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ZvT army composition

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 09 2010 11:26 GMT
#1
I'm wondering what everyone has found to be an effective unit mix versus the various terran mid-late game armies. I'm particularly having a really hard time dealing with a good mix of thors, tanks, and marauders. It feels as though I need more than two 200/200 armies to make a dent into that unit composition once it reaches critical mass.

Against a pure bio-ball I've actually found muta baneling to be an amazing mix especially considering you can match the terran army's mobility and don't have to sacrifice much in terms of map control. Does anyone have any other good ways of dealing with the dreaded ball?

bostic
Profile Joined May 2010
Australia41 Posts
August 09 2010 11:39 GMT
#2
I dont really have an answer, but i definitely empathize with you. had a stupid loss to mass thor/hellion today. Looked at the army value graph after and my roach/hydra army value SOARED above his, but got dominated when we engaged. so stupid. Thors just blew everything apart even though his hellions were useless. I could have micro-d it better though.

After the game i realised infestors could have helped. But I think what i really should have done was out maneuvered him with drops and counter attacks, rather than trying to face him head on. Especially bad idea to go offensive with hydras since they are so slow
Laggy
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States385 Posts
August 09 2010 11:49 GMT
#3
Ultralisks work well with the frenzy passive skill that makes them immune to slow. But you should try and take map control expand to 4-5 bases send mutas to spread creep on the ones you are not using.You can have a few ultras to distract them and burrow a large number of them and bate the terran player into moving over them. You have to get really creative versus this army once it moves out, it is a very powerful army but not unbeatable. If you plan on playing out long macro games all you have to do is wait till they hit 200/200 unless you see a quirk in their defenses that you can exploit such as low air defence you can drop some banelings or lings even ultras but by then he'd have a few thors.

Overall Speedling Ultra work very well against mech armies, throw in some roaches if you'd like and with your 4-5 expansions should be at max larva at each and high counts of minerals and gas while you're waiting for him to move out, you can just reinforce so quick that there in lies the power of the swarm. However there are certain things that are close to impossible to win against such as tank on the high ground over the expansion on Lost Temple, denying any sort of expo. And if the player is good enough he can scout any hidden expansions.Overall This match up is a lot more difficult than it should be. but if your macro is up to par you can slowly out produce him. Watch Idra vs Drewbie, Idra plays very well on that game.
D on iccup stands for diamond in SC2
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 09 2010 12:03 GMT
#4
I have a terrible habit of not getting my hive tech until far too late, but it feels like a lot of the times, the big push comes right before I would have gotten ultras. Against a two-basing terran, a lot of the times I find the problem to be that while I'm taking my 4th and hive tech is about to kick in, the big push comes. At this time I'm usually sitting at 160ish supply worth of t1/t2 army and end up getting rolled. When I watch replays I always notice that I'm even on supply or sometimes 10-20 supply ahead of the terran when our armies clash. The unfortunate aftermath is that I'm left about 50 supply short of him.

It seems like the general consensus is that you have to out-produce/out-macro the terran but I've yet to have a game where I've been able to take that much of a supply lead without something out of the ordinary happening. It makes me feel that if I could find a decent army composition for fighting his, I'd be able to hold my ground and hold out until my superior economy and hive tech kick in.
Laggy
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States385 Posts
August 09 2010 12:06 GMT
#5
Another trick is to get a hefty amount of Infestors to burrow and spit out a large number of infested terran eggs, so the siege tanks friendly fire themselves+ the marauders.
D on iccup stands for diamond in SC2
AnodyneSea
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
Jamaica757 Posts
August 09 2010 12:15 GMT
#6
On August 09 2010 20:49 Laggy wrote:
Ultralisks work well with the frenzy passive skill that makes them immune to slow.


Dude they took out frenzy a long time ago.....................
Lost within the hope of freedom, not for control but in the light of our cause
Scruff
Profile Joined May 2010
Singapore509 Posts
August 09 2010 12:42 GMT
#7
Roach and Hydra army gets effortlessly obliterated by tanks/marauder and thors. The best unit we can come up with against that army is probably ultralisk. Make sure you get upgrades (+ 3 armor is important). Position is very important. You'll find that even ultralisk die ultra fast to mech army if you don't position and flank it well. Ultralisk also have retarded AI pathing so you'll need to do quite a bit of micro. Broodlords can work very well too if they don't expect it since a few vikings is enough to take care of broodlords.

