Hello everybody. The more I play at mid-high level (2600+ master, top 1000 eu), the more I get to realize the dramatic importance of having a shitload of queens from mid to late game, especially for large battles, as they are really good at 2 things : healing and tanking.
Here is a quick "guide" on this awesome unit, talking about those 2 main points. I'm hoping it will be a little of an eye opener for a majority of players, playing only with N or N+1 queens (N is the number of hatches). I know it already has been discuted, at least a little bit earlier, but I definitly think this needs more dwelving.
Inject, b****
Transfuse This spell has 2 main uses :
To help your muta harass and generally heal between battles Having a few transfusions ready for healing your mutas if you are close by air can be a game breaker. Mutas are really fearsome only once in very large numbers. The difference with a 12 and a 15 mutas ball is not to be underestimated. It's therefore very useful to heal up your mutas between each harass wave. Zerg are the only race "without" healers for harass forces. Toss have shields, Terrans have everything. But this is just an illusion. To make your fighting army better Zerg units really lack range. Transfuses helps your army to stay alive once it has connected. 6 Ultras + 20 transfuses (5 queens) usually do a lot more damages than 10 Ultras, as they will most of the time have an awesome surface area. It also is really game breaking VS Toss. If you manage to have 2-3 queens mixed with your Roaches/Hydras when the attack occurs, you can increase their cost effectivness a lot. A 200/200 army has a far longer run with 5-6 queens thrown in. The last major use is for healing BLs late game. It's very cost effective. A single transfuse saves you more than 150/125. 150/125. And queen counters the BL counters, sooooooooooo... There is a wonderful synergy between those 2 units.
Tanking 175 Health. 1 Armor. Biological and Psionic.
I think this stats speak by themselves. A queen can absorb FIVE tank shots, including splash. FIVE. For 150 minerals. They can also tank more than 20 Helions shots or 18 Marauder shots. VS Toss, it's 6 Colossus hits, and she also absorbs the splash damage. They are maybe the most cost effective tank in the game, AND THEY COST NEITHER GAS NEITHER LARVAES. Has anybody here dropped queens here ? You really should give it a try. They only take 2 cargo space. I think any Zerg army with drops available should first load all ovies with 1 queen. She will drop first and be instantly focused. During this time, the rest of your army abuses their very high DPS.
Why is it underused ? Predicted response : «Hey smartass, no pro has ever dropped a queen during GSL, therefore it sucks, you should get banned blah blah blah». So, why hasn't it been used already ? It's easy. Drops seems cheesy to most Z players. 200/200 is expensive for a half useful ability if you go, let's say, Ling Mutas Blings. Mixing queens into drops has surely crossed their mind, but it's really counter intuitive. As such, getting queens to tank is the harder thing to do. But with good ovie creep spread (speed mandatory), it's really doable. On creep, they're as fast as slow Roaches after all.
Conclusion Another type of queen Queens won't be the revolution Zergs have been waiting for. But I think people need to understand they are far from being a gimmicky unit in a battle. They are increasigly useful as time goes by, like every spell caster, but can also tank. A tanking spellcaster, and it is underused. To all defending Zergs like me, please, give 10+ queens play a try. It really rocks (and they're an awesome anti air).
9 Overlord 14 Hatchery 15 Spawning Pool 18 Overlord 18 Extractor (3 drones ASAP) 17 Zergling 18 Queen (at FE) 24 Spine Crawler (can be skipped for a 23 queen directly) 23 Queen 26 Overlord 28 Queen 31 Overlord 35 Metabolic Boost 35 Queen 37 Queen (lair if no immediate pressure, else keep your gas for Roaches) 39 Roach Warren 38 Overlord 38 Queen 40 Roach*8 if needed, else tech
Trans into (blings) drops or fast T3 to be really unpredictable.
GENERAL LAYOUT : 14 hatch 15 pool Instant spine (needed 90% of the time) Pump 4 queens, the first (expand) gearing up for a transfuse of the spine if needed, the second (main) putting a tumour. Roach Warren. 2 Queens, and use your second flock of queen for larvae. You're alive with massive anti air, lings speed (always good to have scouting and back teching), and a good econ.
Now proceed to auto win.
Replays (build still in the work, expect lots of misplay. Master 2500+ level) :
I havent been using lategame transfuses a lot. But they have a LOT of potential. However I do think that earlygame queens are amazing. Having the ability to transfuse eachother and overlords, on top of hatcheries is great. On top of that they aren't that bad air defense.
I am definitely going to incorporate more lategame queens in my ZvT. Not sure about ZvP or ZvZ though.
But actually, they are EXTREMELY powerful, and having them in your main army makes creep tumors even better. The only real issue I see with them is that they take quite a while to build (even with constant production), so multiple hatches are required. And multiple hatches + Queens = a shit ton of minerals.
EDIT: On second thought, the incredible air protection + the MASSIVE amounts of larva that you gain from having multiple hatches per base and lots of queens is probably worth it. I mean, minerals go into hatches and queens, gas goes into air tech (muta harass ---> Broodlords?) mass upgrades (roaches and hydras benefit from the same upgrades as queens)?
Yes, this "build" is designed to go for a fast 3rd AND 4th. Rather than building macro hatches, you use your existing hatches for queens, and expand like a mad man to increase your mineral income very fast, and later transition to mass gas.
I'm currently messing with 2 gas play (for 2 bases) into expand into 6 gas for Mutas (if they can counter the opponent composition) or BLs.
This is, i know, still a lot of theorycraft. But I hope to be able to provide good replays of this kind of play in a short time. I need to get my timings better, but freeing up gas with Z is just so good... Z upgrades really are among the best (+3+3 cracklings do wonders in small taskforces), and their T3 is just incredible...
I've heard lots of arguments against queens, but the fact is that queens are awesome. Seriously, watch a game or two and look at how often your hatches are just not doing anything. Think about how many queens you could work into a build. Were those six lings really worth it against those two colossus? No, a queen is much better.
Queens are extremely cost effective, and in many ways are much better than hydralisks as AA.
Mass Queens can be a good option in ZvP, when P opens stargate. With that mass of queens you can easily defend any VR/phoenix harrasment and spread creep like a boss. Even if you're not that attentive to tumors, you'll have the WHOLE map under creep at 15:00.
By going Queen, you can skip hydra tech, and straight go infestor -> hive. Skipping hydras is the really awesome thing about this, as Toss will always follow up with Collosus.
So, if you sorta want to skip midgame and just passively macro to lategame, queens are the way to go.
(On a side note, if you're feeling cute, you can Nydus some Queens in the other's base and goop down tumors in there. Works better in ZvT, I suppose. Gets you nice scouting, buys you time if the opponent decides to clean them up, and also throws your opponent off. And having a Nydus is always cool)
Downside of going Queen is, that if they are obliterated, it takes longer to replenish them, than it would with larva units.
I agree queens have saved me so many times, for example when I see hellions come, and I don't have roaches as of yet, they can block the ramp to my main, and allow the spine crawlers to do more damage. And they help dramatically against 2 rax pressure, and of course void/banshee builds.
When you get dropped the queen auto attacks the drop ship, and help pressure the dropper. They save u from a proxy 2 gate, and all this amazing stuff.
2.4 k Masters Zerg for whats it worth, my 2 pennies.
I don't play Zerg, but I think that some Zergs don't utilize creep as much as they can, even high level players that I've watched. Queens obviously are pretty bad off creep, but the solution to this is just more queens. Creep spreads ridiculously fast when you've got 4 tumors going at once, and as a Terran player I can tell you that creep is ridiculously annoying.
Overall I think queens are really annoying to deal with. In the early game they do very well vs. harass, and if you're making some to deal with that, you might as well make more. Personally I think that making queens vs void rays/phoenix instead of hydras could be good, but I'm not sure about that since I don't play either race. Just seems like hydras are really squishy units whereas queens can tank well, like you said.
Yeah, I've had a few games where I barely manage to hold off the big attack on close positions in lategame by having broods and mass transfusions with the queens. This buys me enough time for reinforcements from my faraway bases to arrive to help out.
I also saw a replay where a player did a roach drop with queen support against a protoss player. The queens were useful for killing the void rays the toss player was using, and he microed the queens by picking them up into overlords between shots, as well as transfuses.
From an outside perspective, another benefit to having multiple queens is that they cease to be obvious targets when you're doing harass. If I throw a few dts at someone's mineral line, and see a solo queen, I immediately think I can deny larvae easily by taking it out. If there's several queens, then I doubt it's going to work, or that killing drones is probably a better use of my time.
On January 17 2011 06:09 S.O.L.I.D. wrote: I don't play Zerg, but I think that some Zergs don't utilize creep as much as they can, even high level players that I've watched. Queens obviously are pretty bad off creep, but the solution to this is just more queens. Creep spreads ridiculously fast when you've got 4 tumors going at once, and as a Terran player I can tell you that creep is ridiculously annoying.
Overall I think queens are really annoying to deal with. In the early game they do very well vs. harass, and if you're making some to deal with that, you might as well make more. Personally I think that making queens vs void rays/phoenix instead of hydras could be good, but I'm not sure about that since I don't play either race. Just seems like hydras are really squishy units whereas queens can tank well, like you said.
This is true, however, you underestimate the amount of attention creep spreading takes.
I would rather see a banshee kill my drones than a marine kill my creep tumours, thats how much I love them. If they kill my morphing creep tumors, I often can't be bothered to make a new queen and respread the creep because in the lategame I have so much more to worry about than just creep.
On January 17 2011 06:22 Chaosvuistje wrote: I would rather see a banshee kill my drones than a marine kill my creep tumours, thats how much I love them. If they kill my morphing creep tumors, I often can't be bothered to make a new queen and respread the creep because in the lategame I have so much more to worry about than just creep.
At ~200APM, it's completly doable. But keeping a decent creep spread late game surely is the harder thing for a Z. As such, never forget creep takes time to recede. If you can push back the ennemy army and have a few queens available, you need to drop a few creeep tumors back asap. I usually keep a queen alone in hotkey 9 for this task.
Also, once you have drops, don't underestimate Creep drops : one queen + one ovie, and here you go, creep tumours everywhere (opponent's third, backdoor,...)
On January 17 2011 06:22 Chaosvuistje wrote: I would rather see a banshee kill my drones than a marine kill my creep tumours, thats how much I love them. If they kill my morphing creep tumors, I often can't be bothered to make a new queen and respread the creep because in the lategame I have so much more to worry about than just creep.
At ~200APM, it's completly doable. But keeping a decent creep spread late game surely is the harder thing for a Z. As such, never forget creep takes time to recede. If you can push back the ennemy army and have a few queens available, you need to drop a few creeep tumors back asap. I usually keep a queen alone in hotkey 9 for this task.
Ofcourse. I won't deny that it is definitely doable. I just can't seem to remember adding additional creep tumors once my tumors died.
The creep receding though, I haven't thought about that. Maybe I could emergency 'patch' the creeptumorless creep with another queen. Gotta try that out some time.
