Out of all the useless units in Starcraft the Queen is the one with most potential. This flying support caster of the Swarm is a mix of a scouting unit, debuffer, emergency detector and sniper. However, it is generally deemed lacking in all of these areas. It's spells are hard to use without the Queen dying and when its spells do manage to connect they have a minimal impact on the course of battle. The only use the Queen has is for humiliating the opponent.
The purpose of this guide is to share some useful techniques I've discovered relating to the use of Queens against Protoss. The main focus is on Templar sniping by means of Parasite Broodling. Maybe this guide will inspire some of you to try incorporating the Queen into ZvP adding even more possibilities to Zerg Lair tech.
Without the High Templar the Protoss ground army is just a collection of expensive units drowning under the masses of cheap high DPS Zerg units. A popular strategy is to kill High Templars with mutalisks and clean up the rest of the Protoss army with mass hydra. The same can be achieved with queen hydra.
But why use queen instead of muta?
The mutalisk is countered by many, many Protoss units including the Archon, Corsair and mass Dragoon. It has happened many times that the mutalisks cannot snipe the High Templars because of their relatively short range of attack. The Queen is less vulnerable to the units that counter Mutalisks due to the long range of Spawn Broodling.
The problem with Spawn Broodling is the high energy cost, low HP of the Queen and limited APM of the Zerg user. However, what the Queen lacks in strength can be compensated with some simple techniques and preparation.
How to use the Queen
1. Accumulating energy, building units and timing
The best way to use queens is to time the attack so that the Protoss is just about to or is just leaving the base with his ball of units. You need to start building the queens 2 minutes and 44 seconds before this happens to have exactly 150 energy on your queens. Spawn Broodling has to be researched 50 seconds before the attack at the latest. The ideal amount of Queens is the amount of Templars the Protoss has + 1 or 2. The additional queen(s) are used to parasite the Protoss ball, so that using Spawn Broodling is possible.
2. Parasite
The task of keeping the Protoss ball parasited is very easy. Have one or two queens accumulating energy and every time you cannot see the ball anymore, you parasite. The ideal targets are Archons and the HTs themselves, but Dragoons also do the trick. Do note that almost no Protoss player is going to kill or send away his parasited units. I advise to use two queens just in case you encounter such a Protoss user. Having vision of the Templars is absolutely vital to the success of the attack itself.
3. The attack
The hardest part is made easy with a simple trick all Zerg users know: cloning. However with queens you have to add one more step into your cloning: shift move.
1. Keep a good distance to the Protoss ball, have your 150 energy queens in a single control group. If the Protoss ball is too threatening you must use a mutalisk to distract the initial fire. Just add one muta into your queen group, attack the ball and de-select the muta.
2. Start cloning Spawn Broodling on the High Templars.
3. Now select the control group again and press shift and click a safe place on the minimap. Now your queens automatically run away after they've killed the HTs.
4. The Protoss units concentrate on the broodlings leaving your queens nearly unscathed. Even a damaged queen will be useful again due to Zerg regeneration.
Strengths and weaknesses
Think of this build as 5 hatch hydra where you get your second gas early and build 7-8 queens before starting the hydra pump. This build requires good economy and is meant to counter the Protoss FE by containing the Protoss to 2 bases or ending the game in a hydra break. An ideal timing for your queens to have 150 energy is around the 10 or 11 minute mark. If you succeed at killing the templars there is nothing Protoss can do to stop your hydra mass. After the sniping of the templars you can transition into a lurker contain or, if you are feeling confident, mass queens and broodling everything the Protoss has. Just remember that expanding and keeping the P contained is vital.
Do note that this build only becomes strong when you get your queens at 150. If anything you are at a disadvantage before that happens. A zeal archon push could end your cunning strategy right there. Also note that under any circumstances do not try using this strat against sair reaver.
Build Order
9 pool opening 12 hatch (nat) 12 hatch (third) 15 gas @ 100 gas Lair @ 50% Lair second gas and hydra den 2 additional hatches @ 100% Lair Queen's nest
Build enough hydras to fend off the sairs, keep your overlords safe.
Build 7-8 queens asap and hide them somewhere. Remember to spawn them at the same time so they are at equal energy. Start massing hydra, researching upgrades while saturating your bases with drones. I like to use 3 hatches for hydras and 2 for drones. Attack as soon as you have 150 energy. First parasite with one queen and then clone your broodling charges.
Sometime after this Hydra speed and range, ovie speed, broodling, +1 missile and later on queen energy upgrade, if you plan to use the queens more extensively.
Do note that I do not build a spire until way later. You need the gas and minerals for your fast queens.
This build needs a lot more optimisation. To get a good economy you need to know just when to stop pumping drones. Right now I tend to panic when using this strat and get hydras and upgrades earlier than I need to.
About the BO I posted. Can't build so many queens at such an early timing. Too many drones lost and your economy willl not be enough. Works only against D.
A solution could be to build a queen's nest when you get your lair, then 2 queens and at 110 energy research broodling. You should have the 2 Broodling charges at 9:00 and again at 12:20, if you don't use parasite. This is assuming you get gas at 15.
Pros:
- Two of the initial templars are almost guaranteed to die for P - Might fool the P into making a DA - Can use Parasite after the sniping or wait for new Broodling charges. Probably better to use Parasite. - This integrates minor queen usage into early play, so you don't have to worry about lack of APM. - Even when the P sees your queens he will not be able to really counter the broodling attack. - You can scout the P base with your queens. You know what he will be doing. Your 2 queens will hatch when the sair enters your base so you can immediately counter scout him. - If P goes sair reaver you can get ensnare instead of Broodling or just parasite the shuttle or sairs.
Cons:
- Everything will be a bit late for Z. - 400/400 (even in partial payments) early in the game might not be worth it for 2 templars, scouting and Parasite. - Does this mess up fragile timings? I know that it will not affect scourge against initial sairs, but mutas... an earlier gas will have to be taken if mutas are wanted at normal timing.
This is only something I have been thinking about recently. Your thoughts will be needed. I will post a replay when I get home.
Interesting I'm not going to bother debating the merits of Queen/Hydra as opposed to anything else because really, thats irrelevant in a thread like this (although its going to come up... *sigh*).
As an advocate of the Sair/Goon PvT I approve of this thread!!
(Add to liquipedia is thx!! :D)
EDIT: I think this post needs to be quoted in this thread
I did, as promised, some tests to calculate the %decrease in fire rate of ensnaire. Since zerg and toss have regeneration and teran buildings tend to die faster when at red HP i used tanks for ground damage and BC's or vessels for air damage. Before giving the results(which are very interesting and strange) i wanna state that they came from experiments and because of that may not be 100% precise. OK, enough with the silly introduction, let the numbers talk!!!!!!!
Zerg Units -Lings 15% decrease -Hydras 15% decrease -Mutes 15% decrease (quite boring huh?) -Ultras UNCHAGED!!!! Yes u read right. Ensnaire does not affect ultras. -Cracklings 25% decrease
Terran Units -Marines 17% decrease -Stimmed Marines 23% decrease (though other tests suggests it's more of 45-50%, negating stim entirely) -Golies UNCHANGED BOTH AIR AND GROUND. So next time dont be surprised if your lings get raped of ensnaired gollies -Wraith 16% decrease -BCs air 16%....BCs ground 4%. Pretty strange but i did this many times and the results were the same. Ensnaire has different effect on air and ground BCs attack!!!! -Valks 18-20% decrease. -I left firebats for the end because they are so hard to calculate. The trick is to have the tanks that take the damage at exactly the same angle towards firebats fire. If tanks are at 45 angle towards firebat fire they take more damage for some reason compared to 90 or 0 angle. Anyway, all things considered equal ensnaire decreases firebat rate by 29%. That's the largest decrease of all!!!
Toss Units -Zealots 16% decrease -Goons air 14%, Goons ground 11% decrease. Pretty strange again but that's what i found, period. -Archon air 20%, Archon ground 3% decrease. What can i say people, hope u correct me. -Dts 22% decrease -Carriers UNCHANGED. When ensnairing carriers directly, fire rate doesn't decrease. Then i tried to ensnaire some interceptors. I didn't notice any change either. That gave me much grieve!!!!! -Sairs 12% decrease -Scout air 16% decrease. Forgot to test ground.
I'd like to add that guradian's decrease is about 11% while (to my great dissapointment) siege tanks and reavers are not affected.
Lurker cooldown IS affected by ensnaire, but you have to ensnaire it while it is above the ground first in order to take affect. Ensnaring a burrowed lurker even though detected does nothing to its cooldown.
Using the terran tank as a target, I allowed the ensnared lurker to get the first hit, and the unensnared lurker to attack right after, the result being the unensnared lurker winning and the ensnared lurker's tank having 17 hp left at the time the first tank was destroyed.
I just woke up, so maybe my numbers are off but it would be around 11% decrease.
If you have enough mana left over 1-2 good ensares can very easily change the outcome of any hydra vs zeal/temp battles (more shots while zealots get to hydras + decreased zealot attack rate is a very sweet combo)
To be honest, I think Ensnare is more useful than Broodling, because you can afford to get more Hydras earlier instead of Queens, you don't need as many Queens, and it's half the mana cost. Ensnare on a big clump will make Hydra dancing that much easier, as you only need to contend with dodging storms. Besides, Ensnared units are pretty much useless.
