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So before I got beta, I was really excited by all the news that ZvZ is going to be more diverse in SC2. Players are going to use more than just 2 units, involving roaches, ultras, higher tech units etc.
When I started playing the beta, I found most of this to be true. Most lower league players to use a mixture of ling/roach/hydra and I found macro to be much more important in this match up. 2 base builds are becoming more common and I liked that because it meant deeper and longer games. Roach burrow move and ultra nydus worms are not too uncommon strats.
Recently however, in higher level matchups (I'm only around 1200 Plat), I've found that more and more people are starting to use muta/ling. I've personally found that muta/ling to ling/hydra transition works really well against Terran as it contains them in one base while allowing expansions. Maybe the same concept is creeping into ZvZ.
I've found muta/ling to be very dominating in ZvZ. The heavy gas that mutas require are perfectly offset by pumping a huge amount of lings. While I could macro out equal numbers of roach/hydras, mutas offer much more mobility and again, contains me to 2 bases while the opp. is able to take a 3rd. Even ling/hydra is not exactly optimal against muta/ling. I've found that the only decent counter to this build is the use of infestors. Infestors + hydra/ling can potentially disable this build but it requires a lot of APM. It seems much easier to just go muta/ling.
So my point is that, because of the great synergy that muta + ling provides and considering that the counter -- infestor + hydra is very APM intensive, I can see that more and more ZvZ will gravitate towards ling + muta, especially with the recent nerf for roaches.
What do you guys think? Is this a good thing that ZvZ is back to where it started? Some thoughts on beating muta/ling?
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Well if you're interested in theory crafting I can see the ling + muta strat as not necessarily a bad development because it can grow to incorporate more units making it more effective.
Consider 2 zergs that both do muta + ling,
if one were to do muta + ling + baneling the opponent's lings are nullified giving the zerg that adds more unit diversity the advantage.
Similarly adding infester to muta + ling you can immobilize part of the opposing muta cloud forcing a battle where you want it.
So I think if muta + ling grows in popularity we'd quickly see it grow to using not just these two units making it not exactly a boring strat.
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It was mostly early game roach wars that ended within 9 minutes last patch, but at least a quarter of my zvzs my opponent went muta/ling.
I don't think it's a good thing that we're going back to the matchup working a lot like it did in bw and I expect it to become more common with patch 12. Banelings get overlooked too frequently in this matchup, and work very well vs muta/ling.
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it's entirely different because of the baneling countering lings and hydra (or especially hydra+infestor) countering muta
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hydra baneling-ling pretty much hard counters this due to cheaper costs and faster build... then I find it just degenerates into who can macro more lings better and faster
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United States889 Posts
I'm ~1500 platinum and I've played my fair share of ZvZ, and I haven't lost to muta/ling going hydras because hydras are just so strong against mutas, and their gas cost is considerably cheaper. if you creep up your main and nat, they're even fairly mobile. Yes, mutas do provide a lot of map control but imo you shouldn't be sinking all your gas into just mutas because a player sinking an equal amount of gas into hydras is going to roll those mutas, and if he makes some concessions for roaches, as he should against the lings, he's still going to come out ahead, especially if he upgrades.
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Calgary25996 Posts
Yea 1750 and never really experienced Mutaling at all....
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On May 14 2010 14:39 Chill wrote:
Yea 1750 and never really experienced Mutaling at all....
1875 and all I do is Mutaling....
+ Show Spoiler +
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United States7166 Posts
2100 and I can definitely say mutalisk are the key unit in zvz, this was even before patch 12. hydralisks are the only effective unit to kill mutalisks but are so extremely fragile and get raped easily by banelings that obviously greatly outrun them. the best hope for a hydra player is multiple infestors and really really good fungals, 1 fungal will kill banelings/zerglings on its own, but if the muta player does a really good flank and doesnt bring them in 1 giant blob (not hard to setup as muta player has 100% map control), fungal cant be enough. zerglings also do quite nice vs hydralisks as well. fungal also does great for the muta player as well vs mutalisks.
the mutalisk player with map control and excess minerals can easily outexpand the hydra player, and the hydra player always has to be concerned about defending his workers/overlords/buildings/queens from mutas as well
in last weekend's CraftCup, i played vs Dimaga round 1 and ZpuX round 2, these are 2 of the top zergs in europe if you didnt know. Dimaga and I both went 1 base muta, he opened a few roach into muta, i opened speedlings, we had a long zvz with mass muta/queens/lings/spines/spores/roaches. game vs ZpuX, we had identical 1 base fast muta builds (while going speedlings) and massed muta/ling/etc as well
so yeah most of the lower level zergs may not be going muta but that doesn't mean that much really
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I feel like I should add a replay to this thread.
This is the recent game that I played today. I def. have some macro and timings to work on but it basically shows how effective mutas are able to dance around hydras. I probably should have scouted for mutas much earlier, and been more aggressive with early hydras, but the fact that the mutas had map control made it hard for me to move out. My FG was able rather ineffective but it might be because of my own micro and lack of APM.
http://www.sc2rc.com/index.php/replay/show/5336
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I'm ~1500 platinum and I've played my fair share of ZvZ, and I haven't lost to muta/ling going hydrYea
1750 and never really experienced Mutaling at all....
