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(3.2k masters terran)
my 2cents
Having encountered this style play often, it is a pain in the balls to deal with. I find most zergs I'm beating are going too muta heavy and not building crawlers to defend blueflame and reaper harassment.
For zergs playing vs bio:
The roach variants of this are much stronger, but even so, MMM tank does just fine against it. The problem is the micro is very intense and requires a lot of practice. Splitting big bio balls vs ultras/roach/bling is really the counter to this build, as an unmicroed 200/200 MMM ball will lose to ultra/bling/roach, but with good micro its an even fight. If you leave the terran room to kite you he will, and you will probably crush him if you can surround or flank him.
Often the game will come down to who controls the most bases anyway- so make sure you have patrol lings.
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Er... I've read the whole OP and first pages but not every single post, so i don't know how many people said a similar thing but: ultralisk being good is no news to me, I never understood all the QQing about them... I'm a fresh diamond player, my worst matchup is vs T, but each time I managed to survive until pumping out my ultras, I knew the game was won (considering a similar level of macro at this point, of course... a "rush to ultra" is devoted to fail imo, i tried it in many ways as ultra is my best unit). Actually, it's my ultimate game ender in every matchup : combinated with blings against T (for bio, if mech i prefer cling and more ultra); with roaches against Z (so many units on the ground in each army, useless to get more melee), and finally with hydra against P (just be careful not to get the hydra one-shot by colossi, but with ultra leading the assault, it's quite easy to have a nice dps without too much damage on the hydra).
Melee and carapace upgrade against T, range and carapace against the others, and it's done.
Of course, against T ling/bling is the best to survive until ultras, against z it's roaches, and against P it's hydras (just careful with colossi again, but the excess of mineral goes into slings that can have nice surround... Corruptors only if he mass them)
Again, I'm not a pro and almost always have a lower apm than my opponent, but ultra are just the zerg's ultimate weapon (or "armor", obviously). I just don't see what counters it on the ground (and against air, well, you just explodes his base and thanks to zerg's special power, you have a pure anti air army about 30 seconds later).
oh, a small edit "just in case" : i prefer roaches against Z because opponent's slings will just flank your hydra way too easily, even more when all is covered by creep; while upgraded roaches will tank them efficiently and two-shoot them.
TLDR: ultra rock since the launching of SC2, thus in every matchup. Imo of course.
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I have to bump this because this guide is amazing, and I have a few questions (man this thread isn't nearly as old as I thought it was). I remember reading this, and realizing how amazing ultras were in ZvT. That you always win with it, and they are way better than BL's. Then with the infestor patch and the realization of how awesome NP + Ultra is in ZvP, it further cemented how amazing ultras are (I wrote a guide about going ultra/infestor with NP/bling in ZvP going ling/infestor into ling/bling/infestor into ultra/bling/infestor).
ANYWAYS. My question is this: I've been having a lot of trouble recently with the Goody style of mass thor/siege tank (not sure why it's suddenly getting popular as opposed to when goody first became known). It crushes, and usually the problem is the push before hive is even up. But that's another thread, as from what I understand, a ridiculous Mass broodlord to counter his ridiculous army, is the advice I get about it.
I was wondering how well ultras fare against the sort of Goody style of just mass mass siege tanks and thors. I know you say it deals with mech well, but that was a while ago and I can see in the pics there aren't as many thors, and seem to be a lot of units other than siege tanks and thors, which is completely the opposote of what I face.
Thanks, love this guide. I feel broodlords are worthless compared to the amazingness of ultras, and I don't think I've ever lost a game where I got ultras, and they are always my goal in ZvP and tank/rine ZvT.
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I use ultra/baneling vs roach/hydra in ZvZ and people try to give me shit for it. Its not like that melee upgrade makes both the T1 AND T3 unit exponentially better, noooo...
Its not coincidental that the 2 staple units of zerg, ling and bling, share the same upgrade as the two T3 units of zerg, broodling and Ultra. I dont say brood lord, because while it does do damage, its main effect it to spit broodlings all over an army and thus provide the same distraction/surround late game that zerglings provide early game (and for free!), with a bonus of causing adjacent friendly fire splash if its a terran, or forcing HT storm spam on their own army if they went HT strong and have less to deal with the broodlings via colossi. But then again, brood lords hit colossi and then he broodlings are right under the colossi, which is the best position possible for low hp units vs colossi splash.
I have to say that I practically learned ZvZ in extreme depth thanks to 1 ZvZ game. The game was an hour and 6 minute long, and it taught me that corruptors shoot down the brood lords while bling mop up the hydra, and ultras get rid of their switch to roaches, combined with cracklings, and if they bring roach/hydra, you flank with bling to kill the LIGHT hydra, while ultras deal with the roaches along with either roaches of your own, lings, or in some cases, hydras.
people undervalue corruptors as an anti-muta strategy. it takes 28 shots for a muta to kill a corruptor. then you can rock and roll with corruption vs key targets or just softening up their roach balls for your own roaches to decimate them.