I'm just thinking of what you can do with mass gas and lesser minerals. I guess you can just avoid getting gas for a long time, thus supercharging your mineral income (in terms of how much time/money you save on gas and drones). OR infestors and ugrades (I like this idea alot)
Zerg are the only race "without" healers for harass forces. Toss have shields, Terrans have everything. But this is just an illusion.
Don't they have regeneration? Just something to note. Yes, Queens are hot shit. Didn't we recently see a game where a guy did an all-in push with hydras and like 5 queens after fending off a phoenix harass?
Zerg are the only race "without" healers for harass forces. Toss have shields, Terrans have everything. But this is just an illusion.
Don't they have regeneration? Just something to note. Yes, Queens are hot shit. Didn't we recently see a game where a guy did an all-in push with hydras and like 5 queens after fending off a phoenix harass?
Was really beautiful ):
What I think he means by, "healers," is something that's useful in short-term engagements (like a few seconds between pushes, or even during the fight).
Zerg are the only race "without" healers for harass forces. Toss have shields, Terrans have everything. But this is just an illusion.
Don't they have regeneration? Just something to note. Yes, Queens are hot shit. Didn't we recently see a game where a guy did an all-in push with hydras and like 5 queens after fending off a phoenix harass?
Was really beautiful ):
What I think he means by, "healers," is something that's useful in short-term engagements (like a few seconds between pushes, or even during the fight).
Exactly. The regeneration is a nice passive utility but can't be used on short terms. It helps building harassed to rebuild life slowly as an example. But outside this, it's far from being as useful as, let's say, a Medivac, or a shield replenishing. VERY far.
It's the answer to the early hatch. Hatching first and delaying gas while droning hard, spines and queens allow you to sit on t1 longer without having to waste mineral production to rush t3 units. Droning more earlier will also allow for a faster t3 transition due to being able to throw up 3 more geysers. Then as you stated when you go into the mid or late game you can use those queens in your push or to take more bases.
they are only worth it on creep tehehe. But there is a reason why they nerfed the off creep speed. Because queen rushes where probably one class above 60 hp scv rushes. But it means at the same time she is still imba but only on creep. Never saw a reason to not go for 4-5 queens at the start as either the opponent would push and my queen heal would keep every unit alive or to heal up my damaged mutas i would get if he would turtle. (also because they save you larva and you can get more workers out) Can't play zerg though it made me to lazy and i got worse in macro and my macro was bad before hehe. Could use a more complicated base management
My stub build will be 4 queens before lair, on 1 gas. I'll work on the transitions (roaches ? mutas ? ling blings ?). My goal will be to have 2 builds : one which saves gas for fast T3, and one which uses all the 2 base ressources to have a really surprisingly powerful drop push.
But as Queens are the BEST AA in the game, with Rines, I really think it can get a Z to be much more creative with his army composition.
Question- what would be your hotkeys for this set up? As a random player, I usually just hotkey all my queens together on 6 and have all my hatches on 5, but would you put your non-injecting queens on a separate hotkey (for example 4), would they just be lying around with your army, or would they be on the hotkey with the other queens?
Queens are truly good and with perfect creep spread i would say they are a bit imbalanced.
I did some counting and if you constantly produce queens from two hatcheries it will take just 250 seconds to get 110 creep tumors if you control the creep perfectly.
I used the queen building time of 50 seconds and said that the queen gets energy for one creep tumor every 50 seconds ( in fact enough energy every 44,4 seconds when using the data from the map editor.) I then assumed that each creep tumor that can place another creep tumor place one every 25 seconds, which would allow each of the creep tumors created from queens to create 2 more creep tumors every 50 seconds.
Then when your first two queens pop you create 2 creep tumors and start your two next queens, when the next two queens spawns the starting creep tumors would now be 6 creep tumors. The queens then spawn 4 more creep tumors creating a total of 10 creep tumors and 6 of them from queens, the rest of the calculations are presented down below.(The creep tumors from queens are the ones that can create more creep tumors)
The first column is time passed in seconds, the second one is number of queens, the third one is the number of creep tumors from queens, the fourth is the amount of creep tumors created from other tumors and the last column is the total amount of creep tumors.
However you will not be able to get this many creep tumors in a real game because of several factors such as travel distance for the created queens as well as the opponent killing creep tumors.
However if you manage to just get some of these creep tumors in a real game it would gain so much vision from the tumors that it's basically full maphack. luckily no human being could have perfect creep spread and 110 tumors in 250 seconds might be a bit more than possible in a real game.
Well, thats my secret to a 80% ZvP ratio busted xD.
Queens are so retardedly strong to mix into an army, and i always make them in place of hydras. you can max extremely fast when using Roaches for your larvae and queens at the same time, your pumping 15+ supply per hatch every 30-40 seconds.
Not to mention it gives me the gas to go extremely fast infestors and double upgrades (roaches and queens get same upgrades btw). Since roaches have such high HP, it's a really efficient transfuse target too, so much synergy. You can also pump some spare gas into quick overlord drops + banelings, which to be honest at the 2k masters level, a 26 baneling drop onto a CC or nexus can end games right there.
So many opportunities with gas. Might upload some reps of these things working.
Infestors also happen to shit on any Protoss stargate play.
Also very viable in ZvT although their usage for me is less pronounced as a game winner, probably due to me not being creative enough with the extra gas.. i just tend to kind of stick to the whole muta/ling thing.
edit:
@ Dullahb
When creep spread is your #2 priority directly after injecting its very very easy to spread scross the entire map in under 10-11 mins game time.
On metal I've reached the opponents base at 11 mins numerous times. It becomes laughably fast if you use Poopoverlords to leapfrog your tumors too. Using the new hotkey changes the camera position is much easier to use, personally i think using [shift + `] to set the camera, and [`] to go back to it would really speed up creep spreading, however its fairly easy to work it in just by minimap clickin after inject.
But yeah, by 10 mins you can have 1000+ hp worth of transfuse ready to go with your queens.
Such a long post, horribly written overall. Sorry.
calling it now, in HotS the queen can morph into a matriarch with new abilities and more mobility
Haha mass roach/queen!
Anyways, yes Queens are so underused! They are a great unit, and NO GAS omg seriously NO GAS that is just amazing. And no friggin larvae. It's awesome that they synergize with such gas heavy units, like BLs and Ultralisks! And transfuse really is just friggin amazing when used on ultras/BLs and to a smaller extent Roaches (or even other Queens xD)
Been playing 10-20 queens in ZvP and ZvT for ages now, yep, it's great! ZvZ it's also good because the enemy has creep, but the games dont go long enough generally.
On January 17 2011 06:51 mr_tolkien wrote: My stub build will be 4 queens before lair, on 1 gas. I'll work on the transitions (roaches ? mutas ? ling blings ?). My goal will be to have 2 builds : one which saves gas for fast T3, and one which uses all the 2 base ressources to have a really surprisingly powerful drop push.
But as Queens are the BEST AA in the game, with Rines, I really think it can get a Z to be much more creative with his army composition.
I don't think that you should pre-plan what transition you're doing, as it reacting would do wonders here. Such as, if a T's going MMM, Blings and Upgrades will do wonders (or infestors *wink*). If it's thors/mech, speed roaches (especially with heals) do wonders. If he's turtling really hard, map control, expanding, and mutas. With this there's no real one-answer-solution.
Why is it underused ? Predicted response : «Hey smartass, no pro has ever dropped a queen during GSL, therefore it sucks, you should get banned blah blah blah». So, why hasn't it been used already ?
I like this idea but the reason why queens don't really get used too much in offensive ways is because they used to be in beta and blizzard kept nerfing them. Thats why queens are really slow off of creep and transfusion has a mini CD on it.
Queens are incredibly useful, especially when defending a 4 gate. I'm glad that you pointed out how most people try to focus down the queen, because, well, they do. Also, When you're doing a drop, also be sure to spew creep so your Queen has a little more room to dance (haven't tried, but it's pretty sound theorycraft, right?)
I don't think that this is very Zv*, as much as T or P. I feel like in ZvZ, this is too slow to handle even moderately aggressive builds. Against a 4 gate and multi-rax push, you can multiple queens out and a sizable army. But against mass Slings or Sling Bling, I feel like the mineral loss is a little too much in the early game.
It seems lame but I've always thought about queens in terms of raiding and wow, you would never succeed without your healers even if you had 8+ tanks (ultras or broods)...
I've had huge success with lots of queens at lower levels, but I always assumed that if you relied on them too much at higher levels people would stuff stuff with EMP or feedback.
On January 17 2011 11:32 Chance55 wrote: I've had huge success with lots of queens at lower levels, but I always assumed that if you relied on them too much at higher levels people would stuff stuff with EMP or feedback.
If they want to Feedback my queens and not storm my army, I'd scream for them to and present my queens on a platter.
I love queens but my main problem with using them myself is while they make an amazing anti air replacement, they get in the way late game as anti ground (how did we zergs ever survive with 3 range roaches?) lack the dps of hydras and my biggest issue is you can't really ever attack opponents bases with queens (besides a few exceptions) because no matter how many queens you have tumors will never reach your opponents base (unless he's terrible) and they're almost 100% useless off creep. Not saying it can't work, I just don't know how to make it work though I'll try experimenting some more with queens when I scout phoenix / void ray.
I usually get 2 queens per hatch and then even more if I am going muta. Mutas are damn expensive and transfuse saves my ass so many times. Some day, Im going to try mass queen.
On January 17 2011 12:06 Grijzeham wrote: I love queens but my main problem with using them myself is while they make an amazing anti air replacement, they get in the way late game as anti ground (how did we zergs ever survive with 3 range roaches?) lack the dps of hydras and my biggest issue is you can't really ever attack opponents bases with queens (besides a few exceptions) because no matter how many queens you have tumors will never reach your opponents base (unless he's terrible) and they're almost 100% useless off creep. Not saying it can't work, I just don't know how to make it work though I'll try experimenting some more with queens when I scout phoenix / void ray.
Queens should get the same speed upgrade as overlords, that would make them viable as a healer at least.
I've always kind of wanted to do mass queens in a build, but the synergy with other units is actually quite disappointing in my experience.
Queens don't cost larva, but make larva (hypothetically). So you'll have to get lots of (extra) hatches. 3 hatches / base is too much to constantly make queens / lings, but 2 / base is fine. Zerglings are cost-efficient but not larva-efficient, so they go together well. Transfuse isn't good for lings, though; and there's a huge discrepancy in mobility.
With roaches, 1 hatch / base is more likely (or 3 / 2bases), so you'll probably get way less queens out. And with roaches, lair timing is a big deal for upgrades, so getting multiple queens early can certainly be damaging. I'd imagine you can squeeze out 5 hatches of pure roaches off of 3 bases.
Queens build one at a time at the speed it takes to make 2 marines, but a hatch costs as much as 2 raxes and takes almost twice as long to build. Because of this, they aren't really a viable early game army supplment, and your opening will definately either have to be structured around the idea of getting a lot of mod-game queens, or you'll just constantly make them as a minor army supplement or a late-game thing.
