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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. |
On September 22 2010 08:00 kNyTTyM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2010 07:14 Eazypeezy wrote:
I could be wrong here, but I notice a big difference between Korean Zerg and NA zerg. It seems when I whatch PhoeNixWeRRa he usually always goes
15hatch
14pool
17ovie + 1st gas
as soon as pool pops 2sets of lings + queen
2nd queen as Nat pops
and almost always a Roach warren at about 20-21 skipping ling speed till later.
He does exact same vs Terran and Toss except he dosent get the Roach Warren right away vs toss. I notice sometimes he will go 15gas 14 pool But I cant figure out what makes him choose between the 2 builds.
Anyway I just wanted to get a high level players opinion on that kind of opening build/Maybe you could tell me why he sometimes goes 15gas 14pool instead. It must be decent because hes 11th in NA server. Thanks alot 15 hatch is usually a blind economic opener. Meaning if your opponent opened up aggressively, you outright lose. On 2 player maps you can scout quickly to determine his barracks/gateway timing but he also has the option to block your natural hatchery with a fast scout. On 4 player maps you can't scout all the positions by the time you need to place the hatchery so you outright die to 10 rax or 10gate.
This might need to be reevaluated post patch, since both of those rushes were slowed in the patch (the reaper/bunker doubly so).
I definitely don't think a single 10 gate will hurt you badly. Especially since the rush comes slower on the maps where you can't scout and adjust to 15 gas 14 pool. On short rush distances like LT/Metal close and Steppes where those are really dangerous you can do the adjustment if you scout early enough.
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In terms of the new balance patch, are more economic builds a lot more viable? (Like 15 Pool, 14 Hatch and whatever) Even though it's just five seconds, that's a lot of time especially to get out a Queen or Zerglings.
To tie in with that, what are the "best" economic builds for different sized maps? I tend to use them on bigger maps (Kulas Ravine and etc.) but on smaller maps I just get creamed using economic builds if the opponent does any kind of early pressure.
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I know this might be too much trouble, but I'd just like to suggest that maybe answers are put into op. It's going to get really hard to keep track of them all and also this could help prevent same questions being asked repeatedly.
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On September 22 2010 08:10 ZapRoffo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2010 08:00 kNyTTyM wrote:On September 22 2010 07:14 Eazypeezy wrote:
I could be wrong here, but I notice a big difference between Korean Zerg and NA zerg. It seems when I whatch PhoeNixWeRRa he usually always goes
15hatch
14pool
17ovie + 1st gas
as soon as pool pops 2sets of lings + queen
2nd queen as Nat pops
and almost always a Roach warren at about 20-21 skipping ling speed till later.
He does exact same vs Terran and Toss except he dosent get the Roach Warren right away vs toss. I notice sometimes he will go 15gas 14 pool But I cant figure out what makes him choose between the 2 builds.
Anyway I just wanted to get a high level players opinion on that kind of opening build/Maybe you could tell me why he sometimes goes 15gas 14pool instead. It must be decent because hes 11th in NA server. Thanks alot 15 hatch is usually a blind economic opener. Meaning if your opponent opened up aggressively, you outright lose. On 2 player maps you can scout quickly to determine his barracks/gateway timing but he also has the option to block your natural hatchery with a fast scout. On 4 player maps you can't scout all the positions by the time you need to place the hatchery so you outright die to 10 rax or 10gate. This might need to be reevaluated post patch, since both of those rushes were slowed in the patch (the reaper/bunker doubly so). I definitely don't think a single 10 gate will hurt you badly. Especially since the rush comes slower on the maps where you can't scout and adjust to 15 gas 14 pool. On short rush distances like LT/Metal close and Steppes where those are really dangerous you can do the adjustment if you scout early enough. ive seen socke shut down hatch-pool with 2 gates, and ive just talked to a 1500 terran who said that bunkerrushes arent affected much at all in his perception.
