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On February 15 2012 02:41 TFS wrote:
Hi there. I just started playing SC2 with any sort of seriousness about two weeks ago, and have chosen to use the Zerg pieces. I'm doing well in my Bronze league, but there is obviously a lot for me to improve on. Things like getting supply capped and making sure I'm hitting all my injects are clearly important, and those are concrete things that I can work on. However, things that are less concrete have been popping up for me. For instance, I like to fast expand in every matchup, like many of the top pros (I usually hatch first vT, 15 pool > hatch on vP, and I've been trying to 14 gas > pool > hatch on vZ). With each of these builds, I'll usually build drones almost exclusively in the early game, getting a few lings for scouting and switching to make units or spines only if I see some early aggression coming.
Now, I've been doing some reading of this thread (mostly the most recent posts) and have already got some good information on how much to drone vT, when to take a third/make a lair, etc. I still have a few issues, though. One major problem for me is vP when my opponent is fast expanding and I take a fast third, I will either get lucky and he won't attack me for long enough to drone a little more and start pumping out units, or he'll come in soon after I take my third and crush me. I try to have good scouting with overlord spread, keeping a few lings at his front, taking towers, etc. But even if I see the attack coming, I usually get smashed. One example was on Cloud Kingdom today (first time playing the map, aheh) when I took my third, droned a bit, and saw his attack coming, but managed to get around 24 roaches. Now, upon watching the replay I see he had 8 gateways, so it was a little all-inny, but I'm wondering if there was something I could have done better to hold this off. He had 1/1 and I had nothing. I was thinking I should get faster upgrades, but I'm not sure if that's the whole answer.
My biggest problem, though, is I don't know how to spend my money. I get this sweet economy going with 2-3 bases that are really nicely saturated and start to get my lair and then I just get this huge bankroll that builds up and I feel stupid. I get supply blocked every now and then, but it isn't an extremely common thing. I know not getting supply blocked will help, but surely there is something else I can be spendnig my money on? When I'm just making drones, the money stockpiles. Like I said earlier, faster upgrades may be one option. But one thing I never do is take a macro hatch. Is this commonplace in all matchups? Should I be getting a macro hatch every game? If so, when?
Sorry for the wealth of text I presented you all with. I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read this and help me out. :D
At bronze level, you must focus on macro, because in this game, timing is the key to everything. And at bronze, timing is often very off, as long as you do relatively solid injects and don't get supply cap'd until at least 40 food, you will be way ahead.
Let's take your example, that 8 gate push, could have came at least 2 mins earlier if you are in a higher league. So as long as you macro well and build units at the right time, you can win.
About spending money, yes, get an extra macro hatch every game if it happens, especially if you are going a ling heavy unit composition.
I would always have a macro hatch in all match ups except zvz. stockpiling minerals is very usual, gas however is more important. If you are not gas starved, then you need to consider if you are making enough higher tech units/getting the necessary upgrades.
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On February 15 2012 00:10 Belial88 wrote:Yes, I understand what he means. Above 16 workers means marginally diminishing returns on each additional worker. I know that. But I think he's confusing on what you need, if you were to just stop droning at 16+16 in a ZvT, you would just lose in any macro game. And having only 16 on minerals would probably mean you can't support your gas income, even with mutas. Show nested quote +As an aside, something I've been doing lately in zvt is droning to saturation (or slight over-) on 2 base + macro hatch, and then committing to making units until my 3rd goes up (which is at a fairly normal time). I think that's the idea with zvt these days. Get ~50 drones on 2 base, make units, get third as soon as safe, instantly saturate it as soon as you hold the 2 base timing (or before, if you are confident in your abilities).
Yeah, pretty standard idea. I think I get 75 drones max on 3 bases, and maybe if I'm feeling good in a super long game I'll up it to 80. Once you hold the 2 base timing from terran, just make all your mutas and upgrades and such.
