EPT[G] ZvT Roach/Ling All-In (Or is it?) - Page 5
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oOOoOphidian
United States1402 Posts
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Jehct
New Zealand9115 Posts
On January 07 2012 21:20 oOOoOphidian wrote: Seems like this is really bad if your opponent is bio heavy. Why not roach/baneling all-in instead? What is this good against that roach/baneling is not better against? It's not all-in, and bio heavy play would lose as it would have no marauders at the timing you would hit. I haven't seen someone opening bio hold their nat against the 8 roach variant, and bio is slower at retaking the nat than standard play is. Edit: I don't recommend this build at all against reaper openings though. Against reaper openers a ling/baneling attack (similar drone counts and attack timings, little faster) is much, much stronger. | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
On January 07 2012 13:52 sonnyb wrote: I agree that this build is not optimal. Still, probably works pretty well vs mid-master and lower level terrans given what's popular nowadays. Just wanted to add from my experience that this kind of play is very weak to 1/1/1 expand. 4 marine+1 hellion poke timing will make it pretty obvious that it's a roach opening and you'll likely take damage as more hellions and a banshee stream in rushing the roach warren that fast. Although the roaches will pop out in time to push everything back, Terran will lose nothing compared to the amount of units produced and will hold as a 2nd banshee pops out, while putting down a 3rd, and then roach warren won't help with the map control when being contained by 4-6 hellions and 2-3 banshees. I've actually found I outright kill most 1/1/1 or banshee openings, it's usually tank builds that hold the first push best and if the gas is going into banshees, breaking that depot-wall is the only problem. | ||
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sonnyb
Canada18 Posts
On January 07 2012 23:16 TangSC wrote: I've actually found I outright kill most 1/1/1 or banshee openings, it's usually tank builds that hold the first push best and if the gas is going into banshees, breaking that depot-wall is the only problem. Yes true I've died to this too plenty of times, perhaps it comes down to who executes better, as other times I've pretty much stopped it cold with additional simcity at wall + repair + hellions running around trying to snipe off lings (or drones.) Depends on how many scvs are killed by the time push is cleaned up (can be 0 to all,) but I still think if Terran plays perfect it can hold the "all-in?" while coming out significantly ahead in econ. | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
On January 08 2012 00:00 sonnyb wrote: Yes true I've died to this too plenty of times, perhaps it comes down to who executes better, as other times I've pretty much stopped it cold with additional simcity at wall + repair + hellions running around trying to snipe off lings (or drones.) Depends on how many scvs are killed by the time push is cleaned up (can be 0 to all,) but I still think if Terran plays perfect it can hold the "all-in?" while coming out significantly ahead in econ. Perhaps, but then again if zerg executes it perfectly they can be a base ahead with full map control and comparable mineral saturation! EDIT: Basically if zerg executes the attack and transitions perfectly, and terran defends the attack and transitions perfectly, I don't think the terran is in a vastly superior position. The game certainly isn't over, the zerg player will have options. | ||
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sonnyb
Canada18 Posts
On January 08 2012 00:02 TangSC wrote: Perhaps, but then again if zerg executes it perfectly they can be a base ahead with full map control and comparable mineral saturation! EDIT: Basically if zerg executes the attack and transitions perfectly, and terran defends the attack and transitions perfectly, I don't think the terran is in a vastly superior position. The game certainly isn't over, the zerg player will have options. Perhaps... but zerg will have no map control vs hellion/banshee. This game will likely transition into terran 3 Orbitals vs zerg 2 base + macro hatch as it normally would with standard zerg play vs hellion/banshee, and it comes down to how much damage zerg was able to do. I feel that a zerg playing perfect will not be able to do enough damage to a terran playing a perfect 1/1/1. Perfect defense (though it's hard for me to judge timing of the attack from just reading the BO) would be CC placed at wall to expand/wall + bunker + lifting off factory to simcity as well. | ||
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Crypdos
Netherlands110 Posts
On January 06 2012 23:55 TangSC wrote: I prefer roach/ling due to the amount of players that open with hellion expand. Roaches are much stronger against hellions, and also you can use roaches defensively if they counter attack later. You would think this build is good against hellion expand, while it actually does terrible against it. He will have a techlab on his barracks, while his 4 hellions will camp in front of your natural. Once you move out with your roaches he will see it immediately. Because of how slow roaches are, you will face a bunker with marauders and the 4 hellions in position to roast your lings when you arrive. This minimal defense holds this semi-allin (he can even salvage the bunker), and put you really behind. | ||