That being said, I don't know how you'll be able to effectively hide the Queens, especially if the Protoss is scouting with Corsairs or notices your lower amount of Hydra (comparatively, with the timing). The fact that you have a Queen's Nest but aren't upgrading Hive should be a dead giveaway.
And once the Protoss knows you're committed to Queens, he might do something that wouldn't be feasible otherwise, such as perhaps making Dark Archons for Feedback (and eventually Maelstrom).
EDIT: Though do ask eri about his Queen use :D
EDIT: Also, here's a thread I made a while ago about Queens. It's a pretty good read:
On October 23 2008 09:44 Empyrean wrote: Because, no, I didn't make this thread two years ago (shifty eyes). I honestly feel that this topic needs discussing, but we need a new thread to do it in.
Anyway, I think they're an unappreciated unit that really doesn't get as much airtime as it should. They're probably one of the most cost effective Zerg units, and you only need to incorporate a few into your army to get a high utility from them, not to mention you'll already be building a Queen's Nest on your way to more standard Hive tech. Spells aren't that expensive either. Hell, if your queen got irradiated, just be glad it was your cheap 100/100 queen instead of your 50/150 Defiler or Lurker, etc. I honestly feel Queens are like the Defilers of 2004, in that no one really appreciated them and thought they were a trash unit (when in reality they kick massive ass).
Ensnare is probably the most useful Queen spell. It slows both movement speed and attack rate for units, often bringing fast-attacking units (Stimmed Marines are the most prominent example) down to a more managable speed. It also reduces movement speed, and makes flanking a whole lot easier. I believe Ensnare would be very effective in match ups such as ZvP, as Zealots would be slowed, Dragoons would hardly attack at all, and Archons would be pretty much useless with their Reaver-like speed and horrendously slow attack rate under Ensnare. Ensnare can also be used in ZvZ battles, and I believe that a Queen is worth the cost of a few mutas if you get an Ensnare on a Mutalisk clump. It's obviously not wise to just rush Queens, but I think eventually they'd be pretty useful in ZvZ as well.
Ensnare'd be useful when engaging the enemy to reduce enemy aggregate DPS. By slowing attack speed, if you integrate enemy damage with respect to time, you'll find that it's greatly reduced. Additionally, the fact that it slows down units pretty much prevents escape, as well as make it exceedingly difficult for the enemy to gain a positional advantage over you during your fight. An example would be Hydras vs. a Zealot-heavy army. Their Zealots won't be able to surround you effectively, and besides that, you won't be taking as much damage anyway thanks to the reduced DPS. Another example in TvZ (to relate this to a current topic, TvZ Valks), if you Ensnare the Valkyrie clump, you can easily eliminate them with Hydras without much fear of them flying away, thus ensuring they lost more than you did (Overlords vs. Valkyries).
On August 29 2006 15:38 Liquid`Drone wrote: it's really, really great vs sair/reaver (and carriers) but once again it only really helps if you have enough units to beat his units. if he can fight it out then it's not a big deal. but if you don't have ensnare and you manage to flank his corsairs with mutas and he doesnt have enough sairs to beat them, normally he can just retreat to cannons and try again later and you gained nothing but with ensnare you can actually kill all his units then. vs sair reaver it can often be gamedeciding :O
The most effective use of Parasite is in its "soft power" ability. What I mean by that is that it basically shuts down the use of whatever unit it's targeting. If, say, you target an expensive like an Archon, you either force it to show you the unit composition of its army through its vision, or force the Protoss to basically abandon the unit so that it doesn't show much. If, say, he just puts it in a corner somewhere so he doesn't show his tech, it can't be used against you. And if he decides to actually use it, you get to see his army and some positions of it, even if he brings it in at the last moment. Either way, you either get an advantage in information or an relative advantage in power (as compared to if the Archon had not been parasitized). Additionally, Parasite can be used on other "important" units such as Shuttles or Science Vessels. Certainly, those units are used often by the enemy, and if he's forced to just abandon that unit somewhere so he doesn't reveal the location of the impending Reaver drop or Irradiate raid, you'll have countered the utility of that unit, effectively costing him whatever the unit cost was for that unit.
I'll also mention the cliched uses of Parasite. Yes, you can parasite creatures and enemy workers. It's actually not as effective as going after a high-value enemy target. They'll probably suicide the worker (though yes, you'll have seen some buildings and such), and you don't have control over any critters. That's why I advocate using it on targets such as Science Vessels/High Templar/etc.
Spawn Broodling, though, is very expensive energy-wise, and probably isn't as efficient as the other two spells. But still, it could be used for example, against a Terran by forcing Tank splash onto the Broodlings you create, thus hurting his own units if they're clumped. But I think the only reason Broodling could potentially be used is in a long stalemate, by periodically picking off important units. Still, Broodling pays for itself after a few uses, especially if you target, say, Tanks, or High Templar. Additionally, if you get rid of some "core" units like that, you'll delay the enemy because his army will be significantly weaker . You could choose to engage then with his strategic tools taken away. Seriously. Fighting a Templarless army ZvP is significantly easier, and if you have some extra queens, he'll basically have no way to counter Ensnare. But all in all, at 150 energy, Spawn Broodling is very expensive.
Just for the hell of it, this is what eriador has to say about Infest:
On August 29 2006 15:38 Liquid`Drone wrote: and infest is fucking AWESOME. especially if people don't know you're the kind of guy who likes to infest. (eventually against players I knew I only really got to infest command centres I would otherwise have killed cause every time a cc started burning they immediately started repairing just cause it was me ) but when I played vs unknown nonkoreans I could like come in with a queen 2 minutes after a battle and take the cc cause they just didn't care about it having 600 hp but I won a lot of games with infest as well
On August 29 2006 15:38 Liquid`Drone wrote: I always thought using queens was easy as hell easiest spellcaster in the game imo ensnare STICKS to whatever unit you throw it at, so unlike storm you don't need to anticipate where the units are moving. you just press e and then left mouseclick on the unit in the middle. in addition the queen is flying thus you never have to take account for it getting blocked by other units (like defilers can sometimes get when you're trying to swarm. or templars with storm. ) maybe it's hard to keep track of where they are but I never had that problem as I always hotkeyed queens to 0.
and drowsy is pretty much correct. I played a zvt style of play where queens helped me tremendously. with other styles of play you also benefit greatly later on, but if you're doing a standard 3 hatch muta into lurker ling kind of thing, you actually have more problems spending 400 gas on getting fast queen than I did with my hiverush.
also broodling is almost useless (cept for stalemates pretty much but terran wins that due to irradiate anyway), and you don't need more than 2-3 queens.
and in zvp they're really good if you have lings vs goons and he tries running or you have hydra vs zealot archon and he tries running if you're up against a zealot goon archon templar force and you don't have enough units to beat the force in the first place, ensnare doesn't help that much. still enough to spend 300/300 on it though. for sure. but it'll very rarely be gamedeciding. (unlike zvt where I would often win because of ensnare. )
and zvz they're really great in theory but usually there isnt any point in the game where you can spend 400 gas on 2 queens queens nest and ensnare.
Finally, I'd like to open the floor to discussion on Queens being a potential "counter" of sorts to the recent increased popularity of Valkyries + a more mech heavy force. Obviously, Parasite works wonders against Valkyries due to the reasons outlined above, and Ensnare can also really fuck them over since you can pick them off easily once you've sacrificed some Overlords and probably your Queen to get that Ensnare off. But hey, you just hydralisked that Valkyrie clump.
And Chill, this isn't a Queen rush ;D...just throwing it out there
By not using up 800/800 for Mutas, you get to use it on queens. It would just require higher apm to execute Spawn Broodlings properly but it would be better if P got some anti-muta units. I think 3 hatch spire transitioned to 5 hatch hydra has its ability to save larva for mutas after getting a bunch of hydras therefore, would catch the P off-guard. He has to delay his push to get some anti-muta units. Plus, mutas can give you that advantage when he hasn't build any cannons in his mineral line.
I'm not saying this isn't viable but, I'd like to point that out this just needs to be a transition when you're assuming that the P would go for more dragoons/archons/sair or the anti-muta units.
I think the problem is broodling's mana cost, really. Timingwise, you need to build your queens and wait for them to charge up, then cast broodling, and you need to have several queens to really pick off templar, whereas mutas can start killing shit the second you reach critical mass and only lose functionality after being killed. Not sure it's worth it.
On July 07 2009 00:30 Batibot323 wrote: By not using up 800/800 for Mutas, you get to use it on queens. It would just require higher apm to execute Spawn Broodlings properly but it would be better if P got some anti-muta units. I think 3 hatch spire transitioned to 5 hatch hydra has its ability to save larva for mutas after getting a bunch of hydras therefore, would catch the P off-guard. He has to delay his push to get some anti-muta units. Plus, mutas can give you that advantage when he hasn't build any cannons in his mineral line.
I'm not saying this isn't viable but, I'd like to point that out this just needs to be a transition when you're assuming that the P would go for more dragoons/archons/sair or the anti-muta units.
You are forgetting alot of the other benefits of mutas. Once queens snipe the templar they serve no further purpose other than potential scouting. Mutas aren't just a 1 shot unit to kill templar then die. They can be used to further damage the P army once the HT are sniped. They force more cannons in the main and depending on the nat setup, some in the nat. Mutas can be used to stop drops, snipe probes laying around the base, shutting down expos before they get up, etc.
