I've lately been having alot of problems against the Terran Mech build with Thor/Tank/Hellion, and have had alot of battles, where although i had an equivilent cost-sized army, if not ALOT more of a larger army that the Terrans mech, it just WAY too much for any Zerg unit composition. The best one i could've thought would be mass roach, but it falled INSTANTLY to all of the tanks AOE, even if i tried to run down and get a surround. I'm seeking for platinum player help (1500+ please, as thats where i'm around) on how to counter this. Replay of course:
(And PLEASE dont tell me to use mutas, and get inefestors to take over thor, becasue with tanks, its impossible to get away with..)
also, Broodlords are wayy to expensive of a tech-switch in order to get them out that fast vs a Terran player, as they are COMPLETELY useless until upgraded now pretty much.. 20% dmg taken isnt enough (atleast before i could production delay harass..)
It seems that Tanks eliminate any type of ground army nearly instantaneously, and Thors destroy mutas WAY too easily to get those out.
i was just about to write a post about this i can do nothing to stop it. In 1v1 I have been able to stop it by just expanding and attacking a lot. but in 2v2 especially if its 2 zerg vs 2 terrain i cant think of a build to win. infestors are super important because of fungal growth, but hydras and roaches are almost useless. I have tried Ultralisks but even them die fast. I have tried brood lords but by the time i get them they have battle cruisers and vikings. The only thing i can think of is more ultralisks with infestors and then some hydras for extra support
Speed upg. mass roaches and muta and maintain an eco advantage. Drops and nydus and expansion taking in ways to use greater mobility over mech's relative immobility.
Your non-speed roaches died to 5+ +2 attack siege tanks that were in a good position around a corner. That's like, what Terran is supposed to do, and like, not what Zerg is supposed to let happen.
I just find it hard to defend well when he goes reaper hass into hellions into expo.. and once that expo is thrown down, constant mech production there on in
Get roach fast and eco whore. You CAN go mutas if he's not looking like he's not making thors, but only a handful for map control. Your goal in the game is to get to broodlords. Once broodlords are out, if terran doesn't have a significant amount of vikings, terran loses. Make sure when you get broodlords to get a ton of corruptors too. Broodlords do fine vs even a large number of thors, and nothing else is an issue, so you just need to prevent vikings from taking air control.
Basically, your goal in the game is to get broodlords.
I just watched the rep and I'm not sure why you kept the spire after you saw the armory. I would have canceled and pumped a ton of roaches and taken the a third as soon as I saw him expo. You throw down a hatch by the rocks which is pointless and then you sac your nat and let him get a good position and there's no way to ever come back from that. You didn't have enough roaches to attack and if you had tunneling for the roaches with more roaches instead of useless mutas and tried to engage him in the open where you can pick off units you would have won. You also pump a lot of lings at the start and I'd rather go roach ling especially after seeing the double factory and one with a tech lab. Also I'd skip the hydra den.
It sounds so stupid but you can just mass roach and stuff like this becomes so much easier to beat. It's boring and stupid easy but it works.
i like how he asks for platinum advice on how to deal with thor tank hellion and a bunch of people give him one sentence replys like upgrade and build roaches lol. like is pure uped roaches the real counter to tank thor hellion??? ive been having the same troubles in gold and silver. roaches melt b4 they even get within range and people have been telling me infestors hard counter thors which is bullshit. if you can get your infestor that close to a mech ball without losing it get the spell off and somehow dont lose your infestor you are some kind of god among men.
On May 08 2010 09:02 Spoof wrote: I'm not a zerg player, but I wonder what a speedling/with burrowed movement upgraded roaches would do to that kind of composition.
I feel like thats asking way too much. You would need perfect scouting and an open field to pull it off.
The answer, alone with any zerg answer, is that you need to find a way to win early/midgame. Any late game situation is lights out. If has thors and tanks youve simply lost the game. This is why ultras and broodlords are next to useless, because zerg can hardly get to them! And even if you do, there are other OP units terran and toss has to obliterate them...
My only advice is to work on your early game harass or mid game push. Zerg is not a late game faction, if they are camped in an unharassed one base or managed to pull off even one expansion, youre done for!
ok I watched your replay. this is my objective advice
1.) macro better ur macro slipped a bit early on at times, suddenly u would build 8 drones at once. just a spot to improve.
2.) break those rocks earlier so u can get ur expansion. there is no reason not to.
3.) get that 2nd expansion up earlier
4.) try to push ur creep out even farther. a large part of winning the battle is being able to have the fight be on creep so ur units can push in fast
5.) screw the muta switch. it's a good opener but u switched to mutas too late, they were pointless by that point. i would forego the mutas and get brood lords and win the game.
btw in ur OP u seem to confuse brood lords with corruptors.
anyways how I deal with this, if I don't open with mutas, is I just macro way faster than you did(or at least that's my goal) and then do a big ling/hydras surround and own the army by having a larger one.
oh and if it really matters I am 1255 plat at the moment but that's only because I haven't had enough time to get higher
ahh well thank you Travis =P and in the OP i was meaning how broodlords were so late-game, and corruptors arent very useful vs T in my eyes anymore, so yes i did get confused. I'm thinking of what i usually do which is spam roach with burrow + move to burrow right to the tanks IF theres no marauder heavy army (which is what i usually do, but im like 1-5 in 1v1's today... VERY bad day which is what i think part of my unclear thinking is) But, i am going to practice this with a practice partner if i can find one, if not i'll just ask people in my clan, as this is one of the strats even when i do beat, its only BARELY.
On May 07 2010 18:17 condoriano wrote: I think they are nerfing zerg too early, no one even learned how to properly play tvz/pvz yet. Wait until you see some decent terran mech vs z (it's coming)
I'll stand by what I said, wait until some REALLY good T learns how to mech. I want to see people go mass roaches vs 20 sieged tanks lmao, try it
On May 07 2010 18:17 condoriano wrote: I think they are nerfing zerg too early, no one even learned how to properly play tvz/pvz yet. Wait until you see some decent terran mech vs z (it's coming)
I'll stand by what I said, wait until some REALLY good T learns how to mech. I want to see people go mass roaches vs 20 sieged tanks lmao, try it
I think the tanksplash change actually might make siege mode much stronger vs roach. I played some TvP and I've never seen gateway units melt so fast. It definitely seems stronger all the sudden.
On May 08 2010 14:07 Floophead_III wrote: I think the tanksplash change actually might make siege mode much stronger vs roach. I played some TvP and I've never seen gateway units melt so fast. It definitely seems stronger all the sudden.
I've seen some games recently, z couldn't do anything even off 4 expos (we are talking ~2000 lvl games)
On May 08 2010 14:07 guitarizt wrote: Tanks do more damage unsieged against roaches.
70 DMG tanks (tanks with +2) vs roaches seiged are ALOT better than unseiged.. I dont think your taking in the fact that it hits the roach in the middle, PLUS the surrounding 5-7 roaches every hit, and with 2 tanks, that 2 hits them... with 8 tanks, its insta-demolish. Watch the replay.
It was hard with a reaper harass into hellion harass though =( even though i saw the hellions comming, spine wasnt out really fast enough.. i did lose ALOT of lings at the start carelessly, still.
Yeah no one even suggesting unsieged tanks, the crazy thing that we will all see very soon is fields of sieged tanks that simply cannot be broken no matter what mix of units you have. First blizz makes these infinite groups of units that will always clump, then they slowly implement splash.. kind of counter productive lol
I knew this day would come. When I play terran, I use tanks all the time and they just end games. I could not fathom for the life of me why people didn't use them every game.
Anyways, I made a long ass post earlier in SC2 general forum about this exact problem. I play 2v2 and it is just dirty there because all the 2v2 maps are so tight that tanks set up so easily. I've rewatched my replays and our ZZ team is ahead on bases, has twice the income and 1.5x the food count in army and we still barely win/lose against a mech terran.
I think the only consideration is to use nydus worms and burrow and overlord drops to stay mobile.
Broodlords are an obvious solution but they are too high in the tech and too expensive and too easily countered for my tastes. A terran doesn't exactly sit back once he has enough tanks to roll over your base. He pushes in and unless you have those broodlords ready, then the game is over.
Probably want to avoid fighting the army straight up unless you can get an ambush/surround going. Make sure to focus the tanks.
I don't really know to be honest. My 2s is rank 3 plat but I feel like against a solid T it is really hard.
On May 08 2010 14:23 GenesisX wrote: Early economic advantage is key. Since mech is more expensive than bio, it takes longer to mass up an army.
You wont have a window to even shove the all in before t takes 3rd, he can just crawl to that 3rd and mass up like 180 supply army. Muta is useless vs thor/turret, roaches and anything ground dies to tanks, by the time you got broodlord he wont only have thors but ravens too
It's going to get nasty
Right now if its done properly it looks like those fbh or flash tvz games on destination. Completely ridiculous, z can suicide his 200 supply as many times as he wants.
edit: anyone who has doubts, ask your terran friend to set up his army the way described and build anything you want, repeat until you get tired
On May 08 2010 14:07 guitarizt wrote: Tanks do more damage unsieged against roaches.
70 DMG tanks (tanks with +2) vs roaches seiged are ALOT better than unseiged.. I dont think your taking in the fact that it hits the roach in the middle, PLUS the surrounding 5-7 roaches every hit, and with 2 tanks, that 2 hits them... with 8 tanks, its insta-demolish. Watch the replay.
Maybe it's changed since patch 11 but you're gonna have armour upgrades for the roaches too. Also I did watch the rep and you would have lost no matter what you did at the point the t pushed because his macro was better like I said in my first post. You stretched yourself too think by not making enough roaches and trying to go muta hydra roach all at the same time. You also absolutely cannot sack your expo because the game is lost at that point and t has a very dominant position.
Holy shit everyone has a different answer. I watched your replay and I think you just need to improve your game a bit better. Listen to what Travis said. You had the correct build order. Instead of wasting gas on mutas and a spire when you already saw armory, buy tunnel claw instead.
Whenever I play mech I like to add a starport for two reasons : one, Raven is the perfect 1 man army unit against zerg and two, future broodlords. But in this case, he didn't have a Raven so you could have bought tunnel claw for sure. If it doesn't work out, oh well, a little waste of gas, but better than dying 5-6 mutas to thors. If it does work out, you'll have a very good edge.
Another thought, is the infestor. You said not to use it because of the tanks, but that is because you would use it for for neural parasite, which is retarded because it would die from tanks. Instead use infestor's fungal growth and watch as all his hellions go bye bye very quickly. Without hellions tanks are vulnerable and you can make more roaches faster than he can make hellions. Again, without the spire and mutas you can use that gas for infestors. Who knows, you might get lucky and growth a few tanks too.
if it's anything like sc1 mech (and i can see how similar they are lol) there isn't a cute trick to kill it, you just have to take advantage of these facts
1. T has to transition into mech from some opening to hold off early Z 2. mech is super gas heavy (thor/tank/upgrades) 3. mech is very strong but immobile
" The primary Mech counters to Zerg revolve around the ability to expand so much since Mech is so immobile ... Having a lot of “stuff” is the key to killing a Mech army. Since having a lot of expansions is the key to having a lot of “stuff,” many expansions = lots of Zerg “stuff.”' - liquipedia
- early window before tanks - another window where you can muta harass when he mass tanks, transition out as thors come and then retransition into greater spire - T turtles after 2nd base to amass for push - if he moves too fast, he exposes himself too much - keep speedlings outside his base so if he pushes out he's exposed to backstab - try to shut down hellion harass/map control as best as possible - don't engage on his terms: force him to siege, dance around his army, hit and run expos and make him constantly babysit and force him out of position as much as possible - you either slowly chip at his army with a better econ than him or you turtle to brood lords so that you can directly engage
On May 08 2010 16:25 AJ- wrote: if it's anything like sc1 mech (and i can see how similar they are lol) there isn't a cute trick to kill it, you just have to take advantage of these facts
1. T has to transition into mech from some opening to hold off early Z 2. mech is super gas heavy (thor/tank/upgrades) 3. mech is very strong but immobile
" The primary Mech counters to Zerg revolve around the ability to expand so much since Mech is so immobile ... Having a lot of “stuff” is the key to killing a Mech army. Since having a lot of expansions is the key to having a lot of “stuff,” many expansions = lots of Zerg “stuff.”' - liquipedia
- early window before tanks - another window where you can muta harass when he mass tanks, transition out as thors come and then retransition into greater spire - T turtles after 2nd base to amass for push - if he moves too fast, he exposes himself too much - keep speedlings outside his base so if he pushes out he's exposed to backstab - try to shut down hellion harass/map control as best as possible - don't engage on his terms: force him to siege, dance around his army, hit and run expos and make him constantly babysit and force him out of position as much as possible - you either slowly chip at his army with a better econ than him or you turtle to brood lords so that you can directly engage
gl findin a practice partner
this is right. I'm a 1800 terran and I've just recently started doing this. The only games I've lost have been when the Zerg is very smart and is constantly engaging from different locations(drops included, not much AA with this build) and putting up expansion constantly.
i like what a j said above me i think its really solid advice. i think the hardest thing about the new mech though is it doesnt feel that immobile. thor drops are the most annoying thing in the game. you dont see collossus drops or ultralisk drops but thor drops every zvt.
I am platinum and has trouble to stop mass hellion with marauder, followed up with vikings. I think I have lost 10 matches in a row even though I scouted it. Roaches can now be kited very easily so they are useless against hellions unless you have a bazillion of them and spire takes such a long time to build. I usually end up with to many roaches and my muta are 1-2 minutes behind his viking. I have a similar issue with P and void ray/phoenix combo. The only reason why I am still in platinum is because of my 80-90% ZvZ ratio.
On May 08 2010 18:14 Tef wrote: I am platinum and has trouble to stop mass hellion with marauder, followed up with vikings. I think I have lost 10 matches in a row even though I scouted it. Roaches can now be kited very easily so they are useless against hellions unless you have a bazillion of them and spire takes such a long time to build. I usually end up with to many roaches and my muta are 1-2 minutes behind his viking. I have a similar issue with P and void ray/phoenix combo. The only reason why I am still in platinum is because of my 80-90% ZvZ ratio.
I was faced with this build again recently, i felt alot stronger, as once i saw him getitng the thing for thors, i went straight into broodlord, got 4-5 up before he could push, and destroyed nearly all his army, but couldnt make enough to counter even being an expo up on him all game (4 bases, 1 gold, as he was 3 bases, no gold)
my composition was mainly roach/hydra/broodlord with a couple infestors. I think if i was more aggresive later though i would have won.
Even though ultras were buffed to 25 dmg AOE, drops would be an eco-waste, becasue they are so expensive, AND they SUCK vs terran mech who gets any ammount of marauders.. Which is i guess why blizzard even admitted they REALLY need to change the ultralisk to get it used.
Baneling drops seem to be useful, so im going to try to transition into baneling/speedling/hydra early even if i do see mech out, expoing faster once he expos, and just drop harass him as much as possible while macroing. Thats my biggest problem, the only time i harass is when i get mutas in ZvZ, or ZvP.
My counter is roaches with underground movement. Pop up in tank line and own.
First you are using maximum roach damage because you are right on there ass dealing damage. Their pitiful 3 range coupled with a hellion meat shield usually prevents maximum dps but here everything is cool.
Tanks have a minimum range and friendly splash so while you are attack them, they are attack themselves! Yay
Easily massable going along with the same SC:BW philosophy zvt mech, you just need alot of shit.
Once he sees my army burrow, he will scan it, Or, if hes ttacking and i see him comming and burrow, he scans anyways, T always do.. start of beta i could get away with burrowed banelings, but not anymore, so i dunno if this would work as well if its super-late game i'll have to try!
How does he have enough for ravens if he is going tank + thor? If he is turtling until max or something where he has enough for tank + thor + upgrades + raves then broodlords are the answer after taking like 5-6 bases. I was assuming you were having problems with a mid game push.
Obviously you don't burrow right in front of him. You wait until he doesn't see and then burrow.
On May 09 2010 13:38 kNyTTyM wrote: How does he have enough for ravens if he is going tank + thor? If he is turtling until max or something where he has enough for tank + thor + upgrades + raves then broodlords are the answer after taking like 5-6 bases. I was assuming you were having problems with a mid game push.
Obviously you don't burrow right in front of him. You wait until he doesn't see and then burrow.
Any terran that can play this game will make turrets and take third, he needs turrets either way vs possible muta. He slowly pushes towards third, making turrets. He has thors already, he slowly adds ravens. It is midgame. If you beat some horrible t's with roach burrow - that's not proving anything. T doesn't need to attack in this scenario, he can take his half and sit there and slowroll. Broodlords won't do anything because of thor/raven.
Any terran that can play this game will make turrets and take third, he needs turrets either way vs possible muta. He slowly pushes towards third, making turrets. He has thors already, he slowly adds ravens. It is midgame. If you beat some horrible t's with roach burrow - that's not proving anything. T doesn't need to attack in this scenario, he can take his half and sit there and slowroll. Broodlords won't do anything because of thor/raven.Last edit: 2010-05-09 15:11:17
Slush successfully used burrowed roaches against a terran player pretty recently...
If a Terran can take his third with no retaliation, he's already won the game. Massing factory units is an economic blackhole on one base. I think this is where you are not taking control. The mech unit composition is so slow to respond to any type of change at this phase in the game, so the zerg player is dictating the pace. Any loss is a huge loss for the Terran at this point. If you vehemently oppose the roach strategy, maybe an infestor/ling army might work. Hellions are your main threat, and they die to 3 fungal growths as shown in the TLO vs CauthonLuck match. Even if the Terran player turtles up and pushes, you have two major advantages. 1) You can match or out-do his expansions 2)Fungal growth will stop that already immobile army from moving out at all.
Here is a VOD (from the French powerhouse aAa) of a custom game between aAa.Kenzy and MouZ.Morrow (Morrow is probably one of the best Terran european player and Kenzy one of the best Zerg french player with Moman).
Two weeks ago, a nation clanwar took place between Sweden and France. France was wining 5-3 before Morrow arrives and pwned the 4 french Zerg in order to finish 5-7 for Sweden.
Following that, Kenzy trained with Morrow in order to get a counter to that mech strat.
Im a terran player so i may be wrong here. But what is wrong with dealing with it broodwar style. Use drops or nydess worm mass exspo and if there not enough thors kill them with mass muta, i know splash is a bitch but if u come in from multiple sides its cant be that bad
On May 09 2010 15:57 Spoof wrote: Slush successfully used burrowed roaches against a terran player pretty recently...
If a Terran can take his third with no retaliation, he's already won the game. Massing factory units is an economic blackhole on one base. I think this is where you are not taking control. The mech unit composition is so slow to respond to any type of change at this phase in the game, so the zerg player is dictating the pace. Any loss is a huge loss for the Terran at this point. If you vehemently oppose the roach strategy, maybe an infestor/ling army might work. Hellions are your main threat, and they die to 3 fungal growths as shown in the TLO vs CauthonLuck match. Even if the Terran player turtles up and pushes, you have two major advantages. 1) You can match or out-do his expansions 2)Fungal growth will stop that already immobile army from moving out at all.
Post again when you see an actual mech play, not marauder/marine/tanks.
On May 09 2010 16:15 Apo.Stou wrote: Ok guys,
Here is a VOD (from the French powerhouse aAa) of a custom game between aAa.Kenzy and MouZ.Morrow (Morrow is probably one of the best Terran european player and Kenzy one of the best Zerg french player with Moman).
Too many mistakes by t, no ravens either. Simply died to muta/bloodlords after losing his army trying to rush his push across the map.
@ spoof: the infestor ling worked for TLO becuase the hellions were simply grouped together. In my match, by the time the push came, there already was an incredible amount of hellions out, AND infestors die in 2 shots of a sieged tank, so all the T has to do is snipe them.
