|
Hello people of teamliquid,
i have struggled a lot against the more and more popular stephano style of play with mass ling infestor , fast upgrades and so on.
The question "How do you beat Stephano" was asked several times at Assembly and i wanted to ask you, what you can do against his style of play?
Is it constant pressure like polt does it?
Are drops enough or do you need pushes and drops at the same time.
Do you have to be ahead in upgrades (wich is hard as terran imo)?
What are the key things that make you beat this style?
~so long.
/ps: take a look at this replay if you want. I killed about 40 drones and several hatches and still got owned (ofc he got really good fungals off).
http://drop.sc/130676
|
Just use Polt as an example. MMM is a bitch to play against when you use that style.
|
I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement.
|
Imo drops are the best way to play against that style. Abuse the fact that he has no air control. Straight up pushes are probably not a good idea since the zerg will have so many lings that he will just crush them. Expand a lot with PF since you do not have to sit in your base defending against mutas and he cannot really attack if you are sieged well and put down some bunkers. Keep your tanks in front of the Marines so they cannot get fungaled without him losing the infestors. Make turrets against burrowed infestors. Add a second factory soon and try to get early upgrades too. Mixing in Marodeurs can be very good, as well as a ton of blue flame Hellions in case you are going mech. That is how I play against that style and it has been working quite well.
|
My trick is deny economy. Like the reactor hellion opening is designed to, you are to delay the opponent third AND deny creepspread. Keeping the initial hellions alive while you get up stim, 1/1, and tanks to reinforce the contain is crucial. If he doesn't have a 3rd by 10 minutes you win the game easily as yours should be on the way and your upgrades will be done with a fair amount of tanks to kill the banes.
Polt style is powerful because he acts similarly to Stephano in TvZ, where he builds a strong economy and tier 1/2 army with heavy upgrades. The difference is that terran can be the agressor in many of the situations whereas attacking into fortified positions is rough for Z. Drop + push your tanks out to deny economy/deny cost effective trades with your bio. Because so much gas is going to banes/infestors/upgrades, you don't have to be worried about mutalisk sniping tanks and can be a bit more thinly defended on the main army while dropping with more of it and doing damage. (remaking drones is bad, making army is worse, delaying upgrades/expands/tech is terrible!).
MMM can work very well in earlier stages when the opponent invests in roaches for hellion defense, but can be very scary if you allow the zerg enough time to make 20 or so banelings. Even MKP loses his armies to absurb amount of banes.
|
so let me just write it up:
Siege position - if you loose position you loose the game.
Marodeurs are a nice addition to your army since fungals won't hurt them as much.
big spread of army
no streight pushing but a lot of drops
Is there any way to deny the 3rd at the beginning?
I feel like: If he gets the drone pass your hellions and starts the 3rd you can't do anything about it.
|
France12794 Posts
I can't go much into details right now, but once you know the zerg is playing that style, upgrade your stuff.
Upgraded lings are as incredibly strong as upgraded marines, so keeping up on upgrades is very important.
Drops are very useful once the zerg got t3 and lot of far away bases, and you can use one to distract the zerg a bit and advance your army enough.
And you'll have to use scans to check for tech.
Make sure to have a good simcity and don't be afraid of using sensor towers
|
On March 13 2012 07:48 ntssauce wrote:
so let me just write it up:
Siege position - if you loose position you loose the game.
Marodeurs are a nice addition to your army since fungals won't hurt them as much.
big spread of army
no streight pushing but a lot of drops
Is there any way to deny the 3rd at the beginning?
I feel like: If he gets the drone pass your hellions and starts the 3rd you can't do anything about it.
Get the replays of Assemble Winter. Stephano vs Polt and use the build he uses.
|
The infestor ling style takes a lot of skill to execute against a good terran. Just because a zerg on ladder plays a style inspired by him doesn't mean they are playing like stephano :p. Infestor ling isn't that much different then ling bannelling muta; you need to put pressure on the zerg before three bases. You need to be in seige modes before big engagements. You need to manage the creep. You need to drop when you pull the army out of position. Keep your marines split for fungals like against bannelings. Send small groups of marines ahead to harrass infestors when you get the oppertunity; its not worth a fungal to kill 4 or 5 marines spread out with 2 medivacs over head. The biggest difference between ling infestor and ling bannelings is you can afford to lead with your tanks against ling infestor. There is nothing to stop you from slow pushing, so slow push aggressively (if that makes sense). Be constantly leap frogging tanks, and be dropping in the mean time to keep your zerg opponent from getting to many ideas about flanks and attacking.
The hardest part about ling infestor is the fast hive tech. You need to expand aggressively and get out your late game units fast. And you need to do all that while keeping up with upgrades, denying bases, ect. If zerg gets up five bases with good creep spread and good upgrades then there is really nothing you can do. Practice a lot. You really have to out play the zerg. There aren't any easy answers, that is just how the matchup is.
|
mid master zerg who recently swapped to stephano style with huge success.
For Protoss its simple stop going all-in every game and take a 3rd, dont QQ when going blink/ collosis /3rd all at once and you fail. decide when teching,units, or expanding is best for the situation and do it well.
For terran drop play is the one thing that is very hard to deal with, the 2nd thing to keep in mind is that lings consume a large amounts of minerals and LARVA! what this means is that if zerg is slacking on injects or if he cant get a 4th up its very hard to deal with strong positional play as we simply dont have the larva. to through away. and for last the ghost is a good unit and just b/c you dont want to use snipe anymore doesnt mean EMP or even snipe is any less effective vs infestors. keep infestor count low (or energy) and keep ultras from coming b/c thats our game closer.
|
What about when the zerg adds like 6+ spines to each expansion later in the game? Dropping with 8 marines into 6 spines doesn't really work too well, and i feel like committing 2 dropships for 16 marines is too much.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but whenever I play against ling/infestor the zerg just adds like 6 spines to each base and my drop play can't do anything, so I'm stuck and end up losing.
|
On March 13 2012 08:03 genius_man16 wrote:
What about when the zerg adds like 6+ spines to each expansion later in the game? Dropping with 8 marines into 6 spines doesn't really work too well, and i feel like committing 2 dropships for 16 marines is too much.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but whenever I play against ling/infestor the zerg just adds like 6 spines to each base and my drop play can't do anything, so I'm stuck and end up losing.
