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The muta's short vision hurts Zerg against M&M. Mutalisks have to poke dangerously close to the marine ball to track it, and even pros take chip damage or lose mutas if the marines surprise them. Or they'll miss opportunities to pick off stragglers because the mutas can't see the full shape of the ball.
Well... Queens fly as fast as mutas, but see much further. One queen could stack with ten mutas for longer vision at the cost of one less muta's damage. That might be preferable to the standard stack of eleven mutas, and costs the same once the Queen's Nest is up. Might be worthwhile for builds that keep using mutalisk while teching to Hive.
I verified offline that the micro works (the stack doesn't separate), but I'm not nearly good enough to meaningfully experiment in a real match. Is a spotter queen in a muta stack possibly worth it?
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Common ye slimy Zergs, come outta yer lurker holes and give this person some feedback!
I think, if you see it as a thing during the inevitable transition (like you explained) and not as something that you delay your initial pure muta-timing for, and if the queen really doesn't change anything about the way the mutas move, then why not?
You might not kill one or two marines that you would've with one additional muta, but you might save a muta or two due to the additional vision... and you have other small benefits like:
The Terran be like "WTF????" (until your idea becomes a thing)
Mindgame potential because the Terran might expect more (early, oddly timed) queens but can't be sure.
And you get a queen with full energy if it survives, not too shabby. Parasite is ANNOYING, and you might mix in one of the upgrades later.
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sounds cool, but what timing could be good for that idea?
for the first couple of muta-attacks battling m&ms, every muta counts and spending 200+ on gas/mins (and a drone and one/two larva less) will be quite a sacrifice.
in later game stages muta harass normally get less.
while teching to hive, often mutas are used more defensively vs drops.
would love to see it and hope some pro tries it, tho!
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One tiny downside:
Enemy anti-air fire will automatically target your mutalisks over your single queen, assuming that the anti-air fire is not being manually targeted. This means that when you use 1 queen and N-1 mutalisks (instead of the usual 0 queens and N mutalisks), the damage will be distributed across N-1 mutalisks instead of N mutalisks. Mutalisks benefit from sharing damage, and replacing a mutalisk with a queen will marginally increase the likelihood of a mutalisk taking lethal damage in any given engagement.
All I can do is contribute to the theorycrafting, since I'm a lousy player who can't playtest your idea :-)
I think it's a cool idea, and it's hard to imagine that for *some* builds under *some* circumstances it wouldn't be optimal. Even at the tip-top level of ZvT, players often send in their mutas at inopportune times, causing them to take too much damage. It seems like 10 mutalisks with a bit extra "maphack" could well be better than 11 mutalisks.
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It just doesn't work in any meaningful way timing wise. Your window of opportunity to do damage with mutas is limited. By the time you have a queens nest done and can make a queen you're much better off starting your hive instead and using that gas towards defilers. It's a nice idea but not practical.
Could certainly do it against a player weaker than yourself for style points though
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Norway28903 Posts
I used to do an old school 2 hatch muta with 1 queen where I amassed a flock of 23 +1 mutas with 1 queen to snipe command centres. Worked fairly well 17 years ago!
But I don't really envision this being worthy. I love queens and am a strong advocate of them, but I don't think this is all that viable, you don't necessarily have 200 spare gas for a nest and a queen.
However - if you are transitioning into crazy zerg, and you have already made a queen's nest for hive, and you are engaging mm in the middle of the map with mutaling, then I very firmly believe that 1 queen with ensnare is much more valuable than an extra two mutalisks are. Like 16 mutas + ensnare >>> 18 mutas when fighting against a clumped together group of marines. (They have to clump to deal with mutaling, meaning ensnare easily hits the entire group.) I'll flat out say that even progamers would benefit from experimenting more with ideal ensnare timings.
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This doesnt work as mutas has a short expiry date and queen nest + queen is not really fitting that timing. As soon as starport units are out (valkirie/vessel), mutas can only be used tactically and their vision doesnt matter anymore. So it could only help with initial (6-9minute) fights against marines but then you don't have gas to spend on queens.
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I used to do an old school 2 hatch muta with 1 queen where I amassed a flock of 23 +1 mutas with 1 queen to snipe command centres. Worked fairly well 17 years ago!
But I don't really envision this being worthy. I love queens and am a strong advocate of them, but I don't think this is all that viable, you don't necessarily have 200 spare gas for a nest and a queen.
However - if you are transitioning into crazy zerg, and you have already made a queen's nest for hive, and you are engaging mm in the middle of the map with mutaling, then I very firmly believe that 1 queen with ensnare is much more valuable than an extra two mutalisks are. Like 16 mutas + ensnare >>> 18 mutas when fighting against a clumped together group of marines. (They have to clump to deal with mutaling, meaning ensnare easily hits the entire group.) I'll flat out say that even progamers would benefit from experimenting more with ideal ensnare timings.
It's funny you mention that, When the goliath play was more in style in TvZ and the counter was mass muta, I would do the same thing. If i got enough muta I'd add a queen to infect their main CC when they pushed out and it worked really well around the 1900 level lol. Obviously, that move would delay any hydra switch for quite some time but a lot of the time I wouldn't even need it as the game was ended before sci vessels popped out.
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Bulgaria750 Posts
Cool idea, not sure against which builds you can afford this timing-wise (e.g. to have one less muta at point X and spend the extra 100 gas after getting the queen's nest you need anyway) and still be meaningful, e.g. T doesn't have irradiate or valks incoming. Worth exploring tho, even discovering something doesn't work has value after all.
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On April 23 2021 01:51 Kodan wrote:Show nested quote +I used to do an old school 2 hatch muta with 1 queen where I amassed a flock of 23 +1 mutas with 1 queen to snipe command centres. Worked fairly well 17 years ago!
But I don't really envision this being worthy. I love queens and am a strong advocate of them, but I don't think this is all that viable, you don't necessarily have 200 spare gas for a nest and a queen.
However - if you are transitioning into crazy zerg, and you have already made a queen's nest for hive, and you are engaging mm in the middle of the map with mutaling, then I very firmly believe that 1 queen with ensnare is much more valuable than an extra two mutalisks are. Like 16 mutas + ensnare >>> 18 mutas when fighting against a clumped together group of marines. (They have to clump to deal with mutaling, meaning ensnare easily hits the entire group.) I'll flat out say that even progamers would benefit from experimenting more with ideal ensnare timings. It's funny you mention that, When the goliath play was more in style in TvZ and the counter was mass muta, I would do the same thing. If i got enough muta I'd add a queen to infect their main CC when they pushed out and it worked really well around the 1900 level lol. Obviously, that move would delay any hydra switch for quite some time but a lot of the time I wouldn't even need it as the game was ended before sci vessels popped out.
Works all the way to the top.MSL semis, elimination game. Note how JD doesn't know Light has starport +double armory, he expects 4 fact when he makes the queens nest, so it's a response to the anticipated moveout.
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EPT