1875 and all I do is Mutaling....
2100 and I can definitely say mutalisk are the key unit in zvz
That was awesome, can't stop laughing 
Need to say "pwned" ;p
I think mutaling is the key, not just because hydras fall to blings, its because mapcontrol. I'm at 1441 and hat a lot zvz recently, i always went mutaling and right now i'm at a 11 game winstreak. (Got the servers reset yesterday?)
Drimacus
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It's actually Muta/Baneling. Banelings kill the Hydras and Mutas clean up. Popular combo for fighting against this is Hydra/Roach/Infestor since fungal growths 1 shot Banelings and prevent them from getting up close. Splitting your Muta/Baneling into several groups helps a lot but its very touchy you can definitely lose badly if you miss micro. The advantage to Muta/Baneling is you'll always get your second expansion up before the Hydra builder.
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Zerg has only 1 counter to mass muta which is hydras and hydras of course are weak to banelings (and even muta/ling in general). Perhaps if they suddenly make corruptors not suck there might be a counter to mutas other than more mutas.
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On May 14 2010 19:54 Floophead_III wrote:
Perhaps if they suddenly make corruptors not suck there might be a counter to mutas other than more mutas.
Blasphemy! Corruptors must keep sucking so theyre only good against capital ships and colossi... As evidenced by the latest ability change.
Instead of being an AOE debuff like devourer which would suggest incorporating at least a few Corruptors into an air force, it remains a very niche unit so we can keep massin' those mutas. Wee.
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expand with overlord-creep & spores and muta-"map control" becomes less of an issue. people just build too few spores.
def-upgraded and clumped roaches still eat lings for breakfast - no, two-shotting them is only possible with +3 vs +0 upgrade, so why bother.
defensive upgrades also work wonders against the muta glaives and their ugly upgrade results. slightly better than offensive upgrades for hydras.
i also encountered nydus expansions on the asian server. as it generates creep, you can basically start static defenses (very popular there) right away, too. this functionality is ofc not limited to islands -.-
sry, but ZvZ is heavily corrupted by both old and new paradigms. especially the +1 attack upgrade has gotten out of control -.-
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I find the muta ling fights in sc2 really frustrating without scourage. There seems to be no way to catch up if your gas was slightly later.
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Maybe I'm just not very good, but I constantly lose to muta builds when I try to counter with hydra. They just are not mobile enough to defend two expansions on say, scrap station, even with creep and if you split them up one group will end up getting mobbed eventually. Meanwhile you're losing drones bit by bit all game and doing no damage whatsoever in response. I build spores, but eventually there's going to be more mutas than a couple spores can handle and he's going to smash 10 drones in a few seconds. I've been trying to use infestors, but it's difficult to keep them alive and get them to fire on target.
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On May 14 2010 20:32 onmach wrote:
Maybe I'm just not very good, but I constantly lose to muta builds when I try to counter with hydra. They just are not mobile enough to defend two expansions on say, scrap station, even with creep and if you split them up one group will end up getting mobbed eventually. Meanwhile you're losing drones bit by bit all game and doing no damage whatsoever in response. I build spores, but eventually there's going to be more mutas than a couple spores can handle and he's going to smash 10 drones in a few seconds. I've been trying to use infestors, but it's difficult to keep them alive and get them to fire on target.
honestly, if hes spending THAT much gas on mutas, you'll be able to outproduce him on hydra. few spores at each min line, few hydras with them pretty much nullifies that. then you can just a move him with your massive amount of hydras ^^
this is assuming you have good macro too, this too happens to me quite a bit
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nerfing roaches just ruins zvz. I been getting alot of 1 base ling + baneling only... If it goes for longer muta. So there is no point going hydra or roach anymore in zvz imo...
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On May 14 2010 22:21 e.soul[gm] wrote:Show nested quote +On May 14 2010 20:32 onmach wrote:
Maybe I'm just not very good, but I constantly lose to muta builds when I try to counter with hydra. They just are not mobile enough to defend two expansions on say, scrap station, even with creep and if you split them up one group will end up getting mobbed eventually. Meanwhile you're losing drones bit by bit all game and doing no damage whatsoever in response. I build spores, but eventually there's going to be more mutas than a couple spores can handle and he's going to smash 10 drones in a few seconds. I've been trying to use infestors, but it's difficult to keep them alive and get them to fire on target. honestly, if hes spending THAT much gas on mutas, you'll be able to outproduce him on hydra. few spores at each min line, few hydras with them pretty much nullifies that. then you can just a move him with your massive amount of hydras ^^ this is assuming you have good macro too, this too happens to me quite a bit
That's what I've tried to do too but when you move out with the hydras, the sheer amount of speedlings plus the mutas that they bring back owns hydras. Maybe this is an issue of macro but when the opp. has taken a third along with complete map control, it's really hard to play in this position and try to macro up on 2 bases.
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EPT