I personally would agree, but its your / our lack of ability to play Terran to its full potential. I personally think a drop cannot happen when you play massling style with infestors, since if you have good scouting / map awareness you will never unload a medivac or even two before lings are there. Also usually before the very lategame where drops are effective again Zerg has superior upgrades.
The key lies within not letting the pressure go down. You need to pressure from start to finish or be insanely well prepared like Polt with positioning and macro. He usually never misses a beat. Pull the Zerg out of position or have him split his army while you move into position. Viking can greatly help your drops if he doesn't see it coming.
I struggle as well, but if you can beat that style, you can beat any style I think.
|
On March 13 2012 07:39 Type|NarutO wrote:
I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement.
How do you scout and actully tell if its stephano style ling infestor or a standard ling baneling mutalisk play?
|
Usually Zergs that go for that heavy ling / infestor style will have 2 early evolution chambers and they will probably even have a macro-hatchery in base. An additional hint could be that they are trying to kill the hellions at all costs. They need to make tons of lings anyways and killing the hellions as long as there are no marines/medivacs around is their best shot.
Obviously it could still be muta play, there is no way to confirm it by 100%, but the trend goes towards infestors nowadays.
|
The issue isn't so much the style of play, but rather the decisions you make in your games. Rather than phrasing your question as how to beat Stephano, you should think in terms of how you can play better yourself.
In this game, your opponent opened with an extremely fast 3rd base, in fact finishing it before even your natural was taken. This warrants some kind of reaction from you - either a fast 3rd yourself or you need to put some pressure on him. The 4 hellions did decent damage, but during that time, you failed to take your natural and you forgot to make workers. You finally take your natural at 9 minutes (very late) and by 10 minutes you're about 10 workers behind where you'd be with constant production.
This puts you in a tough position, with your 2 base tank marine timing coming from a much weaker economy than usual against an opponent who is happily mining on 3 bases. Your army gets crushed, you have no 3rd base, and the game is pretty much over from there, before your opponent even got any infestors. You also neglect to get combat shield for your marines all game, which certainly doesn't help.
|
On March 13 2012 08:11 ShaneFeit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 07:39 Type|NarutO wrote:
I face this style of play a lot in the ladder. It usually is very easy to read but its very hard to abuse. If you are good and open the game like Polt does you can heavily pressure the Zerg. The downside is that you will sacrifice earlier upgrades for it. Usually you can apply pressure to the third or keep them on 2 base until infestors are out.
Key to all of this is actually having your hellions alive until there are tech units out. You may not lose your hellions (6 is a good count and a lot better than 4) so they enable you to deny creep, allow you to pressure with medivacs. While your first medivacs pressure add your 3rd base and 3 barracks. By now you should already know what style the Zerg is using. If he's using the infestor style you are talking about I'd immediately start double-ebay and armory to 1-1-1 instantly. While you pressure, you can macro and build up additional 2 medivacs with 16 marines and pressure another place. By now infestors should be out and you have to be careful, try to move his army out of position while slowly macro'ing.
If you pressure, he will most likely not and you keep the danger of the superior upgrades at least defensive. The 3 barracks you added should be techlab and two reactors as you will need marauders. Marauders are very good to tank zergling attacks and make your army 'BIGGER' as in fungal doesn't hit as much. Key in fighting against ultra/ling/infestor is good control with your units. 200/200 vs 200/200 you can either complete crush with good positioning and control or get completely crushed.
In my opinion and my personal experience was, having your army spread out a lot to create walking distance as all the Zerg units are melee and fungal will never hit a lot. If you have 12+ tanks with +3 attack and a lot of bio Zerg will most likely not trade cost efficiently. Also you should always have a viking around to deny overlord scouting / creepspread.
The style is extreme frustrating to play against, but its the best practice you can get, glhf!
In addition I want to say, that I don't think Terrans experienced with ghosts a lot, so adding 2-3 ghosts to at least get 1 or 2 EMPs off the infestors would greatly increase your chance of actually winning the engagement. How do you scout and actully tell if its stephano style ling infestor or a standard ling baneling mutalisk play?
fast double evo for delayed lair.
|
On March 13 2012 07:23 ntssauce wrote:
"How do you beat Stephano"
Smack him with a flipchair before the game starts.
Jokes aside. I assume you mean the early macro hatch with mass mass lings. I feel MKPs hellion reactor expand with another reactored fac instantly would work well. Show 2-4 hellions and hide the rest, then hit with 12-16 hellions and go roast like a madman. Queens and a few spines wont help, and hellions in those numbers can´t be countered by mass ling surround, you will force a roach transition, in which case you can switch back to reactored marines with double tanks production.
|
I'm a zerg, but I'll just add what I find difficult to deal with when I do that.
1. A VIKING. Like, one viking. Goodbye all the overlords. Without mutas you just can't really kill the viking, and it just flies around the map shooting at overlords, which is why I end up keeping most between main/nat. They have a big range too so unless you have creep spread in the main it can even be hard to the queen to kill it before infestors are out. And a poor overlord spread really helps with the next point...
2. Drops can be really difficult to deal with. Early if you drop behind the minerals it's tough because you don't really have banes. Later on not so much at the main/nat but at 3rd/4th. You can deal with it, but if you're leaving an infestor at each base and have built spines or left lings then that's taking from elsewhere. I found the style let me get a lot of bases once infestors were out (if they go hellions they are strong before that) but it can be hard to adequately defend them all.
3. A raven. It can be hard to attack siege positions if they can see the burrowed infestors. That's just how I play though.
4. Good tank positioning. You can't force movement like you can with broodlords, if the Z wants to engage it's where the T wants, unless you can catch them en route.
These things don't seem to apply to the very top, but may be useful to some people.
|
It's not too hard really. Push the front of their base, whilst dropping every single base they have. As taxing as that may be on your apm, there is no way a Zerg can defend it all. (I'm a Zerg -> Thats how I lose ZvT). Also if you're not pushing the front, do like triple medivac drops, snipe hatch, pickup, go next base.
|
On March 13 2012 09:28 Host- wrote:
It's not too hard really. Push the front of their base, whilst dropping every single base they have. As taxing as that may be on your apm, there is no way a Zerg can defend it all. (I'm a Zerg -> Thats how I lose ZvT). Also if you're not pushing the front, do like triple medivac drops, snipe hatch, pickup, go next base.