So no, 15 hatch remains a blind economic gamble
edit:meant pool-hatch
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Thanks for the tips so far. Any general suggestions about setting rally points and keeping armies hotkeyed? With all hatches on 1, sometimes my army gets shredded before attacking when there's a battle in my base. What I try to do is set a rally point that's somewhere on my creep, in a safe spot as near the front as possible. Individual rally points per hatch are sometimes the only way to keep units safe. What's your reaction to armies inside your creep highway, assuming you're caught a little short on army (ie, need the next wave or two of spawned units to hold off a push)?
I've been messing around with "fire and forget" lings: 1szzzz and then click on the expo/tower I want to attack. Crutch? Still viable at higher level play? For mutas I've had some success with a sequence like this, assuming mutas are on 6 already: 1stttt shift+6 then reselect hatches if I want to build other stuff. It runs in to trouble if they end up flying over AA, but a lot of times it helps keep all the mutas together for increasing pressure. What kind of key sequences do you rely on to manage armies?
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On September 22 2010 08:37 phfantunes wrote:
I know this might be too much trouble, but I'd just like to suggest that maybe answers are put into op. It's going to get really hard to keep track of them all and also this could help prevent same questions being asked repeatedly.
this is a good idea
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What's your hotkey layout like across all mus? I've been using one similar to my bw style, 5 and on are hatches, and 1-4 is army.
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On September 21 2010 20:49 DarKFoRcE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 20:38 Xizorz wrote:
How do I properly punish an early zerg 15 hatch > 15 pool build in zvz, assuming you went a more standard 14 pool?
1. Hit him early with a few zerglings.
2. Hit him a bit later with speedlings/banelings.
3. Fast tech to muta.
4. ? first off, i would go 15 hatch 14 pool in this situation (in the position of your opponent). On maps where the blocking off of the ramp with 2 queens is possible a bust with speedling/baneling pretty much does not work (unless the opponent makes a mistake). for this reason the 14 gas 14 pool build is a little risky on maps where the 15 hatch build is possible, as this build is pretty much automatically behind in that situation. on the other hand, the 15 hatch build of course loses to any kind of 6-9 (maybe 10?) pool (if you place the hatch before scouting your opponents main). going mutas is probably the best thing you can do, but as the 15 hatch player will have a stronger economy he can build a few queens to defend against the mutalisks, and then either go mutas himself or go for roach hydra and 1-2 infestors and do a timingattack before you are able to get a third up and running and catch up in roach/hydra count or tech to broodlords. another possibility would be to go banelings, but i feel this is very risky against infestors as fungal growth is very good against them. in the deciding battle it will come down to positioning/micro and whether the roach hydra infestor player can get off good fungals, but i feel the roach/hydra/infestor force is favorable in this situation. the player who is fast expanding might need a good bunch of experience to get a good feeling for when to push, but my intuition tells me that this is the superior strategy.
Do you have a good 15 hatch 14 pool BO for ZVZ? I've been doing the following, and I'm not sure if it's optimal:
15 hatch
14 pool
drone to 15
15 OL
save money and larvae
6 lings
Queen at main
Queen at nat followed closely by 2 crawlers
Creep tumor using main queen
Inject with nat queen
Block ramp
Get a 3rd queen at some point so you can inject while keeping the ramp blocked
Past this, I never know when to add my roach warren/take gas. Main questions I have:
-Is 2 crawlers generally enough? Or does it completely depend on what the other zerg is doing?
-When to take gas and roach warren and/or baneling nest?
-Is my BO optimal?