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Why ultras and not brood lords?
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On July 13 2011 00:05 Olsson wrote:
Why ultras and not brood lords?
without spire, GG lords will take so long in coming that if you're counting on having a T3 to keep you in the running during a game, you will lose if that T3 unit is BL when you haven't even gotten GS yet. an ultra den is pretty quick. GG lords have about the same time as Ultras, when you factor corruptor BT to BL morph BT, in addition to the super slow GS BT on top of an already slow Sp BT on top of more slow lair/hive BT.
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On July 13 2011 00:05 Olsson wrote:
Why ultras and not brood lords?
The answer is in the OP's post. The point of the Ultras is to absorb damage from tanks/collosi/etc so that your blings/lings/mutas can obliterate their army. Broodlords can't fulfill this role in an initial confrontation because there hasn't been any time to build up a broodling count.
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ive been destroying ultras with mass snipe and tank/maradaur.. broodlord infestor is much harder to deal with.. 1500~ GM Terran
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On July 13 2011 00:26 lGy wrote:
ive been destroying ultras with mass snipe and tank/maradaur.. broodlord infestor is much harder to deal with.. 1500~ GM Terran
Well, to be fair, at the time the OP was written infestors still had the 8 second fungal and were wildly underused, so broodlord/infestor was a non-existant unit combination. Also, ghosts or marauders are pretty much the counter to ultralisks. It's far and away most effective against the marine/tank composition that is seen in nearly every ZvT these days.
As a 1300 diamond zerg, I make use of this in most of my ZvT's and a lot of my ZvP's too. As long as the ultralisks are sent in first to attack the tanks, you should have enough banelings to clean up any number of marines, no matter how good you are at splits.
Even if it is a completely even army trade, the Zerg can just rally zerglings to the Terran's production line, which is almost always a GG.
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I think your comment concerning BW's relevance to SC2 is interesting and worth note and further examination when the metagame is changing- specifically, the way that unit comps in BW were, in part, dictated by the speed of the units involved; while in SC2, that is not yet the case, but when something little, just a detail, is noticed and taken into account, it yeilds powerful results.
The only other question I have is where does all the gas come from? :D (JK)
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Awesome, awesome post!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to create this, really helped me vary up my ZvT.
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I think one things players often do not take into account is army synergy. Why are Ultras good with this unit and bad with this unit against this army and so on.
People make Ultra + Roach and wonder why they lose so easily.
It seems to me that Ultra are at their strongest when the fight goes by very quickly. For this reason I fend them most effective with units like Banes, Zerglings, and Infestors. All units that have extreme damage potential in a short amount of time. Not even Hydra have enough dps to work with Ultra that well and certainly not Roach imo.
I did the math once and found that Ultra have more dps than Colossi when hitting 3 armored targets. At full upgrade a Colossi hitting 3 units has 76.2 dps while an Ultra will have 90.304. Hitting a single target it has 54.4. This means hitting enemies with a Fungal to clump them up is essential as it boosts the power of the Ultra enormously.
Against 3 unarmored targets however it would be 40.338 so it would need help from Banelings to cover this. When enemies are more spread out Zerglings cover the rest letting the Ultra take the initial brunt of the Damage. When enemies are more spread out NP is used to mind control the power units instantly giving you a boost in power. A 10 second mind control is fine as the battle will be extremely short.
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As a Terran this whole thread just makes me cry 
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If it gets really late into the game for a finishing blow I like to transition from BL's to ultras if it even gets that far xD, as any anti air they make gets subtracted out of their ground army. Like one time I versed a terran who made 20 supply worth of vikings all to counter the 6 to 7 BL's I made. He waited to build up an army again before moving out, but by that time my ultras were out, and his vikings just sat in the air with nothing to shoot at XD
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The largest problem with Ultras currently is that Ghosts are used to fight the Broodlord Corrupter mix, and the ghost is still wildly effective using snipes vs Ultralisks. At the time this guide was written, infestors still had the less damaging fungal and ghosts were almost unrecognized in the matchup
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This guide needs to be updated after the 6 months of patch changes. Also
On January 25 2011 11:27 CuteSmallHydra wrote:
But I notice something... he's not really making marines, and the ones he does have aren't being upgraded. FML, I have like 100 banelings and he has a pure mech army.
lol? Maybe I"m being too picky but I want something that sounds like you know what you're doing and you don't blind counter marines to that big of an extent.
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My question + Show Spoiler +coming from someone who watches quite a bit of SC2
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blooming good read! and defo food for thought!!!!! cheers bud!
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Great post/read. . .
A bit surprised that this was your first guide +^-^+
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This OP really changed my ZvT and ZvP. Ultra-Banes have been melting every single deathballs I've ran into. Thanks a bunch.
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EPT
