After the Nestea vs Rain match, there was Ret's quote which has been stated several times:
people who keep talking about 'hatch first' really don't have a clue.. 2 rax constant marines dominates pool first so bad because there's only so few larve off 1 hatch untill after the first queen inject...the marines can just push you back non stop till that first inject finishes and you are in danger of being bunker blocked
not to mention you have to blindly make ~20 lings in that case so if terran just stops after 5 mariens and puts down a CC you are economically fucked
nestea fucked up his drone/ling control pretty bad there but hatch first is the only choice really...hency why steppes is auto loss vs terran, im sure nestea expected to lose set 2
LASTEST EDIT: I'm now noticing a trend in GSL4 where alot of zerg's seem to be going pool first against terran (for example, Jinro vs Idra, Cliiiide vs Idra). Has the thinking shifted? Do more pro-level zergs prefer pool first now?
EDIT: After reading some of the replies, I now fully understand what Ret is trying to say. He and Idra spent countless of hours testing the zerg responses to 2-rax and they found "hatch first" to be the best. Thus, anyone who says "go pool first to counter 2-rax" have got it wrong then. The korean zergs all probably have gone down a similar path to Ret and Idra which is why they all seem to want to hatch first as well. In the case of JulyZerg, he is playing an inferior opening against 2-rax, but the opening probably suits his playstyle, which explains his choice. I'm thus now more focused on the 2nd part of his statement, where the claim is that the zerg will be totally behind if they play safe (i.e. make spines/lings). Is this really so? Has this been tested in high level play?
I'm interested if this sentiment (where 'hatch first' is done for safety rather than economy) is shared amongst the pros. For example, Artosis prefers the pool first. And JulyZerg does the pool-speed opening which leads me to believe that he considers that safer? Has the JulyZerg opening been tested extensively in the upper echelons of the ladder?
The current thinking amongst the pros (except Jinro!) is that in the lategame terran is a disadvantage to zerg. My evidence for this is the "all-in mentality" of the terrans. Thus, is it a bad thing that the zerg has to blindly build lings/spines in order to survive? The economic hit that the zerg takes will slow down econ/tech and may be what is needed to give the terrans a boost in the mid/lategame. Perhaps this may be the next stage the TvZ matchup evolution -> the zerg goes more defensive (lings/spines blindly) and beats back the terran all-ins -> terran responds by playing economic -> we will then know if the early-game hit to the economy is enough to make terran more competitive in the lategame?
Steppes has traditionally been considered a hard map against terran but maybe it's time to challenge this "auto loss" mentality? This is because the map stats show it differently where the zergs have been doing pretty well in this map so far when they opened defensively.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
He's exaggerating. If a terran feigns pressure then drops a CC then yeah, you'll be economically behind if you don't bother reacting. That's exactly why they do it. You won't stay behind for long once you realize Terran can't pressure you though.
No one really wanted to see Nestea lose to a bunch of all ins but Rain was just playing the odds and they came out in his favor. It's hard to blame him but this post from Ret came off more as whining to me than anything.
I think Idra stopped it perfectly vs IMMVP on blistering sands. But he saw the expansion going up. If he didn't he would just have to flip a coin. Making zerglings or drones? Is he going to atack or expand? I think that's the stupid part about this build. You can't sac an overlord at 20 supply -.- Not that it will work because there will be 10 marines there to stop the overlord from seeing anything.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
Have you been listening to different casts? Artosis has been saying that it's suicide until very recently. He took a really long time to even acknowledge hatch first as even being potentially safe.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
I just want to point out, that isn't the kind of thing you can criticize. If someone is able to criticize something because it seems wrong, but realize that they made an error in judgment and take back that criticism, isn't that a good thing?
On December 07 2010 17:10 Endorsed wrote: I think Idra stopped it perfectly vs IMMVP on blistering sands. But he saw the expansion going up. If he didn't he would just have to flip a coin. Making zerglings or drones? Is he going to atack or expand? I think that's the stupid part about this build. You can't sac an overlord at 20 supply -.- Not that it will work because there will be 10 marines there to stop the overlord from seeing anything.
This is another aspect of what I'm trying to point out. Is it imperative that the zergs flip a coin? Would it be better for them if they played safer? Once their overlord scout reaches the terran natural, they can then make the decision to resume droning or make units? As I mentioned in the OP, this may be what evens out the middlegame battle.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
Have you been listening to different casts? Artosis has been saying that it's suicide until very recently. He took a really long time to even acknowledge hatch first as even being potentially safe.
It's not about it being safe. It isn't safe in any way but it's required. A zerg on one base does not get enough larvae to make lings AND drones to fend off the second wave of marines / scvs. It hits before baneling tech and the only thing that can stop it at that point in the game is spine(s) + queen + lings which you can only get on time if you 14/15 hatch. Alternatively you can 15pool 14 hatch or somethnig but then the first attack really gets almost impossible to hold because there wont be a spine up in time.
The timings of the defenses that zerg needs to have are so tight that on current maps it's almost impossible to play. Even on shakuras a terran can do this effectively which says something about the state of TvZ.
In my honest opinion marines are too good early game vs zerg. The fact that marines in high numbers can kill any zerg unit early game with ease is not ok. You see the same thing vs protoss but they have a way of defending and holding out until they get anti marine units such as colossus or templars. But if a toss went pure gate units and attacked a marine army with stim out int he open he would get so raped its not even funny. Marines simply burn through everything. Their downside is that they are very fragile but that's why people use scvs / marauders in front for tanking purposes. I'm not saying nerf the marine as they are a core unit to terrans but atleast look into how scvs and marines work together.
Ret is right - You need the larva really desperately. Once the Zerg finde out how to counter the 2rax build, ie. how many spinecrawlers or lings or queens or whatever the real problem appears. You can't scout the terran. You have to gamble, because Terran can transition into 4rax as easily as into CC. I honestly don't know how the zerg will correctly react to that.
On December 07 2010 17:40 LLuke wrote: Ret is right - You need the larva really desperately. Once the Zerg finde out how to counter the 2rax build, ie. how many spinecrawlers or lings or queens or whatever the real problem appears. You can't scout the terran. You have to gamble, because Terran can transition into 4rax as easily as into CC. I honestly don't know how the zerg will correctly react to that.
Or into 2 fac blueflame helion. That opening is sick as it can also crank out tanks early vs banelings and thors early vs any sort of muta shenanigans. The helions also pretty much rape even speedlings when there are marines around. In no way can a zerg combat that force or be aggressive against it. Meanwhile the terran takes his expansion and is still ahead on econ on one base because of mules and his sheer scv numbers (compared to the extremely low drones counts we see from zergs against this build).
Here's the sentiment I'm hearing around the forum: zerg have to figure out how to deal with a shitload of different harass and push, and if he survives to mid game zerg is unstoppable. Why don't we just stop the game at mid game them. Just have a timer that announce zerg as winner if he's alive at 20 minutes. Saves time!
drdrdrdrdrdrdrd You are really dumb and thats not the case at all. Zerg can have a huge ling bling muta army and make one missmicro or poor decision and lose to a rag tag medivac tank mmm.
On December 07 2010 17:55 NeRzyMan wrote: drdrdrdrdrdrdrd You are really dumb and thats not the case at all. Zerg can have a huge ling bling muta army and make one missmicro or poor decision and lose to a rag tag medivac tank mmm.
And the same isn't true of the Terran? Attack moving marines and tanks into banelings is viable? Please try to maintain at least a little objectivity while posting.
On December 07 2010 17:49 ddrddrddrddr wrote: Here's the sentiment I'm hearing around the forum: zerg have to figure out how to deal with a shitload of different harass and push, and if he survives to mid game zerg is unstoppable. Why don't we just stop the game at mid game them. Just have a timer that announce zerg as winner if he's alive at 20 minutes. Saves time!
Didnt ret and idra also come up with the idea of skipping the second ovie incase of pressure so you had an.extra.larva and minerals to throw down a spine, i feel that this strat will become more and more popular.
Another post has shown that 11 overpool is better for economy than any other build. It would also get you spinecrawler earlier - which can be moved afterwards.
Personally I think that 14 gas, 14 pool, speedling into baneling (bust if bustable - and that hits right before hellions can be out with 2 rax opening, and beats marines off 2 rax) is the correct counter to this non-stimmed, non-upgraded, marinepush with SCV's.
One thing is if you don't know it's coming (the push) - then it's almost an all-in gamble (even though you can recover, well, you can't really unless you do serious damage with it), but in the final match, everyone knew it was coming, including, I am sure, the players.
I have to disagree with Ret, even though he would whomp me in any game, but as stated, July Zerg and others go speed first into expo and it can turn out really well. Why is it so hard to believe that on a map like Steppes, with a tiny ramp, that the speedlings + spine crawlers cannot hold of a 2 rax push? Throw in an in-base hatch and you can do just fine. I know a lot of zergs are against building spines unless they have to, but I think that they do not use them enough. Look at Sen's play on the Day9 daily recently. He was able to use spines to great advantage and they never go out of style since you can move them as need be and they have outstanding range on a cliff (Not to mention they are like -1 food units). I really think that zergs got too greedy when the terrans lost their super fast proxy rax builds and now the terrans have adapted. Zerg must adapt as well and if that means playing it safer, that is what it means.
The marines are not OP, they are just good, but so are a lot of speelings with a few spines. Zerg are trying to push for so much early econ trying to reach that late-game mass macro ability that makes them so strong, but sometimes they need to step back and take less risks.
Those are my opinions as a zerg player, but, well, Ret could probably kill my maxed out army with just drones if he wanted, so who am I to really say.
Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
Hatch first give you a strong lead in the mid-game if you are untouched, that's why terran hard pressure early and force a ton of zergling and maybe a spine, but when you don't go hatch first they can deal with it in the mid game just with pure macro and expand normally.
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
The game looked a hell of a lot different a month ago. We played months without hatch first back when barracks didn't require a depot and Zealots had a shorter build time. Players are getting better, patches are coming out, strategies are being developed, and the same-old same-old just might not cut it anymore.
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
Hatch first give you a strong lead in the mid-game if you are untouched, that's why terran hard pressure early and force a ton of zergling and maybe a spine, but when you don't go hatch first they can deal with it in the mid game just with pure macro and expand normally.
What they're saying is that hatch first is superior to pool first vs 2-rax builds not that without it the game is literally impossible if you go pool first. Pool/gas first used to be mandatory simply because of the possibility of 10 rax/reaper + bunker rush which = dead 14 hatch, so there was no alternative.
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
The game looked a hell of a lot different a month ago. We played months without hatch first back when barracks didn't require a depot and Zealots had a shorter build time. Players are getting better, patches are coming out, strategies are being developed, and the same-old same-old just might not cut it anymore.
The funny part, is they are telling us that they go hatch first to counter the 2 rax opener which was the counter to the hatch first lol. And JulyZerg did quite well with pool first in this GSL so pool first is not out of date.
Edit: If you can't counter a 2rax opener with pool first then there is a balance issue and Blizzard have to fix it.
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
Hatch first give you a strong lead in the mid-game if you are untouched, that's why terran hard pressure early and force a ton of zergling and maybe a spine, but when you don't go hatch first they can deal with it in the mid game just with pure macro and expand normally.
What they're saying is that hatch first is superior to pool first vs 2-rax builds not that without it the game is literally impossible if you go pool first. Pool/gas first used to be mandatory simply because of the possibility of 10 rax/reaper + bunker rush which = dead 14 hatch, so there was no alternative.
Ok, this post gives a lot of clarity to Ret's quote. So, if people say "go pool first to counter 2-rax all-in", then they are completely wrong? Ret is not saying that pool first is not viable; rather, if your intention is to counter the 2-rax, then it is better to hatch first. In JulyZerg's case, if Ret and Idra's experiment is correct, his pool first opening is inferior to hatch first against a 2-rax opening. However, JulyZerg's probably uses his opening because it suits his style better.
I thus want to focus on the 2nd part of Ret's statement:
not to mention you have to blindly make ~20 lings in that case so if terran just stops after 5 mariens and puts down a CC you are economically fucked
I feel the next phase of the TvZ matchup map explore this. Is it viable for the zerg to play safe blindly (e.g. pop down spines, make lings)? Would this set them back too much? Or would this result in an equal footing in the mid and lategame?
On December 07 2010 18:22 Erectum wrote: Someone as tried 11 pool against 2 rax pressure ? At high level i mean.
Idra and Ret did spend quite a bit of time investigating all the responses to the 2-rax all-in and found that hatch first came up on top. I would guess the korean zergs have done the same thing and maybe this is why all of them seem to want to hatch first.
On December 07 2010 18:22 Erectum wrote: Someone as tried 11 pool against 2 rax pressure ? At high level i mean.
Idra and Ret did spend quite a bit of time investigating all the responses to the 2-rax all-in and found that hatch first came up on top. I would guess the korean zergs have done the same thing and maybe this is why all of them seem to want to hatch first.
I don't think so, koreans go hatch first without a spine crawler and they defend with drones and zerglings but Ret and Idra put a spine on the expansion and delay the queen. For them it's the safest build against 2 rax. So it isn't that obvious. I really think Koreans are greedy because hatch first give you a huge lead in the mid game because of the extra larva, that's why the terrans don't let them untouched and pressure/all-in.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
What's wrong with changing an opinion? Nobody's figured out this game yet. And people are quickly learning the ins and outs of the game, hence why they quickly change opinion
On December 07 2010 18:22 Erectum wrote: Someone as tried 11 pool against 2 rax pressure ? At high level i mean.
Idra and Ret did spend quite a bit of time investigating all the responses to the 2-rax all-in and found that hatch first came up on top. I would guess the korean zergs have done the same thing and maybe this is why all of them seem to want to hatch first.
I don't think so, koreans go hatch first without a spine crawler and they defend with drones and zerglings but Ret and Idra put a spine on the expansion and delay the queen. For them it's the safest build against 2 rax. So it isn't that obvious. I really think Koreans are greedy because hatch first give you a huge lead in the mid game because of the extra larva, that's why the terrans don't let them untouched and pressure/all-in.
The question is not how you follow up 14hatch, but rather if 14hatch is superior to any pool first/1 base builds...
As I said in another thread, the pros are not perfect in any way. But when you combine the knowledge and skill of nestea, fruitdealer, idra, ret, haypro and their terran practice partners I am sure they would come up with more competent builds than the average tl.net user...
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
Hatch first give you a strong lead in the mid-game if you are untouched, that's why terran hard pressure early and force a ton of zergling and maybe a spine, but when you don't go hatch first they can deal with it in the mid game just with pure macro and expand normally.
Yep, the speedling opening that was standard for like 5 months is still completely strong and viable. Back then Terran could even BBS, I don't buy that SBB is harder to stop than BBS.
Well, an admin closed my thread without even saying anything. Except a link to this thread. And this is something completely different. I am going to paste my previous post here, because I believe the admin says that this thread is the same as mine?
I want to discuss something that I already said a million times already in all the live report threads: an INBASE hatchery. I am a Zerg player myself and I frown upon the stupidity of going 15 hatch on every map every time against Terran. When did TL and progamers decided that putting your first hatchery on your natural was the way Blizzard intended for Zerg to play this game?
I have read the comments of Ret in the live report treads about not being able to keep up with a 2 baracks mass marine + scv push on a 1 base. Thus, he claimed that 15 hatchery was the only way to go. But the math has been done, in multiple threads, that it isn’t that bad to go an inbase hatchery. I have done it myself against and the results are positive: Mineralwise there is an acceptable loss, you can saturate your main very fast and the 100% certainty of Terran allin when you hatch on your natural makes it not that bad than you think. If you time 2 larvae rounds when you put your first expansion correctly and transfer 6 drones, you can INSTANTLY mine your natural for 80% (16 drones). But the mineralstory is the downside. There is also an upside, and I believe that the advantage does outplay the disadvantages of this build. One big advantage is diversity. Easy example, with putting that 15 hatch in your base you could get a fast extractor, skip you initial queen, get lair with your first 100 gas. This means you get lair when your pool finishes! And I know this is a gimmicky build. But it could be a build Z could use as the meta game changes. There are pressure builds as well coming from this inbase hatchery, like an insane timed roach push. I did this a couple times on scrap station and it works like a charm. You aren’t even vulnerable to banshees/void rays because you have a compact base with 2 queens anyway (if scouted you can make 2 more).
And like I said, and you should remember this: - The mineral loss is ACCEPTABLE. - This game was not designed to 15 hatchery every freaking game.
Also, getting bunkers on the bottom of your ramp is not that bad, because you can skip mass zerglings and tech to roach.
Could Ret, Idra or someone who did intensive practicing on the early TvZ comment why there can't be an inbase hatch??
I play zerg at around 2000 diamond, and I've found that the 11 overpool provides a lot of flexibility in holding off marines pushes/all ins. Just stopping the push is usually enough to win the game, as most terrans haven't thought much past the mass marine stage. The really scary play stems from the followups to marine pressure, taking advantage of the zerg scramble to defend against the marines to prepare a banshee followup or something along those lines. I've been trying out a third in-base hatch for extra larva production to allow me to pump lings and enough drones to keep up, and it works in some games. The idea is really to spend as little gas as possible. If you can fend off the marines with lings/crawlers without suiciding huge number of banelings you can sometimes make it to midgame.
i'm recommending trying out hatch first super fast roaches. The problem is if he uses a lot of scvs the T might be able to kill it before roaches could hatch but 3-4 roach and 1 queen does really well. I havent seen it at progamer level yet, but it works for me fairly often.
Could Ret, Idra or someone who did intensive practicing on the early TvZ comment why there can't be an ingame hatch??
