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I have recently been improving my ZvP a lot opening with the spanishiwa build. I find that I can hold any sort of mid game aggression by massing ling/bane off 3 base and adding in infestors, and if they are massing up going straight to hive and ultra as you suggest.
You suggested that a switch to roach hydra corrupter in the end game to clean up was powerful. I've actually found that after my end game engagement sometimes depending on positioning there will be some Voidrays left over and maybe even a colossus or two but most of the stalkers dead I also have a lot of gas stockpiled at this point
I have just been putting out as many mutas as I can afford as my army dies
Mutas will clean up all his void rays and colossus easily and allow you to do some harass while you mass back up your ling/ultra. Will also prevent this mass zealot dump you suggested as he will need to spam as many stalkers as he can.
I've even started doing air attack upgrades when I get maxed in preparation for this. On my iPhone atm, but I'll upload a replay or two if I can find one
700 pt Masters zerg EU
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I remember you made a 6gate thread a while back. Does this build solve your 6gate problems?
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Hold 6gate with pure ling bling i hard because you won't hav enough larvaes for it ithout 3 or even 4 hatchery.
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b4 i finished reading this i just wanted to say that once u hit broodlords colossi shouldnt evan hit ur ground army if ur using broods right, broods are amazing but also very exspensive u should protect them with your life
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On May 19 2011 01:35 Noocta wrote:
Hold 6gate with pure ling bling i hard because you won't hav enough larvaes for it ithout 3 or even 4 hatchery.
I have become solid enough at holding 6 gate with ling/bling that I actually welcome them doing it as it gives me a clear lead in the game. It all comes down to having good timings, you have to be ready for it before it moves out, if you try to prepare after he is on the way to your base, you will not have enough larva. As long as you have 3 hatch (one macro), a queen dedicated to creep so that it spreads to at least the middle of the map, and lots of ling/bling made BEFORE he moves out, you can hold it just fine.
The creep is essential because you won't have ultras or infestors out to deal with mass FF play, so it is essential that your make him waste energy several times on the way to your base, or best case engage him in an area so open even FF cannot save him (best example is the middle of shattered temple, they have to do a full circle of FF to protect against blings). Just keep rushing in and backing off to waste FF, and be careful to lose as few blings as possible. With this composition it is very important to deal a decisive blow to his army when you commit to losing blings, if you don't you will never be able to mass enough of them after losing that first wave. So if you don't have enough to kill it right then and there, wait, it's not like roach/hydra where you can win with reinforcements, because blings lose all of their power and efficiency if they are in small numbers.
If they don't move out with a 5 or 6 gate timing, it is okay that you made a standing army blindly, you can use it to pressure/deny his 3rd while safely taking a 3rd and 4th, topping off on drones, and teching up to hive. With this style throughout the whole beggining/mid-game you want to stay as even as possible on standing army and worker count, so that you have enough to hold back any push without falling behind economically. You are waiting for that first confrontation where you can win and then use that advantage to drone and expand like a madman.
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How does this build react to Storm/archon transitions (mixed w/ colossi)? Doesn't storm/feedback shut this down?
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On May 19 2011 04:23 101toss wrote:
How does this build react to Storm/archon transitions (mixed w/ colossi)? Doesn't storm/feedback shut this down?
Templar and archons are both really good against this but it really depends on what happened before the transition. Storm completely owns lings but blings can at least make it through one storm and deal full damage so if zerg can make it to ultra/ling it isn't really that big of a deal it's just a matter of who has more stuff. The templar will not survive a losing engagement with fungal and banelings so to use them effectively toss needs some kind of advantage like a better standing army or the zerg stupidly attacking into his choke. Feedback is also really good against infestors, but toss is also dumping a lot of gas just to be able to do that and it will cut into his storms, and he still has to deal with the primary zerg army. Also because feedback is single click vs. fungal aoe, I think with equal speed players some fungals will ALWAYS go off before all of the infestors can be feedbacked.
So I think it mostly comes down to who was ahead before the tech switch. As long as zerg is not falling behind economically or with standing army (always trading armies), he will always be able to out tech switch and reinforce with roaches or whatever is needed to deal with the templar tech - it's really a question of can he afford to get the units he needs. In the same way as long as toss is not falling behind with his standing army and efficient engagements, he will always be able to get the tech needed to hold off any zerg tech.
