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Hullo thar TL, as a gold ranked player (i.e. not that amazing), I'm asking what are your views on including roaches in army comps past the 15/ 20 minutes mark of a game. I see a lot of higher tiered zergs tend to go for other comps like muta lings or some form of banelings (obviously depending on the matchup), but is lots of roaches really that bad?
If a zerg opens 5RR, that leaves him weak to maruaders or stalkers, (or even immortals.)
However, I feel like in mid-level games I've pitted my roaches vs these "anti armor armored units" and still won. Why? Tunneling claws are LEGIT.
The biggest problem facing a zerg army is avoiding chokes and surrounding an opponent's army. With tunneling claws, popping up mass roaches in the middle of an army is way better than any possible concave or surround.
Burrow is a key mechanic of zerg, (ALL zerg attack units can burrow), but I feel like its getting played less and less in SC2. I watch a lot of pro replays, and I see zerg units tend to not research burrow if they hit lair tech.
Why not? Roaches at 2 supply do make it hard to mass, but tunneling claws also increase burrowed health regen. If i take 15 roaches, I could outmaneuver a terran's MMM ball of 15 marauders because I would pop my army in the middle of theirs, or if they happen to mass stalkers I could pop and surround those as well.
Ill consider posting a replay if it becomes super important, thanks.
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As you get higher up if a player see's your massing roaches which he will. Then he's going to get detection and thats why its really not that great in the late game also with the 2 supply it just doesn't happen anymore and even if it does work once they will get detection right after the battle
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Roaches have their uses all throughout the game, but the problem most people run into is they try to mass roach, which is a lot less effective. Roaches, up until you get ultralisks, are your only real tanking unit, and will allow your other units to dish out the damage. However, try to go all roach all the time, and you will get absolutely owned.
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Roach is a meat shield and thats about it, you need to use them together with other units. It's alright to use roaches if you don't plan to go ultras but if you get ultras i don't find any reason at all to go roaches unless you have the speed and tunneling claws and is 3/3(so you are probably using a combination of hydras and roaches).
I find some roaches really effective, I'm a gold player myself but i think im in low diamond level but i havent played much ladder lately(only praticing against good people lol). Not a while ago i started to notice how much your units mixture is important.
I don't really like to go roaches against terran. I do only when there's a reaper rush and only get the speed and focus on changing the army into a multraling. You know... there's tanks and shit.
I find them really effective against protoss, but by effective i don't mean to mass them. I like to use hydras against toss so i need some meatshield to help and they are SO effective because it isn't a unit that is just there to tank but also to help my early game against zealots.
In zvz its about how you like to play, but they are effective if you want to play defensive but in "pro standards" i think roaches aren't viable anymore as an early game unit as there's a little time space which you will get owned by lings if u go roaches.
I find burrow and tunneling claw so bad but that's just my opinion, maybe u can find some game that fits well but it's never must have. The speed is interesting early game.
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Burrow is not great. It's supposed to be a signature of the zerg forces. In the end, it's just a disadvantage when you let the enemies army get free hits cause you're taking the time to unburrow while they see you.
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I used a bunch of roaches against tanks today and they did very well. Like 10 tanks vs my 18 roaches and I beat them with minimal losses.
I've started to incorporate them into most of my play. The 5RR is very effective for me. Even if it doesn't work, you've got a pretty good economy and can transition well into many different directions.
Also, I'd like to say that roaches and mutalisks work really well together. Most of the roach counters don't shoot up, so your mutas just give free DPS to the fight.
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I use the 5RR and once the game gets past that initial phase (occasionally I will have made a few more than the 5 roaches) I stop making them.
Roaches can ... surround ? Speedlings do it better and without the risk of a detector passing by or a lucky scan. Another great unit for this is the infestor, if you want to avoid the enemy getting away, use fungal and ITs in the midgame. As for tanking damage, against anything but a giant mass of hellions or reapers lings also do it better.
For 100 resources you get 140 hp of lings or 145 hp of roaches. The lings close the distance faster, keep up with the enemy (no running away without taking hits), block units better (because 4 lings trying to melee crowd in way more than a roach) and because they are light they take less damage. Things like marauder, immortals and even thors make lings much better at soaking up hits because there are no armored bonuses and way more damage gets wasted due to the 35 HP per unit.
Against protoss they are ok early to take care of zealots if he does some form of 4 gate push ... anything later and I usually have enough muta/ling to just not care about a few slow ground units that can pop out of the ground.
In my opinion one of the most underused options for Zerg right now is having in base hatcheries to spam zerglings while going pure gas heavy units (infestor, muta, ultra, broodlord, even banelings are 50% gas). It is much less of an investment than a new base because you don't have to defend it but it gives you a ton more larvae which is very important for speedlings and drones (saturating expands faster is another great use for in base hatches).
