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The Zerg Help Me Thread - Page 415
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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. | ||
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Giganthrax
Serbia19 Posts
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TangYiChen
Korea (South)195 Posts
On October 25 2012 09:17 Giganthrax wrote: Hello, I have a few questions about scouting. ZvT: Basically, I have no idea what to scout for in this MU. I send in a 12 drone to check if his barracks is in his base or if he's proxying me, and that's about it. After that I dunno what he's making until I see the actual units on the map. I'm platinum and terrans in my league always do one of the following: - hellion/banshee harass into 3rd & mech - hellion harass into 3rd & bio/tank - marine/tank pushes into 3rd with drops How do I scout these things? What do I look for? How many gas will he get for each build? When is the best time to sac an overlord? ZvP Okay the way I understand it: 2 base toss (especially if he takes gas on natural) means timing attack incoming around ~9-10mins, so I build roaches, lings & spines to defend. However, I dunno how to differentiate a 2 base all-in toss from a macroing toss. At what time do macroing toss usually get their 3rd? What should I look out for when poking his wall? When is the good time to sac an overlord? Thanks. For what it's worth, this is what I do in ZvT. My ZvT isn't good however so take it for what it's worth. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong... I don't even scout in ZvT and I 15h. Instead, I use my first overlord and send it to the back of the natural (on 2 player maps such as Cloud Kingdom or Daybreak). The ovie should arrive at about the time their expansion should be going down. If they don't have an expansion around that time +- 10-20 seconds, I know they're doing 1 base opening unless they built the CC in their main. No matter what they do, my build really doesn't change (except for 2 rax) so I just don't scout (and I know players such as Sheth have said drone scouting in ZvT isn't that important). Also since I 15h, I may scout around standard 2 rax locations and ALWAYS keep a drone scouting around the hatch for a bunker until it finishes. If they are 2 raxing, just pull a lot of drones from your main (works really well actually) and don't let the bunkers get up! Pick off as many marines as you can as well as SCVs building bunkers (this requires some micro). Hold off until lings+queens+spines come out. My build also gets out 6 lings once pool finishes regardless of their opener. There is actually a timing I've been able to do with my BO where if they play TOO greedy and delay their bunker, these 6 lings can force a lift and delay mining at the Terran natural. Also poke the front and keep vision with watchtowers and ol sack at around 6:30. Most terrans will go hellions, and follow up into banshees. It doesn't hurt to build a spore at every base; even if he doesn't go banshees they will help if he decides to do drops. If he does open hellions, you can also do a roach/bling attack while taking your 3rd. It allows your 3rd to safely get up because he has to defend, and a lot of times you can do a huge amount of damage with roach/bling attack on his nat. Afterwards, you can just drone up your 3rd. I can upload replays of holding off 2 rax, 6 lings delaying the natural expansion, etc when I get home if you want them. My BO is: 15h 16p (rally 16th drone to build) 18ol 2 queens + 6 lings when pool finishes 25 ol (right after 2 queens + 6 lings) EDIT: sorry I meant 18 ol and added more detail | ||
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MstrJinbo
United States1251 Posts
Also poke the front and keep vision with watchtowers and ol sack at around 6:30. Most terrans will go hellions, and follow up into banshees. It doesn't hurt to build a spore at every base; even if he doesn't go banshees they will help if he decides to do drops. If he does open hellions, you can also do a roach/bling attack while taking your 3rd. It allows your 3rd to safely get up because he has to defend, and a lot of times you can do a huge amount of damage with roach/bling attack on his nat. Afterwards, you can just drone up your 3rd. If you see the CC building in the natural I feel sacing the overlord at 6:30 is a tad early. You should already have seen hellions at that point so the main thing you are really looking for are third CCs, starports, Multiple Rax, multiple factories for mass blue flame hellion timings. All of these are things you can scout if you sac the overlord at 7:30. The majority of the really effective roach/bling attacks are preplanned and not reactionary. You need to get the gasses down pretty early to hit at the correct time. Once banshees are out this attack is considerably weaker. | ||
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SuPpoRTeR
Russian Federation3 Posts
I have to play in 3hatchers versus Protoss, but i dont know how i have to play versus Terran and Zerg | ||
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Slardar
Canada7596 Posts