It's not too hard really. Yes it is. It is very fucking hard. Please don't act like you would be some Code S caliber. If you drop 3 places at once and push the front, you will get overrun with your main push. Even if you would be able to snipe 1 expansion from those 3 drops, you would still be behind because you just gave away your whole army probably very cost-inefficient.
Counter attacks, complete loss of mapcontrol is what you get in addition to that. Most Zergs will also have spines and a handful of lings defending their bases, so no, what you suggest is not the solution and certainly not easy.
Watch Stephano vs Happy and how well Happy played on Shakuras with complete abuse of the map which isn't possible on most maps or at least no in that same fashion and he still barely won by the skin of his teeth. Happy by the way is very fast and has very high APM and did drop 3 bases at once all the time.
=.= Seriously. I don't want to judge, but I don't think you are insanely high on the ladder, otherwise you wouldn't talk like that.
|
On March 13 2012 09:33 Type|NarutO wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 09:28 Host- wrote:
It's not too hard really. Push the front of their base, whilst dropping every single base they have. As taxing as that may be on your apm, there is no way a Zerg can defend it all. (I'm a Zerg -> Thats how I lose ZvT). Also if you're not pushing the front, do like triple medivac drops, snipe hatch, pickup, go next base. It's not too hard really. Yes it is. It is very fucking hard. Please don't act like you would be some Code S caliber. If you drop 3 places at once and push the front, you will get overrun with your main push. Even if you would be able to snipe 1 expansion from those 3 drops, you would still be behind because you just gave away your whole army probably very cost-inefficient. Counter attacks, complete loss of mapcontrol is what you get in addition to that. Most Zergs will also have spines and a handful of lings defending their bases, so no, what you suggest is not the solution and certainly not easy. Watch Stephano vs Happy and how well Happy played on Shakuras with complete abuse of the map which isn't possible on most maps or at least no in that same fashion and he still barely won by the skin of his teeth. Happy by the way is very fast and has very high APM and did drop 3 bases at once all the time. =.= Seriously. I don't want to judge, but I don't think you are insanely high on the ladder, otherwise you wouldn't talk like that.
....If your main push gets over run then your drops will do severe damage. My rank on ladder is irrelevant, but I'm top 8 master on NA, and GM on SEA, take what you will from that.
If play Ling Festor at a high level, if I take no damage from drops, I win, it's as simple as that. YOU as the Terran player have the ability to drop where ever, and whenever you please. Someone further up said that a single viking can clean up every single overlord on the map. He's spot on. There is no way a Zerg player can defend a push at the front and multiple drops at the same time. They will take damage, and that's how you will ultimately win.
You seem to have gotten really worked up over this, especially considering you decided to send me a pm, I'm expressing my opinion on how I lose when playing ling festor ultra.
Edit: In regards to the OP, as soon as you identify their going ling festor, keep on the ball with your upgrades. If youre 0-0 or 1-1 against 3-3 ultras and cracklings, you're going to lose. Marines just tickle things at that point. If you stay up par with upgrades you'll be in great shape.
|
If you would actually read what I wrote in the thread, I did also mention to get that viking to deny the scouting of the Zerg. I did also mention to keep your hellions alive to deny creep and a thirdbase as long as possible and pressure the Zerg before the infestor timing. Additionally I did mention to instantly counter-upgrade with an double ebay as soon as you know you are facing this style.
'Severe' damage with you drops (if at all) is not enough if you give a way an army for it. If you usually have very close fights against this style, you want to send out 3 medivacs and nearly 30 marines that will be missing in your army. This could lead in a completely onesided rape and to be honest, 8 marines and a medivac will not completely shut down any competent Zerg in the mid or lategame. Obviously it can happen, but if you want to count on that, good luck on actually higher levels of play.
You are correct with what you say about the drops, yet you act like its easy - even more - you state its easy and I bet my ass you didn't even try to play Terran. If I shut down drops I win, as simple as that. Yes, we understood that and thats what the OP is implying with 'how do I beat that style' because even if you can 'freely' drop, time and location where to drop is important and insanely hard to figure.
Not everyone here is Polt or MVP who can completely pressure Zerg non-stop and I understand that its our lack of ability, yet pulling it off is very hard - please don't make it sound easy, thats the only point I wanted to make.
Now sincerely you can take your 'fuck off' from your reply in your PM and have a nice day, because insulting is not something I want to comment on.
|
On March 13 2012 10:15 Type|NarutO wrote:
If you would actually read what I wrote in the thread, I did also mention to get that viking to deny the scouting of the Zerg. I did also mention to keep your hellions alive to deny creep and a thirdbase as long as possible and pressure the Zerg before the infestor timing. Additionally I did mention to instantly counter-upgrade with an double ebay as soon as you know you are facing this style.
'Severe' damage with you drops (if at all) is not enough if you give a way an army for it. If you usually have very close fights against this style, you want to send out 3 medivacs and nearly 30 marines that will be missing in your army. This could lead in a completely onesided rape and to be honest, 8 marines and a medivac will not completely shut down any competent Zerg in the mid or lategame. Obviously it can happen, but if you want to count on that, good luck on actually higher levels of play.
You are correct with what you say about the drops, yet you act like its easy - even more - you state its easy and I bet my ass you didn't even try to play Terran. If I shut down drops I win, as simple as that. Yes, we understood that and thats what the OP is implying with 'how do I beat that style' because even if you can 'freely' drop, time and location where to drop is important and insanely hard to figure.
Not everyone here is Polt or MVP who can completely pressure Zerg non-stop and I understand that its our lack of ability, yet pulling it off is very hard - please don't make it sound easy, thats the only point I wanted to make.
Now sincerely you can take your 'fuck off' from your reply in your PM and have a nice day, because insulting is not something I want to comment on.
I play Terran offrace at like a plat level, and I can queue up drops, which is what most people seem to do.
Is it really that hard, to take 20 seconds out of your macro, to queue 3-4 points to fly past, then finally 'd' to drop marines.....
|
Just so you guys know, Stephano has switched it up a bit since playing Polt.
On stream he has been doing a 4 roach opener with slightly slower 1/1 ups, allows him to take a much faster third base, and he's been teching directly to broods, not ultras. I think his newer style is much better and much scarier.
|
On March 13 2012 10:45 Flonomenalz wrote:
Just so you guys know, Stephano has switched it up a bit since playing Polt.
