EPTThe Zerg Help Me Thread - Page 333
| Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy |
Make sure you read the OP before asking a question. Asking a question already addressed in the OP will result in moderation action. Also, please put some effort into your questions. | ||
|
jdsowa
405 Posts
| ||
|
Belial88
United States5217 Posts
I feel your frustration, but what seems like gold players just doing some retarded all-in and overwhelming you, is just macro. I think zerg macro is a lot harder to pull off up until maybe masters level, whereas making probes and pylons up to that same point is much easier (hence, why zerg is not recommended as a starting race). If you are below diamond, you are still learning the game. Don't get so frustrated, and you can even try out different ways to beat it, you aren't as pressured to follow the builds pros do like 3 hatch, you can go 2 base lair, you can get infestors in time. How do you stop banelings from exploding on contact when something (a speedling) attacks them? Unfortunately I couldn't find an answer by searching. Hold position doesn't work, stop command doesn't work, it seems I have to constantly keep them on move command? Is there another trick to this? One trick you can do is have them on follow command, like right click an overlord or a queen. Also, if you know the opponent is doing this, losing a single bane is okay, but avoid losing 2+ - the first time someone does that single ling thing, just queue up a long series of move commands back and forth real quick. Try having lings and banes on separate hotkeys as well, so if the opponent does that, you can quickly hit 2-right click, even if you aren't looking at them but, say, see a single ling on the minimap running into your base, or are looking at his lings and see him send one out toward you. | ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
On July 27 2012 00:37 jdsowa wrote: It only seems like that because your bad. Frankly. I could play in gold [I have a couple of times on my friends account to demonstrate things to him] and I can be half asleep, paying no attention to the game and completely messing around and not be in a second of danger. The builds arent air tight, the macro is not competent, and the micro is basically non existent. Yours is just similar so it seems all rather impressive.Gold players a year ago did a lot more 1 base all-ins. Now, they are much more likely to play a macro game with FFE or 1 Rax FE. They can follow a rough build that they read off a website up to the 10:00 mark. Their pushes can be quite dangerous if your build is not approaching airtight. If you play against a FFE, just drone up till 8:00 and then make strictly units from that point on. Read Belial's guide to ZvP. | ||
|
Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On July 27 2012 06:27 whatevername wrote: It only seems like that because your bad. Frankly. I could play in gold [I have a couple of times on my friends account to demonstrate things to him] and I can be half asleep, paying no attention to the game and completely messing around and not be in a second of danger. The builds arent air tight, the macro is not competent, and the micro is basically non existent. Yours is just similar so it seems all rather impressive. I'm going to try and head off this flamewar.... First of all, consider this: 1). As a game ages, casual players leave. 2). Over time, less players pick up the game for the first time. 3). The level of skill is constantly rising with practice over time. Therefore, as time goes on, the average level of skill increases. So, if you stopped playing for a year and were able to return with the same sense of macro and game mechanics you would not be the same level. In fact, you may not even be the same league. With that being said, yes, gold players along with platinum, diamond, etc evolve over time. The only consistency is the percentage each league claims from everyone's MMR. Lower league players aren't necessarily "bad", but definitely sub-optimal. And yes, if you're a higher league player who smurfs or levels down you will find that the lower leagues are distressingly easy. In fact, you're doing the lower level players a favor by destroying them since they're used to playing against sub-optimal strategies and executions. It's entirely possible that the gold league guy who was complaining actually ran into a few smurfs who gave him the impression that his league is harder than it is. Whatever the case, when we lose we often dramatize the loss when, in reality, we probably didn't do too bad. This is present in all leagues. Such complaining isn't conducive to learning and should thusly be ignored. | ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
| ||
|
bacoatc
El Salvador26 Posts
| ||
|
Mavvie
Canada923 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + http://drop.sc/229137 I did end up winning, but I feel that I made plenty of mistakes: -Injects fell a bit behind after 10:00 -Completely forgot macro hatch until well after 10:00 -Didn't max as quickly as I could; later push After that, I'm wondering about engagements. I pressured his third, sniping gateways etc, dodging forcefields. I felt that this was GOOD, but not good enough (I'm not gonna break through a choke vs Protoss). I decided to walk into his third when he FF'd himself in, so I bee-lined to his natural/main. Is it OK to trade a maxed roach/ling army for probes and tech structures. After trading my roaches for his main/natural, I sent ~10 roaches to his natural to kill some probes and killed a zealot wrap-in. Was this smart, or should I focus the nexus/probes? Again, I did win in the end (lol complaints about roach imba xD), but I felt that my play wasn't very smooth. When I was in unit-producing mode (ie. after droning safely) I had idle larvae/money which is BAD, but I still won. Perhaps it doesn't take skill to win ZvP in diamond? :O | ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
