I'm here to ask any zerg players if they have an alternative to standard Muta/Ling/Baneling play in Zerg vs. Terran. I've always been a Muta/Ling/Baneling player, and it used to work well, but it seems now a days that all the terrans have figured out how to beat it. I probably only win about 10% of my games versus Terran, and its starting to aggravate me.
The composition is great in theory, Mutas for Tanks, lings for tanks and distraction, and banelings for marines, but in practice it always falls short on me. It might be one bad click with the mutas that sends that into a clump of marines and they all die instantly, and there goes the primary tank killer, or banelings running into a tank line, and now there is no answer for marines. I feel at my level, low-mid diamond that these sorts of little accidents are happening more and more often, and a game that was mine to win can suddenly turn into a complete and utter loss, and its getting depressing...
So do any zerg players out there have some unit compositions that have been working well for them? I'm really looking for something that can even be a slight bit forgiving of a mis-micro scenario, and that has some killing potential, and ability to actually attack a terran after a winning a battle and potentially being able to end a game.
Thanks for any help I can get.
Also, not posting any replays, as I don't really want my Muta/Ling/Baneling play analyzed, I'm more looking for something altogether new.
Edit: And of course forgot the [H] in the title, if a mod would be able to add that in, that'd be great.
Ling/Baneling/Muta is really bad vs Mechanical Terran, 9 times out of 10 he will roll you. If terran is mostly making BIO Ling/Muta/Baneling is a really good choice. If the terran mechs make alot of infestors. Why infestors?
#1 they are the ultimate counter vses Helion, infestor locks them from moving with that one spell (lol i cant remember the name, fungle something + it lowers helions life to 1) #2 thors do alot of damage, and with infestors you can take over your opponet's thors and use them against him.
I was watching iNcontrol coach Mr.Bitters last night. He confirmed that this is the basis of ZvT, and the frustratinos yoru having? yeah, it's universal. It's super micro intensive, so yes, your absolutely right, one misclick and boom, your super cool awesome army is dead.
The only other thing that may work is Infestor, Roach, Muta.... but then you gotta be super careful in microing infestors. Even then, infestors Fungal Growth can one shot 6 marines.
Mech? Roach/Infestor/Muta. NP the Thors, Muta's eat the tanks, Roachs soak damage.
well ling baneling mutas is a great composition. I honestly think it is very strong vs any marine base composition. The good thing about starcraft is that there isnt a set number of unit composition that completely obliterate everything. Although some composition can be argue so, such as HT and viking but what it really come down is just how you play it out and how you use your composition the best way possible.
Vs terran, your usually the reactive race. The terran usually get to decide how the game flows. Such as if he goes bio then you probably forced to make baneling and eventually go ling baneling mutas but if he goes mech then you gotta go something with roaches. As zerg, i dont think you can honestly choose a set of unit composition in general because you are the reactive race and you are usually force to adapt to your opponent play style. This does not mean that during the game you cant make decision yourself however. You can go broodlord or ultras and infestor or mutas. The way i like to think is terran and zerg like chess. Terran are white and get to decide the opening the game by having the first move or the "tempo" and the zerg will do the logical response to the terran and just go with the flow. Of course this applys to PvT as well since T once again get to dictate how the game is played by deciding either to go bio or mech and toss get to choose later on HT or collosus and the other race will respond accordingly. Your zerg and you will most likely be force to sit back and adapt to the play style your opponent does and that why you are in chess, usually, black.
The match-up is pretty much a micro battle most of the time- it's the same for Terrans. One bad split and our entire army of Marines are splattered goo.