Let's hope Ret posts and explains, Idra and like everybody else who's good are not posting on the strat forum since beta, respect for the exceptions
On December 07 2010 19:13 pwadoc wrote: I play zerg at around 2000 diamond, and I've found that the 11 overpool provides a lot of flexibility in holding off marines pushes/all ins. Just stopping the push is usually enough to win the game, as most terrans haven't thought much past the mass marine stage. The really scary play stems from the followups to marine pressure, taking advantage of the zerg scramble to defend against the marines to prepare a banshee followup or something along those lines. I've been trying out a third in-base hatch for extra larva production to allow me to pump lings and enough drones to keep up, and it works in some games. The idea is really to spend as little gas as possible. If you can fend off the marines with lings/crawlers without suiciding huge number of banelings you can sometimes make it to midgame.
I think following up 2 rax marine pressure improperly by the terran player might be a problem of either the quality of the individual terran player, or of the strategy against zerg being new enough still for many players to simply not have enough experience yet to make the best choice there. Ret, Idra and the korean players face better terrans though who have studied their opening quite well and so are ahead of our learning curve.
However, since I only off-race as zerg I used to opt for a supposedly very safe build against early rushes and so have used the Overpool almost exclusively. And from what my own limited experience is worth, I have to agree with Ret's evaluation. I had no trouble fending off initial waves, but my economy suffered quite a bit. Whenever my opponent took advantage of that, I lost the game. Switching over to hatch first, fending off early pressure is much harder, but if I manage to do that, then I'm usually well positioned for the mid-game. Good thing we get to downvote maps on ladder - when I saw GSL 3 disallowing that, I already expected a worse result for the zerg race even though they were the most numerous race to qualify.
On December 07 2010 19:34 MapleLeafSirup wrote: Sometimes solutions take months or even years to find.
How long did it take for hundreds of BW protoss progamers and skilled amateurs in korea to find out that the bisu build is quite effective vs zerg ?
Give it some time and don't give up
the ever present, very bad argument, posted by hundrerds of people. Yes it took many years, years in which the progaming scene was in its early days and there weren't 400 progamers and semi pros who were constantly playing, on scene almost on daily bases for tens of thousands of dollars, but some pros (for whom BW was the first rts)playing once or twice a week live on different maps, no VODs and barely any forums, and low prices. Then it took more time. in sc2 it's 100X faster because of all the forums, VODs, tones of released reps, rts veterans, teamhouses and whatnot + SC2 being less complicated in a way. So NO, waiting a couple years and seeing how it turns out then is not an option. If something does not get solved in a couple of months chances are it wont ever be,
dont know why you guys are calling ret a whiner hes just stating that hatch first is better than pool first against 2 rax pressure. just to clear up noob confusion.
also, steppes of war is so freaking imbalanced its stupid. i dont know how in the fuck people stand for it in a tournament like this for thousands of dollars.
I want to hear a sollution from idra and ret. Marine nerf? Spinecrawler buff? I really don't know what blizzard can do about this. Make queen avaible without pool (= extra larvae early)?
On December 07 2010 17:40 LLuke wrote: Ret is right - You need the larva really desperately. Once the Zerg finde out how to counter the 2rax build, ie. how many spinecrawlers or lings or queens or whatever the real problem appears. You can't scout the terran. You have to gamble, because Terran can transition into 4rax as easily as into CC. I honestly don't know how the zerg will correctly react to that.
the good terrans such as marineking transition into cc AND 2 more raxxes for a 2barracks 2reactorbarracks stim/combat shield push
On December 07 2010 20:13 charlie420247 wrote: dont know why you guys are calling ret a whiner hes just stating that hatch first is better than pool first against 2 rax pressure. just to clear up noob confusion.
also, steppes of war is so freaking imbalanced its stupid. i dont know how in the fuck people stand for it in a tournament like this for thousands of dollars.
Because he says that it is the only solution against Terran all-in. If that is true, than the match up is broken. Nestea loses 3 out of 3 rushes AND Rain DIDNT bring scv's.
Now my question (and many others) is simply: "Why no inbase hatchery". I tested it. It works. On small maps. No auto-loss. But boohoo if you are on a small disadvantage (read my previous post). Cross positions on a big 4player map is favorable for zerg.
On December 07 2010 20:19 Dente wrote: I want to hear a sollution from idra and ret. Marine nerf? Spinecrawler buff? I really don't know what blizzard can do about this. Make queen avaible without pool (= extra larvae early)?
On December 07 2010 20:19 Dente wrote: I want to hear a sollution from idra and ret. Marine nerf? Spinecrawler buff? I really don't know what blizzard can do about this. Make queen avaible without pool (= extra larvae early)?
Speaking about Ret's quotes, there is another one, not relevant to early but to late game
On December 06 2010 21:38 Liquid`Ret wrote: at the same time, zerg late game when going untouched seems OP on the other end (vs terran at least), and it seems incredibly hard to fix both these things lol
The problem of TvZ isn't only about Zerg's hard early game but about their too strong late game aswell, even Ret admits it.
So remember that when posting things like "nerf marines!".
I haven't been able to try it because finals, but has anyone tried like 13 pool, 14 hatch or 15 pool, 14 hatch with no gas against the all ins? I feel like on the maps with smaller openings to naturals, with those builds, spines will stop it easily and on the wider open natural maps, a spine or two with a bunch of lings, which you'll have larva for with the quicker 2nd hatch due to no gas, will hold it off. Also since pool is first, you will have lings to hold off initial marine pressure giving your hatch/spines time to finish. I mean sure spines are expensive, but they're so strong against marines that I feel they're the only answer.
As I said before, it seems like the game a little bit broken with races having massive power switches in different parts of the game, due to be balanced for small maps.
i'm actually diamond 2400 and when going speed before expansion i'm totally safe.. july must know what he is doing, he looked very safe and confident in all his games..
On December 07 2010 18:22 Erectum wrote: Someone as tried 11 pool against 2 rax pressure ? At high level i mean.
Idra and Ret did spend quite a bit of time investigating all the responses to the 2-rax all-in and found that hatch first came up on top. I would guess the korean zergs have done the same thing and maybe this is why all of them seem to want to hatch first.
I don't think so, koreans go hatch first without a spine crawler and they defend with drones and zerglings but Ret and Idra put a spine on the expansion and delay the queen. For them it's the safest build against 2 rax. So it isn't that obvious. I really think Koreans are greedy because hatch first give you a huge lead in the mid game because of the extra larva, that's why the terrans don't let them untouched and pressure/all-in.
The question is not how you follow up 14hatch, but rather if 14hatch is superior to any pool first/1 base builds...
As I said in another thread, the pros are not perfect in any way. But when you combine the knowledge and skill of nestea, fruitdealer, idra, ret, haypro and their terran practice partners I am sure they would come up with more competent builds than the average tl.net user...
If you can micro perfectly and fend off all early agressions from a 2 rax opener every single game then there is no debate 14 hatch is the way to go, but the game with Nestea prove that one miss micro and you are done. So i don't know what progamers think about that. Do they want to take the risk to lose games like that?
For me, it's way easier to defend a 2 rax opener (without all in scv) with pool first and it doesn't require perfect micro, when speedling is done, i feel safe because i have the control map and i can react in time to what my opponent is doing.
they might be exaggerating (considering they all play Z we can be sure they are alteast partialy biased), like it was with mech IMBA, unstoppable etc and few days later somebody bumps old thread about "magic box" and suddenly mutas rape thors.
On December 07 2010 18:22 Erectum wrote: Someone as tried 11 pool against 2 rax pressure ? At high level i mean.
Idra and Ret did spend quite a bit of time investigating all the responses to the 2-rax all-in and found that hatch first came up on top. I would guess the korean zergs have done the same thing and maybe this is why all of them seem to want to hatch first.
I don't think so, koreans go hatch first without a spine crawler and they defend with drones and zerglings but Ret and Idra put a spine on the expansion and delay the queen. For them it's the safest build against 2 rax. So it isn't that obvious. I really think Koreans are greedy because hatch first give you a huge lead in the mid game because of the extra larva, that's why the terrans don't let them untouched and pressure/all-in.
The question is not how you follow up 14hatch, but rather if 14hatch is superior to any pool first/1 base builds...
As I said in another thread, the pros are not perfect in any way. But when you combine the knowledge and skill of nestea, fruitdealer, idra, ret, haypro and their terran practice partners I am sure they would come up with more competent builds than the average tl.net user...
If you can micro perfectly and fend off all early agressions from a 2 rax opener every single game then there is no debate 14 hatch is the way to go, but the game with Nestea prove that one miss micro and you are done. So i don't know what progamers think about that. Did they want to take the risk to lose games like that?
For me, it's way easier to defend a 2 rax opener (without all in scv) with pool first and it didn't require perfect micro, when speedling is done, i feel safe because i have the control map and i can react in time to what my opponent is doing.
The way NesTea lost set 5 was just embarrassing - all he had to do was send ~5-6 drones when the spine was at like 30% health and he easily would've taken down the bunker, saved the hatch, and gone on to the macro game.
Personally, I find the micro at my level (~2.1k diamond) is not that good, and I find the bunker rushes generally pretty easy to hold off. The thing we have to remember though, is the pros playing in the GSL have INSANE micro (ahem, MarineKing), and that makes this rush way more dangerous than us 2k diamond scrubs truly realize.
I personally prefer 15 pool, 17 or 18 hatch, spine crawler at 19 in main as soon as pool finishes, moving it down to the expansion as soon as it finishes. I would have to look up the exact timings but its quite good against cheese imo. like: 15 pool 18 hatch 17 ovi 17 gas 16 queen 18 lings 19 crawler
and if you scout cheese you could even start the crawler before queen.
On December 07 2010 19:46 lim1017 wrote: I know everyone will probably ignore this but
Zergs can afford to come out slightly behind due to how their production works..
if you're behind, you're behind. That's all there is to it. It doesn't matter how production works if there's no economy. or in the case of 1 hatch, not enough production capability.
Lots of these zerg problems with all-ins are just map issue's imo. I think the next 2 maps to be cut from the pool will be steppes and blistering sands (1 too small the other too big of a backdoor) and will be replaced with something more closely to xel naga (the best map imo).
The entire problem imo with allins vs zerg atm is that the response time at some maps between your natural and the terran base is too short, at maps like xel naga etc. you can produce 1 set of lings of lings and a few spines when you scout T moving out. At steppes and close position meta/LT you can't do this if you defend your expo. That makes the maps too hard for Z. As it is ZvT is too map dependant imo, large distances favor Z too much (like idra sais meta is 2/3rd free win and 1/3rd free loss) and short distances favor T too much.
The solution imo is simply to nerf Z very slightly in the lategame vs T (for example very slight baneling nerf or very small tank buff) and simply remove the ultra short positions from the map pool. For example i'd REALLY like steppes (and blistering sands) to be removed and meta + LT be changed to the shakuras spawn system, ie. you can't spawn close.
Also I think i agree with ret that hatch first is actually the superior way to beat 2 rax then 14 pool is. It gives you that extra larvae from the hatch gradually instead of the full first inject in 1 go and more importantly lets the creep spread start faster which makes it much easier to micro well AND keep bunkers at bay.
inbase hatchery only means you get contained, Terran builds 2 bunkers at the bottom of the rank, tech up, expand can do whatever without fear. They have so many options including, 4 rax, expand, banshee, and the zerg has no way to scout unless they managed to get an OL down the map. You can't prepare to counter a 4rax AND a banshee rush at the same time as they require totally different responses.
Remember what I always hear, "Zerg always wants to be 1 base ahead", well at the start of the game both are on 1 base, so of course the zerg wants to expand to be 1 base ahead.
I think the SCV+marine all in is definitely defendable, so many people are forgetting the BitbyBitPrime vs Fruitdealer games.
On December 07 2010 23:32 Leviwtf wrote: I think the SCV+marine all in is definitely defendable, so many people are forgetting the BitbyBitPrime vs Fruitdealer games.
BitbyBit botched every single rush in one way or another.
Give drones the ability to morph into a creep tumor off creep (without the ability to spawn extra tumors). Suddenly you can place spines earlier in useful positions and deny ramp blocking bunkers. Problem solved.
At the same time increase hatch cost/time and decrease pool cost. 14 hatch shouldn't be the safest and economically most focused build at the same time.
On December 08 2010 00:54 Thrombozyt wrote: Give drones the ability to morph into a creep tumor off creep (without the ability to spawn extra tumors). Suddenly you can place spines earlier in useful positions and deny ramp blocking bunkers. Problem solved.
At the same time increase hatch cost/time and decrease pool cost. 14 hatch shouldn't be the safest and economically most focused build at the same time.
always nice to have people give completely retarded suggestions... drone being able to morph into a creep tumor off creep?? Z would be able to block command center / nexus all the time then and it would take detection for P/T to deal with it. Also massive spine defense into using spines offensively would be WAY too easy then... If you post a suggestion by completely changing the game at least think it through a bit..
On December 08 2010 01:03 Markwerf wrote: always nice to have people give completely retarded suggestions...
Here's mine:
Remove the Spawning Pool restriction to build Queen, allowing some openings such as Queen>Pool or Queen>Hatch.
The fact that ZvT games are decided in 4minutes show that the early game options are broken, not the metagame. They need to help zerg's early game, and early game only. This change is exactly that: it won't change mid-late game in any way while giving Zerg a chance to actually get there.
It's not like people are going to Queen cheese, and the early larvas are a requirement not a bonus.
Zerg is pigeon-holed in "FE or die". Allowing faster queens wouldn't change much to this, but it would make it go more smoothly.
Alternatively, they could give the queen's ground attack a longer range and bonus dmg vs light. But that would be a lazy band-aid change IMO.
I don't think this is a zerg problem, I think it is a terran problem. None of this happens against protoss. They can apply pressure and their units are good, but it doesn't cause the problem we see here. Anything you do to shore up early game zerg is going to throw them out of whack in the late game.
Mules are most powerful right after the OC is built, that is when the mule powers the greatest percentage of their economy, and it allows them to use workers in combat with the least detriment of all the races. This stuff starts happening is right at the beginning of the game right when the orbital is strongest.
What is the fix for this? I don't know but I wish mule would just be gone or something because it is screwing up the delicate economy balance in this game. Maybe mule could have a different building requirement or a longer build time so that terrans would have a tougher decision on whether or not to get it immediately or wait for some time.
Any good Z I talked to agrees with 14 Hatch being by the best opening atm against 2 Rax Marines. I myself (2,9k Diamond) have been preaching it for days on different forums, but there are still plenty of terrans with their "lol its risky it should die! play pool first DERP DERP" shenanigans confusing and derailing any debate about the build because they don't know what they're talking about.
Speedling first may be the traditional "safe" build, but it suffers from a severe lack of larva against the gods of war that are marines early on. The beauty of 2 Rax Marine ist the uncertainty about what and when the followup attack will come since it can basically be anytime the T feels confident. There's no dedicated timing that you could react to - and producing drones/lings at the same time (the thing you'd need to do) just throws you farther behind.
I'm not even sure if I'd agree on the notion that the first wave is harder to hold with a 14 Hatch (beside plain silly maps like SoW or DQ close spawns), but I'm absolutly confident that it's extremly much harder to fight of the following waves using only one base.
11 overpool is the better imo. ive been playing with it basically every game and i find that it is way safer and almost just as economical... 14 hatch bypasses it past the 4 minute mark but for the safety it provides, thats nothing.
On December 07 2010 18:03 aebriol wrote: I just don't believe this to be true. Another post has shown that 11 overpool is better for economy than any other build. It would also get you spinecrawler earlier - which can be moved afterwards.
Personally I think that 14 gas, 14 pool, speedling into baneling (bust if bustable - and that hits right before hellions can be out with 2 rax opening, and beats marines off 2 rax) is the correct counter to this non-stimmed, non-upgraded, marinepush with SCV's.
One thing is if you don't know it's coming (the push) - then it's almost an all-in gamble (even though you can recover, well, you can't really unless you do serious damage with it), but in the final match, everyone knew it was coming, including, I am sure, the players.
Bolded is false. It's not even the most economic pool first build. Simply the earliest pool you can get that wont absolutely destroy your economy.
On December 07 2010 18:07 Samhax wrote: Ret and Idra are really biased, it's not even funny. We played months (I'm a zerg, in case) without hatch first, now they are saying without hatch first you can't play zerg? Sorry but i don't buy it.
Hatch first give you a strong lead in the mid-game if you are untouched, that's why terran hard pressure early and force a ton of zergling and maybe a spine, but when you don't go hatch first they can deal with it in the mid game just with pure macro and expand normally.
What they're saying is that hatch first is superior to pool first vs 2-rax builds not that without it the game is literally impossible if you go pool first. Pool/gas first used to be mandatory simply because of the possibility of 10 rax/reaper + bunker rush which = dead 14 hatch, so there was no alternative.
Ok, this post gives a lot of clarity to Ret's quote. So, if people say "go pool first to counter 2-rax all-in", then they are completely wrong? Ret is not saying that pool first is not viable; rather, if your intention is to counter the 2-rax, then it is better to hatch first. In JulyZerg's case, if Ret and Idra's experiment is correct, his pool first opening is inferior to hatch first against a 2-rax opening. However, JulyZerg's probably uses his opening because it suits his style better.
I thus want to focus on the 2nd part of Ret's statement:
not to mention you have to blindly make ~20 lings in that case so if terran just stops after 5 mariens and puts down a CC you are economically fucked
I feel the next phase of the TvZ matchup map explore this. Is it viable for the zerg to play safe blindly (e.g. pop down spines, make lings)? Would this set them back too much? Or would this result in an equal footing in the mid and lategame?