TBH I'm kind of glad muta play never died out in favour of infestor/ling, which is way easier but nowhere near as good IMO. For a while there it was looking like infestor/ling was the be all end all, considering how effectively you can trade units... But muta play feels so much more solid to me, much less "1a" than infestor/ling.
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Help! I literally can not beat protoss! I've tried every unit comp/style I could think of and absolutely nothing works, unless the toss just all ins and fails miserably. I've tried roach/hydra/corruptor, roach/hydra/infestor -> quick hive, mass mutas, mass ling/infestor -> quick hive, ling/bane drops, everything I can think of and no matter what I just can't ever win a zvp to save my life. I'm probably about mid or so master on NA though I quit playing here for the past 2 seasons or so, I'm about high diamond on korea and feel stuck there because I have no clue how to play ZvP. If someone who feels confident in ZvP could help me I would greatly appreciate it.
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On February 15 2012 03:31 hunts wrote:
Help! I literally can not beat protoss! I've tried every unit comp/style I could think of and absolutely nothing works, unless the toss just all ins and fails miserably. I've tried roach/hydra/corruptor, roach/hydra/infestor -> quick hive, mass mutas, mass ling/infestor -> quick hive, ling/bane drops, everything I can think of and no matter what I just can't ever win a zvp to save my life. I'm probably about mid or so master on NA though I quit playing here for the past 2 seasons or so, I'm about high diamond on korea and feel stuck there because I have no clue how to play ZvP. If someone who feels confident in ZvP could help me I would greatly appreciate it.
Yo get on korea and message me and i'll help you out a bit. While I am still not confident in zvp (but do have a 55% win rate in it somehow >>) I am high masters on kr server so I imagine my zvp should work for you  .
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When should i get ovie speed in zvp and zvt and does anyone have a guide on ovie positioning?
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I'm having trouble against Protoss versus turtling into mass Voids. I know you're not supposed to let the 'toss get critical mass of Voids anyway, but specifically how would I go about beating a 2.5 (I'm harassing constantly) base Protoss with mass voids?
I have a replay of me trying to harass while expanding and trying to get enough hydras to deal with voids, but I don't know how to attach it or where to upload and link from.
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On February 15 2012 02:07 Sway.746 wrote:
What's the best response to a FFE into 6 gate stalker push (with 3-4 immortals and 4-5 sentries) ?
It feels like I'm always going to lose my third if I take one early, because I can't make enough lings and roaches to beat that army (especially with decent forcefields). The only way I've found I can beat it handily is to take out sentries with baneling drops, but that seems a bit fragile. Robo tech means an observer is around, so I don't think burrow movement is a great strategy... What do you guys think?
Im high master if someone cares.
I tried something in pvz and it worked pretty damn well vs all kinds of 2 base all ins from toss and its verys strong to delay his third too.
I open with Nesteas 12 pool. That means : Pool at 12. Drone to 15. Overlord. Wait for Pool finish. 1 Queen and 4 Lings.
Than Expand safe. Get a second queen if you have no larva for drones anymore or 150 minerals you cant spend.
Gas:
Take your gas as the times you get the larva from your first inject. At 100 you get speed for lings. At the time you press m for it you start instantly an evo chamber. As it finishes you should have 100 gas . Take +1 attack.
As you have 50 gas start an second evo chamber. As it finishes you should have 150 gas . Take +1 Armor. With the next 100 gas you get lair. Now you can transition in many stuff after his attack. As you want.
The 4 Starting lings : They should always be active. take the wachtowers. Find the probe. Take a ling to his third and if this ling die for any reason. Replace it instantly or attack when he takes his third. Place a ling at his entrance : You have to know how many zelots will come to deny or kill ur third. Produce lings to kill them. They should always have speed at time. Check his entrance it can be a huge tell: How many gateways. Forge upgrade or not. Gases(only on some maps).