I'm aware that stuff like when to lair, whether to go spire or roach hydra infestor, all that kind of stuff you kind of play by ear. But for quite early when your build is pretty much set in stone, I could use some advice. If you have any thoughts you want to mention outside of the questions I asked, go ahead and let us hear 
(btw this goes to any of the high-level zergs, not just darkforce, i just happened to pick his post to respond to because he already said something about FE zvz)
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On September 21 2010 12:21 Saracen wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 11:56 raybasto wrote:
Against Toss, what is the best way to fend off 4 gate pressure and survive till the late game. It seems like if I open Hydras/Ling/Spines, they fast expand and switch to 2 gate Robo in which I am unable to defend long enough to get Ultra/Ling (Whether its because of lack of harass or over commiting to Hydra/Roach). If I open Muta/Ling, they keep the 4 gate pressure until my defenses finally break. This is what I do against 4gate: 14 pool 15 hatch 15 queen/overlord - when that queen finishes, build another queen, take your gas, and spit larva at the main then movie it to your nat (you might want to take your gas slightly earlier) - drone to 32 supply, then MASS lings - build nothing but lings/overlords - take a drone off of gas whenever you have the 100 gas for speed - I have been able to beat 4gate with exclusively lings, but you might want to add roaches or banelings if you're feeling uncomfortable, like maybe he's going heavy zeal/sentry or something - try to engage him as soon as speed finishes because you don't want his gateway ball to grow too large, and you don't want him to have too many force fields
Feel like "complementing this". If the Z wants to fend a 4 gate with mass lings he should go for an early evo and get +1 melee OR +1 carapace, this makes a HUUUUGE difference,s pecially if the Protoss is smart enough to know whats going on and wont push out till he gets a +1, this makes imperative that you make SURE that he doesnt have a forge working or its gg right there.
If by your 49/52/54 supply he hasnt moved out then that means somethings up an you need to re-scout ASAP he could be trying any sort of shit like DT Rush or teching straight to templars as a way to stop the mass lings. As a personal advice dont think "Hey, maybe he messed up and his timmings are late", like 90% of the time theres more going on.
Also but it kinda goes without saying, when trying to fend off a 4 gate YOU HAVE map control so always send 1 ling to check for a hidden stargate.
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On September 22 2010 13:11 sooch wrote:
Do you have a good 15 hatch 14 pool BO for ZVZ? I've been doing the following, and I'm not sure if it's optimal:
15 hatch
14 pool
drone to 15
15 OL
save money and larvae
6 lings
Queen at main
Queen at nat followed closely by 2 crawlers
Creep tumor using main queen
Inject with nat queen
Block ramp
Get a 3rd queen at some point so you can inject while keeping the ramp blocked
drone to 16
16 ol
then, as you have scouted your opponent by this you can see what his pool timing his, if he plays 14 gas 14 pool and will only have 2 larvae by the time the pool finishes you can build one more drone, if he will have 3 larvae, save your own larvae aswell.
shortly before the expo hatch finishes, send down 2-3 drones, then as you wrote build 6 lings in main, but also build new ones as soon as larvae becomes available, build the two queens asap. shortly after the hatch has finished and you have built the queen there you should have money spare to put down 2 spine crawlers.
i personally use injects with both queens as the creeptumor isnt really necessary at this point. if your opponent stays on one base you have 2 choices: get like 4-5 spine crawlers total and pump more lings at the natural while pumping drones in the main and getting gas and then teching.
or you build a roachwarren and gas and get roaches instead of spine crawlers, this is probably the better option, but it is a little harder to play in the midgame when your opponent gets mutas and expands too, as you will probably want to stick to roach/hydra/infestor then which has no mapcontrol.
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On September 22 2010 00:55 Zelniq wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2010 00:25 Goobus wrote:
Hi Saracen!
Thanks for doing this. Zergs have needed this for a while now, with all other races having help/replay analysis threads.
Anyways, I have a few questions about ZvP when the toss goes 2 gate.
1. How do I stop a 2 gate without going roach? Do I simply scout his zealot numbers and match it 4:1 in lings? Since I'm at ~1000 diamond level, most Protoss players know to push when they have around 5 zealots (which is before my first wave of larva pops). Do I need to build spines to hold this off? What if I went blind fast expand? Am I screwed then?