Do it in a game. Zerg would fall very far behind in worker count with no expo and the next pressure wave will be able to destroy you.
Because terran and protoss can produce both workers AND an army at the same time in rounds, they have an advantage early game where zerg really has to just drone hard to keep up in worker count until a certain point where zerg leap frogs them. So the earlier you put pressure on a zerg, as long as you keep making workers you will get a commanding economic lead over them. Then the zerg holds off your attack and you are ahead 24 to 14 workers, the zerg still can not drone up because your standing army will still be much larger than his unless he continues to use his larvae on an army, and if he uses his larvae on an army, then he loses because your economy is so much better than his.
This is why the basic principle of zerg is do not make an army until you have to.
On December 07 2010 20:19 Dente wrote: I want to hear a sollution from idra and ret. Marine nerf? Spinecrawler buff? I really don't know what blizzard can do about this. Make queen avaible without pool (= extra larvae early)?
Spine crawler build time would be the only thing that wouldn't entirely change the race. And the build time makes no sense to me anyway. Spine crawlers take 50 seconds to complete, photon cannons take 40 and they shoot up and down, bunkers take 35, spore crawlers 30, missile turrets 25. I think the build time on spine crawlers should get 5 or 10 seconds shaved off. They take way to fucking long to build.
And the root time is an hour.
On December 08 2010 03:19 ltortoise wrote: This thread confuses me.
I thought we already have a thread detailing that 11 pool, 18 hatch has superior larvae production to 15 hatch, 14 pool? Or is that thread a lie?
11pool/18hatch is becoming the new 7 roach rush. Everyone is spreading it everywhere claiming it is this amazing new build when in reality it is quite behind compared to 14hatch. You have larvae down time with 11pool, no creep at your natural, less drones and minerals, and you make it very easy for terran to stop your expansion. You do not get more larvae production.
11overpool is fine versus protoss and zerg but it doesnt have a place versus terrans (at least good ones.)
And if you are referring to the graph proving 11pool/18hatch has superior production, he is comparing it to 13 pool/15 hatch.
u ppl act like idra/artosis saying so means anything? come on they lose to anything and call imba terran or imba map.
its definitely not unstoppable, but i think the issu comes where u dont know if hes committing or expanding and then u have no idea on how to defend. so thre is an issue.
On December 08 2010 03:37 MorsCerta wrote: Spine crawler build time would be the only thing that wouldn't entirely change the race. And the build time makes no sense to me anyway. Spine crawlers take 50 seconds to complete, photon cannons take 40 and they shoot up and down, bunkers take 35, spore crawlers 30, missile turrets 25. I think the build time on spine crawlers should get 5 or 10 seconds shaved off. They take way to fucking long to build.
And the root time is an hour.
Spine Crawlers also have short range and low DPS when used to defend against marines.
1 spine crawler does roughly 18 dps, or the equivalent of 1 1/2 marines. For 3x the cost, that's a poor deal.
You also have 2 major vulnerabilities in Marine rushes. There's the hatch itself and your ramp toward your main. That means you have to spend 300 minerals in spine crawlers and you'll only ever have 1 of them attacking at any given time, sad to say, but I think buffing spine crawlers would do very little.
On December 08 2010 03:19 ltortoise wrote: This thread confuses me.
I thought we already have a thread detailing that 11 pool, 18 hatch has superior larvae production to 15 hatch, 14 pool? Or is that thread a lie?
11pool/18hatch is becoming the new 7 roach rush. Everyone is spreading it everywhere claiming it is this amazing new build when in reality it is quite behind compared to 14hatch. You have larvae down time with 11pool, no creep at your natural, less drones and minerals, and you make it very easy for terran to stop your expansion. You do not get more larvae production.
11overpool is fine versus protoss and zerg but it doesnt have a place versus terrans (at least good ones.)
And if you are referring to the graph proving 11pool/18hatch has superior production, he is comparing it to 13 pool/15 hatch.
See now I'm even more confused. Maybe you can set me straight.
You say you don't get more larvae production... Correct me if I'm wrong but with the 11 pool, 18 hatch build you get a much faster first queen, and therefore a much faster first inject. This implies to me that during a large window of time (from start to before the 15 hatch finishes), the 11 pool should be ahead on larvae due to having the queen out before hand.
Again correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems pretty straightforward to me.
Hatch first SHOULD die to early attacks. IMO, in the state that the Zerg is being played with the early pool openings into heavy eco, Hatch first (in my eyes) is nothing more than economic cheese that isn't very effective.
Early pool (10-12) with an expo (16-18) is ALWAYS going to be more flexible AND economic than a hatch first build because of the early queen, production capacity, ability to rush, eco, or tech at a moments notice. You're not locked into "Shit I made a hatch first build, I have to lay down 4 spine crawlers as soon as its done to survive."
What happens if they delay your hatch anyways?
Hasn't it been a more recent practice to build an engineering bay ASAP on the zerg expansion to block it? What then? You delay your hatch and pool. It then becomes a like 15-16 pool first build, which is drastically inferior to 11-12 pool builds.
You decide. Are the pros always right in everything?
I seriously doubt they've tried 11 pool 18 hatching AT ALL.
On December 08 2010 03:48 TLOBrian wrote: Hatch first SHOULD die to early attacks. IMO, in the state that the Zerg is being played with the early pool openings into heavy eco, Hatch first (in my eyes) is nothing more than economic cheese that isn't very effective.
Early pool (10-12) with an expo (16-18) is ALWAYS going to be more flexible AND economic than a hatch first build because of the early queen, production capacity, ability to rush, eco, or tech at a moments notice. You're not locked into "Shit I made a hatch first build, I have to lay down 4 spine crawlers as soon as its done to survive."
What happens if they delay your hatch anyways?
Hasn't it been a more recent practice to build an engineering bay ASAP on the zerg expansion to block it? What then? You delay your hatch and pool. It then becomes a like 15-16 pool first build, which is drastically inferior to 11-12 pool builds.
You decide. Are the pros always right in everything?
I seriously doubt they've tried 11 pool 18 hatching AT ALL.
First of all, I am sure the pros have tried it. Second of all, early pool is NOT more flexible AND economic. It is EITHER flexible OR economic. Really the only way it can be economic is if your opponent applies no pressure and you make nothing but drones and then a hatch.
this thread is full of wrong assumptions like the 11pool 18 hatch thread. the 11 pool/18 hatch is bullshit against any early aggression. PERIOD. - you are BEHIND until your first spawn larvae comes - you are even more BEHIND if you don't spend those larvae on drones - you probably won't hold the 18 hatch! - you have no creep at the ramp - you have fewer larvae at key timings stop spreading this false rumor that the build is any good against early pushes.
You decide. Are the pros always right in everything?
I seriously doubt they've tried 11 pool 18 hatching AT ALL.
i strongly believe that the pros have figured out any possible opening and that nestea as an example has practiced against the 2 rax push very often. yet he came to the conclussion 14 hatch is superior. don't you think these players actually KNOW what they are talking about AND can back it up with their intense training of the matchup? you on the other hand.... relying on a dumb thread full of false informations with questionable measurements for rating builds...
I'm not a Z player, so I'm probably completely off base, but what about an in base hatch before pool? You don't need your second hatch to be at you expansion until you're saturated. It gives you more larva to defend. I also understand that you usually need a macro hatch if you plan on going Muta Ling because lings are so larva intensive.
On December 08 2010 04:05 fleeze wrote: this thread is full of wrong assumptions like the 11pool 18 hatch thread. the 11 pool/18 hatch is bullshit against any early aggression. PERIOD. - you are BEHIND until your first spawn larvae comes - you are even more BEHIND if you don't spend those larvae on drones - you probably won't hold the 18 hatch! - you have no creep at the ramp - you have fewer larvae at key timings stop spreading this false rumor that the build is any good against early pushes.
You decide. Are the pros always right in everything?
I seriously doubt they've tried 11 pool 18 hatching AT ALL.
i strongly believe that the pros have figured out any possible opening and that nestea as an example has practiced against the 2 rax push very often. yet he came to the conclussion 14 hatch is superior. don't you think these players actually KNOW what they are talking about AND can back it up with their intense training of the matchup? you on the other hand.... relying on a dumb thread full of false informations with questionable measurements for rating builds...
Go read (note actually process the text and dont just spew more garbage from your mouth) Jdismoreglass' threads that do EXTENSIVE research on the 11 overpool build at many different key timings, and show that if it is behind a build in larvae count, minerals mined or drone count its only by a marginal amount. All of your points on the overpool build are unsupported and false. If you actually get down to it the timing on a properly executed 11 overpool the expo comes less than a minute later than on a 14 hatch. How can you say that you wont be able to defend the expo, when you can have a spine crawler already built, so that as soon as your expo pops you can go plop it down and you already have your second queen before the expo pops, so you actually have MORE larvae if you execute this propoerly. If you actually read the research of people who have spent countless hours testing this... (or go test it yourself) you will see this.
I agree with the fact that I seriously doubt they have tried this build, because up until a few weeks ago basically all builds with a pool before 13 were discarded as all in plays. Im almost certain that when Idra and Ret did their testing, they didnt even test any builds with a pool earlier than 13/14, because of preconceived notions (read. stubborness) that arise from their extensive understanding and mastery of the metagame.
So many cries of builds being overpowered. Idra is already complaining about how the new Protoss air build is OP. This is starting to get ridiculous just seems like zerg players constantly whining. Either that or they just whine the loudest.
A 14 hatch as compared to a 12 pool has one extra larvae at 3:45, and 2 extra larvae at 4:00, and is one larvae behind at 4:15.
Of course, Ret hasn't explicitly claimed that the 30 seconds from 3:45 to 4:15 are the key to the entire match -- I do agree that fleeze is rationalizing his preconceived beliefs, rather than making a fair estimation of what Ret claims or a fair judgment of reality.
Jdismoreglass' threads never tested realistic builds -- there was no test for going hard Zerglings before 5 minutes, or squeezing in Spine Crawlers or getting gas. The larvae advantage of a middle pool FE build vanishes if you can't keep up constant 2 hatch + 2 queen production -- something that will happen if you don't make 25 drones very early, or opt to spend a lot of money on things like getting quick Spine Crawlers along with Metabolic Boost.
I don't know if people can assume what ret/idra did and didn't do during testing, I have faith that they would try every build including 11 pool/etc.
I also would point out that not only are Idra/ret doing testing but almost every single Korean zerg is doing their own testing simply by playing on the ladder and they are almost all still going 14 hatch in the GSL. If there is one group of people I'd trust with figuring out how to survive cheese/all-ins it is the people who play on the Korean Ladder as it is ruthless.
That being said, I think if Blizzard were to change something I agree that decreasing the build time for spine crawler would be a good move. I see that making this marine/scv all in rush easier to hold off and not really "breaking" anything else.
On December 08 2010 04:30 Leviwtf wrote:That being said, I think if Blizzard were to change something I agree that decreasing the build time for spine crawler would be a good move. I see that making this marine/scv all in rush easier to hold off and not really "breaking" anything else.
Frankly, I'm currently under the impression that the only serious obstacle (other than experience) to holding off the Marine/SCV rush is that people are balking at making units "blindly" -- didn't one of the pros already mention that you could stop the rush if you started massing Zerglings before it started coming?
On December 08 2010 04:29 Hurkyl wrote: A 14 hatch as compared to a 12 pool has one extra larvae at 3:45, and 2 extra larvae at 4:00, and is one larvae behind at 4:15.
Of course, Ret hasn't explicitly claimed that the 30 seconds from 3:45 to 4:15 are the key to the entire match -- I do agree that fleeze is rationalizing his preconceived beliefs, rather than making a fair estimation of what Ret claims or a fair judgment of reality.
Jdismoreglass' threads never tested realistic builds -- there was no test for going hard Zerglings before 5 minutes, or squeezing in Spine Crawlers or getting gas. The larvae advantage of a middle pool FE build vanishes if you can't keep up constant 2 hatch + 2 queen production -- something that will happen if you don't make 25 drones very early, or opt to spend a lot of money on things like getting quick Spine Crawlers along with Metabolic Boost.
i'm just stating the FACTS that those 11 pool admirers love to ignore and the maker of the strat fails to answer. the 11 pool is actually a really bad build if you get pressured early on (because you want to make drones) and an 18 hatch is way too late as it is NOT completed when you opponent arrives at your door. also strongly agree on your second point as it's one of my main arguments.
Yeah getting the hatch one minute later is actually crucial - the marine/SCV rush comes really early, and you need that spine to be started before they get there or you're probably fucked. Literally a 10 sec decrease to the build time of a spine would probably completely fix this rush.
Even look at NesTea, who lost yesterday to bunker rushes - set 5 could have been held EASILY if he had pulled 5-6 drones to help the spine. I guess he underestimated the repair of the SCV (which is very significant).
On December 08 2010 04:29 Hurkyl wrote: A 14 hatch as compared to a 12 pool has one extra larvae at 3:45, and 2 extra larvae at 4:00, and is one larvae behind at 4:15.
Of course, Ret hasn't explicitly claimed that the 30 seconds from 3:45 to 4:15 are the key to the entire match -- I do agree that fleeze is rationalizing his preconceived beliefs, rather than making a fair estimation of what Ret claims or a fair judgment of reality.
Jdismoreglass' threads never tested realistic builds -- there was no test for going hard Zerglings before 5 minutes, or squeezing in Spine Crawlers or getting gas. The larvae advantage of a middle pool FE build vanishes if you can't keep up constant 2 hatch + 2 queen production -- something that will happen if you don't make 25 drones very early, or opt to spend a lot of money on things like getting quick Spine Crawlers along with Metabolic Boost.
i'm just stating the FACTS that those 11 pool admirers love to ignore and the maker of the strat fails to answer. the 11 pool is actually a really bad build if you get pressured early on (because you want to make drones) and an 18 hatch is way too late as it is NOT completed when you opponent arrives at your door. also strongly agree on your second point as it's one of my main arguments.
My second point? That you're rationalizing your preconceived beliefs?
Anyways, while you are stating facts, you are not stating all of the facts, which paints an incomplete -- and possibly misleading picture.
e.g. one of the things a middle pool build can do with its extra larvae with the Spawn Larvae is make the same number of Zerglings, but have an extra Drone or two. So while it loses its inherent Larvae advantage due to wasted capacity, it can recover it through an income advantage.
(Also, it can recover it from making extra Zerglings instead of the Drone in a situation where the Hatch first build would have to sacrifice many drones to survive a rush)
I do 11 overpool into speedlings. The queen comes out super early giving you a round of larvae to make lings/drones depending on scouting. If I see a 2 rax, I pump lings.
On December 08 2010 04:29 Hurkyl wrote: A 14 hatch as compared to a 12 pool has one extra larvae at 3:45, and 2 extra larvae at 4:00, and is one larvae behind at 4:15.
Of course, Ret hasn't explicitly claimed that the 30 seconds from 3:45 to 4:15 are the key to the entire match -- I do agree that fleeze is rationalizing his preconceived beliefs, rather than making a fair estimation of what Ret claims or a fair judgment of reality.
Jdismoreglass' threads never tested realistic builds -- there was no test for going hard Zerglings before 5 minutes, or squeezing in Spine Crawlers or getting gas. The larvae advantage of a middle pool FE build vanishes if you can't keep up constant 2 hatch + 2 queen production -- something that will happen if you don't make 25 drones very early, or opt to spend a lot of money on things like getting quick Spine Crawlers along with Metabolic Boost.
I think you are missing his point, that the tests he published are just based on being left completely alone and allowed to build only drones. It is just a shell, he isnt saying that you should only build drones, this the build order doesnt include things like lings or spine crawlers (non-eco related items) which you would only put down if your scouting tells you to. It is just a general shell that combines great economy with an early pool for potential defense. Another great thing about this build is it essentially removes the rock paper scissors element from ZvZ, and allows you to take it to a macro game versus ANY situation.He is purely testing the economic limitations of the builds, and showing that the 11 overpool is basically the same economy as a 14 hatch 15 pool but with more larvae earlier on.
The absolute only point that ive seen that makes sense against the 11 overpool is if the expo doesnt finish before the rush gets there, although also remember that a hatch can take a lot of abuse, so if you see the attack coming, and then build one larvae round of lings, your next larvae spawn of lings will probably be done before they kill your hatchery, and if you build a spine crawler so that its just ready to plop down when the expo finishes i feel like it should be no problem.
Also keep in mind, that when an opponent scouts your 11 pool, chances are they arent going to all-in rush you, and by the time you drop the 18 hatch if you feel the need you could make one pair of zerglings to deny their scouting.
I think the requirement to flip a coin balances the ability to make all units from the same structure. Everybody needs a better way to scout terran earlier tho.
Ugh, I was really excited for the discussion after reading the OP. But after reading most and skimming some, by the time I got to the last page I'm pretty disappointed overall. I used to wonder all the time why most of the pros never hung out and talked strategy in these threads (no not upcoming tourney builds, just general talk and balance). But the answer is getting more and more clear, that most of these threads are no place for intelligent conversation.
Far to many people just came in here to say "QQ zerg" for no apparently reason, other than to perhaps flex their intent of degrading this community. And others are posting responses as if they either did not even read the OP, or have a level of knowledge about the race and this specific matchup that has me questioning their motives for trying to even post in a strategy thread with anything other than a question.
Some, or to be less PC, basically THE best (english speaking) zergs in the world right now have spent an entire week working on every possible variation of this specific issue. For those who dont know what that means, using a standard-ish practice schedule its likely around 84 hours each, so a combined 168 hours on one specific matchup, and one specific play style. Its almost insulting to every person who has to read these posts when someone in their infinite sub 40 posts wisdom decides that its inconceivable they tried pool first. I mean really?
