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Hi all,
My friend and I play a lot of 2s together and both being zerg players go for double zerg. Lately we have had INCREDIBLE trouble against phoenix based builds.
One of the main problems is that being 2v2 we feel the need to be able to defend as many early rush pushes (which are common) while still being able to have some form of economy.
I generally open roaches into an expansion once I have around 6-8 and then either get drones if they don't seem to be rushing or get more roaches if they are. My team mate either fast expands into speedlings or gets speedlings into expansion.
The problem is because we have gone for a ground defensive opening we do not have much in the way of air defence. Our Lair generally finishes for us around the 7min mark, and generally this is much too late to completely nullify the phoenix, we have only truly had success defending pheonix with infestors (which also need the energy so won't come until the 8-9min mark by which time the damage has been done).
Spore crawlers don't seem to kill them fast enough, with 3 in our base a group of 8 phoenix can kill upto 7ish drones while only losing 1 maybe 2 phoenix. This may sound like a decent trade, but 7 larvae is a lot especially when they have taken out your queen and u also need overlords for supply.
While we are flailing around putting all our resources to defending the phoenix his team-mate has been macroing up at will and will generally have a really strong army that is incredibly difficult to defend against because we have been crippled so much by the phoenix.
We also lose all map control, scouting and can pretty much not build a third. Also we pretty much always put at least 6 overlords out on the map between us at the beginning of the game and these are always lost which is lost minerals and lost larvae which only escalates the problem.
We are at quite a loss at the moment as what to do because if we fast tech to lair or play 100% to counter the phoenix we just get 4 gated and die even faster. It seems rediculously difficult to have an opening between us which is capable of defending the early rush which may come and the phoenix play is that is to come.
Any ideas or tips will be greatly appreciated.
PS - We are macro players and refuse to do something like "roach rush every game" or "just 6spool".
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What level is this at? A really good thing to get after lair burrow. When the phoenixes swoop in, burrow your drones in your mineral line. In the meantime, fend off his phoenixes with extra queens and/or spores. Then, you want to go for a timing attack with some combination of roach, ling and maybe hydra.
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I think the main problem is your scouting. Zerg is a reactive race, you can´t just say "I build units in case they rush". Scout their front, suicide an overlord. Pump some units around 6-7 minutes (when 4gates come) and if they don´t attack pump drones and prepare for dt, or some kind of stargate play. Get some additional queens, a spore crawler per base and spread creep between your bases.
And once he hits 8 phoenixes you should have hydras, if you don´t you tech much too late.
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We are at around 800 Platinum but play people from platinum to 2800 diamond. Burrow actually sounds like a useful solution but I feel that by the time we have it, significant damage has already been done (around 7 min mark the phoenix get there which is roughly the time lair finishes).
In terms of scouting we always have lings out the front of their bases and look up and down to see what they are doing. The problem is we just about always see the same thing from the protoss (couple of zealots and a few other gateway units), when their partner always seems to have something that looks like a rush. From the ling scout it still could potentially be a rush.
OL scouting is something we may need to work on but it still doesn't seem the final answer. If we spot the starport (around 5mins or so) with our builds it generally does not seem to give us quite enough time to fully prepare, and to prepare it seems we need to make a massive commitment to do so and drastically reduce our army size/economy and their team-mate who is not phoenix is free to macro and make their ball of death.
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yeah ok you're not rushers.. still no excuse for having 8 phoenix in your base and only have 3 spores and a queen there to defend..
if you had scouted that this was happening.. toss going mass phoenix... player X goes tech.. you then would know that you dont need roaches or zerglings in the start.. more drones! throw more drones! while rushing to lair.. .getting a spore or two.. and a handful of hydras each.. and hey... maybe an extra queen too when you're at it? for transfuse and such..
but instead you build 6-8 roaches that was completly useless... they had a tea party in your choke.. and tea parties arent cheap  what you spent in roaches could have been lair, a hatch and a handfull of drones instead 
"but what if they rush us?!" you say?... well.. did you see it coming? if not.. scout again
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On February 18 2011 20:56 ZergOwaR wrote:yeah ok you're not rushers.. still no excuse for having 8 phoenix in your base and only have 3 spores and a queen there to defend.. if you had scouted that this was happening.. toss going mass phoenix... player X goes tech.. you then would know that you dont need roaches or zerglings in the start.. more drones! throw more drones! while rushing to lair.. .getting a spore or two.. and a handful of hydras each.. and hey... maybe an extra queen too when you're at it? for transfuse and such.. but instead you build 6-8 roaches that was completly useless... they had a tea party in your choke.. and tea parties arent cheap what you spent in roaches could have been lair, a hatch and a handfull of drones instead "but what if they rush us?!" you say?... well.. did you see it coming? if not.. scout again
I think you are right and we definitely do have many areas to improve on just seems like defending is 200% harder to pull off than what they are doing.
