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On September 02 2011 04:30 rightstuff wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2011 03:58 commiekaze wrote: aXa did cover that in the guide. Even after you break his push, the T already has stuff back home and with enough control and good position, the T will drive you back regardless. But this as he explained for the midgame. Once you have enough bases and are in the lategame, you need to be spending resources, so why not why bling nest for busts, I'd agree. I dont know how OP feels about that though. I can see your point. I'll test it out in a few games if I get a chance to, but what I'm advocating is dropping the bling nest just before, or just after spending 100g on lair. Then, when the marine tank push comes, you can morph some banelings near your opponents base if there is a wall blocking your lings from doing any significant damage. In practice this may not work, but I'm not really sure how much defense the terran player will have after losing the tanks and marines committed to the push. You could potentially end the game with a bust after cleaning up the push if he's only had time to make one or two tanks. The marines won't cut it for defense against a lot of 1/0 or 1/1 lings. It's just a matter of getting into the base.
But if you don't end the game with that bust, you no longer have any advantage and t may even lead to a dissadvantage. it;s fsafer to just keep your map control and expand, since he can't pressure you anyways with most of his army gone. in other words: "When you get ahead, get more ahead".
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On September 02 2011 04:37 stink123 wrote: This build I think would work wonders on the PTR and when patch 1.4 comes out, (with nerfed BFH, and buffed ultras), but atm I think BFH are just too effective against zerglings. Is there anyway you can deal with this other than just building roaches? Or for instance any kind of switch over to BFH or if the terran adds BFH into his army? And how would you deal with BFH drops?
The BFH nerf will have no effect vs zerglings.
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I have a really efficient way to deal with BFH: i ragequit. And i'm half serious...
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How do you deal with the one base tank-marine/scv all in? Even cross map on Backwater, its hard to do anything against.
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Some baneling along mass speedling should help against 1 base all-in, including 7 rax.
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Ok, so you are saying that if I know he is all inning, to drop a bling nest. What if it's cross map and I cant scout it in time Because I cant get an OV in there fast enough or he denies it.
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I dont really get this. In my experience very few zergs sit back in their base and are defensive/passive anymore. Isnt it the norm to be out on the map with zerglings for mapcontrol and constatly threatening with a counter the moment t moves out? I read the whole guide. But still, dont undestand your message.. Maybe its just me It doesnt take 3-3 marines to render pure zerglings pretty much useless in battle. If pure zergling T can just keep their marines in a tight ball, and when in a certain number (lets just say 30) the marines is so compact (little surfacearea for the melee zergling to attack) and have such high dps that the lings become very uneffective. With medivac support it gets rediculous.
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The build you detail in the OP seems like it could be better optimized. Following it to the letter you can't actually afford everything you say to put in, especially the macro hatch and 2 queens at around the 6 minute mark. The couple of games that I cut out the spines from the build seemed to be better suited to getting everything out in a timely manner, but the level of scouting required to respond to early attacks with no spines and just speedlings is beyond my ability. Also, it feels like the timing on switching drones to gas is too early to have enough drones to support the intake.
I'll have to do some more runs through and testing, but I do feel like with a few more hours of tweaking we could find a better-optimized build for what we're trying to do here.
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I never mentionned any specifics food/timing for everything. So its basically when you can afford it, which is the right way to refine a build order. If you feel like you don't have enough mineral for queens or enough drone to go gas, then you tried to do it too early.
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aXa this is a solid strat, and what I like most about it is that it's an example of Zerg trying to workaround what's been hampering the race for so long. Banelings are dropping in usefulness so fast of late against smart micro, but the just ling shenanigans are smart. I think a big problem a lot of Zergs are facing is multitasking--being able to handle drops, have more than 1 control group of basic units, knowing what the enemy is going, watching for timing pushes etc. Strats like this, whether they affect the meta game or not, should be practiced for just that reason. Thanks for the info.
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On September 02 2011 22:12 Marooned wrote:I dont really get this. In my experience very few zergs sit back in their base and are defensive/passive anymore. Isnt it the norm to be out on the map with zerglings for mapcontrol and constatly threatening with a counter the moment t moves out? I read the whole guide. But still, dont undestand your message.. Maybe its just me  It doesnt take 3-3 marines to render pure zerglings pretty much useless in battle. If pure zergling T can just keep their marines in a tight ball, and when in a certain number (lets just say 30) the marines is so compact (little surfacearea for the melee zergling to attack) and have such high dps that the lings become very uneffective. With medivac support it gets rediculous.
You don't stick to only zerglings until the 20:00 mark when he has a huge marine ball and tanks It is only a way to play early and mid (or early mid) game, and then later transition into muta ling bling or infestor ling bling ultra/broodlord or whatever you wish. Of course 3-3 marines kill 3-3 zerglings, but you should have something other than lings at that point
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Thanks for the guide, which is very well received. Some confidence in the humble zergling is really going to help zerg a lot, especially since it is done in a way that dictates the pace of the game to the opponent. As a spectator I just always hate watching ling/bling/muta. It's so fragile that I never know 'if zerg has enough', and the outcome always seems trivial (unless there's a complete stomping of T's base or if Z slips up at the start of the midgame and allows a foothold outside his natural). Watching mutas run from marines for 30 mins just isn't fun, and incidentally it's because of this that I've not wanted to ever play this 'standard' unit comp.