I guess ranting doesn't help much. But its just the arrogance, ignorance, or some combination of the two that comes across when people post some "definitive" criticism/answer like "loL idiots pool furst!" as if they just outplayed the pros and balanced the issue in the time it took them to register their TL forum account.
Obviously this whole thread isn't garbage. And there are some very well thought out posts from people who know far more than me and my limited <100 game zerg career. As well as people who seem to be legitimately trying to come up with solutions, who just don't end up grasping the entirety of situation, through no fault of their own lack of knowledge/experience. But honest effort is good! Like the idea to go straight macro hatch, yea you might have enough larva to hold off the initial pressure, but it will be scouted, marine production immediately cut into a ultra fast CC resting safely behind free bunkers. Which will turn into an even stronger all-in on a slightly adjusted time-table ( or just a gigantic ECO lead depending on what the map/situation favors ). So you more or less are just burying a drone and throwing a 300 mineral tombstone on top of it, in terms of effectiveness.
I'm also not saying, well the pros couldn't figure it out, so lets throw our hands up in the air and shelve the game until the next patch. I always encourage the mindset that these issues are challenges to overcome, and a solution exists within the means given. (Although the rational part of me is starting to doubt it in this case). A lot of really bright people have done a lot of amazing tests and number crunching, so please take the time to read through it, do tests of your own, or even ask some good questions to point them in new directions if your not a mathy person.
These are the problems as far as I can see it so far, for those those who don't see the issue. Also a note, this and the above is with steppes of war in mind, obviously the grim nature of this varies or becomes almost not an issue on some maps and spawn locations. - In my opinion the skill it takes on each side to SCV all-in and hold it off as zerg varies between infinite and very lopsided. Even if its stoppable this is a real balance concern. - The rush requires almost no investment and can be followed through, delayed, or abandoned almost flawlessly from a high level player depending on how the zerg is defending. - The mule can artificially create an economy long enough to sustain a follow-up game ending all-in as long as at least modest damage is done. - Its anywhere from very to completely unscoutable. And can be changed into a FE so efficiently that saying its a coinflip to defend/get ahead is generous. - Its not just about holding off the force, its about its economical potential as well.
This really became longer and more of a rant then I intended, almost could have been its own thread but its going here. I just started typing and 2 min later it was a page. Part of the frustration I think stems from the recent GSL series, in which I feel far more talented players had games basically stolen from them. So when I see the flaming from people who don't even comprehend the situation in discussion/strategy threads its upsetting. And id really like to see what kind of solutions can be reached when the dedicated posters here don't have to spend half their time defending established concepts and dealing with flame-derailments.
Its entirely possible some information I've presented here isnt 100% accurate or im missing things based on my limited zerg play. But these are the trends im noticing =P
Seems like 6 pool would be a better option than 14 hatch, at least use the short map to your advantage and its more of a gamble than straight up loss. This map is retarded though and ridiculously unfair for zerg, what is Blizzard thinking looking at this. What is GSL thinking forcing people to play on it. The map is pure garbage.
On the game with Nestea the terran is at his natural's ramp at about 3:50 so even if you 11 or 12 pool all you will have is slow lings and they won't be enough to hold off decently micro'd marines/scvs. Even if you bend over backwards to get enough units out in time all terran as to do is not attack and soar way ahead of you.
I don't think anyone meant 14 pool 15 hatch. They meant the 13 pool/18 hatch which has been shown many times to be economically similar.
I run the build all the time and you're 100% right that both 14hatch and 14 pool 15 hatch will leave you at a disadvantage. 13pool/18 hatch is safe against the 2-rax pressure.
its same versus toss, look the game in GSL ro8 jinro and Marineking CHoya make good pressure on game 1, he expand and 4 min after terran with just with one base with scv and mm push and win ... the same on delta with marineking vs MC, its terran problem not protoss or zerg
On December 08 2010 16:11 iEchoic wrote: I don't think anyone meant 14 pool 15 hatch. They meant the 13 pool/18 hatch which has been shown many times to be economically similar.
Someone on PlayXP disagrees. Here is a comparison they did between 14 hatch and 14 pool in Xel'Naga Caverns.
1. Hatch first
14 hatch after gas trick, build hatch at natural. Pool then gas at 15. 6 lings + queen, then make drones non-stop. Hatch finishes at 3:47, take off all drones off gas as soon as you gather 100 gas for ling speed
Results at 5:30 26 drones, 2 queens, 6 lings, 6 larvae, 35 seconds left in ling speed
2. Pool first
14 pool after gas trick, assuming that you build hatch after your initial lings Build drones non-stop after 6 lings, mine 100 gas then take off all drones Pool finishes at 3:01, build hatchery at natural 3:52 Ling speed finishes at 5:05 (i.e. ling speed finishes 60 seconds earlier than hatch first)
Results at 5:30 22 drones, 2 queens, hatch about to complete with 8 drones transferring, 5 larvae (including main and natural)
Summary
Ling speed finishes 60 seconds earlier with 4 less drones for pool first.
Assuming 4 warp gate finishes at 5:30 then you can see that it is difficult for 14 pool to fend it off (spine crawler takes 50 seconds to complete, and protoss will come in before 5:40)
people who keep talking about 'hatch first' really don't have a clue.. 2 rax constant marines dominates pool first so bad because there's only so few larve off 1 hatch untill after the first queen inject...the marines can just push you back non stop till that first inject finishes and you are in danger of being bunker blocked
alright but then why not go inbase hatch to stop the 2 rax? if the issue is larvae why not make a hatch inside your base that will be easier to defend?
However, I still have a problem with the in base hatch because getting that natural up asap is crucial to keeping up with terran and toss. 1 base zerg vs 1 base T or P is rough.
ALSO, if the terran does not see a fast hatch..most likely he is not going to marine scv rush you but take the econ advantage with more workers or FE...so yeah this sucks.
A honest question: Is building a hatch inside your main as opposed to your natural viable?
Secondly: I have the feeling that NesTea didn't treat the all-in appropriately in Game 5. He could have survived if he pulled more drones. Why are not more players doing this?
On December 08 2010 17:22 goto wrote: A honest question: Is building a hatch inside your main as opposed to your natural viable?
Secondly: I have the feeling that NesTea didn't treat the all-in appropriately in Game 5. He could have survived if he pulled more drones. Why are not more players doing this?
it's viable if the opponent commits to the scv/marine all in (much easier to defend). But if he just expands then your behind due to lack of hatch in natural.
this is what ive been telling ppl aswell when they say "u should stop 15hatch all the time cause terran can just stop it by 12rax14rax"
on top of what ret said theres big possibility u get contained in bunkers on bottom of the ramp when u 1base
On December 08 2010 16:11 iEchoic wrote: I don't think anyone meant 14 pool 15 hatch. They meant the 13 pool/18 hatch which has been shown many times to be economically similar.
I run the build all the time and you're 100% right that both 14hatch and 14 pool 15 hatch will leave you at a disadvantage. 13pool/18 hatch is safe against the 2-rax pressure.
On December 08 2010 17:22 goto wrote: A honest question: Is building a hatch inside your main as opposed to your natural viable?
Secondly: I have the feeling that NesTea didn't treat the all-in appropriately in Game 5. He could have survived if he pulled more drones. Why are not more players doing this?
You NEED to do hatch first at natural, otherwise you're economically behind.
You don't necessarily need to pull more drones; you just need to stall enough time for spine crawler to finish.
On December 08 2010 16:11 iEchoic wrote: I don't think anyone meant 14 pool 15 hatch. They meant the 13 pool/18 hatch which has been shown many times to be economically similar.
Someone on PlayXP disagrees. Here is a comparison they did between 14 hatch and 14 pool in Xel'Naga Caverns.
1. Hatch first
14 hatch after gas trick, build hatch at natural. Pool then gas at 15. 6 lings + queen, then make drones non-stop. Hatch finishes at 3:47, take off all drones off gas as soon as you gather 100 gas for ling speed
Results at 5:30 26 drones, 2 queens, 6 lings, 6 larvae, 35 seconds left in ling speed
2. Pool first
14 pool after gas trick, assuming that you build hatch after your initial lings Build drones non-stop after 6 lings, mine 100 gas then take off all drones Pool finishes at 3:01, build hatchery at natural 3:52 Ling speed finishes at 5:05 (i.e. ling speed finishes 60 seconds earlier than hatch first)
Results at 5:30 22 drones, 2 queens, hatch about to complete with 8 drones transferring, 5 larvae (including main and natural)
Summary
Ling speed finishes 60 seconds earlier with 4 less drones for pool first.
Assuming 4 warp gate finishes at 5:30 then you can see that it is difficult for 14 pool to fend it off (spine crawler takes 50 seconds to complete, and protoss will come in before 5:40)
To see the timing as to why FruitDealer was struggling against HongUn's 4 warp gate then losing to dark templars on Blistering Sands
Also, pool first builds vs T gives you lower larvae and drone count thus you're at a disadvantage later in the game.
Conclusion: hatch first is better than pool first for mid game after fending off 2 rax pressure.
Arguments like this is why people are so skeptical of the "proofs" that hatch first is better. You've only tested one pool first build, and you've heavily skewed things in favor of the hatch first by:
Doing a late pool
Doing a late FE
Building much earlier Zerglings
Taking a much earlier gas
Getting Metabolic Boost much earlier
EDIT: If you want to play with things yourself, a better comparison would be to something like 12 pool 16 gas 19-20 hatch 19 Metabolic Boost.
on top of what ret said theres big possibility u get contained in bunkers on bottom of the ramp when u 1base
@morrow
usually the bunker rush comes early before the hatch in the nat can creep the ramp. This is also when you have either a few or no lings, just drones to try to kill the scv making the bunker blockade. So going 2 base does not really help with the bunker blocking because the timing of the bunker rush is ahead of the pool and ahead of the FE hatch.
On December 08 2010 17:22 goto wrote: A honest question: Is building a hatch inside your main as opposed to your natural viable?
Secondly: I have the feeling that NesTea didn't treat the all-in appropriately in Game 5. He could have survived if he pulled more drones. Why are not more players doing this?
You NEED to do hatch first at natural, otherwise you're economically behind.
You don't necessarily need to pull more drones; you just need to stall enough time for spine crawler to finish.
You NEED to hatch first? No no I do not know how you came up with this logic. Yes, getting the hatch down asap is extremely helpful to get econ moving but it is not NEEDED to win. You can still win without going hatch first.
and situations call for different Build orders. What if the Toss or Terran is doing a proxy attack? What if your ramp is blocked...do you foolishly let that hatch build?
Lets use logic to address this issue:
Dealing with the Rush
In the early game your main will most likely not be saturated. So there is little bonus splitting your 16-17 workers in half and sending them off to a different hatch. So until you are about to become fully saturated, the bonus of an extra hatch is just extra larvae and creep. However, the queen can deal with this issue or you can use a safer IN base hatch.
The problem arises when Zerg becomes saturated and he does not have a expansion. Thus, timing an expansion a bit later on once the rush has been dealt with is viable. But most Zergs like having that fast expansion because the Zerg has the ability to simultaneously build drones allowing for faster saturation. This is why we put down the fast hatch to make the most out of the drones.
But like I said earlier, in the early game and rush phase there is little bonus of having workers mining in two different mineral lines because the total amount of workers would not even saturate one base.
A lot of you guys are making totally irrelevant answers which have nothing to do with the OP's quote. What he's saying is that 14 hatch is safer vs the 2-rax build compared to pool first builds because of the early creep spread.
On December 08 2010 18:02 justindab0mb wrote: A lot of you guys are making totally irrelevant answers which have nothing to do with the OP's quote. What he's saying is that 14 hatch is safer vs the 2-rax build compared to pool first builds because of the early creep spread.
The quote in the OP says nothing about the creep.
I also find it odd that the quote in the OP doesn't consider that 20 Zerglings can block the Terran from expanding if he only has 5 marines to guard it with.
Well sure, Z can still win without going hatch first if they're doing some cheesy 1 base build or willing to accept the fact that you'll be behind.
Proxying is not even good anymore after the supply depot/zealot nerf. A drone should already be on patrol if you think the opponent will block your ramp. If you let that happen then you would have to cancel the hatch at the last second unless you want to lose the 300 minerals. That is the price that you'll have to pay for making that mistake.
The reason Zerg needs to stay ahead one base is because they can't saturate all their bases. Otherwise Z just does not have enough larvae for their army. Also, the marines come way before the first larvae inject like ret stated.
On December 08 2010 18:13 Hurkyl wrote: I also find it odd that the quote in the OP doesn't consider that 20 Zerglings could kill 5 Marines + CC.
The marines would be behind the wall with the CC building in-base.
On December 08 2010 18:13 13ThirtySeven wrote: Well sure, Z can still win without going hatch first if they're doing some cheesy 1 base build or willing to accept the fact that you'll be behind.
In which sense do you mean "behind"?
Certainly making early units and delaying the expansion will be behind as compared to going hatch first and Droning for 5 minutes unpunished.
But it's another thing entirely to assert that you will be behind as compared to the Terran position.
On December 08 2010 18:13 13ThirtySeven wrote: Well sure, Z can still win without going hatch first if they're doing some cheesy 1 base build or willing to accept the fact that you'll be behind.
In which sense do you mean "behind"?
Certainly making early units and delaying the expansion will be behind as compared to going hatch first and Droning for 5 minutes unpunished.
But it's another thing entirely to assert that you will be behind as compared to the Terran position.
Behind as in you'll be behind economically in midgame. Also, a Zerg droning for five minutes is unrealistic when you're being pressured with 2 rax marines.
Like ret said, as soon as T spots the pool first then they will simply fall back and build a CC to get ahead of you.
You either have to accept to play with a disadvantage in midgame with pool first, or try to open hatch first and hope to start with an advantage after defending vs the early pressure. But the whole point that Ret makes is that it is impossible for Z to defend in short-rush distance maps such as Steppes of War.
On December 08 2010 17:22 goto wrote: A honest question: Is building a hatch inside your main as opposed to your natural viable?
Secondly: I have the feeling that NesTea didn't treat the all-in appropriately in Game 5. He could have survived if he pulled more drones. Why are not more players doing this?
it's viable if the opponent commits to the scv/marine all in (much easier to defend). But if he just expands then your behind due to lack of hatch in natural.
Another question: If he expands instead of committing to an all-in, can't you pressure him with your superior spawning ability (you have two hatches now) and expand to your natural while doing so? Or are you lacking the economy to do both?
Let me first say this, I feel like it is entirely possible to stop 2 rax allins, even when they send all their scvs, on most maps with 15 hatch opening. Exceptions are : LT close pos, Meta close pos, steppes of war.
So there is very little incentive for anyone to try different builds that give you less economy, and later creep to put a spine down at your natural base.
a speedling opening build is probably safer against a standard 2 rax on most maps, when the 2 rax is executed in standard fashion, however, when you are close position with the terran, the 2 rax constant marines reinforces so fast, combined with the fact that slow zerglings are easily outmicro'ed by marines, and that the speed upgrade takes FOREVER; makes me believe that even when you are close position with the terran your best bet is to hatch first, dance your drone/ling around, plant a spine, and defend that way. This is because of the various sets of follow-ups terran can do, which will require you to have some sort of economy to deal with. They can put down a CC; They can put down 4 rax; They can put down a factory and do some sort of weird marine hellion allin follow-up.
There are so many transitions for terrans and you wont be able to scout them; Vs 4 rax you ideally want banelings, vs 2 rax cc you want a lot of drones to be able to keep up in an economic game, vs hellion followups you ideally want some roaches, vs banshees you need a lair and a bunch of queens...
The problem is you can't scout, and on close position, the transition comes soooo fast, that unless you guess correctly there is almost no way to deal with it except getting lucky and guessing right. This becomes especially true when you opened speedling. You still have to send down 3 drones with your first set of lings to pretend being bunker walled off, then you can still get pushed back all the time by constant 2 rax reinforcements because it takes so long for speed to finish. By that time, terran couldve transitioned into any of the earlier mentioned units and if he's good, you will have no idea about which one. 15 pool speed hurts your economy so bad that the whole guessing thing becomes especially true with this opening, there is simply no way for you to have a roach warren, a lair, a bunch of queens, a baneling nest in time to deal with whatever terran can do to you. This is why I prefer hatch first; If your drone/ling micro is rock solid and your opponent makes a mistake; you might even end up ahead. Sometimes you end up even, and sometimes you end up behind. I prefer this as opposed to being behind and left guessing about what terran is doing in every single game because of my opening. Yeah, we lose some games to scv/marine allins, but it's acceptable for us, on these positions/maps that are horrible for zerg to begin with.
Imo maps with close position should be removed from the game. If terran is smart then zerg should rarely be able to win, and if they do then only cause they guessed right, whoop di doo. The reason IdrA won on steppes vs Mvp is cause MVP is so naive and thinks hes far superior to Idra and he placed a CC right under Idra's overlord and played completly standard. Idra didn't even have to guess, he knew what was coming a week b4 the series even started, and outplayed mvp in a standard game on steppes.
Instead of raging at many of the people with terran avatars in this thread I'll just say this- zerglings are extremely larva-expensive. To the point that if you're going heavy zerglings you not only need 1 queen per hatch, but you need more hatches than you have bases.