I cannot really think of any build in this match-up that is not micro-intensive. I feel Zerg needs huge splash damage to overpower Medivacs, and that either comes from Banelings or Infestors, both requiring a lot of micro. Pick your poison, in essence.
ive been trying some ling bling infestor while transitioning to broodlord. it was in a recent day 9 not sure which but it was jungal basin and the zerg won due to just being able to stall with infestors long enough to get lords. marines try to stim and run under the lords. they get fungaled or baned, they get tank shotted from the lings/broodlings, and the tanks get murdered lol. lords and infestors really work great against tank marine. its just getting thre that is the problem.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of banelings unless it's used in a - baneling bust - military baneling drop - mineral line baneling drop
Not to say I won't use them, but they die too easily to - as well as aren't always as cost-efficient against - the units they are supposed to do best against (such as marines). Combine that with the fact they aren't particularly versatile (can't attack air, are melee, are low health, aren't reusable, only deal good damage against light and structures), and I think it could be understood why there are other options, or perhaps even why there may NOT be other options, but this option simply isn't satisfactory (underpowered)
If you go play Green tea AI and use banelings against it, you will likely not do well at all, since the AI spreads their units out vs banes preventing any major damage being dealt from them. Even pro gamers do this, just to a different extent (better and worse).
Anyway, to get to the point: I think a mass ling-muta build can be viable in the right scenarios, but will oftentimes need roaches or infestors to help as well. As there is no continual gas sink into banelings, a few infestors can quite easily be made in their place, it's just important to not loose them.
Regardless of whether someone uses banelings or not, it is pretty important to get some max tier tech up, like broodlords, to deal with critical masses of units.
On January 20 2011 11:08 MEcH TErRAN MaNIaC! wrote: #1 they are the ultimate counter vses Helion, infestor locks them from moving with that one spell (lol i cant remember the name, fungle something + it lowers hellions life to 1)
Fungal growth deals 36 damage over like 8 seconds. It doesn't deal 89 (or more) damage, and it CAN kill the target.
don't forget baneling mines... use your mutas to bait marine masses into burrowed banelings, which you unburrow manually as marines are on top. better yet, if they're stimmed, one baneling goes that much further. if they bring a raven, be sure to use the mutas to take it out first.
you can also try baneling/zergling bombs from behind on the overlords on the tanks, it makes them hit each other, and dropped one at a time, you force their marine force back or have them risk their tanks kill each other, i use that as an alternative if i've messed my mutas up
I think the best thing for mid-late confrontations to make the baneling-marine confrontation less volatile (pun totally intended) is infestors. Lock down marines, splat. win.
On January 20 2011 12:59 Xapti wrote: Personally, I'm not a huge fan of banelings unless it's used in a - baneling bust - military baneling drop - mineral line baneling drop
Not to say I won't use them, but they die too easily to - as well as aren't always as cost-efficient against - the units they are supposed to do best against (such as marines). Combine that with the fact they aren't particularly versatile (can't attack air, are melee, are low health, aren't reusable, only deal good damage against light and structures), and I think it could be understood why there are other options, or perhaps even why there may NOT be other options, but this option simply isn't satisfactory (underpowered)
If you go play Green tea AI and use banelings against it, you will likely not do well at all, since the AI spreads their units out vs banes preventing any major damage being dealt from them. Even pro gamers do this, just to a different extent (better and worse).
Anyway, to get to the point: I think a mass ling-muta build can be viable in the right scenarios, but will oftentimes need roaches or infestors to help as well. As there is no continual gas sink into banelings, a few infestors can quite easily be made in their place, it's just important to not loose them.
Regardless of whether someone uses banelings or not, it is pretty important to get some max tier tech up, like broodlords, to deal with critical masses of units.
On January 20 2011 11:08 MEcH TErRAN MaNIaC! wrote: #1 they are the ultimate counter vses Helion, infestor locks them from moving with that one spell (lol i cant remember the name, fungle something + it lowers hellions life to 1)
Fungal growth deals 36 damage over like 8 seconds. It doesn't deal 89 (or more) damage, and it CAN kill the target.
What the heck? Banelings not cost efficient? have you ever tried fighting a marine/marauder/medivac ball with just roaches and zerglings? How can you say there are OTHER options? I'm sorry to say but there are NO OTHER OPTIONS when fighting an MMM ball but to include banelings.
I have yet to find a replay where a zerg beats a terran MMM ball w/o banelings.
Do not listen to Xapti. Worst theory crafting ever. Probably an even worse player.
I have just made a guide about an strategy I have been using recently, i was going to make a short post but i think the guide is much better!! here is the link
On January 20 2011 15:08 Buruguduy wrote: What the heck? Banelings not cost efficient? have you ever tried fighting a marine/marauder/medivac ball with just roaches and zerglings? How can you say there are OTHER options? I'm sorry to say but there are NO OTHER OPTIONS when fighting an MMM ball but to include banelings.