I saw PhoeNixWeRRa hold off 6 zealots with just drones, a couple of slowlings and queens when he went hatch first. Do you recommend me trying this? Seems like I need pretty godly micro to pull that off. Is there any cost effective way to counter 2 gate without going roach? It seems that every time I go roach to counter 2-gate, the ensuing 4-gate push is that much stronger because I delayed my expo until ~late 20-early 30 food.
2. Also, when I don't go roach against 2 gate, what do you recommend me doing with my first set of lings? Do I dance around and stall, not engaging, or should I try to pick off reinforcing zealots (leaving my second wave of lings and queen to fend off the brunt of the zealot army)?
What are your thoughts on this? post patch, depending on what other changes we see maybe, you should be able to hold off 2gate much easier now with just slowlings, careful not to spend your larvae on drones until you find his gate timing, try not to engage them until you have enough to fight them head on as they regenerate shields quickly while your health does not let your queen start to take some hits before your lings go in, then bring your lings in and if needed pull your queen away if theyre still targeting it
Thanks Zelniq! Great advice. I think my problem was that I missed the whole "saving larva until I know what to do" thing, which was why I was having so much trouble holding it off without roaches.
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first of all, hi have been reading not yet posting.
I love playing zerg, just think it's the coolest race. I suck though. I am sure i could be doing a lot better playing Protoss or Terran but I dont really want to.
the main problem I've been having is that I can't seem to get up a solid army early enough. I usually go 14 gas 13 pool or 14 pool 16 hatch in most matches, then proceed depending on what I scout. Now around say ~35 - 50 food I always seem to have trouble getting a decent army. I make a few Hydra/ roach/ Baneling / muta's depending on what i did scout or thought would be good in the match up. Then i run pretty much out of gas and prob have 1k minerals by now. :S i can pump some more lings but not nearly enough even though I try to keep decent track of my supply and larva injections. Mayb i should elect to build an inbase hatch or expand again a little earlier but all i get from that are zerglings too, not that they're not gr8.
should i mayb be expanding more and then just take gas first/only for a while? so i have more gas for better units + more larva to make them?
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About zerg vs zerg I have been doing a little test with a friend of mine. We wanted to see which build would be best suited against a 6-pool rush.
We started off with 14 pool, which got absolutely thrashed, so did 13 pool, 12 pool was a bit closer and may be a bit more map dependant, but you could suffer serious drone damage before getting reinforcement. The only real secure build was 10 pool. We didn't try extractor trick 11 pool, which may be better.
7 pool could be fended off by a 12 pool with few casuelties.
This means that I have personally been going 6/7 pool in most of my zerg vs zerg games simply because people get too greedy, thinking they can just sit and macro. What I would advice to do is going for an extremely early scout. 7'th og 8'th drone, this way you can make sure you don't get buildorder pwned, or atleast get a macro advantange by droning longer than your opponent.
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On September 22 2010 19:01 Mikkerthebhu wrote:
About zerg vs zerg I have been doing a little test with a friend of mine. We wanted to see which build would be best suited against a 6-pool rush.
We started off with 14 pool, which got absolutely thrashed, so did 13 pool, 12 pool was a bit closer and may be a bit more map dependant, but you could suffer serious drone damage before getting reinforcement. The only real secure build was 10 pool. We didn't try extractor trick 11 pool, which may be better.
7 pool could be fended off by a 12 pool with few casuelties.
This means that I have personally been going 6/7 pool in most of my zerg vs zerg games simply because people get too greedy, thinking they can just sit and macro. What I would advice to do is going for an extremely early scout. 7'th og 8'th drone, this way you can make sure you don't get buildorder pwned, or atleast get a macro advantange by droning longer than your opponent.
this is pretty micro dependant, while you might be right, i wouldnt jump to conclusions so quickly.