I've actually tried this a few times, and the biggest problem I found was how long it took to recharge enough energy to broodling again. I was able to stop the first push using 4 or so broodlings, but the P pushed out again with more HT faster than I could recharge the energy needed. 150 is just way too much for broodling. The queen is really just a slightly more viable ghost. In theory you can always think of some great ideas to abuse the units spells, but in reality it's not that great.
On a side note, I think getting a fast queen vs sair reaver to parasite the shuttle, then maybe ensnare later on would actually be pretty useful.
After watching the demo I think its really worth using queens. Parasite has great vision range, and it decloaks dark templars. Very useful, and queen is also great scout herself. And parasiting one Archon is invaluable for the info you get, you could argue that queen payed itself already with only that parasite. If toss kills the archon, its quite a loss for him.
I think smaller number of queens, about 3-4, would be, at least for start, better solution for standard hydra build. Getting 6-8 queens is excessive. Parasiting 1 templar/archon and killing 3 other high templars is invaluable, and standard strategy would be that much boosted. For the cost of 4 queens, protoss would be screwed and his timings would suffer, since protoss also have to wait templar's mana pools.
It will take some apm but i think its very viable. It would be nice if some more skilled player, would try experimenting a bit with build/s - incorporating few queens in it.
Btw even if we forget about broodling, since its slow - mana wise/inefficient to base whole gameplay on it, wouldn't be useful, for a cost of say 2-3 queens, to parasite expensive protoss units constantly through the game. I bet it would be very annoying : ).
Yes, you make them chase ur mutas with their corsair group and once they get over ur burrowed hydras u ensare and scourge them. This is how i counter reaver sair builds..
I really wish we'd see more Queen usage in pro games. I find it very hard to believe that in a late-game TvZ or PvZ that queens ensnare would not pay for itself. Even catching 1-2 units that you wouldnt have would pay for the queen. I've seen all the queen abilities used in pro games and every time it seems to help them a lot more than if they never used it.
Great write-up, hopefully we will see some more queen action in the future :D
I think this could actually work--actually--and well for a time. However, it's like a rookie pitcher's first trip around the majors. It seem magical, and then after they've seen him enough, the balls start flying off the bats. If Protoss see this enough, the magic will be all gone.
The real problem with this is that it is far too easily countered. It's a big investment particularly in gas, and the queens are completely defenseless if found in their hiding space. 2+ corsairs and they're all gone.
Great effort and a nice organization of and old but fun as hell build.
But the real question, what is going to keep you from getting run over by pure goon?
Answer: Nothing
Good luck holding 3 bases while getting fast mass queen against a decent.
And I actually think queen/hydra would work BETTER against sair reaver than against ground only play. But with parasite/ensnare obviously
Also you need to factor in feedback. Feedback rapes queens pretty badly. Id love to play against this off race(im a z user) as P though. I think it would be fun to test out the timings/dynamics of it.
The rep posted is kinda blah...the p isn't very strong.
There are a LOT more benefits of mutas that you're neglecting. One is map control, another is it forces p to spend about 900 in mins JUST to defend from it (3 cannons by the min lines).
On the other hand, 1 queen while going to hive tech is awesome and something everyone (including me) should get used to doing. Parasite is a great and cheap skill...100/100 for the queen...thats it! Its just hard toget used to actually using it.
Yeah, I agree with Plexa. The other thing is, if the parasite queens still have mana left over [based on the timings, they might], they could ensnare escape if it was really a problem. Might be able to get scourge in time [I'd say yes, especially if the queens are semi close to a base] to counter that.
On July 07 2009 03:05 Weaponx3 wrote: Yes, you make them chase ur mutas with their corsair group and once they get over ur burrowed hydras u ensare and scourge them. This is how i counter reaver sair builds..
On July 07 2009 03:25 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Great effort and a nice organization of and old but fun as hell build.
But the real question, what is going to keep you from getting run over by pure goon?
Answer: Nothing
Good luck holding 3 bases while getting fast mass queen against a decent.
And I actually think queen/hydra would work BETTER against sair reaver than against ground only play.
Also you need to factor in feedback. Feedback rapes queens pretty badly.
Yeah. Feedback will be a problem. Depends on the range of both I suppose. Isn't broodling seriously long range? With first strike, you might be able to dodge this problem.. but you'll definitely lose some queens in the process.
The other thing is if they go pure goon, you can probably revert to standard play without that much expense.. unless you're pushing queens like a 3 hatch muta rush and saving larva [which sounds way too fast to me]. Should you survive you have the queens nest still. I don't know the effectiveness of ensnare on goons, but if you had a queen or two built you can always research that as well.
Seems flexible enough to be able to adapt to that situation though, if you're scouting it.
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Theres no point in hiding the queens imo.
Just keep them with your hydras.
Any decent p is going to fly a sair around your base/bases and be like hmmmm...this is odd I guess hes going for ....queens? WTF.
Something weird just happened. I saw the picture and read the title and I thought why is there a Marine in the picture??? Read a bit more and scrolled back up and now there's a High Templar there. How the fuck did I see a Marine first?!?! hahaha
On July 07 2009 03:59 McCrank wrote: Something weird just happened. I saw the picture and read the title and I thought why is there a Marine in the picture??? Read a bit more and scrolled back up and now there's a High Templar there. How the fuck did I see a Marine first?!?! hahaha
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know In fact I think they are as fast as speed upgraded vultures (or maybe a tad slower)
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know In fact I think they are as fast as speed upgraded vultures (or maybe a tad slower)
Yeah, Queens, Mutas, and Scourge were always the worst units to face in those defense maps
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know In fact I think they are as fast as speed upgraded vultures (or maybe a tad slower)
Fair enough, but be that as it may, they are still defenseless. Epic Protoss counter: Speed upgraded scouts?
did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know
Actually, queens, corsairs, mutas and scourge (and speed-upgraded scouts) are all the same speed.
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know
Actually, queens, corsairs, mutas and scourge (and speed-upgraded scouts) are all the same speed.
I disagree, Speed upgraded scouts are definitely faster. Don't know about queens for sure, but definitely the other stuff.
On July 07 2009 03:24 Plexa wrote: Disagree Arrian, thats like saying if your overlords are found in their hiding place 2+ corsairs and they're all gone (this is clearly not the case!)
Ah, but overlords are a necessity. Queens have less health, and their helplessness cannot be an argument for having to guard them, too.
The implication in the OP is that you have to hide your queens. Hiding them separates them from what can defend them, generally. With overlords, you keep them close and you can defend them.
Queens are faster than corsairs you know
Actually, queens, corsairs, mutas and scourge (and speed-upgraded scouts) are all the same speed.
I disagree, Speed upgraded scouts are definitely faster. Don't know about queens for sure, but definitely the other stuff.
Speed upgraded scouts sure are zippy. Natural sprinters. Very dangerous at short distances.
Seems really expensive. And for that reason this needs a build order, cant just explain how to micro queens and think anyone can do this.
Ok :p i just read the build order and the main disadvantage i see it has is the lack of spire. if you have no spire, the first few corsairs will make you cry and may even cost you the game, hiding the queens isnt really viable.
PS op...you seem to have a very poor grasp of basic zvp skills, for example, you wrote: --- Build 7-8 queens asap and hide them somewhere. Remember to spawn them at the same time so they are at equal energy. Start massing hydra, researching upgrades while saturating your bases with drones. I like to use 3 hatches for hydras and 2 for drones. Attack as soon as you have 150 energy. First parasite with one queen and then clone your broodling charges. ---
Its horrible to pump units from some hatches and drones from others at the same time. Zerg should be pumping only drones or only units because its much much more effcient to do so. Your build order should get only 4 or so hydras then make only drones until your 3 bases are full. Then 6 or so queens, then only hydras until 150 energy. Make sunks as needed depending on what you scout.
Also in ANY zerg build you need to make a spire. The threat of mutas is far too valuable not to have. Even if you dont even make any scourge and he sair scouts you its worth it. If he doesnt sair scout you and you made the spire, make like 2 mutas and scout/hit open probes. The pressence of even 2 mutas will most likely make him cannon up (in case you might send more).
PS Feedback has a range of 11 im pretty sure. Its definitely AT LEAST as long as any spell the queen can cast.
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
I switched to zerg's vision in that replay in 1st post, and you can parasite Zealot, and since his zealot sees his dark templar you can see it also. So basically you dont need to parasite obs, you can parasite anything. I think with his last queen attack in the demo that he also killed a dark templar with broodling. I'm quite sure I saw it well :D
I will use more queens in my games as of now : ) at least for parasite, its extremely nice to see where are his units. And in all the fuss he might even not notice parasite on his unit.
I'm pretty sure this isnt true... It shows up in the replay but it wouldnt be visible in the actual game. You'll notice when the dt is being killed theres an ovie near by
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
I switched to zerg's vision in that replay in 1st post, and you can parasite Zealot, and since his zealot sees his dark templar you can see it also. So basically you dont need to parasite obs, you can parasite anything. I think with his last queen attack in the demo that he also killed a dark templar with broodling. I'm quite sure I saw it well :D
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
queens are good, they are just too micro inefficient. I would use them if ensnare had a faster cast time(instant would be good) and/or if spawn brood ling was slightly cheaper.
It's good in theory, but requires too much work and isn't as flexible as mutas. Queens can't do anything without energy and all those gas you need to research upgrades really slow down your lurker production. Mutas also aren't only templar snipers, they can be used very effectively in combination with hydras, lings and lurkers after killing of temps.
