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On January 30 2011 14:02 Plexa wrote:
Why you Zergs refuse to use Hive Tech I'll never know. The only time I ever have trouble with a deathball is when the Zerg plays good solid hive tech. In particular;
- Using Fungal to screw up my army positioning
- Using Fungal to pick off my expensive Tech units
- Using Ultralisks to break my forcefields
- Using Ultralisks to smash through my ground army
- When I don't have a massive stalker blob, raping my tech units with Corruptors
BL used to be the best option PvZ, but with us Protoss realising how awesome VRs are, BLs should be taking a back seat to Ultras as the preferred late game option. Let's face it, Roaches are not supply effective when the Protoss is in death ball mode. Replace the Roaches in your army with Ultralisks (so you're running a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/Infestor mix) and viola! You are now supply effective. I swear you Zergs vastly underrate just how effective ultras are =/. Yes immortals hard counter them, but who masses immortals these days? If they're massing immortals it's not hard to tech switch to BL (Assuming you still have corruptors) or mass ling/bling =/
How does fungal pick off expensive tech units? It brings them down to what, half shields?
And Ultralisks smashing your ground army? They're going to get caught up on your Zeaots while VRs deal their damage, then a few immortals mixed will start to deal so much damage to them. I really feel they're just not a unit for this game
I feel as if Zergs really just can't compete with that kind of army, but they can abuse the hell out of it with mobility if the map allows. Kind of why Steppes seems really anti-Zerg because there's no real room for counterattacking/dropping/nydusing cause it's so easy for Protoss to run back and defend.
Saying something like 'oh just go Ultralisks + infestors, then if makes Immortals just go Broodlods' seriously?
Baneling dropping is pretty nice though, if you're attacking with your roach/hydra/ling meanwhile he's kind of forced to either retreat and take the hydra/roach shots or just fight while taking the baneling damage. And of course it's really supply-effective and there's a lot of versatility for banelings late game (cracking expansions in particular :o)
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I really like the idea of baneling drops and think it could really in the future give zerg slightly more of an advantage in ZvP as for the short term when the toss sees a large group on ovie's heading towards them they do nothing, so this can be hit with bane drops, but after a while of course they will always be splitting their forces nullifying your baneling drops. No problem, just send speed ovies with nothing in, he volunterily messes with his positioning and you gain a good advantage in the fight.
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On January 30 2011 16:56 roymarthyup wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2011 16:52 LWr wrote:On January 30 2011 14:02 Plexa wrote:
Replace the Roaches in your army with Ultralisks (so you're running a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/Infestor mix) and viola! You are now supply effective. Although I agree that Ultras aren't used enough in ZvP, they are not even cost effective against zealots. 2 ultras (600/400) lose to 7 zealots (700), even without charge. you are correct. ultras only really become effective when you consider that zealots get shredded so fricken fast by roaches and hydras which you should have to deal with zealots. you only want 3-4 ultralisks in your lategame army because after the zealots are dead the ultras roll over everything armored the problem becomes when storm / archons are added into the mix. archons take forever for ultras to kill, storm obliterates everything zerg has you need broodlords to compete with archons / storm because 8 broodlords throwing their fire will cause the archons to waste their attacks and they have so much range they can be safe from storm to a point
You can't have a mix of zealot/sentry/colossi/stalker/archons/immortal/ht/void ray it's unrealistic. When the protoss hit 200/200, he should have maid a choice in his mix. And this choice depends on his opener and the mid game.
Classical ending mix are :
-archons/stalker (blink)/sentry/immortal/ht, protoss like this mix when they face muta/ling in the mid game (sentry/ blink stalker/ht) and they prepare for ultra transition with archons/immortal. against this mix i think infestors/broodlord is the key with some burrow roaches. Ultras are bad against this mix.
-stalker/sentry/colossi/phoenix/void ray, protoss have this mix when they open phoenix they force roach/hydra/corruptor in the mid game (sentry/stalker/colossi/phoenix) and they add some voidray to deal with the corruptors. i think it's in this case where ultralisk/infestor are underused. But i don't know exactly how you can transition efficiently, that's the main problem, how to transition from a roach/hydra/corruptor to an infestor/ultralisk/hydralisk mix because yeah remax with some ultralisk is very risky it takes too long, it depends on when and where you engaged the fight.