| ||
|
Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Mass roach should work too, you should have 3 bases. You should have taken your third around when you threw down your spire, so you should have a massive economic advantage. If he tries to mass roaches to kill the third, you kill all the roaches with your mutas, then kill his third and you are way ahead (unless you didnt see his roaches move out and you are at his base on a long map by the time you see his roaches, but in that scenario you just do damage, take out his third, lose your third, and have spines at your natural to prevent him from closing the game, and you still have a lead). If he turtles up roach/hydra/infestor on 2 base, you can do the same thing on 3 base, or max out 200/200 with ling/bane/muta. If he's on 2 base, you should reach 200/200 way before he's able to push with roach/hydra/infestor, and if he goes pure roach/hydra, you can simple just reach 200/200 anyways and just attack him. No FG in the chokes to stop the banes from just running into his hydras, and if he does have infestors, he can't move out in the open or else you can set up a really sweet multiple flank so his infestors can't possibly FG everything. Or, as I said, just do the same thing (roaches, roach/hydra, roach/infestor, whatever, you are on 3 base, you win, even if you made 15 mutas). Really would take a replay to watch. Anything can work, but how you do it is different i guess. Watching the replay from his POV (make sure you didn't lose because you were just too far behind in the early game too btw), and seeing "wow, he was really vulnerable here" or "oh shit, i could have just base traded and won easily" helps a lot with perspective. There's a reason you can't just do this 2 base roach/hydra bust, it just gets stomped and you feel hopeless as you are trapped in your base and by the time you have enough shit off 2 base, the opponent just has way too much 'stuff' for it to work. There are 2 base busts you can do against mutas, but they are 2 base roach/infestor/queen - in which case you simply need to get spines and lots of roach/hydra or roach/infestor, or just base trade if you stick to lings and snipe the nyduses. | ||
|
W00tbeer1
United States33 Posts
| ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
Evil genius, map hacker, I'm a moron, what the fuck? How did that happen? You know what screw it heres the replay: http://drop.sc/229155 Not even sure if the replay is up, never used this site before. I dont normally play that...pathetically but, yeah, fuck zvz. | ||
|
Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Are you saying the guy was a maphacker? Was he a pro EG player that is clearly much better than you? Really confusing post... | ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
| ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
| ||
|
ncsix
1370 Posts
On July 27 2012 11:23 bacoatc wrote: how to stop 2 stargate protoss as zerg i was tried mutas 3 base but i cant get enought damage and if i go hydras protos go or carrier or transition colosus which is best counter ? Mutas aren't really a good counter to stargate play. Concentrate on droning up on 3 base and defending with queens and some spores (don't over do it). Queens and spores should be able to delay 2 base stargate long enough for you to build infestors. If you spot some kind of stargate + 1 zealot come in, you'll still need your lings or roaches and queens. If you macro has been good up to this stage, a decent micro should make it easy enough to hold. Generally 2 stargate play isn't so attractive these days with the metagame, you should be able to deny his 3rd with roach lings infestors. Get some corrupters to stop the colossi count from getting too high and save them to be turned into Broodlords when you're on 3 - 4 - 5 bases. | ||
|
Salivanth
Australia1071 Posts
| ||
|
Belial88
United States5217 Posts
Is there a way, and how, to defend my two bases in ZvZ until roach whilst avoiding ling/baneling wars? Most of my ZvZs end up with me losing a lot of drones at the 6:30 mark from a flood of lings. I've tried a couple of defenses with walls and spines, but it seems to be too little too late. Your build probably isn't honest enough, that's why. You should never lose to ling/bane all-ins. Say you open hatch first, leave the drones in gas and get a bane nest and spine ~26 (when you figure out timings and how to scout better, you can pull 1-2 drones off gas, cut it a bit, rely less on banes and spines and more on making enough lings, etc). Then make ~6 lings at about 28+ (if you already made 6 lings, great!), and morph 4 pre-emptive banes, while scouting with the other 2 as speed kicks in. If the opponent doesn't take his expo by ~21, then go bane nest first since scouting and map control and the threat of ling/bane to prevent dishonest greed by the opponent isn't necessary since if he didn't expand, he's going 1 base ling/bane obviously (roach all-ins are handled with the same response, and are even easier). This is with hatch first, but you can follow this guideline with speedling expand as well. Pulling your 2 queens to hold position on the ramp against lings moving out, having your initial overlord go to the opponent's nat and then to behind his mineral line once you see him expand, and your 9 