But i'll suggest to not ever get into that kind of situation since mech is ridiculously overpowered and very tough to beat. I normally just get muta to harrass the hell out of them so i don't have to deal with tanks and lolrauders on steriods.
I astonish myself everyday
Broodlings
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United States157 Posts
August 09 2010 12:58 GMT
#8
On August 09 2010 21:15 AnodyneSea wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 09 2010 20:49 Laggy wrote:
Ultralisks work well with the frenzy passive skill that makes them immune to slow.


Dude they took out frenzy a long time ago.....................


They never took out frenzied, they just moved the ability to the ultra as a passive ability. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Frenzied
There is no Karont3 icon???? what is this madness?
Amber[LighT]
Profile Blog Joined June 2005
United States5078 Posts
August 09 2010 13:02 GMT
#9
On August 09 2010 20:49 Laggy wrote:
Ultralisks work well with the frenzy passive skill that makes them immune to slow. But you should try and take map control expand to 4-5 bases send mutas to spread creep on the ones you are not using.You can have a few ultras to distract them and burrow a large number of them and bate the terran player into moving over them. You have to get really creative versus this army once it moves out, it is a very powerful army but not unbeatable. If you plan on playing out long macro games all you have to do is wait till they hit 200/200 unless you see a quirk in their defenses that you can exploit such as low air defence you can drop some banelings or lings even ultras but by then he'd have a few thors.

Overall Speedling Ultra work very well against mech armies, throw in some roaches if you'd like and with your 4-5 expansions should be at max larva at each and high counts of minerals and gas while you're waiting for him to move out, you can just reinforce so quick that there in lies the power of the swarm. However there are certain things that are close to impossible to win against such as tank on the high ground over the expansion on Lost Temple, denying any sort of expo. And if the player is good enough he can scout any hidden expansions.Overall This match up is a lot more difficult than it should be. but if your macro is up to par you can slowly out produce him. Watch Idra vs Drewbie, Idra plays very well on that game.


This would work well if every Zerg was able to stockpile 1200+ gas at the late game. Hive tech is so costly and getting even 3-4 ultralisks is a HUGE drain on both economy and supply. I had a terran suggest making ultralisks after we played like as though I'm using my farts to add bonus gas. It's ironic by the late game (hive transition) I always have about a 10:1 mineral:gas ratio that I can't even use properly.

Not disagreeing on the Idra vs. Drewbie suggestion though
"We have unfinished business, I and he."
Castaface
Profile Joined May 2010
Finland34 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-09 13:14:17
August 09 2010 13:11 GMT
#10
BLs work fine against that - especially on tighter maps where ultras have a hard time getting a good position (like blistering). Marauders and 250mm cannon can make short work of ultras.

It's also cool to start with BLs and transition to ultraling when the terran's committed a lot on vikings. Need a really good economy with 4+ bases for the gas of course.
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 09 2010 13:20 GMT
#11
To stay on topic with unit composition, what do you guys find to be the best support unit for ultralisks? (since it seems to be generally accepted that ultras are your best bet)

Discounting the usual speedling approach, do you guys think Roach/Ultra would be viable? Roaches are another unit, like lings, that don't really cut into your gas that heavily. I feel as though zerg would really benefit from having an army capable of soaking tons of damage. A lot of the times I'm using ultra/speedling I find that speedlings end up dying so quickly due to random splash damage and it quickly becomes 5 ultras against the entire terran army.