I have yet to find a replay where a zerg beats a terran MMM ball w/o banelings.
Do not listen to Xapti. Worst theory crafting ever. Probably an even worse player.
Obviously you don't see players like Marineking own baneling builds with mostly marines. Add marauders and/or tanks in there and it gets even worse. And I didn't say banelings ARE cost inefficient, I said they can be. I also didn't say just roach ling, I said muta-ling with roaches and infestors as necessary.
Insulting users without giving substantial reasoning is really immature and stupid. With regards to my skill, I have no problems playing in masters league. I'm not saying I have the best advice, I'm sharing MY advice and MY play style, which at least has reasoning and back-up behind it unlike yours.
Go play an AI or professional player who can micro their units well vs banelings and see how cost-effective they end up being when you're trying to use them anywhere off-creep. Maybe in gold league banelings can be heavenly cause people are terrible and just a-move, but it's not so simple when a bit of skill is actually involved.
ling/infestor/ultra where you are concentrating on getting melee and carapace upgrades through the whole game. Get pathogen glands asap, then get a couple infestors out. At hive get adrenal glands for lings and ultra upgrades, spend all gas on ultras, rest on lings, infestors when you need them. I dunno about this unit comp, I've had success against protoss with it, but terran has tanks and blue flame hellions which destroy lings and infestors. Maybe combine ultralisk drop play? then you can drop ultras on a group of tanks.
Burrow Movement Roaches is another one and can be strong, but you have to do damage to the terran to allow burrow movement roaches to be successful. For example, hurting his economy early on then going to burrow movement roaches can be effective because they don't want to use scans and also can't afford detection early on. I've used this pretty well against siege tanks but the bio is the problem, lots of rines can out DPS roaches pretty hard, add in marauders and it's just painful.
Muta/ling/bling IS the best MID-GAME strategy against terran. You can't be going muta/ling/bling the whole game, your cost effectiveness eventually wears out because you're wasting gas on banelings, while the terran is only wasting minerals on marines, eventually you're going to run out of gas. If you can do important damage with mutalisks, then it's going to take longer for your army to become less cost efficient. However, this is merely a mid-game strategy and there should be a transition into something better. Broodlords and infestors is a good transition, you will be able to take out any thors/siege tanks with ease, and fungal the marines makes for the ultimate end game composition. Keep your infestors around though, because vikings will come out, then go into a mass ground army with ultralisks and cracklings. The main thing to remember, is that you want to try and upgrade melee/carapace through the whole game, so that eventually your broodlings/ultras/lings will become extremely cost efficient.
Muta ling bling is good because you can harass, have map control, and an army that can take the opponent army head on. But it's very micro demanding, and personally (2100 master here) I always loose my muta like shit to a thor passing by or runing into a shitload of marine. I just hate muta ling bling.
Roach ling bling and infestor seems to be (for me) way more stable. With a lot of expand and teching to ultra or brood later on. On big map you can also go for muta to force marine (and prevent marauder) and then switch to roach infestor with your ling bling. You still need a lot of micro (FG on marine, baneling focussing marine, roach taking tanks one by one, which is usually easy since the bioball is retreating from the bling).
As a terran player I've had some issues v ling/roach/muta mostly as a tech switch from the norm and I've yet to see any infestors used in any of my TvZ (in recent memory) .
I've had pretty good success with the following strategy:
Early roach pressure (not a rush), into early ling roach, into quick infestors (infestation pit as soon as lair finishes and 9-10 infestors with upgrades). From here you react based on what you see: can stay on ling/roach/infestor with an eventual sudden muta explosion, or can go into ultras. Mass infestors are wonderful at killing infantry FG, and stopping the mech (NP thors and tanks). Assuming its a normal engagement with infantry and thors up front and siege tanks behind you just FG the infantry and run in with lings/roaches and then NP all the thors...then use the thors on tanks. NP is incredibly powerful when you have a lot of infestors.
one thing thats great but abit risky is to instead of getting the spire for mutas get fast infestation pit and get infestors figure out if they play bio or mech. play roach ling infestor vs mech heavy and infestor ling baneling vs bio heavy
the down side about skipping mutas is that medivac drops can be quite deadly so what u want to do is have sick creep spread and speedoverlords all over the map so u can catch medivac play with infestors
this style is really good but is overall more unstable than going mutalisk
I do think at high-diamond-ish levels opening roach/ling/bling into infestor is less micro-intensive in early to mid game, but later on it's easy to accidentally lose the infestors if you aren't careful. Mass roach is great if it works, but easily shut down by marauders.