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On May 16 2011 23:39 freetgy wrote:
infestor play is really really strong, without HT it almost impossible to win a battle because you can't micro at all.
and just die to vs. mass upgrades.
+ you have complete mapcontrol due to mass zerglings.
+ Baneling drops into the ecoline force the P to do something
"you cant micro is not really a good reason. Its like saying, because i cant macro at all starcraft is bad.
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what about hallu collo+overseer snipe?
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Ling infestor just suck ballz, archons + ht hard counter the shit out of it.ppl are just not aware of it and they try going for stalker + colossus + vr against it ( which works at some level but not really good ).
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On May 18 2011 15:40 MrBitter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2011 14:44 Belial88 wrote:
This is just getting crushed by mass zealot/archons... this sucks. Roach + infestor while teching to broods plays similarly, and does much better vs zealot archon.
Can you go for colossus vr "standard" death ball play and just crush roach infestor by just keeping the colossus in the front and roasting the infestor in 2 shots then retreating and letting the zealot meat shiled + vr do the job ?
Edit : 2x post -_- sry, could mods merge/delete one of em pls ?
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The problem for me using lots of lings in ZvP is that Lings are countered by a LOT of Protoss units (Zealots, Archons, Collossi, HT) and some of those units melt 70 supply of Zerglings in an instant. HT is worst and Collossi close 2nd. It's even effective for P to storm into close combat against mass Zerglings.
So, I feel that Lings are very very unforgiving in this matchup which is their major fault. Roaches don't just die to a mismicro, storm or even Immortals so fast you can't just move away, burrow, or just focus fire Immortals with a few Roaches. Roaches are insanely tanky.
To sum up: I feel just as Terran doesn't have a real counter to Slings, I feel P doesn't have a real counter to mass Roach (+some infestors, ultras, banes, whatnot). Because the only halfdecent counter comes out of the same facility that collossi come out, so it's even one or the other.
But being unforgiving is even adding to the fact that we are the most unforgiving race in the first place, so anything that enhances "unforgiveness" in any way should be avoided. It's really no matter if Ling/Infestor is great on paper when all your lings die because at the start of the battle your infstors are 2sec slightly out of position or whatnot.
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As with all strategy forum threads, people are theorycrafting hardcore here with tons of hypothetical scenarios. "You can storm lings and feedback infestors so this is bad."
Just like other solid playstyles, you still need to outplay your opponent to win. Yes, the OP is talking about some deathball that he believes will destroy any Toss deathball (I don't agree with much of OP's claims in this regard), but the basic idea of Infestors + Lings is solid. Yes, archons and zealots are good, but good zergs can punish toss for moving out with lings and do other things to tip it in his favor. Toss can be clever as well, so it still comes down to who can outplay who.
I would like to see how OP defends 6 gate with spines while stalling for the infestors. I have a feeling the people who have 6 gated you didn't do it very well if you were able to "buy time" with spines and somehow still be ok economically compared to Toss. My point here is that at anything below tip top level, it comes down to playing smart and executing properly more so than intense consideration of unit comps. I think it's more useful for people trying to get to masters and grandmasters to worry about their macro and reacting intelligently to scouting than unit compositions.
Example: I got into Diamond just by going ling muta a lot against Protoss, a composition that many claim is worthless and easily punishable by Toss (maybe at the pro level it is bad). I refined it and learned how to respond to the inevitable 2 base all in timed with my Spire completion, Psi Storm, mass blink stalkers, and everything else that people say turned ling muta obsolete. I won most games as Toss doing this, and even the ones I lost I saw simple mistakes in the replays that could have won me the game. I'm just trying to point out how much more important the basics are than any of this type of theorycrafting until you have really mastered the basics. I still don't worry much about unit compositions and try to work on my macro, and I feel I improve quickly because of this.
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Ling bling infestor ultra is will wreck any gateway/collosi or gateway/collosi/voidray ball. Against a high temp army it should lose but since your army attacks so fast its quite possible to kill his army before he reacts in time to get storms off.
This composition dies to archons though....big time  (.
So once you destroy his initial death ball, you either MUST kill/cripple him right after with massreinforcing lings + remainder of your army or switch into some heavy roaches (I always forget the roach switch).