Early game they're fine to pretty good against most things when they're worked into a composition, and since they don't use larva you need for drones there's no reason not to get some, but the lair is a big thing and you'll probably only get about 3 queens out before the early game is over, maybe more if you did some kind of early pool.
Midgame queens are pretty good imo, because even if you're up against an army composition that queens aren't useful against, queens are never useless, and it's always easy to transition out of them (although transitioning into them is quite hard). Helpful against the early mech units from both races, bad against the t1 forces, and great against the air forces.
Lategame queens are just really supply efficient as their own army, and compliment t3 forces really well. If you can get a lot of them, I think queens are the ideal lategame up-shooter for zerg, far better than hydras lategame. The gas you save will compliment your t3 force extremely well, too. I've never managed to pull it off, though.
I think this discussion is especially relevant due to the new ZvP matchup, if anyone has any replays about finding the right number of early queens for a queen/roach play or whatever, please feel free to share :D
This sounds very interesting. I've already been much more proactive about spreading my creep lately, but going for more queens and mixing them into the army actually sounds great. I'll see if I can't mix them in more. If anyone has any replays of this actually working in a ZvP or ZvT that'd be great. Gonna test this out when I get the chance.
Queens are really useful for muta harass also. You usually build up a ton of extra minerals and can get up to half a dozen extra queens. Regularly retreating for transfuses on your mutalisks keeps them healthy and alive, stops the terran from wearing them down.
I've tested getting more and more Queens. And even though I've been recently demoted to Plat, the results were pretty concrete. As I played, I tried to get more and more queens.
The best combos seem to be Muta and Roaches. Roaches benefit most with the heals and the creep spread, also the mutual upgrades make the gas spending easier. In combat heals on roaches won me SO many fights tonight alone. In terms of mutas, less queens were required (as I only really needed them for the periodic heals when they return from harassing). But still, they made a large difference in bewteen harassment and supporting during pushes. I did want to try to tech to Brood Lords or Ultras in some games, but even if I didn't beat them with my harassment or pushes, they were just left incapable of defending adequately, and it would have proven nothing.
General findings: Having queens being constantly produced has little downside. The fact that they're made from hatches instead of larva (in fact, they MAKE MORE LARVA) allows maximum production for your army (your unit production is barely phased by the queens) between them and your regular units.
Before a push, queens are HARDLY a waste. They sit back, spread creep, gain energy for future in-combat Tranfusions, and demolish all forms of air attacks. Mutas can be easily shrugged off. Drops, if intercepted well, can also be stopped before they even happen.
There is a limit to how many queens you should have. Between your bases (1 queen each for injections) and your army, there's a point where more queens =/= better. After about 10-12 queens, they just take up a lot of space (which is considerable if you're going roaches), you have enough transfusions, and they start to take up a pretty significant amount of food.
Maybe my findings are a little invalid because I haven't been playing against tip-top players, but overall, queens are DEFINATELY something that will be getting more and more of.
Yay, queens are a bad unit VS Ground. But as I said, never forget to TANK with them, this is one of the major point of the thread. They don't deal damage very good, but they take it wonderfuly, thanks to their very special type.
Agreed, great post! I'll add that queens are good if you're trying an early nydus push with roaches. You can bring a couple queens to handle early voidrays without cutting into your gas budget for the nydus tech. This transitions nicely into infestors, since you're using very little gas for your army. Queen AA in turn works well with fungal, since they have such long range.
I'm messing around a lot with the optimization progs over here.
I currently am looking at optimization for FE + 30 drones + 6 queens + 8 roaches + 2 fast lings for scouting + Metabolic boost + a spine crawler (necessary as we're going Roaches). Time : 7:00 approximatly. I really am curious and will dwelve this, it's really promising. You can afterward go Lair, and once you pushed the first "wave" back go into creep explosion mode (4 queens spreading creep = madness). The opening is 14 hatch 15 pool, very classic and quite defendable.
After this you're free to go. Lair is highly recommended, and you can do it will pumping lings if necessary. If you're not under pressure, fast B3, fast T3.
Do think there is a fundamental flaw in this BO ? I'll definitly be trying it out on ladder as it sounds sooooooooo cool.
to think the queen was once super awesome. I wish it was still like this, sounds so cool
some one tell me what those last 2 abilities did :O
Originally, the queen was a unique unit (like the Mothership originally was) of the Zerg[2], who could be mutated into two consecutive upgrades. From Queen to Large Queen to Huge Queen. The normal Queen could Burrow, Lay Creep Tumors, Lay Swarm Clutch, Lay Shrieker, Evolve Queen and cast Regeneration. Basically, she was in charge of the Hive Cluster's defence.
Her abilities increased as a Large Queen, adding Deep Tunnel and Swarm Infestation to the array of skills, making her better at transporting between bases and also more able to defend the base. The Huge Queen could not evolve further, but instead use Toxic Creep, which made creep poisonous to walk on. Each size increase also significantly boosted her hit points, armor and damage. She originally had only a very limited air attack, using her tentacles to nearby flying units.
By mid December the same year, the Queen was no longer unique, and the Swarm Clutches and Shriekers were definitely overpowered. The change to make her non-unique was possibly at the time also to make the Mothership more of a unique feature.
ot: will definately try to use them more/ in bigger numbers
Queen drops are awesome, specially in ZvZ, you can usually snipe some overlords and stir shit up since you get the bonus speed from his creep, you can also drop a tumor on his creep and try to hide it under a queen until it's done, now you have vision of his base :D
Against T or Z, if you queen drop, remember your overlords can spread creep too, and you can put tumors on that creep, just saying.
By the way, there's a simply trick to spreading creep. It takes a decent amount of time for a creep tumor to build, and THEN it takes a decent amount of time for the cooldown to go down for the next tumor. This is about the same amount of time as the Spawn Larva timer.
So a good way to remember to spread creep is simply do it every time you spawn larva.
Been trying it in custom, I just absolutely RAPE anybody who is below master with. This build is REALLY safe as far as I can see, I really never had a BO loss, and i usually get BLs + mass transfuse by 12:00, with 3 bases, it's so scary oO Not to mention complete maphack with 100+ creep tumours.
This. Is. So. Awesome. Updating OP with the BO, I'll begin to use it on the ladder tomorrow.
EDIT : Done 2 ladders with it, 2-0 atm, and they both said «wp» :p
On one of those strange instances of ZvZ where you reach lategame, queens along with a few ultras are truly unstoppable. The big advantage of the lategame roach army against ultras is that the roaches can focus fire down every individual ultra. Focus fire on the ultras makes it absurdly easy to heal with queens. Throw in an infestor to lock things down and you're set!
I really liked the idea for other matchups though. Will try it once I get home .
On January 18 2011 02:11 mr_tolkien wrote: Been trying it in custom, I just absolutely RAPE anybody who is below master with. This build is REALLY safe as far as I can see, I really never had a BO loss, and i usually get BLs + mass transfuse by 12:00, with 3 bases, it's so scary oO Not to mention complete maphack with 100+ creep tumours.
This. Is. So. Awesome. Updating OP with the BO, I'll begin to use it on the ladder tomorrow.
EDIT : Done 2 ladders with it, 2-0 atm, and they both said «wp» :p
Exactly. This is starting to look like less and less like theorycrafting to me. From my play, something as minimal as just having 2-3 queens in your amy is a huge difference. Like, it optimizes early game defense, strengthens your army immensely, allows for amazing amounts of map control and macro. The only real downside is you need at least adequate micro. Between transfusion, spreading creep, perfecting all of the injects, and managing your mutas and roaches alongside your queens, lower levels of APM might not be able to get all of it perfectly.
My APM has been close to 200 when playing this build.
It REALLY is awesome. Very micro intensive, but I've just beaten a Blink Rush with it : 8 Roaches + 1 Spine + 4 healing/tanking queens > 20 Stalkers it seems :D
I'm so happy I opened this thread lol, it motivated me to develop a Queen centric build, and it works... BLs + Queens is just too awesome. Best anti ground for its cost, the BL, gas heavy, + best anti air for its cost, the queen, min heavy. Add transfuse into this, and Roaches to fix the opposing army, and you probably got the best 200/200 army in the game...
And thanks to the Z building style, I just made a 220/200 army (yep, 20 evo chambers are "just" 1500 min and you get 75% back anyway) with this, and what can I say except that I litteraly demolished a Protoss "Deathball" with it ? No need for a 2nd round, I lost only 25 supplies in the battle.
This is so good... I can't even see why it hasn't be used yet.
Replays inc, I'm playing plain noobs atm because of the master reset + long time without ladder. I'll post them once back in EU top 500.
I've only had success with roach/queen on small maps. I go for a ~12min 115-130 food +1/+1 push (off 1 base gas). Grab a third, all the gases, and do whatever transition necessary during the push (make one more wave of roaches, so about 8-10 more). I feel that there is a pretty good window during that time where you can hit your opponent before they have a critical mass to offset transfuse. The army is very tanky and cost effective, so it is a good way to move into the mid game imo.
Larger map/far distance spawn, my concern is that it is not difficult to control the mobility of the queens by tumor sniping. Not to mention it takes about 30-60 seconds longer to get in position to strike at your opponent. I have not yet tried doom drop or nydus in this case (or even both at the same time), but that would make the timing very different, and I'm not sure if there is a good time to hit after the 11-12 minute mark.
I don't see queens being useful in late game because at that time you need units that are readily able to perform, and with queens you are sacrificing supply for a unit that is fairly useless till a few minutes down the road, which is a big enough opening for your opponent to roll over you.
On January 18 2011 04:23 mr_tolkien wrote:And thanks to the Z building style, I just made a 220/200 army (yep, 20 evo chambers are "just" 1500 min and you get 75% back anyway) with this, and what can I say except that I litteraly demolished a Protoss "Deathball" with it ? No need for a 2nd round, I lost only 25 supplies in the battle.
I most definitely need a replay of this because it just sounds freaking awesome.
The protoss was spamming T to storm, and I was spamming T to transfuse. IT WAS COMPLETELY AWESOME. I came out way ahead in the fight and they help a lot versus phoenix harrass. Being able to last minute transfuse overlords is a godsend.
Thanks for this thread, without it, I would have definitely lost thousands of minerals more in overlords.
On January 18 2011 04:23 mr_tolkien wrote:And thanks to the Z building style, I just made a 220/200 army (yep, 20 evo chambers are "just" 1500 min and you get 75% back anyway) with this, and what can I say except that I litteraly demolished a Protoss "Deathball" with it ? No need for a 2nd round, I lost only 25 supplies in the battle.
I most definitely need a replay of this because it just sounds freaking awesome.
This will come, I'll do it (much) better soon :p
On January 18 2011 04:39 Xeken wrote: I don't see queens being useful in late game because at that time you need units that are readily able to perform, and with queens you are sacrificing supply for a unit that is fairly useless till a few minutes down the road, which is a big enough opening for your opponent to roll over you.
You're wrong. Having 20 worth of supply of queen late game IS game breaking. I watched a replay and one of my BroodLord sustained approxmately 1500 damages. 1500. And Broodlings where popping everywhere.