Also : if he goes nexus before forge you can punish him hard with the 4 lings. If they die or arent enough take so many lings so you get all the information you need. Watchtowers. His entrance. His third. Scouting probe. Proxy Pylon.
Scouting: like always sacrifice 2 overlords from 2 different directions send in at the same time.
Third : It depends on the enemy pressure. In the most cases i get my third as i have 16 drones at each of my 2 bases and 3 at gas at my main.
Extra information: I get a macro hatch after my third started.
I also get a 5 queens for 4 hatches( macro hatch included). Its nice to have vs voidrays. I spread many creep in the near of my bases to see the exact place of his attack. and if one dies you can replay it directly.
Dont get to greedy when your ahead in bases and workers and know his push is coming.
If he goes out with his first force just sorround it. You even just outnumber zealots and probably he is going for a pretty bad tech against your army like immortal or blink stalker or things like that cause he should played completly in the dark. And he wantet probably warp in in the near of your base too to get a good timing. Dont take bad fights vs mass forcefields just run back and attack again and again.
Advantage : you should be ahead 1 base.
you can deny his third as long he has no colossus or high templer.
You can get a fourth easily behind this.
I know its sound silly to defend a 2 base protoss attack with just lings but it worked pretty well for me.
Without roaches you dont have to take the fight directly cause your lings can run away. You can take the fight far away from your third. In front of his base. And lings on upgrades they really get much stronger with it because their attackspeed.
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In ZvP I've recently run into the issue of trying to hatch first and him arriving at my natural and doing some cannon shenanigans that end up losing me the game. The cannons don't usually outright kill me, but he'll have one or two cannons sitting in my natural before/while I begin building my hatch, and I won't be able to expand for quite a while because I'm trying to 15 hatch and don't have my pool up for some time. What should I do about this?
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Yes, I understand what he means. Above 16 workers means marginally diminishing returns on each additional worker. I know that. But I think he's confusing on what you need, if you were to just stop droning at 16+16 in a ZvT, you would just lose in any macro game. And having only 16 on minerals would probably mean you can't support your gas income, even with mutas
The original question was what's the best saturation (in general), and your response was that 24 is way too few and you need 30. You basically said that a zerg should always aim at 30 drones for each base, and you can tell that that's what Tristanity understood when your read his next post.
I don't argue that you should get as many drones as you can get away with, but aiming for a 30 drones per base average is completely ridiculous. Do you normally wait until you're at 60 drones before taking a third? Do you really aim to make 90 drones on 3 bases? Of course not, you just said you take a third at 50 drones. But what you said will lead a lower league player who's not too savvy about the game to do just that.
Same goes with your statement about gas income. I just took 5 min to check every ZvT I could see on SC2Casts (including Nestea, Leenock, Sen, Sheth, Darkforce etc..) and the only time I saw a 44 gas was against a CC first build. Every other Z got gas at 28 or lower, mostly lower. Your statement that "most zerg these days grab all 4 gas at 44" is incorrect.
My point is that it's really irritating when a big contributor like you that posts a lot and gets a lot of respect from many TLers makes broad statements like that that are sometimes really far off the mark because it can lead a lot of people in the wrong direction. I'm sure you have a decent grasp on the game but I think you need to put more thought into your posts basically.
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Don't hatch first zvp unless you are absolutely sure his scout wont arrive before you get the hatchery is down, and even then you will have to patrol a drone to avoid 3 pylon block and keep track of his probe/check for additional probes.
Also never hatch first on small maps due to forge+zealot rush, but that is pretty obvious.
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On February 15 2012 03:31 hunts wrote:
Help! I literally can not beat protoss! I've tried every unit comp/style I could think of and absolutely nothing works, unless the toss just all ins and fails miserably. I've tried roach/hydra/corruptor, roach/hydra/infestor -> quick hive, mass mutas, mass ling/infestor -> quick hive, ling/bane drops, everything I can think of and no matter what I just can't ever win a zvp to save my life. I'm probably about mid or so master on NA though I quit playing here for the past 2 seasons or so, I'm about high diamond on korea and feel stuck there because I have no clue how to play ZvP. If someone who feels confident in ZvP could help me I would greatly appreciate it.