Not to mention you will either get rolled, or the protoss will take a 3rd without you being able to do much about it, if you are saving up 800/800 for queens. You can do this with mutas because mutas are instantly effective against HT/zealots etc.
Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
On July 07 2009 07:28 Probe. wrote: If queen were good progamers would use them more often. It's as simple as that.
edit: i wish i played more zergs that thought like OP.
If Valkyries were good progamers would use them more often. It's as simple as that.
If you don't get what I'm saying it is this, Valkyries have only been being used more often in TvZ very recently. The game is still changing and Pro-gamers are not the only ones capable of developing new strategies.
I played a ZvP on Andromeda the other day where I made queens. At first it was because he'd turtled so hard, I'd taken the map, and I had no scout on him or his army whatsoever so I parasited the neutral kakaroo thing and waited for it to fly over his base. It took so long that I just parasited the first thing I saw in his base, which happened to be a corsair.
Turns out he was going carriers. Instead of overreacting and building a ton of devourers, I built about 15 queens and started moving them around his base in a taunt. Then I built a lot of devourers. I'd say that's pretty close to the most useful a queen has ever been for me.
It was an interesting guide, but i think that queens could be used more effectively if ensnare was simply used.
Zerg units have a higher ROF and DPS than protoss units, and really ensnare is just going to make this difference even more pronounced. Goon micro would be pointless, and because ensnare is only 100/100 and 2/3 queens 100/100 I feel that it could be a very viable thing to do during the midlate / early late game.
Just simply cut out a muta or two or delay your lurker upgrade (if you are playing 5 hatch hydra)
That i think would easily be able to benefit zerg in the late game. You will still have the muta out, and the protoss army is going to be severely hampered.
Really i feel that heavy queen use could be a great counter to mass range goon templar. Just for the simple fact of the ROF and DPS difference that ensnared goons would be dealing with against hydra. In that respect i feel that the queen could be the most useful. However broodling is just too much of an investment, and the 150mp cost is too great.
Once again- nice guide and thanks for the great writeup it was very thought provoking.
On July 07 2009 07:28 Probe. wrote: If queen were good progamers would use them more often. It's as simple as that.
edit: i wish i played more zergs that thought like OP.
Read jaedong's interview on queens and ensnare. Yes broodling sucks but even jaedong thinks ensnare could be quite good.
He basically says it could be very good but not even he has the apm to do everything that needs to be done AND use queens effectively but he works on it in practice sometimes.
So not its not that simple. Besides parasite is very useful. If youve started hive, might as well make a queen to be honest. Just for the parasite and possible cc infest. So many games I get a cc to yellow and think hey...if only I had a queen right now...
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 07:55 Arrian wrote: I played a ZvP on Andromeda the other day where I made queens. At first it was because he'd turtled so hard, I'd taken the map, and I had no scout on him or his army whatsoever so I parasited the neutral kakaroo thing and waited for it to fly over his base. It took so long that I just parasited the first thing I saw in his base, which happened to be a corsair.
Turns out he was going carriers. Instead of overreacting and building a ton of devourers, I built about 15 queens and started moving them around his base in a taunt. Then I built a lot of devourers. I'd say that's pretty close to the most useful a queen has ever been for me.
Ok so basically what youre trying to say is that you suck at bw?
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
They're the same speed.
You sure about that?
I've seen a scourge catch up and kill a corsair that was running away from it many times. In my experience scourge are VERY slightly faster than Corsair.
I use queens sometimes against Sair/DT, Sair/Reavers, and 2 port Wraith for Ensnare. They're always pretty awesome.
On July 07 2009 07:55 Arrian wrote: I played a ZvP on Andromeda the other day where I made queens. At first it was because he'd turtled so hard, I'd taken the map, and I had no scout on him or his army whatsoever so I parasited the neutral kakaroo thing and waited for it to fly over his base. It took so long that I just parasited the first thing I saw in his base, which happened to be a corsair.
Turns out he was going carriers. Instead of overreacting and building a ton of devourers, I built about 15 queens and started moving them around his base in a taunt. Then I built a lot of devourers. I'd say that's pretty close to the most useful a queen has ever been for me.
Ok so basically what youre trying to say is that you suck at bw?
I see I see...very interesting.
I challenge you to a ZvZ queens only to defend my honor! If nothing else, my queen taunting micro is unrivaled. You cannot hope to win, because my broodlings are magical and never run out of energy.
In those instances the P probably made a slight turn torwards the angle the scourge was comming from since the scourge was probably RIGHT behind it the scourge caught up.
If scourge really were slightly faster than they would ALWAYS catch a sair running in a staight line across the map but instead they NEVER do. Keep in mind, the sair path has to be perfectly straight and if it does turn it needs to be a sharp angle/an angle away from the angle the scourge is comming at.
On July 07 2009 07:28 Probe. wrote: If queen were good progamers would use them more often. It's as simple as that.
edit: i wish i played more zergs that thought like OP.
Read jaedong's interview on queens and ensnare. Yes broodling sucks but even jaedong thinks ensnare could be quite good.
He basically says it could be very good but not even he has the apm to do everything that needs to be done AND use queens effectively but he works on it in practice sometimes.
So not its not that simple. Besides parasite is very useful. If youve started hive, might as well make a queen to be honest. Just for the parasite and possible cc infest. So many games I get a cc to yellow and think hey...if only I had a queen right now...
Look if jaedong can't use queens effectively, no one can. GIVE UP.
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
They're the same speed.
You sure about that?
I've seen a scourge catch up and kill a corsair that was running away from it many times. In my experience scourge are VERY slightly faster than Corsair.
I use queens sometimes against Sair/DT, Sair/Reavers, and 2 port Wraith for Ensnare. They're always pretty awesome.
Yes, I am very sure about it as I have witnessed my scourge chase corsairs over the entire length of Destination with the distance between my scourge and the corsairs stay exactly the same until I had to pull them back before they run into cannons.
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
They're the same speed.
You sure about that?
I've seen a scourge catch up and kill a corsair that was running away from it many times. In my experience scourge are VERY slightly faster than Corsair.
I use queens sometimes against Sair/DT, Sair/Reavers, and 2 port Wraith for Ensnare. They're always pretty awesome.
Yes, I am very sure about it as I have witnessed my scourge chase corsairs over the entire length of Destination with the distance between my scourge and the corsairs stay exactly the same until I had to pull them back before they run into cannons.
They're exactly the same speed.
I just tested it.
With a corsair moving straight at full speed, no commands being given to it, and a Scourge chasing it, the Scourge will catch up VERY VERY VERY slowly.
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
They're the same speed.
You sure about that?
I've seen a scourge catch up and kill a corsair that was running away from it many times. In my experience scourge are VERY slightly faster than Corsair.
I use queens sometimes against Sair/DT, Sair/Reavers, and 2 port Wraith for Ensnare. They're always pretty awesome.
Yes, I am very sure about it as I have witnessed my scourge chase corsairs over the entire length of Destination with the distance between my scourge and the corsairs stay exactly the same until I had to pull them back before they run into cannons.
They're exactly the same speed.
I just tested it.
With a corsair moving straight at full speed, no commands being given to it, and a Scourge chasing it, the Scourge will catch up VERY VERY VERY slowly.
scourge is faster unless corsair flies diagonal. Trust me.
On July 07 2009 07:30 koreasilver wrote: Isn't it just better to spend money on mutas as mutas can not only snipe high templars, but are also better for use in buying time by harassing their base and forcing them to make cannons in their minlines, forcing the protoss to make archons, etc.
On July 07 2009 05:23 Nevuk wrote: Scourge are definitely faster than sairs.
They're the same speed.
You sure about that?
I've seen a scourge catch up and kill a corsair that was running away from it many times. In my experience scourge are VERY slightly faster than Corsair.
I use queens sometimes against Sair/DT, Sair/Reavers, and 2 port Wraith for Ensnare. They're always pretty awesome.
Yes, I am very sure about it as I have witnessed my scourge chase corsairs over the entire length of Destination with the distance between my scourge and the corsairs stay exactly the same until I had to pull them back before they run into cannons.
They're exactly the same speed.
I just tested it.
With a corsair moving straight at full speed, no commands being given to it, and a Scourge chasing it, the Scourge will catch up VERY VERY VERY slowly.
scourge is faster unless corsair flies diagonal. Trust me.
surprised ensnare is not used more really. i mean surely the slowing down of attack/speed is worth the cost. plus good against sairs, and sneaky parasites of units in base can give you constant eyes on whats going on
On July 07 2009 02:28 invy wrote: After watching the demo I think its really worth using queens. Parasite has great vision range, and it decloaks dark templars. Very useful, and queen is also great scout herself. And parasiting one Archon is invaluable for the info you get, you could argue that queen payed itself already with only that parasite. If toss kills the archon, its quite a loss for him.
I think smaller number of queens, about 3-4, would be, at least for start, better solution for standard hydra build. Getting 6-8 queens is excessive. Parasiting 1 templar/archon and killing 3 other high templars is invaluable, and standard strategy would be that much boosted. For the cost of 4 queens, protoss would be screwed and his timings would suffer, since protoss also have to wait templar's mana pools.
It will take some apm but i think its very viable. It would be nice if some more skilled player, would try experimenting a bit with build/s - incorporating few queens in it.
I think a lot of the problems in using queens is that it's hard to get the timings down of when they regenerate the energy, and so it's also hard to keep track of them.