It's completly BROKEN late game. Of course after the first big fight and all energy use, sac them. They tank damages like wonders, so no reason not to do it after all ! And then insta remax with whatever, I remember you you're a T3 Z, you basically are the king of sexy tech switches.
Woah. Assuming the opponents have no armor, queens have the same DPS as roaches. However, roaches have 145 hp, cost 75 min less but 25 gas more, and have a slightly larger range. However, queen is not armored, therefore can survive a lot of rauder or immortal shots compared to roaches. and they dont take up larvae. They also have their abillities which is the most important of all. (but they are so fu$## slow). If i had way too many min, y not get some queens? however, with limited rescources, roaches may be a better option depending on the opponent's army composition. EDIT: actually no it wont. becos queens are ownage and a zerg shud have a good eco anyway I realised how many positives of queens there are to negative. SO many reasons that queens are so useful. i missed another important one. they are anti air.
I've seen a couple of replays when someone would push with lets say broodlords and have 6-10 queens in the background transfusing them. Wish i could micro well enough to incorporate more queens.
On January 18 2011 05:24 bearjuice wrote: I've seen a couple of replays when someone would push with lets say broodlords and have 6-10 queens in the background transfusing them. Wish i could micro well enough to incorporate more queens.
You get used to the micro. Before yesterday, I think I've used transfusion <20 times. Now, I've probably used it hundreds. It's a little bit awkward at first, but while you're transfusing, just think to yourself, "When was the last time I made more creep tumors? Is my larva injection done? If it is, I need to send reinforcements," and such like that. If it's really hard, just playing against very hard AI will sometimes help (not a long-term, in depth practice. More for just getting into an engagement and macroing while fighting).
While I was watching TLO's stream the other day, I saw some more evidence of the queen's "tanking" role. It was a ZvT on Scrap station, and the Terran had set up seige tanks inbetween the destructable middle lane and the smoke by the natural. What TLO did is he pulled out two queens, seperated them, then sent them into the seige tank line. As soon as the seige tanks fired on the queens, TLO ran in with 20-30 speedlings, with roaches and I beleive hydra support. It absolutely demolished that tank line.
Best part was that one queen survived after all the tanks had fired.
On January 18 2011 05:36 DeltaBravo wrote: While I was watching TLO's stream the other day, I saw some more evidence of the queen's "tanking" role. It was a ZvT on Scrap station, and the Terran had set up seige tanks inbetween the destructable middle lane and the smoke by the natural. What TLO did is he pulled out two queens, seperated them, then sent them into the seige tank line. As soon as the seige tanks fired on the queens, TLO ran in with 20-30 speedlings, with roaches and I beleive hydra support. It absolutely demolished that tank line.
Best part was that one queen survived after all the tanks had fired.
They absorb five tank shots, splash included. Queens tank like bosses.
My game is evolving so much right now, when I'll be stable again I'll post reps. I'm far too sloppy atm, but hell, BL transition costs so much XD Need around 1k 1k saved up two times (corruptors, then BLs) to be really effective lol.
PS : The fast hive also allows me to go fast cracklings. +3/+0 cracklings are like the best unit for little raids in this game. 4 supply of Lings = a whole mineral line raped.
There are two situations to consider after a big fight
1. Army trade, in which case you want to be aggressive, and you obviously do not want queens in this case.
2. Opponent with some forces remaining, in which case you can choose to play passive or aggressive, depending on how many units are left.
For the first point, there is no discussion, you go for the kill. For the second point, it would depend on how many/what type of units your opponent has left. For the cases you would play passive is when you would try to remass with some queens mixed in. However, this is where I have a problem with the idea.
In the only situation where you would consider getting a second round of queens, it is not the best approach at that specific point in the game. Getting queens means you need about 2-3 minutes to grab ~10 queens off 3-4 bases, and about another minute-1.5 minutes to get enough energy to have a respectable number of transfuse (avg of 2 per queen). In the end game, with your opponent still having somewhat of a standing army, a 3-5 minute window is very dangerous. You are very vulnerable till your queens are ready, which is why I dislike getting a second round, because your opponent gets to dictate when to engage if you do.
I've also considered fewer queens during the end game, but I felt that only a few queens worth of transfuse is more of a novelty than anything else. If you go a lot of queens, you are obviously going to just ram your opponent's front door down. If you go no queens, you can go for the main, or just hit all the peripherals. Going a few queens? You can't do either.
Again, from personal experience, the first push with queens has been effective. If the fight is a draw, I have not seen a situation where getting queens is safe. Playing passive when you don't have to past the early game is just not smart imo.
The thing is Zerg is fundamentally a race where you mass and throw units at the enemy. Eco, then mass and throw units. So keeping units alive isn't the biggest part of our mind set, such as terran with tanks and toss with sentries. So even though it can tank a but and heal, it's not that important to overall success. 20 tranfuses is great but not if you could have that many more zerglings as fodder or drones mining. Not to mention 50 energy and if you're a good zerg player you shouldn't have that on your injecting queens ever. Creep spread is good too but you only need 1 or 2 extra queens for that
^^ Yeah....but this is about massing queens, having more than one per base, which will give you plenty of energy for transfusion. Like queens specifically for the battle.
On January 17 2011 06:29 Zelniq wrote: yeah queens are definitely good
calling it now, in HotS the queen can morph into a matriarch with new abilities and more mobility
It would be cool if the queen could morph into an airborne spellcaster in HotS. Similar to the old queen except with an ability to instantly win the game for 50 energy.
I just had some guy rage for 20 minutes and float away all of his buildings so I couldn't kill them because I, "cheesed him," and used the, "most lazy skillless build," he'd ever seen. Also, i'm Zerg, so I suck. I just mass expanded and teched to broodlords.... (BroodLord + Queen = Best time I've had in SC in a while)
It envoked the rage of a bad player. This is officially a build.
Hopefuly mr_tolkien is still reading this thread. I was wondering as to how well the build you describ ein the OP is going to deal with a fast 4gate at around 6:30 when they send first stalker and zealots and reinforce.Looks like your going to have like 5 or 6 Queens and about 6 roaches with your 2 lings out n the map to scout it coming. This sounds like it MAY be able to hold with a second crawler and a lot of transfuses. If it can hold a 4gate im starting to wonder exactly what is going to be a strong opener from T or P vs this.
How does it do vs a 2 rax, your getting hatch first and a fast crawler so this is the standard reaction to the 2rax, however I feel like you might need to drop queens 3 and 4 for lings to help defend since maybe the 3rd and4th queens wont be up in time to defend the second wave.
I was doing some messing around in the unit tester this morning before work after reading this thread, I was thinking that mass VR is going to counter the BL+queen combo, I was very suprised to see that Queens are supply efficient counters to voidrays with only a handful of transfuses on the queens. Ie 30 Queens > 20VRs. This is a fairly big suprise to me because I often thought that VRs once in these numbers are almost unstoppable. also to note is as Queens are range7 to a Hydra and VR's 6. It means with fungal queens can range on VRs for free hits.
This is making me very excited hoping i can pull off the micro/macro required at my realtively low skill of 2.7k dia
On second thoughts if your against mass VR, you just save yourself the money and dont morph in like half of the BLs and save the corrupters which with the queens is going to roll through mass Vr.
On January 18 2011 23:23 BoonSolo wrote: Hopefuly mr_tolkien is still reading this thread. I was wondering as to how well the build you describ ein the OP is going to deal with a fast 4gate at around 6:30 when they send first stalker and zealots and reinforce.Looks like your going to have like 5 or 6 Queens and about 6 roaches with your 2 lings out n the map to scout it coming. (...) How does it do vs a 2 rax, your getting hatch first and a fast crawler so this is the standard reaction to the 2rax, however I feel like you might need to drop queens 3 and 4 for lings to help defend since maybe the 3rd and4th queens wont be up in time to defend the second wave.
VS 4 Gayte : ABSOLUT RAPE. You first crawler will likely score 10+ kills, be healed 3-4 times, and your roaches will be safe near him. This build is a COUNTER to 4 gate. It's a straight BO loss if he attacks.
VS 2 Rax pressure : Crawler defends like a boss, he only takes 3 damages from rines. This + heal = easy to defend. You may have to drop a second crawler though to protect your whole hatch.
So let me restate what it counters : Any air play A lot of agressive play from P or T
It's countered by : Cheese (2 rax all in, 6 pool,...)
It transitions into : Everything
I really love this build that far. So far from the meta game I'm getting a lot free wins with it (T sees a spire : 20+ turrets lololol). I mainly loses because of mis micro, as it is VERY intensive. I already made 2 vods but I'm not happy with my opponent's level...
On January 18 2011 07:10 NTGKOA wrote: Zerg is fundamentally a race where you mass and throw units at the enemy.
Where is it written ? As long as there isn't a law for this, you have the right to be creative...
I mainly loses because of mis micro, as it is VERY intensive. creative...
So far, I can connect almost all of my losses to this. Misclicking transfusions can be awful, and missing more than one becomes a pretty big loss. If you hit all of them correctly, you're awesome. If you miss one or two, you're still fine. If you miss more than that, you're wasting quite a bit. If you miss a lot, work on your micro.
Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out the Queen's tanking ability. A lot of people overlook the use of having no armor type, making her strong against every kind of attack (Of course, Archons will still deliver their devastating bonus damage, but Archons are so rare nowadays) and critical in fending off hellion run-bys.
On January 18 2011 07:10 NTGKOA wrote: Zerg is fundamentally a race where you mass and throw units at the enemy.
Where is it written ? As long as there isn't a law for this, you have the right to be creative...
Zerg isn't a race where you have to throw your units away, Zerg just tends to be a race with units that are more difficult to keep alive through heated engagements, and is compensated by the fact that those units are easier to re-make. As far as I'm concerned, this only makes the ability to keep those units more valuable: imagine how many extra resources you'd have for things like getting +3/+3 or hitting T3 faster if you had to re-build, say, 25% less of your army after each engagement?
On January 19 2011 01:30 OfficerTJHooker wrote: Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out the Queen's tanking ability. A lot of people overlook the use of having no armor type, making her strong against every kind of attack (Of course, Archons will still deliver their devastating bonus damage, but Archons are so rare nowadays) and critical in fending off hellion run-bys.
On January 19 2011 01:30 OfficerTJHooker wrote: Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out the Queen's tanking ability. A lot of people overlook the use of having no armor type, making her strong against every kind of attack (Of course, Archons will still deliver their devastating bonus damage, but Archons are so rare nowadays) and critical in fending off hellion run-bys.
Im suprised noone mentined HT's (dont even need the amulet, or the storm) and just feedbacking the queens and then rushing them with zeolots, (2 transfuse = 100 energy?, 100 damage to queens... i forgot how much hp the queens have)
On January 19 2011 04:17 BloodyPikachu wrote: Im suprised noone mentined HT's (dont even need the amulet, or the storm) and just feedbacking the queens and then rushing them with zeolots, (2 transfuse = 100 energy?, 100 damage to queens... i forgot how much hp the queens have)
Queens have 150. But the thing is, the comp that you mention is HT/Chargelot. I don't see this being too much of any issue (though you're right in saying that would be fairly effective against the queen's themselves), as the main units that will be used with the queens are either Roaches or air tech. Pure, unfiltered, upgraded roaches do well against lots, and lots can't even hit hutas. Also, HT's are pretty high in the tech tree. SO by the time that they regularly become a part of your army, it's very possible for the Aerg to be on a third or fourth base.
