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Jeffbelittle
United States468 Posts
I am a ~1400 point diamond zerg and I'd love to start using some new tools to throw my league off. I will definitely start getting upgrades on my ovies now to make this strat work. It will take some time, but if the alternative is 1A roach/hydra moving into attack collosi/gatewayunits armies, I think I'd rather perfect this strategy! Thank you soo much! Please get more replays up! | ||
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illgottengains
83 Posts
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ohN
United States1075 Posts
I always avoided using bane's in vP cause FF just makes them completely useless but this.. O.o | ||
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MrBitter
United States2940 Posts
More fun with baneling drops. That was a ladder match. In practice sessions, I've come to this conclusion: Dropping banes on the Protoss ball can be very effective, but if you don't kill him immediately after, or transition immediately into higher tech, you're going to fall behind. While using banes is very cost effective for a maxed Zerg, after that first fight, continuing to rely on baneling drops to win battles is just too expensive. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On November 09 2010 15:47 MrBitter wrote: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replays/102446-1v1-protoss-zerg-steppes-of-war More fun with baneling drops. That was a ladder match. In practice sessions, I've come to this conclusion: Dropping banes on the Protoss ball can be very effective, but if you don't kill him immediately after, or transition immediately into higher tech, you're going to fall behind. While using banes is very cost effective for a maxed Zerg, after that first fight, continuing to rely on baneling drops to win battles is just too expensive. Yeah. I agree, it works wonders when I am on my way to T3 but have the ressources to get maxed. If I have the banelings ready, nothing Protoss throws at me is scary :D I wouldn't use it in continuous battles, the purpose of it is to maximize the damage output in one big battle where they can hit a lot of stuff at the same time and hit those expensive gas units (sentries, Colossus, HT) that are normally untouchable. As Day9 said in his most recent daily, who cares about cost efficiency in the sense, i kill 200 minerals for 150 gas. It's much more about what you gain in a strategic and late-game oriented sense. Dropping the banelings just changes every single battle afterwards. He will have 0 zealots and sentries to work with. His Colossus count will drop severely and if he wants to survive he has to quickly rebuild more and cannot as easily invest in othr gas units like DTs or HTs. It just feels easy to fight Protoss ^_^ I've now played tons of games with it, and I can say ZvP is just so much fun with this new technique :D Here's one of the bestest baneling drops I've done so far. Sure, we both make a crapload of mistakes (who doesn't), but the last fight literally (literally) gave me a nerd boner. Enjoy! ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-164396.jpg) | ||
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serverdown
19 Posts
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michaelhasanalias
Korea (South)1231 Posts
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Malminos
United States321 Posts
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IPA
United States3206 Posts
Thanks for sharing, interesting stuff. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On November 10 2010 10:42 IPA wrote: I like this idea (saw that replay last week and almost cheered) -- my question is: how does a baneling drop compare to corruptor/roach/hydra? What are its benefits over corruptor/roach/hydra? I like 2/2 roach/hydra midgame into corruptor (working off 3-4 base). Is this strategy superior in your estimation? Or merely a transitional opportunity? Thanks for sharing, interesting stuff. I hate corrupters. I truly do, they are only there to kill colossi and then they are the most useless unit one could imagine. I don't think it's correct to combat splash damage with units that only attack air, have 7 range and take a freaking long time to get AND to deal damage. While your expensive corrupters (100 gas for one, and you need atleast 8 to put a dent into his colossi count without immediately getting sniped down) even start moving towards his colossi, a good Protoss can immediately either trap your army with FF to trade his colossi for your entire ground force or just FF them out to snipe your corrupters one by one. If he decides for the first option you wind up with a bunch of corrupters in the air while his stalker ball rips you apart, he can even reinforce with immortals if he feels like it, if it's the second option he can slowly push at your expansions, remaining incredibly cost-efficient while getting more bases up. There's almost no way to flat out kill that stalker sentry colossus ball by ground and making corrupters feels like a losing game to me. You killed his colossi? Great, now you have no ground forces. It's a losing battle from the start and I'd rather invest in more ground forces that can actually counter attack and that share the same upgrades. I'm glad that everyone who has tried this out so far has had great success  It's a great tactic and it gives me something to look forward to in every ZvP, even before Tier 3. | ||
