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I tried this in one ladder TvZ and several ladder random team games, and I must say that this didn't work only when:
1) In TvZ, I had a macro slip-up. 2) In team games, when at least one of the opponents was Protoss and went mass HTs supported by Chargelots or Collossi. Like I said, Feedback and Storm seem to counter this build pretty well. 3) In team games, when all the opposing players would attack me at once and my allies didn't react in time.
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Also what do you think about not taking the SCVs off gas so you can get the +1, shield and stim upgrades a bit faster or does taking them off get more minerals for the fast expo more important ?
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Whenever I play against this build, I tend to find roach + Infestor a lot more effective than ling + bling, especially early on, since you can fend off the first push without actually losing all of your units...
Whenever I use this build, I find that getting a good containment with bunkers and eventually pushing with tanks just wins the game...
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On November 01 2010 01:18 Anther wrote: Whenever I play against this build, I tend to find roach + Infestor a lot more effective than ling + bling, especially early on, since you can fend off the first push without actually losing all of your units...
Whenever I use this build, I find that getting a good containment with bunkers and eventually pushing with tanks just wins the game...
Thats why when i do this build i build more raxes rather then reactors. This way i can switch to mass Maruaders. What nice is that with so many raxes you can build just 1 cycle of reapers mid game for back stabbing.
P.S. Against roaches weapons upgrades are very important. Especially plus 1
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On November 01 2010 01:18 Anther wrote: Whenever I play against this build, I tend to find roach + Infestor a lot more effective than ling + bling, especially early on, since you can fend off the first push without actually losing all of your units...
Whenever I use this build, I find that getting a good containment with bunkers and eventually pushing with tanks just wins the game...
The problem with Roach Infestor is you're putting so much gas for only defending against a few hundred minerals. If I saw an opponent massing Roach/Infestor, I would just hold off my first push and wait for a Raven to kill off the creep, and then just fly in to HSM your Infestor, since you lack an entirety of Anti-Air.
I didn't save the replay, so I'm sorry that I can't go link it but I played someone who went pure Roach/Infestor against this build. I literally just got 6 Ravens and HSM'd all of his Infestors and then it was just Roach vs 1/1 or 2/1 Marine/Raven, which is just a total joke. You need to get Hydra's or Mutalisks to stop the Ravens, most people going Roach builds get the former. And OP does a quite fine job showing how to counter Roach/Hydra/Infestor
And all of the people saying they do this but with Reactors or Tanks or whatever, you're not doing the build right. You're doing something completely different. The entire premise of this build is to constantly lose your army and trade minerals for gas and larvae until you overwhelm them.
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I'll let KME answer questions about his build since he's been tweaking it much.
With regards to Mutas vs Hydras, I have more issues with Hydras than Mutas because Ravens die so fast to Hydras. The issue with that though is that Hydras can't pressure me. I think either stockpiling more energy for HSM, PDD, expoing, or just plain getting a few tanks can deal with Hydras.
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On November 01 2010 01:35 Antisocialmunky wrote: I'll let KME answer questions about his build since he's been tweaking it much.
With regards to Mutas vs Hydras, I have more issues with Hydras than Mutas because Ravens die so fast to Hydras. The issue with that though is that Hydras can't pressure me. I think either stockpiling more energy for HSM, PDD, expoing, or just plain getting a few tanks can deal with Hydras.
Hydras autotarget Ravens when they come into range, thus making it difficult to HSM them. The fact that Hydras put out a gazillion DPS doesn't help either.
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On October 31 2010 22:46 Shockk wrote: I do have a tip regarding the raven micro. This may be old news for many players, but it did help me once I noticed it.
You're probably moving your ravens around with the rest of the army or as a separate group, and once you want to start setting up turrets (or PDD/HSM), you'll probably do so by keeping Shift pressed to quickly drop multiple turrets from multiple ravens. However, this will queue the turrets (or the PDD, or the HSM) up behind the raven's current move command - first, they'll move to where ever they were going in the first place, then they'll drop turrets.
This has lost me countless battles before I actually noticed it; before I just wondered why my ravens weren't doing what I told them. So if you're about to do something with ravens, either issue a stop command or move-click them to where they are at that moment so that they stop and can directly start deploying stuff. Alternatively, hold down T (without shift) and click where you want each turret. Multi-cast without queuing problem.
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On November 01 2010 01:35 Antisocialmunky wrote: I'll let KME answer questions about his build since he's been tweaking it much.
