I just find it so very hard with playing zerg. I am a silver player in SEA but only because I won against a silver zerg by chance using protoss (completely no clue why I was protoss, guess someone switched it while i went to toilet).

The big big difficulty with zerg is that you have to make sure you spent your larva correctly.
Many times, in smaller maps where I managed to hold off early aggression after I FE, I started pumping drones to recover the loss in drone counts since I have a handful of speedlings.
Then after a while, another attack and I have no larva to build anymore and have to give up my natural.

FatalRuin

United States45 Posts

May 07 2011 06:03 GMT

#82

Thanks for taking the time to write all this up! I wish I had this when I was learning Zerg. A lot of the advice here can apply to other races as well not just Zerg.

TheLOLas

United States646 Posts

May 07 2011 06:27 GMT

#83

Great post Arisen. You really simplify how Zerg should be played and it makes a lot of sense. Hopefully upon review of your post I can gear out of gold league. Thank you so much for your effort in writing this post.

zeOllie

Australia486 Posts

June 18 2011 00:20 GMT

#84

GREAT Guide. Very informative to me, thanks a lot :DD

I'm gonna take a lot away from this, thanks again :D

mrgoldenbrown

20 Posts

August 03 2011 02:32 GMT

#85

Flying Farms! How cool is that? Not only do they fly, they drop creep, can drop, and can morph into overseers which can slow production, nullify cannons, delay upgrades, and scout very well.

wait what? overseers nullify cannons?

firehand101

Australia3152 Posts

August 03 2011 02:40 GMT

#86

On August 03 2011 11:32 mrgoldenbrown wrote:

Show nested quote +

wait what? overseers nullify cannons?

i dont think they can

WollKnoll

Namibia14 Posts

November 16 2011 16:55 GMT

#87

Excelletn guide and keep up the good work.

Thank you for the help

TangSC

Canada1866 Posts

November 17 2011 05:03 GMT

#88

Interesting post with a lot of good points that I agree with. My biggest argument is I think an aggressive style of zerg (IE Drone-timing attack-drone-timing attack) style of zerg is the best way to improve

Thanks for the post!

AlmightyRaiden

Mexico59 Posts

November 27 2011 23:00 GMT

#89

Nice post! shame i know (as in aware, trying to improve) all of those points and still in bronze :-(
I hate cheese and trying to be good at macro 1st, will i ever make it out of bronze??

chipman

United States139 Posts

November 28 2011 16:04 GMT

#90

I stopped reading after you said you wanted to be special so you rolled the hardest race, because not only is the zerg race being harder to play than the others a myth believed only by self-important zerg players, but also because I think if someone wants to try and accomplish something and feel good about themselves on a video game they should be aiming to become one of the best players and win tournaments and make something out of their time spent on the game, otherwise it's just a really, really fun hobby.

I play random at master level, and no one race is harder or easier than the others. They all have some retarded easy things they can do to get up to masters, but most of what gets you into Master league is simply being able to macro efficiently. If you hit all your injects and use all your larvae as they become available, for instance, chances are you will already be breaking into masters MMR. I'm not lying this is actually the truth. Scouting, unit compositions, timings, etc, all that is important don't get me wrong, but if you just always have more stuff than your opponent then you will always be ahead, and the windows in which you can punish your opponent or get more ahead by using the tools given to you will become more apparent. With protoss and terran, to get into masters mmr it's the same thing. Almost never stop building workers and macro up a huge army. If zerg is about the flank and counter attack "micro", then terran is about the stim stutter step, drop and protoss is the retreat and forcefield micro, because every race can appreciate having a concave and and pre place units before fights. In fact zerg, imo, is probably the least micro intensive race in the game much of the time, nestea might agree with me.

Crushinator

Netherlands2138 Posts

November 28 2011 17:08 GMT

#91

I´ve played all races to Diamond, and Zerg to masters. I still regularly play all 3 races, and Zerg is definitely not the hardest race to play for me. Infact, succeeding in Diamond as Terran was much more difficult than as Zerg, I struggled not to be demoted at times. Terran is the hardest race for ME. Stating Zerg is the hardest race as some kind of universal truth is ridiculous and it devalues the rest of the post.

ExodusHydrA

58 Posts

November 28 2011 17:15 GMT

#92

On November 17 2011 14:03 TangSC wrote:
Interesting post with a lot of good points that I agree with. My biggest argument is I think an aggressive style of zerg (IE Drone-timing attack-drone-timing attack) style of zerg is the best way to improve

Thanks for the post!

I agree on this! I've been fiddling around with roach timings in ZvZ lately, and trying to improve those timings boosted my mechanics and general comfort on being aggressive a lot! I feel like aggression is one of the, if not the best way to improve quickly. if you have a plan to execute ASAP, you'll notice how slow you are actually playing.

Cascade

Australia5405 Posts

November 28 2011 17:26 GMT

#93

Nice guide!

For the zerg-hardest-race flamers: keep in mind that the OP is from February, and then that opinion was a bit more accepted I think (maybe ppl still listened to Idra, what do I know?

). So take that more as a piece of sc2 cultural history from the times where PvZ was dominated by 4 gate rushes, and when MVP > all was a widely accepted fact.

chipman

United States139 Posts

November 28 2011 20:09 GMT

#94

Race balance crying has and will always be bad manner.

If someone loses a game, they should change what they're doing somewhere, rather than demand it be changed for them, implying they can't do wrong.

drgrofl

Canada48 Posts

December 06 2011 05:45 GMT

#95

this thread is old.

Zerg was up back then.

nice guide:D

GhandiEAGLE

United States20754 Posts

December 06 2011 06:15 GMT

#96

Lol a lot of this came from that one Day9 Newbie Tuesday >.<

Great write-up though!

Nuclease

United States1049 Posts

December 16 2011 05:53 GMT

#97

Just switched to Zerg (maybe this time I can actually convince myself to just SWITCH), and your guide will help SO sososo much. I'm amazed at how relevant it is and how relevant it will always be. Great read, great write, and I'm glad you wrote this Arisen. Thanks.

Stropheum

United States1124 Posts

December 16 2011 06:07 GMT

#98

Something you might want to consider mentioning in your OP

I made a guide a little while ago that got next to no attention, but i think it could be very helpful to a lot of players. It's a zerg build development guide. here's the link.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=287731

Fairchild

133 Posts

December 16 2011 08:44 GMT

#99

This is all really cool, but I wanted to point out that:

If you're at 200 supply and you don't have a damn good reason not to, go attack. If you're sitting back in your base at 200 supply, you're wasting larvae. The goal is to suicide units intelligently, taking out chunks of the opp army and using those extra larvae from larvae vomit to reinforce very quickly to overwhelm your opp. Your situation is only going to get worse the longer you stay at 200/200.

Is not sound advice, a Zerg can lose an edge and possibly the game for attacking just because he's 200/200 and has no reason not to. If you have an army and want to use it, make it the opponents problem that he has to deal with on YOUR terms by forcing a reaction out of him. Say expanding 3 times for the gas, and forcing him to move out or let you get free T3.

hyperknight

294 Posts

December 16 2011 10:09 GMT

#100

V nice writeup! the learning curve for sc2 is pretty steep and getting sound advice like this is always helpful. im going to give my zerg laddering another shot!