I feel like the real limiting factor in roach/ultra wouldn't be in gas but in supply. I'm not sure how large of a roach/ultra army you could get without maxing out if you have enough drones to saturate 3-4 bases.
Denzz
Profile Joined July 2010
United States9 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-09 13:23:48
August 09 2010 13:22 GMT
#12
broodlords broodlords broodlords, thats all i will say, you see a terran trying to mass up marauder thor tank just tech towards broodlords while trying to maintain map control with a lot of lings, some mutas and maybe some infestors, if the terran doesn't use turrets for a long time, burrowed infestors work great you can just spam infested marines on their mineral lines and kill a lot of scv's, sometimes u can even focus fire the CC down pretty easily
mathemagician1986
Profile Joined February 2010
Germany549 Posts
August 09 2010 13:28 GMT
#13
atm I'm doing something along these lines:

start off with early speedlings (gas before pool) just in case a reaper harass or very early helions hit me. Then I tech to mutas while getting my natural up. Once I get my mutas out I start harassing and expand at least once again. I then have a short period of muta/ling/bling and sometimes a few roaches depending on what I see. It's important to start going hive very early though, so muta/ling/bling is just a short period before I can get ultras out. I've also started using burrowed blings to great effect. Even if it doesn't really kill that many of his units, it makes him waste scans and advance slower.

I'm only a low diamond player, so this probably won't work at a high level, but I find that most terrans are actually really bad, and don't know any proper timing pushes. This way I just mass expand and hope my ultras get out in time to crush his mech army. It's amazing how +3 armour ultras can shrug off tank fire. When attacking you really need lots of space though, otherwise ultras just run around not able to get to the front line.
NonFactor
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
Sweden698 Posts
August 09 2010 13:30 GMT
#14
Hive isn't really the answer imo.

It's very easy to say ''lol just get broodlords or ultralisks!!'' The Tech time to get these is very long, and for a good reason too, otherwise we could get high amounts of high tech units really fast due to our larva system, so we need longer tech times for it to stay balanced, the problem here is that the push from Terran usually comes before you can get BLs / good amount of Ultralisks with upgrades.

So in your arsenal you have: Roaches, Hydralisks, Mutalisks, Zerglings and Infestors. Against Mech builds Zerglings and Mutalisks are sadly useless. Terran can too easily defend against Mutalisks so ''harass'' to buy time like in BW isn't a possibility either. Infestors can buy you time, but heres the other problem: The rush distances in most maps are incredibly small, so yeah, you might slow them down a bit, but wont usually mean shit. The mech units can be handily be repaired too so if your thinking about sometype of kiting with FG then it's not gonna work.

Zerglings are too hard-countered by tanks and hellions, so sadly they are more or less useless. They can be useful though against a very early push when there isn't a ball of units.

So what your usually left with is Hydralisks and Roaches to be the bulk of your army, and the only thing to defend with. This mix is the best mix you got, but I don't personally think it's enough. Siege tanks own up Roaches and Hydras. The problem here I AGAIN think are the god-awful maps.

Compare current maps to the maps used in BW. You will notice that the majority of the maps are a lot bigger and generally have more open space. While the blizzard map makers seem to get hard-ons by making tight space areas with random walls that seemed to have been specifically designed to help Siege tanks to be un-reachable. This combined with the no-overkill makes imo Siege tanks so incredibly strong against Zerg ground. Combine this with big ass Thors with SVCs repairing sitting at the front blocking the shit out of everything with some Hellions throwing extra DPS too. (Hellions sometimes aren't even used, but I've found it myself to be a good mineral sink.) Thors also pack a punch against Zerg units. 1 shotting Hydralisks, seriously? While also being the perfect counter towards Mutalisks.

Then theres still people who mix some random Marines to the force mainly because they can, and they are also very cheap, making any Mutalisks even more useless, while Marines are still decent DPSers on ground and since Zerg doesen't have ANY AoE attack except for FG which is a spell at that point in the game, they usually stay alive and if wanted dead, they need to be killed by single targeting Roaches / Hydralisks which is good because their not killing the blocking Thors or the tanks.

The way I see it is that the Terran usually does 2 pushes. 1 very early in the game, usually involving Hellions / Marauders / Marines, or Marines / Tanks, and usually Zerg defends this, but Terran can safely expand afterwards, this allows Zerg usually to expand aswell depending how much damage he took defending, but I don't think you will have enough time to get BLs / Ultralisks out before the next strong push comes.
Smackzilla
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States539 Posts
August 09 2010 15:37 GMT
#15
On August 09 2010 22:11 Castaface wrote:
BLs work fine against that - especially on tighter maps where ultras have a hard time getting a good position (like blistering). Marauders and 250mm cannon can make short work of ultras.