I imagine with enough use a good player could become quite efficient with them.
sadly though, ensnare just isn't very good against toss so they really dont have a point besides broodling.
however broodling is good against any toss unit since they are all expensive
I was trying really hard to make this work on iccup before. It works very well if you manage to get a perfect clone at the right time, then send in all of your hydras, but that happened quite rarely in my experience. The biggest problem is the 2 minutes and 44 seconds before your queens can broodling. That's a long bloody time for which your 800/800 investment is useless. With so much money lost the protoss will easily have the superior army and can just about do as he pleases. There's no way you can stop the protoss from taking another expo like you can with muta hydra, and I'd imagine that they'd even be able to hold a 4th. Finally, dark archon feedback just decimates queens. It has 12 range and costs 75 energy.
On July 07 2009 11:28 Wonders wrote: I was trying really hard to make this work on iccup before. It works very well if you manage to get a perfect clone at the right time, then send in all of your hydras, but that happened quite rarely in my experience. The biggest problem is the 2 minutes and 44 seconds before your queens can broodling. That's a long bloody time for which your 800/800 investment is useless. With so much money lost the protoss will easily have the superior army and can just about do as he pleases. There's no way you can stop the protoss from taking another expo like you can with muta hydra, and I'd imagine that they'd even be able to hold a 4th. Finally, dark archon feedback just decimates queens. It has 12 range and costs 75 energy.
Yea feedback is 50 energy, has huge range and INSTANT CAST. So a full energy DA being controled by a fast player could kill 4 queens before they can cast the broodling due to the casting delay.
It's really easy to splash ensnare over tons of mutas and once the numbers are high enough, I honestly thinks it it worth the gas. Of course, well played ZvZ rarely gets that far but it still happens sometimes and it's quicker then getting guardians and/or plague or something.
I'm not good or anything but I've used Queens + Ensnare to win some large scale muta battles pretty decisively.
On July 08 2009 09:34 Strayline wrote: What about queens in ZvZ?
It's really easy to splash ensnare over tons of mutas and once the numbers are high enough, I honestly thinks it it worth the gas. Of course, well played ZvZ rarely gets that far but it still happens sometimes and it's quicker then getting guardians and/or plague or something.
I'm not good or anything but I've used Queens + Ensnare to win some large scale muta battles pretty decisively.
Anyone else use this trick?
That would only ever work if the game comes to a long stalemate, which almost never happens. And if the game does go into a stalemate, I'd rather invest the gas into upgrades and plague than ensnare.
On July 08 2009 09:34 Strayline wrote: What about queens in ZvZ?
It's really easy to splash ensnare over tons of mutas and once the numbers are high enough, I honestly thinks it it worth the gas. Of course, well played ZvZ rarely gets that far but it still happens sometimes and it's quicker then getting guardians and/or plague or something.
I'm not good or anything but I've used Queens + Ensnare to win some large scale muta battles pretty decisively.
Anyone else use this trick?
That would only ever work if the game comes to a long stalemate, which almost never happens. And if the game does go into a stalemate, I'd rather invest the gas into upgrades and plague than ensnare.
It's pretty nice to use whenever the game goes past both players having 2gas. Teching to queens is also alot more realistic than defilers in most cases. Getting 1 queen with ensnare requires so much less gas than getting queens nest, hive, defiler mound, consume, plague, defilers.
You can do some funny stuff when you have queens out. Like ensnaring the majority of his mutas in the middle of the map, then raiding his base to kill his spire or drones, then running away before he can come defend.
I always thought there is a good reason why I never saw Spawn Broodling in a pro VOD (a few ensnares were seen though). Even though I thought killing units just like that is awesome.
It seems cost effective to kill high templar and many other protoss units, as well as siege tanks for terrans, even if the queen dies after killing just that one unit (100m100g for anything protoss/terran 100g +, why not). However in practice, queens take long to up their mana and thus you have to commit a lot of resources for something that you aren't getting any help from for a couple of minutes. Making 6 + queens relatively early creates a weakness gap that lasts until they get enough mana to do their thing. This would probably be well noticed and exploited by good players. Not to mention them going mass sair reaver if they see you making queens, or just making several corsairs to kill them off. I believe Feedback on DAs costs 50 mana. You can even Maelstorm them.
There would be countless strategies that would be used to nullify SB queens, but you cannot say from here since you never even see pros try them out. Killing queens is easy. Heck, a good toss could just shuttle his hts and then drop + storm when he sees an opportunity.
I wish this was possible, but there are too many reasons that say otherwise, at least on a higher level of play. Queens just can't keep with the tempo of Starcraft. Maybe in a very very unsettled, long and an economical drain game (when terrans turtle up too much after getting enough bases and try to beat you with effectiveness, you can snipe their tanks for example), they would be useful, but even then ....
On July 08 2009 09:34 Strayline wrote: What about queens in ZvZ?
It's really easy to splash ensnare over tons of mutas and once the numbers are high enough, I honestly thinks it it worth the gas. Of course, well played ZvZ rarely gets that far but it still happens sometimes and it's quicker then getting guardians and/or plague or something.
I'm not good or anything but I've used Queens + Ensnare to win some large scale muta battles pretty decisively.
Anyone else use this trick?
That would only ever work if the game comes to a long stalemate, which almost never happens. And if the game does go into a stalemate, I'd rather invest the gas into upgrades and plague than ensnare.
It's pretty nice to use whenever the game goes past both players having 2gas. Teching to queens is also alot more realistic than defilers in most cases. Getting 1 queen with ensnare requires so much less gas than getting queens nest, hive, defiler mound, consume, plague, defilers.
You can do some funny stuff when you have queens out. Like ensnaring the majority of his mutas in the middle of the map, then raiding his base to kill his spire or drones, then running away before he can come defend.
But plague is so much more decisive than a queen. I dunno, I've only gone to hive tech in ZvZ once, but the game was already over as I killed my opponent in the big muta fight at +2 armor timing and killed his nat and main. I only went hive to go guardians because my opponent massed like 15 spore colonies with lurkers and turtled at his third.
I'm not really sure if it's just better to go ensnare instead of plague. I've always seen pros go for plague in drawn out ZvZs, and plague does seem to be much more decisive.
On July 08 2009 09:34 Strayline wrote: What about queens in ZvZ?
It's really easy to splash ensnare over tons of mutas and once the numbers are high enough, I honestly thinks it it worth the gas. Of course, well played ZvZ rarely gets that far but it still happens sometimes and it's quicker then getting guardians and/or plague or something.
I'm not good or anything but I've used Queens + Ensnare to win some large scale muta battles pretty decisively.
Anyone else use this trick?
That would only ever work if the game comes to a long stalemate, which almost never happens. And if the game does go into a stalemate, I'd rather invest the gas into upgrades and plague than ensnare.
It's pretty nice to use whenever the game goes past both players having 2gas. Teching to queens is also alot more realistic than defilers in most cases. Getting 1 queen with ensnare requires so much less gas than getting queens nest, hive, defiler mound, consume, plague, defilers.
You can do some funny stuff when you have queens out. Like ensnaring the majority of his mutas in the middle of the map, then raiding his base to kill his spire or drones, then running away before he can come defend.
But plague is so much more decisive than a queen. I dunno, I've only gone to hive tech in ZvZ once, but the game was already over as I killed my opponent in the big muta fight at +2 armor timing and killed his nat and main. I only went hive to go guardians because my opponent massed like 15 spore colonies with lurkers and turtled at his third.
I'm not really sure if it's just better to go ensnare instead of plague. I've always seen pros go for plague in drawn out ZvZs, and plague does seem to be much more decisive.
If queen had consume i would use them. Defiler is just sooooo much better IMO.
The bigger reason for queens rather than defilers wouldn't be the gas cost but rather that you can get queens faster than defilers, so you can hit at a faster timing. Plague is just so much better than ensnare in a muta battle that the gas cost is completely worth it. The thing that would concern me more is the time.
On July 08 2009 20:07 darktreb wrote: Sickest thread timing in TL history?
Agreed, heck, Bisu even went Goon Heavy + got a DA for feedback, still didnt work . OP is a friggin genius.Zero even hid the queens in a corner of the map rofl.
On July 07 2009 03:25 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Great effort and a nice organization of and old but fun as hell build.
But the real question, what is going to keep you from getting run over by pure goon?
Answer: Nothing
Good luck holding 3 bases while getting fast mass queen against a decent.
And I actually think queen/hydra would work BETTER against sair reaver than against ground only play.
Also you need to factor in feedback. Feedback rapes queens pretty badly.
Yeah. Feedback will be a problem. Depends on the range of both I suppose. Isn't broodling seriously long range? With first strike, you might be able to dodge this problem.. but you'll definitely lose some queens in the process.
The other thing is if they go pure goon, you can probably revert to standard play without that much expense.. unless you're pushing queens like a 3 hatch muta rush and saving larva [which sounds way too fast to me]. Should you survive you have the queens nest still. I don't know the effectiveness of ensnare on goons, but if you had a queen or two built you can always research that as well.
Seems flexible enough to be able to adapt to that situation though, if you're scouting it.
broodling is 6, feedback is 8, one of the highest. paracite is also 8.
One thing I got to note though is how the zerg player used the terrain to his advantage. By hiding his queens on cliffs. He could quickly clone the broodlings without the protoss even knowing what's going on. This wouldn't have happened on a more open map. But on maps with such terrain, it's very good because you can basically sneak attack. Whereas mutas don't have the range to get rid of the temps before the protoss army could respond.