On January 19 2011 04:17 BloodyPikachu wrote: Im suprised noone mentined HT's (dont even need the amulet, or the storm) and just feedbacking the queens and then rushing them with zeolots, (2 transfuse = 100 energy?, 100 damage to queens... i forgot how much hp the queens have)
Queens have 150. But the thing is, the comp that you mention is HT/Chargelot. I don't see this being too much of any issue (though you're right in saying that would be fairly effective against the queen's themselves), as the main units that will be used with the queens are either Roaches or air tech. Pure, unfiltered, upgraded roaches do well against lots, and lots can't even hit hutas. Also, HT's are pretty high in the tech tree. SO by the time that they regularly become a part of your army, it's very possible for the Aerg to be on a third or fourth base.
Here is what i am thinking: You are going for chargelots, which requires the twilight council, and HT's are just one building away, you do not need to research the amulet nor the storm to feedback, you can warp in HT's immediately, and when warped in, they can gather energy, when kept alive, they can FB two queens. Now people mentioned Roach / Queen or Muta / Queen, I would put chargelots to clean up after the roaches and queens, but the mutas? well, im not sure if this would work but HT's can turn into archons, (From my experience, archons rape mutas, even when warped in on the middle of the battlefield). However, i am a complete noob, and i currently have no evidence with me as i am in school, and this is all in my head and past experience >_<"
I used to play with a lot of Queen-based play in ZvZ and ZvP back in beta, but unfortunately I've adopted more main-stream tactics and gotten away from those queens for the most part... not really sure why.
Either way, I think Queens are an untapped part of the Zerg army and have recently been thinking of reincorporating them.
I can see Queens making any Roach ball exponentially better while simultaneously helping with your creep spread so hydras can support those roaches as well. I think the Queen/Roach/Hydra triangle of support will actually become a pretty awesome composition for this MU as time goes on. Throw some Infestors or Broodlords in there and you're talking straight-up sexy.
On the ZvP side, I used to do some mass queen openers and incorporate roaches. I've since moved to mass lings, which seems to work better. None-the-less, I am finally starting to want to reincorporate those Queens. Not to support roaches, but to act as meat-shields to a hydralisk mid-game. Hydras are one of the best units you can have vs everything that comes out of a gateway, but you need something to throw in front of them so they don't die super fast, Queens can again help with the creep spread, are super beefy, and you can double them up with overlord drops to give yourself a pretty impressive army (especially as they take 0 gas, freeing up that 300/300 you need for good drops). It's something I've been thinking of for a while but haven't had the time to dedicate, I think it will be hot once I do though.
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of use for queens in ZvT. Marines just tear through them, and everything else, so fast I typically can't be wasting the minerals and supply on them, especially when they don't do much for me on the offensive end of the spectrum. Those 125hp heals seem a lot less awesome when marines will just burn down that unit in another 2 seconds anyway...
I obs'd a game between a master toss and a diamond zerg. The zerg nydused into his base, sent a queen out first, and dropped a creep tumor. I thought that was an interesting thing to do, seeing as it maintained vision in his opponents base AND prevented buildings from being built there. Very useful for further nyduses.
I think the op raises a very good point, re transfuse being used between Muta harass waves.
Mutas are a huge gas investment, queens are not; and since I usually have excess minerals before spire finishes anyways, maybe I could start making 3 queens per hatch. Healing just one muta makes the whole queen pay for itself -- shit, maybe I should make 2 queens for every 3 mutas :X
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of use for queens in ZvT. Marines just tear through them, and everything else, so fast I typically can't be wasting the minerals and supply on them, especially when they don't do much for me on the offensive end of the spectrum. Those 125hp heals seem a lot less awesome when marines will just burn down that unit in another 2 seconds anyway...
I think 2 areas where Queens are good in ZvT are creep spreading and muta/broodlord healing. Good Terrans will snipe creep tumors, so it's nice to be able to lay them back down. Good creep spread makes fights so much easier.
Once Broodlords hit the field, a queen escort makes them especially scary to T. Transfuse will keep the broods up vs. a few vikings, and you can also shoot at any vikings that get too close to your queens.
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of use for queens in ZvT. Marines just tear through them, and everything else, so fast I typically can't be wasting the minerals and supply on them, especially when they don't do much for me on the offensive end of the spectrum. Those 125hp heals seem a lot less awesome when marines will just burn down that unit in another 2 seconds anyway...
I think 2 areas where Queens are good in ZvT are creep spreading and muta/broodlord healing. Good Terrans will snipe creep tumors, so it's nice to be able to lay them back down. Good creep spread makes fights so much easier.
Once Broodlords hit the field, a queen escort makes them especially scary to T. Transfuse will keep the broods up vs. a few vikings, and you can also shoot at any vikings that get too close to your queens.
Truth about the Brood Lords. The only response that I've seen from terran is vikings, which the queens an heal through and easily sniper down, or thors. And thors get eaten alive by the broodlings relatively easily. I want to test Battlecruisers, but I have yet to have them be used in a real game yet.
Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of use for queens in ZvT. Marines just tear through them, and everything else, so fast I typically can't be wasting the minerals and supply on them, especially when they don't do much for me on the offensive end of the spectrum. Those 125hp heals seem a lot less awesome when marines will just burn down that unit in another 2 seconds anyway...
I think 2 areas where Queens are good in ZvT are creep spreading and muta/broodlord healing. Good Terrans will snipe creep tumors, so it's nice to be able to lay them back down. Good creep spread makes fights so much easier.
Once Broodlords hit the field, a queen escort makes them especially scary to T. Transfuse will keep the broods up vs. a few vikings, and you can also shoot at any vikings that get too close to your queens.
I would actually add Ultralisks as a 3rd to that as well because tumors and infusion both do TONS to help Ultras cost-effectiveness. But those are niche uses. I don't think you could 10 queen your way to T3 against a decent Terran and that makes it a bad opening in ZvT.
Either way, I think EVERYBODY should get 10+ queens once they hit T3 in ZvT, they really are that effective when paired with BLs and Ultras.
I just had an idea that turned into some theorycrafting (and I was wondering if anyone else had thought of/tried this as well). Speedlings and Queens with continuous carapace upgrades and teching to T3 really fast. It's a race to get to ultras, which are already good with heals, but the extra armor means that the heals' effectiveness goes even farther. I'm normally against ultras (when Brood Lords are an option), but with Queen anti-air and heals, and massive amounts of armor and creep, I feel that they could actually be somewhat effective. Also, speedlings seem to be a less micro intensive path to go, because your heals can more easily be used on the larger queens (as opposed to roaches). The carapace upgrades also increase the lings survivability against Zealots while you're teching up.
Yeah mass queens is an interesting idea. I'm gonna do some practice games vs cpu with it and just see how it feels. I just did my first one and it's nice not really having to worry about air. My big thing that irritates me about zerg is how hard they have to defend early on and how sloppy most zerg defense strategies feel. Just from this one game, a spine crawler or two plus a bunch of queens feels like extremely solid defense tho. It seems like queen/roach/infestor might be nice.
I'll have to try and warm up to it a bit more, but seems really interesting.
On January 19 2011 06:28 mr_tolkien wrote: I think there are a lot of possibilities, but Lings Ultras + queens sure can be viable.
No reps atm because I want to show a really good match. Low master just sucks so much... >.<
My fear here would be stargate play. I just don't feel comfortable with just queens to fight back vs phoenix/VR play. At the same time, the more hydras you build, the longer it takes to get Ultralisks. It would definitely need a way to incorporate more AA while still keeping the ultra rush coming quick.
On January 19 2011 01:30 OfficerTJHooker wrote: Yeah, I'm glad you pointed out the Queen's tanking ability. A lot of people overlook the use of having no armor type, making her strong against every kind of attack (Of course, Archons will still deliver their devastating bonus damage, but Archons are so rare nowadays) and critical in fending off hellion run-bys.
So true - as toss, the only things I have that counter them well are archons and HT, but Archons won't get any splash off a queen (and they take 6 hits anyways)
I've gone against offensive queens only a few times on the ladder, and I do agree they can change the tide of a battle quite severely... just watch out for the HT; feedback will obviously ruin full-mana queens.
dont queens do more dps against air then hydras? and scale better with upgrades? and have more hps plus transfuse? someone void rushed me once when i was massing queens. 5 vrs vs 4 queens...i lost no queens.
as a random unmentioned point, upgrades on queens are HUGE
Queens are good, however: Queens are bad. They take forever to build, so if you want any number of them you'll have to continually produce them from the early game, or make a stupid amount of hatcheries mid-game. This cuts in to your droning too much.
If you find a work-around (or more like 30 different work arounds tailored to your opponents build), then yes queens are beasts. However so are motherships, battlecruisers, broodlords etc.
There might be a time and place, I doubt it'll be consistent though.
On January 19 2011 06:45 pbecot01 wrote: dont queens do more dps against air then hydras? and scale better with upgrades? and have more hps plus transfuse? someone void rushed me once when i was massing queens. 5 vrs vs 4 queens...i lost no queens.
as a random unmentioned point, upgrades on queens are HUGE
No, queens do about 1/2 the DPS of a hydra vs air, maybe 2/3...
They would scale slightly better with both upgrades, but considering they're so far behind in the offense department it wouldn't matter, 1 hydra is always > 1 queen for DPS.
hp + transfuse are the main reasons to get queens in number. Every time you transfuse a hydra, roach, or queen, you effectively built 1 more of that unit instantly in battle for free. 2 transfuses on hydras means you just bought 2 more hydras for 150 minerals and 2 supply (didn't even cost you a larva), not a bad trade-off at all.
The best composition vs air units would be queens + anything that can shoot up, be that corruptors, hydras, or mutalisks. As long as it can hit air, adding queens to it will multiply its effectiveness.
DOOD... IVE BEEN TELLING U GUIZE FOR YEARZ... all you need to do... is get like 15 million queens and 1 ultralisk then mass transfuse the ultra = PRO STRAT... (jk will not work, can't transfuse fast enough (did this in a 2v2 and failed))
Hmm yeah mass queen against terran most be really good, against mm. or if they go for a reaper harras over to a hellion harras to banshee harras. (a opening a have seen terran do a couple of times actually its lame) the queen counter all of those units perfect.
You know whats weird? PDD blocks Queen shots. It really doesn't make sense to me, since the Queen is stabbing things with her claws, not shooting projectiles.
Constant Queen production has been doing wonders for me in fending off mass hellion or mass banshee play- they also do decently well when mopping up stragglers when you've melted most of their marines and have a handful of lings chipping away as well. I had 3 queens of full energy deal with being poked by a full surround of SCVs, a marauder, and a couple marines for a very long time. (To bad they didn't have enough burst DPS to kill SCVs before they could get repaired back up though...)