I wonder then why you add mutas to your army to spend gas? How are they worth the investment? If you want to spend some T2, why not get a nydus (to negate the defences T will build up such as wall-ins and bunkers against run-bys), drops, burrow? or if you want units, why not hydras (I like hydras!), or if not hydras then infestors, but something that actually supports your ling army?
Best Stardroid
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On September 03 2011 06:22 Stardroid wrote: Thanks for the guide, which is very well received. Some confidence in the humble zergling is really going to help zerg a lot, especially since it is done in a way that dictates the pace of the game to the opponent. As a spectator I just always hate watching ling/bling/muta. It's so fragile that I never know 'if zerg has enough', and the outcome always seems trivial (unless there's a complete stomping of T's base or if Z slips up at the start of the midgame and allows a foothold outside his natural). Watching mutas run from marines for 30 mins just isn't fun, and incidentally it's because of this that I've not wanted to ever play this 'standard' unit comp.
I wonder then why you add mutas to your army to spend gas? How are they worth the investment? If you want to spend some T2, why not get a nydus (to negate the defences T will build up such as wall-ins and bunkers against run-bys), drops, burrow? or if you want units, why not hydras (I like hydras!), or if not hydras then infestors, but something that actually supports your ling army?
Best Stardroid
I've actually been using this strategy since I read this post. I found that 1 gas isn't quite enough to support the zergling upgrades/lair you need, so you have to get at least 2. But I've found that 2 is more than enough for just the zergling upgrades and you end up with excess gas while on t2/getting your third. Typically when I get to t2, I get burrow, overlord speed, the carapace/melee upgrades, and you've already spent a bit of gas. I also try to fit in drops if I can, especially if I was unable to delay their third for some reason.
Overlord speed is good for creeping expansions, burrow is good for delaying those expansions even longer, as well as intel on when they move out. They are all very useful upgrades that I never would have gotten if I spent all that on mutalisks right away.
To be honest, I'm pretty surprised how effective zerglings are against terran armies. In theory, they should not be as good as they are, but in practice, terran players seem to be very late on their upgrades for some reason. Maybe they are spending all that gas on tanks, which are 125 gas apiece? I mean, 5 tanks isn't THAT scary when you have so many zerglings, and 5 tanks are 625 gas, which is 2 melee and 2 carapace upgrades.
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@Xanbatou thanks for the heads up on the gas costs - haven't tried it myself yet as I'm not home atm. Yeah It's really surprising how swarmy Z can be with lings, negating all those tech units. It's good that Z can reverse the roles like this and tech up by using a mineral-dump unit like T does as it says in the OP. I used to go with the Spanishiwa Ice Fisher style which gets lings when you saturate 2 bases around 7 or so minutes, and they're just so completely handy.
I really think you're onto something with the T2 tech. Mutas just seem such a waste to me. Even just burrow delaying his econ (forced scans, delayed expo) keeps your decisions at the centre of the game... gj!
Oh and when I look at builds for T or P and it says 'and if all he has is lings you can just laugh your silly head right off' or something like that, I can't help thinking - the hand's on the other foot when you've been massing turbo upgraded lings for the past two minutes just to nibble his gibblets off.
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Read the guide. It's really interesting. I do have a few thoughts though that actually came from playing a team monobattle.
One of my allies randomed the zergling, which I thought was going to be useless besides perhaps an early push. But he just kept producing them... He got on 3 bases and had 5 macro hatches. I don't know if he was hitting his injects, but just seeing the raw amount of zerglings he could produce was insane. And then he did something interesting...
He teched up really quickly like you said, although for him it was because of the upgrades and not for ultras (I <3 ultras) but he also dropped 5 nydus cannals. That meant he could make 5 nydus worms at once.
And with this guide... well, if lings are so useful in their mobility, why not increase that mobility more? It would be something to do while getting ultras out as early gas should be spent on upgrades and lair/hive/ultras. But while getting the ultras on a healthy 4 base economy (again using ling mobility to secure this) why not just start spamming nydus worms? Imagine what a terran would feel like if each of his bases had at least 1 and sometimes 2 nyduses spawning with ultras and lings popping out all over. What do?
In short, I'm trying this strat.
Nice guide! =D
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I tried your build out on ladder and it seemed really effective against marine tank however if the terran scouts what your doing and cuts out tanks and just goes mass marine maruder with good upgrades what do you do to counter that? Also good job on the guide very well written.
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Best counter against MMM is infestor and some baneling.
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The problem I'm running into is that the terran sees my fuck ton of zergligns, so he just turtles on 2 base for a while. Then he comes out with a lot of tanks (2 fact), marines, and a lot of medivac. If this push fails, he pretty much loses because he has no third, but it feels like it is impossible for to me to stop the push with just zerglings, esp because of all the medivacs. Ultras aren't done yet.
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On September 04 2011 00:04 kushm4sta wrote: The problem I'm running into is that the terran sees my fuck ton of zergligns, so he just turtles on 2 base for a while. Then he comes out with a lot of tanks (2 fact), marines, and a lot of medivac. If this push fails, he pretty much loses because he has no third, but it feels like it is impossible for to me to stop the push with just zerglings, esp because of all the medivacs. Ultras aren't done yet.
If he comes before having multiple medivacs, you can beat it with pure zergling, as long as you flank. If he waits long enough to have a lot of medivacs, you should have your lair tech available. I go infestors and crush any kind of bio push, but even with mutas I think you could take it.
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