I also think meta/lt close po should be removed, and for steppes war i don't know because past the early game it's a very good map for zerg, the center is wide open i like it
I even believe on the quotes, but overall I don´t think there is a solution that won´t cause a profund mess.... I mean blizz have random guys to not be biased that test those stuff... they PROBABLY know what they are doing ... (or so I want to believe)
Let me first say this, I feel like it is entirely possible to stop 2 rax allins, even when they send all their scvs, on most maps with 15 hatch opening. Exceptions are : LT close pos, Meta close pos, steppes of war.
So there is very little incentive for anyone to try different builds that give you less economy, and later creep to put a spine down at your natural base.
Nice, and I can understand why the zergs all want to 15 hatch. I'm betting that their own internal testing (similar to Ret/Idra) has yielded the same results. This also means that with the exception of steppes of war, Nestea didn't defend completely correctly? I am also wondering why he didn't use the same defence as Idra did against mvp on steppes, considering that mvp and him are on the same team and would've discussed Idra's opening defence?
The problem is you can't scout, and on close position, the transition comes soooo fast, that unless you guess correctly there is almost no way to deal with it except getting lucky and guessing right.
Imo maps with close position should be removed from the game. If terran is smart then zerg should rarely be able to win, and if they do then only cause they guessed right, whoop di doo.
This perhaps is the solution then? Bigger maps (e.g. shakuras plateau). I can understand how idra lost of MVP in the third game; that attack came so fast he couldn't react in time (must've guessed wrong).
I'm also curious if the "Jinro-style" (i.e. quick 3rd base for springboard attacks) will catch-on amongst the Koreans.
2. why do zerg players refuse to make a second hatch in main? if terran goes 3 rax then he's already paid the same expense as an extra hatch. you don't need the income of 2 base untill about 6 minutes where you'll reach full saturation. if terran goes T1 rush then it's expected that zerg will struggle/lose if he's expanded and trying to power drones.
3. take fast expo and then drop a 3rd hatch, then attack the terran with 3 x hatchery worth of lings. he'd need a critical mass of marines or 4+ barracks to stand a chance. beat his all-in with an all-in of your own.
the whole point of a rush is to punish fast expo. if you could safely take your natural on 14 supply in every match then doesn't that completely destroy any possibility of very early aggression?
On December 07 2010 17:44 douggrz wrote: is 2nd hatch in the main not viable? spine crawler at the ramp?
I'm surprised this hasn't been addressed yet, as I am also wondering if hatch first in the main is viable. Is it too hard to secure a third hatch in the natural for this to be viable or what?
Second hatch in the main should also reduce the need for a fast queen since you will have greater creep spread, and you already have more larva.
I dont think hatch first is the problem, in fact I think it necessary for zerg to get the unit production they need. The problem lies in their drone greediness. ALOT of zergs drone pump like crazy, because they pretty much auto win if they manage to fully saturate their expo by 8 Mins. I just think zerg needs get a feel for drone vs Unit production, because right now they are used to greedy drone production. Eventually they will figure out the optimal economy and safe unit/drone production, and then these 2 rax marine builds wont be nearly as effective.
On top of that, I really dont think the problem is as bad as alot of people are making it out to be. Yes, the zergs got knocked out of this tournament by this strategy, but Zerg won the last 2 GSLs, and Foxer was using this strategy in GSL2 and yet a zerg still won. You cant expect them to win all the time. But then again, obviously ret is a more experienced and way stronger player than me. Thats just how i see it from a 3rd party perspective of watching tournies and GSL games and with my own ladder experience.
On December 09 2010 02:55 hoovehand wrote: 1. it's a map issue
2. why do zerg players refuse to make a second hatch in main? if terran goes 3 rax then he's already paid the same expense as an extra hatch. you don't need the income of 2 base untill about 6 minutes where you'll reach full saturation. if terran goes T1 rush then it's expected that zerg will struggle/lose if he's expanded and trying to power drones.
3. take fast expo and then drop a 3rd hatch, then attack the terran with 3 x hatchery worth of lings. he'd need a critical mass of marines or 4+ barracks to stand a chance. beat his all-in with an all-in of your own.
the whole point of a rush is to punish fast expo. if you could safely take your natural on 14 supply in every match then doesn't that completely destroy any possibility of very early aggression?
You can do 2, but in what situations is it going to be better? You 100% HAVE to defend your natural ramp otherwise he can bunker you in, expand, and win. So if you're defending your ramp and making a hatchery, why wouldn't you put it at the natural?
For 3 you can't support 2 hatcheries + 2 queens full zergling for a little while, if you make a 3rd hatch that time is even further out. You can ling all-in, but if he's walled off with rax you're not likely to get through (at best you contain him).
I found this to be quite effective on steppes. But I'm bad, so take that with a grain of salt.
If need be this is supplanted with a few zerglings too.
i may be wrong, but im pretty sure you literally cannot have all that by the time the rush gets to you? unless my understanding of the rine/scv all in isn't correct
I found this to be quite effective on steppes. But I'm bad, so take that with a grain of salt.
If need be this is supplanted with a few zerglings too.
You have an unnecessary evo chamber there. If you place 1 evo chamber touching the edge of the ramp, you can have the spine crawler tucked in right behind it completely walling the ramp off.
The only problem with that when talking about marine/SCV attacks is your creep won't be spread far enough to set that up.
I would also like your spine crawler on the right to be about 2 clicks more to the right, you're leaving yourself a tiny bit too open for people to run past and camp behind your mineral line.
If you need a picture I can upload one when I get home today.
On December 09 2010 03:19 vicariouscheese wrote: i may be wrong, but im pretty sure you literally cannot have all that by the time the rush gets to you? unless my understanding of the rine/scv all in isn't correct
As I said, I'm bad, which means my ladder opponents too. And I'm also random, which probably helps too.
But it's true, it won't be all there when the first marines arrive. Usually only 1-2 spines and a queen are ready, or are just about to be ready. The rest get built during the attack, which sometimes allows you to trap him.
On December 09 2010 02:55 hoovehand wrote: 2. why do zerg players refuse to make a second hatch in main? if terran goes 3 rax then he's already paid the same expense as an extra hatch. you don't need the income of 2 base untill about 6 minutes where you'll reach full saturation. if terran goes T1 rush then it's expected that zerg will struggle/lose if he's expanded and trying to power drones.
You can do 2, but in what situations is it going to be better? You 100% HAVE to defend your natural ramp otherwise he can bunker you in, expand, and win. So if you're defending your ramp and making a hatchery, why wouldn't you put it at the natural?
Maybe one should give 14 hatch first at ramp another shot .. the advantage is its defendability, you can place a spine poking from the cliff down, so it can't be attacked that easy. The queen can help defending, while still injecting larva (into ramp-hatch). This way a complete ramp block is impossible for the terran, cause the spine kills the bunker. In base hatch is at disadvantage once main gets saturated, however this is much later in the game, especially if you get rushed. You need an early third at nat as soon the rush is defended.
As a 2700+ zerg on the NA ladder, I believe hatch first builds to be best suited to defend early pressure and get to mid/late game without a severe economic disadvantage.
This is KNOWING that there is approximately 90% chance of 2rax before scout (lol @ FOTM), about 40-50% chance of a scv-marine timing attack all-in (when seeing the hatch first) and 10% chance they play standard.
The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try. The problem with this build is that you sacrifice early larvae to build that pool, even if you make it up "later", you will be way behind due to the lack of earlier economy.
The standard July-zerg opening is decent at defending the rush and you won't be *THAT* behind economically, assuming the terran doesn't pressure with first 2 marines + 4 scv's to bunker the bottom of your ramp. The terran will know the exact timing of zergling speed and can abandon his rush and go back to his base if he notices you made 8+ zerglings to stop his 2rax rush. If he does this correctly, I believe you will be behind economically no matter what you decide to do with your initial larvae (either by being bunkered in, or by making zerglings too early).
This *might* be the safest opening vs 14gas 14pool after 1.2 patch goes through, but I forsee taking your natural a problem due to the lack of creep spread and inability to properly scout the terrans build (4rax all-in or 2rax CC, etc). A 4 rax all-in will have too many marines to defend your building hatchery with pure zerglings and banelings. A roach opening will have too low econ to defend against 4rax marines.
Hatch first has been seen a billion times, and I would agree with ret / idra in saying this build is probably the current solution to a 2rax opener, unfortunately that just seems to be how the mechanics work out in ZvT atm.
On December 08 2010 21:27 Azzur wrote: I can understand how idra lost of MVP in the third game; that attack came so fast he couldn't react in time (must've guessed wrong).
After the initial pressure, the terran hat 19 scvs and i think idra hat 14 or 15 drones. At that point the game was basically already over, no matter what transition.
On December 08 2010 18:02 justindab0mb wrote: A lot of you guys are making totally irrelevant answers which have nothing to do with the OP's quote. What he's saying is that 14 hatch is safer vs the 2-rax build compared to pool first builds because of the early creep spread.
The quote in the OP says nothing about the creep.
I also find it odd that the quote in the OP doesn't consider that 20 Zerglings can block the Terran from expanding if he only has 5 marines to guard it with.
The terran doesn't need to lift his command center to his natural in order to gain a ridiculous lead against a 1-base zerg. All he needs to do is make it an orbital command and keep pumping some scv's for the time the zerg will put down a hatch while safely bunkering / building a wall against all-in play, then move scv's + orbital once he feels safe.
The zerg has to be 1 base ahead to stand a chance in a standard-game vs terran, for the most part.
On December 09 2010 02:55 hoovehand wrote: 1. it's a map issue
2. why do zerg players refuse to make a second hatch in main? if terran goes 3 rax then he's already paid the same expense as an extra hatch. you don't need the income of 2 base untill about 6 minutes where you'll reach full saturation. if terran goes T1 rush then it's expected that zerg will struggle/lose if he's expanded and trying to power drones.
3. take fast expo and then drop a 3rd hatch, then attack the terran with 3 x hatchery worth of lings. he'd need a critical mass of marines or 4+ barracks to stand a chance. beat his all-in with an all-in of your own.
the whole point of a rush is to punish fast expo. if you could safely take your natural on 14 supply in every match then doesn't that completely destroy any possibility of very early aggression?
You can do 2, but in what situations is it going to be better? You 100% HAVE to defend your natural ramp otherwise he can bunker you in, expand, and win. So if you're defending your ramp and making a hatchery, why wouldn't you put it at the natural?
For 3 you can't support 2 hatcheries + 2 queens full zergling for a little while, if you make a 3rd hatch that time is even further out. You can ling all-in, but if he's walled off with rax you're not likely to get through (at best you contain him).
the thing is, it's not an economic cock-up for zerg if you drop an extra hatch - because you can produce extra drones from it. from my experience if you're making drone/roach/ling you need an extra 0.5 hatcheries and queens per mining base in order to spend all minerals...
with 3 hatcheries in the early game you can make an insane number of lings without really hurting your drone count.
you can get to 100 supply in well under 10 minutes. regardless, the 'safe' way to play is to get the 3rd hatch in main before the marine scv all-in timing... therefore you can get more than enough units to deal with it.
if the scv marine all-in doesn't arrive, you can always go for a baneling bust, because any terran who's trying to expand on 5-6 minutes will have great difficulty with speedling/baneling pressure. unless they have hellions, in which case the mutalisk master plan is looking good.
On December 09 2010 02:55 hoovehand wrote: 1. it's a map issue
2. why do zerg players refuse to make a second hatch in main? if terran goes 3 rax then he's already paid the same expense as an extra hatch. you don't need the income of 2 base untill about 6 minutes where you'll reach full saturation. if terran goes T1 rush then it's expected that zerg will struggle/lose if he's expanded and trying to power drones.
3. take fast expo and then drop a 3rd hatch, then attack the terran with 3 x hatchery worth of lings. he'd need a critical mass of marines or 4+ barracks to stand a chance. beat his all-in with an all-in of your own.
the whole point of a rush is to punish fast expo. if you could safely take your natural on 14 supply in every match then doesn't that completely destroy any possibility of very early aggression?
The major thing you're ignoring is that the T can scout 2 hatch in-base and build a command center with bunkers and now you're already pretty far behind economically if you can't do serious damage with whatever lings you scrounge up. The other thing is that he can see you going for a hatchery and push you with a timing just as the 3rd hatch finishes but before you get an inject from it because you're still on 1 base economy.
A major part of the strength of the 2 rax before orbital build is that it's not required to be all-in and doesn't follow a specific pattern. Everyone envisions the marine/scv attack coming in, but often doesn't see the attacks when the marines either don't show up or show up later. I'm sure every high-end Zerg has played those games and knows they're often worse than dealing with the marine/scv rush. It's not like 4-gate, where if you build 4 gateways and then don't actually move out you're not doing so well.
Looking at the wins in the GSL, the heavy majority of Zergs went hatchery first, even if the opponent had shown a likelihood for 2rax all-ins before. So maybe there is something to it.
On the other hand, on all but one occasion (Jys vs NesTea game 2 in the Ro64), if the Zerg did go pool first against a 2rax all-in, the Zerg won handily.
My 2c on the subject is that Ret and Idra would have a better understanding of all this if they had some more aggressive builds in their arsenal.
Instead their opponents abuse the fact that they will start off building at least 14 drones 100% of the time. I think choosing pool or hatch first in this situation has very little ramification for the early game.
If they balanced their game by opening 10 pool (11 w/ extractor or whatever) and 14 hatch a certain % of the time, thelarge diversity in builds make the all ins become much less effective
On December 09 2010 03:34 trypt wrote:The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try. The problem with this build is that you sacrifice early larvae to build that pool, even if you make it up "later", you will be way behind due to the lack of earlier economy.
The pause in larvae can be eliminated entirely if you just 12 Pool instead.
I was under the impression that the 11 overpool was just a couple second pause in larvae. I haven't actually tried it myself since I expect there to be very little difference from a 12 Pool, which I settled on long ago as being much better than any late Pool first build, since I judge saving 13-16 seconds on the Pool outweighs the extra 25 minerals I might get by delaying the Pool.
The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try.
Yes, it has the publicity, but I still see a lot of people dismiss it out of hand, on the "common knowledge" that middle pools cannot possibly be good for anything but a rush.
Some of the comments regarding 2-rax have been along the lines of how very long it takes for the inject larvae to happen -- something that is a more significant problem of late pool builds. And Liquid`Ret's reply on this thread is comparing to a 15 Pool build.
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
I'm sure him in his handsome nerdiness knows more about sc than you do.
Now that the Zerg balance team of Ret and Idra have spoken... terran will finally have to have 2 supply depots to build a rax... its about time someone spoke up about this...
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
Yeah, he must know nothing. I wonder how he got to GSL RO64 knowing nothing.
On December 08 2010 20:17 Liquid`Ret wrote:There are so many transitions for terrans and you wont be able to scout them; Vs 4 rax you ideally want banelings, vs 2 rax cc you want a lot of drones to be able to keep up in an economic game, vs hellion followups you ideally want some roaches, vs banshees you need a lair and a bunch of queens...
The problem is you can't scout, and on close position, the transition comes soooo fast,
It still takes about 4 minutes between starting a Refinery and popping a Banshee.
You think an aggressive response to 2 rax CC is infeasible? It would be rather convenient if the same army that would defend you from 4 rax could also be used to quash an any attempt to move out to his natural -- or at least be able to cover you taking a third.
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
Yeah, he must know nothing. I wonder how he got to GSL RO64 knowing nothing.
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
Yeah, he must know nothing. I wonder how he got to GSL RO64 knowing nothing.
I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
Some of you are unbelievable... Ret, an actual professional, comes in here saying that he and Idra (another professional might I add) tested various builds and hatch first is the best. Then, you guys, who are not professionals, play against kids that couldn't make koreans dinner, and probably did no testing at all come in here and say that Ret is wrong and that YOU are right without any real evidence at all other that "what you're saying SEEMS wrong".
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
If a zerg stays on one hatchery, his production will fall behind of either terran or protoss, because both workers and units are from larvea, and the larvea spawn rate off 1 hatch just doesn't cut it against 3 rax or 4 gate early pressure.
What ret was saying in OP is that zerg NEED 2 hatch, and since you need to place down a hatch anyway, might as well place it in your natural as long as you are capable of defending it. I agree with ret that it's much easier to try to fend off very early pressure with lings and drones, than try to stay on 1 hatch and try to catch up with T or P later in the game.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
Pretty simple - zerg units are not cost effective, so you need more income to be able to win.
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
Yeah, he must know nothing. I wonder how he got to GSL RO64 knowing nothing.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
If a zerg stays on one hatchery, his production will fall behind of either terran or protoss, because both workers and units are from larvea, and the larvea spawn rate off 1 hatch just doesn't cut it against 3 rax or 4 gate early pressure.
What ret was saying in OP is that zerg NEED 2 hatch, and since you need to place down a hatch anyway, might as well place it in your natural as long as you are capable of defending it. I agree with ret that it's much easier to try to fend off very early pressure with lings and drones, than try to stay on 1 hatch and try to catch up with T or P later in the game.
Eventually zerg need 2 hatch yes, but a queen can provide enough larvae for the first like 6 minutes of the game (unless you are going kyrix style hyper zergling). Did blizzard design the game so that zerg would always be up an expansion on their opponent and if so, why is a third base so difficult to get on all the maps in the pool?
Idk, I kinda feel like the game is designed poorly if one race is completely Dependant on the map in order to get expansions. What if they upped the number of larvae on each base or on a queen. Protoss has to spend 750 minerals on gateways/cyber core on 1 base in order to produce for a 4 gate push, yet zerg only have to make a 200 mineral tech building and a 150 production thing (queen) in order to almost match the production capabilities of protoss or terran.
Does anyone else think that the whole system is designed wrong? I know that there should be imbalances in the game to make it interesting and to make each race unique, but why does the map imbalance seem to affect zerg more significantly than protoss or terran?