overlord right out front of his base to spot for army movements and if he isn't making drones asap when new hatch pops, also are critical to winning games. Then from there, I'd recommend watching every zvz replay, see how your drone count compares to your opponents, see if you could get away with a later baneling nest, taking more drones off gas quicker, later spine, et cetera, but start with a safe hatch first build, 2 queen, then reactionary lings equal to what opponent makes, then a spine in main and re-rooted to nat, then bane nest, 6 lings if you haven't already. Walls and spines won't work too well. But with 4 defensive banes, you should be able to delay an infinite amount of speedlings for you to be able to at least morph as many necessary. You should have bane nest in time before any mass ling/bane attack hits too, or any amount that would 1 shot a spine. Did I not *just* give an explanation of what transpired? He pushed out with 2 base roach and I hurt myself economically to put up spines, he didnt attack but instead expanded and massed hydra, I went speed banes to hold the push but I had neither drones nor the economy to handle what he did. I was exclaiming shock with how badly he raped me jokingly remarked, was he an evil genius [not the team, the occupation] a map hacker or am I just a moron. I think thats all rather obvious. The only things pertinent I left out from my *prior* explanation of the events is that he sniped a queen in the early game -- something surely to explain any drone deficit or otherwise but not at all explaining his strategical decisions or how I ought to have replied to them. No. I'm assuming english is your second language, but what you said was really rough to understand. From this new description and re-reading what you said earlier, it sounds like you are saying the opponent did a roach/ling all-in off 2 base hatch tech. Against such an all-in, you can't take a third hatch, as it's basically zerg's 4 gate. It's easy to scout - roaches made before third is taken (no reason to get a roach warren if you go 2 base lair, speedlings rape unupgraded roaches, especially with spines, even slowlings on creep beat them, something like 4 lings beat a roach). If the opponent takes a third, don't worry about it, he has zero drones and no tech. Seeing that your opponent made roaches before third hatch, didnt take gas at his natural and no third, has very few drones in his natural with the overlord you ALWAYS have over his natural mineral line, you should have made 5+ spines in your nat, and then teched up to lair. From there, you have 3 choices basically, after holding with purely ling/spine/bane/queen (you can afford 5+ spines because you should have at least 50 drones...) With 50 drones vs his ~20-25 drones... 1. You can then start massing speedroaches. You won't get enough roaches to defend, because he's been making roaches all game long, no way you'll catch up, but the plan is to hold with mass economy off 2 base, and have speed before he even has lair started, and just simply kill him, deny his third forever while taking yours, etc. 2. Mutas. Almost always will just straight up close the game against a roach/ling all-in 3. Infestors. You already massed spines, so it's an easy way to transition into the ling/infestor into 3 base hive play. He won't let you take your third with his roach/ling force though, so you'll have to rely on your lair tech advantage to win the game and punish him, basically. You should not be near as hurt economically, as you already have 50 drones before he even pushed out. If you are feeling hurt economically, chances are you just are not macro'ing well enough, so when the attack came you couldn't afford to simply throw down 5 spines. This is the timing that lair play throws down 3+ spines and makes a bunch of lings, or you grab your third hatch before lair, so you should easily afford 5 spines and not be hurt economically, especially considering he's only at 20, 25 drones max. Him sniping a queen could be why you lost. Depends how many lings you made, if you overreacted to his ling pressure, and how well that engagement went for you (ie did he snipe a queen but lose all his lings to you making an exactly equal amount of lings, or did you overreact and make 20 lings to kill 5 lings that killed your queen, did he make 10 lings and kill your queen and you lost 15 lings one by one as they popped?). Really sounds like a macro loss to me though. A roach/ling all-in is very easy to beat, and very easy to scout for, and if you macro well you don't really even need to scout for it, especially on the larger maps - 'oh that's 10 roaches walking out of your main right now at the ~50-70 supply mark? good thing i have 50 drones on 2 base right now, i'll start up lair and throw down 5 spines with my huge income right now". What's the quickest way to lay down mass spine crawlers in the late-game? Select a bunch of drones, hit b, hit s, then hold down shift and there you go. The only problem is this tells the drones to make the spine after their current command, so they'll probably finish mining those minerals first, or return that cargo first, before planting them, so if 5-10 seconds is life or death for you, you should probably just b-s-b-s-b-s-b-s. That's what I do, imo problem with b-s-b-s-b-s is that you always end up accidentally making a baneling nest. Or I do, that's why I hold down shift. This isn't a right or wrong answer sort of thing though, but that's just how I do it i guess... | ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
| ||
|
whatevername
471 Posts
| ||
|
Jerubaal
United States7684 Posts
| ||
| ||
