitimate play and should be utilized more, and also gives you the option to do doom drops into their main later on.
I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
On June 09 2025 03:19 iopq wrote: I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
On June 09 2025 03:19 iopq wrote: I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
why not 800 like 90%+++ of pros?
Because I want to decrease wrist strain. Many of pros experience wrist pain because they all do the same thing
On June 09 2025 03:19 iopq wrote: I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
Hey IOPQ, would you happen to know what happens when the resolution changes for both a good dpi and also impact on the magic box?
My main monitor is 1440p, should i just force it to 1080p for bw instead? If i keep 1440p, are you aware of some setting changes i d need to do? I m currently using a 1600dpi + 65% scaling. It "feels" somewhat similar to 800 dpi no scaling for some reason (in 1440p)
On June 09 2025 03:19 iopq wrote: I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
Hey IOPQ, would you happen to know what happens when the resolution changes for both a good dpi and also impact on the magic box?
My main monitor is 1440p, should i just force it to 1080p for bw instead? If i keep 1440p, are you aware of some setting changes i d need to do? I m currently using a 1600dpi + 65% scaling. It "feels" somewhat similar to 800 dpi no scaling for some reason (in 1440p)
but what do you mean by 65% scaling? In game you should be using default settings with hardware cursor
set the DPI to be exactly to the value you want and don't mess with it (no windows sensitivity adjustments other than setting it to 1:1 [on windows 7 it was 6 ticks out of 11] and no enhanced pointer precision), so if you played at 800 DPI on 1080p you should use 1066 DPI on 1440p, you don't need to set the resolution of the game lower
[B] An example of an untested strategy is to just put defilers into overlords. For 200 gas you can keep them safe from irradiate. Wonder why nobody has ever tried it defensively and keeps losing defilers. Pays for itself after stopping 2 irradiates.
Actually seen EffOrt hide defilers in Overlords at least 5 years back... Seen others do it too but it stuck out to me when he did it because he was consistently doing it throughout the game. Not just 1-2 off and giving up later because too many other things to do.
[B] An example of an untested strategy is to just put defilers into overlords. For 200 gas you can keep them safe from irradiate. Wonder why nobody has ever tried it defensively and keeps losing defilers. Pays for itself after stopping 2 irradiates.
Actually seen EffOrt hide defilers in Overlords at least 5 years back... Seen others do it too but it stuck out to me when he did it because he was consistently doing it throughout the game. Not just 1-2 off and giving up later because too many other things to do.
If you can find the VOD/replay that would be amazing
one thing I thought of to work on are my keyboard fingerings
so for the 5dh6dh7dhg8dh9dh0dh hydra spam (I bound larva to d because smaller hands) I used to use two fingers, but I realized I could do index on the top row, pinky on d and middle finger on h
all I have to do is practice this exact fingering until it's effortless and improve my larva utilization all game long
2 fingers user here. Tried the 3 fingers method but gave up. What i did was changing Hydra to S.
now i just press 5ss6ss7ss8ss9ss0ss . Conveniently was also a good change cuz u will make accidentally scourges. So i put scourges on E to avoid making them. Honestly there is a lot of good optimizations you can do. But is suicide to do all those changes at once lol.
On August 02 2025 05:40 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: 2 fingers user here. Tried the 3 fingers method but gave up. What i did was changing Hydra to S.
now i just press 5ss6ss7ss8ss9ss0ss . Conveniently was also a good change cuz u will make accidentally scourges. So i put scourges on E to avoid making them. Honestly there is a lot of good optimizations you can do. But is suicide to do all those changes at once lol.
I set scourge to u for this reason, but d is drone so I can spam drones at the start
But d for hydra might make more sense, since you make them longer and making drones on accident can be really bad when panic spamming
edit: I did drone to F, hydra to D
so now instead of hitting sd to make a drone it would be df, but hydra is dd
rebound my overlord hotkey to 4, I've been hitting the wrong keys for it for a while so now I'll just have to get used to those two settings without losing too much
On June 09 2025 03:19 iopq wrote: I forgot to mention, I've been working on my mouse accuracy and speed. I settled on 1200 DPI which might be a little high for accuracy (maybe 1000 DPI is optimal for 1080p) but it's better for scrolling around like when you're trying to catch fleeing zealots with mutalisks or trying to run away from scourge doing backshots
My splits are noticeably better vs. 1600 DPI so I'm definitely closer to optimal
why not 800 like 90%+++ of pros?
just mentioning this because I just saw Ret say he increased from 700 to 1000 because he feels it's more beneficial to be fast than accurate in BW
It is proly easier to be more accurate with lower DPI. But you can be accurate with high DPI too. Check this vod you will see this player using really high dpi and barely moving his mouse on the mousepad while aiming. I personally use 1600 DPI but in game i use 35% mouse sensitivity. When you are using widescreen is more beneficial to have higher DPI. But if you are playing 4:3 low DPI is proly the best option.