On January 19 2011 07:53 Keifru wrote: You know whats weird? PDD blocks Queen shots. It really doesn't make sense to me, since the Queen is stabbing things with her claws, not shooting projectiles.
Constant Queen production has been doing wonders for me in fending off mass hellion or mass banshee play- they also do decently well when mopping up stragglers when you've melted most of their marines and have a handful of lings chipping away as well. I had 3 queens of full energy deal with being poked by a full surround of SCVs, a marauder, and a couple marines for a very long time. (To bad they didn't have enough burst DPS to kill SCVs before they could get repaired back up though...)
I do not think mass queens should be worked into any build order but I do think a large amount of queens have their purpose. I personally like heavy queen numbers + infestors as opposed to hydras when dealing with mutas because I can never seem to get the hydra count I need.
This is a 2500~ Master game and it's the game I've played using a large amount of queens
Note: I'm still only Plat, but I've been doing some 1-base roach play in ZvZ, and lots of Queens + Roaches against just roaches = auto win. If they expand, I expand. If they push, I easily defend with spine crawlers, queens, and roaches.
Mutas don't work. Slings/Blings don't work. Hydras don't work. I out-roach them, so Roaches don't work. I honestly can't think of how to beat this (assuming they do a zergling runby or some kind of Nydus trick).
Edit: I'm probably being over confident, but I honestly haven't lost a ZvZ yet that I didn't get 7-pooled.
I've read the thread and am really interested in trying to utilize this as it would add a lot of fun to the normally monotonous builds i use.
The one spot I feel like this could be a BOL to is heavy heavy bio pressure vs. terran. 2/3/4 rax type pressure. It also could be that I'm just not used to the style and should be getting larger ling/bling numbers, but if anyone has a replay of this type it would be much appreciated. Gonna keep practicing it in customs and vs. ai a bit more in the meantime.
On January 19 2011 07:15 Jermstuddog wrote: No, queens do about 1/2 the DPS of a hydra vs air, maybe 2/3...
Queen DPS VS air : 9 Hydra DPS VS air : 14
Difference : Hydras have 5/6 range VS 7, have 90HP VS 175HP+1 armor, cost more (gas), don't have one of the best spells in the game, and require a special tech (and of course an upgrade to become useful). So no, definitly, queens are better anti air. By far.
On January 19 2011 16:43 NTGKOA wrote: It's not a law... It's an opinion just like everything else in this forum.
When I first saw this I thought "how silly, somebody thinks queens are fighting units!". But then i actually looked at the queen. And for those who haven't...
Queen vs roach
Queens have the same dps vs ground, more HP, same armor, aren't "armored", don't cost gas/larva, have awesome spells, don't require addition tech (roach warren) and attack air.
Roaches have half the mineral cost, higher range, armor does not reduce damage as much, can fast heal with burrow, can burrow move, and have faster movement speed, especially off creep.
I may have missed a couple of points, but you get the general idea.
A kinda recent replay. As you can see, I still have a lot of troubles with gas timing with the build. But the last fight should be enough to demonstrate the power of queens !
(don't really take the supplies into account at the end, this builds maxs you very fast).
Also notice at the end how fast my gas start to rise : this is were the fun starts, as you can transition into just anything !
On January 19 2011 07:15 Jermstuddog wrote: No, queens do about 1/2 the DPS of a hydra vs air, maybe 2/3...
Queen DPS VS air : 9 Hydra DPS VS air : 14
Difference : Hydras have 5/6 range VS 7, have 90HP VS 175HP+1 armor, cost more (gas), don't have one of the best spells in the game, and require a special tech (and of course an upgrade to become useful). So no, definitly, queens are better anti air. By far.
On January 19 2011 16:43 NTGKOA wrote: It's not a law... It's an opinion just like everything else in this forum.
You didn't say it like this.
On January 19 2011 22:18 LAN-f34r wrote: When I first saw this I thought "how silly, somebody thinks queens are fighting units!". But then i actually looked at the queen. And for those who haven't...
Queen vs roach
Queens have the same dps vs ground, more HP, same armor, aren't "armored", don't cost gas/larva, have awesome spells, don't require addition tech (roach warren) and attack air.
Roaches have half the mineral cost, higher range, armor does not reduce damage as much, can fast heal with burrow, can burrow move, and have faster movement speed, especially off creep.
I may have missed a couple of points, but you get the general idea.
Both of these are missing the crucial factor of armor. having just 1 armor reduces a queens air DPS to 8 while it reduces a hydra from 14.5 to 13.25 (this means queens do 62% of a hydras damage vs unarmored targets and 60% vs armored)
Armor devastates a queens ground attack even more because its 2 hits for 4 every second. So vs something like a zealot, a queen goes from doing 8 DPS to 6 DPS, a 25% dps loss because of 1 armor, lets not even talk about +1 armor zealots, which would literally cut queen DPS in half.
Queens are not good for their DPS and saying they are better AA than hydras is just a wrong statement. Though it is equally wrong to say hydras are better than queens. Proper AA, if that's the goal, should have probably a 2:1 hydra:queen ratio. And a solid ground army composition would involve Roaches, Hydras, and Queens all on creep. Maybe something like a 4:1:1 ratio depending on what you're fighting against obviously.
edit: Just to be clear, I am in complete agreement that the queen is an underestimated and underutilized unit from the combat perspective. But her strength isn't in her fighting stats, they're terrible. It's in the fact that Queens can easily multiply the life of nearby units, especially when they are in number themselves.
Erm, I dont know if this has been mentioned, but what happens to queens in the lategame when you lose your entire army? Wouldnt it take much longer to reproduce them due to them coming from your limited hatches?
It would, but not by that much because you wouldn't want them to be the bulk of your army anyway. It's not uncommon to have 3-5 hatcheries in late game. If you made 2 rounds on queens from 4 hatcheries, you'd have 8 queens, which is more than enough for any army of 100 supply.
The more critical aspect would be the energy loss, new queens don't have energy and are therefore useless.
Yes, Queens aren't high DPS units, ofc. But what I was saying is that they really are very good anti air, given all their spells, and, more important, their sustainability. I just forced a tank line with queens, it's so sexy...
On January 20 2011 00:39 mr_tolkien wrote: I just forced a tank line with queens, it's so sexy...
This is one use that I wish I had time to play around with. When T has pushed on creep with their tank line, it's so smart to throw 3-5 queens in to absorb the first volley or two while the ling/bling/roach comes in during the 3 second CD, but it's so hard to think about doing that when you're in the middle of a game doing your routine.
I also want to play with the idea of early roaches in ZvT with a forward queen or two. Marines are only slightly better than Roaches to begin with, so throwing a queen in there and land even one heal could change the whole fight.
i think they are good against air only and maybe tanking yes..but it's that their movement is greatly limited that they can't move out of creep..that's what really turns me off from using queens. if you want to attack or anything you have to engage on creep only. it's quite hard to do that since most players will be killing off your creep, that will then leave your queens stranded.
mass transfuse is really great but its not as useful early on in the game since i doubt you will be transfusing on roaches nonstop. good for ultras and bls though..
On January 17 2011 05:38 mr_tolkien wrote: They are maybe the most cost effective tank in the game, AND THEY COST NEITHER GAS NEITHER LARVAES.
This is the main reason why I like the queen. She does not consume any larva and she does not requires vespene gas. She has an air attack with 9 range, too.
It is also a psychological thing: In my experience, the queen is often considered a high-value target. While she is sacrificed, she buys me time to reposition a spine crawler or to get another round of lings.
On January 20 2011 00:50 bluecake wrote: i think they are good against air only and maybe tanking yes..but it's that their movement is greatly limited that they can't move out of creep..that's what really turns me off from using queens. if you want to attack or anything you have to engage on creep only. it's quite hard to do that since most players will be killing off your creep, that will then leave your queens stranded.
mass transfuse is really great but its not as useful early on in the game since i doubt you will be transfusing on roaches nonstop. good for ultras and bls though..
I think it's the opposite of your last statement. Early game it's important to not let as many units as possible die, early game under pressure goals would be 1. stay alive. 2. don't put yourself in a hole that you can't come out of. Transfuse is 50 energy but 125 life. That's basically a full heal on a single roach, crawler (since you can heal buildings) or what have you. Against early air pressure (banshee/voidray/phoenix) it's basically stopped by 2 queens (against 1 air unit) or 3 queens (against 2-3 units any more and you should have statics or other ata etc).
They're not meant to be "attack units" they are defensive, about the same cost as a static D but it costs food, but it has abilities. Creep spreads crazy fast when you have 3-4 tumors going at once
Queens are great AtA early on. If you do 14 hatch 15 pool or any similar variation with 2 hatches before 18 and you're getting sling speed, it's a great investment to get a 3rd queen going.
Is it possible to pair this with a timing push somehow? With like OL speed + creep poop? My concern would be the lack of potential mid game aggression you can apply.
I'm glad Zergs are finally experimenting with queens! Transfuse is just such a powerhouse of an ability -- especially with tanky units. I need to start experimenting with multiple queen per hatch openings like this one more. The only way I was incorporating queen play was for transfuse on muta mid game and then on broodlords late game.
Mid-Late game I have been pairing queens with my experimentations in nydus theorycrafting. After seeing a protoss push out with a warm prism to reinforce instead of dropping proxy pylons closer and closer. I thought about using nydus canals a lot more. I generally drop a nydus between every two expos and over the long-run its not very expensive at all. During the battle, when I engage in a position I like, I will drop 1-2 nydus's behind my forces and rally my hatcheries to their nydus entrances. I was always really annoyed at how P could just eliminate a defender's advantage with warpgate tech -- but then I realized Zerg can do it better, and faster. As my creep spread historically has never been that good, I used nydus canals also to transport mass queens, that way I could use queens in battle. I've been having a fair bit of success combining nydus and queen tech to combat immobility (not commenting on the race, just commenting on my poor creep spread). Also, when I do find that my BL's are exposed, I can generally drop a nydus out of sight and stream in the queens to transfuse + stream out units to protect. This combination allows Zerg to protect and utilize its most immobile units effectively. Not to mention if you are running on a high eco -- isn't it completely worth it to drop a nydus worm behind the opponent to outflank? I really don't find nydus to be as "gimmicky" as people think it is -- partially because everyone is trying to use them in outrageously aggressive ways. Why nydus the main when it is a perfectly good, albeit expensive for this function, to achieve an easy flank in tight positions by sending half of your troops instantly behind an opponent. I plan on doing a full post on creative nydus play at some point in the future (and I will definitely experiment with new ways to incorporate queens into my style).
The other way I have been using mass queens is sunken colony / roach pushes against protoss. Cute and insanely hard to hold off as protoss. I find the most success with this build after holding off a 3gate expand --> 5-6 gate push. If I can hold off, then I generally have creep halfway across the map or almost at his base. I move the sunkens forward along with the roaches. On Shakuras, I would tend to nydus behind the push in order to reinforce quicker but this is completely optional and just something that I like to do stylistically. Also since my creep spread was subpar when I started to experiment, having a nydus made getting patches of creep across the map so much easier. In fact, if I was sure that P wouldn't spot me -- I would move the sunkens across the map without there being creep even. Then nydus / poop creep / set sunkens in place / push -- you can save the queens if it fails and youll have a giant patch of creep outside his base.
