|
I find that, unless you do some all-in ling/speedling rush build, there's no point to having zerglings. In nearly every match-up, with the exception of perhaps ZvZ (in some cases), as a Zerg you have to get roaches as your initial offensive/defensive units.
Roaches are so easily accesssible, and are far superior to zerglings in every way. They're far better at defending early M/M/M pressure from Terrans, as well as zealot and stalker pressure from Protoss.
Even late game, 'cracklings' just don't seem to be what they used to be, and the minerals appear to be far better spent on other units.
Marines and Zealots still play a role in their respective race's army mixes, where as Zerg seems to have no benefit from the squishy and ineffective zergling. It seems like they only exist for the sake of banelings.
Thoughts?
|
if anything I consider zerglings imbalanced right now for 2 reasons
1) You cannot scout a zerg once he makes 2 lings early game
2) They can run through unit walls
mid they still seem useful, late game if they were any better they would probably be too good
|
United States7166 Posts
EDIT: i'm laughing so hard right now reading my post from this morning..i wasn't thinking clearly at all obviously
zerglings suck vs zealots but if theyre going for a fast immortal + 3gate timing attack, zerglings + like 6+ish banelings will crush it. later on once they get immortals (LOL WHAT i meant to say colossuses) zerglings are awful again, no amount of spreading will help. ofc if you can manage to keep Neural Parasite on them or kill them w/ colossus(i meant CORRUPTORS) then of course zerglings are once again decent..unless theres a lot of zealots in which case you need banelings or other units
zerglings are also quite good vs terran in general, but you need to open roaches unless you see him building up marauders early. most common is hellion harass where only speedlings will work vs that, but roaches better.
it's important to note that due to the queen's larvae mechanic, zerglings are one of the few units you can actually manage to keep using up the larvae for when you have expo and 2 queens
|
imo linge are fast + cheap and they are a good and early counter to immortals and stalkers.
its the same like sc1 you need a good army mix and good scouts to build the right unit.
i mean it wouldnt make sense to build only roaches (cause "there's no point to having zerglings") if the P rushes for robo and immortal without building any gate unit. finally getting hard countered by the immortals and start screaming IMBA
|
United States4126 Posts
I don't have much experience as Zerg, but it sounds like mutaling would be a good unit composition against Protoss. Zerglings > Stalkers/Sentries and mutas should be able to handle phoenixes well. The only problem seems to be HT.
Of course, this is just all theorycrafting. I've never tested this or heard of anyone doing it yet.
|
That's not really true. When I play T the toughest opener I face is ling/baneling. They are really tough to gauge... I see their army and I'm not sure if mine will beat it or not and that's mainly because i haven't played with and against banelings enough to know the difference, but I do know they do some insane splash to marine clumps and tear depots down fast.
I've lost a few games where I was positive I could kill them and I was totally wrong and got rolled.
|
they really need to change the crack upgrade. in sc1, it provided the lings with a 100% attack speed boost. now its only 20%. i'm sure this will be addressed. also roaches r pretty overpowered atm. after they'll be nerfed, lings will regain some of their utility
|
on platinum level i feel like alot of protoss and terran are specifically building roachcounters, like 1gate cyb core, robo and 2nd gate and push with 2 imortals 4 zealots 1-2 stalkers when they see me fast expanding. Same with terra who usually go with alot of marauders early, and only few marines..
Vs those builds zerglings are very important and way way better then roaches. Since i often even skip roachwarren completely, i can get my eco / lair up alot faster and usually have hydras out for their first push and hydras + zerglings just own everything that was build to counter roaches sooo badly 
|
The way I do it is make initial zerglings with your first puke then get lair after getting speed, then make baneling hut and start making lings/banelings. If 2 gate rush then just massing lings will take care of it.
If I scout hellion+banshees rush then I just do roach into hydra den.
|
lings are fine, lost more than twice as much games to ling openings than to roaches /pvz
|
On March 12 2010 06:31 da_head wrote:
they really need to change the crack upgrade. in sc1, it provided the lings with a 100% attack speed boost. now its only 20%. i'm sure this will be addressed. also roaches r pretty overpowered atm. after they'll be nerfed, lings will regain some of their utility
No.