I'm having an INCREDIBLY hard time against this. I usually get my expansion up before they do, and early game I hit with a baneling bust and usually I'm able to kill 4-5 SCVs. Once the terran guy has like 3 tanks though... I can do nothing.
I just played a game where the terran player slowly pushed me back to my natural (in LT) and then built a ton of offensive turrets, sieged his tanks, and slowly turtled up. I tried using a few infested terrans to take the first few splash shots, and I had about 25 hyrdras and 20 roaches that literally died in 2 seconds to the tanks, even with the distraction dudes. I started building brood lords, but then he came in with about 10 vikings and I could do NOTHING.
I even build a nydus and tried some backdoors into his base, even just one nydus outside of his base around the tanks... but sieged tanks in his base killed the nydus every time before I could get anything in.
"Don't let him get to that point" seems like a lame answer. If the terran plays carefully enough, turtles, and slowly moves up, it seems like there's really not a lot I can do. Is there seriously NO answer to this? All ground units become useless vs tanks, and viking's range can snipe the broodlords sniping the tanks. If they have about 2 thors, all mutas become almost useless.
Also... is it just me, or do thors seem to do just fine against zerglings? I swear one thor still could take 14 zerglings ISOLATED WITH THE ATTACK SPEED UPGRADE? I thought that small units were supposed to counter them?
Uhg... every terran game is the same, if I don't win in 5 minutes via baneling bust I lose the game.
grr, this mech build is hard to beat - my 6th straight lost vs it. Anyone found a reliable way to beat it? might have to switch to 7 pooling soon and go for early win as after the banelings I'm screwed. Bring back SC1 queen please!
My advice is to have an army about 40 food larger than his.
Well, considering the roach nerf perhaps 80 more.
MASSSSSS roach is about your only chance vs tank/thor/hellion. Make sure they are 2/2 with speed upgrades, have some attacking and have others running ontop of the tanks to spread splash.
Burrowed roaches are awsome vs this. im 1200 plat and thats the only way im losing with a good sized mech army.
Also remember to get your creep out faaaar both for the sake of closing distance with the T army but also to denie him from building missile turrets.
Now people complainig about this and saying a good terran will get a raven. Bleh getting a raven will delay your push a lot since its a techlab, starport and 200 gas. Thats more than 3 tanks or 1½ thor worth of gas. Meanwhile he is getting that raven you will be taking eco advantage and spreading creep crazy much. Lategame just go broodlords+muta. Since you can change your units comp waaaaay faster than terran he will be dead before he can get enough vikings/thors. Also dont micro your mutas as if they were 1 unit.
Jesus Terrans should really learn to get 1/2 ravens or save up scans maybe even slow push BW TvP style. With the roaches ability they should be basically prepared for hold position lurkers everywhere on the map. Even with the latest patch I throw 12-15 roaches into my hydra/ling/infestor mix and research tunneling claws.So far it works every time like a charm... too much so. I'm sorry i was wandering where to post this.. it kiinda suits here..
I don't think you can do anything cute against mech. You really just have to open with roach/hydra, (or roach and quick mutas depending on how he's meching) and you need to spread as much creep around as possible and prevent a slow push with burrowed roaches/hydras, all the while taking extra expansions and teching to broodlords. That is the most consistent and reliable thing to do against mech. Unless someone can come up with something better. Hydras and 2 pop roaches will melt like butter, infestors will get sniped like nothing.
No tier two unit is going to penetrate his nat with tanks on the ridges, turrets everywhere, hellions in the front, bunkers there.
DISCLAIMER: THIS IS PURE THEORYCRAFTING AND I HAVE NEVER TRIED THIS MYSELF
Everyone's looking at roaches to burrow under the enemy and negate some of the tank range/draw splash to terran friendlies/soak damage. What if you took 5 or 6 full energy infestors and spammed infested terrans all over the place? It would possibly give you ~40 supply extra (if you're maxed 200/200 and spawn ~40 infested terrans from 5 infestors with 200 energy), and give you great positioning that the terran could really do nothing about. This is in contrast to roaches which take up supply and have crappy dps, require terrans to be ravenless and scanless to get into position. Infestors are pretty hard to use for neural parasite late game because they just get focussed down so easily and are outranged by tanks, and FG has little effect on tank/thor.
This is sort of a *meh* idea but its the only strategy I could think of that zerg could use that could beat a Terran 200 mech army without having to use 300-400 supply worth of units...
First of all a Terran mech army needs a lot of gas and is immobile and rather fragile till it hits critical size (something like ~8 tanks, ~20 hellions, ~2 thors, +viking & raven support).
Now I am going to assume that due to this the zerg should be able to out resource the terran by doing multiple fast expanding since the Terran attack will be slow in coming. (zerg would be using the typical roach muta with some spine crawlers at this point to harass the Terran, stall his expansion and hold off hellion harass also zerg would be upgrading air at this point)
Since the Terrans army is primarily ground (hellions, tanks) I believe zerg's best shot is to try and overpowering the Terran's air control (and no I don't mean mutas). I think the zerg may have success using mass corruptors, broodlords, and... queens.
Why? Well broodlords should be obvious since most of the damage they'll do will be the Terran's tanks killing his own units due to broodlings also thors aren't cost effective against them. So the Terran's only deffence against them is vikings which the corruptors will take care of just by out numbering them and corruptors' 2 armor and corruption skill on thors doesn't hurt either.
Lastly what are the queens for? Hasn't anyone realised they have the best cost to hp ratio of any unit in the game? Besides you have to do something with your spare minerals and zerglings are not an option against hellions. Furthermore queens can heal your expensive air units almost instantly.
Anyway thats my best idea its not great and relies largely on being able to out resource the Terran but it should work.
On May 08 2010 08:56 CheAse wrote: Try burrowing roaches and popping them up right around the terran army. Seems to work pretty well for my opponents.
Very effective, if you burrow walk the roaches right near his tanks, the tanks will end up friendly firing lots of his units as well.
If you dont have enough to research / make roaches, speedlings could possibly work. You really need to fight terrans (and in most matchups anyways) at multiple fronts. If he can safely hide the tanks behind his meat, then he'll win almost any battle singlehandedly. Part of your micro should be separating your army into multiple control groups and converge on your opponent - that way he cant hide his tanks.
Okay.. so Massive amounts of roaches on more bases was enough to stop the push before, but what now? i hit 200 supply so fast now with roaches, that i cant get nearly enough to soak up the splash, and i've been experimenting with ALL TYPES of builds including using infestors, baneling drops, broodlord tech, and ultra tech, and here is my outcomes:
Baneling Drops: By the time i get this, i invested so much into the (small) amounts of tech required (Playing SAFELY) that by the time the drop goes down, hes already pushing with 4-5 tanks, ~20 hellions, 2-3 thors+ and marauders.
Broodlord Tech: By the time my greater spire is finishing with 2base, the push is already killing my nat, or mid-way to my base (using safe play) Using non safe play: T's harassment usually scouts my lack of units, and destroys my base
Ultra Tech: Ultralisk dens up, ultralisks are building while hes pushing. Wont get more than 2-3 out, which will DROP to the hellions
So At this point, it looks like you pretty much have to end the game before he can safely expo once, or else he will rack in too much gas for the pushh.
I'm not totally sure about how to deal with it, but I think the trick is that you need to be aggressive in the midgame, before the Terran is able to really assemble the "money" composition to beat your army.
I don't think there's a "silver bullet" solution. Roach/muta might work best. Or I think asian zergs use like roach/hydra/baneling/muta or some other long composition.
Ive tried being aggresive, but i mean 1-2 thor near minearls + 2 turrets can shut down literally 20 mutas, which would DRAIN gas funds, and seeing as their AA range is so far, it'd be hard to pick much anything off in their base.
The best way to win is to get LUCKY with field position, and hope hes too bad to scan / get a raven out....
Maybe its the only way, until ultras are an easier tech and/or stronger
Roaches used to own mech hard. Now they don't. But they still do very well against it. The problem most people run into is they must find a way to get the terran to commit to a mech combo that doesn't counter roaches. So starting your build with things that throw the mech combo off is a good idea. Mutas is the best example. He will be less likely to add tanks or marauders to his combo if he's seeing you with muta tech. Instead he'll be heavy on thors and hellions easy pickings for roaches.
You have no intention of building a lot of mutas you just want him to think that. Get a few corruptors out for 20% bonus damage against thors and spam roaches. When you have extra gas start getting infestors and neural parasite. If he starts getting a lot of marauders add zerglings. The idea is to use your map control to out expand him while he's trying to find the right unit combo to push out. If he finds the right unit combo you're dead so you better scout and stay ahead of him.
Oh and don't run into sieged tanks ever! If he's being super careful slow pushing and keeping them sieged at all times then you better nydus him or he'll eventually reach your base and kill you.
Edit: Just a side note, I'm fairly sure that a very skilled terran should always beat an equally skilled zerg if the terran scouts well and understands the meta game. If you're a terran struggling against zergs take some time to learn zerg and you'll find it much easier to beat them once you understand them.
On May 19 2010 14:55 BigDates wrote: So once i see his army move out from his nat, i should nydus the back of his base with ALL my army?
No thats silly only send enough to make it a hard decision for him. Preferably you'll still have enough of your main army to completely wipe him out if he rushes forward unsieged and out of position. You don't really want to base trade unless you're 1 base ahead of him. Burrow with move speed is ideal for this because you can really make him task saturated and his micro will suffer.
On May 16 2010 08:20 Equalizer wrote: Why? Well broodlords should be obvious since most of the damage they'll do will be the Terran's tanks killing his own units due to broodlings also thors aren't cost effective against them. So the Terran's only deffence against them is vikings which the corruptors will take care of just by out numbering them and corruptors' 2 armor and corruption skill on thors doesn't hurt either.
The problems with Corruptors vs Vikings is that their range is 9 vs the Corruptors 6. The Corruptors have to move towards the Terran ball of Thors and Marines if they want to take out the Vikings (who are firing at the Broodlords). This means that the Vikings can just be microed back and forth on top of the Thors and marines (if they went "TLO style" with more marines than marauders). Thors+Vikings+Marines can easily take out Corruptors.
Nydus wont work, Hes got tanks. Mutas metls to Thors, AND he will get vikings and thus own your BLs. If you get spire, hold back until you can come with hydra+BL.
Ive seen Terran late game mech beat a few times, but I think you as a Z is at a big disadvantage. There is no perfect solution that will give you the win every time. When Z beat late game terran mech, here is what I have observed;
They have macroed economy like crazy. At least +2 bases, preferably more. They have gone mass roaches with burrow-move, with some lings and then hydra, for midgame, containing T. They have transitioned into BLs for the final push to win. They have poked at the terrans 2 bases, again and again, but never commited to an all in, but enough to keep dealying terran, forcing him to spend resources on rebuilding and static defences. With heavy on roaches, when z is 200/200, you cannot let T get passed 150/200 because he will become to strong. As z you have 1 advantage, production capability, so loosing your army dosent even remotely compare to T loosing vital parts of his. If the map has a backdoor to his main, abuse it. Contain, contain, contain, and everytime T moves out, attack while Tanks are unsieged.
Moman VS Morrow demonstrates this quite nicely, morrow goes heavy on tank, thor, and moman outexpands him, contains and harasses him with burrowed roaches. Think he had a bunch of mutas at one time, but they melted away before doing to much.
Here's some more theorycrafting: I'm loving the infestor idea.
Sort of an all-in play. Get banelings, burrow, overlord speed/drop, cracklings, infestors.
Final combination: Lots of upgraded lings, lots of energized infestors, banelings in overlords.
Go for a fast expand with first 100 gas to zergling speed, 50 gas after to baneling nest. . 6 banelings positioned carefully can buy you time vs hellion harass. Utilize more banelings and eventually burrowed banelings(preferably in front of his base, where the hellions have to pass). in order to completely stop his hellions from making it into your 1. main, and if your able to, 2. expo. Use queens extremely defensively. Make 3 in the beginning in order to have one that always has energy for transfusion. It'll help with any air harass thats sure to follow.
Tech to overlord speed and drop. mass zerglings, banelings, and infestors (Im liking the 4-5 infestor idea. Free infested terrans = free units).
This way, with low tech, your able to 1. stop his hellion harass, if you position well. 2. stop his air harass with queens, 3. mass up drones.
When he moves out, sacrifice something to gain vision of his position. This is where the "all-in" play comes in. Load up maybe 20 banelings into overlords, and set those to a control group. now, gather ALL your overlords (what, 90 food?, so 9). With your incredible micro, send in the two control groups with overlords that don't have anything in them, efficiently "sacrificing" these overlords to get the baneling bomb in, while attacking with your zergling/infestor army.
Sounds incredibly micro intensive and a complete all-in. Luckily, your army is pretty low-cost.
To support this, i'd say get a 3rd hatchery that "walls off" your natural expo. You get more larva, have a natural choke thats able to be defended easier than open space where hellions can get in, That way, you'd mass up your army of zerglings pretty damn fast. Your goal, with the banelings, is to take out as many units as possible so you can overwhelm with zerglings. Combined with the infested terran, zerg should efficiently be able to mass a LOT of units fairly quickly, fairly early in the game, before the T has a critical mass of unit, while stopping any potential harass from the T.
Travis said it all, i'll just add that you need to scout the terran army and adjust your army composition accordingly. (and yes i am 1500+ plat on the eu server) When i play mech vs zerg i lose if the zerg masses the right unit and has a good macro so he can throw army after army at me while producing always the right units.
I`m around 1700 platinium and i have been experienting stuff against this.
I think opening with mutas is safest thing to do. It forces terran get mariners or thors. In either cases i get third quite fast and hope terran is impatient and tries to push that. Muta-ling-bling is imho decent against any 100 pop terran army. Against Mech use blings to blow up helions and lings to swarm rest of his army. In small scale battles even mutas do fine against thors if you spread mutas against splash and he has no scvs for repair. If you can handle thors with mutas and lings, mutas will clean rest of his army. This is all assuming he moves out before reaching pop 170 army.
Cant beat 170 mech army so you can just bank on the fact that he attacks faster since there is nothing to lose.
On May 19 2010 20:58 Arir wrote: I`m around 1700 platinium and i have been experienting stuff against this.
I think opening with mutas is safest thing to do. It forces terran get mariners or thors. In either cases i get third quite fast and hope terran is impatient and tries to push that. Muta-ling-bling is imho decent against any 100 pop terran army. Against Mech use blings to blow up helions and lings to swarm rest of his army. In small scale battles even mutas do fine against thors if you spread mutas against splash and he has no scvs for repair. If you can handle thors with mutas and lings, mutas will clean rest of his army. This is all assuming he moves out before reaching pop 170 army.
Cant beat 170 mech army so you can just bank on the fact that he attacks faster since there is nothing to lose.
I imagine you switch to upgraded roaches if he continues to build up anti-air units? Where do you spend your time/resources upgrading in the early/mid-game? Earlier on, when you just have ling/muta, do you go for melee attack and muta air attack upgrades first?
I'm a decent plat toss player... probably 1500+, but am maybe 1400 or so zerg. Definitely looking for help from the zerg perspective against terran.
If you see a terran going pure mech then just abuse his immobility (nydus worm, expanding, etc). Also abuse burrow! If you let the terran make a full mech army then you are dead .
If you see a terran going pure mech then just abuse his immobility (nydus worm, expanding, etc). Also abuse burrow! If you let the terran make a full mech army then you are dead .
I tend to notice my opponent only falls for the burrowed roaches once. After that, doesn't work so well. I'm honestly surprised it even works the one time, considering all top players can and will do it in alot of games.
1 Thor with a few marines is not the problem. 4-5 thors with MM ball support is the problem.
In order for those UMS tactics to be effective, you are going to have to split up your mutas into twice as many groups as there are Thors. so vs. 4 Thors, you would have to split up into 8 groups of mutas each not overlapping in splash zones. Now that is some crazy-ass micro required right there.
Hey all. New to the forum even if i have been lurking quite a bit. Never played BW, started with SC2 beta, slowly worked my way up from copper to around 1400ish plat.
Here's my bit of advice. First, i hear hydras and mutas. No way, those aren't gonna work, hydras get burnt by hellions, aoeinstagibd by even just a few siege tanks splashing, mutas get blasted by thors and aren't that awesome against metal in general, bad idea.
What IMO is the key against T mech is: 1 early pressurem trying to make him grab his natural as late as possible, even just by threatening and not really engaging. 2 mid game is the tricky part. IMO you want to put down a spire no matter you're not gonna produce mutas, that will force the T to produce thors and will make him need a considerable amount of time to pump out let's say 5 siege tanks, and will make him sink money in turrets around his minerals. Otherwise you don't put it down and you get an earlier tanks critical mass but you'll prolly have the door open for drops. 3 Get ventral sacs and pneumatized carapace as soon as possible. Spread your creep around with ovies and tumors, especially along the path he'll have to walk to come to your base. As soon as he moves out, you make a drop with lings/banelings. He's too slow to come back anyway, and he won't have turrets all around his base to prevent it, and no siege tanks to defend a base while he atatcks because simply he can't afford to tie that much resources into defense. Most you could find might be some rines into a bunker. You can go for heavier drops with roaches as well, they're cheap compared to the obscene amount of gas a mech army needs. 4 Don't have your army in front of your natural, have it outta along the way he'll walk to come to your base (and you'll know he's coming because of creep/tumors/ovies/xel naga/single zergling burrowed right outta his base, whatever. If you don't and get surprised by a mech push, meh, you're not using the zerg as they IMO should be). A T always scans in front of his army, and will prolly have 3-4 scans ready when he moves out, have your roaches and lings burrowed outta the predictable location of the scans and you'll manage to get him from behind once he sieges. If he has a raven, well, that's bad. But TBH having a raven in a T mech isn't that easy, tanks and thors cost an awful lot of gas and even with 2 bases having 3 factories pumping metals won't really allow much to spare into a raven untill late game, also considering usually a T will get some vikings or medivac first for map control/drops, and considering PDD doesn't work aginst roaches, so no really any reason to grab a raven if Z doesn't have mutas/hydras en masse, and simply relay on OC scans in case of burrowed units, which leads to what i was saying before: don't get him burrowed coming from his front. Usually a T will feel safe to push with 4-6 tanks (which already takes a considerable amount of time to get, given he needs thors as well), waiting more could mean leaving complete map control to Z, which is bad.
To sum it up, pressure early on, expand your creep non stop, harass as much as possible, don't be stupid and suicide those poor roaches having them tunnel their way right in front of the T, even if he didn't see 'em borrow, he'll scan.
Easier said than done, indeed
big ass edit: i see mention of marauders. That's a complete different scenario, and IMO doesn't fit into the T mech definition. To have a decent amount of marauders, he must have the usual 3 raxes, prolly marines to fend off possible air, no thors if he still wants siege tanks, definately no raven because he gotta pump out medivacs for the bio part of his army. And that basically ends up in a bio ball with siege tanks support (few and late) or into the usual marauder hellion thor (which i find harder to counter 'cause it's more suited to fend off both roaches and hydras) which again isn't really into the hard T mech i referred to, even if the important considerations still apply. IMO.
On May 20 2010 01:06 TheRyanBurke wrote: Here are 2 short vids showing how to attack Thor with Muta and not get owned.
Lead in with Corrupter, cast on Thor, split up Mutas to minimize splash.
750/700 vs 300/200
then 1050/1000 vs 600/200 and no stim on marines
also thats only 1 thor. Once they get 3, they can take on retardedly more mutas due to 1 shotting them (or if they are +2 attack, they can 1 shot with only 2 if you have 0 armor on mutas)
Very, very inefficient and not a good situation for zerg to use muta vs thor. It's like using roaches to counter immortals. It may work vs only 1 immortal, but the more there are, it gets exponentially worse
i've been frustrated with effectiveness vs. terran mech too. Has anyone tried mass (and i mean MASS, like 50-70) bling? could bling combined with roaches to mop up the rest be the answer?