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enykie
Germany64 Posts
15hatch 15pool 17gas 17overlord 2 queens (double creeptumor) 24 roachwarren 4 to 7 roaches then speed and then i drone hard + add macrohatch/upgrades ... on easy defendable naturals i only build 4 to be safe against hellions on the other maps i am aggressive and delay their expansion. - you get to know what he is up to (without roaches i feel complete blind and you have to get lucky with overlords to see tech) - and i feel a lot safer (i think thats my most important for me) | ||
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Mahtasooma
Germany475 Posts
Usually, I'm very very hesitant to get my third up. However, trying this build, I can get up a saturated third AND a macro hatch in no time (except when he goes air). To be ultra safe, you should get an evo up by around 5:30 because if he did go air, you will delay his attack by ahving gone roaches and have extra queens and spores up by the time he actually reaches your base. | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
On January 08 2012 02:07 Morghaine wrote: I still think the main benefit of this build is the fact how long you can actually delay his expo, AND delay the midgame push as he eventually moves out and has to trade with your units. And of course the chance to win the game right then and there  added bonus. | ||
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EndOfLineTv
United States741 Posts
I wanted to tell you that as another master zerg (usually my smurf or main is in your devision). I have been opening zvt in a similar fashion with great success. I Feel like the roaches force the terran to show you what he is doing. Additionally, it counters helion/reaper/greed/6 rax all in openings. I wanted you to comment on my version your/sheth/DRG opening. 16H,17P (if not two player map) 18G (only two on gas, not 3 drones) two queens, (2 pair of lings, to scout and let me know if its an early cc or reapers/helions) warren 28. (3 ol) (add 3rd drone back into gas after the group of roaches) 6-8 roaches, (2 for defense my 4 lings saw reapers or helions) My rational for the 2 drones on gas and the 3 ol is this. It gives me just enough gas for 6-7roaches, and it allows me enough money to really start pumping mass drone while I micro the roaches. Usually I can fully saturate 2 bases during the roach engagment if you dont supply block youself. | ||
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BurgerAce
30 Posts
There are two good ways of thinking about it. One is, "How many drones and production facilities COULD I have now? What percent of ideal am I at?" Suppose this roach ling aggression sacrafices 40% of zerg's potential economy. Then maybe zerg needs to kill 12 SCV's and an addon to break even. The other way of thinking about it is "I want to max out at X minutes." This could literally mean 200/200 supply, or it could mean getting broodlords, or getting all the drones you want for the rest of the game. The point is, pick a goal, figure out how fast you could reach that goal, and how much this aggression delayed you. Suppose the roach production set you back two minutes. How much damage to you need to do to delay the terran push by two minutes? (I'm not the first person to recognize the faulty calculation, but multiple posts made faulty attempts at invalidating his calculation. Nobody in this thread seems to understand math.) | ||
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Mahtasooma
Germany475 Posts
What about reinforing only with speedlings when you are actually through the wall? Then you're only sacrificing some mining time, 8 larvae and not too much money as roaches are ridiculously cheap money wise, only expensive supply wise, but you're bound to get that anyway. I was always of the opinion that the 2 supply of the roach really counts when maxed because being maxed on roches is usually really bad because the roach just doesn't cut it supply wise. Btw, in most replays you provide you ARE actually allin because you are NOT building drones behind this. Even before you can know you will get through the wall. | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
On January 08 2012 07:08 Morghaine wrote: What about reinforing only with speedlings when you are actually through the wall? I usually always make lings at least to 52 (sometimes to 60). The problem with waiting is if the roaches break in, that's a critical time where you NEED some speedlings to kill marines/scvs while roaches target hellions/marines/marauders. The lings can also prevent SCV surrounds on the bunkers. | ||
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Theovide
Sweden914 Posts