In my opinion the best options right now (excluding ZvZ) are muta/ling or hydra/ling, hydra ling gives you lots of gas for infestors and upgrades/other tech. Speedlings are just such better units for surrounds, map control, DPS and even tanking that I see no reason for roaches other than the 5 RR and 4 gate defense (and those are because you don't have enough larvae at that point to make 100% speedlings, and 5 roaches can get you up a weakly defended ramp).
Roaches still have some tanking use in ZvZ because 1 armor makes a large difference to lings, almost all damage is untyped (no anti armor bonus) and the range of 3 is actually better than melee when dealing with melee units (against stimmed MMM though the speed is better than a short range).
Edit:
One last note on the "roach counters get hurt by mutalisks". It is very very true but the very fact that you opened 5 RR and have a roach warren is enough to force some of those counter units. If he makes none, make a quick batch of roaches but most of the time the marauders/immortals will make an appearance even if you don't have a single roach.
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I actually use roaches into the mid game vs toss because they're typically not going to bother with Immortals when the only thing they're good against is roaches and they're actally not half bad at soaking up storms/colossi hits. If they do go for immortals, I'll just stop producing roaches.
I wouldn't say they take damage any better than lings vs zealot stalker, but they do give you options in larva vs resource management and their 3 range let's them stack up behind lings well enough in the dmg department.
I find roaches all but useless in ZvT outside of a rush.
In ZvZ, I would say roaches are the staple unit. They can completely ignore ling/bling/muta and actually win 1 on 1 vs a hydra. The only thing that can hold roaches back at all is spine crawlers or other roaches.
roaches don't tend to be useful for the burrow movement as much as just being relatively cheap hps IMO.
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I tend to go just Roach/Ling vs Toss and basically Ignore Hydras unless i got 3 running bases...
The burrow-move is nice to *force* psistorms and retreat, really makes the Roach a powerfull unit against a Protoss that went Templar.
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Thanks for the feedback. I just had a game where I did go mass roaches and still outmaneuvered the enemy toss army ball/ timing pushes.
First question, at what point would you consider roach strategy mass roaches instead of just being a part of army composition?
15 roaches? 20+?
Perhaps this is just my style of play, and that I'm using roaches different than most people, but I really am starting to like investing in tunneling claws.
Yes, speedlings can close the distance to melee faster than roaches, however I use tunneling roaches much the same way, with good effect as well.
This is my bold strategy which you may or may not like-
tunnel roaches into melee range, and pop in the middle of an enemy's army ball.
First off- yes that is a surround with ranged units. While awkward, it still traps an enemy's army effectively. If they don't have detect, than that is the element of surprise and first strike you have.
Even if they have detect, i'll still tunnel my roaches into a melee pop up. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe its that my mentality of swarming takes precedent over conventional means.
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http://www.starcraft-replay.com/replays/zxflip-vs-lazylaz-1283470909.php
I got a semi-decent replay which illustrates the strategy I am discussing with mass roaches.
Look in the description for the rundown of the game, but basically If you don't want to watch 24 minutes of fail macro then here are the key time slots so you can see the main purpose of the replay- the fighting.
9 minute mark-
Stalker/lots with 1 weapons push out against 7 roaches +1spine +worthless speedlings. With speed upgrade, the roaches somehow manage to stop the timing attack
17 minute mark- some decent scouting going on with overseers (ie using both changelings and one infestion use on a forge I think- it may not be at 17 minutes but at least I am using the overseer's abilities.)
mass roaches (1-1 upgrades) vs. lots, stalkers, and colos!
Toss pushes out with seemingly perfect army comp and my army is WAY out of position (which in turns ends up favoring me.)
I rush my roaches back to defend and flank the colos like a champ and easily focus fire them both down. This is where my zerg army uses its key advantages- 1) NOT being in chokes/ in open areas, well thats the big one really lol.
***21 minute mark***
if you only are gonna watch this replay for like 5 minutes then watch this part- I maneuver my roaches tactically on the fly straight into the heart of the remaining toss army.
The purpose of this- if my army went head on with the toss i would have been completely owned in 5 seconds. Think about it- 20ish roaches hit smack into a wall of lots, behind which are mass stalkers and 2 colos. By baiting the army into my side of the map and flanking my seemingly out of position army I can dispose of the colos, then interestingly i place my roaches smack dab into the middle of the rest. in works out in my favor. Also note that afterward I can rapidly heal my army in 30 seconds to quickly retaliate and mount a counterattack.
Have you ever noticed that if you have a lot of ranged units that when they start to form a concave, there are extra units behind the firing line not contributing to the overall DPS? This remedies that problem- ALL units are attacking in my army positioning.
Any thoughts? thanks
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I've been finding zerglings to be more useful as a tanking unit, especially considering how often you encounter rauders and stalkers. Ling/hydra/bling are incredibly cost effective units... Roaches are pretty gimmicky, and seemingly countered by everything toss/Terran like to mass.
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EPT
