hi guys, first time posting here in about . .. what, 10 years? haha.
I am playing with some casual friends tomorrow, and I'm wondering what has the meta changed in 10 years? They're kind of n00b, so something solid, and can survive 1v2 potentially would be nice too. I used to be D+ on iccup for what's worth, and masters in sc2. I played some single players today and I have still about 160 apm, which hopefully can manage enough.
I play zerg. If someoen can link me to some study material, either guides or youtube links / streams. I'm so very very out of touch with the game cuz I never played it after 2010 hahaha... it's fun to be back and post on TL again, I wonder who is still here after all these years?
I'll look at those study guides, practice online for about 2, 3 hours for my battle tomorrow.
I will post results of me vs my friends by end of tomorrow, stay tuned !
[update] : thanks for the BO and stuff. just played a lot of ling / hydra and smashed some faces 4-0. granted they're not good players (~30 apm people) but hey, I'm very happy I crushed them in a convincing fashion. <3 cheers !
so of course with like 4 people we just did a FFA instead haha, all the 1v1 advice were still useful though because it kept me sane and not having to think what build I should go on the fly.
the game is on this 6 player map called medusa, which I picked after trying to find BGH for 5 minutes and can't find it. This map is a PAIN IN THE ASS if you never played on it before. the pathing and where the bases are totally tripped me up hardcore, I don't even know where the F is my natural with gas LOL. I remember staring at the mineral only expo and I was like . . . is this it? I wish for tournament maps the game starts with a grayed-out version, rather than having to scout all of it, as that mechanics is only useful for campaign when discovering the map was important.
A big difference is the maps. Python and Destination were still really popular in 2010, as well as Bluestorm. Heartbreak Ridge still is a map that makes it into the map pool, but the only pre-2010 map that is still used is now the most popular map: Fighting Spirit.
Many maps have been modeled around the formula that Fighting Spirit has put forth. Circuit Breaker is also extremely popular on the ladder, but is closer to something like Eye of The Storm. Before 2010, maps like Python, Gaia, Bluestorm, Heartbreak Ridge, Destination made it much more viable for Zerg to be aggressive against fast expands by Protoss with zerglings. You could do more run-bys and could mine out the back on Destination and Heartbreak Ridge. Many newer maps have made the entrance to the natural much smaller to accommodate Protoss wall-offs. Additionally, many maps with close 3rd bases have narrow entrances as well, making them much easier for Protoss to defend, and for Zerg to deny (except on Circuit Breaker), which has led many Zerg players to start trying to hydra bust Protoss or fake a hydra bust in order to build drones behind it while Protoss puts money into cannons.
After 2010, Zerg players began to go back to 3-hatch plays over 2-hatch openings in ZvT. This led to a bunch of meta-game changes over the decade, with the most important ones being the +1 5 Barracks build, and the Goliath build. +1 5 Barracks follows a pretty simple formula: rather than trying to get a 9 or 10 minute vessel/tank push, the Terran player will stay on a single barracks early in order to get a gas and an engineering bay, then get +1 ranged attack. After this, the Terran player adds on 4 more barracks for a total of 5, and uses a very large infantry army to control the center of the map. A very popular transition from the +1 5 Barracks was to deny the Zerg third base with the big infantry force, and then start laying mines around the map instead of immediately going for tanks. This made it difficult for Zerg players to defiler-push across the map due to a lack of detection. This bought Terran players time to lift off ALL their barracks and plop down a bunch of factories, essentially switching their army composition to entirely mech.
The +1 5 Barracks into mech style eventually fell out of favor because of changes in maps, and because the games could be gruelingly long for Terrans. More Terran players began to go back to an older paradigm of getting a very large number of science vessels. While requiring more micro than a mech army, lots of vessels posed a lot of problems for Zerg players that would try to build a big economy behind a minimal amount of defense, as many lurkers and defilers would be picked off by irradiate.
A variation of the 2009 Fantasy build emerged for a short period of time called the 1/1/1 build, but it was quickly figured out by Zerg players and fell out of favor.
Another weird meta change was that Terran players would start building battlecruisers to harass drone lines. Not as an opening, but as a late-game type of thing. 3 battlecruisers can shoot down scourge fast enough to make it difficult for Zerg players to simply knock them down with a few scourge, and requiring many more to be morphed. For a Zerg player having difficulty building many gas units, having to spend so much on gas would take away from lurkers and defilers in the late game, and give the Terran more chances to break through.