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On September 22 2010 19:01 AFCArt wrote:first of all, hi have been reading not yet posting. I love playing zerg, just think it's the coolest race. I suck though. I am sure i could be doing a lot better playing Protoss or Terran but I dont really want to. the main problem I've been having is that I can't seem to get up a solid army early enough. I usually go 14 gas 13 pool or 14 pool 16 hatch in most matches, then proceed depending on what I scout. Now around say ~35 - 50 food I always seem to have trouble getting a decent army. I make a few Hydra/ roach/ Baneling / muta's depending on what i did scout or thought would be good in the match up. Then i run pretty much out of gas and prob have 1k minerals by now. :S i can pump some more lings but not nearly enough even though I try to keep decent track of my supply and larva injections. Mayb i should elect to build an inbase hatch or expand again a little earlier but all i get from that are zerglings too, not that they're not gr8. should i mayb be expanding more and then just take gas first/only for a while? so i have more gas for better units + more larva to make them?
I basically have the same problem. In single and in team games, I'm almost always behind in the early to the midgame and if I manages to survive I usually am able to take the macro advantage later. Personally I've found that having an in-base hatch is good if you are going for a muta ling combination. Of course if you can take an expansion instead that's better but depending on the map that can be hard. If the map allows it I prefer the roach hydra combination better since I'm able to keep both the minerals and gas down better.
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Hi all !
I'm quite new to starcraft ( and rts in general).
I'm currently trying to improve my macro/micro/game sense so i don't really bother about supra refined build for now. (just have basic game plan on my head but not precise foodcount after 20food)
i'm actually sitting at around 900/1k diamond as zerg ( was terran in beta).
Lately i've been playing with FE build a lot (not on steppes and blistering). It's something like 14 hatch/13or14 pool ( gas too against T). I send an early scout ( 10th drone) to adjust my build ( cross/close position, early rax, 2 gate or some weird stuff).
It feels pretty damn good. I have early queen in each base. Queen are awesome to tank damage when you are waiting for more lings to defend against early agression. I usually go for a third queen before lair for creep/anti-air stuff.
Some people feel that's a blind economic opener. What do you think about that? I feel its quite safe, i've more troubles defending my expo morphing at 20/21. You can also deal quite easily with most common early push with the combo speedlings/roach/(baneling) and a strong eco. Is it also "safe" on higher level?
About the general idea of zerg being underpowered or t being OP. At my level, its certainly not the case. But i think that the real zerg difficulty/problem/weakness is the positioning of your army, you must engage properly or you can just loose against a 1a T/P. I feel its quite annoying sometimes, i'm far ahead and end up loosing against 2 microed coloxen in a narrow space/cliff or loose to a terran thors/hellion combo because my lings were badly caught by hellions or my mutas accidently clumped together. you have to be so careful in comparaison to T/P players. I'm not saying that T and P don't need good positioning but i feel like in my lvl, it doesn't really matter for them.
p.s. : i apologize for my approximative english
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On September 22 2010 18:17 DarKFoRcE wrote:
drone to 16
16 ol
then, as you have scouted your opponent by this you can see what his pool timing his, if he plays 14 gas 14 pool and will only have 2 larvae by the time the pool finishes you can build one more drone, if he will have 3 larvae, save your own larvae aswell.
shortly before the expo hatch finishes, send down 2-3 drones, then as you wrote build 6 lings in main, but also build new ones as soon as larvae becomes available, build the two queens asap. shortly after the hatch has finished and you have built the queen there you should have money spare to put down 2 spine crawlers.
i personally use injects with both queens as the creeptumor isnt really necessary at this point. if your opponent stays on one base you have 2 choices: get like 4-5 spine crawlers total and pump more lings at the natural while pumping drones in the main and getting gas and then teching.
or you build a roachwarren and gas and get roaches instead of spine crawlers, this is probably the better option, but it is a little harder to play in the midgame when your opponent gets mutas and expands too, as you will probably want to stick to roach/hydra/infestor then which has no mapcontrol.