For many years i was using 800 DPI. Then when i made the switch to widescreen adapted to 1000 DPI. And now 1600 since it reduces input delay. But is not like my game is way faster now. That just made me reduce sensitivity from fist 55% with 800 dpi to 50% with 1000 DPI and now 35% with 1600 DPI . The thing is that outside the game it can be intidimating at first at how fast it is lol. But now i cant really go back. if i try something lower than 1600 is too slow.
I need to organize my thoughts on what things need improving. So I have certain drills I've been doing to improve quickly at one aspect of the game which gets me to my goal of top tier at everything in the game. For the mechanical part of the game:
1. Clicking speed [***--] Here the top players get like 130K on gridshot so despite a significant investment of time I'm like only half way there. I started at around 60K gridshot.
2. Muta micro
[***--] Eonzerg can effortlessly top my scores that I've had thousands of attempts at when I warm up. But I cut my time below 5 minutes, then below 4.
3. Keyboard usage
[**---] I've optimized hotkeys a bit, but I'm still very shit at spamming stuff out and actually using the F2F3F4 as often as I should. But I'm getting better at spamming hydra out with eonzerg's tip so it's trending up
4. Hotkey assignments
[**---] very bad at consistently assigning 4 hotkeys of units and moving them around together, especially late game where I just end up box selecting everything. I don't know how I would practice this
5. Multitasking
[**---] I've done some move-scout-around-while-building drills and it helped, I just practice it in ladder while moving run-by lings, not sure what other ways to practice
6. Boosting
[****-] I've done a deep dive on it just to discover there's more boosts you can do. It's truly a difficult topic to master. I guess I can more effectively hotkey the drones to do all of the boosts without misclicking on the wrong drone. But that's about it, other than practice
7. Build orders
[****-] The very basic ones like 11 hatch 2:48 Lair I've basically mastered (I don't hit the exact timing every time, but close enough), but stuff like 3 hatch hydra can be more optimized. Why exactly 22 drones? What's the best gas timing? But after thinking about it, I know how to do a lot of builds well so I gave myself another star there
The obvious next steps is to put time into fixing the things I haven't practiced. Another hour of muta micro won't fix my ability to make lings constantly vs. a Terran. But maybe if I just sit there and spam hotkeys for a while I'll get much better at it? Anyone actually try sitting there and just pressing 5dz6dz7dz8dz9dz0dz for a while? (larva hotkey is d now)
[***--] Mass drop micro (maybe there's a map for it?), remembering to fast burrow lurkers with stop, defiler micro, etc. not sure if it should be a separate category for each of the important ones
Some misc stuff: rallying and re-rallying army (I lose units to wrong rallies all the time)
Then the big category is game knowledge and strategy, but those I am not as clear on how to improve. I have a notebook with some notes, but I don't really look at the notes so I'm not sure how useful they are. Maybe I need to write a guide so I can remember what I'm supposed to be doing.
So I explored why pros do 9/7/3 with those drone numbers
for one, I discovered the optimal gas timing has to be 2:30 (overpool ideal timing) or 2:45 (hatch first ideal timing) for the non-speed version
so for overpool, you would do
9 overlord 9 pool 11 hatch 13 gas @ 2:30 12 hatch 14 den 16 speed 16 overlord 23 overlord
speed before 5 minutes, range before 6
but what's the smallest number of drones you can make when making lings?
I found with 18 drones you can STILL make hydras and lings and spend your larva/get the upgrades, with 17 drones you cut it a bit too close, but maybe possible with good boosting and larva/overlord management.
The difference is that you don't get to make a fourth hatchery for when the Protoss defends. You need extra 4 drones mining for a minute to save the 300 minerals.
