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Maybe I am playing bad zergs, but I rarely have to deal with any kind of high tech unit using this strategy, often if my oppenent doenst open banelings I cripple them quickly. I concentrate on getting my 2 eng bays going before I really concentrate on ravens, and a few medvacs instead of ravens will really help against the kind of infestor play you describe iechoic. Each infestor has to make up for 6 banelings, plus the banelings lost to making the infestor lair that he doesnt have and needs some time to get enough energy to fungal more then once, and frankly without a sufficient baneling ball following up its not that effective with even 2 medivacs.
That said it doesnt matter if your force dies at the cost of an infestors and a few banelings because thats a fair trade.
Your comparison of infestors to ravens I don't feel is quite fair. Infesors are much more susceptible to death from the terran army then ravens are to death from the zerg army, one of the main advantages of this build. For example in one game, I only had 1 marine that got free of the fungle growth, but I chased down and killed 2 infestors with that marine because the infestors were out of energy (slightly injured) and I just stimmed a few times.
I havn't played any 2000+ zergs with this yet though so toss out a few replays of you getting handled if you have them.
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What's extremely frustrating about ravens is that in a group of ravens, HSM on a target from a raven with energy will of course release the kraken. But without energy they just run to that point and die. The same thing happens with templar and infestors also though, I hope blizz maybe fixes that one day.
I don't know if opening up cloaked banshee really works, that is to say if we're talking fastest banshee possible. If you gas first you can get a banshee out with cloak in under 8 minutes surely, but with the marine/raven aggression build, you'd already have pressured the expansion and are preparing for a second attack, maybe if you work it in later I think it might be a good fit, but that's gas that is cutting into a raven, or stim, or engbay upgrades, or better yet, hunter seeker itself! A cloaked banshee that early may even win outright.
That isn't to say cloaked banshee doesn't work, it's a good opener, I just think rushing the banshee and then trying to get to that level of production that this build calls for, it's a little behind. Judging from all the replays this is an extremely fun build that's dependent on upgrades. Durable materials! ha!
Also as far as infestors go, if zerg has enough resources to go get a lot of infestors, you surely have HSM, maybe even durable materials. I can't see why HSM shouldn't take care of this. Especially when the common practice is to group all your infestors in a separate control group. you might get 2 for the price of 1, or more! Repairing ravens is also pretty key I've been finding.
I think this strategy is awesome, I think it's probably the most robust CONCEPT a terran build has had since SC2 was released. Everything else seems to be: do this to gain an economic advantage and therefore more units. But this focuses on the point which I think might have gotten glossed over. You're forcing zerg to exchange their cheap units, with yours, and in turn spend larva where they may not want to. Hope this makes it into Liquipedia.
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In my experience, the issue isn't dealing with infestors persay. It is instead dealing with the timing of infestors. A fast infestor will basically be able to shut down any push you can do against zerg and be able to fungal everywhere. If you can get your neverending marine pump going with raven cloud and medivacs, then infestors don't really do nearly as much damage. It is when you are applying pressure with your first major pushes, and you don't have a mass of ravens up, that you have this vulnerability to infestors specifically. You must either delay your first push for HSM and sufficient ravens or you must be able to do something to counter the infestors or you go ahead and risk getting cold stopped by a fungal before you can amass enough ravens to counter this.
I think iEchoic is referring to the above situation since alot of times zerg only goes for infestors when you already have a crit. mass of ravens and are basically burning the zerg out. You can toss a few(or many) auto turrets around your attack lanes to scout flanks and prevent infestors from doing their hit and runs. Additionally because you get so many marines off 9/10 rax + of production, you can usually get map control and be able to split off small groups of 10ish marines to do stuff while you main army is doing something else like old SK Terran.
My rationale behind doing basically the FE into 5 rax into cloaked banshee before raven is to force gas into Overseers and force infestors to stay with the zerg army or die. Likewise, it gives you something immediately useful rather than snowball useful as a stop gap before your production capacity for infinite attrition is ready. Additionally Zerg now must get detection because of the threat of cloaked banshee for the rest of the game.
Of course marine->tank->raven late game is also an option.
PS. The idea isn't for fast banshees, it is just a push with banshees to control space and kill infestors until you have enough ravens to control space with turrets.
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in 1 week i played like 20 games against 1900+ zerg and i only lose 1 time (first time i was using this build, so i forgot to double upgrade  . it's fun to compare the number of worker at the end of my old mech game with this build. Zergs build like 2 times less drones. Sometimes it's hard to deal with some units but because of 10 rax, you are putting non stop pressure on zerg, and most of fights are far far from your base so even if you lose your entire army (except raven), you will time to rebuild and deal with his counter attack.
