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Sorry this post is a bit whiny but I just got so frustrated after watching day9s daily 157.
Another aspect i think is interesting is that if Z looses his army once its pretty much GG. But if terran or toss loose their attack once then they are still in the game cause they have their hard counters so if Z fails to adapt a 2nd time he might loose cause of this. T and P dictate the game so hard and Z has to adapt even if he is in a huge lead. T can get away with just having the wrong units since their defense is so good.
I think day9s latest daily is a perfect example of the arguments that are going around in this and defenders advantage thread.
Z has perfect unit composition to win the first battle. Marine, tank, medivac vs roach, baneling, muta. If it was the other way around T having perfect unit combo it would be GG. If T has such a simple unit mix I honestly think that the intended counters (to both marines and tanks - being roaches) should win much harder then it did this game.
Now Z can adapt better and rebuild quicker so that is fair in a way. But what happens next is interesting Z is in a huge lead 4 (one gold) vs 2 bases. Not long after T takes his 3rd Z decides its time to act (cause he is 200/200) Again he has a good unit composition vs tanks and marines, ultras, lings roaches and a few few banelings. He managed to kill Ts 3rd (p fortress btw) but Z looses his entire army. In response T can just walk out and easily kill of Zs gold expo. Z tried to punish him for it but cause T walled of with engineering bays and creating a very narrow choke it punishes Z just as bad.
One could say that Z could have researched drop and speed but I do no think he would have ultras that early if he did and it wouldn't have mattered on the outcome cause the ultras did really help.
Day9s says what about nydus and BL and Z doesnt adapt. How does T adapt during all this - he doesnt he just turtles and does add some vikings? It just works anyway. T already have a reactor starport going - not fun for BL as we can see just a couple minutes later. Drops, nydus with a properly scouted defended base? NO chance. You can see Zs drop fails big. A nydus would have failed with units popping out 1 by 1. Maybe with multi dropping, multi nydus etc. But what would Z win on dropping the main that was mined out? Nothing.. Theres a choke to the natural, theres a choke to the 3rd, theres a choke to the 4th. Even if he could kill one base of (as he does more then once) it doesn't win him the game. The chokes just punish him way to hard.
What happens next? Funny. T can't move out cause he looses if Z attacks in open. Z can't attack cause he looses if he attacks. Z breaks in again, T kills off the attack and turtles again.
Z goes broke cause he wasted so many recourses trying to force his way in. T is left on 1 base. Z finally breaks this base with 1 ultra and queen transfuse.
Game goes on for 1 more hour. Why? Cause T flies off his base and Z cant reach it.
So it ends up being a draw......
How is this a good MU?
Z managed a draw after 2 hours. Wheres T has 20 different ways of winning before 10min.
I agree this game between morrow and inuh is epic. Its epicly shows how few options Z has and how hard it can be to end the game vs turtling T. Z playing really good busting in several times only manages a draw? I'm very skeptical that dropping earlier or nydus more would have helped. If you are of another opinion (like day9) please make a daily of that or post a replay of that where T turtles hard and slowly expands where Z manages to break T.
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Another aspect i think is interesting is that if Z looses his army once its pretty much GG. But if terran or toss loose their attack once then they are still in the game cause they have their hard counters so if Z fails to adapt a 2nd time he might loose cause of this. T and P dictate the game so hard and Z has to adapt even if he is in a huge lead. T can get away with just having the wrong units since their defense is so good.
This. If zerg lose their army then its usually gg. There is no sim city to run home to.
Zerg is very unforgiving.
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Yes that game was painfull to watch.
And in the end, even if it's balanced how is it "fun" in any way at all.
If I am laddering and I go up against a Terran who isn't terrible then either I lose very quickly to some early push or (see next paragraph)
And the games that I do win always, but always evolve into those really long games where I have had the advantage for ages but I just cannot break in.
And I just have to go on for ages and if I screw up once for example desert oasis denying him an expo while he is dropping my main with like 4 medivacs he could even come back or draw the game out even longer.