Keep in mind what zero did was a lot different than whats described in the op as far as the timing and overall idea of the build. Instead of a queen "rush", its a defensive macro build for most of the game. Turtling (very well I might add) to 4 base, zero macros like a god, throwing in the extra 600/600 of queens as a finishing finesse move timed perfectly to finish the game in one attack. Instead zerg loses significant power while defending those 4 bases but if its done carefuly enough/against the right build the risk can pay off big as we saw here. Also remember that the zerg requires a large amount of time (2 minutes or so) for the queens used in the attack to become useful again so there is a significant window in time for the p to adapt should he survive the period after the initial broodlings.
I think if Bisu had used a build that mixed reavers into the build he used in this game the out come may have been strongly in bisus favor. The game would change completely if P was able to do good damage to the lurk defensive line without losing a lot of units like bisu did here. Reavers would allow a P with good micro to break such a defensive line with very little loses. The reavers coudl then be used to defend key chokes during the counter attack period after the temps have been neutralized.
From there P could/should try to hold and maintain the center base with a robo + reavers as added fortifciation. Once P controls those 2 gases they can afford to make enough temps/archons/and a few das to maintain a balanced and unstoppable death ball into the late game without the absence of temps(the das would eventually stop the queen threat, with either maelstrom + goons if z is careless and clumps them a bit or loses track, or feedback).
Of course mixing in reavers into your army creates a whole new set of weaknesses that zerg can exploit so its by no means simple. But I think reaver on heartbreak is a good idea no matter what zerg is doing. Its a strong unit for the layout of that map. Mainly because of the high/narrow ground near the ridges that force units close together, but also the mobility of speed shuttles to harass the spread out bases, and the layout of the map which often causes zerg to mass lurkers to defend/redefend key uphill locations on both sides of the map depending on where p goes. With reavers it forces the zerg to leave this strong position and either come down the hill to engage, or retreat and give up the position.
On July 08 2009 20:37 baubo wrote: Note: Names not used to preserve the spoiler.
One thing I got to note though is how the zerg player used the terrain to his advantage. By hiding his queens on cliffs. He could quickly clone the broodlings without the protoss even knowing what's going on. This wouldn't have happened on a more open map. But on maps with such terrain, it's very good because you can basically sneak attack. Whereas mutas don't have the range to get rid of the temps before the protoss army could respond.
Yes it was nice, but a lot of the time it can backfire if P is more active with there sairs/obs. Its entirely possible for a sair or ob to fly a little too close and give away the position of your queens, making the task at hand much much more difficult.
While queens looked extremely powerful in this game, I don't see them becoming a staple of zerg play anytime too soon. Not to say that it can't happen.
On July 07 2009 02:28 invy wrote: After watching the demo I think its really worth using queens. Parasite has great vision range, and it decloaks dark templars. Very useful, and queen is also great scout herself. And parasiting one Archon is invaluable for the info you get, you could argue that queen payed itself already with only that parasite. If toss kills the archon, its quite a loss for him.
I think smaller number of queens, about 3-4, would be, at least for start, better solution for standard hydra build. Getting 6-8 queens is excessive. Parasiting 1 templar/archon and killing 3 other high templars is invaluable, and standard strategy would be that much boosted. For the cost of 4 queens, protoss would be screwed and his timings would suffer, since protoss also have to wait templar's mana pools.
It will take some apm but i think its very viable. It would be nice if some more skilled player, would try experimenting a bit with build/s - incorporating few queens in it.
it decloaks dts? but only if you parasite themself i guess. or does the parasited unit decloak nearby cloaked units? o_O
this would be quite cool actually... then i'd get a single queen to parasite my own units to get more mobile detectors. parasited ling + burrow at mineral line + sunk = safe from dt harass o_O
On July 08 2009 20:37 baubo wrote: Note: Names not used to preserve the spoiler.
One thing I got to note though is how the zerg player used the terrain to his advantage. By hiding his queens on cliffs. He could quickly clone the broodlings without the protoss even knowing what's going on. This wouldn't have happened on a more open map. But on maps with such terrain, it's very good because you can basically sneak attack. Whereas mutas don't have the range to get rid of the temps before the protoss army could respond.
Yes it was nice, but a lot of the time it can backfire if P is more active with there sairs/obs. Its entirely possible for a sair or ob to fly a little too close and give away the position of your queens, making the task at hand much much more difficult.
While queens looked extremely powerful in this game, I don't see them becoming a staple of zerg play anytime too soon. Not to say that it can't happen.
Orbs are always placed in front of the protoss army to find lurkers. So unless the protoss actively seek out queens, the orbs are not going to be placed well enough to find them. Not to mention you can always scout with an ovie beforehand to make sure. As for corsairs, the zerg can simply react and not make queens in the first place.
I agree that it's not something that can be a staple of ZvP. Because it is situational. But it does appear that Zero's usage of it in this game definitely worked better than if he had just made mutas the standard way. What really amazed me is how those queens were even capable of using broodling twice in the game, which is one of the problems mentioned here against the usage.
Still, you have to have some damn good micro ability to use it well though. And Zero is really, really fast.
On July 07 2009 03:25 TheFoReveRwaR wrote: Great effort and a nice organization of and old but fun as hell build.
But the real question, what is going to keep you from getting run over by pure goon?
Answer: Nothing
Good luck holding 3 bases while getting fast mass queen against a decent.
And I actually think queen/hydra would work BETTER against sair reaver than against ground only play.
Also you need to factor in feedback. Feedback rapes queens pretty badly.
Yeah. Feedback will be a problem. Depends on the range of both I suppose. Isn't broodling seriously long range? With first strike, you might be able to dodge this problem.. but you'll definitely lose some queens in the process.
The other thing is if they go pure goon, you can probably revert to standard play without that much expense.. unless you're pushing queens like a 3 hatch muta rush and saving larva [which sounds way too fast to me]. Should you survive you have the queens nest still. I don't know the effectiveness of ensnare on goons, but if you had a queen or two built you can always research that as well.
Seems flexible enough to be able to adapt to that situation though, if you're scouting it.
broodling is 6, feedback is 8, one of the highest. paracite is also 8.
EDIT: lmao, I used the search function for this, until I realized I'm not actually bumping it -_-. EDIT2: Didn't read last page before posting. I guess the YT link could be useful anyways?
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
Arbiters aren't detectors. Parasited DETECTORS detect for you, not parasited arbiters.
This build CAN work but only as fun build - like stove, some kind of nuke rush wariation or some other weird build that will work because noone really practised against it.
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
Arbiters aren't detectors. Parasited DETECTORS detect for you, not parasited arbiters.
This build CAN work but only as fun build - like stove, some kind of nuke rush wariation or some other weird build that will work because noone really practised against it.
Umm, a fellow progamer Zerg used it vs the best Toss in the world, it worked. Just read the thead. + If you parasite a enemy unit you get its sight, so you see the enemy dts and cloaked units.
On July 08 2009 20:07 darktreb wrote: Sickest thread timing in TL history?
I doubt it. This is way too much for a coincidence. How many days are there in a year times how many years pro starcraft have existed for. That's a 1/3650 = 0.002% chance that this is a coincidence.
Either Village Idiot is actually Zero posting here to troll us. Or he has psychic abilities. There is no other viable alternative.
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
Arbiters aren't detectors. Parasited DETECTORS detect for you, not parasited arbiters.
This build CAN work but only as fun build - like stove, some kind of nuke rush wariation or some other weird build that will work because noone really practised against it.
Umm, a fellow progamer Zerg used it vs the best Toss in the world, it worked. Just read the thead. + If you parasite a enemy unit you get its sight, so you see the enemy dts and cloaked units.
I saw that game live. And "the best Toss in the world" is IMO nowadays sloppy as every Korean protoss ATM.
Also about parasites - did i state other way? But good luck trying parasiting whole protoss army so that none unit is hidden by arbiter Either parasite obs or ensnare whats under arb.
Plus - Zero is not just "fellow progamer Zerg" - he is great Zerg capable of defeating "best Toss in the world", as we just saw in that game. I'm not gonna argue if Zero would win that game w/o queens but i'm sure that they were not game-breakers - he just used them but they didn't turn the tables, he was able to win that games w/o them.
And besides you didn't read my post did you? Because i'm sure that Bisu did NOT practice vs that build. I'll quote myself so that you can read again part which you prolly didn't pay attention to: "This build CAN work but only as fun build - like stove, some kind of nuke rush wariation or some other weird build that will work because noone really practised against it."
Would you call nukes powerful just because Boxer won few games with them? Or medic's blind ability? It's just fun thing, no revolution there bro!
We just don't know. Let's just say, the pros adapted Zero's build and they tried to master it add a few tweaks to it? Maybe, we can see it as an additional strategy for ZvP and of course, protoss would have also made some counters to it.
This thread has just turned epic. Well done, I'm looking forward to the near future of PvZ, with this and the reinvented slowdrop (More 2gate in the leagues? yes please:D)
On July 08 2009 23:49 538 wrote: This thread has just turned epic. Well done, I'm looking forward to the near future of PvZ, with this and the reinvented slowdrop (More 2gate in the leagues? yes please:D)
yeah whatever leads to more variation other than FE
hmm looks like progamers are also browsing and reading TL xD
it was an awesome tactic by Zero , just a shame that he used it on my fav gamer ... i cannot wait to see more tactics of this kind , its just awesome to watch .