On October 28 2012 20:41 SuPpoRTeR wrote: Hi. Tell me about one more generally build for each matchup I have to play in 3hatchers versus Protoss, but i dont know how i have to play versus Terran and Zerg For general questions and build order, I recommend reading this. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Portal:Zerg_Strategy Will give you good knowledge on what to do vs everything. | ||
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HighLach
United States132 Posts
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6xFPCs
United States412 Posts
Is it the new thing in ZvZ to not get a spine at your front early on? Normally I'd chalk it up just to two different players being greedy, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing, because replays showed that neither one bothered checking my drone count at the natural, i.e. neither had solid info that would allow him to take a calculated risk like that. Twice now I saw no spine, so I made one round of lings, morph six banes, and send them in pairwise. Each case, even against 2-3 defensive banes, I got 8+ drone kills, plus some misc larvae kills. I always thought the correct greedy risk is to not morph the 4 lings into defensive banes (or morph fewer than 4), and only if you scout nothing but drones, usually as heavy saturation at the natural. The spine is almost as key as the double queen block, right? | ||
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Clarity_nl
Netherlands6826 Posts
On October 29 2012 07:09 6xFPCs wrote: mid-masters zerg. Is it the new thing in ZvZ to not get a spine at your front early on? Normally I'd chalk it up just to two different players being greedy, but I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing, because replays showed that neither one bothered checking my drone count at the natural, i.e. neither had solid info that would allow him to take a calculated risk like that. Twice now I saw no spine, so I made one round of lings, morph six banes, and send them in pairwise. Each case, even against 2-3 defensive banes, I got 8+ drone kills, plus some misc larvae kills. I always thought the correct greedy risk is to not morph the 4 lings into defensive banes (or morph fewer than 4), and only if you scout nothing but drones, usually as heavy saturation at the natural. The spine is almost as key as the double queen block, right? You answered your own question with the result of your games. Don't second guess yourself, just take wins and if you're doing it wrong you'll notice because you'll stop winning. Generally you can't get away with not making a spine unless you have a good read, doing it blind is bad. | ||
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Mavvie
Canada923 Posts
I'm mid masters, and honestly don't know what I should've done. I did a 3 queen fast speed fast third opening into fairly quick lair, slightly delayed +1/+1. I scouted a high marine count so assumed he was relatively gasless, but then he hits my third with 2 cloakshees and I lose it (lol bad but not game ending). He kept making banshees off god knows how many starports, and he was massing vikings too. At one point I was at 80/36 supply. Still, I hadn't lost because it was 3 base vs 2. He eventually takes his third, I take my fourth, and go for infestors (bad idea in hindsight). I feel that mutas would lose because he's already been massing vikings for a long time, and infestors would get mauled by banshees. So, all 12 infestors get mauled by banshees. I get ultras up, charge his third (which was a PF btw), and the banshees literally instantly kill all the ultras, only half of them even made it to his side of the map. What do I do? Hydras?? If I had got hydras instead of wasting 1.5k gas on infestors I feel like I would've won; he had NO ground units except for a few marines. I feel like he also planned on abusing how Zerg's detection works and would kill my overseers so that banshees go to town, but I'm not sure. I guess that nydus/queen + spore strategy would work...or something. Sorry about no replay, I can upload tomorrow. TL;DR: Mass air ZvT, I'm not behind, what the hell do I do. Infestors/mutas don't work, and I didn't open mass queen. Should I go mass queen and try to bust this? I think that queens are supply efficient vs banshees with transfuse. | ||
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Oboeman
Canada3980 Posts
Why do you think infestors wouldn't work? Infested terrans, fungals, and a few queens/spores when defending. | ||
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Mavvie
Canada923 Posts
Yeah I can defend fine with infestor/spore/queen, but I can never attack him. What do I tech up to? Do I go for a ling/infestor/queen attack? Do I still go for ultras, just with queens + infestors too? Like I can avoid not instantly dying, but I see no mid/late game plan. If I let him get up his deathball, he wins. Ravens were right around the corner, and banshee/raven/viking counters all hive tech it seems. I just don't know what direction to go against such a style. | ||
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TheGreenMachine
United States730 Posts