Now I'm actually very curious to go for a much more aggressive hydra bust vs. forge expand, it will put a lot more pressure on the Protoss to rush out cannons
If you want to improve your muta micro vs terran the best method i have found is doing 2 hatch muta into the third and then go muta all in over and over. Forget about winning. You are basically learning real muta vs marine human interaction. Micro maps can be useful to practise vs scourge but vs terran you truly gain a lot of experience just playing muta all in. Then when you mastered it you can basically apply normal strategies with strong muta support.
On October 27 2025 00:26 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: If you want to improve your muta micro vs terran the best method i have found is doing 2 hatch muta into the third and then go muta all in over and over. Forget about winning. You are basically learning real muta vs marine human interaction. Micro maps can be useful to practise vs scourge but vs terran you truly gain a lot of experience just playing muta all in. Then when you mastered it you can basically apply normal strategies with strong muta support.
Thanks, I'll try it today. I've considered it before, but then I'll get a laggy opponent, go into a macro game and forget about my plan. I'll try it right now
EDIT: mission failed successfully, I beat a lot of Terrans with nothing but muta and got A rank again
One of the things I did not actually quantify is army movement. After watching replays I saw that if I moved my mutalisks to the correct spot it would expose the enemy weakness.
Of course I also need mutalisks which I sometimes forget to mass at the correct timing vs. Protoss. I can always switch earlier and have a lot more map control. I can easily fix the timing of my droning/hydras/mutas, but knowing when and where to strike is what separates me from an S rank player.
Almost every game I lost I could fix by better timings and army movement. I don't actually need to improve my mechanics to win at this level.
One of the things that I struggled with is a healthy mindset. When I actually started playing the micro test map on difficult mode I had to challenge myself to find the best way to approach each level. The mindset of exploring every angle and every setup is the healthy learning mindset. The mindset of doing everything perfectly is an unhealthy mindset since you can only fail.
This is the cause of frustration for a lot of players since things you have practiced for a long time can only go wrong, as you expect them to go well due to the hours you put in. You don't celebrate your successes, but get angry at your fails.
If you adopt an experimental, curious mindset about the game you don't just learn things, you perform what you already know much better as you don't place the pressure on yourself to perform, you just do the things you already know.
I timed out the overpool build, Lair starting at 3:15 is basically perfect since the larva pops out at 4:17, but I guess you could give yourself a tiny bit of wiggle room and start at 3:16 so you don't miss it
the best possible time to mine 100 gas from starting the extractor is 48 seconds if the drones are waiting to get into it when it pops so the perfect time to make it is 2:27 (and the extra cushion from a slight delay over perfect)
I don't know why people are waiting for 2:29 or later
1. You start with 3 larva and larva production is shut off. 2. The moment you make a unit your larva drops less than 3 and a timer starts from 0. 3. When the timer hits roughly 14.5 a larva is popped out, the timer is set to 0. 4. When you complete Lair or Hive, a larva is popped and the timer is set to 0.
So you want the FEWEST seconds possible to be on the timer when you get to Lair. If a larva just popped out and your timer is 0, that's the optimal timing to complete Lair or Hive
Two more things I hadn't practiced, but I now realize might be slowing me down
1. When I box I always go from top left to bottom right, which means I have to move my mouse first before I start if it is below the units in question 2. My accuracy on moving units is horrible given my good accuracy on stationary targets
medics and templars give me a very rough time in real games, so for medics I didn't care that much because they often stop to heal
but moving templars really hurts my ZvP win rate, since misclicking on a dragoon usually means I kill one less templar when I try to snipe them as my mutalisks die to dragoons and storms
On June 07 2026 19:49 iopq wrote: Explanation of larva timing:
1. You start with 3 larva and larva production is shut off. 2. The moment you make a unit your larva drops less than 3 and a timer starts from 0. 3. When the timer hits roughly 14.5 a larva is popped out, the timer is set to 0. 4. When you complete Lair or Hive, a larva is popped and the timer is set to 0.