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This is a pretty common strategy in ZvP now... zealot archon immortal crushes it though. In this case though just choosing broodlords over ultra helps immensely.
Also broodlords arent bad at all, corruptor broodlord infestor is the ultimate endgame for ZvT and ZvP in my opinion, it is amazingly strong in any army fight. Its only weakness is immobility so its good to have a decent mobile force of roaches or speedlings floating around to deal with attacks and to backup your broods.
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On May 18 2011 15:40 MrBitter wrote:Show nested quote +On May 18 2011 14:44 Belial88 wrote:
This is just getting crushed by mass zealot/archons... this sucks. Roach + infestor while teching to broods plays similarly, and does much better vs zealot archon.
I've been playing a bit in unit tester, and I find Ultralisks actually crush Archons - it even says so on the Starcraft 2 Game page (I know, but it's more useful than you'd think). In general, this composition is weak to mass zealots, something you always need to keep an eye on, in which case you match with banelings. FG + Ultra vs zealots also isn't too bad. You definitely need to match archons with ultras though, in which case you should work really hard to deny a third against such an immobile army that's somewhat weaker around that time.
As for like a 2 base zealot/archon before ultras come out, that's a bit hard to deal with and ultras can't be out yet. So I'm not really sure, I'm still trying to figure it out.
Mutas will clean up all his void rays and colossus easily and allow you to do some harass while you mass back up your ling/ultra. Will also prevent this mass zealot dump you suggested as he will need to spam as many stalkers as he can.
Really interesting. I think if you can mass bling to push you may be better off, you can easily suicide into his infrastructure and be safe since you killed his army, deal with mineral dump zealots, and not be held off by something ridiculous like a single colossus or few void rays and cannons.
Forcefield really is the biggest trouble with this before ultras are out (i've had quite a few games where I'm about to lose to mass FF and then that 1 ultra pops and it's rally point straight to the army breaking every FF and the blings and lings just clean up).
I remember you made a 6gate thread a while back. Does this build solve your 6gate problems?
Against something like 6 gate you have to make mass mass spines. On some maps it's harder than others, like in Xel naga I've had quite a few people just go through the secret hallway to bypass the spines, in which case you need to be on top of that and reposition them. The key is to delay delay delay, personally I prefer going ling/infestor instead of ling/bling, and once those 4-6 infestors with energy are out, you stop 6 gate pretty cold. I like to prepare a macro hatch early too, if I sense a 6 gate. But yes it does.
b4 i finished reading this i just wanted to say that once u hit broodlords colossi shouldnt evan hit ur ground army if ur using broods right, broods are amazing but also very exspensive u should protect them with your life
Maybe you should finish reading it first.
Hold 6gate with pure ling bling i hard because you won't hav enough larvaes for it ithout 3 or even 4 hatchery.
If I scout a 6 gate I try to throw a macro hatch very quickly. I also rely on mass spines to delay the 6 gate, until I can get 4-6 infestors out. 4-6 infestors with energy will hold off 6 gate. I don't use banelings until endgame, as forcefield will rip apart ling/bling and trying to get speed+drops for overlord for a 6 gate will take too long and is too expensive that early.
How does this build react to Storm/archon transitions (mixed w/ colossi)? Doesn't storm/feedback shut this down?
I usually have more infestors than templar. It's a bit ridiculous if Protoss has mass high templar, but mass infestor for zerg is not ridiculous at all and is quite powerful. Against storm I usually just back off, with archon/colossi I just NP everything or use ultras to rip everything apart. Not a big problem.
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Can you go for colossus vr "standard" death ball play and just crush roach infestor by just keeping the colossus in the front and roasting the infestor in 2 shots then retreating and letting the zealot meat shiled + vr do the job ?
Yea roach/infestor will lose to deathball. You need melee units for NP otherwise they won't be out of range of opponent.
The problem for me using lots of lings in ZvP is that Lings are countered by a LOT of Protoss units (Zealots, Archons, Collossi, HT) and some of those units melt 70 supply of Zerglings in an instant. HT is worst and Collossi close 2nd. It's even effective for P to storm into close combat against mass Zerglings.
I wouldn't say zealots necessarily counter lings, they just do really well against them in certain situation. Lings do really well against stalkers and immortals which are a big problem in ZvP.
I feel P doesn't have a real counter to mass Roach (+some infestors, ultras, banes, whatnot). Because the only halfdecent counter comes out of the same facility that collossi come out, so it's even one or the other.
Unmicro'd, they lose to zealots 1v1, they are bad against mass stalker and blink stalker, immortals, and 4+ colossi just instantly negates them. They have their place - i will rush roach if I see Protoss going fast colossi (ie 3 gate robo) but I find in general they are not good units, they take up way too much supply and are a bit too slow.
But being unforgiving is even adding to the fact that we are the most unforgiving race in the first place, so anything that enhances "unforgiveness" in any way should be avoided. It's really no matter if Ling/Infestor is great on paper when all your lings die because at the start of the battle your infstors are 2sec slightly out of position or whatnot.
No it's not an easy composition, and most of the time you need to rely on baneling drops as a good Protoss won't let you take a third without a fight. I don't really think your criticism is that valid - you say it's unforgiving, well yes, it's not an easy strat, but it's better than losing. Roach/hydra/corruptor is very easy to pull off, but it also loses to very standard play. I'd rather win with a hard strat than lose always with an easy one.
Ling bling infestor ultra is will wreck any gateway/collosi or gateway/collosi/voidray ball. Against a high temp army it should lose but since your army attacks so fast its quite possible to kill his army before he reacts in time to get storms off.
This composition dies to archons though....big time
High templars are not a problem. They are better than colossi but not a problem. You just back off, banelings are the major damage dealer so banelings being stormed doesn't really help if they blow up by the army. Well placed storms can go a long way, but I haven't had a problem with a Protoss going HT instead of Colossi, as seen in the reaplys.
As for archons, Ultralisks clear them out very easily. The problem is a 2base archon/zealot push before ultras are out, but I'm still working on that.
This is a pretty common strategy in ZvP now... zealot archon immortal crushes it though. In this case though just choosing broodlords over ultra helps immensely.
Also broodlords arent bad at all, corruptor broodlord infestor is the ultimate endgame for ZvT and ZvP in my opinion, it is amazingly strong in any army fight. Its only weakness is immobility so its good to have a decent mobile force of roaches or speedlings floating around to deal with attacks and to backup your broods.
First off this is about ZvP, not ZvT. Both t3 units are amazing in ZvT. As for ZvP, I do think broodlords have a place against a zealot/archon/immortal, I'm still working on it.
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On May 21 2011 12:47 Belial88 wrote:Show nested quote +Hold 6gate with pure ling bling i hard because you won't hav enough larvaes for it ithout 3 or even 4 hatchery. If I scout a 6 gate I try to throw a macro hatch very quickly. I also rely on mass spines to delay the 6 gate, until I can get 4-6 infestors out. 4-6 infestors with energy will hold off 6 gate. I don't use banelings until endgame, as forcefield will rip apart ling/bling and trying to get speed+drops for overlord for a 6 gate will take too long and is too expensive that early.
Just wanted to clarify here, drop upgrade and infestation pit + pathogen upgrade take the same amount of time (130 seconds), so you can have banelings in overlords ready to drop at the same time as popping 4-6 infestors ready to fungal.
There's 2 different lair techs you can do if you decide to go melee+infestor:
1) ling/infestor - get infestation pit as soon as lair finishes, start pathogen immediately and make your infestors when the upgrade is 31/80.
2)ling/bane with drop - start overlord drop as soon as lair finishes, followed shortly by overlord speed + baneling nest.
I prefer going ling/bane w/ drops, it delays infestors but it allows you to safely take your 3rd much more easily, and it holds off 5/6gate just as easily as ling/infestor does. Also if for whatever reason the enemy attacks earlier than you expected, you can at least morph banelings and defend with ling/bane while waiting for drop to finish, as opposed to only ling if you decide to go infestors as your first lair tech. Another thing, going drops means you have speed overlords very quickly and can scout protoss base, keep tabs on expansions, and generate creep around 8-9 min. into the game. Lastly, bane drops on mineral lines. 2 overlords dropping banelings on both protoss bases at the same time, while your main army either defends an attack or attacks the front of the nat, is virtually guaranteed to net a ton of probe kills and possibly win the game right there. And once you have +2 melee, banelings 1-shot probes; if you drop correctly, you can clear out an entire mineral line with 2 +2 banelings. Once your 3rd is up you can then get infestors, FG + bane drop is extremely strong vs protoss, especially HT which would normally counter ling/bane with storm and counter infestors with feedback.