In SC1, zerglings had cooldown of 8 normally, and 6 with adrenal glands upgrade. That's a 25% boost in attack speed.
|
i sduppose ling are useless like now..they need to get more damage per hit..
|
On March 12 2010 06:49 BlasiuS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 06:31 da_head wrote:
they really need to change the crack upgrade. in sc1, it provided the lings with a 100% attack speed boost. now its only 20%. i'm sure this will be addressed. also roaches r pretty overpowered atm. after they'll be nerfed, lings will regain some of their utility No. In SC1, zerglings had cooldown of 8 normally, and 6 with adrenal glands upgrade. That's a 25% boost in attack speed.
are you sure? visually observing the increase in attack speed for both games, there's clearly a huge distinction or merely its just a visual difference
|
I pretty much always only use speedlings early game against toss and terran until I get Hydras with pretty good success. I fucking love them.
|
I think zerglings are doing fine at the moment. The biggest issue is that they're being eclipsed by roaches, which I think are a bit too good with the armor they have.
|
......... lings are sooo good
|
I'd lose most my games without lings
They're easy counter tech switches, since pretty much anything that counters a roach, a zergling can counter.
GREAT worker harass. Backstabbing or even choke breaks have proven really successful
with speedlings. It's great cuz you dont need to 'waste' gas on roaches for your offense/defense, instead waste a few minerals to keep the pressure on with the lings and you can tech anyway you want
|
Zerglings are still very useful units but their role shifted somewhat from what they used to be. Since the entire zerg army has had their movement speed slowed down somewhat (except zerglings) you cant really use zerglings as standard army filler anymore. Now, their incredible speed makes them great harass, scout, ambush, or run down units rather than army filler. I love zerglings now, but you can't use them the way you could before.
However, they still counter other unit compositions pretty well. If you see a protoss going heavy stalker/immortal with few zealots, Zerglings do really really well.
I had a pretty amazing game where Zerglings really saved me in the end against a top 8 Platinum player. Replay: http://lore.mysites.com/get_file/2010-week-10/win-vs-bento-gg.sc-2-replay
|
I feel like roaches are the new zerglings. Like the zerglings in SC1, they are powerful in the early game, kinda lose their effectiveness in midgame but get a kickass upgrade on hive, so they are worth it again. Also, they are used in all matchups and are pretty costeffective against almost every ground unit.
If Blizzard decides to nerf the roaches I demand some kind of improvement for the zerglings. Like increase their attack rate and the bonus of adrenal glands or something like this.
|
I don' know what your aiming at FREEloss_ca, but Zerglings are in ZvP and ZvT the unit I build most. They give you mapcontrol and are so damn fast and versatile. In ZvT they own any non-medivac army, if there are too many marines incomming just morph some to banelings. In ZvP they rape any non mass-zealot- or colossus army. In ZvZ they are great for backstabbing. If you uprade their attack they are very decent against buildings. Don't bother with the cracklingupgrade though, it only ads minor dmg.
Another thing to mention, if you are lategame and stockpiling minreals, just get some extra hatcheries with queens, trade armies and rally 100 larvae morphing to speedlings into enemies base, gg.
|
Roaches will never replace zerglings in my arsenal. Zerglings are still a great unit in my opinion; as well as being extremely good for their cost. I feel like this is especially the case because gas is an even more precious resource in sc2.
|
On March 12 2010 06:49 BlasiuS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 06:31 da_head wrote:
they really need to change the crack upgrade. in sc1, it provided the lings with a 100% attack speed boost. now its only 20%. i'm sure this will be addressed. also roaches r pretty overpowered atm. after they'll be nerfed, lings will regain some of their utility No. In SC1, zerglings had cooldown of 8 normally, and 6 with adrenal glands upgrade. That's a 25% boost in attack speed.
Actually you need to inverse the cooldown (and maybe add the time the animation takes?) to get what I would call "attack speed", so your percentage is off (33% increase if one neglects the animation).
Yeah, I felt like nitpicking 
|
Zerglings are absolutely amazing in SC2. For one, they don't cost any gas, and you usually have WAY more minerals than gas in SC2. Autosurround makes them very powerful despite the greatly nerfed attack speed from SC1. Anti-armored units like Marauders, Thors and Immortals get absolutely destroyed by zerglings.
Zerglings get eaten by anti-zergling counters like Hellions and Colossus but that's expected.
The only time zerglings feel weak is when going head-to-head with zealots pre-Crack upgrade. That's what banelings are for. Even though the crack upgrade is only 20%, it is enough of a difference to allow lategame zerglings to beat equal-supply zealots.
|
Mystlord
United States10264 Posts
Zerglings are awesome. Zergling/Baneling in ZvT, Zergling/Roach/Baneling and later Mutas in ZvP...
Ok they suck in ZvZ.
But Lings are far from useless.
|
Lings are fine, they just need to be micro'd or else they will fail against everything.