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Shikyo
Finland33997 Posts
So yeah, overlords with banelings are imo an amazing transitioning unit going from the first 200/200 army into the T3 tech of your choice. | ||
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TheFinalWord
Australia790 Posts
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
This replay has brought 2 things to my attention. First of all, if you play Muta/Ling and can deny him his 3rd for a long enough time, an all-in push by him will usually come. So far the solution was a base trade or, a ton of spine crawlers, neither of which is terribly beautiful a solution. Since you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want in the those first minutes of your muta harass you can just power drones, expand and get the overlord speed + drop instead of 3 more mutas. Those mutas will not do anything in the fight either way and the baneling splash will completely obliterate his paranoid and panicky all in attack (that is as a result more clumped up and ready to a move, in spite of a lot of speed OLs) Second of all, if you while he is on his way to attack you, for example put a few mutas on a pylon in his main and a few speedlings in the economy of his natural, this will, if he is determined to attack you and doesn't turn around, consume ALL of his APM to fend off. In the meantime you can - assuming you timed it right so that his army is in reach while you are doing this - just drop banelings on him and after he as dealt with the harass, he will either return to all the Overlords already above his army, or no army at all. ^_^ ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-165181.jpg) | ||
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lowlypawn
United States241 Posts
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MrBitter
United States2940 Posts
On November 12 2010 17:24 ChickenLips wrote: I'm just adding replays as I play them. Unfortunately most Protosses all-in me before I can get the tech required to insta-win an engagement of my choice :D This replay has brought 2 things to my attention. First of all, if you play Muta/Ling and can deny him his 3rd for a long enough time, an all-in push by him will usually come. So far the solution was a base trade or, a ton of spine crawlers, neither of which is terribly beautiful a solution. Since you have a lot of freedom to do whatever you want in the those first minutes of your muta harass you can just power drones, expand and get the overlord speed + drop instead of 3 more mutas. Those mutas will not do anything in the fight either way and the baneling splash will completely obliterate his paranoid and panicky all in attack (that is as a result more clumped up and ready to a move, in spite of a lot of speed OLs) Second of all, if you while he is on his way to attack you, for example put a few mutas on a pylon in his main and a few speedlings in the economy of his natural, this will, if he is determined to attack you and doesn't turn around, consume ALL of his APM to fend off. In the meantime you can - assuming you timed it right so that his army is in reach while you are doing this - just drop banelings on him and after he as dealt with the harass, he will either return to all the Overlords already above his army, or no army at all. ^_^ I'm a die hard muta/linger when it comes to my ZvP. I've enjoyed experimenting with this baneling drop style, and have more or less accepted it as part of my game when I go roach/hydra, but adding drop and banes to muta/ling is something I have to advise against. Adding spines is what you're supposed to be doing. Add them sporadically, as you harass. My general rule of thumb is every time I hit a supply cap, throw down 1-2 spines. Here's the logic: Muta/ling relies on picking away at the toss economy and any outlying pylons/tech structures - basically just being a nuisance - while denying his attempts at taking a 3rd, and massing as many mutas and lings as you can muster. If done correctly, the Toss 3rd will be either completely denied, or delayed for so long (or you'll have done so much damage forcing his hand) that he's going to have to make that one big push. That's his last shot at winning the game. If you defend it you win. If you don't, well, game over. But the point is, you want him to make that big push. That's ultimately what you're trying to force him to do. If you're executing your muta/ling correctly, you'll have enough mutas and zerglings to stop the push, but to do so you're almost always going to need to fight at your spines. I'm getting off topic a bit... My point is this: If you invest in drop and ovie speed, then sure. Those 3 mutas lost won't hurt. If you morph 20-30 banelings, however, you're starting to talk about such a significant gas invesment that your muta numbers are going to be far short of what you're going to need to defend the protoss push. I'm sure that in isolated instances it CAN work. But if you're correctly doing your thing, and Toss is correctly doing his, he's going to have far too many units for you to clean up with just one big baneling drop. | ||
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Akash
Romania113 Posts