On stream he has been doing a 4 roach opener with slightly slower 1/1 ups, allows him to take a much faster third base, and he's been teching directly to broods, not ultras. I think his newer style is much better and much scarier.
Yes, its a slight variation to just go a few roaches to scare away the hellions, allow your creep to spread and get a fast third base. Still you can pressure the 3rd with the way Polt opens up. About Broodlords, I think they are less mobile compared to ultras and if you can try to outmove them or use drops, because Infestor/Broodlord really is immobile and you cannot afford to have your broodlords/infestors be apart, because broodlords alone will fall victim to marines or vikings.
|
What I do when I go Ultras is leave 2 pair of Corruptors on each side of the map where drops usually come from. Helps me so much because it forces the Terran to manual drop marines to kill the corruptors or lose their medivacs if they just queue up and afk them.
I think BL vs Ultra is also map dependant. On wider maps, Ultra --> BL tech switch is amazing. But on smaller maps i.e. Shakuras, you pretty much have to go BLs unless you're way ahead.
|
blue flame marine attack ->third, attack 1 minute after hive finishes with 2-2-1 upgrades.
Pretty much anything blue flame marine related will slow down ling infestor style of play enough to make the rest of the game pretty easy.
Edit:
Doing a marine blue flame timing with a quick third and double ebay behind it is pretty bad against a lot of other zerg builds, so it's kind of a coinflip if you don't know their style or get a really good read.
|
heavy marine with equal upgrades while throwing in some marauders and ghosts works pretty well vs me, using drops to spread my units out and try to deny my fourth base.
|
Missleading title, should said somthing about "stephano's ZvT"
|
Thanks a ton naruto, i learned a lot :D
|
On March 13 2012 12:05 OSM.OneManArmy wrote:
Thanks a ton naruto, i learned a lot :D
Always happy that I can actually help some guys out there :-)!
|
|
|
MMMG almost completely counters it.
If you are going to go marine tank its best to slowly engage with bunkers added as well and double medvac drops. Make sure not to lose the drops, and always target the brofestors with tanks. tanks are wasted if they target the lings. Thats what marines are for.
|
ling/infestor isn't so hot against mech, at least until they get broodlords out.
|
On March 13 2012 07:34 Silvertine wrote:
Just use Polt as an example. MMM is a bitch to play against when you use that style.
The thing about MMM as a counter is you need to have super good multitasking and macro at the same time, where as in most cases infestor ling is a very low action needed style, meaning zerg can focus on macro and getting really good engagments, where as as terran to counter needs to play at a much higher level...
Sort of like anyone vs protoss (I kid I kid)
|
i think theres a keypart in the micro control
normally youd think you want to spread your bio and the tanks to abuse him being melee and using fungal as this super aoe but i think this is actually wrong way to approach it.
lings with high upgrades rip through bio thats spread out
i think its better to keep most of your army in a clump, especially the siege tanks pretty close together. as soon as zerg attacks, scan on it and youll see the infestors well ahead and then you target them all down with the tanks while sitting still with all bio in a clump
if you kill all infestors with the tanks, the lings wont stand a chance at all seeing how theres almost no surface area to fight the bio with
a big thing that makes mutalisk scary is that they deny drops, vikings and creates huge threats of counterattacks.
good sim city should should deal with counterattacks very easy vs ling infestor
a viking can roam around the map pretty uncontested hunting overlords aswell as patrolling the edges of zergs base to make it impossible for him to know if a drop is coming etc
to actually mass drop everywhere as some might think is a good way to abuse ling infestor i dont think this is very true.
lings are super mobile and 1 infestor with a handful of lings shut down drops super cost efficiently.
as long as your not forcing him to be on a certain part of the map, his units will be spread out across all bases to deal with these sorts of drops. therefor i think its more crucial to work on frontal power pushes.
the need for no turrets or leaving many units at home while pushing or threats to just die from any attacks of zerg (when bane speed and mutas would normally be out) allows you to get upgrades going super quick and establish a ton of econ and infrastructure.
then once you reach this high tank count and maybe 2-2 upgrades (example) you can start putting the real heavy pressure on.
its key to capitalize on the things mutalisk are normally for
the most normal way i see terrans fail against this style is:
-they waste too much units trying to get lucky drops
-they dont build up or plan real timing attacks
-they fail micro control and misunderstand how this army should be fought
-they are too passive or push too slow, allowing the ultras or broodlords to come out just in time
-they dont know how to push on the map without getting caught offguard and their entire army owned because of it
whenever i play vs infestor i feel more comfortable than vs rly good mutalisk players. it feels like i should win every battle unless i get caught unsieged or fail to target down the infestors with the tanks.
a good tip for the ones who have trouble getting caught unsieged against this style - keep a medivac well up infront of your army or have it follow the zerg army constantly. youd be amazed how much effort and energy it takes to kill 1 medivac with infestors. if they do it just send another one, after 2-3 medivacs are killed like this they wont even have energy left lol
ive also seen polt send in fake drops (empty medivac) into zerg bases that he knew are guarded by many infestors just to trigger him to kill it with purely infestor energy
another thing that you can do, but is pretty abusive (invest alot to counter infestor style without actually scouting it) is starting to tech cloak banshees early on. im not saying 1base cloak banshee. but if you start building cloak banshees from 1 starport after your 2base. you make it soo much harder for them to do anything at all. id recommend fooling around with this abit and see how it feels.
i think its super good anyway
the infestor ling play is quite easy to play with compared to mutalisk play. so it creates a false illusion that its super strong because the zergs your facing are harder to win against compared if they play mutalisk
naruto also gave some great points aswell. its super key to not lose your hellions (much moreso compared if they play bane muta ling) and going 6-8 hellions just to make it almost impossible for them to creep spread or take a 3rd is pretty darn good
|
On March 13 2012 08:15 Type|NarutO wrote:
Usually Zergs that go for that heavy ling / infestor style will have 2 early evolution chambers and they will probably even have a macro-hatchery in base. An additional hint could be that they are trying to kill the hellions at all costs. They need to make tons of lings anyways and killing the hellions as long as there are no marines/medivacs around is their best shot.
Obviously it could still be muta play, there is no way to confirm it by 100%, but the trend goes towards infestors nowadays.
