|
Just had a silly Idea, but maybe it is worth a try:
How much better is worker pathing now? How much income do you lose by placing your main building a little farther away from your mineral line?
I believe this question is even more pertinent with Z, since you can just place a hatchery in the good spot later on, and the early hatch will be a production hatch.
Also, We've seen P delay his nexus in favor of a Gate-Forge wallin against Z with great effectiveness.
So why not place your 1st "expo" hatch outside the good spot i.e. in ZvZ at Lost Temple? This will make the creep reach the choke much faster, and you won't spend queen energy for that.
You'll then be able to wallin with Evo+Queen/Lings, and maybe even Roach Warren if the build affords it. This beats speedlings easily, since they'll have a hard time to kill the buildings under queen fire, and even if they do, the broodlings will cleanup the lings. If your opponent goes Roaches, you can place Spines just like P places cannons (range 4 from the wall, so that it hits roaches attacking the wall, but roaches can't move in to attack the crawler), and if you went roaches you can still place them in front of the crawlers to deal with zerglings.
What must be tested is if the wall can hold (I believe it can easily), how much off-placing your hatch affects the economy, how many queens, if transfusion should be used (i.e. oly doing 2/3 the injections you'd do, so that you have a transfusion ready at the time one building would fall), if replacing a good hatch is worth it, transitions to other builds, expansions, etc...
But 1 base Roach doesn't even get an expo normally, and you'll be able to commit less to fighting units with a good non-roach wall.
|
I normally have a ton of success, but yesterday lost to two 1 base roach builds because the players were simply smart enough to ball up their Roaches and move slow. I might have been able to overcome it the first game by being a bit more aggressive, but the second one I out expanded the guy, had complete map control, and had almost three times the Lings as he had Roaches and still got reamed. Maybe a faster tech switch to Mutas would have helped (I was admittedly pretty slow about it) but he actually had a few Hydras out before my Spire was done.
|
3:1 ling roach isn't very good without an upgrade advantage
|
On April 01 2010 19:21 spinesheath wrote:
Yesterday was zvz day, so I faced several variations of speedling builds. +1 ranged easily beat them all so far. I only faced "favored" players btw.
Currently I really hope that my enemies go for lings in zvz. If they play like me the games go all the way up to Broodlords and I generally lose because I have zero experience with infestors.
What league are you in? I can't really believe this is consistently beatable with roaches unless you are really a lot better than your opponent, which seems not to be the case if you play vs. favoured players. Can you pm me you ID on beta?
I just tried it the last couple of days and I was blown away by how effective this is. Most of the time the roaching player just dies to starvation because he is too afraid to move out. Or he does move out and loses his entire base.
|
ling to muta to muta/baneling = gg.
with upgrades of course.
With the new sunken you can push back a roach timing attack.
|
On April 02 2010 02:12 Slunk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2010 19:21 spinesheath wrote:
Yesterday was zvz day, so I faced several variations of speedling builds. +1 ranged easily beat them all so far. I only faced "favored" players btw.
Currently I really hope that my enemies go for lings in zvz. If they play like me the games go all the way up to Broodlords and I generally lose because I have zero experience with infestors. What league are you in? I can't really believe this is consistently beatable with roaches unless you are really a lot better than your opponent, which seems not to be the case if you play vs. favoured players. Can you pm me you ID on beta? I just tried it the last couple of days and I was blown away by how effective this is. Most of the time the roaching player just dies to starvation because he is too afraid to move out. Or he does move out and loses his entire base.
spinesheath.spinesheath on Europe.
I currently am in gold, on my way to platinum after some messed up placement matches. I am facing mostly platinums.
It could be that not all of those speedling players are at my level. But my builds are far from optimal, I am messing up a ton (like not properly blocking chokes).
The thing is, my +1 ranged comes around the same time as their ling speed. Their +1 melee is finished even later. +1/+1 would be much later. And that's not just because those guys are bad (if they are), it's an inherent trait of this hatch pool build.
Hatch pool probably also dies immediately to stuff like 6 pool, while 13 pool has always been enough for me to hold those rushes. It certainly is a lot safer. So that's another reason not to go for this build. I don't want to have to pray that my opponent doesn't rush me every game.
|
I have had a lot of success with this on maps with large ramps, but I struggle with it on LT for example.
|
its not borken just boreing as hell !!!
|
I have yet to lose to this, granted not everyone seems to have the same build or plan when they go speedlings. I basically just saturate with 22ish min drones and 6 on gas. Place my pool / evo chamber to block the major pathways into my mineral line and add 1 sunken just as standard in case i get 10 pooled or whatever. Then I just make roaches with every larvae I don't need to make an over lord.