U zergs allways complain about corrupters,he had so little stalkers....Its an rule...2 corrupters per collosi...but dont overreact and make like 10 corruptors for 3 collosi(most zergs do ).4 banes is 25 min more then an corruptor,but corruptors can kill more then 1 collosi. Heck..even dropping roaches would work...he didnt had any immortals..and 1 roach is 25 min more then 1 bane..and deals alot more dmg...As toss..rellying so much on collosi..means ur hoping that ur oponent doesnt know how to counter them. It was more like an wc 3 TD wave....passing trough an maze ....instead of an sc 2 battle.Collosi were being rallied and lost at the same time.Collosi are only good against hidra..and small quantities of roaches and lings,HT on the same time counter most things,they can be morphed to archons (altought ppl think theyr useless....theyr good against cracklings,and massed corruptors who tend to clump..and against ppl who stack theyr mutas),but unlike collosi..who are eassilly countered,HT ,if defended...cant be overpowered,there only true enemy are burrow roaches. But its just my opinion. I appreciate ur sense of innovation,but u should drop them straight on sentryes,instead of collosi.No sentryes=no FF,and no ff means imba surrounds of mass speed/roaches. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On November 12 2010 19:25 MrBitter wrote: I'm a die hard muta/linger when it comes to my ZvP. I've enjoyed experimenting with this baneling drop style, and have more or less accepted it as part of my game when I go roach/hydra, but adding drop and banes to muta/ling is something I have to advise against. Adding spines is what you're supposed to be doing. Add them sporadically, as you harass. My general rule of thumb is every time I hit a supply cap, throw down 1-2 spines. Here's the logic: Muta/ling relies on picking away at the toss economy and any outlying pylons/tech structures - basically just being a nuisance - while denying his attempts at taking a 3rd, and massing as many mutas and lings as you can muster. If done correctly, the Toss 3rd will be either completely denied, or delayed for so long (or you'll have done so much damage forcing his hand) that he's going to have to make that one big push. That's his last shot at winning the game. If you defend it you win. If you don't, well, game over. But the point is, you want him to make that big push. That's ultimately what you're trying to force him to do. If you're executing your muta/ling correctly, you'll have enough mutas and zerglings to stop the push, but to do so you're almost always going to need to fight at your spines. I'm getting off topic a bit... My point is this: If you invest in drop and ovie speed, then sure. Those 3 mutas lost won't hurt. If you morph 20-30 banelings, however, you're starting to talk about such a significant gas invesment that your muta numbers are going to be far short of what you're going to need to defend the protoss push. I'm sure that in isolated instances it CAN work. But if you're correctly doing your thing, and Toss is correctly doing his, he's going to have far too many units for you to clean up with just one big baneling drop. There's a lot of ways a Muta/Ling game can play out and as more and more players start to straight up 5-6 gate you off of a FE before mutas are out I'm starting to steer away from it on anything but LT (god this map is so sexy with the natural choke and islands). I'm also not a fan of just massing mutas until I have no more gas. I feel like they become less and less cost-effective as their numbers increase, as the Protoss will start to get storm or Phoenixes both of which deal pretty well with them. (and render them pretty useless as a harassment-tool) I like using them as a mid-game strategy, getting 24 at the most while transitioning into T3 since that is where Zerg actually has an advantage over Protoss. If you look at it like that, getting that Ovie Drop + Speed is actually pretty smart since it will increase your probability of surviving ten-fold. Yes sure you would rather have the gas for the T3 units, but I'd rather delay my T3 units and survive than lose my 2 most recent expansions. You wrote that the goal of Muta/Ling is to harass the economy. I think that the goal of Muta/Ling is to threaten to harass the economy. A good player that scouts your spire will have 2 cannons and a few stalkers in each mineral line (and more as your muta numbers increase). As I play better and better players on the ladder I find that I almost never get to actually do significant damage in the mineral line as my opponent will almost always be prepared for my incoming mutalisks. I'm perfectly fine with that, I happily fly in and out sniping pylons and maybe a lone stalker. I will absolutely never exchange mutalisks for anything he has sitting on the ground. It's just not worth it for me to lose mutalisks. I don't see them as a fighting unit but as a speedy harassment unit. I will use them in battles but I will try everything I can to minimize damage to them, just like IdrA did in his recent game vs oGsGon. He was content sniping refinieries and outlying supply depots while out-expanding his opponent. Mutalisks are just a way to dictate the game and force your opponent's hand (like you said). You're talking about a big push. However I'd much rather have 20 banelings +ovie drop and speed than 8 mutas when that big push comes to completely obliterate all his zealots, sentries and HTs (the only threat to my Zerglings) and severly soften up his stalkers which my upgraded lings will have absolutely no problems cleaning up since they will be spread apart from the light-classed units now missing between them, giving the speedlings an easy surround. Spines don't really help