If you know how to play (put some towers everywhere on the map and scan during fight), infestors won't be a big problem (i always have time to snip them with HSM).
How fun is it to attack 3 places at the same time, instead playing with slooooooooooooooow tanks/thors?
As some people said, i don't really think that going for tanks or thors is a good idea. The core of the build is to harass and trade army. Raven can escape from fight, but tanks and thors will die...
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Well I finally got around to watching Pokebunny's reps. I watched KME's when you had first written the post. I think the biggest difference is Pokebunny's use of ravens for turrets and an early stim, while maybe getting HSM way later. It's interesting also because PB's use of turrets acts in a similar fashion for sentry FF. He puts them in spots to deter any flanking. Additionally, most games, if any, did he get +2 armor to structures, and neither of them got +range to turrets. I imagine this is simply because of priority to weapons/armor.
Map selection also makes a big difference, those Iccup maps are really favorable towards FE, not to take anything away from PB, but I think it's certainly to the terran's advantage should the zerg want to expand early as well.
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On November 05 2010 03:25 k4ne wrote:in 1 week i played like 20 games against 1900+ zerg and i only lose 1 time (first time i was using this build, so i forgot to double upgrade . it's fun to compare the number of worker at the end of my old mech game with this build. Zergs build like 2 times less drones. Sometimes it's hard to deal with some units but because of 10 rax, you are putting non stop pressure on zerg, and most of fights are far far from your base so even if you lose your entire army (except raven), you will time to rebuild and deal with his counter attack. If you know how to play (put some towers everywhere on the map and scan during fight), infestors won't be a big problem (i always have time to snip them with HSM). How fun is it to attack 3 places at the same time, instead playing with slooooooooooooooow tanks/thors? As some people said, i don't really think that going for tanks or thors is a good idea. The core of the build is to harass and trade army. Raven can escape from fight, but tanks and thors will die...
bio openings with tanks is pretty standard tvz these days, and I definitely think it's viable, if a little fragile. It's funny, as fragile as say marine raven is because of the baneling micro, tank positioning is probably more fragile. One mistake and all your artillery is gone. Either you move out at a bad time, or you get too overzealous with your bio and lose it which on most cases means you lose the tanks to mutas or speedlings (they're pretty friggin good against tanks now). At least the ravens can get away and participate in the fast hit and runs.
But the tanks are great for establishing a strong point to cover the bio from banelings and infestors. They also aren't as gas heavy as ravens so you can get more marauders. You can still do the hit and runs and drops without the tanks, and if you can slow push or just siege up for a contain it's really hard for the Zerg to break. It really depends on the map and spawn locations, and they lend themselves toward playing passively which is not a good idea against zerg. I do think that a few tanks can really anchor the mass marines and help you against banelings and infestors with less micro.
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I never tried HSM harassment on the mineral line. How effective is that? Does it wipe out a lot of drones?
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On November 05 2010 06:25 micjmac wrote:
I never tried HSM harassment on the mineral line. How effective is that? Does it wipe out a lot of drones?
not very effective imho, better use multiple autoturrets for the same energy cost imo. Unless the mineral line is hyper satured, you'll most likely kill 6 drones if extremely lucky, and 3 most of the time. (just theorycrafting here, never actualy tried)
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I wouldn't try hsm on mineral lines, just use turrets. They shut down mining and they last a long time, forcing your opponent to deal with them. You'll kill a few drones as well but really the lost mining time is more important. Hsm will barely dent him because they are pretty spread out and he doesn't need to react in any meaningful way.
edit: I've been seeing a trend in the unsuccessful replays with people being too fancy with hsm. It's not THAT great tbh. I'm far from gosu with this strat at this point but I don't think you should be trying to hsm hydras, you wont kill that many and you will definitely lose that raven. Retention of those guys is most important, like a Protoss with colossi. Blanket turrets to cover the marines and/or spam pdd so the marines can mow down hydras but don't lose ravens. Save hsm for mutas, which clump up and get decimated, or banelings if the angle is right, or even infestors may not be terrible. Just my 2 cents anyway, if you watch kme's replay pack he really doesn't use it that much. If you have a huge cloud and lots of energy I could support more liberal use but spamming those upgraded turrets is usually better imo. Somebody good can dispute me if I'm mistaken 
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On November 04 2010 10:30 Antisocialmunky wrote:
How are they going to fungal growth your units when they fungal growth and infested terran your banshees?
Going banshees means you have less other stuff (especially if you get cloak); hence they need to fungal fewer units?