I think the most important thing is to not panic when playing speed lings, I stay in my base, I don't even bother trying to stop the expansion or whatever, research +1 attack and just keep your roaches balled up. When +1 finishes I'm usually around 50 supply or so and I'll be at 25 roaches or so around then too or shortly after. I wait till another injection pops and make 5-7 more roaches, when those are done I block my ramp with that 5-7 and just go kill the ling player with my other 25 roaches. If you keep your roaches balled up and near a wall I truly believe it's impossible to lose to speed lings. Then when they lose that battle they try to back door me but because properly positioned / microed roaches just obliterate speed lings i've still got like 15 more roaches back at home to stop the back door and when +1 armor finishes it really is just game over for the speedling strat.
Now, the interesting thing is if the speedling strat can evolve into a quicker muta push, or perhaps even transition into a fast expand roach strat while not losing to +1 speed roaches right away. Though I already have the evo chamber and I typically throw down 2 spores just because at that point I feel like "the only way I lose is by a muta surprise" so why not.
That should be the next step to the speedling strat, beat me while I play defensive off one base with something other then speedlings because speed lings can't win.
|
On April 02 2010 05:03 mondry wrote:
I have yet to lose to this, granted not everyone seems to have the same build or plan when they go speedlings. I basically just saturate with 22ish min drones and 6 on gas. Place my pool / evo chamber to block the major pathways into my mineral line and add 1 sunken just as standard in case i get 10 pooled or whatever. Then I just make roaches with every larvae I don't need to make an over lord.
I think the most important thing is to not panic when playing speed lings, I stay in my base, I don't even bother trying to stop the expansion or whatever, research +1 attack and just keep your roaches balled up. When +1 finishes I'm usually around 50 supply or so and I'll be at 25 roaches or so around then too or shortly after. I wait till another injection pops and make 5-7 more roaches, when those are done I block my ramp with that 5-7 and just go kill the ling player with my other 25 roaches. If you keep your roaches balled up and near a wall I truly believe it's impossible to lose to speed lings. Then when they lose that battle they try to back door me but because properly positioned / microed roaches just obliterate speed lings i've still got like 15 more roaches back at home to stop the back door and when +1 armor finishes it really is just game over for the speedling strat.
Now, the interesting thing is if the speedling strat can evolve into a quicker muta push, or perhaps even transition into a fast expand roach strat while not losing to +1 speed roaches right away. Though I already have the evo chamber and I typically throw down 2 spores just because at that point I feel like "the only way I lose is by a muta surprise" so why not.
That should be the next step to the speedling strat, beat me while I play defensive off one base with something other then speedlings because speed lings can't win.
This is basically the way spinesheath just schooled me in 2 games. Sim city with roach warren, pool and evo makes the lings drop half their effectiveness and keeping just some roaches at your choke or in you well walled-in mineral line defends backstabs easily. With an early upgrade advantage lings can't do anything.
Also, even though 4 lings kill a roach, there is no way 100 lings can kill a roach ball of 25 roaches.
|
This build seems to be gaining in popularity, I've had several people try it against me today. So far I've won every single game by 13 pooling and attacking with roaches before ling speed kicks in. I just leave 2 roaches behind, which, together with the queen, are sufficient to defend against backstabs (remember he hasn't got speed yet) and his lings just can't take on my roaches head-on. However I'm quite a bit better than the opponents I play against atm, so I have no idea whether this actually works or not.
|
On April 02 2010 05:44 Slunk wrote:
This is basically the way spinesheath just schooled me in 2 games. Sim city with roach warren, pool and evo makes the lings drop half their effectiveness and keeping just some roaches at your choke or in you well walled-in mineral line defends backstabs easily. With an early upgrade advantage lings can't do anything.
Also, even though 4 lings kill a roach, there is no way 100 lings can kill a roach ball of 25 roaches.