With regards to Mutas vs Hydras, I have more issues with Hydras than Mutas because Ravens die so fast to Hydras. The issue with that though is that Hydras can't pressure me. I think either stockpiling more energy for HSM, PDD, expoing, or just plain getting a few tanks can deal with Hydras. edit : nothing :D
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http://www.teamliquid.net/video/userstream.php?user=TheGunrun Tarson vs a zerg here atm, Tarson doesn't use the raven strat, but his marine micro/split is one of the best I saw. I don't know how he does it, his marine ball split in 4 or 5 directions simultaneously, but he have just one control group if I saw correctly. I really would like to know what his technique is.
(sorry if I use this thread for a more large TvZ strategy, it's one of the best TvZ topic on TL atm imo so I make some offtopic TvZ posts, OP, if you don't want this, just tell me I'll stop my offtopic posts )
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Man, I've been using this in ladder. It feels great to have so many marines early on and be safe from rushes, yes even baneling busts. But if you aren't really aggressive, especially at shutting down expos, you will die horribly and think that this build is garbage
I think that 20 marine push with cs and +1 is really essential. And it's difficult to stick with only marines for too long, you have to get either ravens or tanks to support unless you have great micro. I lost so many marines to banelings last night, it's really a lesson in humility
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On November 01 2010 01:31 Fruscainte wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2010 01:18 Anther wrote: Whenever I play against this build, I tend to find roach + Infestor a lot more effective than ling + bling, especially early on, since you can fend off the first push without actually losing all of your units...
Whenever I use this build, I find that getting a good containment with bunkers and eventually pushing with tanks just wins the game... The problem with Roach Infestor is you're putting so much gas for only defending against a few hundred minerals. If I saw an opponent massing Roach/Infestor, I would just hold off my first push and wait for a Raven to kill off the creep, and then just fly in to HSM your Infestor, since you lack an entirety of Anti-Air. I didn't save the replay, so I'm sorry that I can't go link it but I played someone who went pure Roach/Infestor against this build. I literally just got 6 Ravens and HSM'd all of his Infestors and then it was just Roach vs 1/1 or 2/1 Marine/Raven, which is just a total joke. You need to get Hydra's or Mutalisks to stop the Ravens, most people going Roach builds get the former. And OP does a quite fine job showing how to counter Roach/Hydra/Infestor And all of the people saying they do this but with Reactors or Tanks or whatever, you're not doing the build right. You're doing something completely different. The entire premise of this build is to constantly lose your army and trade minerals for gas and larvae until you overwhelm them.
I'm not making roaches to defend, I'm making them for map control.
If I wanted to defend I'd make spines.
Ya'll are acting like it's a crime to use gas to defend against an expensive mineral army o_O. Infestors are anti-air as far as I'm concerned, lol. If the rines are ever forced to retreat, ravens are probably pinned down, and it's not as all powerful. Plus, when HSM's were used against me, I just ran my infestors until the HSM's died. I lost a positional advantage, but the battle was going on in the middle of the map. My main goal against marine/raven is to stop the terran them from expanding, while attempting getting a bigger force of infestor + ultra or something else that'll work at the late game stage and using roach mobility to snipe command centers, since a huge part of the build is for terran to keep expanding, right? Every T I've played has been using their mobility to try to expand from what I've seen.
And though you say tanks + marauders are unnecessary and a different build, I feel that sometimes the situation really does call for a small tech switch, as a tank vs a zerg that's turtling with spines forces them to stop making drones and move out in some way.
Plus I think making hydra is a death sentence, at least early on due to the fact that you're massing RAVEN. PDD will make them completely useless. I mean, I've thought this stuff out, and you're arguing like it's just straight up unbeatable if played right. Which would not be fair. I mean, why would I listen to the guy that's saying to make units that get hard countered by the build in order to stop the ravens. PDD stop muta and hydra I think, and even if they don't stop muta, ... marines!?!? .
Yes I'm sure the build can counter a roach heavy build, but I just want to assume for the moment that it'll come down to positioning and tactics that occur during the game as opposed to your declarations that the zerg has spent gas vs an all mineral army... a mineral army that's full of expensive gas intensive units.
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On November 01 2010 03:36 Anther wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2010 01:31 Fruscainte wrote:On November 01 2010 01:18 Anther wrote: Whenever I play against this build, I tend to find roach + Infestor a lot more effective than ling + bling, especially early on, since you can fend off the first push without actually losing all of your units...