It's not about unit compositions in ZvP, it's about macro. It's soooo about macro.
Basically ZvP is about defending their 2 base aggression with queen/spore for AA, and roach/ling. You want to get your third ASAP against 2 base Protoss, some would say you should take your third as soon as they take their natural (although some say go 2 base lair vs 1/3g expands, I like to go ~35 lair and then 40-45 mass units until I can hold their aggression, which has worked for me just fine in mid-masters).
Once on 3 bases and you hold their aggression, you have 2 choices:
1. Quickly tech to mutas, and use mutas to discourage deathball play, and deny the third with roach/ling/muta. If they get their third established, you use the mutas to keep P in their base while you tech to BL/infestor.
2. Mass 200/200 speedroach and just smash them apart. Take that third down, never let it get up, be super aggressive. There are a few variations of this, but this is the basis of it. You can add hydras to it to be hyperaggressive (worse against colossi, better against stargates), you can add corruptors to deal with colossi with your pure roach army, you can add infestors ~150 supply dimaga style to use mass IT's to bust through FF and wall-ins, or what I like to do, go pure roach/ling (lots of lings) and if you still haven't broken the Toss or they get the third up, at 200/200 get drop tech, baneling nest, 2 infestors (not a moment earlier too btw), and go roach/banelingrain/infestor, using ~2 infestors to prevent blink micro and turn those 40 lings into banelings and load up.
But if you don't kill them then, and really, you shouldn't but usually you do, you:
1. Use mutas to keep them in their base while you tech up to bl/infestor.
2. Use your 200/200 roach army to maintain map control while teching up to pure bl/infestor.
Bl/Infestor is very hard for P to deal with on anything less than 5 bases, and impossible to deal with if you have a constant economic edge and just keep trading. Things like mass infestor no longer work, not just because of the nerf, but also because macro style play is just way better. The key to ZvP:
1. Getting your third up against the natural of P
2. Hold off aggression using hatch tech roach/ling, and eventually pushing back (if you go 2 base lair vs gateway expands, it's using speedroaches to secure your third)
3. Deny the P third using tech (speedroaches, could be hydras, also could be mutas/infestors)
4. Tech up to broodlords before P has really maxed out on 3 bases.
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When should i get ovie speed in zvp and zvt and does anyone have a guide on ovie positioning?
When you have the extra money (ie after your tech of choice has been pumped out).
At incoming drop locations over the air, then to each base, and eventually you literally want vision of the entire map because you have 20 spread overlords. In extreme lategame ZvT, I literally have vision over 95% of the map. Poop creep with them too, the whole map should be purple with overlord creep.
I'm having trouble against Protoss versus turtling into mass Voids. I know you're not supposed to let the 'toss get critical mass of Voids anyway, but specifically how would I go about beating a 2.5 (I'm harassing constantly) base Protoss with mass voids?
I have a replay of me trying to harass while expanding and trying to get enough hydras to deal with voids, but I don't know how to attach it or where to upload and link from.
Some people like hydras, but I don't. I think most pros are moving away from hydras against air harass anyways. But generally, spore/queen until you get corruptors. Once voids start getting larger in number, you need infestors.
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Plat NA/Gold EU zerg here (for some reason EU is much harder at that level of play, esp ZvP). I've recently started playing again after a 3 month hiatus, and while I'm back to the same-ish level of play as I was before, I obviously want to improve further. So, here's some long random rambling with questions mixed in, I apologize in advance if it's hard to understand what I'm actually asking for. 