And if I do something like a big doom-drop to early, and lose to much he just counterpushes and I lose, again..
And don't get me wrong, I like long drawn out macro-games, but then I would like it to be an actual game, not a game for 15mins, with another 15mins of the T just trying to hold on.
I even met this Terran on the ladder who was completely abusing this against Zerg, talked with him a bit, and his only gameplan was, make MMM with medivacs and tanks.
His whole plan was to just stay on one base, constantly do these big MMM drops while just putting tons of siege tanks up, then he would expand, get more siege tanks and MMM untill the zerg (wich happens a lot on the plat level) screwed up, wasted his army trying to break up and then he would just do one big push to end it.
And yes this is lower-level play, but I bet that there is a progamer out there who does a similar style in some way, but less counterable, for example expo'ing a bit faster or doing a more traditional play with drops, but the same gameplan.
And I'm kinda glad that I'm not the only one who has this problem, because I had a ton of games where even after teching to ultra's I scout his army, and I just think, that is just impossible to break in any way, I'll just loose everything and he will counter, and then I just sat there scratching my head thinking of what on earth I could do except for waiting.
(in the sense that it is a zerg problem and not just me sucking completely to find no way to break in)
And yes I have tried OL drops and nydus worms, in fact I use them in every game that goes past midgame, but because of all the forementioned problems (defense mechanism) and nydus just being easily countered, vikings and sensor towers, it's hard to make much happen with those.
And no I don't think that T should be nerfed, but Zerg should get some changes on what the OP mentioned imo.
Altough I guess the BL is supposed to fill that role, but it's again T3 and more then likely it will require a lot of gas into support corruptors against his vikings. (about the breaking in part)
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Each race plays differently.
If you don't like the way Zerg plays but like the way Terrans work, switch it up.
If you want aggressive rushes, play protoss. If you want to turtle up, play terran. If you want to macro, play zerg.
Edit: To point, complaining that one race isn't able to do X that another race can, is a lot like complaining that your Pepsi doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
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On August 04 2010 04:22 chair wrote:
Each race plays differently.
If you don't like the way Zerg plays but like the way Terrans work, switch it up.
If you want aggressive rushes, play protoss. If you want to turtle up, play terran. If you want to macro, play zerg.
Edit: To point, complaining that one race isn't able to do X that another race can, is a lot like complaining that your Pepsi doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
But what do you do after you macro up? Sit and wait for P or T to move out? And if they dont then what?
As stated before Z had ways to break in in BW. But in Sc2 those options are very limited and pretty easy to counter. Especially for T
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Well they'll run out of resources eventually if they are true turtling.
If not, get creative?
Baneling bust, drops, nydus, etc.
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Well with that mindset, look at the last day 9 daily.
Do you really want to have most TvZ games to turn out like that?
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On August 04 2010 04:35 chair wrote:
Well they'll run out of resources eventually if they are true turtling.
If not, get creative?
Baneling bust, drops, nydus, etc.
Look at that day9 daily then. There is drops, BLs, busting in and killing off expos.
T does run out of resources he got from his 4 bases eventually. (note that he only really had 2 bases at the time most of the game, but he managed to move his army and turtle a new base after loosing the old ones)
But so does Z that had 6 bases and 2 of them where gold. As it costed him so much to to break the T, Z ran out of resources about the same time.
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On August 04 2010 04:36 Icx wrote:
Well with that mindset, look at the last day 9 daily.
Do you really want to have most TvZ games to turn out like that?
Do I want games which are dynamic, interesting and more than just 200 army vs 200 army? Yes, I do.
However I'd also point out that the zerg player made some huge mistakes with his armies that made it take way longer than it should have.
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On August 04 2010 04:44 chair wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 04:36 Icx wrote:
Well with that mindset, look at the last day 9 daily.
Do you really want to have most TvZ games to turn out like that? Do I want games which are dynamic, interesting and more than just 200 army vs 200 army? Yes, I do. However I'd also point out that the zerg player made some huge mistakes with his armies that made it take way longer than it should have.