Also the hardest match up where the phoenix are a problem is when he has a zerg partner who just masses speedlings. This forces us to make much more attacking units and less drones as well as delaying some tech which severely weakens us to the phoenix.
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On February 18 2011 19:31 lachy89 wrote:
PS - We are macro players and refuse to do something like "roach rush every game" or "just 6spool".
this definately made me cringe. highly ranked zz team here top 300 in NA should easily be top 100 or top 50 once we get some games in on weekend. i have reiterated many times that i think zz is underrated and incredibly powerful. however, hearing this shows maybe a limitation in what strategies you are willing to implement.
stopping phx is fine however, from personal experience...since zz is so flexible...most of the time you can kill them before they even get enough phx to make any dent and usually the easiest and most optimal way even though you can deal with it in mid game with certain combo builds.
first off though, its so largely matchup dependent...p/x.
the next problem is that getting into mid game you probably are going to have to go either infestor or hydra. neither of which are great investments. but it gets more complex than that.
the willingness to press early and end the game early is probably your best bet and there are non-cheesy/macro builds that allow you to take advantage of a phoenixing protoss if you are can scout it because you can switch from making drones into making crapload of lings.
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On February 18 2011 23:01 Phanekim wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 19:31 lachy89 wrote:
PS - We are macro players and refuse to do something like "roach rush every game" or "just 6spool".
this definately made me cringe.
I find the cheesy rush strategies completely boring and would prefer to have a decent game that evolved into the mid-game.
the willingness to press early and end the game early is probably your best bet and there are non-cheesy/macro builds that allow you to take advantage of a phoenixing protoss if you are can scout it because you can switch from making drones into making crapload of lings.
What are your favorite macroish builds vs protoss and what are the standard openings of your team against say P+Z?
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150 Posts
Your problem is you follow a cookie cutter build for every match up, for Zerg this is especially bad, but in general in team games you shouldn't act like this unless you are the one applying pressure.
My recommendation would be to be more flexible, and know that when a p sees double z they are probably going to want to Phoenix you, so act accordingly. Make extra queens out the butt. Also note if somebody is pestering you with Phoenix their standing army is probably pretty weak, and since your roaches are having a teaparty on your ramp, you should respond by pressuring them back. Neither lings or roaches are that great of targets for Phoenix on defense.
You also seem to have an issue with early pressure, "were macro players." it's very important to realize when you have the advantage or momentum, or when you don't. Making a bunch of lings and roaches but not using them is just like not having them... Put pressure, make them stop teching and macroing to match your investment, or just don't spam roaches and lings just to have them sit.
Goodluck.
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When the enemy team has a single race (like 2x protoss) I generally go for the build that works good vs that race in 1v1.
Against protoss in 1v1 I generally go for a fast lair (with some ling/spines) and tech to hydras. It's a good build that renders phoenix mostly a waste of money and forces collossii. Then add corruptors against the collossii as well as the phoenixes.
Mutas are too much of a liability against P because of the phoenixes. So focus more on ground, expand a ton of creep and go hydra/roach/corruptor. If one of you is good with infestors, go for a fungal on the phoenix ball with hydra support.
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Exact timings please. When exactly are the phoenixes coming, in what number, on what map, and is this vs PP, PT, or PZ?
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Me and my buddy are currently ranked #13 in NA (gone as high as #4), and #35 in the world in 2v2 (we both play random). As double zerg we are always very aggressive with our openings, and phoenix type builds just aren't very strong holding off a large timing push in the 5-6 min mark with roaches / lings.
In the mid / late game if I see him getting a lot of phoenix I'll get a about a good mix of corruptors / mutas. Phoenixes absolutely suck against corruptors so as long as you keep your mutas close to the corruptors you can do a lot of damage before their push comes. You can't just do a passive build, get late tech, then expect to not have trouble with that kind of build.
Either be really aggressive and do a strong early game timing attack, or play entirely reactive and get lots of queens / spore crawlers while out macro-ing your opponents.
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It's not the best idea to go straight defensive with ZZ. If one P is going straight to phoenixes, you could easily shovel your lings/roach combo down his or his partner's base at 7 mins. In most games once one of you have 6 to 8 roaches and other has a couple dozen lings you should prepare the first push (or counter when they move out), regardless of what your opponents have.