And it really doesn't make that much of a difference if you find out he does something else. If he is staying on 2 bases longer than usual you might have to scout for early mutas but otherwise you will find out what he does by pushing his third.
|
wow thanks morrow and naruto for dropping them knowledge bombs. helps a ton 
|
As a zerg playing this style more or less, I feel that drops can still be quite annoying. But above all, I would recommend for terran to take expansions a bit quicker, as you won't have to cover everything against mutas. you still have to be careful with a mass zergling attack, but think that zerg's idea is to push mainly with tier 3 units, not before...
|
It's not too hard really. Yes it is. It is very fucking hard. Please don't act like you would be some Code S caliber. If you drop 3 places at once and push the front, you will get overrun with your main push. Even if you would be able to snipe 1 expansion from those 3 drops, you would still be behind because you just gave away your whole army probably very cost-inefficient.
Counter attacks, complete loss of mapcontrol is what you get in addition to that. Most Zergs will also have spines and a handful of lings defending their bases, so no, what you suggest is not the solution and certainly not easy.
Watch Stephano vs Happy and how well Happy played on Shakuras with complete abuse of the map which isn't possible on most maps or at least no in that same fashion and he still barely won by the skin of his teeth. Happy by the way is very fast and has very high APM and did drop 3 bases at once all the time.
=.= Seriously. I don't want to judge, but I don't think you are insanely high on the ladder, otherwise you wouldn't talk like that.
Just gotta correct that, first of all it was never by the skin of his teeth, he was in a very comfortable position the entire time. However the game got dragged out for ages because he insisted on trying to multitask Stephano to death instead of just pushing his economic advantage and killing him with one big push. While Happy might be very fast, he is still the inferior player in this case, so using that game as an example is no good.
|
Giant hole in early to midgame of this before the infestors come out. Did you see the Blizzard Cup RO10? MVP wrecked stephano by scouting and then reacting to his style (or anticipating it altogether :p)
Reactor hellion expand into
blue flame hellion (2fact?)& bio
into a timing attack where you just kill him because he's going mass zerglings and you have the most accessible counter to zerglings in the game :>
[Consider fast upgrades because where is your gas going if you're going hellion marine?]
A lot of lings will just wreck hellion marauder allin, but if you don't all-in and just go with this composition and strike before infestors with pathogen are out, you should be fine given reasonable micro vs zerglings (ie don't get surrounded on creep, etc). And once you get medivacs out it gets even harder, if your initial push didn't just kill him.
His new fast hive from roaches is scary, agreed, don't like it when zergs get t3 fast (in which case mobility abuse and/or really good engagements are your best bet), you have to deal with t3 zerg or attack in the smaller window
Try 3port cloaked banshee after your 3rd (no experience, but this isn't theorycraft) vs ling infestor (yeah it sounds dumb) they'll fungal your banshees, but fungal on 1 banshee (since you've amoved them all around the map) is better than fungal on 10 marines.
|
I don't use the style much myself, but from my dabblings in it, it'd say there are two things you can abuse:
1. Infestors are slow as crap and the only decent antiair of the zerg. Use drops, but be sure to be quick about it, an infestor catching your whole medivac and marine force is terrible. It was stated in this thread earlier that drops don't work against a zerg who has 6 spines at each expansion.. well duh, you can't attack with mutas when a terran has 20 turrets either, the drops obviously have to be used long before a zerg can afford 6 spines per base.
2. The timing where a zerg is going for infestors is a weak spot, there's only lings for defense and infestors take quite a while to build. If you can time a big bio push at this point, you will do big damage.
Other than that, it's important to bank on the fact that infestors are slow defensive units, it should be relatively easy to expand as long as the ling runbys can be handled. As for late game situations, I really don't know. Ghosts are obviously strong against infestors and infestors are not all that great against mech, but then again, a zerg will have T3 by the late lategame with this build.
|
best thing to do against this style is just be aggro and force zerg to use up fungals. When the fungals run out, you win. Much like sentries for protoss, Zerg can't really afford to keep churing out infestors if they ever want to tech up, so if you just constantly pressure/drop/snipe infestors, it delays broodlords and keeps zerg at home.
I can't say MMM is any more effective than just pure marine/medivac. I think if you want to fight big-ball-of-units style marauders are better, but honestly 3-4 pronged marine drops constantly are the way to go. You don't even have to watch or micro them. Just drop them in a spot where zerglings will have trouble so that the zerg has to split up his infestors to defend, and you're golden.
A good example of this can be seen by going through Destiny's VODs of a day or two ago, where he played Drewbie/Catz doing the nonstop marine drop stuff.
|
On March 13 2012 17:46 darkscream wrote:
best thing to do against this style is just be aggro and force zerg to use up fungals. When the fungals run out, you win. Much like sentries for protoss, Zerg can't really afford to keep churing out infestors if they ever want to tech up, so if you just constantly pressure/drop/snipe infestors, it delays broodlords and keeps zerg at home.
This.
Also, if you never kill off medivacs, the numbers eventually get out of control, and the terran basically stop losing units as long as the terran isn't behind on upgrades.
So once aggression starts, do it a lot, try picking off infestors, don't clump units, and drop multiple locations at once.
For example:
- If the zerg is defending with lings on patrol, or with mass spines, doing a drop where you kill off the units and a queen, or a couple of spines, before retreating, healing up, and doing it again, is hellish to deal with because you have to constantly be on top of rebuilding defensens, move the right amount of units to every location.
- Constantly being aggressive towards the main, and taking out tech buildings and defenses there, is very scary for the zerg to deal with because you are likely to overcommit to defenses there.
- Prioritize killing drones over killing hatches. A good stephano style is saving his 16 drones (800 minerals) and letting his hatchery (350 minerals) die, and just move his drones to a new location. Kill the drones first, and if you don't get the hatch as well - you can drop again later.
You basically want to tax the other players multitasking skills.
And yeah, it's really hard, because that means you have to multitask as well.
|
Well I think everything has been mentioned, thanks in large part to Morrow, but I think I'll throw in my 2c.
I play this style as Zerg and I far prefer it over Muta/Ling/Bling. In my experience, there are no obvious exploits you can abuse as Terran, but there are some adjustments you can make to help you more effectively combat this style (pardon the repition):
* Emphasis on MMM: the worst part about playing against MMM is not the drops, but the fact that Terran has already "accounted" for your super quick ultra switch. Ultras are only really good against the entrenched siege style. A smart Zerg might throw down a spire as he's going hive setting himself up for a broodlord switch.