But ofc you will never crush a 200/200 protoss with a 200/200 zerg you need at least a 300/200. But it doesn't mean there is some balance issue, there are just 2 different races with 2 different style of play.
Edit: With bigger maps we don't know how the mid game will be played and ofc the late game will change aswell.
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If you have the money necessary there is a strat that beat most of the P balls. 50-100 banelings and 6-8 ultras in front wipe everything out (the splash get both Colos and regular units). The fact that baneling are only 0.5 food(!!!) and that Collossus stand ontop of the other units is one reason why it is so effective. So the only problem is getting the money for it, but if you have it, its game. I haven't really made anyone believe me, but soon people will try it and understand. Banelings are almost OP due to the fact they are only 0.5 food.
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I feel like now against a protoss going for that death ball you have to keep harassing him non stop with speed roaches, drops or nydus, try to snipe some units, stop him from getting his third up. It's easier to say than to do because on some maps a protoss can just turtle up with cannons and sentries.
If you face the death ball a ton of corrupters actually works very well, but if you focus the collosus the voids rip through them, and if you focus the void rays your ground army evaporates.
The baneling drop seems a very good idea but very hard to make happen and you HAVE to success the first time you do it or you die.
And infestors are out of the question, a good protoss will kill them with collossus range before they can do anything. Anyways you need that gas badly.
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Muta/Ling is the obvious composition to go in cross position maps like Shakuras, but in close position LT or Metalopolis I have real, real difficulty dealing with Toss deahtball pushes. Not necessarily even the Colossus/VR pushes, I mean the 2 base Stalker-Colossus ball which can get to your natural in about 10 seconds. There's nowhere that's very convenient to expand, you can't use Muta harass to keep him in his base and pretty much every composition just gets roasted unless you have supreme micro.
As people have stated, there will never be a cost efficient way to deal with a Toss death-ball, their units are just designed to be slower but stronger. Baneling drops seem gimmicky to me - they might work in a few cases, but it won't work on a Toss who's aware of what you're doing.
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I think zerg players (myself included) tend to go waaaay more roach heavy than lair/hive tech units, than they should. We just see collossi, say "better make roaches," and bam we're at 200/200 before we know it, macroing like pros, and whomp, our army gets rolled. Our issue is we rely on teir 1 roaches (okay, maybe 1.5, but still, its low-tech guys...), expensive supply-wise, and somehow expect that to fare well.
**Also, we have to stay up on upgrades, that will make our 200 supply army that much more awesome. True, lack of upgrades can be made up for by increasing the unit count, but at 200/200, you can't compensate anymore, thus making upgrades very important late game...**
Some untested ideas for the "ZERG DEATHBALL":
Now don't get me wrong, some roaches tanking damage is nice(but not all supply should be roach, come on guys), and I think many queens (10+) are also underutilized, since they die slowly to collosi (150 hp, armor 1 ((though not considered "armored" making it the ultimate tank unit)) versus the other anti-air unit, the hydralisk with 80hp, a.k.a. collosi-fodder-lisk), while dealing their air damage with longer range than the roach and the hydralisk, and also being great versus voidrays.
Now, what else, I got my roaches, got my queens, now what? Well, soon as you see that collosus-den go down, you should all be making spires, or have them up already. And, make about 6-10 at a minimum corrupters, while teching to hive and greater spire. The beauty is this: Broodlords create a broodling wall in front of your "zerg deathball" (while shooting them out from the back above your queens), roaches with range 4 right behind the broodling wall focusing on hurting stalkers, queens behind the roaches spreading creep, transfusing roaches/each other/whatever needs it (yes, microintensive, and I highly suggest health bars on), and pre-battle the extra queens are great for spreading creep to fight on, preferably further away from hatches in order to keep reinforecements from being cut off by the battle's position, and also firing at the void rays (notice they have alot of stuff on their shoulders, so the more queens the merrier), and most importantly, they sit under your broodlords in order to prevent blink stalkers getting under your broodlords. Perhaps a few unconverted/reinforcement corrupters can be assisting the queen's targets (collosi and VRs).