You can use speed ovies and drops to harrass instead of mutas, but it's not as mobile and you really don't want to lose an overlord full of units either (although it's probably a bit easier to avoid than with mutas).
Some people have suggested infestor+hydra vs bio, since hydras with range upgrade outrange marines; I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds like something that is at least as unstable -- hydras die like flies in direct combat against marines, hellions, or just about anything; and if you're one infestor short you can't pull back safely.
In short, I'd love to have something more meaty and not as micro-dependent as muta-ling-bling and the variants described earlier, but I don't know of anything that works in this matchup. (Terran has mech, in ZvP roach+hydra into corruptors is solid, ZvZ has mass roach.)
These days I've been trying ot play without banelings/mutas against terran. What I do is 15 Hatch 14 pool 20 gaz. I Get 4 roaches to prevent any early aggression, and procede to mass drone. Once i have enough gaz i get zerlings speed.
Frrom this point i rely only on zerglings/hydras/infestors. Hydras pevent you from dying from cheesy 2 starport banshee, infestors can fungal bio and banshees to uncloack them. I try go to hive ASAP and get 3/3 zerlings ASAP. Once you have enough economy to support it you can add ultras in the mix. This army composition deals quite well against bio/medivac, imo it the most effective against tank/marine since the hydras can outrange marines as stated above. BUT do no try this against a mech player since thors/tanks will rape your idras.
The nice thing with this build is that you can deal with early aggression, as I think mutas are kinda week early on. It also force the terran to switch is army composition so that you can respond by going delayed mutas which can catch him offguard.
The only major alternative to ling/bling/muta is ling/bling/muta/roach. Those 2 very similar compositions are used for obvious reasons. It's very flexible and allows you to out-play your opponent for a win. That being said, losing to even 1 push from the Terran player is an immediate game-ender. But I doubt this changes at all for other compositions.
There are some people playing with mass queens, which lends itself to queen/roach/hydra play since you will have such strong creep spread, but this hasn't been proven viable in any way, though it can be pretty fun to play with.
Just about everything else has been tried and has failed miserably. Marines and Tanks counter pretty much everything Zerg has, so you kind of need those banelings so that when they die at least they take the marines with them, then this lets your mutalisks clean up the tanks.
I generally go ling, infestor, hydra, ultra, baneling, in that order. Instead of using mutas for contain, I use infestors spread across the map with lings as spot man.
Progression is generally ling, infestor first, which is good against any timing push or harass T may throw at you (you won't get infestors out if T goes for 3 rax stim MM into expo, but you should be able to just stop it with lings since the ball will be fairly small). Work into hydras (get only a handful, add more depending on enemy composition).
When you grab a third, start working into hive and grab ultras.
Zling, bling, infestor, ultra is my goto anti terran start. Admittedly I am only gold in 1v1. However as long as I am paying enough attention it shutdowns drops + banshee/hellion harass esp if I have some bonus queens. I usually just hold off until I get three bases, build 4+ ultras and win. Ultras lead the charge followed by banes and infestors, while zerglings go for the flank. I usually don't need the infestors until after the initial charge, they either mop up the remainder or wait underground for reinforcements. Mutas just seem so squishy, and all they need is marines and missile turrets (min only units + structures) to shut them down pretty hard. Plus dropping ten IT on a mineral line is sooooo ridiculously effective.
Zergling/Infestor/Hydra/Ultra late game sounds really funky, but it actually SMASHES most Terran compositions. Adjust the proportions to their build, and you're set!
don't know where exactly you pull those 10% win rate statistics from (even though i have a hunch).
ling bling muta is the way to go midgame when T has marines tanks medivacs. Yes, it is micro intensive and strategically demanding, but trust me, it's equally challenging to control your army as terran.