On October 29 2012 07:29 Mavvie wrote: What in the sweet tits do you do against mass air in ZvT? I'm mid masters, and honestly don't know what I should've done. I did a 3 queen fast speed fast third opening into fairly quick lair, slightly delayed +1/+1. I scouted a high marine count so assumed he was relatively gasless, but then he hits my third with 2 cloakshees and I lose it (lol bad but not game ending). He kept making banshees off god knows how many starports, and he was massing vikings too. At one point I was at 80/36 supply. Still, I hadn't lost because it was 3 base vs 2. He eventually takes his third, I take my fourth, and go for infestors (bad idea in hindsight). I feel that mutas would lose because he's already been massing vikings for a long time, and infestors would get mauled by banshees. So, all 12 infestors get mauled by banshees. I get ultras up, charge his third (which was a PF btw), and the banshees literally instantly kill all the ultras, only half of them even made it to his side of the map. What do I do? Hydras?? If I had got hydras instead of wasting 1.5k gas on infestors I feel like I would've won; he had NO ground units except for a few marines. I feel like he also planned on abusing how Zerg's detection works and would kill my overseers so that banshees go to town, but I'm not sure. I guess that nydus/queen + spore strategy would work...or something. Sorry about no replay, I can upload tomorrow. TL;DR: Mass air ZvT, I'm not behind, what the hell do I do. Infestors/mutas don't work, and I didn't open mass queen. Should I go mass queen and try to bust this? I think that queens are supply efficient vs banshees with transfuse. Its probably a micro thing. Infestors do fairly well vs mass air terran. Just make sure you are using extra queens to do dps, getting good creep spread so your queens can help and infestors move faster. Even 1 spore per base helps. I dont have the replay but losing so many overlords, a 3rd base, and all that id assume you are nearly dead so anything could kill you. Im assuming he had nothing but banshees since thats all u talked about, so fungals+queens are extremely good in defending. Once u get 4-5 bases you can go spire, maybe even hydras if hes that committed. If he has no thors then muta+lings works great vs viking banshee. Meh just keep doing runbys and stuff, burrow lings at expos and creep spread. Getting more bases than him then rolling over him with ultralisk+baneling or infestor+broodlord your choice. | ||
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ThAsinineOne
6 Posts
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NovemberstOrm
Canada16217 Posts
On October 29 2012 09:06 ThAsinineOne wrote: In any matchup, mainly in ZvZ, when do you pull you drones to help your lings? Also, how do you micro lings/drones during this attack? You'll have to be more specific are you talking about a 10 pool drone pull allin vs hatch first? | ||
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6xFPCs
United States412 Posts
On October 29 2012 07:29 Mavvie wrote: What in the sweet tits do you do against mass air in ZvT? I'm mid masters, and honestly don't know what I should've done. I did a 3 queen fast speed fast third opening into fairly quick lair, slightly delayed +1/+1. I scouted a high marine count so assumed he was relatively gasless, but then he hits my third with 2 cloakshees and I lose it (lol bad but not game ending). He kept making banshees off god knows how many starports, and he was massing vikings too. At one point I was at 80/36 supply. Still, I hadn't lost because it was 3 base vs 2. He eventually takes his third, I take my fourth, and go for infestors (bad idea in hindsight). I feel that mutas would lose because he's already been massing vikings for a long time, and infestors would get mauled by banshees. So, all 12 infestors get mauled by banshees. I get ultras up, charge his third (which was a PF btw), and the banshees literally instantly kill all the ultras, only half of them even made it to his side of the map. What do I do? Hydras?? If I had got hydras instead of wasting 1.5k gas on infestors I feel like I would've won; he had NO ground units except for a few marines. I feel like he also planned on abusing how Zerg's detection works and would kill my overseers so that banshees go to town, but I'm not sure. I guess that nydus/queen + spore strategy would work...or something. Sorry about no replay, I can upload tomorrow. TL;DR: Mass air ZvT, I'm not behind, what the hell do I do. Infestors/mutas don't work, and I didn't open mass queen. Should I go mass queen and try to bust this? I think that queens are supply efficient vs banshees with transfuse. Uh, just a quick note first: you went to 36 supply-max? That's a lot of stuff lost in just overlords, so it could be just that you were too far behind to come back. Here's a replay of me feeling out what to do against mass air--this was the first time I faced it in a long time. I win because I outmacro him and ling runbys and fungals kind of wear him down. I finish with a boatload of semi-upgraded mutas once I'm confident I can overrun his vikings. http://drop.sc/268845 The key, I think, is proper use of ling counters. Bunkers alone won't keep a sky terran safe, so it forces his banshees to stay home, and it gives you time to outexpo him. Sky terran is like mech, it relies on gas and it has a long ramping-up time, so you want to play similarly, except with lings instead of roaches and spores instead of spines. And instead of trading roaches for mech units, you trade infestors (via fungal) for air units. Now, this guy I played definitely made some mistakes, but he appears to be solidly mid-masters. So I'm going to assume I got lucky when he forgot