Like what?
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On August 03 2010 20:33 RickDeckard wrote:
One suggestion I have for Zerg players (I am a low level Terran player) is to try playing as Terran in 1v1. If Terran are unbeatable and you never lose, then you can go professional, and marry many beautiful wives. If you do lose, you might come up with some new tactics to try against Terran.
I'm not trying to defend imbalance, but why are you playing as a disadvantaged race? It's like picking Sonic in Super Smash Bros Brawl... why would you do that?
I agree with the general sentiment that Terran are probably at an advantage but I do plenty of losing to every race. Balancing is definitely in order. But if you nerf Terran, I'm going to be at the very bottom rung of players for sure. As I probably should be.
Because the Swarm has my Kerrigan and is forcing me to play Z. Jks aside, why does anybody do anything? It's cause they like a challenge, (at least i do). I mean, why on earth would you climb mt. Everest? you risk dying and can't exactly be fun. But ppls do it for bragging rights, blah blah blah.
In all honesty, I play Z cause I played SC:BW when I was 10 with "black sheep wall" on. Creep Tumours in sc2 and overlord placement and cheap lings in SC:BW gives me that feeling of security. That and did i mention the Swarm has my kerrigan? =D
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In my experience, missile turrets are the bane of Zerg harass. Effectively placed turrets (which are strictly mineral based) can deter all of the Zerg harass options, since they act as sight (nydus), anti-air (muta) and detectors (burrowed units). I often find that a Terran will put up excessive missile turrets after I begin my muta harass, which is perfectly fine for me. That means, that much fewer marines; however, turrets are only 1.5 the cost of marines, and they are MUCH better as AA than marines.
I think that the current state of ZvT is not as easy as "exploiting immobility" as commentators like Day9 suggest.
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On August 04 2010 04:45 Izzachar wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 04:44 chair wrote:On August 04 2010 04:36 Icx wrote:
Well with that mindset, look at the last day 9 daily.
Do you really want to have most TvZ games to turn out like that? Do I want games which are dynamic, interesting and more than just 200 army vs 200 army? Yes, I do. However I'd also point out that the zerg player made some huge mistakes with his armies that made it take way longer than it should have. Like what?
Well if you watch the daily yourself Sean points many of them out during the cast himself.
One in particular i'd point out was at the 17-19 minute engagement. He sends a 2 prong attack blind at his opponent, with 2 ultras and zerglings at 5 tanks, and 3 ultras at a marine ball with medivacs. He then proceeds to attack the marineball instead of the siege tanks with the ultras, even the ones that proceeded towards the siege tanks in the first place.
Had he sent that force the other way around, 3 ultras towards the tanks and 2 ultras + banelings/zerglings at the bioball, he would have completely rolled that army with ultras to spare.
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On August 03 2010 10:47 zomgtossrush wrote:Me and my friend were talking about this issue just last week. Since Terrans have BC's which are the late game "omgrapetastic" option. In which you can make a few of.. Toss has a solo mothership with super "tech" advantages... What does zerg have? you could argue broodlords or ultras, but they dont have that "unique" characteristic that seperates them from the other 2 races. What if the zerg has something to expand their supply? Of course we could debate forever by how much, but lets just say...35? It feels very swarm like. It would solve alot of issues players have with the roach supply count and such. The only problem would be to figure out what that something would be. Something air? something unit? some building, like post-hive? Of course we didn't put TOO much thought into this, but thats what the forums(and you guys) can do for us 
My problem is not exactly the comparison of Broodlords/Ultras to thier late game units. BL and Ultras are good at what they are made for.
The problem with the Zerg T3 though... is that they are required to have 1 or the other to successfully match the enemy armies, but they get their hive tech units LATER than the other races. Not only does the time to tech that far take longer, but we have to make a much larger and varied army which takes away from the resources that go in to teching. Even if we mass expand, it still takes longer because we have to saturate those expansions before it gives a substantial enough profit to make an army that could defend until ur T3 units and be able to afford enough of them to be effective. (which is related to how the OP mentions we have no defensive unit - we have to make an entire higher population, higher resource value, varied/researched/upgraded army to defend rather than a few key defensive units/structures to hold off the enemy long enough.