It's also cool to start with BLs and transition to ultraling when the terran's committed a lot on vikings. Need a really good economy with 4+ bases for the gas of course.


Do you still feel 250mm is worth it now that ultras cant be stunned?
You see a mousetrap. I see free cheese and a f&%*ing challenge - Scroobius Pip
fdsdfg
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States1251 Posts
August 09 2010 15:41 GMT
#16
On August 10 2010 00:37 Smackzilla wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 09 2010 22:11 Castaface wrote:
BLs work fine against that - especially on tighter maps where ultras have a hard time getting a good position (like blistering). Marauders and 250mm cannon can make short work of ultras.

It's also cool to start with BLs and transition to ultraling when the terran's committed a lot on vikings. Need a really good economy with 4+ bases for the gas of course.


Do you still feel 250mm is worth it now that ultras cant be stunned?


Considering it can kill an ultra before the ultra brings the thor to half health, I'd say yes.

Thors already beat ultras if there's more than about 4 of each (or if position favors ranged), but cannon makes sure it beats ultra in all scenarios.
aka Siyko
Castaface
Profile Joined May 2010
Finland34 Posts
August 09 2010 15:48 GMT
#17
On August 09 2010 22:30 NonFactor wrote:
Hive isn't really the answer imo.

It's very easy to say ''lol just get broodlords or ultralisks!!'' The Tech time to get these is very long, and for a good reason too, otherwise we could get high amounts of high tech units really fast due to our larva system, so we need longer tech times for it to stay balanced, the problem here is that the push from Terran usually comes before you can get BLs / good amount of Ultralisks with upgrades.

So in your arsenal you have: Roaches, Hydralisks, Mutalisks, Zerglings and Infestors. Against Mech builds Zerglings and Mutalisks are sadly useless. Terran can too easily defend against Mutalisks so ''harass'' to buy time like in BW isn't a possibility either. Infestors can buy you time, but heres the other problem: The rush distances in most maps are incredibly small, so yeah, you might slow them down a bit, but wont usually mean shit. The mech units can be handily be repaired too so if your thinking about sometype of kiting with FG then it's not gonna work.

Zerglings are too hard-countered by tanks and hellions, so sadly they are more or less useless. They can be useful though against a very early push when there isn't a ball of units.

So what your usually left with is Hydralisks and Roaches to be the bulk of your army, and the only thing to defend with. This mix is the best mix you got, but I don't personally think it's enough. Siege tanks own up Roaches and Hydras. The problem here I AGAIN think are the god-awful maps.

Compare current maps to the maps used in BW. You will notice that the majority of the maps are a lot bigger and generally have more open space. While the blizzard map makers seem to get hard-ons by making tight space areas with random walls that seemed to have been specifically designed to help Siege tanks to be un-reachable. This combined with the no-overkill makes imo Siege tanks so incredibly strong against Zerg ground. Combine this with big ass Thors with SVCs repairing sitting at the front blocking the shit out of everything with some Hellions throwing extra DPS too. (Hellions sometimes aren't even used, but I've found it myself to be a good mineral sink.) Thors also pack a punch against Zerg units. 1 shotting Hydralisks, seriously? While also being the perfect counter towards Mutalisks.

Then theres still people who mix some random Marines to the force mainly because they can, and they are also very cheap, making any Mutalisks even more useless, while Marines are still decent DPSers on ground and since Zerg doesen't have ANY AoE attack except for FG which is a spell at that point in the game, they usually stay alive and if wanted dead, they need to be killed by single targeting Roaches / Hydralisks which is good because their not killing the blocking Thors or the tanks.

The way I see it is that the Terran usually does 2 pushes. 1 very early in the game, usually involving Hellions / Marauders / Marines, or Marines / Tanks, and usually Zerg defends this, but Terran can safely expand afterwards, this allows Zerg usually to expand aswell depending how much damage he took defending, but I don't think you will have enough time to get BLs / Ultralisks out before the next strong push comes.