On May 20 2010 02:58 megacake wrote: i've been frustrated with effectiveness vs. terran mech too. Has anyone tried mass (and i mean MASS, like 50-70) bling? could bling combined with roaches to mop up the rest be the answer?
tanks kill banelings 4-8 per blast, per tank
While being super weak and hard countered by siege tanks, 50 banelings = 2500/1250. Quite an investment there to be 1-shotted by a unit it doesn't even work against
then it's settled, there is no effective zerg counter to terran mech atm? i believe it, you need more than a 1 base lead too outmacro the terrans at the moment. nydus networking is cute and will get you a few snipes but a couple sensors kind of easily counters that.
I know terran's are supposed to be versatile, but with a little bit of everything in their army they are damned near unstoppable right now.
Hope they are crappy terrans who still neglect mech? That, or neuter their economy before they get more than 2 tanks Backstabbing works well, if you time it right after they move out. If it gets to that point hope they stay dfefensive enough to tech to broodlords :p
On May 20 2010 02:58 megacake wrote: i've been frustrated with effectiveness vs. terran mech too. Has anyone tried mass (and i mean MASS, like 50-70) bling? could bling combined with roaches to mop up the rest be the answer?
I have no idea why anyone is even entertaining the idea of mass baneling. Baneling are just terrible against siege tanks. They die wonderfully to siege tank range and splash and you can lose 50 baneling to just 5 siege tanks. The units Zerg should be using is really mutalisk and roach. Roach because they're the best ground unit against Hellion, Thor, AND siege tank, and move at 3 speed once upgraded making them a fast unit. Mutalisk because any time Terran is missing Thor support over the rest of the unit composition, everything else mech dies, and is a fast unit.
Well, here's a bit of a case study on how to beat mech with ultralisks. This is a game between Dimaga and Avilo. Avilo starts off with a reaper bunker rush and he transitions into mech. 4-5 thors, a dozen tanks and a lot of vikings.
After losing around 6 games in a row to Terran Mech I've just stopped playing ladder. Mutas, Infestors, Hydras, Lings; all ineffective against that powerful ball of anti-Zerg firepower. Brood Lords take a minimum of 10 minutes to create, and that's with absolutely no costs on units or delaying of tech buildings.
But before that 10 minutes happens, you are getting rolled by the Mech army already made and at your front door.
I just played two games against a meching two times and lost both of them. But I don't think its unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination. I think once a decent stratagy is created and we get used to terran going mech instead of MMM it will balance itself out eventually. Until then we'll just half to tough it out.
maybe there should be an upgrade for banelings that gives them an explosive bonus to mech or armored units...ala, morph to baneling (get upgrade), morph again to ultrabaneling...
On May 20 2010 04:30 Warrior Madness wrote: Well, here's a bit of a case study on how to beat mech with ultralisks. This is a game between Dimaga and Avilo. Avilo starts off with a reaper bunker rush and he transitions into mech. 4-5 thors, a dozen tanks and a lot of vikings.
Perhaps we take a page out of the Protoss strategy guide for Brood War... In order for Protoss to win against Terran mech there was usually successful use of the zealot bomb. Try this with lings and banelings.
You can tech to mutas and send a few in to distract the thors while you drop your bling/ling combo on top of the tanks. Overlord speed is cheap and if you are operating on a couple of bases then you probably will be low on gas but have a mineral abundance so losing an overlord or two does not spell disaster. Send in additional blings and lings once tanks are finished to deal with thors and then go crazy with mutas. What's even better about this tactic is the fact that it only requires lair tech and the resource cost is minimal compared to other possible counters.
This is all theory as I have not tested it out and I'm only in the gold division so the T I play against tend to make more mistakes than the platinum T. However, if I get the chance I will give it a shot, what do we have to lose at this point.
to be honest i'm starting to feel like you guys complain that you can't just walk straight into a line of placed siege tanks roflstomping everything Amoving your big ball of stuff. It's not like toss or terran can. In fact, try to watch a TvT, it usually gets into a boring mexican standoff, where they both have siege tanks, and neither can push towards the enemy lines, so it goes into an air domination match for map control (if it gets past mid game and a critical amount of tanks is reached).
Basically, i don't really see why as zerg you should be able to walk into a goddamn killing field of a 200/200 army with lots of siege tanks just waiting for you to do that and actually come out as the winner.
On May 20 2010 06:40 LeChat wrote: to be honest i'm starting to feel like you guys complain that you can't just walk straight into a line of placed siege tanks roflstomping everything Amoving your big ball of stuff. It's not like toss or terran can. In fact, try to watch a TvT, it usually gets into a boring mexican standoff, where they both have siege tanks, and neither can push towards the enemy lines, so it goes into an air domination match for map control (if it gets past mid game and a critical amount of tanks is reached).
Basically, i don't really see why as zerg you should be able to walk into a goddamn killing field of a 200/200 army with lots of siege tanks just waiting for you to do that and actually come out as the winner.
On May 20 2010 06:40 LeChat wrote: to be honest i'm starting to feel like you guys complain that you can't just walk straight into a line of placed siege tanks roflstomping everything Amoving your big ball of stuff. It's not like toss or terran can. In fact, try to watch a TvT, it usually gets into a boring mexican standoff, where they both have siege tanks, and neither can push towards the enemy lines, so it goes into an air domination match for map control (if it gets past mid game and a critical amount of tanks is reached).
Basically, i don't really see why as zerg you should be able to walk into a goddamn killing field of a 200/200 army with lots of siege tanks just waiting for you to do that and actually come out as the winner.
Because, if you hadn't noticed, zerglings/banelings/ultra's are melee, we need to ram them through the killing field before they can even do anything. Roaches and hydra's simply get outranged by tanks, thus getting slaughtered.
It doesn't matter if you attack in a ball or not, when you get too close to a mechball, everything just dies. How can a zerg fight off a mech ball if it can't even get in range to do ANY damage at all.
On May 20 2010 06:56 Chaosvuistje wrote: [ Roaches and hydra's simply get outranged by tanks, thus getting slaughtered.
Erm. Everything gets outranged by siege tanks. That was exactly my point. That's why neither toss nor terran run their army into a line of sieged tanks, and that's why zerg shouldn't as well.
On May 20 2010 06:40 LeChat wrote: to be honest i'm starting to feel like you guys complain that you can't just walk straight into a line of placed siege tanks roflstomping everything Amoving your big ball of stuff. It's not like toss or terran can. In fact, try to watch a TvT, it usually gets into a boring mexican standoff, where they both have siege tanks, and neither can push towards the enemy lines, so it goes into an air domination match for map control (if it gets past mid game and a critical amount of tanks is reached).
Basically, i don't really see why as zerg you should be able to walk into a goddamn killing field of a 200/200 army with lots of siege tanks just waiting for you to do that and actually come out as the winner.
Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
Here are some ideas that I've seen work against the Terran push and later on the maxed Terran army.
Drops. Burrow walking. Broodlords. Overlord bombing (banelings and roaches mainly). Cutting off reinforcements. Backstab. Doomdrop. Muta harrass. Strong early so you can take the map. Abuse his immobility. Snipe Ravens with corruptors and make him use scans to find your 3-6 burrowed roach groups going after individual tanks. Make him siege/unsiege as many times as you have APM to while he's pushing you, always try to flank/run around if possible to delay him even further. Get 3 queens early and start many creep tumors, creep the whole push distance up. Put 2 banelings and 4 lings into scouting overlords and drop them on all his mineral lines. Nydus worm.
I'm a 1900-2000 plat terran and my standard build TvZ is the mech you described. When I lose it's either to tactics (drops everywhere, out positioned, etc) or to late game broodlord/corruptor (which is hard as shit to counter since thors are a joke against corrupter/broodlord so you need many many vikings to stop it)
Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
to the point of being boring, i'll write again what i wrote before. When he pushes, he has no way to defend his base. You sneak a few lings even with a drop and demolish his economy. Most important, when he pushes you should have a nice long tongue of creep along the path he has to walk to come into your base and you should by that time have tunneling claws researched. You don't wait for him at a choke, you split your army, and make your roaches engage him from behind, where he won't scan. Bye siege tanks. You can't do that in time? You load your your guys into OL and drop 'em behind him out his field of view. The raven if present, btw unlikely unless you went mutas hydras, PDD's useless against roaches and HSM not that effective, so a T will rely on scans to increase his view or to spot roaches. And he'll do that in front of his tanks. So you pretty much have free reign behind him. And you're on creep, and you have faster units. I see no reason why not to exploit that.
Also, lol @ a 120 T army stomping a 260 Z one.
edit: ah, btw, i play random, so don't take me for some sort of terran taliban
Of course. Hey everyone, listen to LeChat. He's figured out how to counter it when Day9 and other Pro-gamers haven't yet.
Listen pal, none of this drop-harass shit works when he has just one Thor, some Marines and a Hellion sitting in his base while his main force is roflstomping your base and economy. If the harass does manage to somewhat succeed, congrats, you killed 8-9 SCV's while he is murdering your Queen, entire Economy, and Tech buildings.
This isn't a problem of Zerg not being aggressive enough, it's that their units are so buttfucking weak and so incredibly easily countered that they can't do any damage AT ALL. And to even get to that position of out-numbering the mech ball, you must pump drones and expos hard all early game, making early harassment vs. Z a total joke.
On May 20 2010 05:15 nihlon wrote: Solution = Infested terran. Promise.
No, but seriously, maybe we should give it more than a week before we proclaim some unit combos unbeatable? *dunno*
I'm not sure, I saw a different game with 10+ tanks. The only time you could actually get near with ground army is when they are on the move and even that generates only a small window in which you can destroy his critical mass. Assuming he got sufficient thors/rines/other anti air units, it seems quite impossible to approach the tank mass, unless you simply overwhelm from say 5 sides for example.
Onto more theoretical approach, say you got 10 tanks sieged and tanks shoot tactically (dont overkill), 60 damage at the target and around it 30 or 15 dmg. Basically 600 dmg with a reload time of 3 seconds.
Now what kind of army can survive while its moving in? Let's assume the units get within the 13 range of the siege tanks and it takes them 2 seconds for fast units and 5 seconds for slower units (e.g. roach without creep). Obviously the fast units get in fast, but before that they get already 600 dmg spread out over the group, basically any zergling/baneling/drone dies instantly. So what about Hydras? 80 hp, assume it takes them 3 secs to get in close, that obviously means that every hydralisk that was shot directly is close to dead or has died due to aoe, if it survived it will die the next volley. Unless of course we have say 40 hydras coming in. So what about roaches and queens? Maybe 3 shots and most of them are down?
Let's show some videos:
from 3:37 onward, what would you do against that? 48 roaches vs 14 tanks 3 thors, I think the tanks will win hands down. From 8:12 onwards ourk attempts to make a drop. At 8:43 he moves in his roaches closer to the tanks (although I think not all of the tanks are within range) and you see his roaches obliterated within secs. Prior to this he lost a couple loose roaches, so about 30 (he sent in 36 of the roaches with 9 OLs) roaches moved in and died within secs? Obviously Ourk should never let his opponent get so many tanks, but what if you simply couldn't prevent it?
I saw another perfect video that illustrated how massive armies of Zerg die to about 12 tanks and a thor when stationary, but when moving die to zerg. I just can't seem to find it, but remember a couple things: it was on Blistering sands with terran left corner (I thought it was TLO but not sure), and zerg right corner. The game goes on for a while with the Zerg focussing roach+hydra, while Terran gets 1/2 thors, 10-12 tanks, couple hellions and about 8 vikings. The first battle was onesided win for Terran that had a lot of scvs repairing the tanks and hellions that were attacking the '4th' expansion of Zerg (bottom right, not the gold). Many roaches were obliterated within seconds that tried to flank the tanks. The zerg manages eventually to get a lot of his units back (simply cuz he had 4 bases and terran just 2) and kills off the terran but didnt defeat him. Not much later on, the Terran had a similar build basically but didnt have any scvs repairing and the zerg overran him. As the Terran was out of resources, he gave up. Ive been looking everywhere on youtube but I just can't seem to find it.
Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
PDD's useless against roaches
Roaches are powerful becasue of their powerful SLOW punches of attacks, 5 PDDS will COMPLETELY disable 100 roaches from firing twice, and by then EVERY roach will be dead to the mech.
@ Koffiegast
Yeah, im race swapping for sure until blizzard realises what they did wrong here. Honestly, T have to be VERY unlucky to lose in this MU now... OR instead of raceswitch, i'll do baneling busts =) VERY EASILY stoppable strat, but i mean its the ONLY way to beat a terran now
Edit: Apparently PDD's dont stop roaches? Either way, autoturrets are still great for harass =P Not to mention, its worth investing 200 gas and a quick swap from factories tech lab to win the game
On May 20 2010 05:15 nihlon wrote: Solution = Infested terran. Promise.
No, but seriously, maybe we should give it more than a week before we proclaim some unit combos unbeatable? *dunno*
I'm not sure, I saw a different game with 10+ tanks. The only time you could actually get near with ground army is when they are on the move and even that generates only a small window in which you can destroy his critical mass. Assuming he got sufficient thors/rines/other anti air units, it seems quite impossible to approach the tank mass, unless you simply overwhelm from say 5 sides for example.
Onto more theoretical approach, say you got 10 tanks sieged and tanks shoot tactically (dont overkill), 60 damage at the target and around it 30 or 15 dmg. Basically 600 dmg with a reload time of 3 seconds.
Now what kind of army can survive while its moving in? Let's assume the units get within the 13 range of the siege tanks and it takes them 2 seconds for fast units and 5 seconds for slower units (e.g. roach without creep). Obviously the fast units get in fast, but before that they get already 600 dmg spread out over the group, basically any zergling/baneling/drone dies instantly. So what about Hydras? 80 hp, assume it takes them 3 secs to get in close, that obviously means that every hydralisk that was shot directly is close to dead or has died due to aoe, if it survived it will die the next volley. Unless of course we have say 40 hydras coming in. So what about roaches and queens? Maybe 3 shots and most of them are down?
Let's show some videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_HR-j5SSDc from 3:37 onward, what would you do against that? 48 roaches vs 14 tanks 3 thors, I think the tanks will win hands down. From 8:12 onwards ourk attempts to make a drop. At 8:43 he moves in his roaches closer to the tanks (although I think not all of the tanks are within range) and you see his roaches obliterated within secs. Prior to this he lost a couple loose roaches, so about 30 (he sent in 36 of the roaches with 9 OLs) roaches moved in and died within secs? Obviously Ourk should never let his opponent get so many tanks, but what if you simply couldn't prevent it?
I saw another perfect video that illustrated how massive armies of Zerg die to about 12 tanks and a thor when stationary, but when moving die to zerg. I just can't seem to find it, but remember a couple things: it was on Blistering sands with terran left corner (I thought it was TLO but not sure), and zerg right corner. The game goes on for a while with the Zerg focussing roach+hydra, while Terran gets 1/2 thors, 10-12 tanks, couple hellions and about 8 vikings. The first battle was onesided win for Terran that had a lot of scvs repairing the tanks and hellions that were attacking the '4th' expansion of Zerg (bottom right, not the gold). Many roaches were obliterated within seconds that tried to flank the tanks. The zerg manages eventually to get a lot of his units back (simply cuz he had 4 bases and terran just 2) and kills off the terran but didnt defeat him. Not much later on, the Terran had a similar build basically but didnt have any scvs repairing and the zerg overran him. As the Terran was out of resources, he gave up. Ive been looking everywhere on youtube but I just can't seem to find it.
Well, I'm no expert, but in the first video you posted he had broodlords out there that he wasted on an expo (that he didn't even destroy) without much air support. It seems to me it could have been a much closer game than it ended up being if he had some units to protect the broodlords and attacking the tanks.
In the second video, TLO simply were the better player. Sure the roaches dies like flies there, but I don't see any concrete proof that the terran strategy is so unbeatable. (just from those two vids).
Yeah, except a 120 supply army terran can ROFLSTOMP a 260~ supply Zerg (yes, im resorting back to when roaches were 1 supply and you coudl literally get 60 more roaches)
Do you see the issue here? OVER 2 X the supply cap, and the Terran's army will still win... Ultralisks would be the only hope, but with my recent tests in builds, the T push comes before more than 3 ultras can come out (3 ultras, and 10 roaches, 20 speedlings wont do ANYTHING to the mech ball) And i've been trying broodlords too... yeah-NO. Thors still do enough to kill them with marine and viking help...
PDD's useless against roaches
LOL!?!??!!? How noob can you be??
Roaches are powerful becasue of their powerful SLOW punches of attacks, 5 PDDS will COMPLETELY disable 100 roaches from firing twice, and by then EVERY roach will be dead to the mech.
@ Koffiegast
Yeah, im race swapping for sure until blizzard realises what they did wrong here. Honestly, T have to be VERY unlucky to lose in this MU now... OR instead of raceswitch, i'll do baneling busts =) VERY EASILY stoppable strat, but i mean its the ONLY way to beat a terran now
Yeah that would be true if PDDs stopped roach attack from working, which it doesn't.
D: okay i'll admit im ignorant than if i didnt know that, but EVERY terran who gets ravens against me just uses auto turret drops anyways, so. Either way, Zerg really does need a better way to combat this (Even tasteless says so D: D
The problem is that siege tanks dont overkill anymore which negates almost all friendly fire and crushes all your roaches in seconds... Give the tanks overkill back and they will be fine
On May 20 2010 05:15 nihlon wrote: Solution = Infested terran. Promise.
No, but seriously, maybe we should give it more than a week before we proclaim some unit combos unbeatable? *dunno*
Well, I'm no expert, but in the first video you posted he had broodlords out there that he wasted on an expo (that he didn't even destroy) without much air support. It seems to me it could have been a much closer game than it ended up being if he had some units to protect the broodlords and attacking the tanks.
In the second video, TLO simply were the better player. Sure the roaches dies like flies there, but I don't see any concrete proof that the terran strategy is so unbeatable. (just from those two vids).
I wish I could show the one video that i just cant find. It shows how well terran mech is and at what times a zerg ground force can manage to win. I agree TLO was better in the mu.
Here's my attempt to theorycraft a solution to what I see as the hardest terran build order for zerg to deal with.
Terran opens with fairly fast marine hellion attack. Zerg should do normal early expand timing to get setup for a good econ and seeing preparation for this attack should set up 2 spinecrawlers and get a 3rd queen. Using third queen to tranfuse a crawler this should easily hold.
Terran follows up with banshees to harass. Zerg should tech to spire and on scouting banshees should get a 4th queen to hold bashees till mutas get out. Two queens at each base 1 charged to transfuse should hold till mutas are ready. Also depending on hellion count more spinecrawlers may be needed.
Zerg should use mutas to counter harass. Terran will be teching to thor but the mutas should be able to inflict some damage.
Zerg should be teching to infestors and research neural paracite while getting overloard speed and transport. Also zerg should get roachs once the tech is under way. Depending on effective of muta zerg may be able to take an expo.
Terran will be building tanks, hellions, and thors. Zerg should air lift roachs and infestors with muta escort to Terran main when terran force moves out.
Terran will have to pull back to defend. Tanks will be unsieged while moving in, use infestors to neural paracite thors allowing mutas to move in and focus fire the tanks with help of the controlled thors. Roachs can protect infestors from hellions.
This is where I'll stop as the game continues with zerg even or at an advantage (or wins) and can repeat this (on main again or expansions) when ever the Terran tries to move out expoiting the fact that the Terran will be out of position when fighting.
I would agree with you that your proposed build is the safest. Its difficult to get a footing in and our advantages are far and few between on this matchup. I've just been watching Artosis struggle with most of his ZvT games, his skill is still losing to tanks/thors/rines although winning when the T screws up BO and doesn't block roach push, hmmm can't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel if someone figures this out, perhaps 7 pool opening would help?.
You can't a-move into seiged tanks and expect to come out on top no matter how much you outnumber him by. Exploit the fact that you can mass expand and that seiged tanks can't move.
