EPTThe Zerg Help Me Thread - Page 178
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KimJongChill
United States6429 Posts
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Letall
Sweden384 Posts
So here's my first question: How do I know what my oppenent is gonna do? I used to rely on if I scouted 4 gas I could expect some kind of tech, either dt/blink or colossi, this often results in me getting 6 gated and losing. So my question here is basicly what do I look for while scouting how do I know what build he's going for? I'm also wondering what composition I want to be going for? atm I'm kinda stuck on Roach/hydra/corruptor for most of the game, I get roach/hydra to deal with immortal timings and blink stalkers, but when he sees my army he just kinda turtles, gets a 3rd and starts making colossi, hence the corruptors. When I see him going for the 3rd I try getting my 4th or attacking, when I attack I just end up losing a lot more than I kill and when I expand I just get rolled by his 172 food army. When I try getting to broodlords I ussually just get killed before I can get any good amout of them out. | ||
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halpimcat
215 Posts
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XxMulexX
Canada57 Posts
So here's my first question: How do I know what my oppenent is gonna do? I used to rely on if I scouted 4 gas I could expect some kind of tech, either dt/blink or colossi, this often results in me getting 6 gated and losing. So my question here is basicly what do I look for while scouting how do I know what build he's going for? There are a few things you can look for: - The gas timings at the nat are essential - You can look at where he is using chrono boost and the timing of the forge upgrade; for example a toss who wants to be aggressive will almost always get a fast +1 so you can spot the forge spinning early and the chrono boosts on it - You should definitely sacrifice an overlord around 7 min to try to spot his tech or number of gateways, its pretty hard for a toss to hide all his gateways at that time since he wont have a lot of units that shoot up - Another obvious tell of an aggressive toss is when he's trying to set up proxy pylons, often using small zealot pressure to do it; if you see that you need to cut drones immediately that's all I can think of; honestly I think that the hardest thing to master as Z is the scouting since we have to rely on all of those small tells instead of having an easy solution like scan or obs/halu I'm also wondering what composition I want to be going for? atm I'm kinda stuck on Roach/hydra/corruptor for most of the game, I get roach/hydra to deal with immortal timings and blink stalkers, but when he sees my army he just kinda turtles, gets a 3rd and starts making colossi, hence the corruptors. When I see him going for the 3rd I try getting my 4th or attacking, when I attack I just end up losing a lot more than I kill and when I expand I just get rolled by his 172 food army. When I try getting to broodlords I ussually just get killed before I can get any good amout of them out. That composition is quite ancient and a little out of date, it can work if you trade efficiently with the toss but you need spot on timings for that because you really have to prevent your opponent from reaching that 170ish supply death ball, but if you miss your timing and hit when he has a few colossi and you dont have enough corruptors, you can easily lose the game. I feel like it's too risky to play roach hydra unless you're forced to do it (i.e. double stargate play or something). If you don't like mutas (although you should learn that style, it's very powerful vs robo builds), you can go read gerbil's ZvP guide (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=299170), he basically goes for a pretty standard roach/ling/infestor that's much more stable than roach/hydra imo. The key thing to understand is that you absolutely need to trade with an expanding toss before he gets his deal composition, so gerbil's 15 min timing attack is something I think you should work into your game plan. GL! | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
On February 12 2012 15:26 blade55555 wrote: What lol. 200/200 roaches will not roll a toss who's going mass colossi, especially if he uses force field. If that were true no toss would go colossi ever. Mutalisks/corruptors deal with colossi yes but just roaches do not. Also a toss can take a third vs roach/ling aggression if he plays it correctly. You should also be factoring in the stalker/immortals as well. From my limited perspective, of pro play and in my experience.... You never see Toss go mass colossi as an opening o_O A Toss takes a third using immortals or sentrys or blink stalkers, not with t3 units. Similarly, you don't see BC expands. Obviously, certain maps are easier to take a third on, in which case Toss has more incentive to play it lower tech and get the colossi or whatever, later. But you never see Toss go FFE, Colossi, expand. It's always FFE, blink/robo/sentry/harass based tech, expand. | ||
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GWBuffalo
United States234 Posts