I've been working hard on injects, and lately sc2gears lists me as 85%+ in normal 15-20min games on ~2-4bases (gets lower in long games where lots of time is spent maxed etc), which I consider very good for my level (as I can see in ZvZ's where opponent usually is at 45-65%). Ive also been working on improving my overlord timings as I sometimes get supplyblocked for short periods, but that has been improving quite rapidly but I still don't consider myself good at it. Now, I feel my mechanics are quite good for gold/plat level although I obviously still need to improve on it further as even with good injects and decent ovie-timings I find myself floating minerals.
Now, what I'm asking for is some general tips on what other macro-mechanics I can work on and how I should focus on that practise. I think my 4th-5th timings in ZvP/T are quite poor as I quite often find myself on 3 bases for too long, trying to sort it by getting early 4th when I feel safe and getting 6 drones there so I can have 8 geisers "early". But I'm unsure on how to read the game properly to know when to actually take those bases.
Other than that, there's scouting. On 2 player maps I usually have no problem getting 2 ovies in position for scouting, but on 4player maps I feel it's down to luck - if I fail with my first ovie, I find that my scouting will be very poor which leads to losses vs cheesy play or losses due to bad unit composition. Any tips on how to scout better on 4player maps when your initial ovie fails? I always send my 2nd ovie to natural to spot pylons/bunkers, should I try keeping a probe mining there (to scout pylon/bunkers) while the nat is building and instead use my 2nd ovie for scouting? Any tips are welcome!
And then there's crisis management. When faced with early banshee or stargate pressure, I find myself panicking. I start building spores, trying to micro queens and transferring drones as necessary, but I forget to macro as I'm stressed, even though the multitasking required isn't more than in other situations where I manage fine, but as I stress out I mess up. Double stargate play I have massive problems with overall even if scouted properly as I feel I don't know 100% how to properly react.
ZvP is by far my worst matchup btw (I know, I'm not alone ), I do good vs 6/7gates usually, but vs toss that turtle up instead of doing timing attacks I probably have a 10-20% winrate. I feel that most ZvP's I watch are 6/7 gate defence, or ling/muta into basetrade which I haven't really played around with much since I'm not sure how to do it properly. I also don't have any busts in my arsenal vs T or P which I realize can be useful to throw in sometimes, but I'm trying to play as standard as possible in each MU. Would it be worth the time to actually learn some proper busts to mix it up when I scout someone being greedy, or should that wait until higher levels when I've 'mastered' my standard builds?
Again, sorry if there's a lot of rambling in this post, but I hope you can decipher the questions inside.
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Infestors for fungal or infested terran?
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On February 15 2012 09:07 Vond wrote:High-plat NA/High-gold EU zerg here (for some reason EU is much harder at that level of play, esp ZvP). I've recently started playing again after a 3 month hiatus, and while I'm back to the same-ish level of play as I was before, I obviously want to improve further. So, here's some long random rambling with questions mixed in, I apologize in advance if it's hard to understand what I'm actually asking for. I've been working hard on injects, and lately sc2gears lists me as 85%+ in normal 15-20min games on ~2-4bases (gets lower in long games where lots of time is spent maxed etc), which I consider very good for my level (as I can see in ZvZ's where opponent usually is at 45-65%). Ive also been working on improving my overlord timings as I sometimes get supplyblocked for short periods, but that has been improving quite rapidly but I still don't consider myself good at it. Now, I feel my mechanics are quite good for gold/plat level although I obviously still need to improve on it further as even with good injects and decent ovie-timings I find myself floating minerals. Now, what I'm asking for is some general tips on what other macro-mechanics I can work on and how I should focus on that practise. I think my 4th-5th timings in ZvP/T are quite poor as I quite often find myself on 3 bases for too long, trying to sort it by getting early 4th when I feel safe and getting 6 drones there so I can have 8 geisers "early". But I'm unsure on how to read the game properly to know when to actually take those bases. Other than that, there's scouting. On 2 player maps I usually have no problem getting 2 ovies in position for scouting, but on 4player maps I feel it's down to luck - if I fail with my first ovie, I find that my scouting will be very poor which leads to losses vs cheesy play or losses due to bad unit