I would agree with you that your proposed build is the safest. Its difficult to get a footing in and our advantages are far and few between on this matchup. I've just been watching Artosis struggle with most of his ZvT games, his skill is still losing to tanks/thors/rines although winning when the T screws up BO and doesn't block roach push, hmmm can't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel if someone figures this out, perhaps 7 pool opening would help?.
Yeah, I just saw Artosis play against Terrans on his stream aswell. Especially the game on Kulas Ravine was brutal. Artosis had brilliant macro and beautiful Infestor placement. Even with way higher numbers, perfect infestor play and undetected burrowed roaches, he barely hold off Terrans first push. In Terrans second push he was also way ahead in numbers, but with one simple scan from the Terran, the 2-3 controlgroups of burrowed Roaches were detected and melted away in 5 seconds. Then it was gg. The mistake he did was, of course, to rely to much on his burrowed roaches. It's just too risky because of scans. I don't know how well Broodlords would have done, though, or how much it would have hurt his own ground army numbers. At least he is doing well with Broodlords against a Terran player as I write this.
In midgame, I would love to see someone perfectly execute a baneling airstrike with overlords.
On May 20 2010 12:04 aaaaaah wrote: How about you start putting early pressure on your opponent and try running units into they're base to harass the mineral line.
Yeah because terrans dont get a wall-in early...
I've been doing more and more baneling busts, especially on Kulas, Incineration, and Steppes. But even then, it's an all-in, and if he scouts it, it fails hard.
At the theorycrafting: T will have a thor out before i get my mutas (mutas are just as long of a tech as thors) Plus, as soon as he sees my spire / mutas killing his air, he will have enough turrets to kill anything less than 8 mutas (and i will not have 8 by this time)
Good point, I keep thinking zerg can get mutas up fast... which they can't due to lair and spire build times being much longer than their corresponding terran buildings.
yeah. I've tried spreading mutaas, but the marines end up shooting them down as well usually, although early spire is what i've been opting for to get broodlords, not getting ANY mutas, and only getting corruptors a bit before greater spire, so i can get broodlords right away, but without alot of ground help, Thors + vikings finish them easily
It really seems that zerg can't win end game unless they have a big econ lead (sort of like SC:BW now that I think about it). The problem is how does the zerg stall the terran since at the moment it's the terran that is pressuring the zerg not the other way around.
I thought mutas would work but they seem to come out much slower in SC2 than in SC:BW making them effectivly countered before you can get them as pointed out. I don't think fast teching to broodlord is a solution as it takes too long giving the terran too much time to prepare a counter since they have nothing else to worry about (terrans sees hive and great spire -> gets multi starport with reactor turning out vikings and actually can outproduce the zerg in the air war even if the zerg can dodge the ground support).
Standard ground army build up just doesn't work since tanks are so strong once they hit critical mass.
So it comes down to early ground pressure as seeming to be the only way to go. Going to have to start to look into 10 pool and may be even one base builds...
LOOOLL. So I tried playing terran for the first time today. What did I choose to do? Of course... MECH. God, it was unbelievabley easy. I could even keep my minerals down below 300 the entire game. Something I find difficult to do with zerg. So I didn't open with any harass, I just got tanks as early as possible and took my nat. I made marines and turrets to fight off early muta harass but my thor came just in time anyway. I upgraded everything through out the game.
And I even dropped some helions and killed a ton of his drones. But then he made broodlords and I was like "OH FUCK!". So I instinctively made 2 starports and pumped out as many vikings as I could. He made mass mutas and corruptors in reaction to my vikings. But... I just slowly pushed across the map with turrets, a bunker here and there, mass hellions, some marines, thors and tanks. When he would push in with his broodlords, I would just dance my vikings around. I'd one shot his BLs with my 12+ vikings and then I would retreat to my turrets, thors and marines that were an eyelash away. I would even scan his army to pick off stray broodlords at the very edge. God, he must've been feeling so frustrated there! I know I would. He even tried mass banelings and baneling drops on my army. I'm talking 50+ banelings but it did not work.
Near the end of the game, I took control of the middle, and my tanks caught about half of his army. He must've been macroing because that turned into a desperate suicide attack into my metal death ball. After that, I just flew around with my vikings and killed EVERY single overlord that he had. He was helpless.
Here's a replay of me doing a roach based strategy against mech. The strat isn't finished I definitely need to improve it a lot but it works well because the terran can't move around much with tank/thor and has to do a lot more clicking then you do to defend against it.
As you will see its difficult for him to defend multiple points as the game progresses there's more and more places you can hit to really frustrate him. You definitely want a spire up in case he abandons thors completely and tries to run you over with tanks. I hope this at least gives you guys some ideas about where to start. I know a lot of zergs are frustrated with this terran build.
It's funny, beacuse i was doing this earlier in the day yesturday. (i play Z as my main, i'm HORRIBLE with T, and have lost to silver players pre-patch that are zerg with my terran)
But post patch, i was beating people OVER 1800 plat, using my terran vs their zerg.
I Hellion blueflame harass for the lols, into a banshee if they haev only 2 queens, or a viking if they have more, get tanks + seige asap to take nat. After that, with ~10 vikings, and hellion drops for total map control, they may have 3 bases, but by the time i push with ~20 tanks, my 10 vikings, 20ish hellions, my thors, and my marines, and ONE raven (its seriosuly SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much easier than alot of terran think to get a raven out) that even their broodlord/roach/hydra/infestor/muta army couldnt stop it. I'm sorry, but when i saw his raoches with my tanks, i laughed when ipwned them all.
Oh BTW: People say nyduses + drops work well, but when i use them as Z, they fail, and i even had someone try to hydra drop my base before, i Lol'd when my vikings killed half of his in-air army, and 3 tanks sieged in different places killed all his hydras :D
Well just got out of another game. I saw the early Hellion, so I planted a few crawlers at my expo to secure it. He saw that and backed off. So I got some fast Mutas out, and did significant damage to his economy. He freaks out and builds missile turrets everywhere, yet manages to secure his expo. Meanwhile he has banshees semi-harassing but not doing much, Vikings flying around but are easily sniped, and I'm basically keeping him in his base. I grab a third, but before I can get it up and running, he steamrolls me with Marauders and Thors. Having a Tank or two would have just been the icing on the cake. They clear my Roach defense with no problem, Hydras would have fallen even quicker, and my Mutas just melt.
I am high Gold, and he was mid-Plat. The amount of damage I did to his economy was just extraordinary, and yet he still manages to steamroll me.
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Since this was around the fourth loss in a row to Terran Mech, I was a little BM at the end. But fuck it, this build is just impossible to go against.
^ 17 drones at ~9 minutes vs. Terran's 24+ something before you even started muta harassment. Your income was less than Terran's all game, Terran's failure to prepare for mutalisk and the damage he took roughly balanced the income difference, but that's before you take into account the investment you had into mutalisk and that without some sort of economy lead the lack of cost-efficiency of mutalisk as a combat unit against all the marines you were facing was going to bite you in the ass later on down the line.
It's also questionable to call that mech, considering that you faced marine-marauder-Thor, there were combat shield research but no mech upgrades researched. No siege tanks ever set up, no Hellion after the attempt at harassment... etc.
Mass Muta. TECH SWITCHING is very key here. You want him to make as much thors as possible and make him cut seigetanks. Once this happens you have to get infestors to punish the Thors and go ALOT OF ROACH. Make him techswitch so he cannot have Tanks, also punish his slowness with nydus's and make him NOT GET A THIRD. Really i think ZvT is HEAVILY in the Zergs Favor because of his abillity to punish with techswitches and map control. Terran cannot go MMM because of banelings and Muta and if he goes Tank just keep on massing mutas because he will have to cut other things and make him not go tank. Baneling muta is insanely good.
Mutas + mass baneling isnt so great. Mutas drop to thors, and banelings drop to tanks.
Btw: I play in higher level plat, so the terran will scout enough to realise not to build too many thors :/ Not to mention, infestors are not a viable unit at all, 2 tanks shoot, dead. + any beside them dead.
When I go mech vs zerg, its usually hydra+broodlord that kills me or just a zerg taking advantage of the fact that my army is not very mobile. Blistering sands is one of the worst maps for terran imo since the zerg can harass from so many fronts once they destroy the rocks. Expand everywhere and harass with nydus worms
Now that we got patch 13, contamination could prove useful on factories to get the advantage. Also, Terran would be forced to spend minerals on anti-air to protect from overseer-snipes.
I don't know if Ultralisk-drops will be more viable, though, since their HP got reduced. However, the new possibilities for harassment is great. I can't wait to test this out!
On May 21 2010 05:05 Grimjim wrote: Well just got out of another game. I saw the early Hellion, so I planted a few crawlers at my expo to secure it. He saw that and backed off. So I got some fast Mutas out, and did significant damage to his economy. He freaks out and builds missile turrets everywhere, yet manages to secure his expo. Meanwhile he has banshees semi-harassing but not doing much, Vikings flying around but are easily sniped, and I'm basically keeping him in his base. I grab a third, but before I can get it up and running, he steamrolls me with Marauders and Thors. Having a Tank or two would have just been the icing on the cake. They clear my Roach defense with no problem, Hydras would have fallen even quicker, and my Mutas just melt.
I am high Gold, and he was mid-Plat. The amount of damage I did to his economy was just extraordinary, and yet he still manages to steamroll me.
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Since this was around the fourth loss in a row to Terran Mech, I was a little BM at the end. But fuck it, this build is just impossible to go against.
what would u constitute a mech build that isn't -- thor/helion/marauder/tanks?....that's like the jist of mech...just because he has like 6-7 marauders doesn't mean that it's not a mech build.
i use this build all the time and yes it's a mech build.
I'm not a plat player, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've had great luck against pretty much all non-air terran using a baneling-zergling mix (no speedlings, unless I need them in the early game). Without Metabolic Boost, Centrifugal Hooks'ed banelings will keep pace about perfectly with zerglings, allowing you to load your ball with a small wave of zerglings to lock up enemies, followed by most of your banelings, followed by most of your zerglings. This absolutely rolls through hellion-out-front mech micro. Banelings do extra damage against marines, helions, and SCVs. This takes out bio-balls and the key support units of thor mech, particularly if your micro isn't bad. (The power of the build comes from macro, though).
If the terran player effectively goes air (either sneaking it by or switching), hydras are an easy tech-switch (this also works against bio-ball, so maybe a few hydra should be part of the standard build).
Lings get the surround and cost-effectively own thor (imo). The units spread as they surround, which means if you can force relatively open fights (which you should be able to with even non-boosted lings against the glacial thor) you should be able to mitigate splash advantages, and the one-shotting of lings by thor means you're well served by aggressively upgrading melee damage (which boosts banelings as well) and ultimately getting fast attack for the zerglings, pumping numbers rather than armor (via upgrades) or health (via roaches).
Advantages of the build: -Unit differentiation occurs post-hatchery, meaning that the only immediate decision for larva is drones vs. lings, which allows you to pump army or economy fairly effectively. -The force is well-equipped for base raiding, as even non-speed zerglings can often harass well. -Counters both major terran builds. -Extremely low use of food (1/2 per unit, rather than 2 with roach or hydra) allows you to quickly and repeatedly rebuild off of 2-3 injected hatcheries. This attacks the thor build by punishing slow build times. Disadvantages: -Requires micro of banelings to serve as the most effective counter to helions and scvs (a-move will just be wasted on thor, although it is fairly effective against bio-ball) -I've never seen mass tanks, but theorycraft suggests it should do well coming out of the thor build to respond to this unit composition.
If a reasonably good player would test and report, this would be quite a bit more credible, obv.
Im no longer plat (ty roach nerf and terran buff ), so Im not the one your adressing. But here goes anyway:
Basically banelings are great against bio, but I think you maybe underestimate the meltage factor of sieged tanks. Most lings,blings wont even reach the helions if they are backed up with sieged tanks, so you need to catch them on the move. You could ofcourse try to force this to happen in several ways, but its not easy.
Im sensing that as a nerf coming up; siegetanks sieging slower giving Z a bigger window to attack, also forcing T to frogleap his tanks and thus advance slowly.
They have to give up a lot of thor time to get tanks, since both take tech'd factories. Also, if the build otherwise works, the zerg player could likely end the game before T gets too nuts with sieged tanks, since they require 80 game-seconds past when the factory builds or floats to a tech lab.
After seeing patch 13 notes and Terran buffed again. As a Zerg player I have decided to switch to Terran.
If you want to be remain competative in this game you need to play Terran as every patch they seem to get buffed and Zerg/Protoss get nerfed. Patch 13 is no exception and I'm sure patch 14 will be no exception either.
had some trouble too and i guess there is no all in one solution playing platinum 1600
as stupid as it sounds: worked most of the times pretty well going mass mutas +upgrades and speedlings works for the beginning get map control, of course. move out overlords. patrol single lings all over the map until everything is visible. if he trys to move out, attack his main asap with mutas to force him back. kill building addons, you dont like (reactor on factorys f exp.) and kill armory to interrupt more thors or upgrades on mech
in the meantime get more mutalisks and throw down a 2nd or 3rd exp. you will have lots of minerals. first use it for tones of lings and overlords to never ever get supplyblocked (which ccould kill you, if terran builds many vikings ) get roach warren and speed upgrade tech for ultralisk and broodlords in the meantime
you should now be able to overwhelm him. what works pretty well to, is to always combine units.meaning you can often kill everything by just moving lings and mutas (+roaches later) together. it looks like marines always target lings first. watch out for hellions of course.
if he contaminates you with tanks somewhere around the center go for nydus and speedoverlords dont forget some spines @your choke then.
but as many already said: scout early. if you see 2factorys, get roaches and try to get down the choke with roaches/ling spamming. would save you many time.
another easy strat is: get fast muts. just upgrade to lair. (speed lings later) you will have some muts the same time, the terran is trying to harass your mineralline with 4-5 hellions. he doenst have enough minerals for towers and no time for thors .
short version: eyes up open and building counter units asap
short note: once you reach a critical mass with mutas (like 20-30), your only enemy are 2++ thors. guess 2 thors is easily beatable, if you split mutas 4-5 times, but always take a good look and watch out for your insane harassment units
plat 1600+ player here to tell u that this is the hardest comp for me to go against. i just made a forum post about it recently how zerg need a unit similar to the immortal to combat this since they lack a decent armoured unit throughout the game. That said, what I do to beat this is just rush to mutalisk and raid from base to base constantly hitting all scvs after you have about 10-15 mutas you switch to roaches with a few infestors.
Zerg really should have a way to beat a sieged terran position which it can't at the moment. Solution: change corruptor ability to disable the targeted unit from attacking for a short period of time (say 5 seconds).
I think we're getting off topic here if we're proposing game changes to deal with this matchup, so I'll get back to (hopefully) helpful suggestions.
Can speed-upgraded overlords drop banelings anywhere near a thor before getting killed really hard? That might solve tank issues affecting baneling use. 200 health + decent-ish regen could make it worth it.
Has anyone tried aggressive spine crawlers with queens as medics? How would that do against thor? Spine crawlers are almost 150 mineral no-tech siege tanks in this case, since they have the same range as thor and should come close to trading 1-1, not to mention that they can move. Of course, you'd need a nice little base of roaches to help out (i.e. bust actual siege tanks/ make them unseige), but on paper the spine crawlers dominate thor cost for cost.
edit: Also, spine crawlers don't take up supply, which is huge considering how much roaches eat now.
Hmm yes sorry about going off topic, very easy start suggesting game changes when no effective solution has been found in directly confronting a terran mech army. Currently the best solution seems to be to attack where ever the terran army is not via air units and drops.
Using overlords to drop banelings on the terran army may work provide the terran doesn't start mixing in marines with stim or a significant numbers of vikings as this would result in huge amounts of overlords being lost to be able to get them over the terran army. Also it is not cost effective to kill thors or tanks with banelings even if you loose no overlords and all banelings hit their target if the terran spreds his units reasonably well.
The issue with using spinecrawlers is that they can only hold a position not push since they take a considerably amount of time to set up and ofcourse the terran doesn't need to engage them since tanks can out range them. So the best they'd do is stop harass and stall the terran army.
Also you will not be pushing a mech force once it has critical size with just roaches.
The point of banelings was to allow a zergling force to surround the thor by taking out hellions and SCVs (to disable repair), not to attack siege tanks or thor directly. Additionally, if they start pumping mass tanks, roaches are necessary.
If the build works, it will be because you can mass zerglings repeatedly and quickly, while they spend 60 seconds per thor and 45 per siege tank from 2-3 tech'd factories, not because it counters their units as effectively as possible (which zerg don't really seem to be able to do, as even the brood lord fails against this all-ground army since thor has better range).
On May 22 2010 01:59 ajfirecracker wrote: I think we're getting off topic here if we're proposing game changes to deal with this matchup, so I'll get back to (hopefully) helpful suggestions.
Can speed-upgraded overlords drop banelings anywhere near a thor before getting killed really hard? That might solve tank issues affecting baneling use. 200 health + decent-ish regen could make it worth it.
Has anyone tried aggressive spine crawlers with queens as medics? How would that do against thor? Spine crawlers are almost 150 mineral no-tech siege tanks in this case, since they have the same range as thor and should come close to trading 1-1, not to mention that they can move. Of course, you'd need a nice little base of roaches to help out (i.e. bust actual siege tanks/ make them unseige), but on paper the spine crawlers dominate thor cost for cost.
edit: Also, spine crawlers don't take up supply, which is huge considering how much roaches eat now.
Overlords can absolutely make drops over Thor. But I think we're assuming Terran has Thor+Viking or Thor+Marine, because just Thor isn't enough for even Mutalisk. If you're going to bulldog-like stuff, Roaches are the better option I think. While it takes up more space in an overlord and costs more, a dropped roach will always receive 3 tank shots for siege tank friendly splash, because siege tanks no longer overkill.
My impressions of the TMechvZ matchup come mostly from Husky's CellaWeRRa replays where that's the matchup. In those, it looks like Thor shreds the hell out of mutas.
iv played several zvt mech and it is so frustrating. mass speedlings/banelings dont work against a terran tank wallin. thors pretty much counter muts. hellions own speedlings. roachs/hydras melt against tanks. infestors get taken out so fast. ugh so lame
Maybe the new ultralisk buff wills make it work for late game, with aggressive roaches for early and mid game. It supposed to be anti-armored now, so that could work. Not to mention, the splash damage from it hits SCVs, making it somewhat less terrible of a choice in a thor fight (assuming you have multiple ultras and infestors for frenzy to fight through 250mm cannons).
On May 23 2010 05:33 Leeoku wrote: iv played several zvt mech and it is so frustrating. mass speedlings/banelings dont work against a terran tank wallin. thors pretty much counter muts. hellions own speedlings. roachs/hydras melt against tanks. infestors get taken out so fast. ugh so lame
Yeah this thread is pretty much pointless because a way of stopping a mech terran as zerg is non-existant, especially now after the roach nerf. The only thing that seems to work for me is skipping roaches and rushing straight to broodlords. It's entirely dependent on the terran turtling and not scouting though. You just have to be way better than your opponent to win. They really need to do something about this.
On May 23 2010 06:14 ajfirecracker wrote: Maybe the new ultralisk buff wills make it work for late game, with aggressive roaches for early and mid game. It supposed to be anti-armored now, so that could work. Not to mention, the splash damage from it hits SCVs, making it somewhat less terrible of a choice in a thor fight (assuming you have multiple ultras and infestors for frenzy to fight through 250mm cannons).
I doubt it, 250mm cannons, tank damage, and ultra's clumsiness and lowered hp will make it impossible to actually get in range. Maybe I'm wrong though, just have to wait and see.
I doubt it, 250mm cannons, tank damage, and ultra's clumsiness and lowered hp will make it impossible to actually get in range. Maybe I'm wrong though, just have to wait and see.