* The early Viking is a bitch, it forces Zerg to have good creep spread since he has to split up his army between his bases and requires the creep for an early warning against a big push
* Abuse the terrain. Forcing lings and Ultras to wrap around terrain features to get to tanks makes our blood boil.
* Ghosts are still scary!
* Wall-offs and good simcitying can literally win you the game, just as bad simcitying can lose you the game. Players who play this style well will attempt to delay your push with backstabs and counterattacks.
* Fast upgrades. There is nothing more demoralizing than hitting 3/3 and thinking you have a huge upgrade advantage and then seeing marines at like 2/3 or something. Lings are really the crux to this composition, if your marines can stand their own against the lings, you're suddenly forcing a lot more fungals and you're better equipped to deal with those ultras.
* Make sure you scout that Hive and prepare accordingly! This style is really about getting Hive asap, pure ling/infestor can be aggressive but zerg will struggle to close out the game if he's not at a massive advantage.
* Sensor towers are less vulnerable due to lack of Mutas and can help you defend counter attacks and drops. (Zerg drops is another element this style lends itself to, so beware!)
* When I see Cloaked Banshees, I put down a spire just to deal with them. It's really tough to play against them, they might be most abusive thing Terran can do against this style.
To me Ling/Infestor seems like a solid style, I don't think it's as gimmicky as it used to be. It's popularity and effectiveness will die down in the coming months as Terrans figure it out more, and then we'll see offshoots of this style (Stephano already has a few, as does DRG and Nestea). Quick Hive will become less viable as Terrans figure out the timings and execute them, and more midgame units (Roaches or Banelings) will come into play.
If I had to make a prediction, I'd also say that this will be the foundation for the first big ZvT style in HoTS: Vipers in particular will make a good addition to this style, possibly replacing the infestor. The tunneling buff to Ultras will also aid this.
I hope some Terrans can glean something useful from this. ZvT is shaping up to be a wonderful matchup in SC2, with a broad range of styles available to both sides, I'm excited to see where it will go in the coming months.
|
On March 13 2012 14:07 MorroW wrote:
i think theres a keypart in the micro control
normally youd think you want to spread your bio and the tanks to abuse him being melee and using fungal as this super aoe but i think this is actually wrong way to approach it.
lings with high upgrades rip through bio thats spread out
i think its better to keep most of your army in a clump, especially the siege tanks pretty close together. as soon as zerg attacks, scan on it and youll see the infestors well ahead and then you target them all down with the tanks while sitting still with all bio in a clump
if you kill all infestors with the tanks, the lings wont stand a chance at all seeing how theres almost no surface area to fight the bio with
a big thing that makes mutalisk scary is that they deny drops, vikings and creates huge threats of counterattacks.
good sim city should should deal with counterattacks very easy vs ling infestor
a viking can roam around the map pretty uncontested hunting overlords aswell as patrolling the edges of zergs base to make it impossible for him to know if a drop is coming etc
to actually mass drop everywhere as some might think is a good way to abuse ling infestor i dont think this is very true.
lings are super mobile and 1 infestor with a handful of lings shut down drops super cost efficiently.
as long as your not forcing him to be on a certain part of the map, his units will be spread out across all bases to deal with these sorts of drops. therefor i think its more crucial to work on frontal power pushes.
the need for no turrets or leaving many units at home while pushing or threats to just die from any attacks of zerg (when bane speed and mutas would normally be out) allows you to get upgrades going super quick and establish a ton of econ and infrastructure.
then once you reach this high tank count and maybe 2-2 upgrades (example) you can start putting the real heavy pressure on.
its key to capitalize on the things mutalisk are normally for
the most normal way i see terrans fail against this style is:
-they waste too much units trying to get lucky drops
-they dont build up or plan real timing attacks
-they fail micro control and misunderstand how this army should be fought
-they are too passive or push too slow, allowing the ultras or broodlords to come out just in time
-they dont know how to push on the map without getting caught offguard and their entire army owned because of it
whenever i play vs infestor i feel more comfortable than vs rly good mutalisk players. it feels like i should win every battle unless i get caught unsieged or fail to target down the infestors with the tanks.
a good tip for the ones who have trouble getting caught unsieged against this style - keep a medivac well up infront of your army or have it follow the zerg army constantly. youd be amazed how much effort and energy it takes to kill 1 medivac with infestors. if they do it just send another one, after 2-3 medivacs are killed like this they wont even have energy left lol
ive also seen polt send in fake drops (empty medivac) into zerg bases that he knew are guarded by many infestors just to trigger him to kill it with purely infestor energy
another thing that you can do, but is pretty abusive (invest alot to counter infestor style without actually scouting it) is starting to tech cloak banshees early on. im not saying 1base cloak banshee. but if you start building cloak banshees from 1 starport after your 2base. you make it soo much harder for them to do anything at all. id recommend fooling around with this abit and see how it feels.
i think its super good anyway
the infestor ling play is quite easy to play with compared to mutalisk play. so it creates a false illusion that its super strong because the zergs your facing are harder to win against compared if they play mutalisk
naruto also gave some great points aswell. its super key to not lose your hellions (much moreso compared if they play bane muta ling) and going 6-8 hellions just to make it almost impossible for them to creep spread or take a 3rd is pretty darn good
Not the thread starter, but thank you so much for this advice. Amazing. Going to use it in my games. For those who don't know, morrow knows more about the tvz/zvt matchup than probably anyone else in the world. Golden nuggets right here .
|
On March 13 2012 17:41 Tobberoth wrote:
I don't use the style much myself, but from my dabblings in it, it'd say there are two things you can abuse:
1. Infestors are slow as crap and the only decent antiair of the zerg. Use drops, but be sure to be quick about it, an infestor catching your whole medivac and marine force is terrible. It was stated in this thread earlier that drops don't work against a zerg who has 6 spines at each expansion.. well duh, you can't attack with mutas when a terran has 20 turrets either, the drops obviously have to be used long before a zerg can afford 6 spines per base.
2. The timing where a zerg is going for infestors is a weak spot, there's only lings for defense and infestors take quite a while to build. If you can time a big bio push at this point, you will do big damage.
Other than that, it's important to bank on the fact that infestors are slow defensive units, it should be relatively easy to expand as long as the ling runbys can be handled. As for late game situations, I really don't know. Ghosts are obviously strong against infestors and infestors are not all that great against mech, but then again, a zerg will have T3 by the late lategame with this build.