So you want the FEWEST seconds possible to be on the timer when you get to Lair. If a larva just popped out and your timer is 0, that's the optimal timing to complete Lair or Hive
Larva spawns every 342 frames, and each frame is 42ms, so the timer that counts down is 14.364 seconds
You usually first send the drones and then make a drone, so add 300-500 ms to the first one (and thus every larva after the first), in my experience I still get the next larva before 15 seconds in-game time. But let's just assume perfect execution by an AI and see what their timings would be.
so if we had perfect execution, what's the Lair timing vs. Terran that gives us a free larva a split second before a free larva pops? At 63 seconds for Lair we can subtract 63 seconds from the above timings and get
before 2:46.824 Lair start no larva block (you can start Lair at 2:47 if you're close to perfect) before 3:01.188 Lair start no larva block (start Lair 3:01.5 to be sure)
against Protoss we can further extend it to
3:15.552 3:29.916 3:44.28 3:58.644
with absolutely perfect mining the gas timing you need 48 seconds after starting extractor to get 100 gas, but vs. Protoss you'll be dealing with probe or zealot harass possibly so round it up to 50 seconds
gas timing vs. Protoss
2:26 (overpool vs. forge FE) 2:40 2:54 3:09
you should also put your gas down at this timing vs. probe scout even if you want to 973 to prevent Protoss from being able to tell if they know you optimize your timings
if you want to speed first, subtract 20 seconds so for a 3:59 Lair you would 2:49 gas 3:39 speed upgrade and then Lair
you'll still start your spire a little over 5 minutes and won't lose too many overlords if you hide them well
took me a while to get a perfect 3:30-ish lair with no delays of droning (except for one whole larva which sets me back one cycle exactly) when I go hatch first
the fastest ZvP 3 hatch spire vs. forge fe build goes like this
9 over 9 pool 11 hatch 2:26 gas (we're aiming for 3:16 lair) 13 hatch 13 lair take one off gas and you can build more lings 16 overlord speed when you can afford it 21 spire (so basically save up money for it)
you can't make too many lings or you won't have enough money for spire
most of the time pros do a 2:40-ish gas timing to relax it a bit more and be able to afford more lings, though
what pros do consistently and I don't do enough is temporary hotkeying
a lot of times you can't afford a very key upgrade when you check, but you're busy doing something else
pros will hotkey it to something like 4 and just do something else until it's time to hit the upgrade, and then rebind it to something more useful later
I've learned to do this with lurker upgrade in ZvT, but it could be done with almost anything, like +1 carapace and so forth
so for the larva timing with the 9 hatch build it would be like this:
9 overlord if scouted first see overpool build cancel overlord 9 hatch 9 overlord 9 pool and scout if gate expand do ling pressure build instead 13 hatch 12 gas spend the larva on the second hatch asap pair of lings 16 overlord 18 lair started at 3:45 perfectly to give a free larva when lair finishes you add some lings here and there, protoss will send a zealots out between 4 and 5 minutes to scout and harass 23 overlord
you can start a hydra den right after spire as well (and still go muta anyway, making two hydra against the first corsair is quite cheap and might confuse the Protoss) if you want to transition to 5 hatch hydra you would try to keep your larva around 2 on each hatch before throwing down a building, then building drones, then throwing down some additional buildings to achieve optimal hatchery timings
if you made 8 lings you would drone up to 35 and have 31 supply of fully drones and then you would make hydra right in time for a speedlot push
and if they are not making a ton of units you can go attack them at 7:30 with hydra that has speed and range
What's the cost of cancelling overlord in terms of mineral/larva (I guess, 25 minerals, 0 larva because you are blocked)?
Is it really necessary? I feel like you have two options
1. Go 9 hatch anyway, most protoss don't expect the timing, you probably won't be blocked off. VS Cannon rush I seem to be able to get 1-2 sunks up while my lings pop to hold it off with advantange, but not sure if this is consistent 2. Immediately put down overlord + pool + drone (350 minerals), Here I don't think you lose too much, I'm not sure if you will be supply blocked you will just lose a bit of mining time from delayed overlord popping, but haven't tested this recently.