On January 06 2012 09:17 UmiNotsuki wrote: Gonna be honest, just like all of your guides this one makes me uneasy. I feel as if you're looking at the game differently from me. I'll explain: StarCraft II consists of games and sets of games; that is, you can think within the context of a single game, or within the context of your overall win-loss ratio. To me, it seems that you're more concerned with the latter than the former, and that truly bothers me. A good player should be able to, with rather strong consistency, beat someone significantly worse than himself (if only by one league or so.) For instance, a solid platinum player should almost always win against a solid gold player because the platinum player is simply more refined and all-together better at the game. But, your guides seem to be focused on builds for which this is not true. Let me discuss this specific guide in that way: You suggest that you should have "8 roaches and 16+ lings at the 7:15 mark" when executing this build. Lets look at the cost of that, assuming the minimum number of zerglings. 1 roach = 75 minerals, 25 gas, 2 supply and 1 larva 1 zergling = 25 minerals, 0.5 supply and 0.5 larvae 8 roaches = 600 minerals, 200 gas, 16 supply and 8 larvae 16 zerglings = 400 minerals, 8 supply and 8 larvae Subtotal = 1000 minerals, 200 gas, 24 supply and 16 larvae 4 gas = 5 minerals (based on value of one resource return) 200 gas = 250 minerals Total = 1250 minerals, 24 supply and 16 larvae That's 16 drones with 800 minerals (not including what those extra drones mine) and 8 supply left over (the exact value of one overlord, so 100 minerals worth) So, what you are suggesting is that we sacrifice 16 drones worth of mining and 900 minerals for this attack. In order for it to pay for itself relative to simply droning up, as is safe to do with rather minimal defense, we'd have to kill: More than 12 supply depots, 25 marines, or 25 SCV's or some combination thereof. Note that these numbers STILL don't include the huge count of minerals that the extra 16 drones mine up to this point. I think you're crazy if you think you can deal that much damage reliably. Therefore, the only way this build is any good when compared to a macro zerg style is if it wins, right then and there. "Significant damage" won't cut it because there's simply no way that you could deal enough damage for this to pay for itself and not win outright. The reason this works for you is because you beat some players with it, and that percentage is high enough to keep you at your admittedly impressive ladder ranking. However, you are just as likely to lose to a platinum player with the correct counter in hand (even a blind counter) as you are to beat a master player who was just a little too greedy. I don't like that. TL;DR: There's no way this can pay for itself without the opponent dying outright, which is simply not reliable or in my opinion a solid way to play. EDIT: Added a point about lost mining from lack of drones EDIT: I started this out as an argument against the above poster, but it's not really only that. I'm below arguing for why I think a zerg should produce units over trying to build as many drones as possible and just defend, in nearly all scenarios. As a high masters terran player I strongly disagree with this. Let's put it this way, there are two scenarios that can happen when you come to the terran base. In scenario one you do enough damage/kill him outright to pay for the attack, in that scenario it has by definiton of the scenario been a good move to do the roach ling allin/aggression. So the more interesting scenario is scenario two, where the terran player has put up enough defense so that the zerg wont do enough damage to justify the attack. In scenario two your thoughs imply that you think the only option for the zerg is to attack anyway, to sacrifice the units for less damage than they are worth. This is not correct, the zerg in this scenario should obviously pull his forces back. Pulling your forces back also means that you don't actually "lose drones" with your aggresive build, but instead what you lose is mining time. Why? Well, you will still build those drones afterwards, so only if you would only build drones the entire game and your goal was to rush 200 drones could you say you actually lost something building armies without letting them die. Otherwise you delayed drones, instead of delaying army which is the standard, and you didn't lose anything. (Also as a side note: what you should obviously the compare scenario two with is a scenario where the zerg player makes only adequate units to just defend himself meanwhile droning hardcore. Which means that saying that you've lost 16 drones and 900 minerals is unrealistic, without making these roaches and zerglings you'd most likely still have a bunch of zerglings and one or two spinecrawlers by the time the attack would have stricken.) Now, let's make this clear, when you've got to scenario two you will be in a suboptimal scenario from if you played standard, everything will be slightly delayed as you've lost mining time. But what I'd argue for is that you a) now have external resources that helps you play more optimal later in the game, b) also having units greatly increases your chance of surviving pushes than if you try to play the style where you have as high dronecount as possible, c) reduces the chance that the terran will play optimal. a) With the push you are garuanteed to gain information about what your opponent is doing, greatly increasing the chances of you holding any aggresive builds of his, and increasing your possibility to play optimal against his build of choice even if he doesn't play aggresive. Also if you choose to pullback which should be the case (as we are talking about scenario two, where it wont be worth it pushing