So, to recap, Mass queen for anti air and anti-collosi, roaches to tank and focus stalkers, broodlords to form a broodling wall (you need 8 to 10 to make a good wall-off), and maybe some spare corrupters in the mix as well.
What do you guys think? Viable? Sounds reasonable to me, and with Day9's mass queen funday monday challenge, why not try it out? 
Another great thing about queens and broodlords is that they're both slow as f-#$%, so they will hopefully keep up with each other. After winning, draw a slow swath of destruction with your own death-ball. Also, while you're at hive tech, why not pick up adrenal glands for mopping up far away expos after the battle, before the toss can rebuild? Just some ideas... And for the record, queens are cheap on the gas, providing more resources for upgrades, corrupter/blords, etc.
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I think the fundamental ideas behind Zerg are it's ability to mass like a swarm.
If a 200 zerg army was equal to a Toss / Terran army, it would be broken as hell, because Zerg gets to 200 a fair amount quicker than Terran or Protoss can, and you can also reload way quicker as well.
I suppose you just gotta cop the losses Starship Troopers style, but overwhelm ... feels like that's how zerg is meant to be played?
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Here's what I do, with varying degrees of success at 2700+ masters:
-roaches, upgrading ranged attack early on
-as soon as I scout void/colo army, start mass producing corruptors, get +1 air attack
-3 base 1 evo chamber upgraded roach/corruptor
-once I get 4 bases, go hive, get ultra, go roach/ultra/corruptor, 1-3 infestors if I have the gas
Corruptors focus down the void rays first, then colossus. Roaches more or less a-move, unless a colossus is out of position, and burrow underneath force fields. Once I get ultras, they break down force fields, and attack stalker/colossus, priority on colossus.
If I manage to kill all voids & colossus, leftover corruptors use corruption on immortals followed by stalker, then start pumping mass roach/crackling.
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This thread already exists: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=167126
Baneling drops do seem to be pretty effective. However, hive tech is just so much better. Baneling drops do seem to be a good tactic to use until you reach hive tech though. Maybe use it as a means to survive until you can get out that hive tech for brood lords or ultralisks.
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OMG YESS FUNGAL GROWTH/ BANELING DROPS ARE THE BOMBB
edit: that was a pun
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I have seen Ling/bling and corruptors pretty much rape colossi+gateway ball
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Personally I find that lings/spine crawlers will pretty much hold toss armies off and let you use gas for mutas in 99% of situations. Close position/wide open naturals can be trickier but I just don't see roach/hydra/corruptor as being effective. upgraded lings/mutas will stand toe to toe against a toss army and this composition generally sways them from even going for collosus.
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On January 30 2011 12:37 koveras wrote:
By god man dont tell people to use the baneling drops on deathball. It allready whas a risky tactic and with the latest patch that decreased phoenix building time its going to be pretty hard if not impossible to manoeuvre your ovies above his deathball. Also any half decent protoss would be splitting up his army nullifying the baneling damage. There is also no efficient follow up since you spend so much gass on drop tech and huge amount of banelings. If anything baneling drops where only used to buy time to get something else but its not a viable way to counter protoss deathball.
most intelligent thing in thisthread
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From what I've played I would say the best answer is good early game decisions into roach hydra corruptor. By game decisions I really have found going speedling roach very effective against any toss build. Speedling roach lets you put tons of pressure a FE toss, and if they 4 gate you just dont have to worry about Col/VR as much since they will have no gas to support it. I tend to rush +2 attack for roaches and hydra. The drawback of doing this is that this is really vulnerable fast VR. Another drawback is that this is playing like this is larva heavy and if you don't delay their natural or mass up too many lings and they don't push then you are SO FAR BEHIND economicly.
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I went ultra baneling hydra to some decent effect.
Banelings are pretty unfreaking believable. Hydras get free shots from kiting/splitting. And of course, ultras knock the FFs down. You don't need too many ultras, but you do need a lot of banelings.
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People need to stop viewing mutalisks as a dps unit when theorycrafting. Corruptors are better for antiair because mutalisks are way to fragile and will get autotargeted down. Mutalisks roll lies in harassing, but eventually even going muta ling you do need to transition to tier 3 to finish a protoss off once he gets a counter to mutalisks rolling (storm/blink or mass phoenix).