Second thought: on the Lair/larva trick (aligning the timing to get 2 larva when lair spawns) Are we maybe overvaluing this.. here's my thinking, everyone values it as '1 free larva' but its ignoring the fact we always get some fraction of a larva, AND the additional risk of a tiny larva block making the 'perfect' timing actually the 'worst' timing (lair spawns just before the larva would pop)
1. If we spawn lair randomly, we GAIN 0.5 larva on average (since lair will pop and spawn a larva, if you were 7 seconds into the 14.4 second larva window, you gain the larva instantly and reset the larva timer, meaning you 'gained' 0.5 larva 2. If we spawn the lair perfectly, we gain ~0.95 of one larva from it spawning just before lair pops 3. If we get the timing slightly off, (e.g. you got the first drone at 15.5 seconds or something or were blocked in ZvT for another 1 second after putting down pool on 10), you will LOSE 0.95 of a larva as the lair will reset the larva just after
And perhaps most importantly, if for example I look at my replays on cwal.gg, I easily am 'wasting' 5-10 larva after about 10 minutes when my macro is just too shitty compared to a progamer that i eventually get supply blocked (forgetting or losing overlords) or am not macroing properly while fights happen, or i just simply forget one of my hatcheries e.g. 7th hatch at a 4th base or something
I get that it's 'easy' to control the early game and advantages snowball, but if we are on a knife's edge with the build order, I think we could take additional risks, like delaying lair to 3:02 which may lose us an additional overlord against a wraith build, or greeding a late scout to get a 2:48 lair and then getting surprised by a bunker rush or a vulture build and you have no sunken out.
Third thought: what do we think about a slightly earlier scout (e.g. ZvP overpool opener, scout after the pool goes down instead of on 11)
If we get about ~70 minerals a minute, 1.1 minerals per second, we probably take about 1 min to scout two positions and return to mining at the natural hatchery, so the total cost of a scout should be about 70 minerals (which seems worth it). Additionally, our build will be delayed, probably reflected by a slower third hatchery, as we already have pool, overlord, and most of the money for a hatchery.
BUT, if we compare scouting 20 seconds earlier, we get the drone back mining 20 seconds earlier [depends somewhat on natural hatchery, if it's late, maybe its a flat loss], so then you could argue the delay in the build is worth it if we gain useful information from an earlier scout e.g. -Gateway first opener, know where to go to pressure it or build more lings accordingly -Forge first opener, can delay getting 6 lings and more comfortably build drones earlier on cooldown and not worry about some cheesey stuff -2 gate or proxy gate opener, if you don't scout, or late scout, you are behind if the opponent will mix these in some percentage of games
Overall, I'm playing with the scout timing but I find at least with overpool, I am frustrated with my scout timing being too late in cross positions to know how to play with my initial larva, I see most pros generally get 6 lings and try to adapt on the fly, maybe that's best I think it's possible to make the decision based on the fact that if you aren't delaying any critical build timing, and your scout will come back in time to mine the second hatchery, and earlier scout is not a flat mineral loss, but more of a delay?
it doesn't cost anything but larva to cancel the overlord, it's 0 mineral cost since it costs you nothing to cancel the overlord, just always make it
you have TWO problems with going 9 hatch anyway:
1. You can't hold cannon rush if they are dedicated to it and make forge early 2. If they pylon scouted you they go nexus first and there's nothing you can do about it
the second reason is probably the most important because nexus first Protoss is more powerful than hatchery first zerg
On August 13 2026 22:57 Slayer91 wrote: Second thought: on the Lair/larva trick (aligning the timing to get 2 larva when lair spawns) Are we maybe overvaluing this.. here's my thinking, everyone values it as '1 free larva' but its ignoring the fact we always get some fraction of a larva, AND the additional risk of a tiny larva block making the 'perfect' timing actually the 'worst' timing (lair spawns just before the larva would pop)
1. If we spawn lair randomly, we GAIN 0.5 larva on average (since lair will pop and spawn a larva, if you were 7 seconds into the 14.4 second larva window, you gain the larva instantly and reset the larva timer, meaning you 'gained' 0.5 larva 2. If we spawn the lair perfectly, we gain ~0.95 of one larva from it spawning just before lair pops 3. If we get the timing slightly off, (e.g. you got the first drone at 15.5 seconds or something or were blocked in ZvT for another 1 second after putting down pool on 10), you will LOSE 0.95 of a larva as the lair will reset the larva just after
And perhaps most importantly, if for example I look at my replays on cwal.gg, I easily am 'wasting' 5-10 larva after about 10 minutes when my macro is just too shitty compared to a progamer that i eventually get supply blocked (forgetting or losing overlords) or am not macroing properly while fights happen, or i just simply forget one of my hatcheries e.g. 7th hatch at a 4th base or something
I get that it's 'easy' to control the early game and advantages snowball, but if we are on a knife's edge with the build order, I think we could take additional risks, like delaying lair to 3:02 which may lose us an additional overlord against a wraith build, or greeding a late scout to get a 2:48 lair and then getting surprised by a bunker rush or a vulture build and you have no sunken out.