Lost the same way twice last night (though not to the same person). Because I was unable to directly hinder his economy due to decent speedling harass, even on one base he was able to mass up a critical mass ball of Roaches and take me out. The second game was better; I was quicker with my Lings, kept him well contained, but he was easily able to block his choke and prevent me from doing real damage. Despite me having map control and 2 bases to his 1, he pushed out with a load of Roaches and a few Hydras and took me out.
The first one, the guy was so fast on so many Roaches that I just had no chance. The second match, I feel like I would have been fine had I A: expanded again to a third base and thrown down a few more Spines at my natural, or B: Just teched straight to Muta as soon as my initial Speedling pressure was ineffective.
|
Seems like all good zergs already know about this. Tried this vs a rank 6 plat zerg and lost.
He knew exactly what I was going to do.
He sat in his base with mass roaches, knowing I couldnt get that big of an econ advantage because i needed to spend larvae on lings. He waited for +1 carapace to finish, and then sent all but 3 of his roaches at my base.
I had 1/1 lings and 3 crawlers down, but you can't get a good surround if he's moving across the map with ~20 roaches. I turned around and hit his base, but with more roaches coming out and standing in his mineral line, 40 lings get demolished by ~6 roaches queen and drone clutter. I got out 8 mutalisks but he just put up 3 spore colonies and picked off the rest of my units. I tried to kill his roaches with mutas, but for each one i killed he made 2 more.
They really need to fix roaches. This is a ridiculous matchup. I don't see a point in getting lings for map control if u need to spend that many larvae. Extra expansions are equally pointless because u don't even have 40 drones at your current two expansions.
|
roach v roach, weeeeee so much diversity
|
It's not roach vs roach. Good players will always add hydras and infestors in and slowly add broodlords. By that time a 3rd base will be up and muta/ling harrass will become more interesting.
Attacking doesn't make too much sense in a roach v roach zvz, unless your opponent messed up somehow. At least not before infestors are out. And then we've got hydra/roach/infestor - how different is that from goon/zeal/reaver? Adding broodlords in is like adding HTs in.
You could drop into the min line with reavers. You can do sneaky burrow move stuff and fungal drones twice.
Yeah, early zvz is not very spectacular. But if neither player messes up it can get interesting.
At least it doesn't seem as bad as the current tvp, where marauders seem to work against just anything if you only mass enough of them. If you stay with roaches and miss the transition into hydra/roach you're dead.
|
this isn't true IMO.
on my one accnt, im ranked 13 plantinum, only lost one ZvZ (vs a 6pool zergling rush where he microd well)
Roaches > all with MS upg, and you can pop out an expo pretty quickly, as roaches overpower zerglings at such a high ratio.
I've seen a speedling strat like this done pretty fast, but by the time he had about 30 speedlings i had 6 roaches blocking any possible way into my nat. expo as long as my queen was at the front line, undefeated
|
Ling builds are pretty strong on Kulas and maybe Desert Oasis, but every other map I have not had a problem.
|
ZvZ is a joke right now. There needs to be some major development investment on blizzards part to really make it exciting instead of a simple zergling or roaches fest.
|
A +1 roach build definitely doesn't instantly lose to massling in any variation. Sure you can mess up but it is a strong build.
Normally it shouldn't be possible to take an expansion with roaches versus lings before +1 ranged is done or very close if the ling player is being aggressive enough.
The problem I have right now is that with hatch pool you can defend the initial zerglings off 13 pool easily and then you can transition into roaches. The threat of mass ling prevents the 13 pool player from taking his expansion very quickly and thus the 13 pool player is at an economical disadvantage.
So it would look like this:
6 pool > 14 hatch > 13 pool > 6 pool
Where 6 pool is any build that gets lings quickly enough to punish a 14 hatch. From my experience 13 pool works well against ling rushes.
Now I personally don't like having to pick one of those 3 builds and gamble. So I am trying to find a build that both gets sufficient economy and fast +1 ranged to withstand mass ling, is safe enough against 6 pool, and allows you to punish 14 hatch into roach enough to be back on even grounds.
I've some ideas (which are just little variations of my 13 pool +1 ranged build), but not much experience against 14 hatch into roach yet. 14 hatch roach might be doomed against certain reactionary timing pushes, but then you also have to consider the possibility of crawlers which do hurt his economy but are quite strong.
Well, I need to play some games and test it out, just sharing my thoughts on what I consider the current zvz "metagame".
|
There's a timing attack at 16 roaches you need to watch out for if you dothis build.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