Baneling drop is amazing and is still underused. I use baneling drop very heavily throughout my entire zvp games and have had alot of success with it (top 200 NA player btw). I usually start my engagements by suiciding an infestor for a leading fungal to give me position followed by bane rain on the core army. With just 20 banelings everything in the fungal will die including collosus. With the core of the toss deathball getting killed before it can really do damage the rest gets cleaned up pretty easy since toss will probably not have sentries alive.
The reason bane rain is so effective is because of its efficiency. Banelings are incredibly efficient. They cost 1/2 a supply so you can fit alot in your army for cheap supply costs, this is probably most important. Sacrificing 5 roaches for 20 banelings seems way to good to pass up. But they are actually cost efficient in most situations too! If your baneling hits 3 collosus it is efficient (1500 resources worth of banelings will overkill a colosus hp), or 4 stalkers. Against light units its obviously very efficient. The only ground units that they are not efficient dropping on are immortals. When zergs are used to making 2 armies to fight one deathball actually having anything efficient is very useful.
Also getting drop is also very amazing for fighting toss as well. If your near maxed but cant attack into the protoss because of positioning or creep you can start dropping different points with your army as a good way to trade resources with a toss. Also baneling drops on mineral lines are very good as well. Another less seen tactic is to transport a queen around in an ovie and to put your creeping into overdrive.
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I tried few times a corruptor/broodlord combo and it may be deadly vs. toss depending on map. If the map is something like metalopolis where you can micro broodlords from blink stalkers then it's super strong. Let's say you have ~10+ broodlords and everything else are corruptors, like 30 or something. Then toss can't do anything about that! He will start pumping voids but it will be impossible for him to overwhelm your corruptor numbers.
But ofc until this stage of the game you are usually already dead lol
Edit: Plexa, I tried ultras so many times and they just suck. I mean if you will get 12 upgraded ultras with prefect suround then yeah, definately you gonna crush, but the thing is, toss is not going to dance in the middle of the shattered temple - he will be somewhere around the chokes where your ultras will be dead before reaching toss army. Not to mention that you are maxing range/armor upgrades all game long, and for ultras you should have +attack upgrades.
And toss can just start boosting immortals from double robo and add mass zealot - those are perfect against ultras.
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I think Zergs are getting their Hive tech too late in this match up. I'm stating pure theorycraft because I'm not good enough yet to have really ironed out my theory and put it into practice, so let me know your thoughts on this...
In theory, I want to have Hive ended around the same time as my maxed Hydroach/Corruptor army is made, go trade as efficiently as I can while an ultra cavern and/or greater spire is building, and then re-build my army with a Hydralisk backbone, 3 or 4 Ultras (any more than that is a waste of resources), a few infestors, corruptors, and 2 or 3 BLs (morphing more if any corruptors survive the Collosus hunt). I have a very VERY hard time imagining a situation where a Hydra/Corruptor/Ultra/BL/Infestor late-game mix would lose outright to the toss deathball... Especially with the amulet upgrade being removed in the upcoming patch.
Is my timing window practical? I have no idea, I'd appreciate anybody with experience in this to let me know, but as I continue to play and improve my macro, it's a timing that I want to make happen.
I think that part of the reason that many players think Ultras are so horribad is that they make too many. Any more than 4 or 5 at the absolute most is and they almost never get to attack at the same time anyway. A lot of zerg get stuck in this "4suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" or "4srrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" macro mentality while they play, and what should be happening with their larva is "4suuuuhhhhhhhhhhccccccccgggghhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrr" (infestor is g in my setup). Many zerg players, even at the top level, are not consciously aware of the amount of each unit they are including in their composition. It's usually "Well, I have an ultralisk cavern, now, make FIFTEEEEEEEEN Ultras!" Then they lose the game and wonder why anybody could ever DARE to suggest that Ultralisks be used in the matchup.
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Baneling drops are powerful especially because hitting from the middle turns the aoe from a moon type shape or maybe semi circle into a 360 degree blast. I heard from a good protoss (HuK I think?) that it's really just a surprise play and with a fast spread and/or blink it doesn't do nearly as much damage (ofc)
mass corruptor brood lord would be so unbelievably immobile
I never seen mass spine crawlers as anything more than a stall tactic
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EPT
