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This build is stronger than I originally thought, but I'll say the idea of playing like this doesn't feel much more stable than going hatch first (not that I'm sure much is stable in zvz). I really feel that if your'e not up a base playing without ling speed for so long feels pretty blind. There are some blind counters to this build, they're pretty bad builds though so that doesn't really mean much.
I personally would like to get my drone micro to a point where I feel confident holding early pools with a high percentage with hatch first (obviously I should still lose to better zergling micro). Because then it's hard to get an advantage to me going hatch first 60/70 % of the time.
It's worth noting that I think there are some maps that this build is bad on. The only very relevant one is shakuras. The ramp to the natural makes defenders advantage a lot more significant and the defender can get a good wall/concave up.
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On May 28 2011 07:38 MoreFaSho wrote:
This build is stronger than I originally thought, but I'll say the idea of playing like this doesn't feel much more stable than going hatch first (not that I'm sure much is stable in zvz). I really feel that if your'e not up a base playing without ling speed for so long feels pretty blind. There are some blind counters to this build, they're pretty bad builds though so that doesn't really mean much.
I personally would like to get my drone micro to a point where I feel confident holding early pools with a high percentage with hatch first (obviously I should still lose to better zergling micro). Because then it's hard to get an advantage to me going hatch first 60/70 % of the time.
It's worth noting that I think there are some maps that this build is bad on. The only very relevant one is shakuras. The ramp to the natural makes defenders advantage a lot more significant and the defender can get a good wall/concave up. Emphasis mine.
Yes, I completely agree. What we should take from this build however is the idea that 20-22 drones mining minerals on 2 bases can produce a metric shit-ton of lings. What we can also take from this build is that 8-10 roaches at around 8 minutes are pretty fucking powerful if you back them up with speedlings. Add to the fact that the only way to "counter" an attack like this is to be extremely defensive or do the same to them but with defenders advantage with 2-3 more drones(since, quite frankly, the only cost effective answers to speedlings early game are either chokes, or banelings, adding roaches takes care of both weaknesses).
Disregarding the very stiff and easy to read build order, it is easy to take the "meat" of the build which is that zerg has no real obvious answer to a roach attack backed with extreme amounts of speedlings. If you overdrone, you die, if you tech, you die, if you play overly defensive, you lose to someone playing standard. The beauty of an attack like this is that at the point in the game where it is a threat(7-8 minute mark) your opponent should be more or less completely in the dark as to what you are doing. The only thing they should know is that you have taken an expansion following pool-gas. That could mean just about anything.
Edit: Also, it is very possible to get speed first and hold off on making the roach warren in order to be "unscouted". The difference is that you won't have 6 roaches for blocking your ramp early enough to beat a baneling bust so you instead need to be very active with 4-6 speedlings scouting your opponent and react accordingly. Just as 4gate in pvp had to adapt if they scouted 2gate zealots, a build like this needs to adapt if it scouts something that uses early game shenanigans to blind-counter it.
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To say the least, this is an unusual build. It works in plat/gold, but it doesn't make sense. On paper that is.
I mean, you can get 8 roaches by 5:15 and that's with droning and getting buildings, so it doesn't make sense that it should take twice as long to get 13, plus slings.
But, I don't argue with something that works. But from an execution standpoint, wouldn't the effectiveness increase if you sent in the roaches when they finish, instead of when your lings finish? That way the attack arrives sooner and he's less prepared.
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I've seen both CatZ and Destiny use this all in successfully multiple times, so everyone who is saying that this doesn't work at higher levels is wrong.
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zerg 4 gate?
this is like youre a black guy in the kkk lol.
content: 2 base roach beats this without much trouble at higher leagues and good drone micro against the all in.
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On May 28 2011 18:40 ShoeFactory wrote:
zerg 4 gate?
this is like youre a black guy in the kkk lol.
content: 2 base roach beats this without much trouble at higher leagues and good drone micro against the all in.
First, he was referring to the state of PvP where the situation is that if your opponent 4-gates, you need to do something similar(or extremely defensive) to not die.
Second, "higher leagues"? I have yet to lose with a roach/ling push like this against high masters/low GM on EU and I've only been doing this build for like 5 games total(although yea, this kinda also means that it's not a very large sample size but it also shows that it is incredibly easy to execute), I'm sure it can be done better. The fact is that most players will slightly overdrone and die horribly. Or they'll get evos/lair and try and tech and die horribly.