getting 4 mutalisks when you should have 5 will end the game if the Terran busts your two sunkens
we're not talking about late game, we need to not die in 5 minutes
besides, since the perfect lair is 2:47 when we try to target 2:48 it's just not possible off of an 11 hatchery, the timing is too close unless you just don't build the first drone for like a second
the only way you can mess it up is if you go 11 hatch 10 pool, but just don't do that, go 11 hatch 11 pool 10 gas like a normal person
if you're trying to go 4:18 lair off of a 3:08 gas with speed vs. Protoss that's going gateway expand, then yeah, you can click up a second early and lose the free larva
but yet, pros DO time it out as you can hear them being annoyed when they lair too early! They are aware of the timings
On August 15 2026 01:23 iopq wrote: it doesn't cost anything but larva to cancel the overlord, it's 0 mineral cost since it costs you nothing to cancel the overlord, just always make it
you have TWO problems with going 9 hatch anyway:
1. You can't hold cannon rush if they are dedicated to it and make forge early 2. If they pylon scouted you they go nexus first and there's nothing you can do about it
the second reason is probably the most important because nexus first Protoss is more powerful than hatchery first zerg
I disagree on the second reason being more important - nexus forge vs forge nexus is 150 minerals difference in timing, is it one extra probe? 2? But having extra larva 9 hatch first vs overpool, should be able to compensate that. I don't see that as a big deal.. compared to literally losing instantly to cannon rush
If 9 hatch dies to cannon rush for all the scout timings it's kind of useless, but if it's only when they pylon scout and scout your first (<33% of the time, since some send the probe back to mine and scout after forge), then it might still be ok depending on how the defence goes.
My last game vs cannon rush the guy sent a second probe after forge to scout me 'last' and the rush was too slow, it would have been in time to stop 11 hatch easily, my second sunken survived to kill his second cannon without me trying to pull all drones to defend. If he scouted me second with the pylon scout it would have been a similar rush timing, but probably pylon first scout would have been too fast for me and I'd have to pull drones to fight it off which is probably not reliable.
I'm not being negative actually, the idea to cancel overlord and go for 9 hatch when seeing no probe scout seems like a great optimisation if it's really "free"
I have one problem with 9 hatch which is against 9 or 10 gate nexus builds, their zealot arrives in your base before lings are out (unless its hatch/pool/overlord?), and although you have a chance to win with ling all-in, your 3rd hatch is way delayed over overpool or 11 hatch because your mineral count is less and you can't maynard the drones to 2nd hatch vs zealot pressure.. so if it is bad vs gateway first AND first scout cannon rush the build is kind of not good, but im still experimenting with it. You usually scout late too (to minimize larva block) so it's very difficult to anticipate the pressure
On August 13 2026 22:57 Slayer91 wrote: Second thought: on the Lair/larva trick (aligning the timing to get 2 larva when lair spawns) Are we maybe overvaluing this.. here's my thinking, everyone values it as '1 free larva' but its ignoring the fact we always get some fraction of a larva, AND the additional risk of a tiny larva block making the 'perfect' timing actually the 'worst' timing (lair spawns just before the larva would pop)
1. If we spawn lair randomly, we GAIN 0.5 larva on average (since lair will pop and spawn a larva, if you were 7 seconds into the 14.4 second larva window, you gain the larva instantly and reset the larva timer, meaning you 'gained' 0.5 larva 2. If we spawn the lair perfectly, we gain ~0.95 of one larva from it spawning just before lair pops 3. If we get the timing slightly off, (e.g. you got the first drone at 15.5 seconds or something or were blocked in ZvT for another 1 second after putting down pool on 10), you will LOSE 0.95 of a larva as the lair will reset the larva just after
And perhaps most importantly, if for example I look at my replays on cwal.gg, I easily am 'wasting' 5-10 larva after about 10 minutes when my macro is just too shitty compared to a progamer that i eventually get supply blocked (forgetting or losing overlords) or am not macroing properly while fights happen, or i just simply forget one of my hatcheries e.g. 7th hatch at a 4th base or something
I get that it's 'easy' to control the early game and advantages snowball, but if we are on a knife's edge with the build order, I think we could take additional risks, like delaying lair to 3:02 which may lose us an additional overlord against a wraith build, or greeding a late scout to get a 2:48 lair and then getting surprised by a bunker rush or a vulture build and you have no sunken out.