The 20 turret comparison is terrible. 1 Turret roughly equals 1 spine when comparing mutas/turrets vs spines/8rines-medivac
Of course you wouldn't attack 20 turrets, however zergs can, and often do, attack SIX turrets with their mutas when they reach around 20. The problem with this is that your rines/medivac don't have the mobility of mutas so you can't drop 20 rines to kill a base or the zerg will just a-move into the rest of your army and roll you.
However, it does seem that bio seems to be one of the better ways to deal with this style (ironically) because of it's greater mobility and that it doesn't need to be stuck in one place (seiged) to be effective. Plus it's easier to micro and get a big army with.
|
On March 13 2012 07:34 Silvertine wrote:
Just use Polt as an example. MMM is a bitch to play against when you use that style.
This.
I also suggest looking at VileIllusion's playstyle. He likes to go bio vs zerg.
You have to remember that you must utilize the fact that he's not investing in mutas. Drop everywhere! Just make sure that you keep and eye on the drops before they get to the drop point in case of any infestors near by
|
Another thing that I feel has been neglected a bit - similar to morrows point about targeting tanks with infestors, I have a lot of success with sending a few marauders slightly ahead of my marines to shift-kill infestors as he moves in. He is basically forced to back away or waste multiple fungals on marauders if you have marines a bit behind (out of fungal range but can protect marauders). This + constant drops with pure bio is what I have most success with.
|
Sorry for my stupidity, but what is a MMM?
|
I think it was in one of his appearances in Code S where Stephano got pretty much raped by MVP who went for a timing attack at around 9 minutes with around 8 BF hellions and a shitton of CS marines. If the Z doesn't get the perfect surround there is not much he can do if you micro your hellions a little bit, all his lings just die.
|
United States97276 Posts
On March 14 2012 23:54 DEAF wrote:
Sorry for my stupidity, but what is a MMM?
marine marauder medivac
|
Since we are theorycrafting let me add to it. I watch lots of his vod's and I think what people are missing is that Stephano plays very reactively by scouting and map awareness - he understands the weaknesses and strengths of his army compared to yours and how to safely transition or turn a disadvantage into an advantage. Thus he predicts what you will likely do and reacts accordingly.
- You invest in mass BFH and marines - he has ling/roach/queen/infestor ready.
- You do drops, he has lings/queens and infestors at each of the outer bases as well as the middle covered.
- You do air, he has mass queen/infestor and is knocking at your front door with ling/roach.
- You try to get 3 bases saturated, he has 5+ bases a ton of spines and heavily upgraded ling/Blord/Infestor/Corruptors by the time you move out or mass ultra instead of Blord.
- You all- in push into his main, he counterattacks into all of yours while getting another 2 bases.
The premise for how to beat Stephano is wrong - I don't think just doing X strategy or X unit composition beats him. This thread is about Stephano and if you watch his VOD's you will quickly know that he knows exactly how to stay safe or crush you with what he has against whatever you have. He already has in place a PLAN for everything you do, a unit composition is not going to help you auto-win against Stephano.
"You have 5 collossi and 10 zealots that have destroyed my main and natural...that's ok I know how these 12 lings can beat that" (seriously watch his VOD's on his stream channel with WhiteRa - 2 hours in on Shakuras and prepare to be enlightened). While WhiteRa wrote the book for Special Tactics, Stephano reviewed every page before print.
To beat Stephano or any top Zerg player means you have to beat the man, not his immidiate unit composition.
Good luck with that.
|
I got this notes from QXC when i watched QXC's stream a few months ago. I took a screeshot of his notes when i saw that. want to share to the terran community.
- ghost to emp
- maurader to kill ultra
- sensor tower to check for nydus
- very spread out tanks to control space
- infestor strength increases as time goes on either try to do timing before or just as infestor comes out (only 1 fungal/min energy) or double expand to take advantage of weakness of unit
- vs hive 4-6 tanks max
- 10-20 ghosts
- 8-10 medivacs
- rest marine/marauder
- some vikings if BL
- make ghosts as soon as scout infestor
- constant drops to deny extra bases (1-3 medivac always out on the map)
- transition into some marauders as soon as see hive
- fast 3/3
- pf all bases except for natural
- keep creep spread down
|
Watch polt... drops everywhere. He also often does an 8~9 minute push with combat shield marines and blue flame hellions. It's very effective against ling infestor builds with proper micro (infestors haven't popped yet).
It takes more effort to respond to a drop than to initiate one. And with infestors they're even more difficult to deal with.
|
You dont, the only people in the world that actually can beat him consistently is :
DRG
parting
MMA
MVP - maybe not now cos he is in a slump
Thats it. And even MVP, parting and MMA are questionable.
|
On March 18 2012 11:11 Josh_rakoons wrote:
You dont, the only people in the world that actually can beat him consistently is :
DRG
parting
MMA
MVP - maybe not now cos he is in a slump
Thats it. And even MVP, parting and MMA are questionable.
Polt should be there too.
|
On March 14 2012 14:58 genius_man16 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 17:41 Tobberoth wrote:
I don't use the style much myself, but from my dabblings in it, it'd say there are two things you can abuse:
1. Infestors are slow as crap and the only decent antiair of the zerg. Use drops, but be sure to be quick about it, an infestor catching your whole medivac and marine force is terrible. It was stated in this thread earlier that drops don't work against a zerg who has 6 spines at each expansion.. well duh, you can't attack with mutas when a terran has 20 turrets either, the drops obviously have to be used long before a zerg can afford 6 spines per base.
2. The timing where a zerg is going for infestors is a weak spot, there's only lings for defense and infestors take quite a while to build. If you can time a big bio push at this point, you will do big damage.
Other than that, it's important to bank on the fact that infestors are slow defensive units, it should be relatively easy to expand as long as the ling runbys can be handled. As for late game situations, I really don't know. Ghosts are obviously strong against infestors and infestors are not all that great against mech, but then again, a zerg will have T3 by the late lategame with this build. The 20 turret comparison is terrible. 1 Turret roughly equals 1 spine when comparing mutas/turrets vs spines/8rines-medivac Of course you wouldn't attack 20 turrets, however zergs can, and often do, attack SIX turrets with their mutas when they reach around 20. The problem with this is that your rines/medivac don't have the mobility of mutas so you can't drop 20 rines to kill a base or the zerg will just a-move into the rest of your army and roll you. However, it does seem that bio seems to be one of the better ways to deal with this style (ironically) because of it's greater mobility and that it doesn't need to be stuck in one place (seiged) to be effective. Plus it's easier to micro and get a big army with.
