Zerg: Lurkers Vs Vessels

On January 24 2021 04:27 EmptyHands wrote:
Hello long time Lurker (~15 years) here. I usually keep quiet and just enjoy the game as my skills and knowledge are nowhere the level I would say I can legitimate talk about the deeper values of the game.

Nonetheless I like to Theocraft alot and was quite happy to see some of my thoughts to realise in the competitive game (eg. Ultra+Queens Vs MM). I still kept quiet with my Theocrafting because I thought "The people that play will find new ways to play the game".

Now there is the point a few years ago, when Zergs struggled to get up a third I wanted to find some solutions to help them. I picked the most important Zerg Units aka Mutalisks, Lurkers and Defilers. I thought about ways to help them increase their value and make them less vunerable versus Vessels, but reality was that Mutalisks are doomed and Defilers are too Micro intense to keep them safe.

The last unit that remains was the Lurker. I guess everybody knows the Overlord trick or the Lurker Stacking to buy more time or make a location unattractive to attack. But these methods are still lacking, because if the Terran has an overwhelming army like 8 Vessels and his MM squad vs your 4 stacked Lurkers + Overlord your still done.

I tested around with different Units and I came to the conclusion that putting a Lurker egg above some stacked Lurkers is the best way to keep them alive. Just patrol + Hold your Hydra above them and make it into a egg.



Note: In several tests I was unable to click the Lurkers below with my Vessels if somebody finds a way or maybe
I´m just dumb and always missed them the following parts are completely worthless. Also this is versus MM + Vessels any Tank will be able to punish you.

People will say "Nice egg above Lurker and now?" and here comes the real deal.

Your Lurkers below are now completely unclickable and that prevents the location to lose any of its power vs their MMS. Usually you stack Lurkers and restack them with new ones to buy time, but now you can safe your stacked Lurkers and create new ones behind creating a surplus in Lurkers, also it is easier to get a Hydra anywhere on the map and morph it there compared to an Overlord.

This forces the Terran to either waste his engery on lesser units or he will let his Vessels go 200/200 and every second will cost him resources. Remember that Vessels are very expensive units and they need to kill 1-3 Units to make their money back depending how they die. Delaying in dealing damage / killing high-priority units is quite huge.

Morphing a Lurker takes around 25 seconds, but the best thing is that you can just cancel and restart the morphing and you don´t lose any resources for that action. The resources are only temporary in the egg and you will always get your Lurker at the end or your money back.

Let´s be safe and say you remorph your Hydra egg every 20 seconds. That way you have an ever remorphing Egg above your Lurker Stack. Even with 10 Vessels at your door the Terran would need 7-8 irradiates to kill your remorphing Hydra Egg, but you can just let the almost dead egg morph into a Lurker and borrow it above your stack to gain some extra time versus the pressure. That are several minutes of Irradiates just to push 1 location.



(Good luck pushing with your 10 Vessels. (The Hydra next to it is a reserve Hydra that you can put above when your Hydra egg got too much damage to restart the process.))

This was just an example to show the strength as I doubt anybody would seriously Irradiate an egg that often to get up a ramp.

With that method your now quite safe from any Irradiate play, when your Lurker Stack + Egg is setup. But it gets even better you can just use 1 of your Hotkeys as the controller for your Hydra eggs for all over the map. Below it shows how I control 5 places at the same time with 1 Hotkey and that for 9 clicks per Minute (hotkey + Esc + L) and you don´t even have to morph them the whole time, you can also just morph them when you feel the pressure. And if you forgot to cancel you just get your Lurkers, so the risks to do something wrong are low.



I created this method when Zergs struggled to get their third up and needed time to tech into Defilers. So it´s mainly for ramps or narrow spots and to stop pressure as it costs a good amount of resources to cover larger areas like in this picture below.



(Right) is a 6/ATK 3/DEF Stack with Zerglings to tank damage from incoming attacks as the Lurkers are unclickable against focus fire. (Left) 8/ATK 1/DEF Stack but they cover only a small area, this is more dangerous as anything can just walk around it and unborrowing that many stacked units to react is very risky as they all clump and one good Irradiate will really hurt there. Also always keep a healthy balance between attack and defense, if your attack is too weak the terrans will still just attack, so 5/ATK 5/DEF in a wide open area is probably not the best idea in most cases.

Now your safe versus their Vessels and you can just sit back and tech up right? Almost with the Terran banking so many Vessels he will try other ways to punish you, like mass D-Matrix Marine run by, D-Matrix Drops or pressuring at other locations to force unborrows etc.

As the Vessels can´t Irradiate they will probably make some D-Matrix moves to overrun you. Try to create some Sim-City Chokepoints like below.



Your units are still able to pass but a run by with D-Matrix will become much more risky for the Terran as their following Marines will line up.

Another example are the ramps. You can either narrow their pathing(Left) or completely close the ramp with your eggs(Right) in your 1 Hotkey.



Don´t worry your workers can still pass, when a drop happens and the Terran Vultures can´t follow them through the eggs.



This method utilises the surplus that you theoretically create with your defensive Lurkers being safe from Irradiates so you don´t have to restock, to quickly establish more bases and prevent Terrans to punish you with their MM + Vessel plays and tech safely to Defilers. With 9 Apm you can safe several bases and no resources are lost while doing so. That´s the best method I could find to boost Zerg players with as little backlash as possible.

That´s mostly it but don´t put units near the eggs as they can damage surrounding units if they get Irradiated. ;-)

Now after explaining my thoughts I hope some of the better players could maybe test my Theocrafting and see if it´s really viable as I can´t see any real disadvantages as it bounces your defensive way up and it always drives me crazy seeing Zergs die to Irradiates and asking myself if my method could have worked there.

I just wonder if Pros know about it and don´t use it because it´s not worth it or if this is really something overlooked in the game.



Lurker Love and Thanks for Reading this Text Wall <3

On January 25 2021 16:58 Acgs wrote:
Wow that sure is alot of theocracy for the simple tactic you have description in so many word. Dry idea wink wink like ride skate board down giant hill.
http://www.jimphillips.com/SKATE 2/rr1.jpg

Maybe truth is idea is too wet it should work but in real life no workout to well. Maybe to instrument master of observation and many years practice