Yeah, i tried using ultralisks, i had 8 out with my army (thats ALOT of food consumption BTW) And i mean, the fact that he had some marauders, and some UN seiged tanks shooting down the ultras (not to mention ULTRAS STILL GET STUCK ON OTHER Z UNTIS!!!) I mean, 2 of them got up close before dying to tank fire, and those 2 didnt last long (even with frenzy)
Broodlords. The ONLY way to combat this is to un safely tech to broodlords, and get them out ASAP, while NEEDING to all-in push before he gets any vikings up.
Pure mech can't be beaten on the ground cost for cost so you have to abuse the 2 weaknesses it has: it's weak against heavy air and it's immobile. So before the mech army reaches a 'critical' mass you must outeco him. Roaches are very good against mech play early on and tier 1 so you can easily outexpo terran early on. The threat of mutalisks usually forces the terran into producing some thors before they go tank which delays their push quite a bit. After tier 1 eco and roach pumping you want to go to broodlords ASAP though, hydra's are completely useless at first against mech and mutalisks are decent but only in low numbers for map control, don't bother making more then 4 or 5 usually. Roaches low gas cost allow you to tech quite fast while controlling the map early on. Burrow + roach movement is also critical as it usually forces the terran to either get ravens (which are quite useless against roaches besides detection) or spend turrets/scans at stopping burrow harass. Broodlords instantly give a huge advantage against terran mech and corruptors actually aren't that bad at fighting vikings so corruptor + broodlord is quite a decent combo.
Heavy air could be great against the T mech...however if were talking mech with thors and with thors they have marines with them for support then your in trouble, however if he's using marauders then you could have some success. I played a game earlier this week where he put some early harass on my FE with a marine hellion push which made me continue to put speedling pressure on him which got destroyed i transitioned to roaches only to have them 2 min. later get destroyed by tanks. sure go muta but with me transitioning to muta comes his Thor's and vikings- i think the only real option is early baneling busts before they tech up to factory and just have marines. Mass roach is no longer viable becasue of the nerf as a post above said maybe infestors? idk :p
On May 24 2010 05:14 BigDates wrote: Eh, i've just been loling lately, i go 3-4 base muta spam with 3-4 corruptors eating all of those factories with tech labs after armory goes up... :D
Any replays of this? It really sounds like bronze/silver league play though.
IMO one viable way to exploit this is to do a base-trade with doom drops or nydus networks. Just need to out-expo him and drop/nydus into his base while his army is defending one expo then leg it.
Broodlords work well if you hit when his tanks are seiged up, as the tanks spalsh his own units hitting the broodlings. Just remember not to engage seiged tanks with hydra ling and roaches are probably the only unit that can absorb anything for zerg. Burrowed roaches can be useful, but dont underestimate broodlords. They are very good against terran mech.
Best way to consistently beat terran mech vs Z, as far as I know:
Go heavy on econ (3+bases), as he turtles up on 2 bases. Make sure he wont get more than 2 bases. Early muta-harass to force him spend resources on early thors (equals less harass on you and severely delayed ravens) and static defences (+youll want the spire anyway). Then go heavy on roaches, burrowmove, use it to ceep containing him. Fend of his harass. When he get a 150+ supply army and you can no longer stop him from moving out (and youve not got your BLs yet), play cat and mouse, try run around him into his base, drop, nydus; use his low mobility against him and force him to not stray to far from his bases.
All the while you aim to go BLs, but only once you can support it, no rush since that will get you killed most probably. Once youve got BLs, the win should be yours. Make sure to have enough airsupport tso that they dont die though. Try it and see if it works for you.
Hello everyone, I've been reading these forums for a long time, but ZvT mech really made me want to post. Some of the MAJOR problems in this matchup is that:
1) It's very difficult to attack the Terran base, it's almost suicide. The only viable option is to Nydus worm or drop, which will get you rolled if the Terran army did not move out.
2) Since the Zerg can't attack the Terran base, the ball is in the Terran player's court. The Terran can choose when to attack, which is when the Terran player reaches critical mass ball of death that Zerg units can't deal with.
3) The Zerg can't scout the Terran until Lair, which means the Zerg can't assume the Terran player will go mech and drone hard in case the Terran decides to do a marine marauder rush, which will be too late when the Zerg is finally able to scout.
4) Infestors are next to useless vs Terran mech.
5) Broodlord, the only viable unit vs Terran mech requires pool->queen->lair->pit->hive->greater spire.
Do you guys think it is a good idea for infestors to have something like Spawn Broodling from BW that requires 150 energy and can only be used on non massive units?
On May 25 2010 06:02 ioRa wrote: Hello everyone, I've been reading these forums for a long time, but ZvT mech really made me want to post. Some of the MAJOR problems in this matchup is that:
1) It's very difficult to attack the Terran base, it's almost suicide. The only viable option is to Nydus worm or drop, which will get you rolled if the Terran army did not move out.
2) Since the Zerg can't attack the Terran base, the ball is in the Terran player's court. The Terran can choose when to attack, which is when the Terran player reaches critical mass ball of death that Zerg units can't deal with.
3) The Zerg can't scout the Terran until Lair, which means the Zerg can't assume the Terran player will go mech and drone hard in case the Terran decides to do a marine marauder rush, which will be too late when the Zerg is finally able to scout.
4) Infestors are next to useless vs Terran mech.
5) Broodlord, the only viable unit vs Terran mech requires pool->queen->lair->pit->hive->greater spire.
Do you guys think it is a good idea for infestors to have something like Spawn Broodling from BW that requires 150 energy and can only be used on non massive units?
1) A drop will not get rolled if the terran army did not move out. Drop, destroy a few buildings and leave his base. Like this you force the terran to sit on 2 bases. EXPAND a lot!!!
2) by the time he moves out, you can have a lot of bases and broodlords + corruptors ready (which will delay him). Burrowed roaches will slow him down too (if he doesn't make a raven).
3) ALWAYS sacrifice an overlord.
4) No need of infestors if he goes mech.
5) Broodlords are easy to get against a mech terran because he will be sitting on 2 bases for a long time and you can expand and delay him a lot.
Drops (nydus + overlord drops) + broodlords + burrowed roaches are mech-terrans their worst nightmare.
I play terran and zerg and IMO it is not possible for zerg to beat an equally skilled terran Mech army. The only real chance you have at killing them is if you surprise them with broodlords or kill them while they still have a low food count army (less than 70ish) however those will get hard countered by vikings if you dont end the game once he sees the broodlords. I will have reactors all over the place and can swap out the factories with starports and can mass vikings to pwn the broodlords. Once the terran player gets up to ~150 food the game is over. You either kill them before then or get endlessly slaughtered. As zerg I have gone 170 vs 150 food armies and the battle ended 80 vs 110. Mech destroys zerg so hard its unreal.
Once siege tanks hit critical mass with some hellions in front to vaporize the speedlings its almost gg. Once he adds in about 4-5 thors to squash your air then it IS gg. The problem right now is that thors hard counter mutas AND ultras and can almost 1 shot hydras and 2 shot roaches. Having one unit that hard counters air and T3.5 ground is just a complete balance fail IMO.
Even before the Roach nurf I still have never seen terran lose to zerg on the ground but then it was roachfest vs Mass thors with a hellion meat shield. Roaches would just get munched up because they didnt have long enough range to really focus down all the thors.
Personally, i just got over it and started playing Terran. Toss dont really have a way to deal with MSR so I am happy to take the W's as they come.
Mass expand, as it takes a very long time for them to get a large mass of units/upgrades and mech is very immoble, you should be able to get away with this. Now that you've got an economic advantage it's all about finding the right unit composition. I'm thinking mass air right work, as it completely ignores the tanks/hellions and with enough corruptors and broodlords you can easily take out the vikings/thors. Another option is mass roach with speed, as roaches are the only units zerg has that can stand up to tanks in the slightest.
You can also try to be really aggressive. As I said before, the mech ball is very immobile, so harassing the terran with nydus/drops should be very effective. You should probably progress into the same type of unit composition as I said before.
I'm not sure how either of these stratigies would work, I'm just speculating at this point. I haven't tested these out yet but I plan to.
On May 25 2010 09:07 Trinton07 wrote: I've got a few ideas
Mass expand, as it takes a very long time for them to get a large mass of units/upgrades and mech is very immoble, you should be able to get away with this. Now that you've got an economic advantage it's all about finding the right unit composition. I'm thinking mass air right work, as it completely ignores the tanks/hellions and with enough corruptors and broodlords you can easily take out the vikings/thors. Another option is mass roach with speed, as roaches are the only units zerg has that can stand up to tanks in the slightest.
You can also try to be really aggressive. As I said before, the mech ball is very immobile, so harassing the terran with nydus/drops should be very effective. You should probably progress into the same type of unit composition as I said before.
I'm not sure how either of these stratigies would work, I'm just speculating at this point. I haven't tested these out yet but I plan to.
My practice partner and me have been trying to figure out how to beat this mech strategy as zerg... the only ways i beat him are 3- as Trinton07 said- Mass Expand if the game carries on past 70 food but the most effective is speedling/baneling very early game thats how i beat him the most- then the other times it was base swap with nydus or drops- then as many others have said broodlords but that is risky because a lot of times he has vikings and BL are just so slow, but i have just started playing Terrran, Random now because it was so ridiculous how limited i was but now all i play are TvT's and their boring and its always who has better position with siege tanks, or more vikings :p
I have been having trouble specifically with the TLO opening. All of his harassing is actually reasonably easy to deflect but it just buys him so much time to get his expansion, to build up his army and he dictates the flow of the game. However, I did see Sen actually counter this build with roaches and drop. There's a timing window where you can reek havoc in his main. Of course, the problem is scouting this specific opening in the first place. The terran will have marines hugging the corners and all possible angles of his base so he can kill your slowvie as fast as he can.
Anyways, against a more conventional mech opening I've been doing some thinking. The weakness of mech is of course its immobility. So once you see him teching to mech and FEing you can easily secure an extra 2 bases. The problem with this of course is that he can build a force of 5~ thors, 12 tanks, and any combination of hellions/mauaaders/vikings off two bases.
I think our job is to delay him from getting there as long as possible so we can tech up to BLs/ultras and expand. So I was thining instead of getting that 4th base you can just grab a quick third one and be as annoying as possible off three bases. You get mutas, but of course as soon as he builds thors/marines/turrets your muta harass dies off. So MAYBE instead, you attack from 2 sides at the same time. So the idea behind this is getting drop tech and a lot of sling/blings. First and foremost you have to aggresively scout where his thors/rines are, where his tanks are, and so on and so forth. Most likely using a changeling. You load up a lot of sling/blings into ovies, on one or both sides of his base. You attack with the mutas (and maybe drop a few slings) on one side to lure his thors and rines over, while you drop the other side with sling/bings.
The goal of this would be to pick off turrets, stray units, scvs, tech labs and especially to drop slings on tanks on the ridges and what not. Even using an overseer here and there to corrupt his factories. So while doing this you tech or expand. It's pretty hard to pull off because rines, thors and turrets just rape mutas and overlords.
On May 08 2010 08:56 CheAse wrote: Try burrowing roaches and popping them up right around the terran army. Seems to work pretty well for my opponents.
The problem with this is that it's very easy to get all of your roaches annihilated if he notices them moving underground and throws a quick scan, which will directly lead to a push and a gg.
I've been playing like crazy since the new patch came out. I am completely out of ideas for ZvT. Thors destroy everything in the air and tanks destroy everything on the ground. And there's always the looming threat of a reactor marine+x push if you macro to hard to try get ahead. Or even a devastating drop on the cliffs above your expansion if you go roaches instead of mutas to stop the rush. Ultras still do sick damage against armored units but strangely enough non armored units can tank them! Weird... anyways I hope someone finds a solution to this.
Granted, the last game didn't last very long but it showed us what we can do anyhow. Especially in the early to midgame the terran mech is terribly immobile. Their strength comes from their position. Small chokes, well placed tanks, the high ground, buildings that block chokes. Their weakness in the beginning are their immobility, slowness, and small numbers.
In the first and second games Check dropped a lot. In fact ever since I've watched Sen's replays I always get drop and speed ASAP. 2 overlords full of speedlings and a few hydras/roaches can do a surprising amount of damage, especially if the terran is caught out of position.
I think his drops could have gone a lot better though. What he lacked in both games was scouting before the drop (moreso in the first game) and using more slings in his drops. Losing mules and scvs is sooooo damn annoying for terrans. They take an immediate, significant loss in their economy and scvs take a hell of while to rebuild. Losing 5-6 is terrible. Imagine constantly bombarding them with mutas and sling/roaches drops as you're expanding/teching to BLs. I haven't tested this myself yet but if the overseers corrupt ability can stop MULE usage, then that is just OPed and asking for abuse.
Which leads me to the third game. Check losst drones. He lost A LOT of drones in that game. But it didn't seem to matter because his unit composition was just so good in the end. He had a ton of roaches, a lot of broodlords, corruptors and infestors to FG the vikings (IIRC it takes 3 FGs to kill a viking).
So in the end, check used a similar strategy I proposed in the above post but with roach drops instead of sling/bling drops. Another thing I propose is making an extra Queen or two (I usually make 3) to make muta harassment last longer. Before he gets a critical amount of thors/marines, you can multiprong harass with mutas/drops and bring your weak mutas home for a quick transfusion. And extra 300 minerals seems cost effective to me. So I'm gonna try all this out with a practice partner today.
I opened a thread on this topic but it got locked by a mod because I was slow on getting the replay up but someone told me that basically you have to play this like BW PvT. You can't take their army head on and if they decide to move out you have to hit them before they get too far from their base so they will be forced to stay home and play D. This buys you time to build your macro wihle teching to broodlords. Broodlords are really your only hope. Normally a good push of 5 or so broodlords can be GG to a mech heavy force. They completely maul siege tanks and the friendly fire will probably kill most of the hellions too, after the tanks are occupied then you can move in with the ground force and wipe up. Generally you'll want a mix of speedlings and hydras to swarm the thors and protect your broodlords from vikings.
I dont remember who it was but i saw an awesome replay on metropolis where it was ZvT and T went bio but thats not important. Whats important is that the Z player was Johny-on-the-spot with his larva injections throughout the game so when it came down to a 200 v 200 food army clash, the Terran ended with a good chunk of their forces still alive at about 140 food but the zerg (who got obliterated) was already at 200 food before the terran could even get to the zergs base and was able to clear the rest of the terran's bio ball and push for a gg. So that being said... as much as the terran is going to be buying time to build up his victory mech fleet, you have to buy time once he gets into the critical mass range to get your broodlord air force up and running with the production support you need. Drop, nydus, harass with mutas, whatever. Just keep the terran at home and make him pay if he moves out to secure that 3rd econ by raping his main/natural. You don't have to kill him, just outrun him. Also, do things like harass his main and have a force ready to hit his 3rd as soon as he sends his forces home.
Also, I know that when i play terran i always send out a raven or 2 with my tanks so i wouldn't rely on the burrowed roach thing... All good terrans will have at least a raven or 2. I have lost mad siege tanks because this guy had 6 ultras burrowed where i went into siege mode... (lol@ sc2 burrowed ultras DX). That and they can really help against hydras which will generally be mixed in with pretty much any zerg ground army or worst case can dump their energy in harassing workers with turrets (and those turrets actually own, they last forever).
My only defeat is due to a mech terran that was litteraly spamming
5-6 hellions (upgraded) 4-5 tanks 2-3 thors (upgraded) 10-15 marauders (upgraded) 2-3 medivacs 1-2 tower defence spammer! upgraded 1-1 A - move in my base
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
I had 2x extra expension AT ALL TIME. My income was double his. I had a queen on each expansion and was spamming larva.
Fights would look like:
Frenzy ultras Send ultras Fungal x4 NP 3x tanks 1x Thor send lings/hydras Other tank focus my infestors (infestor dies) all my army vanish
Basicaly my 3-3 units (3-5 for ultras cause the +2 armor was done) vs his 1-1, my 200/200 vs his 150ish/200 army was litteraly getting destroyed. The difference is that I could get back to 200/200 in no time but even that... he could almost out produce me with 1 expand only. Basicaly I had EVERY TECH, upgraded everything that I could upgrade (even ventral sacs!!!) I ran to 3 evo chambers and 2 spires for faster upgrades. So basicaly I was decked out! The only thing left was to produce and A+move his base.... and I've never ever been able to kill the dude. At some point I was desesperate and started to have some bad macro and he over ran me!
I mean.... seriously.... how the heck 1-1 units totaly RAPE 3-3 and they are less! How the heck terran can produce with only 1 expand while I had 3 (and kept expanding as well). I mean... does anyone smell the OPness?
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
Sorry bud, I'm sure your pretty good, but thats a terrible army comp. Ultras are shit, dont make em, any amount of other units using the ressources you invested in that crap wouldve done better.
hydras/lings are bad vs mech. ( in my opinion, especially if its a marauder heavy army with hellions and tanks.)
I think the thor right now is a bit overrated, and zergs are scared to go mutas. But really, Mutas are the best answer to mech right now. They force your opponent into making turrest/thors/marines, and if your good enough with the harassment, he wont get away with 1 thor 4 marines and 1 thor.
What I mean is, by going mutas, you force him to invest into that shit. Things is, thor heavy with marines support are not so strong Vs a ling/roach/muta flank ( banelings if possible).
And the investement into thors/marines/turrets really thins his numbers of tanks/hellions/marauders.
It's not fail proof, and requires semi-good multitasking why you harass/expo/develop your tech and upgrades to slowly mix in roaches/lings/banelings into the mix.
I've had way more success with muta openings or roach/ling to mutas to defend hellion/marine harasses. I've basically turned the whole dynamic of the matchup around with mutas.
You just cant afford to not threaten with air, as tanks will roll over you.
Edit: btw, I'm no scrub, this is all top10-15 diamond league speech, so I'm not making this work vs shitty terrans. ( even had one using medivacs to make his thors keep up with my mutas, that was awesome lol)
Sorry bud, I'm sure your pretty good, but thats a terrible army comp. Ultras are shit, dont make em, any amount of other units using the ressources you invested in that crap wouldve done better.
Wierd, cause SLush is chilling in my vent and I asked him what he's doing vs Tmech and he is doing ultras with lings and infestors and win most of his match vs terran mech altho he agrees that Tmech is imba right now cause zerg just don't have any proper counter (or just didn't find em yet) and I trust SLush more than any other zerg on this forum unless you are Dimaga, no offence. His timming is better than mine (thats for sure... and also the reason he was like 400 points higher than me on platinum before reset (he was like 2500)) but trust me ultras are pretty good cause they are the reason why I push Tmech back to 40-50mins games instead of 15-20.
As for air, I do harass alot with them early but when you think about it (we tested it) 1 thor will take down about 5-6 muta (IF SPLITED, 9+ if staked), 3 thors will take down 15-18 mutas..... if you then tali in marines + turrets (cause I don't know if you played against any good Tmech but they do advance with turrets/bunkers well you'd need an army of 25+ mutalisk at the VERRY LEAST (aka 2500min/2500gaz/50food leaving your with about 70 food for your ground army (since you have to calculate drones))) and you haven't even started to kill 1 tank yet!
I mean I found a way to kill Tmech which consist on being super aggresive early on and than find a good timing window when they attack your base you just make a nydus in their main and do as much damage as you can! since you have 4-5 base by this time you basicaly just have to rebuild if needed (you should have enough minerals/gaz to build what ever and than you go dog fight his army 1 unit by 1 unit. To be honest I won my last 2 games against Tmech using this strat.... I just don't find this NORMAL that you have to go all the way to this kind of start in order to win against a Tmech. Seriously... zerg is in need of a good Tmech counter.... mobility isn't enough... SC1 =/= SC2... by this I mean that in SC1 mobility was enough to pressure the terran with zerglings.... now in SC2 too many shits can happen!
the best way to deal with terran mech is to not let him get that huge tank army.. once he gets 10+ tanks it gets almost unstopable you need to constant be offensive in game .. muta harras or ling run by to kill scv's or nydus/drop just be aggresive while you expand around the map because if you can contain terran on 1-2 base and you have 3-5 bases its just a matter of time before you can break him ...