So long story short, we NEED our late game units to even put up a decent fight against their mid-to-late game army compositions, but have the hardest road to get there. Which kind of sucks, because it's not like Zerg surviving that long ensures an advantage - it only allows us to compete. If we're going to be at a disadvantage for a substantial timing period of the game, we should at least be at some sort of advantage if we survive long enough.
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On August 04 2010 04:52 chair wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2010 04:45 Izzachar wrote:On August 04 2010 04:44 chair wrote:On August 04 2010 04:36 Icx wrote:
Well with that mindset, look at the last day 9 daily.
Do you really want to have most TvZ games to turn out like that? Do I want games which are dynamic, interesting and more than just 200 army vs 200 army? Yes, I do. However I'd also point out that the zerg player made some huge mistakes with his armies that made it take way longer than it should have. Like what? Well if you watch the daily yourself Sean points many of them out during the cast himself. One in particular i'd point out was at the 17-19 minute engagement. He sends a 2 prong attack blind at his opponent, with 2 ultras and zerglings at 5 tanks, and 3 ultras at a marine ball with medivacs. He then proceeds to attack the marineball instead of the siege tanks with the ultras, even the ones that proceeded towards the siege tanks in the first place. Had he sent that force the other way around, 3 ultras towards the tanks and 2 ultras + banelings/zerglings at the bioball, he would have completely rolled that army with ultras to spare.
so thats one micro misstake on Zs part for 5sec attacking the not optimal unit. I wouldn't call it "huge". He could have downed the tanks slightly faster but would also have killed less marines, maybe trading armies completely isntead. But the T could also had just built one more engineering bay there and moved tanks in range (just slightly more down) to attack units in range of the bays. He could also have plopped down 1 or 2 in front of his tanks making the attack from that angle even less effective. So that was a minor tweak T could have done as well simply turtling even more safely.
Care to give a few examples of huge mistakes the Z did?
Day9 says drop sooner. But either he had to drop without ultras then or wait a long time before being able to have both techs running. Its a lot of gas. I'm not sure he could have dropped efficiently that much sooner then he did.
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I am also getting very annoyed at the state of zerg. We spelled out the problems when we were in beta, but all they saw was the win/loss records apparently, and figured everything was fine and dandy.
When playing zerg right now, unless you baneling bust, everything feels like a delaying action/gamble. The entire game you get the least defence possible while macroing as hardcore as you can. The reason for this is that you are pretty much gauranteed to never be able to damage a good P or T going a standard build until very late game. Until you reach that 200/200 with 3-5k resources and 40+ larva sitting in wait, you don't want to engage, because you'll just lose. The other races though, have all sorts of timing windows, where they can power units and bust an unsuspecting zerg's defences. If the zerg player sees the timing push, he can get together the troops and has a 'decent' chance of fighting it off at an advantage. But if the zerg doesn't scout it he loses. If the zerg preps for a timing push that the other player isn't doing, then he is far behind where he needs to be in macro, and loses to the push that comes a bit later.
As the game gets more and more figured out I predict zerg win rates will decline more and more. P and T will find all of the different timing windows and ways they can punish zergs, that playing zerg will be a crapshoot where you need to make 5+ 50-50 choices correctly in a row or you lose.
The removal of lurkers + darkswarm + plague have caused zerg's defencive ability to be next to 0, which as stated extensively in the first page of this post, means zerg cannot be aggressive with their harass units, instead needing to mass up enough units to just survive.
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On August 04 2010 05:19 Izzachar wrote:
Day9 says drop sooner. But either he had to drop without ultras then or wait a long time before being able to have both techs running. Its a lot of gas. I'm not sure he could have dropped efficiently that much sooner then he did.