I play 2v2 Random mostly (1600 diamond). My standard opening is 14 pool 15 hatch 15 gas 15 queen, a pair of lings, and another queen when the hatch is done. Drone to 28 food and then 2 OL and pump lings to about 52 food, provided that we don't scout a rush build from both opponents. With 2 Z's one should go roach opening and other do lings or blings. Double rush build is actually not very popular in 2v2's. I have no seen mid-late game phoenixes from P much.
Playing a defensive opening is the worse for ZZ against any other race combination IMO.
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Pheonix is weak against corruptor. Strong against light unit like muta or even Hydra if they can lift the hydra up.
=>Best advice is go for both hydra den and spire. Spam queens like crazy + hydra while waiting for spire to be done .Spore crawlers are nice too. When Spire done just spam corruptors. Do note corruptor is weak against voidray so if toss makes voidray try to make more hydra or muta.
=>When toss use the lift up skill from pheonix, try to focus the pheonix that does the lifting to free your DPS hydra or queen because both do a lot of dmg.
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Extra Queens seems the way to go. It frees up larvae for you to drone, it doesn't cost gas, their range nullifies the Phoenix's speed, it doesn't force any particular tech route, there is no real counter, they are useful in a ground battle, they aren't light units, and they spread creep like mad, which is great for ZZ.
I'd get 4 Queens if you suspect Phoenixes or Void Rays from your scouting, then when you confirm, produce them continually.
I find with Hydras that, unless you already have a good sized pack of them, Phoenixes can pick them off like nothing. Phoenixes can also abuse the terrain because Hydras only have range 5/6 (versus a Queen's 9), so they can't, say, defend your expansion from inside your main base.
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On February 18 2011 23:38 lachy89 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 23:01 Phanekim wrote:On February 18 2011 19:31 lachy89 wrote:
PS - We are macro players and refuse to do something like "roach rush every game" or "just 6spool".
this definately made me cringe. I find the cheesy rush strategies completely boring and would prefer to have a decent game that evolved into the mid-game. Show nested quote +
the willingness to press early and end the game early is probably your best bet and there are non-cheesy/macro builds that allow you to take advantage of a phoenixing protoss if you are can scout it because you can switch from making drones into making crapload of lings.
What are your favorite macroish builds vs protoss and what are the standard openings of your team against say P+Z?
I have PM'd you.
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On February 18 2011 19:31 lachy89 wrote:
Hi all,
My friend and I play a lot of 2s together and both being zerg players go for double zerg. Lately we have had INCREDIBLE trouble against phoenix based builds.
One of the main problems is that being 2v2 we feel the need to be able to defend as many early rush pushes (which are common) while still being able to have some form of economy.
I generally open roaches into an expansion once I have around 6-8 and then either get drones if they don't seem to be rushing or get more roaches if they are. My team mate either fast expands into speedlings or gets speedlings into expansion.
The problem is because we have gone for a ground defensive opening we do not have much in the way of air defence. Our Lair generally finishes for us around the 7min mark, and generally this is much too late to completely nullify the phoenix, we have only truly had success defending pheonix with infestors (which also need the energy so won't come until the 8-9min mark by which time the damage has been done).
Spore crawlers don't seem to kill them fast enough, with 3 in our base a group of 8 phoenix can kill upto 7ish drones while only losing 1 maybe 2 phoenix. This may sound like a decent trade, but 7 larvae is a lot especially when they have taken out your queen and u also need overlords for supply.
While we are flailing around putting all our resources to defending the phoenix his team-mate has been macroing up at will and will generally have a really strong army that is incredibly difficult to defend against because we have been crippled so much by the phoenix.
We also lose all map control, scouting and can pretty much not build a third. Also we pretty much always put at least 6 overlords out on the map between us at the beginning of the game and these are always lost which is lost minerals and lost larvae which only escalates the problem.
We are at quite a loss at the moment as what to do because if we fast tech to lair or play 100% to counter the phoenix we just get 4 gated and die even faster. It seems rediculously difficult to have an opening between us which is capable of defending the early rush which may come and the phoenix play is that is to come.
Any ideas or tips will be greatly appreciated.
PS - We are macro players and refuse to do something like "roach rush every game" or "just 6spool".
do you have any replays? also theres no way they can get 8 phoenixes out by the time your lair finishes at 7 mins. the spore crawlers should be enough til your infestation pit is ready. if you get the energy upgrade at 31 seconds you can start making infestors and they will spawn with enough energy for fungal
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1. Sacrifice overlords into their base.
2. See stargate tech.
3. Attack.
4. Win.
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Thanks for all who posted I think we are both going to have to come up with some modified builds and change our style of play somewhat. Its just not always that obvious exactly what openers are the best in 2s as you don't have ideas from pros etc. I think basically the problem is we need to tweak our builds as they are sub-optimal at the moment.
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EPT