Great for scouts and defense until tech/roaches.
|
I think they have so much less usefulness now. I don't believe they are bad or overpowered but the time to use them is very situational and in many cases I believe Starcraft 2 is a game where melee units(Zeal, ling, archon) don't really have a place. Other than zeal/ling being gasless of course.
Another big issue is that no one is going to upgrade melee attack when all your money in the mid/early late game is going to a roach/hydra/muta/brood lord army and there are a lot of armored units now. Makes it kinda hard to switch to ultra/ling late in the game
|
In ZvP I get a handful of lings at the start to scout, but other than that, I'm going straight to lair and getting roaches and hydras; hydras to take out immortals and colossus and roaches for sentries, stalkers and zealots. The only time when lings are thrown in the mix is when I have extra minerals and no gas.
As far as ZvT goes, I have no idea what I'm doing. I build as many creep tumors as I can and try to build a ling/baneling army but it's never enough. I'm not sure when to cut drones and when to power; I'm either struggling for minerals and can't get a big enough army, or I powered too much and my army is still too small by the time T arrives on my doorstep.
I just feel that versatility the zergling once had is non-existent due to so many hard counters.
|
=S
I use tons of zerglings to hold off early Protoss pushes. The only things that pure zerglings can't stop very well are 2-3 gate early aggression and +1 zealots.
Banelings+Zerglings are my early army vs Terran.
They do seem pretty useless in ZvZ though.
|
You almost always have more minerals then gas past the early game. This means that zerglings, being the only non-gas unit, can't possibly hurt to make as just extra units.
It also still hurts like hell to get a good flank and surround on any enemy grouping. Even if they seem to be less effective then in SC1, the better pathing ability lets you do horrible, horrible things with a control group that only costs you 500 minerals.
I would also point out the obvious scouting and harassment abilities of a unit that costs 25 minerals and runs fast as hell, but I don't want to insult your intelligence with something so obvious, and figured you were referring strictly to straight up battles.
|
From the perspective of someone without the beta who only watches platinum games, zerglings seem rarely used other than the initial 2-6, as they are superseded by roaches and hydras really quick. I appreciate that there are people who use them, but the starcraft2 media is not showing this.
|
On March 12 2010 08:09 Maenander wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 06:49 BlasiuS wrote:On March 12 2010 06:31 da_head wrote:
they really need to change the crack upgrade. in sc1, it provided the lings with a 100% attack speed boost. now its only 20%. i'm sure this will be addressed. also roaches r pretty overpowered atm. after they'll be nerfed, lings will regain some of their utility No. In SC1, zerglings had cooldown of 8 normally, and 6 with adrenal glands upgrade. That's a 25% boost in attack speed. Actually you need to inverse the cooldown (and maybe add the time the animation takes?) to get what I would call "attack speed", so your percentage is off (33% increase if one neglects the animation). Yeah, I felt like nitpicking
The animation is "inside" the cooldown, there's no additional time between attacks.
The attack speed(and subsequentually DPS) bonus is 33.(3)%, as you said.
|
On March 12 2010 06:27 Kinky wrote:
I don't have much experience as Zerg, but it sounds like mutaling would be a good unit composition against Protoss. Zerglings > Stalkers/Sentries and mutas should be able to handle phoenixes well. The only problem seems to be HT.
Of course, this is just all theorycrafting. I've never tested this or heard of anyone doing it yet.
You can dodge storm, too. This strat can be pretty powerful.
|
I agree with a previous poster about how you can't use lings the same was as in sc1.
For me though, it seems like lings are effective while the numbers for each side are relatively low, Like lings vs marauders. I feel like once a decent ranged ball of units builds up they actually are pretty useless though. Or a couple well placed force fields and then my lings went from having the possibility to do big damage to doing practically no damage.
I think lings are ENTIRELY useless when it comes to getting early game pressure / worker harras though. In ZvZ because of the queen 6 lings will do nothing to workers + queen and if you have 2 roaches you better have 10+ lings for each one. PvZ well protoss can block their ramps now with buildings, useless. TvZ, well they can still block, useless.
Where I've found lings being succesful though is in a small minority of the army composition to be fodder for my better units and a quick reinforcer mid fight. Like in zvp if my lings can eat 3 shots from a colossus off my hydras that's a big difference then just having like 2-3 extra hydras and no lings. Same thing with muta /ling against stalker / sentry, assuming a force field doesn't change every thing.
|
Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
Too much stupidity here. Also general point - stop PMing me when your thread gets closed please. We are cleaning this joint up.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