on), you'll have mapcontrol earlier than you'd normally would which helps you deal with all kind of stuff the terran can throw at you. b) If we say that a terran push comes at the 10 minute mark that you need exactly 60 zerglings to defeat, then playing optimally you'd drone and expand just until the moment when you'd have to start your first zergling to get 60 in time of his push. Though, if you try do this, the chances of you actually succeding seems small unless you are maphacking. Instead you might try having 4 lings only, and use them to see when his push is moving out, but even doing so can be risky, because maybe you just used all your popped larva to make drones, then you might only get 40 zerglings until he reaches you. Therefore having a buffer of units greatly increases your chance to survive any pushes, as none can play optimally, none can know every game that the terran will push in 2 minutes if he haven't even moved out yet. c) as you do the aggression a terran is very likely to overreact, fact is that in many cases you'll end up just fine economically after pulling back doing no direct damage (if you don't sacrifice the units) as the terran will act as if you are continuing your allin. This is also something that the terran is basically forced to do, as he has no way of knowing if you are producing drones or units when you have enough units that he cannot beat you without his base defence. You can also use your army to greatly delay his expansion, as he'll have to wait till he has enough forces to beat yours before he can try to move out. A good example is the game where I think it was Darkforce that won against Sound in HSC on shattered temple, at an early stage Darkforce had LOADS of lings but only the same count of drones as Sound, and Sound had two orbitals, but because of the lings Sound was forced to build bunkers as well wait longer until he could fly out his CC. If Darkforce hadn't sacrificed a lot of lings bringing a bunker to red but not even killing it, Sounds cc would have been delayed even more, as it wasn't before that Sound knew he could fly out. And still doing so Darkforce got an really solid economical lead, taking out the gold rocks with the zerglings aswell as droning madly meanwhile Sound had to play really carefully. As a conclusion, with all these three reasons for having units, and not even including the fact that you'd get a bunch of freewins vs people without adequate defense, (ie scenario one). I'd say that aggresive builds might not only be viable, but better. I think Stephano is the best proof of that, with builds where he nearly constantly has a big pack of zerglings, he can easily deal with pushes and often because of his bigger army than other zergs, trade more costefficently so that he'll turn up with both more army and drones that another zerg meeting the same build. The only build that would always be strong against such builds is if the terran decides to play just as greedy as he can get away with, but that is hard, and even so I'm doubtful if a terran doing so is better off than the terran playing aggressive against a zerg trying to drone as hard as possible. tl:dr as long as you don't sacrifice the units in cases you wont be able to do enough damage to make them worth it, you are not going to be very far behind, unless you did a build which was completely all in. | ||
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Asolmanx
Italy141 Posts
VileSpanishiwa vs QxGtheognis | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
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Mahtasooma
Germany475 Posts
You have to park the queen from your expo at the ramp, though, because the first two hellions will be in you nat slightly before the roaches pop. You will be down on creep spread, though, obviously. Apart from that, it might be a good idea to first show only two roaches and scare the hellions away, not showing your other roaches, because if he sees like 4-8 roaches, he will know something is up and build defenses, if he doesn't see the remaining 6 roaches, you might catch him even more offguard. Just because it takes an aeon for the roaches to actually get to the other base. | ||
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TangSC
Canada1866 Posts
On January 09 2012 03:09 Morghaine wrote: I just found by skipping the second queen and getting two more drones instead, you will have the money to produce ALL 8 Roaches at once and not be down on larvae because you won't have the money to produce more related to your income. On the contrary, usually you have excess drones without your hatches producing larvae of their own. You have to park the queen from your expo at the ramp, though, because the first two hellions will be in you nat slightly before the roaches pop. You will be down on creep spread, though, obviously. I have a new, VERY detailed TL post coming out soon on the macro-mechanics behind the roach/ling. | ||
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Mahtasooma
Germany475 Posts
What would also be interesting is spotting when to retreat and when to push, because it's not as obvious, especially for the lower leagues. Like: If you see a bunker with a marauder shooting out of it and at least X Marines, retreat and camp expo, otherwise push. | ||
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