I've played about 9 ZvZs total since christmas and after starting to play again have been demolishing people left and right with this. Look, I'll even back it up with a replay of, you guessed it, this all-in beating 2base roach. The guy was #135 in euro grandmaster when we played. His mistake? Thinking that me being on 2base meant he could drone up and start teching just like in any normal ZvZ. Sure, the guy could have handled it better, but your claim has been proven false.
Also, seriously, drone micro? Against roach/ling? Are you kidding me? You need spines or defensive blings at the very least, roaches/lings in similar numbers to the all-in preferred.
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On May 28 2011 13:53 Conquerer67 wrote:
To say the least, this is an unusual build. It works in plat/gold, but it doesn't make sense. On paper that is.
I mean, you can get 8 roaches by 5:15 and that's with droning and getting buildings, so it doesn't make sense that it should take twice as long to get 13, plus slings.
But, I don't argue with something that works. But from an execution standpoint, wouldn't the effectiveness increase if you sent in the roaches when they finish, instead of when your lings finish? That way the attack arrives sooner and he's less prepared. It's not about having lots of roaches at a specific time. It's how roaches and lings are extremely powerful together cost for cost when pitted against zerg. Couple that with the idea that lings are extremely fast and thus reinforce much much faster than roaches do and the fact that you are completely forgoing gas after making your roaches Thus enabling you to mass purely lings off of a respectable mineral income, your opponents mineral income will simply not be much higher than yours even if he has more drones due to collecting gas.
If you want to look at the theory of it, drones harvest gas and minerals at the same rate(40 per minute). So in effect, if you stop harvesting gas what you are in effect doing is making your 3 gas drones mine minerals instead of drones, which means that you will be able to make 4 zerglings for every roach you would have gotten with the gas(75+25=100).
Now, lets compare 4 zerglings to a roach. They have 35 health, thus they die in 3 shots from a roach. Which means that it will take a roach 12 shots to kill its own value in zerglings. Compare that to 15 shots to kill a roach! Zerglings are actually better "tanks" for cost than roaches(against roaches). Now, damage per second a roach does 15 damage every 2 seconds(16 minus 1 armor that roaches possess) which is 7,5 dps while a single zergling does 4 damage every 0,69 seconds. Thats 5,8 dps for a single speedling, not to mention four!
Now, obviously speedlings are melee units, while roaches are not and with all that that entails. But the beauty here is that if you are attacking with your 10 roaches and reinforcing with lings, your roaches will not die, your lings will(but not before bravely dealing tons of damage!). The crux here is that the main disadvantage of lings when attacking roaches in that they can only do as much damage as they have surface area is mitigated greatly by the fact that your army damage isn't purely speedling, it is backed by roaches. Roaches that basically never take any damage and thus do not need replacing.
What happens with a roach/ling composition is that the lings will keep dying like flies, but that doesn't matter because lings are extremely easy to reinforce with, while roaches are not. The roaches then in turn give you the ability to deal with banelings(banelings without speed are laughable against roach/ling, you just dance with your lings and kill the blings with roaches) all the while the zerglings can soak damage from spines(bonus vs armored, massively overkills lings with 50 damage over the 35 required) and roaches(again, compare 10 hits to 12 hits from the calculations above). What else is there that a zerg has available early game? Queens? Drones? Both units while capable of fighting do laughable damage against roach/ling.
I keep trying to explain that while the original build as outlined is a dead giveaway if you follow it to the letter the general idea of stopping gas in order to reinforce with massive amounts of speedlings in a sort of all-in roach/ling attack is actually extremely powerful. All the while getting nonsense black guy in the KKK statements from a poster which supposedly is here to bring clarity to an otherwise hurting forum? I just feel disappointed.
Edit: Meh, probably should have edited my previous post and added this to it, oh well.
Edit2: As it turns out, it seems you(ShoeFactory) have a gimmick of always adding some kind of troll or amusing post before your actual strategy posts. Still doesn't change the fact that you don't really know what you're talking about here(probably just underestimating its strength, like everyone else is). I do apologize for my outburst though.
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easy to beat if you take a relatively fast expo and then just build mass ling,
i rolf'd my friend who did this, while i was banking 2k, and i also build 3 spine crawlers that didnt even get to attack, so its actually pretty awful if its scouted
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On May 29 2011 06:16 StatikKhaos wrote:
easy to beat if you take a relatively fast expo and then just build mass ling,
i rolf'd my friend who did this, while i was banking 2k, and i also build 3 spine crawlers that didnt even get to attack, so its actually pretty awful if its scouted
U cant scout this build, all ur scouts will get killed by roaches blocking the ramp.