I am in Diamond League (but not a 'Pro'), so this might not work on very high level. This is what i do asuming he just plays defensivly will some harass and macros up the "unbeatable" army: - Open with Speedlings against early harass. This allows me to make my expansion savely too. - Build spire and make some Mutas, they help to defend and threaten (!) harass. So just dont overcommit, the goal is to keep him in his base and waste some money on turrets (or build Thors). -Make an Investor Pit and tech to Hive, while expanding aggressively. To have some Investory is pretty important as they help to defend against both Bio (Fungal Growth) and Mech (Parasite). -Once you have Lair make a Greater Spire and get BLs out, use your Mutas if you have any left and Corruptors to protect them from Air threats. - Now you are able to push. You can support this composition with Cracklings, as you have quit some Minerals leftover sometimes. Ideally you want to get some Hydras, which help against large amounts of Vikings. Make sure to have enough Broodlords in this case, Broodlings are needed to tank the dmg.
Note that mass Roach is pretty decent if he decides to push preemptively, means if he dont have the critical amount of tanks to melt everything. So watch him closely and be ready to throw down some Roaches. Also if you want to upgrade, Air Damage is pretty good of course, on the ground i would focus on Armor, as it helps all types of ground units.
This is just a rough sketch of an build, it offers the possiblities for harassment and gives you a reasonable well chance to fight his main army. What i have noticed is that in many cases i want to saturate my expanions with the MINIMUM amount of drones at the minerals, but expand much faster instead to aquire additional Gas. I compare this concept to BW ZvT against Bio, where the Z rushes for Hive to get out Defilers.
Yes, pretty much. If you want to beat a mech terran you *NEED* to get broodlords. Against those the only option for terran are vikings and those can be countered with mutas and hydra. Plus you can pump your air units out quicker than he does if you did not neglect your macro.
Let’s face it, there is always a way to win a game – but if you look at about even skill level players in Z vs T, Tyran will win 90% of the time. I really hoop that Blizzard is going to fix this unbalance in middle – late game….
I had a bad game vs Terran recently on Metapolis (we both appeared on the right so closest). I went 14 pool, 15 hatch and then a couple of spines, lings and roaches for defense. Then I put the spire to build. By the time I had 7 mutas and went to harass him he attacked me with 5-6 upgraded helions, couple of thors and marauders. I had no chance. I knew my mutas would get destroyed if I returned to defend so I went to raze his base (managed to kill scvs and CC but he had turtled at his exp) and he razed my exp + base
Anyway my point was, the speedling, muta thing will not work if the enemy gets early thors (which he can easily). And the thor, marauder, helion combination can deal with anything Zerg has by that point. Thors probably hit as strong as tanks (40 damage per attack). Marauders rape roaches and upgraded helions rape lings and do a lot of damage to hydras as well. We all know what Thors do to mutas.
Archangel could you please link the replay here, i am interested in that game. I cant tell till i have watched this, but maybe your mutas came out too late? Being in close position sucks in any case though.
unfortunately the best answer right now is to just out macro him. thats what the zerg race has always been about, its just that in this particular version there aren't enough answers b/ ultraliskss have literally the worst pathing possible.
I wanted to post both replays of my loses against terrans recently (and one of a extremely lame tactic on Desert Oasis which I won in the end somehow) but as I only today created an account here (I been reading this forum for a while) I could not make new topics.
I will put the replays in this topic then when I get home.
It feels to me like no different from ZvTmech in BW
Be fast, hit everywhere, isolate/surround his mechball, massive flank, pray
Keep just enough mutas to force the terran to have to invest in thors. After loads of harass, when the terran moves out towards your base, do a ridiculous massive flank with everything. Don't hotkey all your mutas together!!
On May 26 2010 21:41 Konsume wrote: Diamond 11-1 [157 points] here
My only defeat is due to a mech terran that was litteraly spamming
5-6 hellions (upgraded) 4-5 tanks 2-3 thors (upgraded) 10-15 marauders (upgraded) 2-3 medivacs 1-2 tower defence spammer! upgraded 1-1 A - move in my base
I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
take the resources you spent on melee upgrades, ultra cavern, ultra upgrades, & ultra, and spend it on corruptor/brood lords instead. You would have easily beaten that army. only 2-3 thors, and no vikings.
I hate to say it, but you have to do something you're not going to want to do... Broodlord/corrupter.
This is a pretty late game strat and so you should have sufficient income by this point to support like 5/6 brolords and 4/5 corrupters.
This is what the game looks like: Zerg standard opens, say 13/14/15 pool - 14/15/16 hatch. Around 25 supply if you send a scout you will likely see a factory/rax switch, or a rax with no add on. Once you've spotted this, it's time for mass roaches, while you tech to greater spire in the background. Roaches are cheap enough that you can do this off of 2 bases, a 3rd coming in at some point.
Basically, the idea is that you have to a) hide the greater spire as best you can by using an overlord to crap creep in some corner, and you need to make this part of your plan. You can't just be like "Oh shit, he's got a lot of mech." Then panic swap. By then it's too late. Don't bother upgrading the air units, save that for the roaches in case you need to go back to Hyda/Roach. You'll need to do that if he starts cranking out too many vikings. But if he does this, then you can easily handle the lighter load of mech.
IMO: Ultras are worse now.... They died so easily before, But now they die even easier, As well, Other units such as lings and/or raoches just block these bad boys from getting any hits. Best way to combat it is NOT broodlords / corruptors early (once they scout your lack of units they can just push) But to just harass them as much as possible and HOPE they cannot push out too fast.
My experience is, that even with 4-5 broodlords, their marines and even a couple vikings will P-W-N any of my broodlords without even worrying about the corruptors at all, not to mention i will have nearly NO ground army at this time, so his marines will walk in freely...
Yep ultras are worse now TT. I had better results from them pre patch. I've abandoned hope for them all together because blizzard will probably not reverse the changes or admit that it was a nerf overall. I'm trying to get to broodlords every game with mixed results.
Infested terrans are even more useless now given the huge mana cost and I've been unable to use contaminate against terrans successfully since their lowest teir unit is anti air so they can keep my overseers away easily. Frenzy never gets used because if I have infestors I always get neural parasite and that spell is always getting priority with my first 100 energy.
GdR v LzGaMeR 1 - GdR tries ultra/roach -> fail. Once critical mass of tanks is reached, ultras die to siege tanks before they can get within range. Although I'm surprised GdR didn't use burrow at all
GdR v LzGaMeR 2 - in this game GdR tries a variety of things:
roach drops -> fail, tanks kill roaches, although I think he could have done better if he had dropped directly on the tanks fast broodlords -> fail, some vikings kill them Infestors for NP -> fail, infestors die and even when they succeed they don't do enough damage broodlords backed by hydras -> fail, tanks outrange hydras and vikings outrange broodlords
No contest, after trying out just about everything, Lz just steamrolls with some A-move and periodically sieging all his tanks
On May 27 2010 01:02 BlasiuS wrote: take the resources you spent on melee upgrades, ultra cavern, ultra upgrades, & ultra, and spend it on corruptor/brood lords instead. You would have easily beaten that army. only 2-3 thors, and no vikings.
Broodlords are one hell of a bad idea that you guys must stop using. As soon as you'll face a good Tmech you'll learn that they will use 2 starports/reactors to pump medivacs and switch to vickings as soon as needed. Basicaly what I'm saying is not to forget about BL, it's just not the right thing to do in the long run. It's only one harass to force em to make vickings and lose money over it. it's like when you go mutas to force them to do turrets/thors....
Broodlord is good to own tanks, DUH! they are air and tanks can't hit them. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use them if they over do the tank thing but... it's CLEARLY not what most Tmechs are doing (at least the ones i'm playing)... when it is supported by hellions/vickings, your broodlords are just a total waste of money and supply.
The reason I didn't do any "broodlords" in this game is simple.... I used an overseer to scout that he had not 2 starports but 3. 2 had a reactor and 1 had a lab. So I knew that broodlords would do notthing at all.
I just miss the defiler "Dark Swarm" ability.
As for ultras and melee upgrade.... SLush which is one of the top NA zerg player right now (arguably the best NA zerg player) told me that Ultra + ling + infestors are the solution to Tmech. I was one of the broodlord fans before and (as i've told you in this post) told me to stop using them as they are pretty much useless vs most good Tmech. As soon as I started to use this combo, my ZvsTmech went from a 20mins game to 50+ min games (when loosing) so it's definatly working. I need to work on the timming and all but overall it's a better strat than all-in broodlords.
anyways, you can't say that this matchup is fair as it is cause... equal skills ZvT the T should almost always win due to this strat. I'm not saying it's UNBEATABLE... but you must admit that it is clearly giving a HUGE edge to the terrans!
The problem with ultra ling infestors is that you need to get to the late game (ie hive tech). Lings and infestors definitely aren't enough to stop a timing push by the Terran with a good number of hellions and tanks.
On May 27 2010 01:02 BlasiuS wrote: take the resources you spent on melee upgrades, ultra cavern, ultra upgrades, & ultra, and spend it on corruptor/brood lords instead. You would have easily beaten that army. only 2-3 thors, and no vikings.
Broodlords are one hell of a bad idea that you guys must stop using. As soon as you'll face a good Tmech you'll learn that they will use 2 starports/reactors to pump medivacs and switch to vickings as soon as needed. Basicaly what I'm saying is not to forget about BL, it's just not the right thing to do in the long run. It's only one harass to force em to make vickings and lose money over it. it's like when you go mutas to force them to do turrets/thors....
BS. Broodlords ARE the answer. You only need a few to pwn all of his ground units. You SHOULD have a bigger income than him at that point since you should have more bases. You SHOULD be making MASS corruptors (or mutas) which got BUFFED a lot against vikings. You SHOULD be able to pump more corruptors than he can pump vikings. GG right there if you make it to broodlords. Terran has no ground to armored air units.
On May 27 2010 02:33 link0 wrote: BS. Broodlords ARE the answer. You only need a few to pwn all of his ground units. You SHOULD have a bigger income than him at that point since you should have more bases. You SHOULD be making MASS corruptors (or mutas) which got BUFFED a lot against vikings. You SHOULD be able to pump more corruptors than he can pump vikings. GG right there if you make it to broodlords. Terran has no ground to armored air units.
humm... I don't know who you are in game and which league you are playing on (My guess would be that you were platinum before reset and made it to diamond) but when it comes to
SLush vs You
Who do you think I'll listen to? Like I said... at some point we all tried broodlords and at some point we all had success with it... but when you get higher and play vs old 2000+ platinum terran you find yourself in the deepest shiet ever... when fighting with broods cause vickings + thors are all they need to win against ANY air units you can throw at them. Thors > Mutas | Vickings > Brood and Corrupters
Tell me im dumb for listening to SLush which isn't doing any broods and wins by running with lings, ultra and infestors.... but like I said.... I will keep doing this build till I do it right since it's working in the high end of the ladder.
Edit: Hell even Lz is currently owning with it and top ladder players aren't able to stop him YET! EVEN WITH BROODS!
I think you must be leaving something out when you say Ultra + ling + infestors is the solution to terran mech.
In that if you build only lings, then add in infestors, and finally ultras the terran army will be pretty much be perfectly configured to annialiate your army (mass helions and tanks). Not to mention many mech builds incorporate banshees which you wouldn't be able to handle well.
Now if your were you were to go through a series of transitions I can see it potentially working. (Which is what I imagin is what slush had in mind and that composition is just for end game)
What looks fairly good on paper would be to open with roaches making helions rather ineffective making the terran cut back on them, then transition into mutas haras (only 5-6 of them) to force thor production and handle banshees, finally when the terran moves out with an army of primarily thors and tanks it might be possibile to churn out enough lings with ultra and infestor support to over run the terran army composition.
On May 26 2010 21:41 Konsume wrote: I had all tech (including broodlords and ultra) In a normal fight I had 3-4 ultras ~30-40 lings 20 hydras 4-5 infestors (for fungal and NP as frenzy isn't THAT good besides on ultras(I think)) [note that at the end I tryed to add 5-10 roaches in each pack without any success] [note that I also tryed broodlords but he just pumped 4-5 vickings to own them]
Fights would look like:
Frenzy ultras Send ultras Fungal x4 NP 3x tanks 1x Thor send lings/hydras Other tank focus my infestors (infestor dies) all my army vanish
Since you obviously said that you're uploading the replay later, I'll wait mostly til then. Attacking Mech balls units is horrible in general with how they work. Burrowed Roaches and dropping units onto the Terran ball is incredibly effective and can help so much since you don't lose units trying to get in range. Sure, Thors can shot Overlords down, but they don't shoot them down fast enough if they're skimping by on 2-3 Thors and you do a proper Overlord surround drop from at least two or three locations. Ultras work fine and well if you can get them to deal damage for the most part since they don't tank as well but do pretty good damage from the previous game. Fungal Growths over the whole army can be abused, Fungal Growth suicides can be extremely effective at slowing down and weakening the push.
The biggest problem I'm having is that you're trying to quote a strategy another player has told you, but I have not seen anything about the specifics from any posts in this thread. It feels less like a discussion and more like you just want to simply advocate an idea and that it is the only way to play against Mech. Please elaborate more.
we're not rushing straight to ultras that would be stupid! By the time we get to the ultra fights.... you have access to all units available to the zerg arsenal! Many switches are made before we get to the ultra+lings+infestors combo!
On May 27 2010 03:42 Celestial wrote: Since you obviously said that you're uploading the replay later, I'll wait mostly til then.
[...]
The biggest problem I'm having is that you're trying to quote a strategy another player has told you, but I have not seen anything about the specifics from any posts in this thread. It feels less like a discussion and more like you just want to simply advocate an idea and that it is the only way to play against Mech. Please elaborate more.
Yah I'll upload it tonight as soon as I get home which is in approximatly 6 hours from now.
And ofcourse i'm not giving all the specifics... I'm just saying that "broodlords" aren't the solution which has been proven many times vs Lz in replays we've seen in this verry thread. I'm also saying that Tmech is a bit imba right now... as it's totaly wrecking everything in 2secs or less
and I'm FAR from pro at using this strat cause I just started using it yesterday after I spoke with SLush. So I'm FAR from knowing everything I should know about it... just barely testing it since yesterday. All I know is that SLush TOTALY owns with it and that it improved my game vs Tmech by ALOT!
I might even be able to get you 1-2 replays from slush since he's chilling in my vent. So I might be able to upload them.
On May 27 2010 02:33 link0 wrote: BS. Broodlords ARE the answer. You only need a few to pwn all of his ground units. You SHOULD have a bigger income than him at that point since you should have more bases. You SHOULD be making MASS corruptors (or mutas) which got BUFFED a lot against vikings. You SHOULD be able to pump more corruptors than he can pump vikings. GG right there if you make it to broodlords. Terran has no ground to armored air units.
humm... I don't know who you are in game and which league you are playing on (My guess would be that you were platinum before reset and made it to diamond) but when it comes to
SLush vs You
Who do you think I'll listen to? Like I said... at some point we all tried broodlords and at some point we all had success with it... but when you get higher and play vs old 2000+ platinum terran you find yourself in the deepest shiet ever... when fighting with broods cause vickings + thors are all they need to win against ANY air units you can throw at them. Thors > Mutas | Vickings > Brood and Corrupters
Tell me im dumb for listening to SLush which isn't doing any broods and wins by running with lings, ultra and infestors.... but like I said.... I will keep doing this build till I do it right since it's working in the high end of the ladder.
Edit: Hell even Lz is currently owning with it and top ladder players aren't able to stop him YET! EVEN WITH BROODS!
I made it up to Plat 2100 with Terran before reset, but that's besides the point. With all due respect, Slush is a great player. However, the current T mech build is relatively new. Just because he is a great player doesn't mean he is already using the optimal strategy to adapt to T's new build. He is also a zerg player, so naturally, will be baised in his opinions when speaking casually (to you in private).
My post included reasons and solid logic on why broodlords and corruptors would work. A proper response would be appreciated.
Some people have mentioned burrowed roaches. The problem there is any half decent player as numerous counters to that. #1. they can see you when you are moving while burrowed
#2. They will have turrets protecting their base areas and/or army usually.
#3. They will usually attack with a raven
#4. Even if they can't see your roaches burrowed (graphics settings), terran mech makes very good use of sensor towers due to their lower mobility. All you need is like 1 sensor tower, on some maps maybe 2, then you scan with orbital command. You can annilhate all their roaches before they deal much damage at all
#5. I've tried a massive army of burried roaches vs thor-hellion-siege tank army (probably also had numerous marauders but i can't remember exactly), and unburrowed on his units, and just got STOMPED. I unburrowed the roaches and moved the lings in at about the same time, and just lost all my units very damn fast.
On May 27 2010 02:33 link0 wrote: BS. Broodlords ARE the answer. You only need a few to pwn all of his ground units. You SHOULD have a bigger income than him at that point since you should have more bases. You SHOULD be making MASS corruptors (or mutas) which got BUFFED a lot against vikings. You SHOULD be able to pump more corruptors than he can pump vikings. GG right there if you make it to broodlords. Terran has no ground to armored air units.
humm... I don't know who you are in game and which league you are playing on (My guess would be that you were platinum before reset and made it to diamond) but when it comes to
SLush vs You
Who do you think I'll listen to? Like I said... at some point we all tried broodlords and at some point we all had success with it... but when you get higher and play vs old 2000+ platinum terran you find yourself in the deepest shiet ever... when fighting with broods cause vickings + thors are all they need to win against ANY air units you can throw at them. Thors > Mutas | Vickings > Brood and Corrupters
Tell me im dumb for listening to SLush which isn't doing any broods and wins by running with lings, ultra and infestors.... but like I said.... I will keep doing this build till I do it right since it's working in the high end of the ladder.
Edit: Hell even Lz is currently owning with it and top ladder players aren't able to stop him YET! EVEN WITH BROODS!
I actually thought prepatch 13 that ultras were super effective against mech. I used them in every game against mech and I won most of those games. Now I don't use them so much because of the 450 hp nerf, they just die way too easily to the thor's cannon thingy, focus fire, and a critical amount of tanks. Whereas before I found that my ultras lasted a hell of a long time against a frightening mech ball (4~thors, 10 tanks, mass hellions, a few mauarders).
I don't know though because when I engaged his army I didn't have frenzy admittedly.
I mean how would you open up here? roach/hydra/infestor into ultra ling? That's what I did in the past but I think I'm more dependent on mutas nowadays. How do you deal with a possible 4-5 banshee harass in the late game?
Also, I'd just like to add that I think we should be dropping more versus terran in general. Picking off mules/scvs/tanks on the cliff has got to take its toll on the terran.
Just saw someone Zerg beat T mech with Mass Roach Mass Infestor. I think that build may be on to something... Weak vs Air, but what you can't NP, you can FG and run, and maybe include just a few hydras for support.
I'm going to have to play with this to see if I can make it work.
On May 27 2010 05:03 DTown wrote: Just saw someone Zerg beat T mech with Mass Roach Mass Infestor. I think that build may be on to something... Weak vs Air, but what you can't NP, you can FG and run, and maybe include just a few hydras for support.
I'm going to have to play with this to see if I can make it work.
Doesn't PDD stop roaches now?
With a 1-1-1 opening, you could get a Raven out incredibly fast without it ruining your build.
On May 27 2010 05:03 DTown wrote: Just saw someone Zerg beat T mech with Mass Roach Mass Infestor. I think that build may be on to something... Weak vs Air, but what you can't NP, you can FG and run, and maybe include just a few hydras for support.
I'm going to have to play with this to see if I can make it work.
Doesn't PDD stop roaches now?