cloak, and I saved my third, but that his unspent resources and tactics, etc. are all up to par. Basically, you can see how long it takes him to build up a solid force of banshees that can actually tackle a slowly rising number of queens (I start with 4, and only add more after I see two banshees) plus one or two spores per base, so I freely drone up on three bases. I deny his third like any good zerg, and do my best to force cancels on planetaries whenever I can. So he is always behind on gas, and gas is even more important for sky terran than for mech. I grab what fungals I can as he moves around dealing with lings, but I never overmake infestors because you always lose whatever batch is on the front lines anyway (banshees are too mobile for infestors to run away). But one fungal on 5+ air units is worth the infestor, I feel. Anyway, I keep expanding and I spore/spine everything heavily, and I just keep sending waves of lings and stuff to keep him busy, using infestors to make sure that he can't safely attack into any of my bases. Eventually I'm on 5 mining bases and 12 gas (main is out of minerals at that point), with double spire, so I run him over. | ||
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FalconPunch
United States134 Posts
My general opener in ZvZ now is hatch first, pool, then extractor. Metabolic boost on first 100 gas, then drop a spine and baneling nest around the same time. I usually get 3 queens, 2 at the natural to block ramp if necessary. build 4-6 banes and a handful of lings while saturating 2 bases. Take the remaining 3 extractors. Drop a roach warren and go to lair around same time. I'll try to take my third while using lings to stall opponent's third, but I'm still having trouble doing this. At this point in the game, if there has been not much fighting going on, I feel like our builds are similar except I went for roach tech while he went for spire. I have tried going infestors, and I have tried going hydas, and I still seem to fail. I haven't tried both together because I feel like I wouldn't have enough gas to support a decent number of both. Out of the last 10 games where my opponent went mutas, I can't remember if I won any. I generally don't like to go mutas in my case because I prefer to saturate my minerals first before I get gas. I feel like I'd be behind in the muta count if we both went mutas because of my later gas timings. Mid-High masters | ||
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Henk
Netherlands578 Posts
On October 29 2012 19:16 FalconPunch wrote: Having a really hard time against mutas in ZvZ. What is the "proper" response when you suspect/scout that your opponent is going mutas? Lets say you scouted his base with the spire halfway done. My general opener in ZvZ now is hatch first, pool, then extractor. Metabolic boost on first 100 gas, then drop a spine and baneling nest around the same time. I usually get 3 queens, 2 at the natural to block ramp if necessary. build 4-6 banes and a handful of lings while saturating 2 bases. Take the remaining 3 extractors. Drop a roach warren and go to lair around same time. I'll try to take my third while using lings to stall opponent's third, but I'm still having trouble doing this. At this point in the game, if there has been not much fighting going on, I feel like our builds are similar except I went for roach tech while he went for spire. I have tried going infestors, and I have tried going hydas, and I still seem to fail. I haven't tried both together because I feel like I wouldn't have enough gas to support a decent number of both. Out of the last 10 games where my opponent went mutas, I can't remember if I won any. I generally don't like to go mutas in my case because I prefer to saturate my minerals first before I get gas. I feel like I'd be behind in the muta count if we both went mutas because of my later gas timings. Mid-High masters Getting your third a little earlier helps against mutas, because you can build spores due to the creep. Anyway since you went infestors you should be fine just putting up some spores, perhaps getting an extra set of queens. This will cause you to not waste fungals/IT on single mutas spread out, because without 'regular' (not infestor) anti air this is a pain to deal with. And watch for ling runbies, ofcourse. | ||
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courtpanda
866 Posts
what are the standard opening build orders now? right now im doing ZvT, ZvZ 15 hatch 16 pool, (14/15 pool if scouting something sketchy) and ZvP 14 pool 16 hatch are these still optimal (or were they ever optimal)? | ||
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Defenestrator
400 Posts
On October 31 2012 04:29 courtpanda wrote: (diamond zerg here) what are the standard opening build orders now? right now im doing ZvT, ZvZ 15 hatch 16 pool, (14/15 pool if scouting something sketchy) and ZvP 14 pool 16 hatch are these still optimal (or were they ever optimal)? Still pretty standard in today's play, though most Z's probably do 15pool instead of 14pool. Not a huge difference though, and maybe a 17pool in ZvT. | ||
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Mavvie
Canada923 Posts
ZvZ most players get a fast gas (hatch-gas-pool or hatch-pool-gas(before overlord)) is standard | ||
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