The biggest change right now seems to be that Terran players are going back to playing mech, with a heavy emphasis on goliaths. They will open with vultures, and then just make a huge bunch of goliaths before making tanks.
hey man thanks for the long update. a lot has changed indeed. when I left bw ZvP was 5hatch hydra and ZvT was defiler rush off of 3 base.
i see . . . i was still practicing on destination / tau-cross against computers hahaha wow I feel so old :p
well I think for tomorrow the people are not going to be _that_ good, I doubt they'd have enough fingers to mass vessel irradiate. I just want to hit a good macro timing. Is 3 hatch muta ZvT still viable (honestly I don't think I have the fingers for swarms I'll probably just muta/ling with like 2 lurkers and straight into ultra).
should I practice mass hydra vs protoss still? 5 hatch style? I tried to do some muta on bnet just now but fucked up my 3rd hatchery and was forced to yolo 2 hatch muta and that ended so badly lol... is muta opening even that good against FE toss that build fast corsair? What's the opening there?
On March 08 2020 14:01 evanthebouncy! wrote: hey man thanks for the long update. a lot has changed indeed. when I left bw ZvP was 5hatch hydra and ZvT was defiler rush off of 3 base.
i see . . . i was still practicing on destination / tau-cross against computers hahaha wow I feel so old :p
well I think for tomorrow the people are not going to be _that_ good, I doubt they'd have enough fingers to mass vessel irradiate. I just want to hit a good macro timing. Is 3 hatch muta ZvT still viable (honestly I don't think I have the fingers for swarms I'll probably just muta/ling with like 2 lurkers and straight into ultra).
should I practice mass hydra vs protoss still? 5 hatch style? I tried to do some muta on bnet just now but fucked up my 3rd hatchery and was forced to yolo 2 hatch muta and that ended so badly lol... is muta opening even that good against FE toss that build fast corsair? What's the opening there?
thanks
If you were D+ before, you'll probably fall somewhere in the E to D rank on bnet. I'd really encourage you to work on using defilers. They're honestly not that hard to use, but you have to practice in order to use them, and if you're practicing builds against the computer, try to make yourself put down a defiler mound and use dark swarm. I know the computer will just die if you a-move, but I think you'll have a lot of fun using defilers, and that's why I recommend them.
As far as the ZvP meta goes, you probably don't want to do any muta-first builds unless no-stargate builds become popular, or you play someone you know never makes stargates. If you do a two-base muta build properly, you're generally going to hit your opponent's base when they have a couple of corsairs, so you have to make two pairs of scourge to follow along, and pray to God that the Protoss didn't go nuts and make 4 cannons. A lot of lower-level Protoss players tend to over-make cannons, but against someone middle-tier, it's a fun cheese that sometimes works.
I don't personally like it, and it requires a lot of practice to get the timing right. A slightly older build is 6 hatch hydra, where you get your pool, then expo, then gas, then expo for a quick lair, and then use the spire for scourge only to take out corsairs, and to scout with. After you get the spire, you plop down 2 more hatcheries at around ~35 supply, and a sixth at 38 supply, then add your hydra den and evolution chamber right away. Then you start a natural progression of getting hydra speed, range, and then lurkers. The spire timing has to be right, though, because a corsair will fly at your base at around 5:30 into the game, and might take out an overlord. If it starts killing one before the scourge are out, just make an extra one. But if you start to lose multiple overlords, you'll end up falling really behind.
For ZvT, the +1 5 Barracks build I mentioned basically renders going quick hive into ultra/ling obsolete.
Here is a good example:
Although Flash did this build in 2009, it didn't really become standard until after 2010. The 'Crazy Zerg' style fell out of favor after this. The massive amount of dps inflicted by a very large number of upgraded marines made it impossible for ultralisks to out-muscle them without dark swarm. It might(?) be possible to do with lurkers mixed in, but I haven't seen anyone attempt it because of how much gas it would take.
Otherwise, the standard 3-hatch muta opening is still viable, as well as 2-hatch muta in ZvT.
right I guess when I stopped playing bw defilers were really standard already and the idea is just to rush them off 3 base zvt. the hydra thing was kind of popular, but I think people still go muta zvp fairly often, I guess now it's just using spire for scourges, so that's good to know.
honestly all that info is probably too much to take in, I'm playing the games tmw lol, I'm lucky if I can even play at 200 apm at this rate and not get supply blocked, there's much more fundamental issues holding me back, so that's why I wanted to ask for some build orders to just follow.
seems now the plan is zvz probably still the same muta / ling, zvp just dump a fuckton of hydras, and zvt is muta into defilers + lurkers. I don't really have the resources to follow-up before my games tmw but if I continue to play after that I'd have to practice.
how do you play ladder game on bnet btw, when I log on USE all I see is 4v4 fastest possible wtf.
Hi, welcome back, fellow old timer. For zvp you can look up the "9734 build" as posted above. But if you re looking at 1v2 you might wanna turtle into lurkers like larva does
so of course with like 4 people we just did a FFA instead haha, all the 1v1 advice were still useful though because it kept me sane and not having to think what build I should go on the fly.
the game is on this 6 player map called medusa, which is a PAIN IN THE ASS if you never played on it before. the pathing and where the bases are totally tripped me up hardcore, I don't even know where the F is my natural with gas LOL. I remember staring at the mineral only expo and I was like . . . is this it?
EPT