composition. Any tips on how to scout better on 4player maps when your initial ovie fails? I always send my 2nd ovie to natural to spot pylons/bunkers, should I try keeping a probe mining there (to scout pylon/bunkers) while the nat is building and instead use my 2nd ovie for scouting? Any tips are welcome! And then there's crisis management. When faced with early banshee or stargate pressure, I find myself panicking. I start building spores, trying to micro queens and transferring drones as necessary, but I forget to macro as I'm stressed, even though the multitasking required isn't more than in other situations where I manage fine, but as I stress out I mess up. Double stargate play I have massive problems with overall even if scouted properly as I feel I don't know 100% how to properly react. ZvP is by far my worst matchup btw (I know, I'm not alone ), I do good vs 6/7gates usually, but vs toss that turtle up instead of doing timing attacks I probably have a 10-20% winrate. I feel that most ZvP's I watch are 6/7 gate defence, or ling/muta into basetrade which I haven't really played around with much since I'm not sure how to do it properly. I also don't have any busts in my arsenal vs T or P which I realize can be useful to throw in sometimes, but I'm trying to play as standard as possible in each MU. Would it be worth the time to actually learn some proper busts to mix it up when I scout someone being greedy, or should that wait until higher levels when I've 'mastered' my standard builds? Again, sorry if there's a lot of rambling in this post, but I hope you can decipher the questions inside.
It doesn't matter one bit if you are high gold or low gold. You just say that you make you feel better than you are. Just say you are gold and you suck and you will improve muich faster. Going from low gold to high gold is not much of an improvement.
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i'm a silver player experimenting with roachless muta vs protss, basetrading whenever I get the opportunity. It's been working well so far, but I just played a game where we straight up did a base trade and I lost. Are there any absolute rules to base trading that help ensure victory?
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Here is a very basic question, but in my opinion one of the most important ones:
How do I recognise what my opponent is using as an opener?
I can get a drone scout in a base, but that drone will usually get in there at a stage when all builds look the same. If I delay scouting a bit I can't get inside the wall- in. That means my first information will come from an overlord that needs to get his slow behind into the base without getting killed in the process.
What are dead giveaways to see what someone is planning? A Protoss FFE is easy ofcourse, but other builds are a lot harder to spot. Same with the Terrans. When I get into the base they almost always have a barracks building, a refinary ready or almost ready. From this they can go more barracks, hellions, heck even starport. And when you find out what he's doing whe he pushes out or is already inside your base you're a tad late in reacting to it
I am only in the high end bronze league atm, so I don't know if it is possible to get good info on builds as execution in bronze is sometimes lacking. Basically they might just be slow, or inexperienced.
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On February 15 2012 09:08 Halftrolll wrote:
Infestors for fungal or infested terran?
Er it really depends on the match up and situation you are in. I mean vs a bunch of blink stalkers/marines would definitely go for fungel. I mean just hard to really say, its situational when you use IT or Fungel.
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On February 15 2012 13:06 Catgroove wrote:
It doesn't matter one bit if you are high gold or low gold. You just say that you make you feel better than you are. Just say you are gold and you suck and you will improve muich faster. Going from low gold to high gold is not much of an improvement.
I'm very well aware it doesn't matter and that I suck, that is why I'm asking for help. It wasn't to make myself feel better either, I didn't even consider that I was typing the "high-" part out. I haven't really gone from low to high either, I've gone from bronze to gold/plat and then come to the point where I need to find something new to improve on. Anyway, don't really see the point for your post as you did nothing to actually answer the questions..
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What are the best and fastest ways to get better at playing the game, in your opinion?
I've heard that new players should learn an easy all-in and practice that until they are gold or beyond and I've heard that they would be better off learning how to macro from the very beginning
What are the most important things for a new zerg to know?
What are the key unit compositions?
edit: I am a silver level zerg btw :[
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EPT