This post is really dead on. Hive IS the answer but getting there while maintaining enough bases to cover the gas cost of T3 tech is extremely difficult. Bio is counterable enough but mech with marauders is pretty damn hard to stop, especially if the T pulls scvs to repair thors. It's pretty much the point where you have 3 bases and terran moves out at around 100-150 supply I'm having difficulties with.

It seems feasible on maps like LT where you can do multiple flanks and the distance between bases is hopefully big enough so you can try to catch the tanks unsieged.

NP works relatively well if the army size isnt huge and you get a good position. I think the most success I've had is with burrowed roaches and infestors NP'ing the thors / tanks but not too many T's fall for it.

Also like you mentioned, the smaller maps or close positions on some maps make it really difficult to engage in any decent position.
Castaface
Profile Joined May 2010
Finland34 Posts
August 09 2010 15:55 GMT
#18
On August 10 2010 00:37 Smackzilla wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 09 2010 22:11 Castaface wrote:
BLs work fine against that - especially on tighter maps where ultras have a hard time getting a good position (like blistering). Marauders and 250mm cannon can make short work of ultras.

It's also cool to start with BLs and transition to ultraling when the terran's committed a lot on vikings. Need a really good economy with 4+ bases for the gas of course.


Do you still feel 250mm is worth it now that ultras cant be stunned?


Yeah definately. The damage is enough to warrant it and it's a pretty cheap tech (150/150?).

http://sc2.replayers.com/replays/view/1559
^
Idra vs Drewbie on Kulas.

Idra outexpands T and goes ultras. He only won the game after getting BLs (which he should've gotten earlier to be fair). It's not the best showcase of 250mm cannons but decent enough.
BlasiuS
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
United States2405 Posts
August 09 2010 16:09 GMT
#19
ling/ultra/infestor is a great all-around late-game army composition, as it can handle MMM or mech fairly equally. Just add in a few speedbanes against MMM for the marines.

It's funny, since release I have seen very few high-level players use pure mech, I guess ling/ultra/infestor is too good against pure mech?

As for a thor/tank/marauder mix, it depends on how many thor he has. If it's 1-3 thors, then pure muta will win easily. If it's 4+ thors, then broodlords are good, but you have to follow up with something else because you only have a small window to do damage before vikings come out which counter broodlords hard.

If he doesn't have any medivacs, then muta/ling should beat this army fairly easily in the mid-game; just make sure to run in with your zerglings while his tanks are unsieged. I don't recommend ultras late-game, because marauders + thor can both counter ultras fairly well.
next week on Everybody Loves HypnoToad:
Kexx
Profile Joined May 2010
Germany240 Posts
August 09 2010 17:00 GMT
#20
just don't get broodlords until the very last moment, when you know this push will win the game.
Broodlords are just useless against Terran if you builds vikings, so once you see vikings just don't bother wasting anymore money in Broodlords, chances are you trying to hard to counter the vikings with infestors and BLs and you lose.

What some korean zergs do is to play mainly speedlings/banelinge/mutas against mech/bio army.
It's really hard to pull of and I'd only recommend it on 4 player maps.
Mutas are really not that bad against thors, you just have to spread them enough.

check the replays from CheckPrime to know what I mean.
chooooch
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 09 2010 18:56 GMT
#21
I've had some intermittent success using mutalisks against thors in smaller numbers, but the encounter is usually forced and I only really engage as an act of desperation. It just doesn't sit right with me that one mistake in micro (or just general lack of micro) could cost me 1000/1000+ resources worth of units in a split second. I'm guilty of not micro-ing battles as much as I should since I'm not good enough to micro and macro super well at the same time. Most of the time I just worry about army positioning and try to set up flanks... but after I a-move my groups, I'm mostly back to macro.

I just hate the feeling of a-moving my various groups in what looks to be a pretty-looking flank only to come back after 3-4 seconds of macroing to find all of my units have dissolved. I'm looking for an army that doesn't really require babying in terms of combat potential. I want to be able to set up for a nice surround/flank and a-move my way to victory while I make sure my macro doesn't fall behind.