Because of this thread, I've (Bronze Zerg, btw) been spending some excess minerals on queens until I have ~3 per base.
Creep like mad, great tanks, transfusion... I'm not really sure how I won any games with 1queen per hatch before this. Then again, I guess that's what being a bronzie is :D
On January 20 2011 04:13 Antisocialmunky wrote: It would be cool to see a Daily where people had to have queens with their main attack.
Actually, why don't we just start linking reps to this thread of Queen pushes?
On January 20 2011 03:32 Malminos wrote: More replays plz
As you can see, we are currently EXPERIMENTING with this. People will mainly look at the first few replays with a big interest. I just wait to have a good number of replays where I win with this strat against standard builds, and then they will be released.
Btw I'll do a cast on it (I'm a French caster, doing Daily «à la» Day[9]), I'll sub it (or voice over it) in English
tolkien.. at least you dont play terran.. then you dont have to hear it when they say "thor est là" all the time... so much worse than "Thor is heeeyah"
it's also nice to know that zerg units say the same thing in all versions of the game.. shows solidarity yo.. zerg hwaiting
If I see any Zerg bring several queens with their army, I'll just poke in and out of creep areas to snipe creep tumors thus making queens useless in offensive attacks. It's one of those things where it's great against say low level players or AI but it's so easy to cut off their mobility.
I'm really looking forward to this becoming more and more standard. I think one of the things that seperates top level from low levels is just doing more with what you have, and queens are good at so many differant things (larvae inject, creep spread, transfuse, anti air, tanking)
It's great to see a high level player trying to swing the meta game for all matchups. Zerg is getting huge help right now from high level palyers. I may just have to stick with zerg instead of continuing to play random/toss. Zerg is by far my fav race, but I cannot stand getting screwed without enough drones.
Keep doin what you do TolkieN!
Queens are slow because they're fat :-) I feel like they should be able to hustle at least as fast as a tank or immortal, maybe they do... I'll have to check the speeds for these units.
@Parra - Well realistically we have more than one mechanism to spread creep. Given that there are so many queens, setting up that creep again is fairly easy. I understand your point but after playing around with this strategy I find that in the situation where an opponent engages and takes out the creep before hand I just take my queens in ovies and drop them along with tons of creep. There are a lot of ways around it
Here's a game I played at lunch today where I went Mass Queens after being inspired by this thread.
ZvP, Jungle Basin, I'm 2400ish diamond, he was an "even match". Neither one of us are great players. He was trying some sort of Void Ray into 3wg rush, off 1 base, still the spine/queen defense totally shut it down.
What I REALLY like about mass queens is that because my early game defense was 2 spines at my ramp and a bunch of queens, I was able to devote all of my larvae towards drones. I also mined gas more slowly than usual, giving me more minerals, and more drones. I got my lair much later than usual. Come to think of it, DTs woulda owned me hard as I had no detection, but then again I scouted him going warp gate, and he showed a void ray, so I was ok.
On January 19 2011 07:15 Jermstuddog wrote: No, queens do about 1/2 the DPS of a hydra vs air, maybe 2/3...
Queen DPS VS air : 9 Hydra DPS VS air : 14
Difference : Hydras have 5/6 range VS 7, have 90HP VS 175HP+1 armor, cost more (gas), don't have one of the best spells in the game, and require a special tech (and of course an upgrade to become useful). So no, definitly, queens are better anti air. By far.
On January 19 2011 16:43 NTGKOA wrote: It's not a law... It's an opinion just like everything else in this forum.
You didn't say it like this.
Well you are glossing over a couple of things when you say Queens are better anti-air than hydra. Hydra, as slow as they are, are much faster than queens, on and off-creep. Hydra also pack more tightly so you can get a higher effective DPS in a smaller area. And of course, build faster (33 vs 50) and they produce from larvae, allowing you to make a bunch of them quickly, unlike the queen.
They each have their role, Queens do not dominate in the zerg anti-air department in all situations, hydra are still needed.
It seems this thread can be summed up so far with this. If you disagree please post.
Queen Pros Minerals Only to build Can attacks ground and air "Tanks" damage for your army b/c of unit type Inject KEY for economy Creep Spread Key for engaging enemy forces Transfuse is VERY Versatile. Does not use larva; builds straight from hatch.
Queen Cons Slow and Fat Need hatch to build, cannot mass w/ larva. Usually you wouldn't want to mass queens anyway if you just lost a large engagement, you should still have your queens for injects and have plenty of larva for a "real army" so maybe not really a con but I felt like it could possibly go either way.
Early-->Mid Game -Queens are great early game for base defense from early attacks and anti air. -Queens can continue to be great base Anti Air as well as OBVIOUSLY Spread creep + Inject Larvae throughout the game. -Transfuse is KEY in early game survival (spines/queens buildings)
Mid-->Late Game -Continue to spread creep and larvae inject. -Transfuse mutas for extra efficiency of each unit. -Tank damage for the rest of your army. -Transfuse key army units e.g roaches/broods/ultra etc -Drops with ovies/nydus to spread creep in enemies base for vision and added pressure (T/P can't build buildings on creep)
Heres a replay for you guys.. it was a public game, think against a gold, just wanted to try it. I'm Diamond.
I had about 10 queens or so when we fought each other.. I checked sc2gears after and I madce 278 creep tumours, I wanted to focus on spreading the creep more then anything.
I thought my creep spread at the end was quite interesting.
Anyway, here you go. I basically just went mass queen to defend, saved up on larva and a trust fund until I needed units.
This thread inspired me to take a closer look at the synergy between queens and ultralisks using a unit tester map. I just did some testing (a-moved armies, arranged reasonably), and the results astonished me:
ZvT
3 Ultralisks vs. 10 marines, 10 marauders, 2 medivacs (All units fully upgraded, fully charged, terran stimmed, combat on creep)
Results: Typically 4-6 marines, 4-7 marauders, and 2 medivacs survived.
That last result blows my mind. Without the queens, zerg is basically killing one zealot per ultralisk. With just 2 fully charged queens added, zerg beats the whole protoss army with no losses! :O
I'll definitely be looking to bring queens along with my mid-late game armies in future.
On January 20 2011 14:56 whatthefat wrote: This thread inspired me to take a closer look at the synergy between queens and ultralisks using a unit tester map. I just did some testing (a-moved armies, arranged reasonably), and the results astonished me:
That last result blows my mind. Without the queens, zerg is basically killing one zealot per ultralisk. With just 2 fully charged queens added, zerg beats the whole protoss army with no losses! :O
I'll definitely be looking to bring queens along with my mid-late game armies in future.
Very interesting post. What I like about this post/thread is that no one can say the absolutely ceiling for zerg is easily reached in terms of micro (not that they did anyway but =P), and that there are strategies out there that are possible and potentially practical.
On January 20 2011 15:02 Exxo wrote: "Zerg are the only race "without" healers for harass forces. Toss have shields, Terrans have everything. But this is just an illusion."
Because Zerg units naturally regain health over time? Maybe? >_>
key word = harass, shields have delay but recharge VERY quickly, terrans obvs, zerg heal only is noticeable for buildings/hatchqueens/drones
On January 20 2011 11:33 B34ST wrote: Heres a replay for you guys.. it was a public game, think against a gold, just wanted to try it. I'm Diamond.
I had about 10 queens or so when we fought each other.. I checked sc2gears after and I madce 278 creep tumours, I wanted to focus on spreading the creep more then anything.
I thought my creep spread at the end was quite interesting.
Wow I know you were joking around, but LOL @ that creep
hehe.. I've used it a few times in games, I'm still getting used to it vs terran, I played one game and he just went mass thor marine (12 thors) on 2 bases, vs me on 4 base (5 hatch), used 6 queens to defend his harrasses but didn't tech to ultras so ended up losing.
Also vs another terran I was using so little gas (8 queens defending) I forgot to take gysers so when it finally came to making units I only had 300gas.. queens made me forgot about it ha..
But yeah, I'm definatly using queen based play in my match ups now, just need to work on the harrass side.. I'm thinking either queen muta vs terran or quick tech queen ultra drops..
Here is another replay. It's like 10°C in my room and I'm sick so I played REALLY poorly, and still... My opponent was 2500+ master.
First I went 5RR, he tried to counter with a 3 or 4 gate and a heavy count of sentries, I repelled him without much problems (didn't do a spine as I opened up 5RR). I used the gas to go baneling drops = auto GG once I beat his Stalker/Immortal army with my Roaches and queens (yes, it works).
This replay is here to demonstrate how you can transition INTO this, which is needed if it can be as standard as I claim.
On January 20 2011 07:40 thurst0n wrote: Queen Pros Minerals Only to build Can attacks ground and air "Tanks" damage for your army b/c of unit type Inject KEY for economy Creep Spread Key for engaging enemy forces Transfuse is VERY Versatile. Does not use larva; builds straight from hatch.
Two more things i like to add... -They attack twice and faster than roaches. -They can tank even more damage if you have a proper borrow unborrow micro with the rest of your army, since a a-moved army don't switch their target unless its dead or out of range.
Both can be extremely useful against a immortal heavy army composition, even through the last one is a bit theorycrafting, because if there are immortals, there will be an orb somewhere...
Type Ground Unit Description Defensive unit. Can Spawn Creep Tumors, Spawn Larva, and use the Transfusion ability. Moves much faster on creep. Cost 150 0 50 2 Attributes Biological, Psionic Attack Ground Attack: 4 (+1) (x2) Air Attack: 9 (+1) Range: 3 (ground), 7 (air) Cooldown: 1 (air and ground)
Defense 175 1 (+1) Hotkey Q Energy 25 / 200 Sight 9 Speed 0.938 Speed Multiplier on Creep
Roach has 16 Ground attack with cooldown 2...
Could you elaborate on why this is bad in any situation except versus immortal.
Think of it this way: Base dps is the same as roach's. Each armor the opponent has lowers the dps of a queen by 2, while it only lowers roach's dps by 0.5. Each upgrade increases queens dps by 2, while roach's by 1.
This means, that roaches do better against targets with armor, but gain less from upgrade advantage. OTOH queens do not get any benefit from having equal upgrades with your opponent, while roaches do get one.
I knew stuff like this would come up after seeing what people were calling crazy, impractical, and stupid....queen rushes in team games. While obviously hampered by creep spread, once mass queens can get into combat, their transfuse ability is downright scary. If they have full energy, which many will have if you've been massing them, then they have (125x4)+175 hp = 675 hp. Two queens with full energy basically have 1350 total hp.....for 300 minerals and 4 supply. And they hit both ground and air, and scale fairly well with upgrades. Imagine a +3 queen attack supported by ultras or brood lords. And that is not that far fetched of a strategy. Think T's slow tank push, just scarier because the Z can mass produce the main attacking units. Of course this relies on Z getting to t3, and Ts don't even like getting past the marine stage of the game.