As for ret and idras quote, yeah i can see how 14 hatch can be considered the safest way of defending if you plan on expanding early, but is it always neccesary. Lately I've seen a lot of protoss do cannoning in of the zerg at the beginning of the game in order to prevent the zerg from expanding early, but this doesn't seem to stop them from staying even in production for most of the game.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
If a zerg stays on one hatchery, his production will fall behind of either terran or protoss, because both workers and units are from larvea, and the larvea spawn rate off 1 hatch just doesn't cut it against 3 rax or 4 gate early pressure.
What ret was saying in OP is that zerg NEED 2 hatch, and since you need to place down a hatch anyway, might as well place it in your natural as long as you are capable of defending it. I agree with ret that it's much easier to try to fend off very early pressure with lings and drones, than try to stay on 1 hatch and try to catch up with T or P later in the game.
Eventually zerg need 2 hatch yes, but a queen can provide enough larvae for the first like 6 minutes of the game (unless you are going kyrix style hyper zergling). Did blizzard design the game so that zerg would always be up an expansion on their opponent and if so, why is a third base so difficult to get on all the maps in the pool?
Idk, I kinda feel like the game is designed poorly if one race is completely Dependant on the map in order to get expansions. What if they upped the number of larvae on each base or on a queen. Protoss has to spend 750 minerals on gateways/cyber core on 1 base in order to produce for a 4 gate push, yet zerg only have to make a 200 mineral tech building and a 150 production thing (queen) in order to almost match the production capabilities of protoss or terran.
Does anyone else think that the whole system is designed wrong? I know that there should be imbalances in the game to make it interesting and to make each race unique, but why does the map imbalance seem to affect zerg more significantly than protoss or terran?
As for ret and idras quote, yeah i can see how 14 hatch can be considered the safest way of defending if you plan on expanding early, but is it always neccesary. Lately I've seen a lot of protoss do cannoning in of the zerg at the beginning of the game in order to prevent the zerg from expanding early, but this doesn't seem to stop them from staying even in production for most of the game.
It's not an issue of larva, its an issue of minerals and more importantly gas, which Zerg need to make their game winning units. Without gas and the extra income from an expo, zerg is utterly screwed come mid game.
And no this is not bad or wrong. Zerg are the SWARM, and they cannot SWARM if they have the same number bases as their enemies. Zerg is designed from the ground up to have more bases. Hatcheries are cheap, and needed for production of all units anyway. Zerg units are relatively weak with superior mobility (with the exception of the hydra), and Zerg has poor static defenses. Good mobility and poor static defense is built into the Zerg because they have so many bases. Terran on the other hand need the fewest bases, and thus have the most immobile army, and the best static defenses. This is how the game was designed.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
I think the problem with this thread is the people that are arguing against Ret are playing a different game. The casual game that 99% of us play is totally different than the one Ret is playing. In the low-skill games we're playing, we can make tons of mistakes and still win. Pros, however, don't have that luxury.
You guys say "I pool first all the time and I'm just fine". We're playing 1v1's against soccerfriend619, not against Foxer...
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
I'm pretty sure you are really drama queening that game up. First of all, why is Huk's main mined out and Catz' main has enough minerals left for you to call it a full base? And if that actually happened that doesn't mean Zerg is bad, it means Catz played horribly or there is more to the game than you are describing here. There's no way a one basing toss is beating a zerg with 3 bases, 2 of them being golds.... please. Unless you are hiding tons of details like catz never had more than 12 drones or was playing with his feet.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
1700 diamond. In the midgame, zerg can make mid game units like infestors, corrupters, mutalisks, and hydras. Collosus are a tier 3 unit that costs a buttload (to get and to upgrade). Did catz make any tier 3 units to counter or did he stick with tier 1 stuff? Why don't we see zerg rushing to tier 3 on 2 base? but protoss and terran can do it? I'm not questioning the logic of getting more expansions, i'm questioning the design and philosophy of zerg as a whole. If protoss goes 6 gate it will lose badly to a rush to broodlords, and if protoss goes collosus it will beat a zerg t1/1.5 army. Teching is risky but pays big rewards, but it seems like zerg refuse to tech until they have to, whereas protoss tech to gain an advantage. This might explain why i like watching TLO play zerg, he likes to tech a lot faster than players like ret or idra, and huk loves to switch up his strategies (sometimes cannon rush, sometimes 4 gate, sometimes 1 gate expand). Is zerg so pinned down to a tiny tech tree that they have become predictable the entire game or are they simply playing the game the way they want to, instead of the most optimal way?
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
I'm pretty sure you are really drama queening that game up. First of all, why is Huk's main mined out and Catz' main has enough minerals left for you to call it a full base? And if that actually happened that doesn't mean Zerg is bad, it means Catz played horribly or there is more to the game than you are describing here. There's no way a one basing toss is beating a zerg with 3 bases, 2 of them being golds.... please. Unless you are hiding tons of details like catz never had more than 12 drones or was playing with his feet.
Lol, Zerg always mine out the main slower than either Terran or protoss, but in this case, his main had fewer drones because he wanted his gold bases saturated first instead of his main, so he transferred the majority of his drones to his golds, which is the optimal thing to do. There is nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary about this game. Huk's defense was simply too cost efficient, he nearly lost like 100 times, but held on by the skin of his teeth until CatZ mined out his first gold, and simply couldn't keep up production after that. Huk took a 3rd, got a ball of collosus and CatZ lost his entire army taking out the collosus, leaving a ball of gateway units to clean up his expo's before he could re-inforce. Yes, CatZ was out-played, and a superior Zerg player like Idra most likely would have won that game in CatZ position, but CatZ is a top 200 Zerg, and I mention this game to demonstrate just how cost inefficient Zerg armies are, and the absolute requirement that Zerg have more bases. As soon as Catz had equal bases he was toast, and Huk's ball was simply too cost efficient. There is no point arguing that Zerg need more bases, its a simple fact.
On December 07 2010 17:08 TexSC wrote: It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time.".
Well would you rather have him never change his mind?
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
1700 diamond. In the midgame, zerg can make mid game units like infestors, corrupters, mutalisks, and hydras. Collosus are a tier 3 unit that costs a buttload (to get and to upgrade). Did catz make any tier 3 units to counter or did he stick with tier 1 stuff? Why don't we see zerg rushing to tier 3 on 2 base? but protoss and terran can do it? I'm not questioning the logic of getting more expansions, i'm questioning the design and philosophy of zerg as a whole. If protoss goes 6 gate it will lose badly to a rush to broodlords, and if protoss goes collosus it will beat a zerg t1/1.5 army. Teching is risky but pays big rewards, but it seems like zerg refuse to tech until they have to, whereas protoss tech to gain an advantage. This might explain why i like watching TLO play zerg, he likes to tech a lot faster than players like ret or idra, and huk loves to switch up his strategies (sometimes cannon rush, sometimes 4 gate, sometimes 1 gate expand). Is zerg so pinned down to a tiny tech tree that they have become predictable the entire game or are they simply playing the game the way they want to, instead of the most optimal way?
Are you serious? If you really are 1700 diamond, which I don't believe btw due to the nature of your questions, then you would understand that Zerg don't have wallin or defensive abilities like Terran or Protoss, and teching too much is VERY dangerous, and suicidal vs a good opponent. Besides, as I said, zerg needs the GAS of at least 3 bases, preferably 4 before they can afford to go T3. T3 on 2 bases is lol, as you'll have like 2 ultra's when then come in with a massive army and roflstomp you. There is a reason why Zergs expand all over the place, and its not just because they think its fun or something, they absolutely need to in order to stay in the game. Zerg are designed to be a SWARM dude, and that means many bases.
On December 09 2010 06:59 frogmelter wrote: If you didn't notice yet, Artosis doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Terrible caster. At least he's kinda funny though.
On December 09 2010 05:05 ExoD wrote:
Artosis never got into the GSL before...
I love how I write a huge post on the detriment and overall degrading of content flaming and uninformed moronic trolling has on these threads. And the very next page is full of things like these posts.
Maybe its just me being overtired from finals. But in my opinion a mod needs to sweep this thread hard with the ban hammer, because this stuff is just getting old.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
1700 diamond. In the midgame, zerg can make mid game units like infestors, corrupters, mutalisks, and hydras. Collosus are a tier 3 unit that costs a buttload (to get and to upgrade). Did catz make any tier 3 units to counter or did he stick with tier 1 stuff? Why don't we see zerg rushing to tier 3 on 2 base? but protoss and terran can do it? I'm not questioning the logic of getting more expansions, i'm questioning the design and philosophy of zerg as a whole. If protoss goes 6 gate it will lose badly to a rush to broodlords, and if protoss goes collosus it will beat a zerg t1/1.5 army. Teching is risky but pays big rewards, but it seems like zerg refuse to tech until they have to, whereas protoss tech to gain an advantage. This might explain why i like watching TLO play zerg, he likes to tech a lot faster than players like ret or idra, and huk loves to switch up his strategies (sometimes cannon rush, sometimes 4 gate, sometimes 1 gate expand). Is zerg so pinned down to a tiny tech tree that they have become predictable the entire game or are they simply playing the game the way they want to, instead of the most optimal way?
Are you serious? If you really are 1700 diamond, which I don't believe btw due to the nature of your questions, then you would understand that Zerg don't have wallin or defensive abilities like Terran or Protoss, and teching too much is VERY dangerous, and suicidal vs a good opponent. Besides, as I said, zerg needs the GAS of at least 3 bases, preferably 4 before they can afford to go T3. T3 on 2 bases is lol, as you'll have like 2 ultra's when then come in with a massive army and roflstomp you. There is a reason why Zergs expand all over the place, and its not just because they think its fun or something, they absolutely need to in order to stay in the game. Zerg are designed to be a SWARM dude, and that means many bases.
You're really over-simplifying things. Zerg has cost-efficient units. Speedlings are ridiculously efficient in small food battles in an open field. Nothing else comes close. Watch a replay where Z holds off a 4-gate with zerglings and look at the army values before the fight. Zerg might have a quarter of the army cost and will still win. Roaches CRUSH Protoss gateway units for cost, especially when they have attack upgrades. Hydras on creep laugh at anything that doesn't have AoE damage. Z's T3 is also very efficient unless the opponent skews their composition.
Zerg units are highly efficient, but they need to be used well. Zerglings suck in chokes. Roach/hydra sucks at busting a front. Zerg is designed to be very efficient defensively at T1 and T2, but inefficient offensively until they reach T3. This property allows Zerg to drone hard up till the last second before pumping out just enough units to hold, but also prevents Zerg from auto-winning with early pushes. Zerg can design a timing to have an unreasonably large army at any given point by going all-in at that timing. If zerglings, roaches or hydras were actually efficient offensively, Zerg would be unstoppable in the early game.
On December 09 2010 03:34 trypt wrote:The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try. The problem with this build is that you sacrifice early larvae to build that pool, even if you make it up "later", you will be way behind due to the lack of earlier economy.
The pause in larvae can be eliminated entirely if you just 12 Pool instead.
I was under the impression that the 11 overpool was just a couple second pause in larvae. I haven't actually tried it myself since I expect there to be very little difference from a 12 Pool, which I settled on long ago as being much better than any late Pool first build, since I judge saving 13-16 seconds on the Pool outweighs the extra 25 minerals I might get by delaying the Pool.
I will believe you on this, I think it's 7 seconds of larvae time that you lose. It may not be significant in the long run if allowed to drone, but if you're planning on getting zergling speed or banelings to counter instead of just zerglings without speed + hatch, with a 12pool build I don't think you would have enough minerals + gas to get queen + Zergling speed right when the pool finishes. Most 14/15 pool builds incorporate gas to get an economical bling or speedling build.
The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try.
Yes, it has the publicity, but I still see a lot of people dismiss it out of hand, on the "common knowledge" that middle pools cannot possibly be good for anything but a rush.
Some of the comments regarding 2-rax have been along the lines of how very long it takes for the inject larvae to happen -- something that is a more significant problem of late pool builds. And Liquid`Ret's reply on this thread is comparing to a 15 Pool build.
Even if Ret is comparing to a 15pool build, I don't think you're looking far enough into the game. The game I envision is "ok, I make the terran skeptical about pushing by making some zerglings. The terran then continuously pumps marines while sitting in his base.
If I was playing Terran in this situation, I would take note of when zerg got his gas, then push about 25 seconds after the zerg starts mining gas. This would give enough time to make sure the zerg is not building a hatchery before zergling speed finishes (or before he gets banelings / roaches). If you don't see a hatchery at the natural, just pull back and feel good about yourself knowing your 2nd orbital is finished before his 2nd hatch is finished. From here probably do a stim timing push to poke and make sure the zerg isn't droning too hard.
Playing zerg in this situation is tough, it is nearly impossible to defend against 5-6 marines + 6 scv's with non speed zerglings off-creep without coming out behind on the engage. To defend this second hatch at that timing on-creep, it would need to be a hatch first build, queens cannot spread creep that fast (and you would sacrifice really early larvae even if it was possible)
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
1700 diamond. In the midgame, zerg can make mid game units like infestors, corrupters, mutalisks, and hydras. Collosus are a tier 3 unit that costs a buttload (to get and to upgrade). Did catz make any tier 3 units to counter or did he stick with tier 1 stuff? Why don't we see zerg rushing to tier 3 on 2 base? but protoss and terran can do it? I'm not questioning the logic of getting more expansions, i'm questioning the design and philosophy of zerg as a whole. If protoss goes 6 gate it will lose badly to a rush to broodlords, and if protoss goes collosus it will beat a zerg t1/1.5 army. Teching is risky but pays big rewards, but it seems like zerg refuse to tech until they have to, whereas protoss tech to gain an advantage. This might explain why i like watching TLO play zerg, he likes to tech a lot faster than players like ret or idra, and huk loves to switch up his strategies (sometimes cannon rush, sometimes 4 gate, sometimes 1 gate expand). Is zerg so pinned down to a tiny tech tree that they have become predictable the entire game or are they simply playing the game the way they want to, instead of the most optimal way?
Are you serious? If you really are 1700 diamond, which I don't believe btw due to the nature of your questions, then you would understand that Zerg don't have wallin or defensive abilities like Terran or Protoss, and teching too much is VERY dangerous, and suicidal vs a good opponent. Besides, as I said, zerg needs the GAS of at least 3 bases, preferably 4 before they can afford to go T3. T3 on 2 bases is lol, as you'll have like 2 ultra's when then come in with a massive army and roflstomp you. There is a reason why Zergs expand all over the place, and its not just because they think its fun or something, they absolutely need to in order to stay in the game. Zerg are designed to be a SWARM dude, and that means many bases.
You're really over-simplifying things. Zerg has cost-efficient units. Speedlings are ridiculously efficient in small food battles in an open field. Nothing else comes close. Watch a replay where Z holds off a 4-gate with zerglings and look at the army values before the fight. Zerg might have a quarter of the army cost and will still win. Roaches CRUSH Protoss gateway units for cost, especially when they have attack upgrades. Hydras on creep laugh at anything that doesn't have AoE damage. Z's T3 is also very efficient unless the opponent skews their composition.
Zerg units are highly efficient, but they need to be used well. Zerglings suck in chokes. Roach/hydra sucks at busting a front. Zerg is designed to be very efficient defensively at T1 and T2, but inefficient offensively until they reach T3. This property allows Zerg to drone hard up till the last second before pumping out just enough units to hold, but also prevents Zerg from auto-winning with early pushes. Zerg can design a timing to have an unreasonably large army at any given point by going all-in at that timing. If zerglings, roaches or hydras were actually efficient offensively, Zerg would be unstoppable in the early game.
I didnt follow the 14 thread nested quote, but just going off this response. I think you might be the one guilty of over-simplifying things. Zerg CAN have cost-efficient units. And yes, speedlings are ridiculously good, in small food battles, in an open field. But thats is such a small percentage of what makes up an average game. And easily avoidable. Which is why you dont see 4 marines running around the map at a point in which zerg could be capable of having a decent number of speedlings. So yes, a zerg may win a battle with a smaller army size under IDEAL conditions. But the likelihood of a skill opponent allowing you to engage in those situations is small. Not only that, almost every race can crush a smaller army if they engage in ideal conditions. Thats like saying 2 marines and an scv or 2 can kill 50 speedlings in ideal conditions (behind a wall), doesnt necessarily translate into real gameplay.
Also T3 being highly efficient unless the opponent skews their comp is a bit of an oversimplifcation and understatement. As adding the handful of extra mauraders to destroy ultras is laughably easy. As are vikings, since the tech is almost 100% of the time available. Specially since T3 switches have been becoming more and more predictable lately.
Does anyone else think this whole thread can be used as a basis for why the top players should have threads/a sub-forum dedicated to their own discussion?
So far, we've had 9 pages dissecting a few sentences written by Ret, and because of the nature of this discussion, it's unlikely that he's going to elaborate on his remarks.