against good Protosses. Their range isn't as good so a Protoss can just dance around them while only having to engage 1 or 2 at the same time. Or he can just go where there's less of them. Having 10 Spines per expansion seems kind of excessive to me and even then he can position himself so only half of them hit him etc. Static defenses just suck once it gets to late-ish mid-game since they just never kill anything and cost so many minerals in the long run as the drone that is now a spine could mine 600 minerals every 10 minutes. Watch Dimaga against WhiteRa on Lost Temple from the Blizzcon. Dimaga relies on a heavy muta count and spines in his natural and then gets rofl-blunk into his main where there's really nothing to defend. I'm not saying my strategy would've won that game, but it just shows a big weakness in the mass muta / mass spine crawler strategy. On November 14 2010 19:35 Akash wrote: mr chickenlips..the toss who played jook ToJung.....i pressume he's high diamond...i mean...collosi are good and all that jazz...but rellying on an small variety of units,means ur prone to heavy counters. U zergs allways complain about corrupters,he had so little stalkers....Its an rule...2 corrupters per collosi...but dont overreact and make like 10 corruptors for 3 collosi(most zergs do ).4 banes is 25 min more then an corruptor,but corruptors can kill more then 1 collosi. Heck..even dropping roaches would work...he didnt had any immortals..and 1 roach is 25 min more then 1 bane..and deals alot more dmg...As toss..rellying so much on collosi..means ur hoping that ur oponent doesnt know how to counter them. It was more like an wc 3 TD wave....passing trough an maze ....instead of an sc 2 battle.Collosi were being rallied and lost at the same time.Collosi are only good against hidra..and small quantities of roaches and lings,HT on the same time counter most things,they can be morphed to archons (altought ppl think theyr useless....theyr good against cracklings,and massed corruptors who tend to clump..and against ppl who stack theyr mutas),but unlike collosi..who are eassilly countered,HT ,if defended...cant be overpowered,there only true enemy are burrow roaches. But its just my opinion. I appreciate ur sense of innovation,but u should drop them straight on sentryes,instead of collosi.No sentryes=no FF,and no ff means imba surrounds of mass speed/roaches. I love that you're referring to me as Mr. ChickenLips. That's so funny :D If you had read my original post you would've noticed that I don't want to discuss the specific strategies of the players or their execution. Yeah the Protoss couldve done xyz. Who cares? It's about how effective banelings drops are and Protoss in a normal game at that time will either have Phoenixes or Stalkers and then your Corrupters look pretty stupid as they get sniped etc. I've posted about them before. Read the thread. They're just shit imo I'd imagine most protosses would love it if roaches were dropped onto them. They can just FF the rest of your army out while you conveniently give them whatever amound of overlords you have in slow-DPSing roaches every 1 second, that they can easily take care of with their stalker/colossus ball. Burrowed roaches suck balls against HTs in my experience. Yeah, storm is mitigated by burrow regen. His stalkers still focus fire your slow as hell moving burrowed roaches and he can FF above them so they have to stay burrowed even longer giving him more time to kill even more roaches. If you go down that path, you have to rely on ONLY roaches since everything will just get stormed to death immediately and mass roach gets countered quite easily (f.e. chronoing immortals out of one robo while playing defensively and adding another robo) However if you drop banelings on his templar he's immediately screwed. HTs are slow as hell and work their best when defending. What is he gonna do when your overlords start steering in the direction of his High Templar? Micro his stalkers and leave the HT behind? Storm the overlords? FF the overlords? (that would be funny if sentries could FF air) There's nothing he can do, his HTs will die. | ||
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Pookie Monster
United States303 Posts
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dementrio
678 Posts
i tried to play a bit with this in the unit tester and dropping 20-30 banes on 4 colossi + a dozen or so stalkers doesnt work... i.e. the colossi dont die. im a noob and my micro sucks though. | ||
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ChickenLips
2912 Posts
On November 15 2010 01:47 dementrio wrote: do some of the replays above show this against a stalker heavy colossus ball? i tried to play a bit with this in the unit tester and dropping 20-30 banes on 4 colossi + a dozen or so stalkers doesnt work... i.e. the colossi dont die. im a noob and my micro sucks though. It's not about the colossi dying, it's about everything in the protoss ball losing a lot of health. If you drop 30 banelings with correct drop-micro every Colossus will die, if you mess your drop up however, or can't muster the necessary gas for enough of them before the Protoss pushes you then you still evaporize everything that isn't armored and allow for a much easier clean-up by your groundforces since there won't be any sentries blocking you, which is easily one of the most frustating parts of fighting against colossus heavy builds. | ||
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