On July 07 2009 03:05 Weaponx3 wrote: Yes, you make them chase ur mutas with their corsair group and once they get over ur burrowed hydras u ensare and scourge them. This is how i counter reaver sair builds..
OH MAN YOURE SO GOSU.
LOL. Can you imagine how hard that would be to consistently pull off?
1. Run mutas to burrowed hydras 2. Unburrow hydras at perfect time seconds before cors fly over 3. Select Queen and hit cors with perfect ensnare shot 4. Clone scourge.
Totally feasible!
I do, however, agree that 1 or 2 queens can be good at defending expos against sair/reaver, but mainly for parasite on shuttle and simple ensnare/hydra. Parasiting shuttles is far and away the queen's best use in terms of energy/cost ratio IMO.
On July 08 2009 20:07 darktreb wrote: Sickest thread timing in TL history?
I doubt it. This is way too much for a coincidence. How many days are there in a year times how many years pro starcraft have existed for. That's a 1/3650 = 0.002% chance that this is a coincidence.
Either Village Idiot is actually Zero posting here to troll us. Or he has psychic abilities. There is no other viable alternative.
On July 07 2009 05:04 Pyro]v[aniac wrote: did you guys know that parasited detectors also detect for you as well as give you their vision. So if you parasite one of thier obs, you will see thier DT's, or better yet see all the units under an arbiter. Just throwing that out there...
Arbiters aren't detectors. Parasited DETECTORS detect for you, not parasited arbiters.
This build CAN work but only as fun build - like stove, some kind of nuke rush wariation or some other weird build that will work because noone really practised against it.
Umm, a fellow progamer Zerg used it vs the best Toss in the world, it worked. Just read the thead. + If you parasite a enemy unit you get its sight, so you see the enemy dts and cloaked units.
I saw that game live. And "the best Toss in the world" is IMO nowadays sloppy as every Korean protoss ATM.
oreally? He's 7-3 in his last 10 with wins over Jangbi, free and Leta. He's consistantly over 60% in all of his MU's and he commented on PvZ as "easy" If your comparing Bisu with "every Korean protoss" you're sadly mistaken. There's a reason he's considered S class.
Fucking bisu keeps losing to zergs on heartbreak ridge who do any strategy outside the ordinary. Good thing i never liked Bisu. Reach could've Man-toss'd those queens to death.
Also i take back what i said about queens not being good, and if queens were good progamers would use them more often. OP is a genius.
On July 09 2009 06:18 Apex wrote: Ahahahha, that's what I call a Timing Post.
Is Village Idiot a psychic? He doesn't even need to defend the strategy as feasible now. Zero just did that for him. L O L
Once again i'd like to remind people that zero's build is a lot different than village idiots(beyond the obvious execution / difficulty of opponent issues).
The build, exactly as the op describes it, is NOT viable at high level play.
On July 09 2009 05:34 Probe. wrote: Fucking bisu keeps losing to zergs on heartbreak ridge who do any strategy outside the ordinary. Good thing i never liked Bisu. Reach could've Man-toss'd those queens to death.
Also i take back what i said about queens not being good, and if queens were good progamers would use them more often. OP is a genius.
Reach would've gotten raped even without the queens
On July 09 2009 05:34 Probe. wrote: Fucking bisu keeps losing to zergs on heartbreak ridge who do any strategy outside the ordinary. Good thing i never liked Bisu. Reach could've Man-toss'd those queens to death.
Also i take back what i said about queens not being good, and if queens were good progamers would use them more often. OP is a genius.
Reach would've gotten raped even without the queens
I actually think Reach would have held off Zero better than Bisu. Reach's control with Dark Archon's is actually quite decent (although he's only used them a handful of times). But I have to agree on the fact that Reach probably would have lost as well.
On July 09 2009 05:34 Probe. wrote: Fucking bisu keeps losing to zergs on heartbreak ridge who do any strategy outside the ordinary. Good thing i never liked Bisu. Reach could've Man-toss'd those queens to death.
Also i take back what i said about queens not being good, and if queens were good progamers would use them more often. OP is a genius.
Reach would've gotten raped even without the queens
I actually think Reach would have held off Zero better than Bisu. Reach's control with Dark Archon's is actually quite decent (although he's only used them a handful of times). But I have to agree on the fact that Reach probably would have lost as well.
Why do people think DA's are actually any good versus Queens?
Queens are fast, they have a long range on their spells, and the only time the protoss ever sees them (especially on HBR) is after they've launched their spells. Feedback doesn't do a damn thing on a unit that has no energy.
When the zerg player used queens he used it pretty damn well and smoothly too. It worked out quite well but it probably requires a lot of apm and such. Not all that sure it's really viable if toss scouts with sairs and stuff but only time will tell.
I read this the other day and thought it'd be cool but probably never happen. I watched Zeros game and I was just going crazy, awesome timing =D good call
On July 09 2009 05:34 Probe. wrote: Fucking bisu keeps losing to zergs on heartbreak ridge who do any strategy outside the ordinary. Good thing i never liked Bisu. Reach could've Man-toss'd those queens to death.
Also i take back what i said about queens not being good, and if queens were good progamers would use them more often. OP is a genius.
Reach would've gotten raped even without the queens
I actually think Reach would have held off Zero better than Bisu. Reach's control with Dark Archon's is actually quite decent (although he's only used them a handful of times). But I have to agree on the fact that Reach probably would have lost as well.
Why do people think DA's are actually any good versus Queens?
Queens are fast, they have a long range on their spells, and the only time the protoss ever sees them (especially on HBR) is after they've launched their spells. Feedback doesn't do a damn thing on a unit that has no energy.
Bisu opted for them as the counter. Seems good enough for me.
(queens have a low 120hp, especially compared to their energy pool of 250. Spawn broodling needs 150 to cast, so if a queen is close to the protoss, it must be nearing 150, hence, it can be instantly killed by a feedback. If it has casted a feedback already, there's still chance of doing up to 100 damage what presumably kills any wounded queens. (most of Zero's queens were wounded, either due to stray dragoon shots or that one storm))
I think its obvious that its much easier for zerg to kill high templar than for toss to catch the queen(s) when they are 120-150 energy and when queens are actually in the range of DA. And this is especially easier for zerg if he parasited toss units and he knows where DA's are.. so DA can't counter queens that easily, it takes apm and a lot of concentration of toss players to counter queens that way.
On July 08 2009 23:34 Kaniol wrote: Plus - Zero is not just "fellow progamer Zerg" - he is great Zerg capable of defeating "best Toss in the world", as we just saw in that game. I'm not gonna argue if Zero would win that game w/o queens but i'm sure that they were not game-breakers - he just used them but they didn't turn the tables, he was able to win that games w/o them.
wtf? You're not gonna argue whether zero would have won that game without queens, then the very next sentence you jump out and say "he just used them but they didn't turn the tables, he was able to win that games w/o them." How much dumber does it get?
On July 08 2009 20:07 darktreb wrote: Sickest thread timing in TL history?
I doubt it. This is way too much for a coincidence. How many days are there in a year times how many years pro starcraft have existed for. That's a 1/3650 = 0.002% chance that this is a coincidence.
Either Village Idiot is actually Zero posting here to troll us. Or he has psychic abilities. There is no other viable alternative.
On July 09 2009 23:50 tobi9999 wrote: lol, queens are good for parasiting critters particulary those birds(kakarus?) free maphack on maps with a lot of them.
Not really...check out the 4th post in the thread:
On October 23 2008 09:44 Empyrean wrote: The most effective use of Parasite is in its "soft power" ability. What I mean by that is that it basically shuts down the use of whatever unit it's targeting. If, say, you target an expensive like an Archon, you either force it to show you the unit composition of its army through its vision, or force the Protoss to basically abandon the unit so that it doesn't show much. If, say, he just puts it in a corner somewhere so he doesn't show his tech, it can't be used against you. And if he decides to actually use it, you get to see his army and some positions of it, even if he brings it in at the last moment. Either way, you either get an advantage in information or an relative advantage in power (as compared to if the Archon had not been parasitized). Additionally, Parasite can be used on other "important" units such as Shuttles or Science Vessels. Certainly, those units are used often by the enemy, and if he's forced to just abandon that unit somewhere so he doesn't reveal the location of the impending Reaver drop or Irradiate raid, you'll have countered the utility of that unit, effectively costing him whatever the unit cost was for that unit.
I'll also mention the cliched uses of Parasite. Yes, you can parasite creatures and enemy workers. It's actually not as effective as going after a high-value enemy target. They'll probably suicide the worker (though yes, you'll have seen some buildings and such), and you don't have control over any critters. That's why I advocate using it on targets such as Science Vessels/High Templar/etc.
On July 09 2009 06:18 Apex wrote: Ahahahha, that's what I call a Timing Post.
Is Village Idiot a psychic? He doesn't even need to defend the strategy as feasible now. Zero just did that for him. L O L
Once again i'd like to remind people that zero's build is a lot different than village idiots(beyond the obvious execution / difficulty of opponent issues).
The build, exactly as the op describes it, is NOT viable at high level play.
But still the concept timing was so great lol.
Yes. The point of village_idiot's build is, presumably, to stop the P's push to take their 3rd, which should come a lot earlier (because you don't have mutas preventing it). Queen/hydra seems really aggressive, whereas Zero's strategy was purely defensive, and at a much later timing.
On July 07 2009 00:11 village_idiot wrote: This build requires good economy and is meant to counter the Protoss FE by containing the Protoss to 2 bases or ending the game in a hydra break.