Many of the posters in this thread have already conceded this point, but again - Ret, Idra, etc. on an entirely different plateau from the rest of us. The way the game is perceived in terms of balance is probably very different from the way we play it, to the way they play it. You see this reflected in the match-up breakdowns that Blizzard posted before, too.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
1700 diamond. In the midgame, zerg can make mid game units like infestors, corrupters, mutalisks, and hydras. Collosus are a tier 3 unit that costs a buttload (to get and to upgrade). Did catz make any tier 3 units to counter or did he stick with tier 1 stuff? Why don't we see zerg rushing to tier 3 on 2 base? but protoss and terran can do it? I'm not questioning the logic of getting more expansions, i'm questioning the design and philosophy of zerg as a whole. If protoss goes 6 gate it will lose badly to a rush to broodlords, and if protoss goes collosus it will beat a zerg t1/1.5 army. Teching is risky but pays big rewards, but it seems like zerg refuse to tech until they have to, whereas protoss tech to gain an advantage. This might explain why i like watching TLO play zerg, he likes to tech a lot faster than players like ret or idra, and huk loves to switch up his strategies (sometimes cannon rush, sometimes 4 gate, sometimes 1 gate expand). Is zerg so pinned down to a tiny tech tree that they have become predictable the entire game or are they simply playing the game the way they want to, instead of the most optimal way?
lol i bet you think that terran can go BCs off 2 base if the P goes 6 gate too :S the catz vs huk game was basically catz going allin to kill huk for like 20 minutes, mining pretty much only 1 gold base at a time vs huks 1/2 bases, he only had like 1 or 2 drones on minerals in his main, and he got the 2nd gold right before the 1st one mined out, i think that catz could've won if not for a few mistakes, like suiciding the overlords that were spewing creep, and not having more overlords all over the place so that he had a creep highway, or just making roach instead of hydraling probably would have given him the win ^_^
tbh the OP is really a statement rather than an opinion and quite an accurate one at that. hatch first is the only option, however, if you do it right, a 7 roach rush->expo->ling spd->tech switch slings. works pretty well. assuming 2rax or 111 transition you can smash their army, snipe a sup depot and maybe a rax too, not to mention you should kill 5-10scvs depending how out of position the terran is. Furthermore, the terran will most likely counter atk in about 5min (around 10min mark), which can easily be held off w/ purely slings which u can pump off 2hatch. For info on how to execute a 7RR correctly, PM me on the boards.
On December 07 2010 17:49 ddrddrddrddr wrote: Here's the sentiment I'm hearing around the forum: zerg have to figure out how to deal with a shitload of different harass and push, and if he survives to mid game zerg is unstoppable. Why don't we just stop the game at mid game them. Just have a timer that announce zerg as winner if he's alive at 20 minutes. Saves time!
misconceptions by total noob terrans,
1 zerg in unstoppable in the mid game.
2 terrans cannot macro at the same pace as a zerg can.
maybe you should play more befor you post stupid shit.
On December 09 2010 09:12 my0s wrote: I didnt follow the 14 thread nested quote, but just going off this response. I think you might be the one guilty of over-simplifying things. Zerg CAN have cost-efficient units. And yes, speedlings are ridiculously good, in small food battles, in an open field. But thats is such a small percentage of what makes up an average game. And easily avoidable. Which is why you dont see 4 marines running around the map at a point in which zerg could be capable of having a decent number of speedlings. So yes, a zerg may win a battle with a smaller army size under IDEAL conditions. But the likelihood of a skill opponent allowing you to engage in those situations is small. Not only that, almost every race can crush a smaller army if they engage in ideal conditions. Thats like saying 2 marines and an scv or 2 can kill 50 speedlings in ideal conditions (behind a wall), doesnt necessarily translate into real gameplay.
You make it sound like finding an area on a map where a small zergling army can get a decent surround is a once-in-a-lifetime event. These aren't really exacting conditions, anyone with any micro skills at all should be able to arrange it.
On December 09 2010 09:40 silloh wrote: Does anyone else think this whole thread can be used as a basis for why the top players should have threads/a sub-forum dedicated to their own discussion?
So far, we've had 9 pages dissecting a few sentences written by Ret, and because of the nature of this discussion, it's unlikely that he's going to elaborate on his remarks.
Many of the posters in this thread have already conceded this point, but again - Ret, Idra, etc. on an entirely different plateau from the rest of us. The way the game is perceived in terms of balance is probably very different from the way we play it, to the way they play it. You see this reflected in the match-up breakdowns that Blizzard posted before, too.
No, I am not sure if you have looked through all 9 pages of this thread I just finished a few seconds ago. There are posts in here by recognizable people Morrow, Liquid Ret, and Root.Drewbie. Only problem I see is that Ret actually elaborated on his Quote in the OP but its gone pretty much under the radar because people are engaging in there thread battles with other posters they disagree with instead replying to what Ret had to say. I have seen 2 people bring up what Ret has said. (Ret Replies on Page 6)
There is alot of bickering in here but its usually good arguments. If you get past the insults
On topic I will say that though Ret is quoted in the OP and replies on page 6 as some said earlier he is saying 15 hatch and all the arguements I keep seeing in here are for 14 hatch the general Zerg build. So I am a bit confused if Ret is using something completely different. So I guess that is where he is going 14 hatch otherwise I am not to sure what everyone is fighting over. All I can conclude is that Ret is either 15 hatch cross or 14 hatch close because he feels that either way hatch first is better for defense and econ. Basically hatch first is the safest build you can do as Zerg given limited information and variety of responses Terran can do. In the end hatch first is the best all-around and it sounds like many other people agree. (correct me if I am wrong from reading the OP and Rets Reply on Page 6)
The other side of the coin is people "saying try another build" try pool first try 11 pool 18 hatch. It seems like there a few people that have tested it themselves and swear by it. I think what keeps getting lost when people are arguing FOR 11pool 18 hatch is someone said it is just a shell and not specific to building things not econ, such as spines or zerglings. So the thread that is about the 11 pool 18 hatch doesn't have every scenario or every situation fully fleshed out because it is just that a shell the author of that thread even ask for results back based on people experience but the 11 pool 18 hatch thread testing is specifically economic with in the OP of THAT thread.(correct me if I am wrong here also anyone that is for 11 pool 18 hatch)
I can't say which would be better I don't play zerg at all from reading the entire thread so far I will say I have learned alot about how zergs work. Just based on my opinion. I think it is reasonable to say that Ret and Idra may have not tested 11 pool 18 hatch as outlined in that thread. It's not being disrespectful it's just being reasonable to say just that. Even Rets Reply on page 6 doesn't mention anything dealing with any type of pool first build at all or at least 11 pool 18 hatch specifically which is what many people are specifically referring to that they try.
The amount of scrutiny that you receive on TL to even come up with a build that is solid and new is nothing to really scoff at. I think the amount of testing the OP to show the slight economical disadvantage the 11 pool 18 hatch build provides is worth a note. Doesn't look like it was tested hardcore against 2 rax but its left to the players to decide which is why the author of the 11 pool 18 hatch Post asks for feedback
I could be completely wrong in my assessment of this entire thread so far. I have enjoyed the reading though.
Nestea gave an interview after RO8 with TSL_Rain and he was also asked about the counter to 2-rax pressure. His answer was identical to that of Ret's and Idra's: Hatchery-first.
I also remember Fruitdealer saying similar thing some time ago about early marine pressure. So that makes 4 of the top Zergs around the world sharing the same view. (Idra, Ret, Nestea, Fruitdealer)
On December 09 2010 03:34 trypt wrote:The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try. The problem with this build is that you sacrifice early larvae to build that pool, even if you make it up "later", you will be way behind due to the lack of earlier economy.
The pause in larvae can be eliminated entirely if you just 12 Pool instead.
I was under the impression that the 11 overpool was just a couple second pause in larvae. I haven't actually tried it myself since I expect there to be very little difference from a 12 Pool, which I settled on long ago as being much better than any late Pool first build, since I judge saving 13-16 seconds on the Pool outweighs the extra 25 minerals I might get by delaying the Pool.
I will believe you on this, I think it's 7 seconds of larvae time that you lose. It may not be significant in the long run if allowed to drone, but if you're planning on getting zergling speed or banelings to counter instead of just zerglings without speed + hatch, with a 12pool build I don't think you would have enough minerals + gas to get queen + Zergling speed right when the pool finishes. Most 14/15 pool builds incorporate gas to get an economical bling or speedling build.
Seven second pause for 11 overpool? That's a lot more than I thought it would be; I wonder if anyone in that thread ever really tried to optimize a 12 Pool FE. Anyways....
For gaspool, 13 gas 12 pool is late enough that you can still get Queen + Metabolic boost right as the spawning pool finishes and still not waste any larvae.
On the other hand, while 12 pool 12 gas can't get Metabolic Boost when the pool finishes, it does get it a couple seconds earlier than a 15 gas 14 pool build.
These numbers are from the build order calculator -- I think it accurate enough for a comparison like this. (But I can test in game if you want to see those numbers) 13 gaspool - Pool @ 2:47 - Boost @ 4:37 - 231 minerals @ 3:30 12 pool 12 gas - Pool @ 2:36 - Boost @ 4:54 - 246 minerals @ 3:30 15 gaspool - Pool @ 2:56 - Boost @ 4:58 - 289 minerals @ 3:30 (I went for 16 Drones in each of these tests)
And any of these could afford a FE at 19 or 20 food, if you wanted to try for that.
The 11 pool opening has gotten a LOT of publicity, so much that I can almost guarentee that 95+% of the pro and semi-pro level zergs have talked about it, and 80%+ (if not more) have personally given it a try.
Yes, it has the publicity, but I still see a lot of people dismiss it out of hand, on the "common knowledge" that middle pools cannot possibly be good for anything but a rush.
Some of the comments regarding 2-rax have been along the lines of how very long it takes for the inject larvae to happen -- something that is a more significant problem of late pool builds. And Liquid`Ret's reply on this thread is comparing to a 15 Pool build.
Even if Ret is comparing to a 15pool build, I don't think you're looking far enough into the game. The game I envision is "ok, I make the terran skeptical about pushing by making some zerglings. The terran then continuously pumps marines while sitting in his base.
If I was playing Terran in this situation, I would take note of when zerg got his gas, then push about 25 seconds after the zerg starts mining gas. This would give enough time to make sure the zerg is not building a hatchery before zergling speed finishes (or before he gets banelings / roaches). If you don't see a hatchery at the natural, just pull back and feel good about yourself knowing your 2nd orbital is finished before his 2nd hatch is finished. From here probably do a stim timing push to poke and make sure the zerg isn't droning too hard.
Playing zerg in this situation is tough, it is nearly impossible to defend against 5-6 marines + 6 scv's with non speed zerglings off-creep without coming out behind on the engage. To defend this second hatch at that timing on-creep, it would need to be a hatch first build, queens cannot spread creep that fast (and you would sacrifice really early larvae even if it was possible)
I want point out that "you can't defend a FE unless you have creep or speedlings" is a very different objection than things like "15 pool hurts your economy" or "1 hatch has so few larvae".
My impression (from Idra/Ret public assertions) is that bunker rushes invalidate late Pool --> Hatch builds, so the options are early Pool-->Hatch, one-base tech, or Hatch --> Pool. One-base tech builds are unpopular (and probably weak, though not so weak as folks assume) so it's either early Pool (11 Overpool is seemingly the strongest such build) or Hatch-first.
The reason why terran go 2 rax is the hatch first, a smart terran can't go anything else because he would be behind 100% of the time in the mid game. It's a reactionnary build, cause the potential of the hatch first macro without pressure is really scary. Terran prefer to tech up if they have the choice because in the mid game they can't defeat you with pure bio (except FoxeR:p), i really think good terrans doesn't go blindly 2 rax every game, if they see hatch first they go pressure with 2rax and then expand or all in, if you pool first they can simply tech up harass/control map with hellion/banshee, expand normally and be fine in the mid game, then they have to make something happen with a timing push/deny a third, harass etc.
The 2 rax opener is purely a response to the hatch first nothing else, they can't do anything else against this build.All others builds against hatch first are bad (like hellion drop, banshee, etc.) because you are behind in the mid game if you don't do significant damage. And you can't keep up against a hatch first as a terran just with pure macro you have to hard pressure a zerg if you don't want to be behind in the mid game.
Now maybe Terrans has realised that the 2 rax is also strong against pool first, i don't know (i'm fine against that with pool first when they don't all in). But at the beginning it was a reactionnary build against the hatch first, nothing else.
On December 09 2010 18:19 usethis2 wrote: Nestea gave an interview after RO8 with TSL_Rain and he was also asked about the counter to 2-rax pressure. His answer was identical to that of Ret's and Idra's: Hatchery-first.
I also remember Fruitdealer saying similar thing some time ago about early marine pressure. So that makes 4 of the top Zergs around the world sharing the same view. (Idra, Ret, Nestea, Fruitdealer)
What do they all have in common, they are out of the tourney. LoL...so obviously their main assumption is incorrect.
On December 09 2010 18:19 usethis2 wrote: Nestea gave an interview after RO8 with TSL_Rain and he was also asked about the counter to 2-rax pressure. His answer was identical to that of Ret's and Idra's: Hatchery-first.
I also remember Fruitdealer saying similar thing some time ago about early marine pressure. So that makes 4 of the top Zergs around the world sharing the same view. (Idra, Ret, Nestea, Fruitdealer)
What do they all have in common, they are out of the tourney. LoL...so obviously their main assumption is incorrect.
Not sure whether you're joking or trying to be cute.
On December 08 2010 20:17 Liquid`Ret wrote: Let me first say this, I feel like it is entirely possible to stop 2 rax allins, even when they send all their scvs, on most maps with 15 hatch opening. Exceptions are : LT close pos, Meta close pos, steppes of war.
So there is very little incentive for anyone to try different builds that give you less economy, and later creep to put a spine down at your natural base.
a speedling opening build is probably safer against a standard 2 rax on most maps, when the 2 rax is executed in standard fashion, however, when you are close position with the terran, the 2 rax constant marines reinforces so fast, combined with the fact that slow zerglings are easily outmicro'ed by marines, and that the speed upgrade takes FOREVER; makes me believe that even when you are close position with the terran your best bet is to hatch first, dance your drone/ling around, plant a spine, and defend that way. This is because of the various sets of follow-ups terran can do, which will require you to have some sort of economy to deal with. They can put down a CC; They can put down 4 rax; They can put down a factory and do some sort of weird marine hellion allin follow-up.
There are so many transitions for terrans and you wont be able to scout them; Vs 4 rax you ideally want banelings, vs 2 rax cc you want a lot of drones to be able to keep up in an economic game, vs hellion followups you ideally want some roaches, vs banshees you need a lair and a bunch of queens...
The problem is you can't scout, and on close position, the transition comes soooo fast, that unless you guess correctly there is almost no way to deal with it except getting lucky and guessing right. This becomes especially true when you opened speedling. You still have to send down 3 drones with your first set of lings to pretend being bunker walled off, then you can still get pushed back all the time by constant 2 rax reinforcements because it takes so long for speed to finish. By that time, terran couldve transitioned into any of the earlier mentioned units and if he's good, you will have no idea about which one. 15 pool speed hurts your economy so bad that the whole guessing thing becomes especially true with this opening, there is simply no way for you to have a roach warren, a lair, a bunch of queens, a baneling nest in time to deal with whatever terran can do to you. This is why I prefer hatch first; If your drone/ling micro is rock solid and your opponent makes a mistake; you might even end up ahead. Sometimes you end up even, and sometimes you end up behind. I prefer this as opposed to being behind and left guessing about what terran is doing in every single game because of my opening. Yeah, we lose some games to scv/marine allins, but it's acceptable for us, on these positions/maps that are horrible for zerg to begin with.
Imo maps with close position should be removed from the game. If terran is smart then zerg should rarely be able to win, and if they do then only cause they guessed right, whoop di doo. The reason IdrA won on steppes vs Mvp is cause MVP is so naive and thinks hes far superior to Idra and he placed a CC right under Idra's overlord and played completly standard. Idra didn't even have to guess, he knew what was coming a week b4 the series even started, and outplayed mvp in a standard game on steppes.
1 Hatchery with a Queen produces an average of 10 larva per minute. To produce 1 supply units, 1/9th of these larva must be Overlords (1.11), leaving 8.89 larva for units. This costs 110 for Overlords, and 444.5 for units. In other words, to support 1 Hatchery + Queen in production, you require 554.5 minerals per minute. I can't check in game at the moment, but using Liquidpedia's reported mining rates, this requires approximately 13 Drones, which seems to be in the ballpark. Intuitively, 2 Hatcheries + 2 Queens would require 1109 minerals per minute. The problem is, this would require 138.625 minerals per patch per minute, which is impossible for one base due to the way Drone saturation works. Liquidpedia reports about 102 per minute per patch for 3 Drones.
Now, you could simply not produce the second Queen. Since a Queen is 60% of the production of one of your hatcheries, you'd cut your mineral requirement by 30%, down to 96.87, which is just barely sustainable. You'd have to cut production to expand or tech.
Of course, because of costs, a Queen is a significantly more efficient investment in terms of production capacity - exactly 3 times more efficient, to be accurate. So, you'd really like to be able to afford the production capacity of a Queen if you're going to put down a Hatchery.
This is part of the reason why getting an expansion is so important for Zerg - you can support production off of a second Hatchery with a Queen, which is much more cost efficient to build, and you've got resources to do things like tech, expand, or make units that aren't Zerglings and Drones. Just speaking in general terms, you're looking at something like 1008 resources per minute from 24 Drones on 16 mineral patches, as opposed to 816 from 24 Drones on 8 mineral patches, which is a huge advantage anyway.
As a note, in terms of just straight production, you should be able to almost (but not quite) support constant production from 3 Hatcheries with Queens off of 2 saturated mining bases if you're macroing perfectly (still speaking in terms of 1 supply, 50 mineral units). If you went in-base hatch into expansion, you'd really need to have a third before you stabilized in terms of being able to have extra resources for further expansions, teching, producing 2-supply units, etc. The whole point of the current metagame is that Zerg stabilizes on 2 bases very quickly. I'm not sure Zerg can wait till a third base to stabilize with the current metagame.
