Hello everyone, my name is MrLlama and I'm a Starcraft 2 Caster/Masters zerg player.
One thing that always bugged me about the zerg race (and protoss) is that we rarely ever see drops being utilized when honestly I think we have even better drop options than terran. Protoss can warp in units to make a drop feel unlimited and zergs have 20+ dropships lying around for the small cost of 300/300 (speed + drop)
Anyways, after seeing a lack of drops being used I decided to come up with my own build that aims for that strong max zerg army which can avoid the one thing that protoss armies need to survive... + Show Spoiler +
forcefields
This build does work against FFE or against gate expand but I find it is easier to execute against FFE since you aren't pressured too much.
For the first part of this build it is simply normal zerg 3 base play as follows: 15Pool 16 Overlord 16 Queen 18 4x zerglings 20 Hatchery (Natural Expansion) 19 2-4x Drone 21-23 Hatchery (Third Base) 20-22 Queen 22 Overlord 22 7x Drones 29 Queen From here you simply need to drone/overlord as you normally would. When necessary, make a couple lings to defend a scouting zealot and always be on the look out for probes.
Here we start making it a little more of our own. I also switch over to time as opposed to supply since your supply varies based on your macro and how many supply blocks you had and such. 6:30 2x Gas 7:00 3rd Gas
6:45-7:15 Roach Warren 7:00 evo
8:00 Lair 7:35 Missile Attacks Level 1 Make Roaches as needed to defend. Pure roach can hold off gate pressure at this point, you will add hydras later for when they have a stronger push. 8:15 4th Gas 8:45 5th Gas 9:15 6th Gas 9:10 2nd Evo 9:30 - Lair completed - Start Roach speed and Hydra Den 9:45 Ground Carapace Level 1 10:15 Missile Attacks Level 2 10:20 - Start Overlord Drop Upgrade 10:20 - Start Hydralisk Range Upgrade Start Making Hydras and Roaches intermixed. 11:30 Start Overlord Speed Upgrade (so it will match up with Drop Completing)
At around 12:30 you should be at 165+ supply depending on how well you macroed before and how many losses you took defending. I actually have maxed at 12:30 with this build including a decent amount of hydras so it's possible to still max at a decent time. At this point, push out with your army and start walking over towards your opponents base. Also have your overlords kind of grouped up beforehand so you aren't searching for overlords when you push. 12:30 - Take a 4th base When you get to his base, load up. If he is inside of his base that's okay, move your overlords over his army and drop.
IMPORTANT: Drop while moving by pressing "D" and clicking on each overlord. You do not want your overlords to have to stop and drop.
OPTIONAL: take 2 of your loaded overlords and send them around to his mineral lines. This creates a 3 pronged attack and makes it so even if he holds, he will be short on probes as roach+hydra snipe off probes very quickly.
Set your hatch rally to the front of his base so you can start attacking there while doing damage up top. 13:00 - Spire if he has too many collosus and you can't seem to focus fire them down. Back your rally off a tiny bit and prepare to go for a 2nd drop since he will have a lot less units now but you will still be maxed. Also start making corrupters to deal with the collo. 14:00-15:00 Take a 5th base and throw down an infestation pit to start working towards late game. From there if you haven't won, you can transition into the late game and continue with your upgrades. Do not be afraid to overmake corrupters as the only thing he has to deal with your army is collosus so once they are dead he has to back off or you can charge him and drop him.
Q: What happens if they go for a 2 base push/all in (Immortals, blink stalkers, etc) A: This is where the hydras will do wonders for you. Having a Roach/Hydra army with range gives you SO much more Dps that you otherwise lacked. This was the main reason I actually started adding hydras into my builds because I would lose to 2 base all ins despite being like 170/200 roach vs 115/200 their army. The roach simply does not have the damage necessary nor the range vs good ff's. The problem that I faced was after getting hydras, I couldn't push into their base since they would have ff's and then they would simply tech to collo, push out, and I'd lose then. By adding drops I was able to force an engagement which is exactly what zerg wants to do (and the engagement would be on top of their forces so forcefields wouldn't do much for them.
Q: Won't you lose overlords by dropping on top of their army? A: Yes, sometimes you will. There are 2 things to say about this though. The first thing is if you drop with an overlord early before you get to the army, all of his army will start to fire at the 4 units dropped which will give you time to move your other overlords over his army. If he focus fires your overlords, big deal it really doesn't hurt too much. You have a 200/200 army vs his 120/200 army. Would you sacrifice 8-16 supply to get an engagement where forcefields didn't matter? I sure know I would.
Q: What about 2 base Collosus Timings? A: Yes, this can be difficult to hold. That is kind of the counter to this build but even then you are not completely out of it. If you scout he is going for that, you can simply invest more into roaches and less into hydras (since they get destroyed). The other thing is, by investing a lot into the collosus tech, they generally have less of a ground army with their push (or it comes later) so you can drop down a spire and start getting some corrupters out.
Q: When do I not want to engage his army? A: When he has 3 or more collosus. I've find through experience that generally I can handle 2 collosus if I get good position on them (always try to keep a couple overlords full that you just move around with the collosus and drop right on top of them then focus fire). However, once he hits 3-4 collosus they simply melt your army too quickly and you are going to need corrupters. As I said before, feel free to overmake corrupters (10-12 easy) and just try and snipe his collo, even if it cost a few corrupters. Because as soon as you can get those numbers down, your army becomes more powerful and you can drop all over him.