With a 1-1-1 opening, you could get a Raven out incredibly fast without it ruining your build.
NP the raven?
Fall back and don't fight in front of the PDD?
Dunno, as I said, I'm grasping for straws here. Something, anything, that might be semi effective vs mech.
On May 27 2010 04:16 link0 wrote: My post included reasons and solid logic on why broodlords and corruptors would work. A proper response would be appreciated.
DICLAIMER: I understand that all the theorycrafting I did in this post isn't 100% accurate cause you would have to take into account when zergs loose all their units they can tech switch as fast as a lightling would hit the ground and all.... but I just wanted to prove that MASSSSSS X AIR UNITS isn't a viable strategy against terran that knows what he's doing. Also we would have to take into account that mules + 4 scv per base make up for -1 base and so on.... please don't flame I'm ready to take your suggestions tho
(sorry if my numbers are wrong they are from what I remember)
Corruptor : 150/100 - 2 - 40s Broodlord : 150/150 - 4 - 34s (+150/100 for the initial corruptor making it a 300/250 unit) Mutalisk : 100/100 - 2 - 33s
Vicking: 150/75 - 2 - 42s Thor: 300/200 - 6 - 60s
In the case we say... make MASSIVE CORRUPTORS + BROODLORDS! (like you suggested and also been shown that it's not working against Lz at least but eh! lets look at the numbers cause numbers don't lie)
A normal zerg should have at the VERRY least 1x more expand than his Terran counter-part I totaly agree with you. 1 zerg base should have a MINIMUM of 16 drones on minerals and 6 on gaz. It is prefered to have 20 on minerals. At this point in the game the zerg will have 2-3 expands making it a minimum of
ok now I must say that you will RARLY have 4 fully working base going by the time fights will start but I've seen it happen more often than you'd think since Tmech is a pretty slow strat. Also it's not all base that will be maxed out at all time so we will do a median of 90/200 used! for your workers + queens (which wont participate in any offensive battles) make it a little bit less if it makes you feel better, but in the end about/atleast 40% of your supplies will be used by workers.
Leaving us with 110 food! Now you ask us to pump corrupters + broodlords which are BOTH super GAZ CONSUMING and would be hard to do in a normal game but just for the fun of it we will get the numbers. Now I might not be 2500 zerg but I was 2000 zerg and I know what i'm doing... and GAZ is the problem not minerals. In late game you oftenly end up with 1000minerals and 0 gaz and that is why you produce lings or make another hatch in order to get better production... anyways... lets say you want to produce 110 food of corrupters/broodlords.
110 / 2 = 55 corruptors = 8250/5500 (and those numbers are ridiculous as it will cost less to produce broodlords)
now I understand that you want to keep some supply to make brood lords so lets say that you want to have a 1:2 broodlords/corrupter ratio
Total = 6300 / 4900 (THAT IS TOTALY ACHEIVABLE) for 42 units using 112 supply (a bit more than we originaly talked but eh! w-e)
now the question is how much vicking would it cost to get on par "army cost wize only". Here i'm not talking about 2 vickings owning 523520352 corruptors (lol) but... rather just COST OF UNITS FOR COST OF UNITS.
6300/4900 // 150/75 = 42mineral wise / 65gaz wize making a median of 53 units 106 supply EVENTHO Gaz is worth more than minerals i've put vickings on par!!! so basicaly you understand that producing vicking is a good counter right?
So basicaly at the ~~~~~same~~~~~ cost (aka zergs cost is higher since they use more gaz). Vickings will cost less, deal more damage, and use less supply.
Are vickings owning Corrupters 1v1? YES Are vickings owning Broodlords 1v1? YES --- Plus vicking has a better range than broodlords aka if brood wanna get the tank they have to get past the vickings!
and than we would have to do the same thing for mutas instead of corrupters but than we would have to calculate thors (if I remember correctly vicking has better range aswell).... and since mutals are stacking like crazy....... SLush and I tested 1 thor against X mutals since the patch that made the aoe centred on the targets and the conclusion was:
1 thor > 5 mutas 1 thor < 6 mutas (2 mutas surviving with half hp) and the test was done with no SCV to repair (which I see alot lately)
it would be REALLY hard to calculate everything but over all I think that you can understand that AIR isn't THAT GOOD OF AND IDEA like you seems to think about it.
in conclusion:
Basicaly... you're telling me that if you go Tmech I should go MASS CORRUPTOR + BROODLORDS which theoricaly work till you get mass vicks (which shouldn't take too long if you scout properly (scan anyone?) and get 2 starports with reactors (like most terrans i'm facing)
and than I tell you ok but then GO MASS VICKINGS!
and than you tell me what? If I go back to lings + hydras+ infestors you're going to back to Tmech and so on...
What I'm saying here and I repeted it on almost EVERY POST I did is not that broodlords aren't good and I want them buffed. Just that it's too hard to protect them so they can do their jobs. Imo the best way to protect broods are hydras which are being owned by tanks.... but long story short I really DOUPT there is any air units worth of using against a terran. I'm not saying that broodlords doesn't have their spots in the current Tmech meta game or any other air units, but I'm pretty confident that they are not the solution.... I'm saying that it MUST NOT be considered as the Tmech HARD COUNTER.
Now I know for sure that one of the top player is currently winning against Tmech with his Lings + ultras + infestors combo!! I know that he has at least a good 70% success rate with it. I'm not quite good with this start but I still won 60% of my games vs Tmech since I'm doing it. And while I agree that zergs have an hard time to deal with this strat... i'm not saying that it's not counterable by any means just that it's stupidly needing all your ressources.
On this, I will try to get some slush's replay and I'll post my replay tonight. You'll find alot of small mistakes here and there (i know.. I found em as well) but you'll also see that 3-3 units are being owned by 1-1
I've been playing around with mass overlord, just loading everything into overlords and unloading on his army. Baneling bombs destroy infantry and since it negates the ridiculousness of tank splash it feels pretty good.
You kind of just answered your own question. Even though Vikings are a decent soft counter to corrupter/broodlord for cost, you are neglecting to include the cost of starports + reactors and the huge amount of time it takes to build those structures.
As you've said, you can quick as lightning switch to all air ALL OF A SUDDEN. A terran can't possibly know that you are going to mass air until you actually do it. He won't just have a 3 startports /w reactors just sitting around idle.
This is why a MASS air tech switch does work. Terran CANNOT keep up with zerg production when a tech switch is involved.
Go attack with your air straight to his production facilities and camp the starports with your corruptors. GG.
The problem is that you won't be able to produce THAT many corrupters + broodlords without suffering any punishments... which put us back to square 1
and if you want to include time and cost to build a spire/greater spire vs starports + reactors....
I'm sure you'll find out that in the end it's about even!
and there is no GG in this thread... we're only talking!
also... Terrans are pretty fast producers with their 5-7 factoes, 4-5 barrack 2-3 starports
and also I didn't prove anything besides that air isn't the solution as you don't need as much vickings to own the same cost army leaving your with alot of mech on the ground.... so in reality, you're always a step ahead....
What we're seeing with terran mech is the TTD syndrome. high HP units that hard counter other units with insane damage at 6-13 range. Zerg is put into a predicament where the only units who can survive the TTD are practically melee range and the units they can produce with decent range are 80hp light units that move incredibly slow(off of creep). This leads to insanely cost efficient units on the terran side due to them firing the first shots and hitting harder. This negates the fact that Zerg out expanded them early game because they get so much more "TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE" aka bang for their buck.
I believe that the prevalence of ramp doorways for both terran and protoss are the main issues here. Zerg pose no threat early game when a lot of these TTD units are out of tech range. But the ability to door-off your ramp allows terran and protoss to put zerg in a tough predicament. Try to tech to your own TTD units and risk getting overrun by T1 units, something protoss/terran have very little fear of playing versus a zerg, or pump out your usual fragile army and hope that the other player doesnt hard counter your army because all the expansions in the world aren't going to save you if your 140 supply army keeps getting slaughtered and they're only losing 10-20 supply per engagement.
TLDR version; The ability of both of these races to just sit back and tech to TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE units with no fear, due to wall-offs, is the main problem. Zerg are forced to build an army of fragile and slow ranged units that are cost inefficient, or tough melee range units that are cost inefficient due to ranged critical mass or risk being overrun early if these races do not tech.
I just played in lower diamond against a T (I was high plat before patch, havnt done enough ladder to work my way up yet though) And all i did was do a baneling drop mid-game (after he had ~8 tanks, 3 thors, and 10 hellions) He did a thor drop, but i fended it off decently on lost temple Although, i noticed that he only had about 32 SCVS when i watched the replay, and he stopped building them too often, so if he had them more saturated, his push may have came earlier.
I Think early speedling with hydras ASAP would be good as a build, and once you hit lair, get ovie transport + movespeed AND a baneling nest (hidden even maybe would work well)
And then what you could do is send one suicide ovie when sacs are almost done to pinpoint where thors are, and then use 2 ovies full BOTH on the main base, and drop. Kill ~10-15 scvs will slow him down.
Now, from there nydusing the corner, OR even ON TOP of his cliff (in lost temple anyways) Could work very well, Or you can send more scout ovies (its funny, beacuse after the first drop, they usually retreat their SCVS as soon as they see an ovie in their base with banlinegs or not) to distract him and pinpoint thors again. After sending in ovie after ovie to distract him, you can choose anotther time to baneling drop (expo hopefully) which would work well at DELAYING this push until you can get sufficient broodlords.
BUT: I'm going to further test this in ladder now ^^
On May 27 2010 05:55 Konsume wrote: also... Terrans are pretty fast producers with their 5-7 factoes, 4-5 barrack 2-3 starports
I'm pretty sure that "5-7 factoes, 4-5 barrack 2-3 starports" with addons cost much more than Hive tech and one of each zerg structure. You have the option to suddenly use 100% of your production facilities to make air while the Terran has the option to use 10% of his production facilities to build air. And you can't expect a Terran to start pumping mass vikings as soon as he scouts your Hive. That would just be retarded since you can just respond by not making air.
I dunno about high pro level, but at platinum 1600-1800 (before patch) broodlords were the answer to any terran ground. It just takes 3 bases and 1 failed or delayed attack (from terran) to tech to it safely. I dont mass them, 4-5 are enough, in combination with hydra heavy army it works wonders. They have so much hp you dont even have to worry much about vikings: get a good position and just a-move broodlords into his army, and follow with the rest of yours. The damage from broodlords, the broodlings and the fact he went vikings will benefit your ground army a tonn. Imagine guardians in sc1 buffed twice, goliafs do only half damage to them and the irradiate is out: now you have the idea of broodlords in sc2's zvt.
Im gonna say this right now: Anyone who doesnt think Tmech vs Z is overpowered is an idiot.
It is not only popular concensus it is fact. I find it offensive anyone who doesnt agree.,, they are basically calling all of us crappy Zerg players including the pros who find it imbalanced.
Anyways in regards to strat... ive been working on straight roach defend/harass early to + mass speedlings/roach/ bling drop .... and other variations of an all- in... im just done trying to go macro against Tmech...
I've been doing the opposite. Two spine crawlers at my expo and then using ALL larvae on drones and continously pumping queens from both hatches. I'm talking 6-8 queens until both main and expo are fully saturated. Stops early harass just as well as speedlings, holds off early pushes with transfusion and roaches popping out.
- this one he used early thors and helions while I went muta. When he ran over my base I didn't want to come back and defend with mutas as he had too many thors. If it was any other combination of units I would have defended. Later I was depressed and wasn't paying much attention so I forgot to spawn larva and use all the larva I could for drones/troops.
- here I just got raped by ground units with no chance of survival.
- this one I won but Terran used a very stupid early cheese that should not work this way. This map needs to be fixed.
Any comments and advice is welcome. I am currently an average Platinum (old Gold) player.
Make alot of mutas, its the best answer vs mech, and I've actually started winning vs terran mech with a mutas build.
Thors are good vs mutas, but they cant keep up, and they're really expensive. Dont get like 9 mutas, get enough so that if he moves his thors away by 5 meters, youl be in his mineral line snipin all his turrets, and killing most of his scvs if he really went far with em.
Get enough mutas so that if he thinks hes smart with his 1 thor and 3 turrets next to his SCVs youl be in there snipin everything and gone in a sec ( mutas will rape 1 thor btw. )
If he s massing turrets and thors, and its impossible to get even close, well, your second and third should be saturated when he even thinks of moving out, and you should have by then:
1.alot of mutas 2.alot of roaches 3.upgrades looking like 1 armor for ground, 1 armor for air, 1 attack for air ( thats where I m usually at)
The best thing Blizzard could do to fix this matchup without needing to add new units or tweaking a lot of the balance is:
Give the ultralisk an ability that reduces tank splash damage dealt to nearby units, allowing the Zerg army to get get closer to the tanks without getting totally owned, alongside with speed and health buffs obviously.
Nothing like dark swarm, just well balanced damage reduction. Make it an upgrade that replaces the +2 armor carapace upgrade, wich is quite useless right now.
With that new ability, Zerg could probably play zergling / roach / ultralisk against tank / thor / hellion.
For PvZ, this could be a good counter to mass Archons, wich was quite OP in SC:BW lategame (dunno really about sc2). Shouldn't affect Collossus splash tho.
And, Blizzard would finally have some role for the ultraliks
I find that the best option is to use burrowed roaches in the midgame to get your 3rd and 4th. Add a muta switch for harassment and then transition into mass ultra/ling in the late game. Roaches stop working as soon as they have detection.
Don't expect to win unless you have two more bases than T. If hes low on AA get mutas, if he has no vikings get broods, if hes got AA and lots of tanks, go ultraling. That's what I have found to be most successful, but when I'm doing this I literally have over 50% more income than the terran so -shrug-.
Also, for that first early push where he tries to siege your nat: ling/bling/infestor
How do you get enough gas to get mutas roaches and drop mid game? I'm assuming you're going 15 hatch 14 pool or 14 pool 16 hatch every game depending on the map? Are you getting ling speed with the first 100 gas?
Win early if you know he's going tech, go w/ mass lings / banelings. It works, I've been losing to it constantly since I started playing again, full terran. Been 1800 platinum at the least, nothing high level but at least I can hold my own. And now in diamond w/ a measly score of around 150 but only played about 10 games.
And I've never seen anything like it, mass lings/banelings who knew lings could be so powerful, I know I didn't, I call for a time of nerf ^^ IMO don't do roaches, every Z who tried roach vs my mech just ends up losing, it's lings that are the key. Cheap, easily massable, and amazingly effective at demolishing anything in it's way. If you want, build a spire or roach or hydra den W/E to throw off the terran in wasting money for tanks, thors instead of hellions.
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
On May 28 2010 03:27 JreL209 wrote: Win early if you know he's going tech, go w/ mass lings / banelings. It works, I've been losing to it constantly since I started playing again, full terran. Been 1800 platinum at the least, nothing high level but at least I can hold my own. And now in diamond w/ a measly score of around 150 but only played about 10 games.
And I've never seen anything like it, mass lings/banelings who knew lings could be so powerful, I know I didn't, I call for a time of nerf ^^ IMO don't do roaches, every Z who tried roach vs my mech just ends up losing, it's lings that are the key. Cheap, easily massable, and amazingly effective at demolishing anything in it's way. If you want, build a spire or roach or hydra den W/E to throw off the terran in wasting money for tanks, thors instead of hellions.
I play terran and zerg about 50/50 and as terran I roflstomp speedlings with upgraded hellions+micro and as zerg I generally get roflstomped by the same thing... The only good counter to hellions @ T1 is spines. You want to stick them right in the middle of your mineral patch so that hellions get owned if they try and kite your queens around your mineral line. I have the hardest time as zerg against terrans who scout my FE and then just spam mass marines, like before my 2nd hatch is even done. If i dont take the FE then they just D up and /lolmechvsZerg me and if I do then they just go all in with rines and bunkers and make you pay for it.
However, as Terran vs Zerg playing a typical mech army, I am 6-0. I'm just sayin... this shits IMBA, that's all there is to it. Welcome to Beta. Blizz is balancing around 400 apm Koreans and obviously it isn't scaling down so well. That's all there is to it... I'm good though, i dont mind playing terran. Just sucks cause once a night i get bored and want to try a match as zerg (who I was actually much better at) and it generally ends in frustration to some mass stalker bs or getting /lold all over by mech.
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
this is a good strategy to get owned in the early, mid, and end game.
early game should be nothing but zerglings and hydra if he's going mech (thor drop). If he's going banshee then you need quick hydra or muta, the former being the better choice imo. Mid-game, at least for me, usually consists of mass roaches and hydra [1:1 ratio] with a mix of zerglings with the speed upgrade [4:1:1 z/r/h]. Late game usually consists of adrenalings/infestors/brood lords/corrupters. It works vs. mech most of the time, but the best advice is to keep yourself AWAY from the tanks. If you can move the battle then go for it.
The only reason I don't use infestors earlier in the game is because I just can't control them too well. It's better for me to utilize mobility (drops/nydus) to keep the Terran at home. Plus I can use the gas elsewhere since I tear up every time I see a slug explode (bye bye 150 gas)
^ That is pretty much what I've been doing, except for the late game. My late game usually consists of a base trade, followed by me throwing down a hatch at every location on the map and hoping I can somehow build enough lings to overwhelm what they've got left : /
Alright i just came up with the solution guys. Mass ,mutal + either burrow infestor or infestor drop rush... Thats right fungal the rines NP the Thor and rape and pillage with mutals.
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
this is a good strategy to get owned in the early, mid, and end game.
early game should be nothing but zerglings and hydra if he's going mech (thor drop). If he's going banshee then you need quick hydra or muta, the former being the better choice imo. Mid-game, at least for me, usually consists of mass roaches and hydra [1:1 ratio] with a mix of zerglings with the speed upgrade [4:1:1 z/r/h]. Late game usually consists of adrenalings/infestors/brood lords/corrupters. It works vs. mech most of the time, but the best advice is to keep yourself AWAY from the tanks. If you can move the battle then go for it.
The only reason I don't use infestors earlier in the game is because I just can't control them too well. It's better for me to utilize mobility (drops/nydus) to keep the Terran at home. Plus I can use the gas elsewhere since I tear up every time I see a slug explode (bye bye 150 gas)
What a shitty reply, you say the whole strat is crap without explainin why, then you move on to say you go mass ground VS mech withtout talking about the specifics ( lol tanks?).
Maybe you make it work, but Im still skeptical.
roach/ling to muta works perfectly fine. Not "most of the time", all the time. Muta harass is the best thing a zerg can get in terms of making the most out of micro, and it works extremely well.
Roaches/lings will fuck up anything in the early game, except a pure marauder hellion push, wich aint very mech heavy.
Mutas are what you make of em, either thor cannon fodder or a living hell for the terran.
Im doing exactly what slush is talking about , and my ZvT is now fun to play, I do win alot more (won all of my past 9-10 ZvT's), and no, I dont get owned in the early, mid, and late game.
If your gonna make such a bold statement, you better back it up with substantial facts and a good explanation, especially if your trying to discredit slush. Cause right now you look like an idiot, cause the strat works, and it works very well.
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
this is a good strategy to get owned in the early, mid, and end game.
early game should be nothing but zerglings and hydra if he's going mech (thor drop). If he's going banshee then you need quick hydra or muta, the former being the better choice imo. Mid-game, at least for me, usually consists of mass roaches and hydra [1:1 ratio] with a mix of zerglings with the speed upgrade [4:1:1 z/r/h]. Late game usually consists of adrenalings/infestors/brood lords/corrupters. It works vs. mech most of the time, but the best advice is to keep yourself AWAY from the tanks. If you can move the battle then go for it.
The only reason I don't use infestors earlier in the game is because I just can't control them too well. It's better for me to utilize mobility (drops/nydus) to keep the Terran at home. Plus I can use the gas elsewhere since I tear up every time I see a slug explode (bye bye 150 gas)
Dont ever use roach/hydra mid game vs mech. you will instant die. Hydras are the worst unit vs mech they are too slow and gaz heavy, and that criple ur late game a lot.
what u need is early muta (mid game) if he makes too many thors, roach + infestor is next while u build ur late game tech. always build ling when u have too much minerals compared to gaz.