What?
Attacking six turrets with 20 mutalisks? That will NEVER work out well for the zerg player.
|
On March 18 2012 11:11 Josh_rakoons wrote:
You dont, the only people in the world that actually can beat him consistently is :
DRG
parting
MMA
MVP - maybe not now cos he is in a slump
Thats it. And even MVP, parting and MMA are questionable.
I find this hard to believe
|
On March 13 2012 14:07 MorroW wrote:
i think theres a keypart in the micro control
normally youd think you want to spread your bio and the tanks to abuse him being melee and using fungal as this super aoe but i think this is actually wrong way to approach it.
lings with high upgrades rip through bio thats spread out
i think its better to keep most of your army in a clump, especially the siege tanks pretty close together. as soon as zerg attacks, scan on it and youll see the infestors well ahead and then you target them all down with the tanks while sitting still with all bio in a clump
if you kill all infestors with the tanks, the lings wont stand a chance at all seeing how theres almost no surface area to fight the bio with
a big thing that makes mutalisk scary is that they deny drops, vikings and creates huge threats of counterattacks.
good sim city should should deal with counterattacks very easy vs ling infestor
a viking can roam around the map pretty uncontested hunting overlords aswell as patrolling the edges of zergs base to make it impossible for him to know if a drop is coming etc
to actually mass drop everywhere as some might think is a good way to abuse ling infestor i dont think this is very true.
lings are super mobile and 1 infestor with a handful of lings shut down drops super cost efficiently.
as long as your not forcing him to be on a certain part of the map, his units will be spread out across all bases to deal with these sorts of drops. therefor i think its more crucial to work on frontal power pushes.
the need for no turrets or leaving many units at home while pushing or threats to just die from any attacks of zerg (when bane speed and mutas would normally be out) allows you to get upgrades going super quick and establish a ton of econ and infrastructure.
then once you reach this high tank count and maybe 2-2 upgrades (example) you can start putting the real heavy pressure on.
its key to capitalize on the things mutalisk are normally for
the most normal way i see terrans fail against this style is:
-they waste too much units trying to get lucky drops
-they dont build up or plan real timing attacks
-they fail micro control and misunderstand how this army should be fought
-they are too passive or push too slow, allowing the ultras or broodlords to come out just in time
-they dont know how to push on the map without getting caught offguard and their entire army owned because of it
whenever i play vs infestor i feel more comfortable than vs rly good mutalisk players. it feels like i should win every battle unless i get caught unsieged or fail to target down the infestors with the tanks.
a good tip for the ones who have trouble getting caught unsieged against this style - keep a medivac well up infront of your army or have it follow the zerg army constantly. youd be amazed how much effort and energy it takes to kill 1 medivac with infestors. if they do it just send another one, after 2-3 medivacs are killed like this they wont even have energy left lol
ive also seen polt send in fake drops (empty medivac) into zerg bases that he knew are guarded by many infestors just to trigger him to kill it with purely infestor energy
another thing that you can do, but is pretty abusive (invest alot to counter infestor style without actually scouting it) is starting to tech cloak banshees early on. im not saying 1base cloak banshee. but if you start building cloak banshees from 1 starport after your 2base. you make it soo much harder for them to do anything at all. id recommend fooling around with this abit and see how it feels.
i think its super good anyway
the infestor ling play is quite easy to play with compared to mutalisk play. so it creates a false illusion that its super strong because the zergs your facing are harder to win against compared if they play mutalisk
naruto also gave some great points aswell. its super key to not lose your hellions (much moreso compared if they play bane muta ling) and going 6-8 hellions just to make it almost impossible for them to creep spread or take a 3rd is pretty darn good
Thank you. You are a saint.
|
As a masters Zerg that has been playing this style basically since Mr Bitter posted about it forever ago I can tell you that if Terran just keeps even on upgrades they do fine with mmm and a few tanks and a low medivac count.
|
On March 18 2012 12:29 BinxyBrown wrote:
As a masters Zerg that has been playing this style basically since Mr Bitter posted about it forever ago I can tell you that if Terran just keeps even on upgrades they do fine with mmm and a few tanks and a low medivac count.
You want to open a fast expansion into heavy marine with perhaps a couple marauders and double ebay, get 1-1 early, get 2-2 early, get tanks a little later than usual, go for a relatively quick third base, then just power out units and pressure on 3 base as hard as you can until 3-3 finishes while denying the fourth, as long as zerg had to work hard to get the gasses at their 4th their t3 is going to be really weak initially which will give you time to get 3-3 where you can trade effectively the rest of the game since static defense is now really weak vs the 3-3 marine marauder.
Many terrans overproduce medivacs, I think 4 for army maintenance and 2 for drops is a good number, any more and you really hurt the DPS of your army also a low scv count is recommended as your upgrades finish, around 60 seems like a good number to have late game, once your main dries out you float to a 4th and keep applying pressure until you win.
edit- above was supposed to be an edit lol
|
On March 18 2012 12:32 BinxyBrown wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2012 12:29 BinxyBrown wrote:
As a masters Zerg that has been playing this style basically since Mr Bitter posted about it forever ago I can tell you that if Terran just keeps even on upgrades they do fine with mmm and a few tanks and a low medivac count. You want to open a fast expansion into heavy marine with perhaps a couple marauders and double ebay, get 1-1 early, get 2-2 early, get tanks a little later than usual, go for a relatively quick third base, then just power out units and pressure on 3 base as hard as you can until 3-3 finishes while denying the fourth, as long as zerg had to work hard to get the gasses at their 4th their t3 is going to be really weak initially which will give you time to get 3-3 where you can trade effectively the rest of the game since static defense is now really weak vs the 3-3 marine marauder. Many terrans overproduce medivacs, I think 4 for army maintenance and 2 for drops is a good number, any more and you really hurt the DPS of your army also a low scv count is recommended as your upgrades finish, around 60 seems like a good number to have late game, once your main dries out you float to a 4th and keep applying pressure until you win. edit- above was supposed to be an edit lol
without a high medivac count the bio ball dies every time. you want enough to be able to live through fungals while also having some out on the map dropping at the same time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.kingpepper.com/gifs/bat.gif)