Theres no chance for you to know anything more than, he has 4 roaches on ramp and an expo.
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On May 29 2011 06:16 StatikKhaos wrote:
easy to beat if you take a relatively fast expo and then just build mass ling,
i rolf'd my friend who did this, while i was banking 2k, and i also build 3 spine crawlers that didnt even get to attack, so its actually pretty awful if its scouted
You're friends just awful and your awful if your banking 2k early game.
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Tried this build personally couple times already. Although it's a pretty strong push, it's by all means not unbeatable. Early expo+mass lings will tend to keep you in your base and deny your expo until you have a large enough roach army to come out. By then, the other player already has drones pumping in their nat. Even with ling back-up, you might not be able to overpower the other player's sheer econ.
However, this build is pretty good against zergs who play standard. I haven't had any trouble at all holding back speed banes. Just play sim city and the banes won't even touch your drones. They are also pretty worthless against the push later on if you have the roaches tank the banes and you micro the zerglings correctly. Unscouted, this build will wipe the other player.
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I think people who are skeptical about the strength of this build are missing the point of how important having it go unscouted is and are probably having it and their army scouted. Building your army under an overlord, like Destiny has mentioned time and time again here and other places, is an excellent way to lose with this build. Forgetting to block your ramp and having a ling run into your base is a quick way to lose with this build.
This is yet another similar aspect to the PvP 4 Warpgate. Even after the patch, if a Protoss does not scout a 4 Warpgate and attempts to early expo/pump probes/quick tech then its going to be very difficult to hold off a 4 Warpgate. People keep saying "Awful build, if scouted". Well of course it is, it's an all-in. Most all-ins, if scouted, are usually pretty awful if prepared for properly.
If you can remain unscouted, cut probes properly, and not get supply blocked; this build is hard to fend off. It's not specifically the early roach warren that is important to have unscouted it is the lack of drone production, the massing of an army, and possibly the delayed speed as well.
I'd have to agree with Destiny when he says this works better in higher leagues. As a Gold player, even if Zergs 15 Hatch or 21 Expand, Zergs just build lings and roaches anyways, regardless of what they scout and do not care for saturating their bases. In higher leagues, though, I can see this build catching people offguard. The replays that Destiny posted with him and Slush do not do this build justice. Slush cut drones too, but was still unable to hold it off, even with Burrow and Claws the one game. I'd like to see this against Idra  . His ZvZ is sick but its hard to predict what he's going to go with. Sometimes he Sling/Blings or he'll saturate 2 bases early.
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On May 28 2011 18:40 ShoeFactory wrote:
zerg 4 gate?
this is like youre a black guy in the kkk lol.
What a delightful, classy joke. 
On topic: This is a coin-flip just like every other ZvZ build out there.
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is tehre an alternative to the spine crawler in main cus that is an early easy tell that this build is coming as its gained popularity
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On May 18 2011 13:40 Shahrazad wrote:
I don't see how this is going to hold any speedling all-in, especially with the "no scout" advice. If you watch the video, he has nothing at 5:00 but a spine and a queen.
You can hold a speedling all in with that if they have 0 banes (which they will if its before you get ur roach), with drone micro (stop command) and a spne and queen
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On May 29 2011 07:39 Tvk wrote:Show nested quote +On May 29 2011 06:16 StatikKhaos wrote:
easy to beat if you take a relatively fast expo and then just build mass ling,
i rolf'd my friend who did this, while i was banking 2k, and i also build 3 spine crawlers that didnt even get to attack, so its actually pretty awful if its scouted U cant scout this build, all ur scouts will get killed by roaches blocking the ramp. Theres no chance for you to know anything more than, he has 4 roaches on ramp and an expo.
Just send an overlord above the ramp. and if you see that many roachs and not too many drones at natural then you can assume its an all in. and this only works if the other zerg player is unprepared for it.
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On May 18 2011 14:16 MrBitter wrote:
Destiny's trolling you guys.
1 base roach will lose to 2 base roach every time....
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I LOL'ed
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whenever i see the spine crawler + roach warren i just take my expo and go 2 base roach. haven't lost to this build yet; it's really bad. you give up complete map control early, giving you so much time to expand and drone. and then when he decides to push out you have a huge economic advantage from the earlier expo and more units if you stopped droning at the appropriate time (scouting). very easy to stop
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i like it, it is very similar to the 4-gate, but i think it is less all in ish.
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EPT