Whenever I use this build, I find that getting a good containment with bunkers and eventually pushing with tanks just wins the game... The problem with Roach Infestor is you're putting so much gas for only defending against a few hundred minerals. If I saw an opponent massing Roach/Infestor, I would just hold off my first push and wait for a Raven to kill off the creep, and then just fly in to HSM your Infestor, since you lack an entirety of Anti-Air. I didn't save the replay, so I'm sorry that I can't go link it but I played someone who went pure Roach/Infestor against this build. I literally just got 6 Ravens and HSM'd all of his Infestors and then it was just Roach vs 1/1 or 2/1 Marine/Raven, which is just a total joke. You need to get Hydra's or Mutalisks to stop the Ravens, most people going Roach builds get the former. And OP does a quite fine job showing how to counter Roach/Hydra/Infestor And all of the people saying they do this but with Reactors or Tanks or whatever, you're not doing the build right. You're doing something completely different. The entire premise of this build is to constantly lose your army and trade minerals for gas and larvae until you overwhelm them. I'm not making roaches to defend, I'm making them for map control. If I wanted to defend I'd make spines. Ya'll are acting like it's a crime to use gas to defend against an expensive mineral army o_O. Infestors are anti-air as far as I'm concerned, lol. If the rines are ever forced to retreat, ravens are probably pinned down, and it's not as all powerful. Plus, when HSM's were used against me, I just ran my infestors until the HSM's died. I lost a positional advantage, but the battle was going on in the middle of the map. My main goal against marine/raven is to stop the terran them from expanding, while attempting getting a bigger force of infestor + ultra or something else that'll work at the late game stage and using roach mobility to snipe command centers, since a huge part of the build is for terran to keep expanding, right? Every T I've played has been using their mobility to try to expand from what I've seen. And though you say tanks + marauders are unnecessary and a different build, I feel that sometimes the situation really does call for a small tech switch, as a tank vs a zerg that's turtling with spines forces them to stop making drones and move out in some way. Plus I think making hydra is a death sentence, at least early on due to the fact that you're massing RAVEN. PDD will make them completely useless. I mean, I've thought this stuff out, and you're arguing like it's just straight up unbeatable if played right. Which would not be fair. I mean, why would I listen to the guy that's saying to make units that get hard countered by the build in order to stop the ravens. PDD stop muta and hydra I think, and even if they don't stop muta, ... marines!?!? . Yes I'm sure the build can counter a roach heavy build, but I just want to assume for the moment that it'll come down to positioning and tactics that occur during the game as opposed to your declarations that the zerg has spent gas vs an all mineral army... a mineral army that's full of expensive gas intensive units.
The goal is to keep your ravens alive, not your marines, I don't know why you would abandon them? Anyways, I'm really curious about this build, do you have any replays of you defeating the build?
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On November 01 2010 02:01 Yotta wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2010 22:46 Shockk wrote: I do have a tip regarding the raven micro. This may be old news for many players, but it did help me once I noticed it.
You're probably moving your ravens around with the rest of the army or as a separate group, and once you want to start setting up turrets (or PDD/HSM), you'll probably do so by keeping Shift pressed to quickly drop multiple turrets from multiple ravens. However, this will queue the turrets (or the PDD, or the HSM) up behind the raven's current move command - first, they'll move to where ever they were going in the first place, then they'll drop turrets.
This has lost me countless battles before I actually noticed it; before I just wondered why my ravens weren't doing what I told them. So if you're about to do something with ravens, either issue a stop command or move-click them to where they are at that moment so that they stop and can directly start deploying stuff. Alternatively, hold down T (without shift) and click where you want each turret. Multi-cast without queuing problem.
This is even better, I didn't know that worked. Thanks!
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I think people are taking the trading = good as more of a given and the idea of Marine/Raven as only Marine/Raven all the time. I'll clarify my initial point about trading: It is advantageous for Terran to trade marines for gas while stockpiling its own gas units, spending minerals to control Zerg's gas is your goal. This doesn't mean you should just throw your marines away for any amount of gas. You want to be maximizing their usefulness through decision making and control. You can still get rolled over by better zergs that can spend their gas to get units that they can use to demolish your composition not to mention exploit bad positioning of your marine blob. This is especially true of zerg's that I've seen better exploit positioning and 2 base play - not auto taking their third and getting rolled over by the 30 marine push + Raven push.
As for Marine/Raven composition: Marines and Ravens are the core of your composition because this is a style rather than a build and the builds listed are various FEs that can set you up for this play style OR SOMETHING ELSE. Don't confuse this with a build that gets you X number of A and Y number of B. You can diversify to whatever you want depending on your need: Hellions are good at killing speedling blobs, Marauders are good at tanking and killing ultras, tanks are good at defending, banshees are good for harassing, vikings are good at killing things that can't hit them, etc.