Makes a lot of sense. I think even early in games, I'm going to start making a lot more queens, 4-6 maybe more.
It is the one unit that can fight off anything you'll see early in a game. It saves larva that you can put toward drones, and once you get to about 6 or so can hold off quite a bit especially with some spines. Getting pretty old watching Phoenix fly around my base like 4 minutes into the game.
Just checking back into this thread: TL:DR: Queens have helped me immensely.
In ZvT (previously my worst matchup), early Queen, Sling, and Spine crawler defense protects me from nearly all of the rushes, cheese, and intense pressure that I would lose to originally. I used to fear this matchup SO much, but the early defenses and transition into Mutalisks (which can FINALLY get healed after harassing), Sling, Blings, and Queens.
In ZvP, roaches were already a dominant unit for me. With queen heals and obsessive creep spread (having 4 queens in army is always a great reminder that I should be spreading more creep), I've been winning more and more.
In ZvZ, the creap is obviously a double-edged sword, but allows for AWESOME map control. Like with T, my defenses (which, like P, is mainly roaches) are SO much stronger thanks to healed spine crawlers. The heals and creep can only positively effect my play, as they don't take up larva, I can use gas-heavy tech (like overseer harass/mutas/upgrades), they maximize production, are anti-air that doesn't require me to spend money on Hydras, and allow me to take map control.
Type Ground Unit Description Defensive unit. Can Spawn Creep Tumors, Spawn Larva, and use the Transfusion ability. Moves much faster on creep. Cost 150 0 50 2 Attributes Biological, Psionic Attack Ground Attack: 4 (+1) (x2) Air Attack: 9 (+1) Range: 3 (ground), 7 (air) Cooldown: 1 (air and ground)
Defense 175 1 (+1) Hotkey Q Energy 25 / 200 Sight 9 Speed 0.938 Speed Multiplier on Creep
Roach has 16 Ground attack with cooldown 2...
Could you elaborate on why this is bad in any situation except versus immortal.
This has been explained several times before, let's use the example of a Roach for defense, 0/0 ups on both sides.
A roach has 145 HP and 1 armor, lets ignore HP regen for now as it's mostly irrelevant, but know that factoring HP in further puts the queen at a disadvantage.
Please remember, you can only do whole numbers worth of attacks, so drop all fractions when making calculations here. We will ignore movement speed and range, both of which favor the roach. This is Damage dealt in a vacuum.
A roach would hit a roach for 15 damage every 2 seconds, due to the 1 armor. That means it takes 10x15=150 damage for a roach to kill a roach. 10 shots, 20 seconds.
A queen would hit a roach for 2x3 damage every one second, due to the 1 armor. That means it takes 2x3x25=150 damage to kill the roach. 25x2 hits, 25 seconds.
If we give +1 armor to the roach it gets even worse.
Our offensive roach is now hitting for 14 damage every 2 seconds. That means 11x14=154 damage to kill. 11 shots, 22 seconds.
Our queen now hits for 2x2 damage every 1 second. That is 2x2x37=148 damage to kill. 37x2 hits, 37 seconds.
Armor destroys a queens DPS, this is especially bad if you find yourself in the mid game vs a 1/2 opponent and haven't kept up on your offensive upgrades (which tend not to be all that useful for hydralisks and roaches anyway).
Very nice OP, Tolkien. A question about your specified build order. It seems that you are delaying Lair a little more than needed given your strong econ. I understand that you won't want to cut queen production in order to tech to lair, but how would you feel about getting Lair on one hatch while producing queens on the 2nd? If a possible end goal is to rush to tier 3 while playing defensively with spines/transfuse it seems like faster lair would be worth cutting 1 queen.
On January 21 2011 06:58 Shadrak wrote: Very nice OP, Tolkien. A question about your specified build order. It seems that you are delaying Lair a little more than needed given your strong econ. I understand that you won't want to cut queen production in order to tech to lair, but how would you feel about getting Lair on one hatch while producing queens on the 2nd? If a possible end goal is to rush to tier 3 while playing defensively with spines/transfuse it seems like faster lair would be worth cutting 1 queen.
Wow thats a cool question, i wonder how it would feel to see ultras out by the 11 or 12 minute mark. And having a max army with about 8-9 ultras and 6 or so infestors around the 14-15 minute mark. Of course you'd definitely need to get 3 bases asap to make any use out of hive tech though.
In fact instead of "rushing" T3 I found out that harassing a bit with your T2 (burrowed infestors, baneling drops, or plain mutas) is much more effective. Especially baneling drops, NOBOBDY expect them. They see ovies and say «Oh, a scouting ovie», and then... No more workers :D And they are like "WTF oO".
2nd post because Roaches Queens into baneling drops is just wonderful.
I am currently at 8-1 VS P with this build.
Replay of a match were I failed all match long (5RR VS StarGate opening, fast lair, fail macro, fail micro, forgot to drop) and still won by a landslide :
After my 5RR, I'm at 27 drone + 1 queen VS 30 probes, 3 zealots, 1 VR, 1 phoenix, and 1 sentry, but with my expand already done. He attacks twice and gets raped twice even with sub par micro.
I watched that replay you just posted. My vote for worst move you made (not counting the very high minerals you banked) was when you decided to drop banelings on his probes in his main... He was mined out, you should have known that, because you were mined out already in your main. Yet for some reason, he still had 20 some probes sitting there.
I've been reading this thread for past few days and since I was already experimenting with queen builds I decided to give it a try... esspecially after seeing those replays mr_tolkien your play inspired me and I decided to try it out immediately.
First match I lost against Z ... he did RR i held it off and than he transitioned into infestors while I was trying to go RoachQueen. Even when I lost I was quite amazed as how good it feels to have multiple queens in your army.
I got T in second match and this is the game you can see in replay >>>
I opened 5RR (skipping ling speed) into 2 hatch play. My oponent went for quick Thor (with ~5 scvs) + marines (bunkered my expo) + quick siege tank contain. It felt really solid. I held it of at the last moment... rest in replay (banshee harras as well )
And this is where it gets even more interesting as I was just 1200+ platinum player 41st in my division. And my macro was (still is) quite weak yet I was able to hold of massive early agression with help of my queens. And belive me I did quite a few blunders in that game.
I was shocked when I saw this. My opponent was 2400+ 2nd in his platinum division.
What I really like about this build is how it allowes me to use just 3 hotkeys (1 for army, 4 hatcheries, 5 vommit queens) and play effectively! I really enjoy it as well.
Another one were I 7 pooled (only to pressure, it's very good on scrap because of the wide ramp) into multiple queens on 2 bases to hold a 4 gate. Even though he blocked my ramp, I've been able to hold it off. Then I transtionned into BLs.
My macro was kinda decent in this game, and my transition felt smooth, so I think it's worth posting.
On January 23 2011 01:30 mr_tolkien wrote: Another one were I 7 pooled (only to pressure, it's very good on scrap because of the wide ramp) into multiple queens on 2 bases to hold a 4 gate. Even though he blocked my ramp, I've been able to hold it off. Then I transtionned into BLs.
My macro was kinda decent in this game, and my transition felt smooth, so I think it's worth posting.
Well he was pretty much dead after he failed that 4 gate, if you would of made a hydra den instead of teching up to broodlords you would of killed him much earlier.
I'm just a little silver-league player, and went here because of mrtolkien shoutcasts. I found this thread very interesting and tested this "theories" by myself, with all mistakes I can do.
My macro wasn't perfect, my creep spreading wasn't perfect, but it mostly did the job. On the battlefield it give zergs the crazy-micro spellcasting they lacked (sry for the infestors, but they're really awful for me to play) and it's a real pleasure to play. With roaches then ultralisks it's really powerful.
But then I've also some questions, 'cause on some game I found this completely useless. Do you think it can be used on large maps, like 2v2 or 3v3 maps, or a cross-position metalopolis for example ? Creep spreading, even with multiple queens, is quite slow... And multiple queens are useless if they can't follow the army on the battlefield. So... What do you think ? Is this strategy banned from large maps ?
Then in multiplayer ( 2v2 or 3v3 )... We got the large-map problem, but do you see usefull uses of queens ? In theory, we can heal all biological units. Then what ? Do you see any powerful combo with terran or protoss ? Zealot healing sounds pretty useless to me... Maybe heal ally casters ?
Tanks a lot.
( Sorry for the english mistakes I may have done )
The obvious point that nobody has raised in this thread, is that you are not maximising zerg's production capacity unless you are making queens constantly!
On February 02 2011 22:23 frankster wrote: The obvious point that nobody has raised in this thread, is that you are not maximising zerg's production capacity unless you are making queens constantly!
You know, I was thinking along the same lines after reading this thread, so I did a bunch of training games against the computer to test the validity of constant queens. Early in the game it's quite viable against certain openers (obviously very strong against any early air builds), and you get insanely rapid creep spread. The problem is that you end up with an army that's just too queen heavy. Against MMM, I was expecting queen/roach to be quite effective due to transfuse, but the roaches at the front actually tend to die so quickly to stimmed marines and marauders that it's hard to regularly get a transfuse off between the first hit and them dying. You're then left with a bunch of queens who can't do the dps.
On the other hand, mixing in queens with ultras is extremely potent against any ground composition. Since the time taken to get ultras on the field is so long (Hive = 100s, Cavern = 65s, Plating = 110s, Ultra = 70s), you can actually pump out a couple of rounds of queens at all hatcheries in preparation, and have them ready to transfuse by engagement. The only challenge is keeping the pace of creep spread up to your army, but overlords are quite handy once you actually reach the enemy base.
I really hope this doesn't catch on and become common. I've been using this strategy for a long time, and I love the "WTF factor." I remember in an early bronze game, some protoss massed like 7 relatively quick void rays and sent them to my base. I effortlessly beat them back with like 6 queens / transfuse, and I have to imagine he was sitting as his computer wondering what the hell just happened.
Plus if it becomes common I imagine people will learn how to counter it better.
On February 03 2011 00:47 Chance55 wrote: I really hope this doesn't catch on and become common. I've been using this strategy for a long time, and I love the "WTF factor." I remember in an early bronze game, some protoss massed like 7 relatively quick void rays and sent them to my base. I effortlessly beat them back with like 6 queens / transfuse, and I have to imagine he was sitting as his computer wondering what the hell just happened.
Plus if it becomes common I imagine people will learn how to counter it better.
Also, the rage factor is AWESOME. I'm keeping track of all the people who I've made rage at me for this. They were all godawful players (hence why they think getting outplayed is, "cheese," just because it's with different units), but it still make my day when it happens. Best one yet has been a terran who lifted off all of his building and flew them into the corners where my queens couldn't get them. He then raged for the entire time it took me to make a spire and kill them. He continued to complain to me even after I GG'd and left.
On topic here, but despite all the talk about the invincibility of the void ray colossus ball, ultra hydra queen actually trashes a void ray colossus ball in unit tester quite nicely.
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ill whatever credit is leftover from zelniq!
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