On February 10 2011 19:48 azoriusherald wrote: Zergling/Infestor/Hydra/Ultra late game sounds really funky, but it actually SMASHES most Terran compositions. Adjust the proportions to their build, and you're set!
I totaly agree, plus I recommand to get neural parasite to deal with the tanks and the thors.
I dont play zerg but my team has some really excellent masters zergs and they've blessed us with the following games:
Mass crackling infestor to a big broodlord push, this rocks marine tank and defensive terrans, you either need ghosts to emp infestors or you need to be aggressive otherwise the broods will roll you and your vikings will all die to infestors.
Mass 3/3 crackling + roach or w/e you want. This is one that one of the guys in my team does, he's a very high diamond, almost masters with sick macro and again it rocks marine tank so hard, you get way better upgrades, you can use nydus / drops with the lings to harass and keep pressure off you.
Both these builds arent really that awesome vs mech but everyone knows the standard for mech is roach infestor so use your imagination!
You can also do things like ultra queen for that zerg deathball (add broodlords as well if you are already seriously pwning).
1) Get good upgrade, you NEED upgrades. Your army should be even if not higher in upgrades, anything less is asking to get rolled. Get hive ASAP w/o dying or sacrificing economy for the 3/3 and the cracklings. Upgrade mutaweapon.
2) Get roaches, you NEED roaches if there are any mech in that army. U'll use roach to tank some tank shells and most imporantly, they are very good at cleaning up and have ton of lasting power. Think of it this way: If you only have ling/bling/muta, that army is so fragile and can only deal 4 seconds, max, damage before they die. Most of your lings will probably run around stupid if not flanked properly, and they can at most get 3 swipes in before being blew up.
On Roaches: The goodness of roaches cannot be overstated, I used to do pure ling/bling/muta and what happen is a lot of times when the battle is over, he has a few marines/marauders and I have a few zerglings/mutas left over, and marine/marauder wins and proceed to do damage. With roaches they are extremely good in small numbers, and are more STABLE so get them. Of course, if you go pure roaches ur going to die, so you need a good mix.
On Banelings: do NOT overmake banelings, they are terrrible at offense and can only blew up marines. If he doesn't have a lot of marine, just don't make too many. I rarely make more than 12 of them nowadays unless I forgot to macro and need to save my ass so I just hold down e lol. If you keep up the upgrades, the job of the baneling is to negate marine's DPS by making them run around instead of shooting. While the marines run around, your army will instapwn his high-tech units, tanks, thors, whatnot, and even if you lose all the banelings, the marines are going to be spread out and with a lot of surface area where your roach/ling can just overpower easily.
On Mutas: Ideally you want to dump all your gas in here, but marines kill you if you do that. So you want as many gas dumped in here as possible for control and counter power, but spare gas for banes when nessesary.
On Zerglings: Fuckton of them until you think they won't be able to flank anymore since u got too many. As with all melee units, if you make too many they lose effectiveness, so you want to shift toward roaches. They are your main damage dealer though, so make sure you flank well.
Overall: Gas Sink: Muta/Bane Mineral Sink: Roach/Ling Balance those 4 units well depend on his composition. Marauder Heavy implies more ling to dump mineral, more muta to dump gas Marine Heavy implies more roach to dump mineral, more bane to dump gas Tank Heavy implies more muta to dump gas, evenly dump roach/ling for min Thor Heavy implies hurpderp roaches with enough bane to pwn marines from bmm's link to Seige's guide, this awesome picture: http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7844/unitcomposition.jpg
Something like that... flank well, most important, chase marines with banes, blah blah.
How about by passing the tank army completely? I use ovies and hydra drop all over the place. I have infestors Bcuz the marines love to stim and run in. Well I fungal them then kill them from a safe distance with range 6 hydras. Then drop roaches and hydras next to the tanks to kill them efficiently. GG
==>Yes sir, you can do roaches and infestors. When you see tank, you should have lair by now, so put down that infestor pit. Make about 3-4 infestors. The rest go for roaches. When siege tank/ stim marine push is near you, just fungal all the marines. Dead marines now it time for wave or roaches to own tanks.
EPT
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