On December 09 2010 18:19 usethis2 wrote: So that makes 4 of the top Zergs around the world sharing the same view. (Idra, Ret, Nestea, Fruitdealer)
I think it is important to give the experts the respect they deserve, and value their opinions highly. But we cannot treat everything they say as gospel (*). The wrong thing to do is to evoke the appeal to authority fallacy. Just because the pros are much better than everyone else, it doesn't mean they are always right about everything.
The 11overpool template is very eco when only building drones. IMO, it is balanced on a knife's edge, with just enough minerals to keep drones popping, which mines enough minerals for the next wave of drones, etc. If lings/spines are built at any time, there won't be enough new drones to mine enough for some future set of larva. Building lings/spines doesn't affect each build equally. 11overpool takes a small eco hit very early to rush the pool/queen. It makes up this eco hit by having extra larva quickly and just enough minerals to fully use them, unless lings/spines are built. Other builds might be better balanced to have just enough larva/minerals including lings/spines.
What really needs to happen is to test an 11overpool build vs 2 rax. When do lings/spines come out? How effective is this vs 14/15 hatch?
(*) At one time, the top Zergs agreed that Thor hard countered Mutas. Then someone invented the magic box.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
Have you been listening to different casts? Artosis has been saying that it's suicide until very recently. He took a really long time to even acknowledge hatch first as even being potentially safe.
Yeah, he really doesn't like to admit he's wrong (hard headed)
To me it just seems like you're damned if you do damned if you don't. If you go pool first, maybe in base hatch, it becomes pretty easy for the terran to just fast expand and get ahead economically. If you hatch first, you become more susceptible to early pressure. Which one is worse? Really depends on the map and the opponent ultimately.
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
I'm pretty sure you are really drama queening that game up. First of all, why is Huk's main mined out and Catz' main has enough minerals left for you to call it a full base? And if that actually happened that doesn't mean Zerg is bad, it means Catz played horribly or there is more to the game than you are describing here. There's no way a one basing toss is beating a zerg with 3 bases, 2 of them being golds.... please. Unless you are hiding tons of details like catz never had more than 12 drones or was playing with his feet.
Lol, Zerg always mine out the main slower than either Terran or protoss, but in this case, his main had fewer drones because he wanted his gold bases saturated first instead of his main, so he transferred the majority of his drones to his golds, which is the optimal thing to do. There is nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary about this game. Huk's defense was simply too cost efficient, he nearly lost like 100 times, but held on by the skin of his teeth until CatZ mined out his first gold, and simply couldn't keep up production after that. Huk took a 3rd, got a ball of collosus and CatZ lost his entire army taking out the collosus, leaving a ball of gateway units to clean up his expo's before he could re-inforce. Yes, CatZ was out-played, and a superior Zerg player like Idra most likely would have won that game in CatZ position, but CatZ is a top 200 Zerg, and I mention this game to demonstrate just how cost inefficient Zerg armies are, and the absolute requirement that Zerg have more bases. As soon as Catz had equal bases he was toast, and Huk's ball was simply too cost efficient. There is no point arguing that Zerg need more bases, its a simple fact.
Where did I ever say Zerg didn't need more bases? If a 3 base (2 of them gold) Zerg can't beat a 1 basing Toss than either: 1) this game is horribly broken (which it isn't) 2) the Zerg played the absolute worst game of his life
The vast misconception I can notice in this thread is that people tend to consider that Starcraft 2 is somehow meant to be plaid like Starcraft 1. In other words they think that the optimal way of playing it is macro-wise, which would only be true if the races were balanced in the late stage of the game and that a safe way to get there existed, something that no one has any evidences of. So they label as noobs people who all-in and so on... Right now the game is just so far from being balanced imo. The huge balance issues have just been constantly swept under the carpet by Blizzard.
Instead of fixing Zerg macro they force us to play on ridiculously small maps so that Terran and Protoss can make some blind successful all-in out of 1-2 bases. Instead of fixing Zealot/Stalker to allow Protoss to defeat early all-in, they force them to make sentries and camp at their bases while anxiously waiting to cast a forcefield. Great game-design. Not to mention that the most cool units/abilities of the game have been nerfed into oblivion by Blizzard (reapers/HSM/motership) for really strange reasons.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that the community should balance the game themselves. I know this might seems strange for a lot of you, because it doesn't correspond to the Starcraft 1 mentality, but like I said before, the Starcraft 1 mentality corresponds to a precise game : STARCRAFT 1. And like it or not, there are no evidences that Starcraft 2 in its current state will end up being very similar to it.
tldr : It just pisses me off to notice that some people are dumb enough to believe that so many pro Zerg players "happen" to have a better macro, or that pro Terrans "happen" to be so good at all-ining cheesing a lot... whatever... Statistics folks, it's not the players, it's the race.
In base hatch doesn't cut it because zerg needs the extra gas as much as they need the extra larva. As the game drags on two geysers is not enough to hold back the more cost effective protoss and terran units.
On December 10 2010 04:11 Treemonkeys wrote: In base hatch doesn't cut it because zerg needs the extra gas as much as they need the extra larva. As the game drags on two geysers is not enough to hold back the more cost effective protoss and terran units.
you can go from hatchery into a roughly fast expand still. no reason you have to stay on 1 base just cause you have two hatches in it. I favor an inbase against zerg and sometimes terran just because its unexpected and they're not used to dealing with all that extra larva. my 3rd hatch no matter what ALWAYS goes into my main just cause its easier to defend then ill expand when the opportunity presents itself
Bumping this thread to talk about the trends in GSL4 where alot of zergs seem to be going pool first against terran. The post below is edited in the OP:
LASTEST EDIT: I'm now noticing a trend in GSL4 where alot of zerg's seem to be going pool first against terran (for example, Jinro vs Idra, Cliiiide vs Idra). Has the thinking shifted? Do more zergs prefer pool first now?
Patch 1.2 has shifted nothing about the early TvZ metagame and hatch first is still the proper play vs 2 rax.
I've done extensive testing on every single zerg opening and of course any hatch first is better than any pool first aside from chz pools. If you go pool first you basically cannot expand vs 2 rax because if you do you'll never have enough lings to hold an allin, and you'll never have a crawler up in time (actually more likely than not the hatch isn't even finished by the time the allin hits). This forces you into an allin by definition, and if T either double gasses and turtles up while going 2 port banshee, or expands and holds with a lot of bunkers, you lose. Zerg 1 base allins are really really bad.
Now as for the timing of hatch first, obviously the earlier, the better, since your spine is up faster and that's far more important than lings.
It's a pretty dumb metagame and tbh I don't think T should lose on any short rush distance map ever. Longer rush distances are still plenty viable, it's just harder to allin, but T can just expo as well and maintain very strong economic presence in midgame.
Now I don't main T anymore, I just explored this to help my friend who plays Z, but the evidence is pretty conclusive - hatch first is still the only way to stop this.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
I just want to point out, that isn't the kind of thing you can criticize. If someone is able to criticize something because it seems wrong, but realize that they made an error in judgment and take back that criticism, isn't that a good thing?
But its infinitely cooler to pretend Artosis is wrong apparently...
I feel like the fact that more zergs are opening pool first has more of a psychological effect on the terrans, as opposed to being better against 2 fax. The aggression that the much earlier ling speed allows is effective at delaying the terran expo and generally causing the terran a bit of hurt, or at least so it seems. This in turn may be the reason we are seeing relatively fewer 2 rax all ins than in he previous two seasons. I think it's fair to assume that the TvZ openings will oscillate between hatch first vs 2 and pool first versus more tech/harrass based builds.
On December 07 2010 17:01 Gotmog wrote: Jinro agrees as well. And i think Artosis would agree now as well, even though he was against it at the start of GSL (so was idra i believe)
It is quite amazing how quickly Artosis went from "If you went hatch first and they want to kill it, they can" to "if you place a spine crawler or two, with good ling control, you can fend it off every time."
But yes, I agree, hatch first is what zergs have to do. They are a macro race, period.
I just want to point out, that isn't the kind of thing you can criticize. If someone is able to criticize something because it seems wrong, but realize that they made an error in judgment and take back that criticism, isn't that a good thing?
But its infinitely cooler to pretend Artosis is wrong apparently...
If Artosis is alone in the forest, and he speaks, is he still wrong?
On December 07 2010 18:03 aebriol wrote: I just don't believe this to be true.
Another post has shown that 11 overpool is better for economy than any other build. It would also get you spinecrawler earlier - which can be moved afterwards.
Personally I think that 14 gas, 14 pool, speedling into baneling (bust if bustable - and that hits right before hellions can be out with 2 rax opening, and beats marines off 2 rax) is the correct counter to this non-stimmed, non-upgraded, marinepush with SCV's.
One thing is if you don't know it's coming (the push) - then it's almost an all-in gamble (even though you can recover, well, you can't really unless you do serious damage with it), but in the final match, everyone knew it was coming, including, I am sure, the players.
First, I don't think you spent a week testing it, so no offense but I'm definitely going to believe IdrA and Ret over you. Secondly, if you go with 14 gas 14 pool you simply do not have enough larvae to fend it off. Terran can throw down 2 more barracks and crush you because you won't have an expansion built, or they can throw down a CC and double gas and tech up and you'll still be behind.
Yes banelings are good but you won't have them out by the time the 2 rax comes initially, and if it gets scouted then bunkers go up and they're nullified and you're even more behind.
I really think the best thing to do is get up spines as quickly as possible, but on some maps positioning can certainly make even spines not work so well (Caverns for example).
I was gonna cry and swear that we seriously needed some angelic member of the community to come down and actually tell us what the highest level players all know, then I saw Ret's post. I've gotta say, it's awesome that the really TOP players would take the time to explain what's what. We should listen more often, and hope that it happens more often
On December 09 2010 07:13 darmousseh wrote: I don't understand why 1 basing is so bad for zerg. If you get bunker contained can you not just make a spine crawler to kill it? I thought this game was designed such that if players have the same number of expansions that they could be even with each other on the same number of bases.
For example, on 1 base, with a queen and 2 hatcheries you can produce units non-stop (unless you are going like zergling only). This is an investment of 450 minerals (150 for queen 300 for hatch). Whereas protoss needs 4 gateways on one base = 600 minerals while terran needs 4 rax (2 with tech labs) which is 700 minerals 50 gas.
Who decided that zerg need more expansions? I know this is true in scbw because of how the game worked, but is it neccesarily true in sc2? In sc2, you get minerals so quickly and expansions are worth so much (each base is like 2 bases in bw) that is it really neccesary to FE every time as zerg?
Have the designers ever said anything about zerg early expanding? I'm not saying FE is bad, but I am questioning if it is completely necessary. I've seen a lot of zerg play with a midish expansion (at around 28-30 food) who do very well. Are zerg units so bad that they always need to be ahead in supply in the entire game?
Now i know many players will be like "Economics dude, zerg need production and more minerals", but I want to know if the gains of getting an early expansion as opposed to a normal expansion outweigh the possible risks.
I guess another way of looking at it is, should protoss and terran always go 14 cc or 14 nexus as well?
It doesn't matter how the game was designed, as anybody who is experienced and can play the game with half-decent macro will find out that Zerg will lose on equal bases as their units are simply not cost efficient enough to handle the likes of the more efficient mid-late game units of Protoss and Terran.
What the designers intended or didn't intend makes absolutely no difference because even if they did "intend" that Zerg only need equal bases the reality of the matter determined via experience is that they need at least 1 more. The only people that ever suggest this are people that are unable to play the game with decent macro, so 2 hatch in base or at expo doesn't really make much of a difference as their macro is horrible anyway.
Well, i obviously know from experience and watching plenty of games (and playing plenty of games) that this is mostly true, but i've seen many times where zerg on 1 base (2 hatches 1 queen) can easily beat a protoss FE or terran FE. Also we've seen how cost effective roaches are (especially against protoss early game) so I don't really buy the whole idea that zerg starts with a huge unit handicap. As it stands, terran has the best maco mechanics (able to gather minerals faster than any other race) so it would seem that terran should be the one that early expands to get a huge macro advantage.
Idk, I think zerg is a very bizarre race that depends too much on map balance.
What league are you in? Zerg can hold on 1 base for the early game no problem, its the mid-late game where they get absolutely raped by the cost efficient units like collosus, mass marine/tank/thor etc. In order to combat these units Zerg NEED a lot of gas for things like banelings/corruptor/muta. Just because a Zerg has won on 1 base doesn't mean its viable, as this was certainly due to the failures of his opponent.
If the Terran or Protoss plays optimally, zerg will lose, period. I watched a game yesterday CatZ vs Huk, where Catz had his main and TWO GOLD BASES against Huk who was mined out at his main, and only had his nat. It a 3 bases vs 1 base (and two of those were Gold's for CatZ) and he still lost due to the massive cost effectiveness of the collosus, despite all the corruptors that CatZ made. If a Zerg wins on equal bases its because the Terran/Toss messed up hardcore, or went all-in and failed.
I'm pretty sure you are really drama queening that game up. First of all, why is Huk's main mined out and Catz' main has enough minerals left for you to call it a full base? And if that actually happened that doesn't mean Zerg is bad, it means Catz played horribly or there is more to the game than you are describing here. There's no way a one basing toss is beating a zerg with 3 bases, 2 of them being golds.... please. Unless you are hiding tons of details like catz never had more than 12 drones or was playing with his feet.
Lol, Zerg always mine out the main slower than either Terran or protoss, but in this case, his main had fewer drones because he wanted his gold bases saturated first instead of his main, so he transferred the majority of his drones to his golds, which is the optimal thing to do. There is nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary about this game. Huk's defense was simply too cost efficient, he nearly lost like 100 times, but held on by the skin of his teeth until CatZ mined out his first gold, and simply couldn't keep up production after that. Huk took a 3rd, got a ball of collosus and CatZ lost his entire army taking out the collosus, leaving a ball of gateway units to clean up his expo's before he could re-inforce. Yes, CatZ was out-played, and a superior Zerg player like Idra most likely would have won that game in CatZ position, but CatZ is a top 200 Zerg, and I mention this game to demonstrate just how cost inefficient Zerg armies are, and the absolute requirement that Zerg have more bases. As soon as Catz had equal bases he was toast, and Huk's ball was simply too cost efficient. There is no point arguing that Zerg need more bases, its a simple fact.
Where did I ever say Zerg didn't need more bases? If a 3 base (2 of them gold) Zerg can't beat a 1 basing Toss than either: 1) this game is horribly broken (which it isn't) 2) the Zerg played the absolute worst game of his life
Why anyone would cite CatZ sticking to ling/baneling for 25 minutes straight against force fields and colossus as evidence that 3 base zerg against 2 base protoss in imba is beyond me. Stop making balance comments if you're a platinum player who doesn't understand the games being cited as evidence.
For those people seeing top zerg's going 14 14 instead of hatch first it isn't because hatch first isn't the best vs 2 rax, it's that they either don't anticipate 2 rax or that they anticipate their hatch being blocked by an E-bay.
As we saw at the EG master's cup QXC vs Idra, Idra laid down the hatch at the ramp expecting 2 rax.
14 14 is a great build because you NEED speed as fast as possible, it just lacks the larva necessary to defend a 2rax. And if the terran is teching or expanding then you want speed to pressure the FE, or gas to begin your own tech.
I think possibly more than that is that even if going hatch first can be best vs 2rax ideally, it could incur more losses if you defend incorrectly, so they may be using the theoretically worse build which has more consistent losses. That's a convoluted explanation, easier to say if you go hatch first, the range of drone losses is 1-5, but speed has a range of 2-3(these numbers are made up BTW)
Or it could be that with the ghost worker patch they feel that with speedlings and drones they can defend effectively.
On December 07 2010 17:10 futility wrote: He's exaggerating. If a terran feigns pressure then drops a CC then yeah, you'll be economically behind if you don't bother reacting. That's exactly why they do it. You won't stay behind for long once you realize Terran can't pressure you though.
No one really wanted to see Nestea lose to a bunch of all ins but Rain was just playing the odds and they came out in his favor. It's hard to blame him but this post from Ret came off more as whining to me than anything.
On January 18 2011 19:52 Ultramus wrote: For those people seeing top zerg's going 14 14 instead of hatch first it isn't because hatch first isn't the best vs 2 rax, it's that they either don't anticipate 2 rax or that they anticipate their hatch being blocked by an E-bay.
As we saw at the EG master's cup QXC vs Idra, Idra laid down the hatch at the ramp expecting 2 rax.
14 14 is a great build because you NEED speed as fast as possible, it just lacks the larva necessary to defend a 2rax. And if the terran is teching or expanding then you want speed to pressure the FE, or gas to begin your own tech.
I think possibly more than that is that even if going hatch first can be best vs 2rax ideally, it could incur more losses if you defend incorrectly, so they may be using the theoretically worse build which has more consistent losses. That's a convoluted explanation, easier to say if you go hatch first, the range of drone losses is 1-5, but speed has a range of 2-3(these numbers are made up BTW)
Or it could be that with the ghost worker patch they feel that with speedlings and drones they can defend effectively.
I'd have to disagree completly, the only real reason that the hatch first is risky is because the pool is delayed, thus risking a loss to bunkers and delaying speed slightly. The 14 hatch finishes around the same time that the queen would finish in the main on a pool first, and the amount of larva generated from the 2nd hatch vs queen is really insignificant (3 for the hatch 4 for inject) and you could also argue that having 3 larva earlier is better than waiting for 4 from the inject.
At any rate, it's definitely possible to hold most 2rax openers with a hatch-first, given great micro and proper scouting. As mentioned earlier, if you pool first and he goes marine/scv all-in you're in a tough spot because you don't have the opportunity to defend the natural with spines
EPT
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