Sorry for the groundless statement, but neither a "good" economy nor containing P to 2 bases is going to be possible with the build you outlined. I think ensnare+hydra would work better, too
i'm really un convinced by the "DAs counter queens" arguement... in both of zeros games where he's used queens vP the toss player has made DAs and they've done just about nothing! DAs cost 250/200! over twice what a queen costs, and take the use of 2 gateways so they seem quite impractical for massing as defense...
zeros queens did almost nothing after the initial 5-6 templar snipe, but with that attack he destroyed bisus army. after that, iirc he only did one parasite for the whole rest of the game, but the advantage he had from there allowed him to run bisu over, bisu might have been better served with more goon than that DA as zero killed him before getting enough energy to spawn broodlings again.
theorycrafting... if zero had researched ensnare after broodlings (i don't remember how much that costs), with a timing to finish sometime after that first snipe attack (so fairly late in the game) those queens might have been useful again (as ensnare only takes 75 energy, which zero must have reached cause he used parasite) for ensnare flanks/countering any corsair play later... thoughts?
That's because in his game vs. Bisu, Bisu had no idea that Zero was revolving his game around killing off his templars with a large number of queens, and by the time Bisu got a DA the game was already over.
In the second game against whoever it was, Zero only made one queen to fake out his opponent, and his opponent, due to Zero's previous ZvP on the map against Bisu, made a precautionary DA but Zero wasn't planning on doing what he did to Bisu, and therefore the DA became a waste of resources.
with the recent use of Valkaries by Fantasy and Queens by Jaedong in ZvT and now in by ZerO in ZvP? thats why I love this game. ive seen people just FLAMED for even suggesting these units are usefull.
ZerO/BisU was one of the best games ive seen in a long time.
i tried this build in some variations on C level it works great against worse protosses but against protosses with a good skill level the strategy has to be modified because it is very vulnerable to some sort of aggressive play like fe into cors into 3 gate speedlots i think the best way is to build up as usual and get more defensive by building lurkers and try to accumulate queens afterwards still it is really difficult to hide your queens until they have 150 energy because you have to waste energy on ensnare against aggressive protoss players since your defense suffers from spending money on queens
Your replay didn't prove much since your opponent attempted and failed a cheese. You were ahead by so much at that point that it didn't matter what you had used. He also didn't make any corsairs so mutas would've been even more effective.
[QUOTE]On July 07 2009 00:15 Plexa wrote: Interesting I'm not going to bother debating the merits of Queen/Hydra as opposed to anything else because really, thats irrelevant in a thread like this (although its going to come up... *sigh*).
As an advocate of the Sair/Goon PvT I approve of this thread!![QUOTE]
I always was a fan of Sairs in PvT, but i could never really make a good BO for it, also I think that queens in PvZ would work as a surprise atack but if it were scouted i think it would be easily countered. But worth a try.
After reading this thread, seeing the Zero game and playing some games it has become painfully apparent that the build I suggested in the original post sucks ass. It only works as a very fun all-in, which leaves you massively behind economically and leaves you extremely vulnerable to pretty much everything the P throws at you before your Queens get full energy.
The problem is making so many Queens so early in the game, which screws you up big time.
To fix this I would not go and try invent a whole new way of playing the matchup, but integrate slight Queen usage into regular play.
I'm talking about going the standard muta hydra route, but investing into 2 queens as soon as you get your Lair. The way I see it you would get 2 Broodling charges slightly before 9:00 and again at slightly before 12:20. This way you would essentially get 4 "free" templar kills relatively early in the game for a slight delay in everything. This could also trick the Protoss into making a Dark Archon for a measly 2 queens.
How this would slow down your economy:
100/100 for a Queen's Nest when Lair finishes 200/200 for two Queens when Nest finishes 100/100 for Broodling when Queens have 110 energy
Just throwing this in the air and theorising, please share your view on the matter.
I haven't been able to find this answer in this thread yet. What happens to vision if you parasite a ground unit and a shuttle picks it up? Does the vision stop and continue when dropped, or does it temporarily transfer to the shuttle?
Also, if you parasite an observer, do you gain detector vision?
I just tried this idea on iccup and it seems completely viable to me. I lost due to my lack of queen-micro skill but with practice I think it could be a useful strategy.
On July 17 2009 01:24 Hung wrote: Also, if you parasite an observer, do you gain detector vision?
You wouldn't get detector vision because the observer would only detect your own units since it is your opponent's observer.
Wait what? Yes you do. Since when are observers discriminatory over whose units it detects?
You wouldn't because it is still in your opponent's control and it detect enemy units.... meaning, it would only detect your units..... which you already have vision of....
On July 17 2009 01:24 Hung wrote: Also, if you parasite an observer, do you gain detector vision?
You wouldn't get detector vision because the observer would only detect your own units since it is your opponent's observer.
Wait what? Yes you do. Since when are observers discriminatory over whose units it detects?
You wouldn't because it is still in your opponent's control and it detect enemy units.... meaning, it would only detect your units..... which you already have vision of....
It'll detect everything like a detector does, it doesn't discriminate between a unit's color/team/owning-player.
On July 17 2009 01:24 Hung wrote: Also, if you parasite an observer, do you gain detector vision?
You wouldn't get detector vision because the observer would only detect your own units since it is your opponent's observer.
Wait what? Yes you do. Since when are observers discriminatory over whose units it detects?
You wouldn't because it is still in your opponent's control and it detect enemy units.... meaning, it would only detect your units..... which you already have vision of....
If you parasite it then uh... it detects the opponent too...
On July 17 2009 01:24 Hung wrote: Also, if you parasite an observer, do you gain detector vision?
You wouldn't get detector vision because the observer would only detect your own units since it is your opponent's observer.
Wait what? Yes you do. Since when are observers discriminatory over whose units it detects?
You wouldn't because it is still in your opponent's control and it detect enemy units.... meaning, it would only detect your units..... which you already have vision of....
If you parasite an observer hte observer will give you detection. Sorry buddy.
Rofl ok. I just assumed it wouldn't give you detection of their units if you parasited it, but that still makes sense. I don't exactly have much experience using queens so... lol
You could have just checked it when people first said it would work. Slightly on topic, I've also seen people parasite the opponent's overlords in ZvZ when pushing into a base protected by lurkers.
... yes, it was a long time ago when it wasn't all muta/ling. :p
I figured a good use of queens would be against a 2 stargate build on something like outsider where its harder to move around expansions. If you have enough scourge and you land that ensare it would decimate the entire force of sairs. Not entirely game ending but it would give you map control and force the protoss to stay put. it just requires some baiting with muta with a queen in there.
Also scourge are slightly faster than sairs. They get very close, thats why the pro's sometimes have to juke out the scourge with ai glitching
On July 17 2009 08:17 hyst.eric.al wrote: i thought it was reasonable till i read "7 to 8 queens" and deemed it a huge waste of resources
about 6 queens are fine, thats 600/600
Most Z players who use mutalisks to snipe HT ususually pop more than 6 mutas (costs more) and mutas die easier because they need to be at a closer range
If you have leftover energy after you snipe all his HT's, you can take advantage of ensnare
I think its perfectly viable, as shown in Zero vs Bisu
with mutas you can hit zealots and dodge around archons and the like, and 6+ mutas forces cannons at his min lines, unlike queens. queen temp sniping is viable, i think ensnare is more useful though, 1-2 queen and ensnare going with normal hive tech timing is cheap and adds a useful element to your army, anyone know why progamers forgo a queen or two with ensnare when they tech hive? for instance, a lurk contain with ensnare as additional backup very hard to break imo, if you have a large number of lurks containing along with other units, double esnare the army if they go for a break, it adds up to a shitload of extra spines hitting them, they move slower when heading from lurk to lurk, and if they try to back out theyll take a lot of extra.
You guys definitely don't play enough Broodwar for fun if you don't know how Parasite works.
If you parasite a detector (Observer, Overlord, Science Vessel) then you can see any cloaked enemy units within range.
If you parasite a cloaked unit, you can see that cloaked unit, but no others near it.
If you parasite neutral critters, nobody will notice and you'll have free scouts around the map.
If you parasite a ground unit, that is then picked up by a shuttle/overlord/dropship, you will lose vision until it is dropped down. You will then get vision again.
If you parasite a drone that morphs into a building, you don't get a parasited building
Parasite is most useful on detectors or transports because they tend to be expensive and important to keep track of.
Late game ZvT should always have 1 queen, since you'll get the nest anyways, and 100/100 isn't much when you have 3-5 bases. It's great for picking off damaged CC's, as it can effectively do 700 damage. Also, parasite on vessels allows you to keep track of the cloud.
10-11-12 mutas vs 8 queens and broodling. Almost the same gas cost. mutas pros and cons : INfinite fire amount, mobile, deadly when stacked, but fragile, worse when stacked to a storm and archons. queens : Can parasite archons, mobile, can cast either parasite or ensnare (when upgraded), fragile but don't need to be stacked at all, broodling can be used only 1 time untill the energy restores.
I guess, it's safe to say against mass goons, sniping templars with mutas ain't a good idea... That's about it.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i417.photobucket.com/albums/pp259/ASDFfighter/queentemplar.png)
I'm not going to bother debating the merits of Queen/Hydra as opposed to anything else because really, thats irrelevant in a thread like this (although its going to come up... *sigh*).
![[image loading]](http://repdepot.net/img/thumbs/35598.jpg)