I might be a bit too close-minded about my options but I want to make sure there really is no way to play this way before I take on the daunting task of re-learning macro habits in the midst of battle.
Mantikor
Profile Joined August 2010
United States68 Posts
August 09 2010 19:38 GMT
#22
yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.

If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.

Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.

I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....."
wat
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 09 2010 20:33 GMT
#23
On August 10 2010 04:38 Mantikor wrote:
yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.

If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.

Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.

I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....."


While using mutas effectively does require a lot of attention and micro, that's not what I'm referring to when I complain about mutas needing babysitting. While I am actively running around engaging in muta harrass, I can periodically click my mutas away and go back to my base for 2-3 seconds to macro and then focus my attention to mutas again. I don't mind doing this and this isn't what really kills me because I can avoid direct engagement with the terran's thors. What really bothers me is that when terran brings all of his forces for a big push I have to meet him in order to defend my expansions. It would be foolish to meet the entirety of his forces with only half of my army so I pull my mutas back to engage in this battle. It's during this battle where I'm forced to engage his thors that I'm weary of having a lot of mutalisks. People say that mutas can fight thors, but only with perfect spread. I think the amount of work needed to make 10+ mutalisks effective against 2+ thors is ridiculous. I'm trying to find a more cost and attention effective unit composition that won't get torn apart by thors if I happen to fail at perfectly splitting my mutas.
SaikOuLighT
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
Canada742 Posts
August 09 2010 21:51 GMT
#24
This is what i do in the midgame
Vs Bio: Speedlings, blings and infestors with a dash of roaches or mutas depending on what i got earlier
Vs Mech: Roaches, speedlings, and infestors, and maybe mutas if they are thor lite.
Vs BioMech: Speedlings, blings, roaches, infestors, and maybe hydras for extra dps

Of course the army mixture is just half the fight, as how you engage the army is the key to winning or losing. Also, tier 1 and 2 units will not outright win you the game against a competent terran, as they can sit back and play defense even after you win a confrontation. Broodlords are the only unit that will allow you to break into a terran base, and it also depends on their viking count vs your corrupter count. Ultras are good at fighting the T's army, but not really for breaking in their base as they are really clumsy in tight spaces.

I guess what I am really trying to say is that ZvT seems similar to BW in that you use your tier 1 and 2 units to hold off pushes till you can get and support your tier 3 units which will allow you to win the game. However,sometimes it may not be possible to even stop their midgame push if they time it right, which is where a lack of a darkswarm-esque spell really hurts, and the only real option is to try and drop and nydus them and pray you do enough damage or distract them long enough to get your tier 3 units.
fdsdfg
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
United States1251 Posts
August 09 2010 21:59 GMT
#25
On August 10 2010 06:51 ariK wrote:
I guess what I am really trying to say is that ZvT seems similar to BW in that you use your tier 1 and 2 units to hold off pushes till you can get and support your tier 3 units which will allow you to win the game.


Not really. BW Z could still push a lot of agression - stacked mutas was very very deadly because of their resistance to marines and other D. Z could also make really strong use of Lurkers to put pressure on T and force him to move his troops. Z also had a lot better luck attacking siege tanks with zerglings due to the bad AI and slow refire rate, as well as the lack of Hellions.

So I guess what I'm saying is that T had a lot to fear leading up to the endgame - in SC2 T really has nothing to fear until Z gets T3 up with 3+ bases.
aka Siyko
Mantikor
Profile Joined August 2010
United States68 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-09 22:28:46
August 09 2010 22:24 GMT
#26
On August 10 2010 05:33 deverlight wrote:
Show nested quote +
On August 10 2010 04:38 Mantikor wrote:
yes i know exactly what you mean. almost impossible to go head on to terran mech. Late game, you really have to babysit your mutas. I do actually enjoy that to an extent. even just flying expansion to expansion, keeping the map control, and just in general threatening them is really enough. if you can kill the off the random techlab, depot or 5 workers here or there then fly away unscathed, its totally worth it. when your a-moving your troops in the flank, just have some spare mutas hanging out ready to blow up some mineral lines at the same time.