getting 4 mutalisks when you should have 5 will end the game if the Terran busts your two sunkens
we're not talking about late game, we need to not die in 5 minutes
besides, since the perfect lair is 2:47 when we try to target 2:48 it's just not possible off of an 11 hatchery, the timing is too close unless you just don't build the first drone for like a second
the only way you can mess it up is if you go 11 hatch 10 pool, but just don't do that, go 11 hatch 11 pool 10 gas like a normal person
if you're trying to go 4:18 lair off of a 3:08 gas with speed vs. Protoss that's going gateway expand, then yeah, you can click up a second early and lose the free larva
but yet, pros DO time it out as you can hear them being annoyed when they lair too early! They are aware of the timings
Deleting a big wall of text that I posted originally as it won't be helpful, in summary, 2:50 lair only loses us 0.14 of a larva over 2:48 lair, while requiring less optimisation.. definitely non pros shouldn't worry about this
It's not a free full larva, it's a fraction of a larva, that was the point of my post, if you you are 7 seconds late on lair you will get a larva pop 7 seconds before and then instantly instead of getting 2 larva (0.5 larva cost). Obviously, getting the timing perfect is great edit: I'm wrong on this, the anti timing is being early, so 2:48->2:55 is above average lair: gain 1->0.5 larva, 2:55->3:02 is below average lair, gain 0.5->0.0 larva, absolute worst timings would be 2:48.00 and 3:02.00, so 2:49, 2:51 etc is actually perfectly good and safe, but if anything this supports my argument that getting the timing to the exact second is not the biggest deal I manually checked from Jaedong replays on CWAL, if we get second drone on 15 seconds, like we should all be able to get, max 16.. 14 more larva spawns (14.4 x 14) at 3:36.6, next one at 3:51, optimal lair (63s) AFTER 2:48, if we are 16 seconds for second drone it will AFTER 2:49, safe timing is anything after 2:50
With all that said, its very clear that losing 2 seconds of larva timing won't cause you to lose to a 2 rax academy bust.. that's usually due to late sunkens and is supposed to arrive before mutas, just make 3 if you are scared, if you aren't a pro I'd say for go safety. Even IF you lost a full larva AND you insist that you must have 5 mutas instantly (neither of these are at all true in my opinion), you would just skip a drone to get 5 mutas instantly and not lose the game
I realize you can't just skip drones and get 3 sunkens every game but it there are some fast 2 rax academy FE busts that terran does seem to cut a bit to arrive in time to try to win the game there
Zealot arriving in your base is not a big issue, you just have to drill over it. It's the same as going 11 hatch vs. Protoss, 1:50 pool or something like that so there's no difference.
Overpool second hatchery is right before 2:00, then third hatchery can go down at like 2:45
If you 9 hatch at 1:15, lose one larva cancelling that you would float anyway, you're "equivalent" to a 1:30 timing on the second hatchery, and if you put down the third at 3:00 you're not losing much since you're ahead on larva to begin with
the larva is the issue, so you can't click up Lair as early because you have to keep spending the larva
if an overpool makes a gas at 2:40 vs. forge FE, you're going to have to make a gas at like 2:55 instead because you get probe harassed so you don't get Lair as quickly as optimal in single player (overpool 2:26 gas and 9 hatch 2:40 gas perfectly fine without an opponent to distract you)
for 973, depending on what's going on in the game, you generally want to have 15-19 drones when you make the hydra den (you can figure it out by just looking at supply and subtracting the ling supply)
when I try to make it with 14 drones I can't continue to both produce drones and get the expensive hydra upgrades, so there's no point
when you make it with 20+ drones there's another issue is that you are gas constrained unless you pre-mined a lot of gas to make hydra
you can usually afford exactly 7 hydra before speed is done and have 150 gas left over for range if you put down the hydra den at 50 gas. but if you started at 250 gas (you made drones and pre-mined it) then you can make 11 hydra and still afford the range upgrade, but obviously the upgrade will be much later than if you started it on time
all things considered, the pre-mine is not bad if you need to make extra lings to defend, since delaying your den is good for economy (that drone mines extra minerals, you get more and more drones instead of spending on upgrades earlier)
EPT
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