Late game broodlords are good. but if terrans scout properly he will get enough viking that u'll lose ur gaz without doing anyway kind of damage + broodlords aren't mobile. only viable on certain maps.
I've been doing Sen's one-base muta build, and it is gloriously good versus the noobs I'm playing. Admittedly, I disconnected like nine times before bnet got better, so I'm stuck at like rank #1 plat until it promotes me.
Still, it is very effective, in that you can easily drone hard and upgrade to lair. If they show early pressure, pop out some lings, no problem. Expanding is easy once you have map control, and then just go from there.
I'm only a ~1500 player, but my take on mech T has been to hit them from multiple directions when their tanks are in transition.
The key to this seems to be creep, creep, creep so that you can see them coming from way off (and have the speed to quickly get into position. Stuff like a third queen early so you can spam tumors.
Definitely hard, but so far my best hope. And harassment, ofc, to punish their plodding army.
I also tried Sen one base build against terran and it worked great. I made him go thor/viking/marine and then I surprised him with 15 roaches and pushed his base. After the second push I won
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
Slush, the slush you see in tourneys? I enjoy your play quite a lot if thats you, I'm waiting so eagerly to see the last rounds of the TLI invitational you where in, US one I think? But the VODs never seem to come up on nevakes youtube channel
If you have some patch 13 replays do show off I would be so so happy =) To keep in line with the topic I would really enjoy to see a game where someone uses ultras
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
I'm curious... why ultras instead of broodlords in end game? Both tech choices take about equal amount of time to get and cost similar amount of gas. Both are vulnerable to air, but ultras also die to critical mass of tanks. I'm curious to see a rep of this strategy being pulled off.
im just a bronze level player but what worked good for me was hydra/roaches to confront him and then drop ~20 banelings right into his tanks with overlords, once the tanks explode its pretty easy to clean up the rest.
On May 28 2010 00:55 SLush wrote: Early Game = couple of roach with spines Mid Game = Muta/Roach (use mobility, drops etc) End game = ling/infestor/ultra
I upgrade attack on both melee and ranged, never carapace.
this is a good strategy to get owned in the early, mid, and end game.
early game should be nothing but zerglings and hydra if he's going mech (thor drop). If he's going banshee then you need quick hydra or muta, the former being the better choice imo. Mid-game, at least for me, usually consists of mass roaches and hydra [1:1 ratio] with a mix of zerglings with the speed upgrade [4:1:1 z/r/h]. Late game usually consists of adrenalings/infestors/brood lords/corrupters. It works vs. mech most of the time, but the best advice is to keep yourself AWAY from the tanks. If you can move the battle then go for it.
The only reason I don't use infestors earlier in the game is because I just can't control them too well. It's better for me to utilize mobility (drops/nydus) to keep the Terran at home. Plus I can use the gas elsewhere since I tear up every time I see a slug explode (bye bye 150 gas)
Dont ever use roach/hydra mid game vs mech. you will instant die. Hydras are the worst unit vs mech they are too slow and gaz heavy, and that criple ur late game a lot.
what u need is early muta (mid game) if he makes too many thors, roach + infestor is next while u build ur late game tech. always build ling when u have too much minerals compared to gaz.
Late game broodlords are good. but if terrans scout properly he will get enough viking that u'll lose ur gaz without doing anyway kind of damage + broodlords aren't mobile. only viable on certain maps.
So wait.. what else is good lategame then if they DO scout it and go mass vikings?
He already posted what he likes late game but I'm curious to know how people are transitioning against the cookie cutter mech builds terran is doing. The only person I've seen that shows the transitions well is sen against tlo and sen against demuslim. I think people are focusing too much on unit composition.
It seems lots zerg forget they have nydus worm and drops. Counter to any mech build by terran mobilty. creep the fuck out of everything and drop all over the place use nydus worms to send troops past his defs and hit the expos or main. Also burrow roachs are crazy good vs all mech play rape thors/tanks/hellions.
Really fight where you want to fight not where he wants to fight don't attack his tank lines lol. Mech is slow as fuck and very immobile you are zerg the most moble race in the game use it lol. You don't need to do one big omg push and win army on army thats just silly and stupid take 2 ovs drop a bunch of lings on his expos or main ever so often and make it hard for him to crawl the map with his tanks.
Really it seems like most people are trying to find a way to break a terran tank wall don't you can't just avoid it lol. Just like toss in broodwar go around it.
I find on some maps, it is just too difficult to take advantage of terrans lack of mobility, while on some they can also set up small armies on cliffs next to your expo with an mmm ball and tanks, and vikings. If you are in close positions on a 4 player map they are able to pile drive to your main without much room to take advantage of their lack of mobility.
I was playing a game on lost temple at the close positions, and between vikings hunting my overlords and cliff drops.
The reason it's so hard to deal with is because all of the terran ball outranges the perspective units. The only time I can seem to win against mech is by luring the terran ball away and using fungal growth the mutas go around and snipe the tanks, while hydra/roach/ling attack the m&m ball.
Yeah that theorycrafting sounds good but terran is able to rape your expo very early on so you have to confront that eventually. The people saying 'it's easy all you have to do is expo all over the place and nydus and drop should really post some reps at even the mid diamond level where they're beating mech by just being mobile.
I've had a lot of success in tvz with the mech build. It's really awesome, but I've had trouble when zergs did the following:
1. doom drop in the main when I'm about to go out (this buys zerg so much time) 2. burrowed roach attack. I guess I should learn to get ravens, but if zerg pulls this off once or twice, it's even game and zerg can tech up to broodlords. 3.hidden mass mutas. zerg shows about 8 mutas, and gets easily fended off by thors, but if zerg gets more mutas and hides them, and shows it when T pushes out, it's pretty deadly. of course you need to micro the mutas
All I gotta say is...Never attack into the terran's nat and up his ramp.... Always doom drop. Even if you have a 200/200 fully upgraded frenzied, ultra ling army and you just won a decisive battle a few minutes earlier, you gonna get raped >_>
On May 28 2010 15:48 stalife wrote: I've had a lot of success in tvz with the mech build. It's really awesome, but I've had trouble when zergs did the following:
1. doom drop in the main when I'm about to go out (this buys zerg so much time) 2. burrowed roach attack. I guess I should learn to get ravens, but if zerg pulls this off once or twice, it's even game and zerg can tech up to broodlords. 3.hidden mass mutas. zerg shows about 8 mutas, and gets easily fended off by thors, but if zerg gets more mutas and hides them, and shows it when T pushes out, it's pretty deadly. of course you need to micro the mutas
Or take two workers with your army and build towers.
On May 28 2010 15:31 guitarizt wrote: Yeah that theorycrafting sounds good but terran is able to rape your expo very early on so you have to confront that eventually. The people saying 'it's easy all you have to do is expo all over the place and nydus and drop should really post some reps at even the mid diamond level where they're beating mech by just being mobile.
I agree with this. I want to see some replays of you using your "mobility" on Lost temple when you appear on the closest position by land or on other maps with close land positions.
Early muta harass then move into roach and then broodlords so far works for me.
I'd really like to see some replays with ultra usage in them. Hopefully Slush can post something for us. Ultra/ling was what I would say my bread and butter unit composition against mech in pre patch 13. I've tried using them again but they just seem to be soooo much weaker. I mean even vikings seem to tear through small groups in large sizes. Yet they take just as long to spawn.
On May 28 2010 15:31 guitarizt wrote: Yeah that theorycrafting sounds good but terran is able to rape your expo very early on so you have to confront that eventually. The people saying 'it's easy all you have to do is expo all over the place and nydus and drop should really post some reps at even the mid diamond level where they're beating mech by just being mobile.
I agree with this. I want to see some replays of you using your "mobility" on Lost temple when you appear on the closest position by land or on other maps with close land positions.
Early muta harass then move into roach and then broodlords so far works for me.
pretty much this. I do expo all over the place, but by using mutas to pin the terran in his base.
On May 28 2010 15:48 stalife wrote: I've had a lot of success in tvz with the mech build. It's really awesome, but I've had trouble when zergs did the following:
1. doom drop in the main when I'm about to go out (this buys zerg so much time) 2. burrowed roach attack. I guess I should learn to get ravens, but if zerg pulls this off once or twice, it's even game and zerg can tech up to broodlords. 3.hidden mass mutas. zerg shows about 8 mutas, and gets easily fended off by thors, but if zerg gets more mutas and hides them, and shows it when T pushes out, it's pretty deadly. of course you need to micro the mutas
Or take two workers with your army and build towers.
if your harassing right, and building enough mutas, wich I generally do, he cant really turret up all the way to your base, his resources are already strained from the thors/turrets he has to build for his own base.
On May 28 2010 13:17 slowmanrunning wrote: I find on some maps, it is just too difficult to take advantage of terrans lack of mobility, while on some they can also set up small armies on cliffs next to your expo with an mmm ball and tanks, and vikings. If you are in close positions on a 4 player map they are able to pile drive to your main without much room to take advantage of their lack of mobility.
I was playing a game on lost temple at the close positions, and between vikings hunting my overlords and cliff drops.
I saw a BoxeR vs some zerg and the zerg was able to control the game and win out vs boxer playing mech. He: FE'd, good spine placement stopped the hellion harass, teched quickly up to mutas, harassed and controled the game there. Forced a slow nat expo for the terran and had a 3rd before the terrans 2nd and then just beat him down slowly after a long match. I think the VOD was posted earlier in this thread actually.
Btw, the match that I watch was played on steppes of war so you cant really play on any smaller of a map.
After playing more games against mech and watching more tournaments I don't think mech's overpowered anymore but I think that letting the game go late is hugely in favor of the terran for a large percentage of the player pool below the high level diamonds and tournament players. +2 or higher tanks and thors are really tough for zerg to deal with and at that point it's hard to break any of their expos or for the zerg to expo themselves.
As a sidenote a maxed zerg army just doesn't feel or look the same anymore. People keep saying it in cast that a maxed zerg army looks empty. Balance aside, it would be nice if something could change so that the swarm feel was there again. That might be close to impossible to do and still keep everything relatively balanced though.
No one has mentioned the Cool vs Maka games yet? Cool totally manhandled one of the best Terrans in the world with ling/roach early game into infestors/muta/banelings. Cool would actually attack Maka's mech army head on a number of times and still win. I was pretty shocked, not even sure how that happened. Cool really aggressively expanded. With early speedlings/roaches there wasn't hardly anything that hellions or marines can do to harass. My take on it was just that Cool extremely outmacroed Maka, I'm kinda baffled as to how else he could constantly engage Maka's armies like that.
On May 30 2010 17:36 Tachion wrote: No one has mentioned the Cool vs Maka games yet? Cool totally manhandled one of the best Terrans in the world with ling/roach early game into infestors/muta/banelings. Cool would actually attack Maka's mech army head on a number of times and still win. I was pretty shocked, not even sure how that happened. Cool really aggressively expanded. With early speedlings/roaches there wasn't hardly anything that hellions or marines can do to harass. My take on it was just that Cool extremely outmacroed Maka, I'm kinda baffled as to how else he could constantly engage Maka's armies like that.
Go to the 17173 WorldCup thread and click on Forstis English Vods, The game on lost temple ( I think it's this one, sorry if wrong) is a great example of the Zerg just dominating despite a huge terran army. Baneling drops on top of the tanks/bio while the roaches push in, even the 50/50 trades are good for Cool as he has inevitable map control/zerg macro mechanic/more bases.
All I gotta say is, 90% of my tvz games, zerg does some retarded allin when I mech. If you are one of those people, that is why you are losing. People yell BALANCED!!!! or something like that when they suicide they're entire army into the nat with cliff tanks.
On May 30 2010 19:42 De4ngus wrote: All I gotta say is, 90% of my tvz games, zerg does some retarded allin when I mech. If you are one of those people, that is why you are losing. People yell BALANCED!!!! or something like that when they suicide they're entire army into the nat with cliff tanks.
It's far far easier to force an all in by laying siege to a base than it is to use "mobility" to counter it. By its slow moving nature, mech has a very low APM requirement. I find that to counter a 50 APM mech, I need to do at least 100 APM of harass, drops, etc.
Cool is a f'ing monster though and I don't think a lot of diamond zergs have the apm to do all the stuff he did. I think sen's games are easier to copy.
If you can't copy Cool, you probably can't copy Sen either. Cool's style is basically baneling drops to stop the "bio" part of biomech (you don't run your banelings in because they get vaporized by tanks and gives your opponent an opportunity to kite them) and roaches to take care of the rest. He stops early timing pushes by having more speedlings. Outside of that he's effectively a macro beast, much like Sen.
Against pure mech, ala TLO's style, mutas are far more effective but you need to micro them and not group up against Thors.
Cool also made great use of speedlings on occasion to get a quick surround on Maka's tanks. Not only that, but If you can get speedlings into range on the terran rax units then the tanks are gonna blow them up too. On blistering sands Cool would suicide some speedlings into Maka's mineral line and the tanks ended up blowing up SCV's while killing the lings.
My winrate vs T is like 15%, while vs P and Z near 70%. I can defend an all-in from T but if he doesn't persist and FE into timing push with tanks... it's basicly gg.
Oh god, I'm so relieved to see this thread. I thought my skills had degraded or something. I'm losing about 80% of my ZvT games and I can't figure it out at all. Even when I'm way ahead in macro, my army gets chipped away in attack after attack. I'll stave off the first few attacks, but eventually the damage of multiple tanks just adds up.
I tried going muta, even one base muta, but some terrans have actually started building turrets without even scouting a spire. Even when I do some damage with mutas though, I just don't have the apm to keep everything working back at home and eventually when the push happens I can't stop it.
I can't even deny his expo on most maps. They line tanks up there and maybe even put a fortress up and some turrets and I can't touch that.
The few times I've been able to get out hive tech I've been utterly smashed. I didn't think brood lords were overpowered before the patch and now they just don't work for me at all. I doubt ultras would help.
Also while zerglings do really well against tanks and thors, at least initially, every now and then some terran catches on and makes a handful of hellions, and upgrades them and that's it. There's nothing I have been able to do from that point.
Oh well, maybe we'll get another patch or something...
I'm sorry but i gotta tell ya. Use mutas and infestors. GET MAP CONTROLL WITH OVERLORDS' VISION AND MUTAS AND BURROWED BANELINGS SPREAD YOU UNITS OUT. ALL OF YOUR UNITS WILL HAVE DIFFERENT ROLES. DO NOT.....DO NOT ENGAGE DIRECTLY AND LOOK AT MY NAME. IT IS SELF EXPLANATORY. You don't need anything else than these.
Banelings (great micro breakers. Kills front line hellions in a snap. burrow at least 10 by ALL probable rush routes, and note that do not bust them while under Thors. Bust them while they are under Hellions. Dont forget to "carpet bomb" with overlords. Overlords will not get shot at during battle, for it has very low hostility value.)
Speedlings(damaging stray Thors, and flanking siege tanks)
8 Mutas (ez sniping moving tanks. dont let them siege up)
2 Infestors(again burrowed. Use them to stop hellions or tanks while Terran army is mobile, so that Mutas can come and snipe them all. Mind control is worthless, like you said. Instant snipe.)
Roaches 5x the amount of Thors(Burrow move the surround Thors)
OUT MACRO TERRAN. Once you outmacroed your opponent, get more mutas and just bypass turrets or defensive thors to snipe out workers. You can always make more lightning fast.
I admit TvZ is hard. Hell, PvZ is equally tricky. Zerg is not really "fun" race to play, but you still play Zerg, because whenever you win vs P or T, you feel like much better player than they are, because Zerg takes extra APM, extra RTS knowledge, and extra sharp timing senses.
But mark my words: Zerg, in the end, it not all about massing like crazy. With above build, if your army is equally supplied with Terran mech, you will be fine.
Yeah okay, I just felt like I needed to air some of my frustrations here.
I just finished this hour long borefest versus a turtle terran. I had pretty much the entire map while he had 3 bases. I tried to get broodlords but he sniped them with about 20 vikings.... So I made 16 ultralisks. I frenzied EACH and every one of them and tried to take out his nat. The result? 16 ultralisks for 5 bunkers.... FUCK YOU brizzard. So I made a nydus network to kill off his gold island expo. Done. Now what was I to do? He had turrets EVERYwhere in his main, about 20 vikings or more just sitting around guarding the edges and all he could do was say, "come zerg."
So I grabbed a bunch of overlords, and made them puke creep all over the terran's ridge. And I had about 5k extra minerals to spare so I made A LOT of spore crawlers around near the edge of his base and I edged a little bit closer each time. I would move in with my BLs, hed move in with his vikings and then I'd pull them back while corruptors + a billion spore crawlers picked them off.
Until finally I had enough corruptors to overwhelm his vikings. He said, "Well that was a bitch move." I don't know what he meant by that because I thought the slow push with the spore crawlers was pretty clever. Then I was like "says the turtling terran." And he retorts, "Says the guy who has complete map control." Yeah.... Pretty douchetastic.
What pisses me off even more is that if he had made 4-5 ravens, I would've totally been screwed. Even with 10+ spore crawlers shooting at PDD, that gives him ample time to hunt down my broodlords and to pick off my corruptors. It's really hard to replenish corruptors and broodlords quickly. I was bleeding gas near the end.
As Idra already demonstrated, to deal with viking hordes killing your BLs and Corruptors you need fungal growth. I know the pain of playing vs a turtling mech T. Nerf T. Not our fault all the sc1 pros chose to play Z/P instead of choboT. If they don't, when release comes T will find a `Slayers`Boxer, and lolrape everyone around. And Blizzard will slip on their balance like a person does on dog shit.
i just open with banshees, without fail the other guy goes mass vikings. then I just switch to 3 factories with thor+tank and just attack. i havn't lost with it yet unless i completely mess up
wut, I think I posted this in the absolutely wrong thread T_T
On May 31 2010 14:31 BanelingCarpetBomb wrote: I'm sorry but i gotta tell ya. Use mutas and infestors. GET MAP CONTROLL WITH OVERLORDS' VISION AND MUTAS AND BURROWED BANELINGS SPREAD YOU UNITS OUT. ALL OF YOUR UNITS WILL HAVE DIFFERENT ROLES. DO NOT.....DO NOT ENGAGE DIRECTLY AND LOOK AT MY NAME. IT IS SELF EXPLANATORY. You don't need anything else than these.
Banelings (great micro breakers. Kills front line hellions in a snap. burrow at least 10 by ALL probable rush routes, and note that do not bust them while under Thors. Bust them while they are under Hellions. Dont forget to "carpet bomb" with overlords. Overlords will not get shot at during battle, for it has very low hostility value.)
Speedlings(damaging stray Thors, and flanking siege tanks)
8 Mutas (ez sniping moving tanks. dont let them siege up)
2 Infestors(again burrowed. Use them to stop hellions or tanks while Terran army is mobile, so that Mutas can come and snipe them all. Mind control is worthless, like you said. Instant snipe.)
Roaches 5x the amount of Thors(Burrow move the surround Thors)
OUT MACRO TERRAN. Once you outmacroed your opponent, get more mutas and just bypass turrets or defensive thors to snipe out workers. You can always make more lightning fast.
I admit TvZ is hard. Hell, PvZ is equally tricky. Zerg is not really "fun" race to play, but you still play Zerg, because whenever you win vs P or T, you feel like much better player than they are, because Zerg takes extra APM, extra RTS knowledge, and extra sharp timing senses.
But mark my words: Zerg, in the end, it not all about massing like crazy. With above build, if your army is equally supplied with Terran mech, you will be fine.
Nice post and all but... 1 raven counters almost all of that.
EPT
.
), so Im not the one your adressing. But here goes anyway:
