I am currently a high gold low platinum level player, and I find that the bulk of my losses are coming from protoss when they mass gateway units. In the past I have gotten by on mass hydra but the effectiveness of it dwindling as the game progresses into the mid-late game. My question is about how many roaches should I mix into an army of hydra to combat the multiple unit compositions that can come from gateway units alone. (excluding DT and high Templar) also the reverse of the question if my early army is focused towards mass roach does the ratio change or do I devote to mass roach?

Pakje

Belgium288 Posts

June 02 2010 09:45 GMT

huh?

versus only gateway units (excluding dt & ht) 100% hydra is fine.

Nokarot

United States1410 Posts

June 02 2010 09:51 GMT

Usually the question should be how many hydras you're mixing in to your roach army. Even after the roach food change, the prospect remains similar- get roaches to soak up damage while your hydras sit in the back and add substantial DPS (or to even survive against todays terran mech game). This ratio changes whether they're going air-heavy or whatnot, because you may need more hydras than normal to be able to hit them, but generally speaking you'll still have more roaches when you're reading to make an offensive push.

That being said, that doesn't necessarily mean you get roaches first. The typical (not necessarily always the best) build I see starts with a handful of speed zerglings, going in to lair, going to hydras, only then building a roach warren. This is of course subject to change due to many factors on the way, but with potential void rays, banshees, or whatever coming out of the woodworks, its often good to go for hydras first. If you choose to go roaches first, its usually good to have an extra pair of queens for AA just in case.

This is also all null and void in ZVZ because usually that goes from lings>banelings>mutas, for better or for worse.

Parodoxx

United States549 Posts

June 02 2010 10:12 GMT

I guess my question is not as specific as it should be as it does not address some of the issues I find with gateway units. Mass Hydra can really put out great DPS but when up against a standard comp of gateway units where the zealots have speed I find that micro although good cant let me escape from the charge of the zealot. So to return to the root of my question in this scenario should I skew towards lets say 60/40 hydra, 50/50 or do I continue to pump around 80-90% hydra. Also if its not to in depth to answer how does that ratio change once the protoss .ops for an immortal?

KaiserJohan

Sweden1808 Posts

June 02 2010 10:36 GMT

If toss got a colossus your screwed.

I opt for FE -> rush muta, get 8+ of them -> harrass like hell, snipe all you can while teching to hive -> get greater spire -> get broods + whatever low-gas ground you can muster to soak up dmg, say roaches/splings en masse and then doomdrop/nydus or crawl up to his base.

Luckily, not many toss goes HT's fast. If they do, your in for a ride.

Makavw

Croatia165 Posts

June 02 2010 10:58 GMT

On June 02 2010 19:36 KaiserJohan wrote:
If toss got a colossus your screwed.

I opt for FE -> rush muta, get 8+ of them -> harrass like hell, snipe all you can while teching to hive -> get greater spire -> get broods + whatever low-gas ground you can muster to soak up dmg, say roaches/splings en masse and then doomdrop/nydus or crawl up to his base.

Luckily, not many toss goes HT's fast. If they do, your in for a ride.

Muta rush will get you killed to any timing push unless you play on a map with long distance and easily defendable exp where you can mass sunken.
You can do that only on lt and metalopolis if you aint on close bases positions.

jgreen46

Canada94 Posts

June 02 2010 11:36 GMT

I'm rated similar to you and I basically only run ground or muta rush, the build I do is making sure you have double evolution den for armor/ranged upgrades. Say you have 7 larva, the composition I like against a protoss player is 3 hydra egg 2 roach egg 2 zergling egg. Past that I think its really just micro.

Answering your question about should you mass roach... Mass only makes sense when its Hydra, Muta, or a counter. So go ahead and mass roach if they're massing zealots but if you aren't going to hard counter them with the 2 supply change mass roach doesn't really work any more.

A thing about zerg ground is you can get a big enough army out before the opponent, but you need to use it and fast. I very strongly recommend building a Nydus network and dropping a worm at both sides of the opponent's base, then you can just drop them back into the worm and onto the other side of his base, as well as queuing your hatcheries into the Nydus.