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On November 05 2010 07:16 Victim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2010 10:30 Antisocialmunky wrote:
How are they going to fungal growth your units when they fungal growth and infested terran your banshees? Going banshees means you have less other stuff (especially if you get cloak); hence they need to fungal fewer units?
I'm dropping 500/700 on ravens and all the raven upgrades when I play. :-\ I can get faster upgrades for infantry if I do this. :D
Holy crap dude, that was both epic and hilarious. :D Awesome execution though getting upgrades could be better. Zerg reaction was priceless though.
Any replay anyone feels willing to post (win/fail) would be great for further analysis. :D
One of the overriding issues I've noticed from reps is that banelings require so much larva to mass that it blocks a lot of zergs ability to spend their money. Making zerg go overboard on ling/baneling seems definitely favorable for you. Zerg will probably adapt and throw down an extra hatch but still it is good to know.
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I started practicing marine spreading vs banelings in a unit tester and completely forgot about a discussion piece that happened earlier in the strategy forum.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=132591
That using the patrol command the units have a natural sort of spread going to them.
Try this with marines and kind of mess around with it. You'll see the initial ball clump start to loosen up and spread slightly. It'll make the spreading much much easier. Cause even if you divide your marines up 3-4 times, their still clumped and will die to only a few banelings
So anticipating a battle you can patrol a bit to get the spread going and it'll remove the need for extra dividing later on in the conflict. FoxeR is extremely fast and does it manually. Selecting only a few dividing constantly. However if you get loose spread from the patrol trick, it reduces the number of divides you need to do.
Try it out in a unit tester and see whatcha you can do.
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On November 05 2010 07:16 Victim wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2010 10:30 Antisocialmunky wrote:
How are they going to fungal growth your units when they fungal growth and infested terran your banshees? Going banshees means you have less other stuff (especially if you get cloak); hence they need to fungal fewer units?
2 banshee with cloask cost the same as 2 ravens.
Your army will be just as big and you can deal with infestors much easier.
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On November 05 2010 07:38 metaldragon wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2010 07:16 Victim wrote:On November 04 2010 10:30 Antisocialmunky wrote:
How are they going to fungal growth your units when they fungal growth and infested terran your banshees? Going banshees means you have less other stuff (especially if you get cloak); hence they need to fungal fewer units? 2 banshee with cloask cost the same as 2 ravens. Your army will be just as big and you can deal with infestors much easier.
not quite, the gas cost is the same but it's 300 more minerals, which does cut into your marines. I'm actually very starved for minerals most of the time. Nevertheless, it's probably worth it to kill early infestors. I use them to snipe infestors in my Thor build and it works great. I'm sure it's worth testing at least.
Regarding that patrol trick, that looks promising, I'm definitely going to try it out.
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My intuition after watching Foxer is that pre-positioning units is probably the biggest part of baneling micro. Your eye can easily pick out which marine clump needs to be moved and zerg has a harder time figuring out a target. Sure the patrol thing works when you're standing still with your blob off creep but I think that being able to preposition an pseudo arc with small marine blobs and some air thing to spot make it easier.
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This is a great example of what the build is meant to do. Could have scouted the 3rd earlier but everything else was spot on.
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hey I think I know how to counter this build playing standard (not all-in). if someone wanna try against me, PM me and we can game. (diamond ofc)
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I did a little playing around in a unit tester, and I found some interesting results that could impact how zerg reacts to this build. Interestingly, lings vs. marines alone, lings remain cost effective against marines until the marines are 3/3 (both units fully upgraded). In fact, lings actually beat an even number of marines in an open field until 3/3. The addition of even 2 banelings turns the tide of a 120 ling v. 60 marine battle.
What I'm getting at is that perhaps the reason this build works is that zerg have been favoring roach-heavy builds since the patch. Perhaps the correct response for a zerg is to play the same exact game. Favor minerals, build mostly lings with only a few infestors and banelings, and get a third hatch at your natural before a third expansion so you can get enough larva to support the number of lings you will need. Keep even with upgrades and you should be fine. I haven't tried this on the ladder yet, but it seems like a possible strategy.
The other possible advantage is that with the increased mineral expenditure, zerg players can conserve more gas once they do take a third, and tech hard in the lategame.
[edit] The other advantage is that the mobility and sheer number of zerglings decrease the effectiveness of ravens.
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@Antisocialmunky
Is it possible to replace large raven counts with large Ghost counts? Mass Marine Ghost? This has the benefit of freeing up the starport. Which allows for constant medic production rather then deciding between another medic or a raven.
The Ghost would lower the effectiveness of infestors and allow for nice harass with cloak and Nukes.
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EPT