On February 12 2012 19:13 KimJongChill wrote: Alright, so I played against one of the weirdest cheeses on shattered against a protoss. Basically, I scouted his base and saw nothing so I knew he proxy gated me, but when I got back to my base I saw that my ramp had been walled off by two gateways making zealots. Now obviously the immediate answer is to "not let them do that," but if it already gets set up, then what would be the best response against the zealots? Did you already FE before you found out? Was your hatch done? When this happens to me, I'll just get gas right when I realize it's proxy (even if I don't know where). If I have an expo, I'll actually cancel it and get roaches quick, and kite. After that you can pummel his main with the roaches, if you don't wait too long. If roaches aren't an option, you'll need a spine or two, lings, drones, queen, and good micro. Pretty recently, some playhem guy posted some stats on like 10k playhem matches, and for P, the highest win % was 2 gate. Against zerg, I think it's probably because people try to defend without roaches. It's possible, yeah, but that shit is hard. *Edit: Here is that post. "[Protoss] Pylon, Gateway, Gateway, Pylon - 116 occurences / 62% winrate" | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
If you go roaches on 1 base, you are susceptible to a 4 gate follow-up. If you don't know where the proxy is, or the proxy is kind of far, you can't do anything to kill it, and you can't counterattack, which is the surest way to end the game. Also, if you are on 1 base, and the opponent 4 gates, you are just dead, you won't have the eco to defend it, nor have the creep spread to best utilize spines. With speedlings, you just get enough to run into his base and kill everything with 1-2 spines at home to win the base trade, although usually before that point you can just mass lings and kill his zealots, gateways, and then his base. If you are walled in, I think you just maybe use a 2nd queen to sort of prevent him from zealot-blockng the ramp, force him to fight with lots in the open where lings can win. | ||
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GWBuffalo
United States234 Posts
On February 13 2012 02:56 Belial88 wrote: If you go roaches on 1 base, you are susceptible to a 4 gate follow-up. If you don't know where the proxy is, or the proxy is kind of far, you can't do anything to kill it, and you can't counterattack, which is the surest way to end the game. Also, if you are on 1 base, and the opponent 4 gates, you are just dead, you won't have the eco to defend it, nor have the creep spread to best utilize spines. I agree with this if you don't know where the proxy is. However, if you do (guy said it was at his ramp), you are going to kill 2 of the gates. 4-gate is out of the question in the near-term. That's why you pressure with the roaches ASAP. While doing so, build your natural, of course. You should be miles ahead. I mean, I'll confess, I do this at a high diamond/ low masters level. But if you can get to the gates easily, I think roaches are the best choice. | ||
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blade55555
United States17423 Posts
On February 13 2012 01:30 Belial88 wrote: From my limited perspective, of pro play and in my experience.... You never see Toss go mass colossi as an opening o_O A Toss takes a third using immortals or sentrys or blink stalkers, not with t3 units. Similarly, you don't see BC expands. Obviously, certain maps are easier to take a third on, in which case Toss has more incentive to play it lower tech and get the colossi or whatever, later. But you never see Toss go FFE, Colossi, expand. It's always FFE, blink/robo/sentry/harass based tech, expand. Yes but he was asking how to deal with mass colossi with stalker/immortal and you told him to go 200/200 roaches and you will roll over the toss which is so very wrong is what I was replying to. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
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GWBuffalo
United States234 Posts
On February 13 2012 04:50 [F_]aths wrote: How many workers should I have on the minerals per base? 16? 18? 20? http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=197826 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=219257 But as a quick rule of thumb, 16 is optimal saturation, and 24 is maximum saturation. | ||
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VoirDire
Sweden1923 Posts
On February 13 2012 04:59 GWBuffalo wrote: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=197826 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=219257 But as a quick rule of thumb, 16 is optimal saturation, and 24 is maximum saturation. 3 selection rows of workers is a good rule of thumb (including gas). That's 3x8 + 2 (inside gas geysers) = 26 workers. If there's 4 close mineral patches and 4 far mineral patches it's the optimal amount. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On February 13 2012 04:59 GWBuffalo wrote: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=197826 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=219257 But as a quick rule of thumb, 16 is optimal saturation, and 24 is maximum saturation. I know that 16 are optimal for worker number and 24 is maximum, I also know (most of the) more indepth analysis, I also read the liquipedia articles about resource collection several times. Still I don't know for which number I should go. On February 13 2012 05:08 VoirDire wrote: 3 selection rows of workers is a good rule of thumb (including gas). That's 3x8 + 2 (inside gas geysers) = 26 workers. If there's 4 close mineral patches and 4 far mineral patches it's the optimal amount. I normally go for 21-23 workers with Ctrl-select (25 workers in total since 2 are in gas, meaning I have 17-19 workers on minerals, but I don't know if another number could give me a small edge. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Yes but he was asking how to deal with mass colossi with stalker/immortal and you told him to go 200/200 roaches and you will roll over the toss which is so very wrong is what I was replying to. I suppose he question wasn't very clear, but Toss shouldn't be able to just mass colossi no problem. If they open colossi, there are definite problems, which I responded about, otherwise you just should have your t3 tech out, which i mentioned too i suppose. How many workers should I have on the minerals per base? 16? 18? 20? definitely 24. So with full saturation, and workers on gas, that means when you double click a drone (select all of that unit type in screen) or box all drones, you have 30 workers. This looks like a full box (24 is 3 rows of 8), plus 4 (so you hit '2' to see the next 24 units on middle UI thing on bottom, and you should see just 4 drones). So if you take the geyers, when you box or double click a drone, it means you have a full box, plus 4 in the next box. After 16 drones means you have diminishing returns on each additional drone, but still an increase. I wouldn't say 16 is 'optimal' - optimal means whatever is most efficient, and what is 'optimal' entirely depends on the situation of the game and the number of bases you have, but you want eventually a full box and then 4 for gas (2 for 1 gas, and none for zero gas). If you watch pros play they neurotically check how many workers they have at each mineral field, make sure that each mining base they have has perfect split of workers, because it's EXTREMELY important. If you watch, say, nestea play, you'll notice he constantly boxes the workers at every base all game long, and if one base has slightly more or less drones than the other bases, he'll re-move the drones to another base or rally a bunch of new drones all to the same mineral field. It's really important. For example fast third vs FFE, you will have roughly the same number of workers as Toss (just slightly more). The only way to hold them off given your tech disadvantage and weaker units of zerg compared to toss, is to perfectly split your drones up on 3 mineral fields, and get better mining on 3 mineral fields than the Toss has on 2. 16+16+16 (48) workers is a lot better than 25+25(50) workers. A lot better. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On February 13 2012 07:31 Belial88 wrote: definitely 24. So with full saturation, and workers on gas, that means when you double click a drone (select all of that unit type in screen) or box all drones, you have 30 workers. This looks like a full box (24 is 3 rows of 8), plus 4 (so you hit '2' to see the next 24 units on middle UI thing on bottom, and you should see just 4 drones). So if you take the geyers, when you box or double click a drone, it means you have a full box, plus 4 in the next box. After 16 drones means you have diminishing returns on each additional drone, but still an increase. I wouldn't say 16 is 'optimal' - optimal means whatever is most efficient, and what is 'optimal' entirely depends on the situation of the game and the number of bases you have, but you want eventually a full box and then 4 for gas (2 for 1 gas, and none for zero gas). If you watch pros play they neurotically check how many workers they have at each mineral field, make sure that each mining base they have has perfect split of workers, because it's EXTREMELY important. If you watch, say, nestea play, you'll notice he constantly boxes the workers at every base all game long, and if one base has slightly more or less drones than the other bases, he'll re-move the drones to another base or rally a bunch of new drones all to the same mineral field. It's really important. For example fast third vs FFE, you will have roughly the same number of workers as Toss (just slightly more). The only way to hold them off given your tech disadvantage and weaker units of zerg compared to toss, is to perfectly split your drones up on 3 mineral fields, and get better mining on 3 mineral fields than the Toss has on 2. 16+16+16 (48) workers is a lot better than 25+25(50) workers. A lot better. Okay, I will try to go to (or at least very near to) 24 workers on the minerals but when I take a fast third, I rather go for an equal distribution per base to maximize income. edit: Belial88, you solved a mystery for me. Until now I was under the impression I have to saturate the third to keep up with the Protoss. But when I assume 48 mineral workers for a 2-base Protoss and 48 mineral drones for me, but working on 3 bases, I do have a nice income advantage. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