I find often if you are pushing out with a zerg ground army you'll encounter Collosus/Tanks on the ledge, where you really stand no chance.

slowmanrunning

Canada285 Posts

June 02 2010 11:44 GMT

There's a pretty good thread about muta ling vs toss will post link if i find it.

Melt

Switzerland281 Posts

June 02 2010 12:54 GMT

add Zerglings to your army and Harass the Protoss as often as possible. Also try doomdrops or even nydus worm. Split your army and flank the opponent. Try to use your mobility (spread creep) to your advantage.

Usually, if you just run your army into the Protoss army, you will loose.

Jacobs Ladder

United States1705 Posts

June 02 2010 12:59 GMT

#10

Why not get Infestors? I don't play Z, so I might be missing something. But fungal growth really messes up my mass WG armys. Destroys mobility and micro, damages, and just messes with my mojo. You can also mind control the colossus

Chex

United States87 Posts

June 02 2010 14:14 GMT

#11

When you say you are losing to mass gateway, are you talking about a push at around the 7-8 minute mark? If so then you need ot add a few spine crawlers to help defend. Once you've beaten/repelled that push you should be fine to start really massing Hydras. You should have maybe 3 or 4 hydras as that push is coming with some speedlings and your queens you should be more than fine.

If you are talking late game then I'm not sure why you are losing because if he just has gateway you should be completely fine. I'm just going to take a guess here - since there isn't a replay - but if I remember when I was a silver/gold player, one of my biggest problems was that i cut drones WAY too early.

Rereading your post, I think you need to get some banelings in your mix. Even if he's all stalker, banelings will have the "oh shit" effect and do some serious hurt to any gateway unit.

At the end of the day though, part of the problem could be that you don't have enough stuff in general, which probably goes back to you not having enough drones. As much as possible try avoid too many zerglings early on as each larva/drone is crucial.

guitarizt

United States1492 Posts

June 02 2010 15:52 GMT

#12

It sounds like your macro is slipping or you're falling behind in upgrades. 100% hydra army is fine if he doesn't have ht or col and it rapes everything else.

theBullFrog

United States515 Posts

June 02 2010 16:04 GMT

#13

If all they have is gateway units, i tend to ling/hydra, pump hydra with all my gas and rest into lings

Krayze

United States213 Posts

June 02 2010 16:11 GMT

#14

If he goes too zealot heavy, switch to mutas and win.

OP, Hydras counter every gateway unit, plus they are great AA so it's a safe bet. Once you get into the mid-late game however, it is important to add some roaches to your army just to soak the damage and kill zealots. I would say 2:3 ratio with roach:hydra, but I haven't tested this, just sounds good

Make sure you get upgrades.

Also, I've never played outside the diamond league, but no protoss I've seen sits on gateway tech for long. They usually push out with 4 colossi. But with only gateway tech, you should have no trouble with it. If your losing, work on your macro

Parodoxx

United States549 Posts

June 02 2010 20:47 GMT

#15

Thanks a lot of good advice. If it help to clear any confusion the protoss player I practice against is working on a 2gate into FE and opts to skip the forge into early stalker to deal with the roach counter push.( the day[9] 128 games ) the end result is constant aggression of around 6-8 gates for about a solid 10 min and then a slow transition into HT. I found that I had problems dealing with the large army's constantly streaming in my base b/c it always felt as if my composition was poor. one problem could be that the toss player is diamond and I am not but I didn't feel that it was purely poor mechanics that lost me the game. I will try mixing in muta or banglings and nydus play is just fun.

Stropheum

United States1124 Posts

June 02 2010 20:50 GMT

#16

What you generally want to do is start speedlings, first 100 gas goes to speed to stop zealot threat, then tech straight to lair, drop another gas, while lair goes down, and two more when you drop hydra den. Then mass pure hydra, and once you get around 1/1 upgrades on your hydra and managed to maintain a decent army size, then add on the roaches as meat shields. Of course this used to be a much better strategy when roaches were actually one supply and you could make a reasonable amount of them with an endgame army, but it's still viable.

GreatestThreat

United States631 Posts

June 02 2010 21:05 GMT

#17

Oh god, even reading the topic title was painful. The fact that most zerg players just automatically assume a standard army composition should consist of hydras and roaches depresses me greatly.

Please try more speedlings. There's actually a lot of good posts in this thread already so I won't be redundant and go into detail.