If the T has to spread out his forces to cover everything, you should win the front line;
Iif hes all at the front battle, he'll loose his base;
If he invested a million minerals into turrets, his sunken cost... find an unguarded factory or sneak behind and snipe some tanks in the battle. you should really embrace the "babystting mutas" aspect, you can really stress out the slow moving terran to no end.

Meanwhile be teching up to some heavily upgraded ultras/lings/blings. I dislike Broodlords vs T to be honest. So much tech and econ investment when all the t has to do is throw up a reactored starport and a few vikings make quick work of em. Plus must of your gas is going to mutas anyways, so you'd have to cut them.

I only wish the mutas would just calm down a little bit, or i just need to use hold position more. I watch so many of my replays and i realize that i loose one random unit almost every couple minutes..."oh look, shiny....."


While using mutas effectively does require a lot of attention and micro, that's not what I'm referring to when I complain about mutas needing babysitting. While I am actively running around engaging in muta harrass, I can periodically click my mutas away and go back to my base for 2-3 seconds to macro and then focus my attention to mutas again. I don't mind doing this and this isn't what really kills me because I can avoid direct engagement with the terran's thors. What really bothers me is that when terran brings all of his forces for a big push I have to meet him in order to defend my expansions. It would be foolish to meet the entirety of his forces with only half of my army so I pull my mutas back to engage in this battle. It's during this battle where I'm forced to engage his thors that I'm weary of having a lot of mutalisks. People say that mutas can fight thors, but only with perfect spread. I think the amount of work needed to make 10+ mutalisks effective against 2+ thors is ridiculous. I'm trying to find a more cost and attention effective unit composition that won't get torn apart by thors if I happen to fail at perfectly splitting my mutas.


Yea, i think we are on the same page with the mutas, if its 10mutas vs 2 thors, your right, you really have to micro them right to work. throw in a handful of lings for that fight and you got a win. You will still loose some mutas ofc, but those thors arn't cheap either.

If its a big fight in the front... It might be to the point where you just cant win, Have to bank on your harass being sucessful enough to have slowed his production down until you can have some upgraded ling ultra in his face. That and if its at your door, and you have a nice cliff on his flank, try to get some sneaky neural parasites from the high ground. It almost feels like there is a point of no return with terran mech, once they reach a certian amount of units, there is no standard 200/200 zerg army that can beat it. You just cant let them get to that point.

Thats all I can think of tbh. theres a reason theres a million ZvT threads, shit is hard lol.
wat
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
August 10 2010 04:45 GMT
#27
Still haven't gotten any real discussion on this so... bringing it up again.

What does everyone feel best complements ultralisks against various terran armies? The BW ideology was that ultras would tank damage while the real damage dealers were cracklings. I don't really feel like that mentality is valid anymore in SC2 since lings feel really weak and so many different things splash that lings don't really survive even with ultralisks tanking damage.
brad drac
Profile Joined May 2010
Ireland202 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-10 05:26:19
August 10 2010 05:23 GMT
#28
From my observations, mass ultras seem to suffer a little from diminishing returns. They're so big that if you have more than a few they just all get stuck on each other and a lot seem to die before they do much of anything. I'm thinking, engage first with just a few broodlords and speedlings to grind the T push to a halt, and if he has tanks force them to damage his own units with splash. Then just flank with 3-4 ultras for clean up, as they're actually surprisingly fast when not getting stuck on things.

My other thought stems from the strength of T's push is its diversity, they can come at you with so many different types of units it can be really hard to deal with, so why not counter this by just getting a lot of unit diversity yourself. First attack with speedlings, then roaches to soak up damage and ultras to deal it, with banelings if there are lots of marines, and hydras have the one of the highest base dps of any unit in the game so could work well if you have creep(they're probably too slow to work without) and if you're able to cover them with roaches they could be quite effective. A big advantage of zerg after all is to be able to get as many of each type of unit they like as long as they have the tech, and most zerg buildings are really quite cheap, so why not just get them all(eventually)? Are there any glaring holes in my reasoning?
Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.
deverlight
Profile Blog Joined April 2006
Korea (South)463 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-08-10 05:36:09
August 10 2010 05:34 GMT
#29
On August 10 2010 14:23 brad drac wrote:
From my observations, mass ultras seem to suffer a little from diminishing returns. They're so big that if you have more than a few they just all get stuck on each other and a lot seem to die before they do much of anything. I'm thinking, engage first with just a few broodlords and speedlings to grind the T push to a halt, and if he has tanks force them to damage his own units with splash. Then just flank with 3-4 ultras for clean up, as they're actually surprisingly fast when not getting stuck on things.