I have a question regarding ZvP: If Toss is on 2 bases, and you are on 3, is it ever worth getting infestors? Now obviously, the answer is "no!" right, because you are better off with more roach/ling, which allows you to be more aggressive, and make more drones (need less gas). But I was wondering, like what if it's a map like say, Entombed or TDA, where Toss gets a bunch of sentries, and it's hard to be aggressive with roaches against FF? You need a way to 'bust' through the forcefields. I've been playing around with maybe Tunneling Claws, but i don't know. I've also seen Dimaga regularly gets infestors at about 150 supply, and goes IT bust at this point. But if Toss is doing some sort of 2 base all-in, and you go infestors, you die. So maybe, is the answer to play out roach/ling, and only get infestors if you are ahead? Just get infestors only when at 150+ supply? I'm not sure. Or on maps with an easy third for Toss like that, should you just skip aggression and go with roach/ling, and focus on macro and teching to hive or banerain? I can't quite tell what to do. I feel every time I've gotten infestors vs 2 base toss, I've already won the game, and I end up busting without having to use infestors, or I lose for getting infestors too quickly. But the main problem is how to bypass those forcefields? Maybe just go straight to banerain instead of infestors? But banerain is more gas intensive than infestors. just wondering. I kind of feel like infestors are good to deal with blink, and you are better off using corruptors in case toss gets air/colossi, as your sort of additional tech, but then infestors are always bad. I just don't want to give toss a chance to catch up by taking a fast third behind 6 sentries. | ||
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KimJongChill
United States6429 Posts
On February 13 2012 03:03 GWBuffalo wrote: I agree with this if you don't know where the proxy is. However, if you do (guy said it was at his ramp), you are going to kill 2 of the gates. 4-gate is out of the question in the near-term. That's why you pressure with the roaches ASAP. While doing so, build your natural, of course. You should be miles ahead. I mean, I'll confess, I do this at a high diamond/ low masters level. But if you can get to the gates easily, I think roaches are the best choice. Yeah, I hadn't fe'd cos i saw his base had nothing and knew he proxy gated so i didnt bother sending out a drone, but it turned out my ramp had been walled. I went gas and warren but by then it was too late, so I guess I just needed to react quicker. | ||
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Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Just don't get ramp blocked, that's the main thing. | ||
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VoirDire
Sweden1923 Posts
On February 13 2012 12:07 Belial88 wrote: ^ np, glad to help. I have a question regarding ZvP: If Toss is on 2 bases, and you are on 3, is it ever worth getting infestors? Now obviously, the answer is "no!" right, because you are better off with more roach/ling, which allows you to be more aggressive, and make more drones (need less gas). But I was wondering, like what if it's a map like say, Entombed or TDA, where Toss gets a bunch of sentries, and it's hard to be aggressive with roaches against FF? You need a way to 'bust' through the forcefields. I've been playing around with maybe Tunneling Claws, but i don't know. I've also seen Dimaga regularly gets infestors at about 150 supply, and goes IT bust at this point. But if Toss is doing some sort of 2 base all-in, and you go infestors, you die. So maybe, is the answer to play out roach/ling, and only get infestors if you are ahead? Just get infestors only when at 150+ supply? I'm not sure. Or on maps with an easy third for Toss like that, should you just skip aggression and go with roach/ling, and focus on macro and teching to hive or banerain? I can't quite tell what to do. I feel every time I've gotten infestors vs 2 base toss, I've already won the game, and I end up busting without having to use infestors, or I lose for getting infestors too quickly. But the main problem is how to bypass those forcefields? Maybe just go straight to banerain instead of infestors? But banerain is more gas intensive than infestors. just wondering. I kind of feel like infestors are good to deal with blink, and you are better off using corruptors in case toss gets air/colossi, as your sort of additional tech, but then infestors are always bad. I just don't want to give toss a chance to catch up by taking a fast third behind 6 sentries. Imho, no. Not if you're trying to deny/attack protoss 3rd. Stephano has been using hydra/roach to great effect vs 2 base toss recently. I think hyds might better against forcefields than infestors, plus they come into play much earlier so you can attack faster. Hyds do really well against any type of gateway/stargate compositions, but obviously they die to 2 base colossus builds. Some untested theory crafting: Infestors might be good as a defensive unit on maps when P gets a free third, like LT or terminus. They make you safe against air and they can delay/kite ground pushes. That way you can take 4-5 bases and tech to broods fast with the early infestation pit. | ||
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