Day9 said a lot of things that make no sense in that match. He said that Zerg needs to get more ranged units since all his units have range 3 or less (muta, roach, zerglings, ultra) - but that leaves Hydralisk and Broodlord.
The Zerg player DID build broodlords, but they're beaten so so easily by vikings that they didn't do nearly enough. Hydras would have melted to siege tanks and even marines as we all know. A hydra has the survivability of a marine with the maneuverability of a thor, it's retarded.
The Zerg also did a drop that was quickly spotted and punsihed, and Day9 said that if it were a nydus then it would have probably killed the terran. Drops are much much faster than nydus - if it was a nydus instead of a drop then Zerg would have lost the worm before it popped. That was a really stupid suggestion.
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Adding to the discussion on why zerg can't do anything substantial until the late or mid game is in part because of the creep mechanic. Creep is required to chase/retreat, if it isn't halfway to your opponents door step it's extremely hard to put on any pressure especially against a Terran player who has a defensive tank line.
Speedlings/Mutas are the only real options since nydus networks and OV drops cut into your army so much. Also, if a nydus network pops into your enemies base and dumps half your army into it and the nydus worm gets sniped by anything you automatically lose half your army. Overlord drops are extremely expensive and if the terran opponent has units in the right place at the right time most of your army is going to get sniped and you will probably be supply blocked. Speedlings are inexpensive money wise but to have a substantial amount of lings you will be spending excessive amounts of larvae. Mutalisks are the opposite, they are extremely expensive in tech and per muta when considering how effective mutas are against most units (they are very good at messing up stray vikings and banshees though).
Zerglings are too weak for anything besides run by's and its effectiveness is based mostly on luck. Roaches are decent but it's not that hard to out micro them due to their speed, range and susceptibility to +dmg to armored units (stalker, immortal, marauder etc) and air units. Hydras would be good hit and run units if creep covered the entire map but creep highways take time to build and can be stopped with detection if the opponent really wants to.
Personal Ramblings Inc.
The only time i've had effective early game harass is with almost all-in play on blistering sands when the opponent either tries to tech fast or spends money on static D. If they do either i can exploit the back door, the catch is if they want to do this to me it's a little more effective because i have to burn queen energy on creeping up my base or burning money on an extra queen and even then they can abuse front door back door switches to force fights at chokes where they have a decent advantage.
This can be fixed through maps but it doesn't help zergs bland unit compositions, I personally would love to have scourge patrolling my cliffs to snipe medivacs and banshees. Lurkers would also be useful in anti-cliffing because (hopefully) their spines can reach the entire cliff and nullify marines so I could come in with muta/scourge to fuck up the tank.
I really hate when terran use cliff abuse on LT because they can have a solid D while destroying my chances of getting a decent economy. Two medivacs One Tank and a 6+ marines with stim is very hard to break and have decent enough army to defend other attacks that usually follow.
I'm a mid-high diamond player and my games usually end with me sending Ultra/Ling to the slaughter (enemies choke) then rebuilding and repeating until I can break their D. Otherwise I tech broodlords and try to bait a fight in which my broodlords can fire from some semblance of safety.
Right now I like ZvP(love colossus immortal vs infester and fodder/dps fights), suck at ZvZ and grind ZvT (while down voting Kulas Ravine and praying for no LT).
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Great post, especially coming from someone as respected as Sheth.
Makes me wonder if T players know this... I see a lot pushing against me before 200/200 when they have sufficient turtle to just sit there.
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On August 04 2010 04:22 chair wrote:
Each race plays differently.
If you don't like the way Zerg plays but like the way Terrans work, switch it up.
If you want aggressive rushes, play protoss. If you want to turtle up, play terran. If you want to macro, play zerg.
Edit: To point, complaining that one race isn't able to do X that another race can, is a lot like complaining that your Pepsi doesn't taste like Mountain Dew.
Mountain Dew is bottled and produced by Pepsi Co. International.
Same thing. Bad Analogy.
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EPT