My other thought stems from the strength of T's push is its diversity, they can come at you with so many different types of units it can be really hard to deal with, so why not counter this by just getting a lot of unit diversity yourself. First attack with speedlings, then roaches to soak up damage and ultras to deal it, with banelings if there are lots of marines, and hydras have the one of the highest base dps of any unit in the game so could work well if you have creep(they're probably too slow to work without) and if you're able to cover them with roaches they could be quite effective. A big advantage of zerg after all is to be able to get as many of each type of unit they like as long as they have the tech, and most zerg buildings are really quite cheap, so why not just get them all(eventually)? Are there any glaring holes in my reasoning?


You make a valid point except I think the biggest issue comes in the timing. If you split the map half and half and fight the terran, then you may have enough time and resources to add this diversity to your army, but it seems like the most troublesome terran pushes come right around the same time as your hive tech hits. Without being able to fight off this push, which already has the variety included, you'll never be able to incorporate two different hive tech units into your army. It really comes down to ultralisks or broodlords for what you want your hive tech unit to be at least until you can secure 4-5 bases and aren't gas starved or dead. If you try to pursue ultralisk and broodlord tech at the same time, chances are you'll find yourself with too few of either to save you against the terran army rolling through your expansions.

Also I feel like zerg units generally need to be a little bit more abundant to reach "critical mass" and actually become effective. The addition of 2-3 thors to a terran army effectively makes it immune to air whereas 2-3 ultras or 2-3 broodlords seems to have much less impact. Because of this zerg armies usually don't have the luxury of having more than one type of "gas" unit. It'd be difficult to incorporate a lot of hydras with hive tech units due to the gas limitation.

If zergs could survive that initial big army push and take the game later into the late-game, I feel like your suggestion would be a lot more viable being able to mix in tons of different units to counteract his variety.
brad drac
Profile Joined May 2010
Ireland202 Posts
August 10 2010 06:09 GMT
#30
deverlight: That's why I suggested only getting a few of each. Mo ultras, mo problems and you don't actually need to have that many broodlords assuming speedling support to have their desired effect of just immobilising the terran ball and tanking damage. Thors really don't do very good damage against broodlords, and they'll never even target them unless the T manually focuses, in which case you have a good bit of time to micro them back out of range and the broodlings previously fired + speedlings will keep doing their thing. It's just a case of instead of getting 7 ultras, you get 4 ultras and 3 broodlords. You can always make a crapton of spinecrawlers to support too.

As for hydras, I think 6-8 would probably be optimal for what I was talking about. Any more than that and it'll be difficult to get them all attacking when you want them to, and would probably be too expensive for such a fragile unit. As long as they don't engage too early and take all the damage, it could add some real punch to the zerg force that doesn't otherwise have many high dps units. I think you could get away with skimping on mutas to free up some gas, just make 3-4 all game and just make damn sure to keep them alive for map control, only making more if T contests your air dominance. Seeing as turrets and thors shut down muta harass anyway, 4 mutas = 8 hydras. Ultimately, all you need to do is wipe out the terran ball even if you lose every one of your units doing so. Once you manage that, zerg will be able to macro up a force much faster than terran can hope to, and all it'll take is half a dozen banelings and you should be able to overrun their main with speedlings.
Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know.
mathemagician1986
Profile Joined February 2010
Germany549 Posts
August 10 2010 12:58 GMT
#31
I personally just stick with ling/ultra/infestor and add corruptors if I see banshees or catlebruisers. Usually I just get as many ultras as I can with a few infestors, then I'm broke on gas and just spam that z button! I feel with micro ultras are really strong, it's getting to the point where you can just swarm himn with lings and ultras again and again that's difficult. Bein faster in reproducing an army is like the biggest advantage zerg has imo, but it's very costly.
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