Thanks, that helps. Approx what time do you take gas? I'm thinking about going slowling/baneling after getting my crawlers up, with the banelings just there to deter any 10 baneling balls from trying to bust through the wall of queens. The spines would pretty much prevent any speedlings from trying to snipe my banelings, so I could save the ling speed gas for teching.
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![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-150989.jpg)
someone critique my play after watching the game + reading my spoiler
+ Show Spoiler +
definitely welcoming criticism
mistakes i recognize:
1) forgot gas early because i was too worried about him bunker blocking my ramp
he actually could have killed me immediately had he gone for 5rax over early cc so i lucked out
2) when i almost killed his third, i chose to defend my 3rd from his drop and extend my economic lead rather than 1a2a3aing to victory
3) not enough lings during certain engagements so i wasnt able to hinder/flank his marauders to prevent kiting my ultralisks
4) there was a time when i went into the nydus to move like 5 feet instead of just raping his exposed army attacking my natural (by exposed, i mean not tightly squeezed into a choke/ramp)
5) infestors would have been nice i suppose but i prefer to flank instead of ensare, but dimaga is far smarter than terrans i usually beat apparently because he was never out of position
6) my late game macro was pretty bad especially after he killed my natural, it really disoriented me and my hotkeys. its funny because late game macro used to be a strength of mine but i never ever get any late game practice anymore cuz every sc2 game ends in under 12 minutes
my #1 priority in every engagement is to flank (to prevent kiting and obviously to maximize surface area to optimize dmg output) but i felt like the map and positioning made it impossible
DIMAGA is actually really really smart with his army placement. he almost never exposed his army to potential flanks and he almost always had his bio army balled up rather than arcing to minimized surface area. he also had surpsisingly good control although poor macro as obviously this is his off race
obviously infestors are good to ensnare if your opponent doesnt allow flanks but really, when i get a 90k resource score vs a 50k resource score, is it really that necessary? my zvt isnt awful either, ive beaten quite a few notable terrans who are better than me(like lz, select, blendio etc etc but only when they were off their game)
seriously, i dont know whether to laugh or cry after this game
zvt is definitely possible but i feel like i have to play 100% flawlessly in every single way or pray my opponent makes blatant errors
maybe i couldve killed his army if i didnt worm into his main at the end, but i doubt it lol
dimaga is definitely my favorite non korean player without question. i didnt tell him that though, i figure he hears that all the time anyways
he messaged me after this game to tell me how ridiculous this game was lolol
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I noticed in one of Idra's recent games (I'm pretty sure it was a GOMTV match), that very quickly after his Lair popped, he made an overseer and flew through the Terran main getting additional scouting info from the fast OV. Obviously morphing an overseer is much faster than researching OV speed, so from that point of view I thought it was clever, but in my own applications I've been finding the cost of 100 gas a little steep.
Usually vs T my early game is ling bling roach, so I work off just one gas until the lair pops. So after the cost of the lair, and the constant cost of the roaches, I'm pretty much running on zero gas, which makes me cut roaches to get the overseer. Is that bad? Should I be getting my second gas earlier?
I like getting the early overseer (I can't count the number of times it saved me, either scouting a fast marine marauder push, or scouting two port banshees), but is it worth doing every game?
Just for reference, my usual vs T BO:
+ Show Spoiler +
14 pool
13 gas
15 overlord
Queen and 4 lings when the pool pops
(ling speed if I scout something silly coming my way, usually not)
20-21 roach warren
Lair sometime around now
24-25 expand while pumping drones
Pump roaches once the first spawn larva hits
Make an overseer once Lair pops
Get second gas around now
Transition to hydras or infestors, or drone up and stay on roaches based on scouting info.
TL;DR - early overseer just for scouting purposes: worth it?
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I'm sure this is asked before in this thread. But lately almost all terrans I play go for 4-5 thors in their army, and I really can't seem to find a decent counter for them. So what do you build against thors? I tried some kind of mass lings plus infestors, but if the thors are clumped up there is not enough surface area for lings to deal sufficient damage.
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EPT