I think out of all the zergs that I have played with this, the most dangerous are the ones that mass roaches/blings with a sprinkling of hydras and infestors who are able to turtle on 3 bases.
Edit: For some reason I think its feasible to get some Reapers after 3 base due to the massive army trades...
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I've been using this strat after reading the guide and practicing in custom games several times. The main problem Ive been having is after the first 20 marine push, either it doesn't do enough damage and I'm immediately faced with a large amount of banelings on my second push followed by an uncontrollable muta force. Most zergs at the 1700-1800 level will go baneling before muta when they see a reactor racks. Then when they see more rax planted outside your natural they almost always start adding infestors. With a couple mutas the ravens get cleaned up before they can get back to base. My biggest problem may be my inability to micro correctly. When I see a huge amount of banelings I almost immediately panic.
Against Roach ling baneling. During my 30marine 2 raven push i only have enough energy for 2 turrets. The engagement usually starts rather quickly. Immediately I must throw down 2 turrets, stim my marines and spread. If the banelings have speed this must take place extremely quickly for the marines not to get taken out almost instantly. Not sure what I'm missing but when I try to spread my marines or stim run shoot run shoot I can't get away fast enough and all my marines just evaporate. By that time I haven't been able to take down a hatch or drones and am now behind. I have 4 ravens sitting at my base with low energy and about 10-15 marines and face a huge counter attack of lings.
I wish blizzard would change the AI to auto target banelings. That would drastically reduce the amount of micro required to survive a mass baneling play. Right now it seems like only people with incredible hand speed can pull this off.
I hope you all advice on how to improve my play with this build. I really would like to use it as most of my other options seem terrible now.
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On November 01 2010 05:51 Antisocialmunky wrote: vikings are good at killing things that can't hit them, etc.
Haha I love the way you say it, that's really the only thing this unit can do in this matchup :D
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eurgh, this build is pretty disgusting. I've been playing around with it even though i'm not T (main Z). Been beating 1.4-1.8k Z with it. Biggest trouble I've had so far using it (other than fail macro etc) is slightly more infestor than normal from the Z. They're able to pin down the Marines and quickly expo. Hence reaching the 4th base and getting ultras/broodlords out.
I also think the way for muta/ling/bling to beat it is just to pin your rines in base. If u have to leave 20 marines in base to def agaisnt mutas.. well it's hard to pressure. Work-around so far has been to spam turrets...which also don't cost gas.
I'm thinking Muta opening are still fine provided you're REALLY aggressive with them. But then u have to switch out for infestors while grabbing a 3rd.
I'm not gonna ladder till I work out a way to comfortably beat this.
(might even make a thread devoted to beating this build, as I strongly believe it'll become standard soon as more ppls catch on).
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This is pretty sweet when it works but I find myself getting completely rolled like every other game by Zerg cutting drones and making mass ling/bling off two base after he sees me FE and throw down more rax.
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On November 01 2010 14:26 me_viet wrote: eurgh, this build is pretty disgusting. I've been playing around with it even though i'm not T (main Z). Been beating 1.4-1.8k Z with it. Biggest trouble I've had so far using it (other than fail macro etc) is slightly more infestor than normal from the Z. They're able to pin down the Marines and quickly expo. Hence reaching the 4th base and getting ultras/broodlords out.
I also think the way for muta/ling/bling to beat it is just to pin your rines in base. If u have to leave 20 marines in base to def agaisnt mutas.. well it's hard to pressure. Work-around so far has been to spam turrets...which also don't cost gas.
I'm thinking Muta opening are still fine provided you're REALLY aggressive with them. But then u have to switch out for infestors while grabbing a 3rd.
I'm not gonna ladder till I work out a way to comfortably beat this.
(might even make a thread devoted to beating this build, as I strongly believe it'll become standard soon as more ppls catch on). I agree. As a random player, when I spawn zerg vs this build I just can't win. I practiced a bit with viet here and I did atrociously. I then went to ladder, spawned zerg on xelnaga caverns and wouldn't you know it, it's this fucking build. I didn't go roach hydra but MASSS baneling. I couldn't keep up macrowise, as I've been getting worse it seems. Terran macro is just insane off two base only marine raven. I would kill his whole army and he'd be back to where he was just at a few seconds later.
In retrospect I should've gone mass infestors as opposed to the 4 I got. Ultra's came out eventually and those did ok. What really hit's zergs hard about this build is it takes away control. As IdrA talks about, he goes muta's to take control of the game. This does not work with this style of terran play. I'm not sure what can put pressure on this build.
Also, as a random player, I just might use this. Despite the fact I despise massing one unit in a 1v1.
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