However ling/infestor is also viable, I just think that ling/bane with drops is more mobile, can destroy protoss' economy in just a few seconds, and is more flexible than ling/infestor (you can wait until protoss moves out before morphing banes, letting you drone harder and get your 3rd up quicker). They both end up with the same unit composition, it's just a matter of choosing one or the other as your first choice when you get lair.
It's good to get burrow for your infestors also, if protoss doesn't make any cannons at natural you can use 2-3 infestors and wipe out all of protoss' probes (Spanishiwa likes to do this whenever he can). Even if protoss makes an obs, you can make an overseer, and then all it takes is 1 FG + 1 IT to kill an obs, then you're free to burrow your infestors and engage (watch this Spanishiwa game for an example of this). It's also good to get NP fairly soon after your infestors come onto the field, since you'll be wanting to NP any immortals, colossus, or archons.
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you know, I feel there is a fatal flaw in this build:
Because of the reliance on spine crawlers in the transition to mid-game, an opponent can simply contain you and prevent you from taking a third. Although this buys you time for increased power via getting overlord drop and macro hatch'd mass ling/bling, it really puts you in a losing position. I've been having a very tough time against mass sentry/stalker play, not necessarily 6 gating, although 6 gates are tough, but against an opponent who has a mass army off 2 base with lots of sentries and just prevents you from taking a third.
It really hurts on maps like Shakuras where they can easily take their natural, and prevent you from trading lings in the early game for sentries and sentry energy. Sentries really hard counter this, and my bain rain micro isn't pro (something that obviously is a big source for improvement and almost 100% necessary for this build), I feel like by the time you have enough banelings to destroy an entire mass stalker/sentry army a competent protoss can grab a third and prevent yours for enough time for you to be just too far behind in the game.
Some thoughts I'm thinking about to combat extremely aggressive 2 base Protoss play that just instead contain and expand instead of trying to break you when your on 2 bases:
1. If you see someone going for 2 base play, like FFE or 1 gate FE, ie you see a super fast expand, then you should skip upgrades (or armor maybe) in lieu of super fast hive for a single ultralisk to break forcefields.
2. Hidden expo.
3. Going for banelings or bane rain first, instead of infestors (I think getting those 3-4 infestors is better against maybe robo, blink, or stargate play but worse against mass gateway or non-colossi single robo or single stargate opener for harass only). Someone above mentioned the timing and resources are similar.
I don't know. I feel like against a competent opponent who notices the mass spines and immediately backs off instead of trying to fight the mass spines and queens and just takes a fast 3rd and even fourth, you'll lose because of how far behind you'll be put because of this. A roach based build on the other hand, has the power to let you grab a third (although I feel you are almost certainly screwed going past the mid game due to composition). Maybe I'm just venting about mass stalker even after they opened mass DT or stargate and failed 100% with it they still win with it. Anyways, maybe a roach/bling drop style might be better?
I've been doing a lot of ling focused play recently, relying almost exclusively on zerglings and either banelings or a small number of infestors, *especially* against when I recognize an aggressive opponent (my rational is to stick to what I have instead of trying to tech in the face of incoming aggression), that I go a macro hatch before third or tech. I'm talking games where I throw a macro hatch around 50 food, and I go pure ling with just a few infestors or banelings, before I even consider heavy tech into more infestors or hive. It seems pretty good on ZvT (i know, off topic) and it's been what I've been trying out in ZvP, and a macro hatch early on just seems necessary. I almost always get my macro hatch out before their 2 base timing attack starts, is my point basically.
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I have played this strategy before. And I just have to say, I really think you should mention how much APM this strategy requires to pull off. A player of my level, which was like mid-diamond last season, has a lot of difficulty with executing this strategy because all your units require a ton of baby-sitting.
This is why I still prefer roach in ZvP. It's much more forgiving. If you mismicro with a zergling army, it can cost you the game, but if you mismicro with a roach army, it often is not that big of a deal in comparison.
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EPT