Q: Are there variations to this build? A: YES! This build is just something that I've been playing around with for the last month and I'd actually like other people to try stuff out to see what works better. Maybe invest the gas into banelings instead of roaches? I know for a long time I just did the drop with 0/1 upgrades but now I've recently worked it in to a 1/2 upgrade hit which makes it that much stronger AND gives you a better transition into later game if they hold it off. I think there is still a lot unexplored here but I really just wanted to utilize Stephano's 200/200 max army and make it even stronger/able to force engagements.
Q: I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras A: There are 4 major reasons for this. Now I can say that I have simply gone roach hydra ling and hit lots of timings without drop that absolutely crush, but those feel different and generally work better on more open maps where it's easier to hit multiple fronts. 1. hydras are slow. I think we can all agree that hydras need a speed buff or upgrade option at the hydra den. The overlord speed gives your hydras this speed since they can just carry them everywhere. (PLUS ADDED BONUS: Overlords can drop creep so when you do drops in his base, tell all 20 of your overlords to spread creep and you will get a nice laugh) 2. I watched 10 pro replays PvZ that lasted longer than 15 minutes. After discarding the games that were really weird because of too many units lost early on, the average protoss army at 13 minutes was 120/200 supply. Now I have a 200/200 army at that time with a lot of dps thanks to the hydras. Tell me what is the one thing that protoss was given to makeup for this difference and defend at all points in the game? FORCEFIELDS. How many engagements have you had with a protoss army where you know you would absolutely crush him except for the fact that he had forcefields? Too many to count for me at least. So this is where I decided to completely abuse the fact that we get 25 dropships instantaneously and just get drop/speed to fly right over his army and negate forcefields from doing anything. Not only can you negate forcefields in the engagement, but you can negate simcity and terrain difficulties. Think about playing on shakuras plateau and trying to kill off the protoss base by fighting up the ramp. With sim city, ramps, and forcefields, you simply cannot engage up his ramp. This gives him time to sit back, relax, and make a few collosus until he has that deathball amount that just hurts so much to deal with. By getting drops, you can just fly right past this and drop in a position that is favorable for you instead, thus crushing him and forcing an engagement. 3. Hydras are a great defensive unit but honestly they are a dead tech path and so the longer you sit on them, the less valuable they become. You NEED to trade up to start working towards your later game army and so I decided rather than trading trying to push up a ramp and getting obliterated, why not trade more cost efficiently by dropping into his base. 4. you now have DROPS! If you watch my youtube video I showcase the beauty of having drops by not only dropping on top of his army to avoid forcefields, but also dropping his main and third base mineral lines. The more places that the protoss player has to focus, the more chance of mistake for him to make and the better off you are. From there on out you can continue to do drops (maybe infestor drops late game or ling drops or anything) and this is a part of the game that is pretty much completely unexplored in this match up. Now all of the sudden toss players have to start worrying about drops and worst case they have to throw up cannons at their mineral lines which is less money for their army.
Something else I would simply like to point out is now you have DROP PLAY! Most protoss players never have to deal with drops from a zerg so all of the sudden you can start sending in 1 overlord to each mineral line full of hydras and just completely wreck his probes. Pick up, back out, and repeat. Eventually this will force him to get cannons or leave units there and it will just be an added annoyance for protoss players to deal with in the ZvP match up.
If there is anything else added to my guide that you would like to see, please let me know. This is my first guide so it's probably going to have a few mistakes/be missing a few things.
Edit: As requested, here are additional replays. I would like to state that these replays are a LOT earlier versions though before I refined it more to my liking so they are very rough around the edges and the timings are probably different. Regardless, you still get to see the playstyle.
This is almost exactly how I play all of my ZvPs, except what I do is take 4 gasses a little earlier, and start drops as soon as lair is finished. O.O Glad to see its not just me doing this haha
On May 02 2012 05:23 GenesisX wrote: This is almost exactly how I play all of my ZvPs, except what I do is take 4 gasses a little earlier, and start drops as soon as lair is finished. O.O Glad to see its not just me doing this haha
When do you drop then?
I start my drops a little later so that I can push out and be ready to drop with a 200/200 army.
Do you drop earlier to keep them in their base so that you can expand behind it? I thought about that some for sure.
Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
nice post, I feel like this would do pretty poorly versus double stargate play and relies heavily on micro... whether or not your overlords are spotted and there will be a lot of target firing and so forth.
I feel like my build will beat roach/hydra pretty easily, however, if you were to drop pure hydra I could be in a lot of trouble depending on how the micro goes.
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
If you scout/ react you are going to be too late, I will have a critical mass of VRs to stack and deal with the Hydras. The 9-10 minute timing you mentioned is I believe the build that I can lose to, but nobody does it because its a blind all-in that can be defended (but still it beats me, I think)
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
If you scout/ react you are going to be too late, I will have a critical mass of VRs to stack and deal with the Hydras. The 9-10 minute timing you mentioned is I believe the build that I can lose to, but nobody does it because its a blind all-in that can be defended (but still it beats me, I think)
Well I mean the whole point of this game is reacting. It's like someone saying "well judging by your build, I will just hit you with a 7gate all in at 7:30 (cutting gas) and win everytime." I mean clearly when I see this stuff, I react differently. If I see you take all that early gas, I know you are double stargating and I will spore, get all my extractors quickly, and go veryyy heavy hydra. I'll also get an overseer in there and if I scout a fleetbeacon I'll probably get corrupters to go with my hydras.
I think it'd be fun to mash up the 2 builds against each other though PM me if interested
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
If you scout/ react you are going to be too late, I will have a critical mass of VRs to stack and deal with the Hydras. The 9-10 minute timing you mentioned is I believe the build that I can lose to, but nobody does it because its a blind all-in that can be defended (but still it beats me, I think)
Well I mean the whole point of this game is reacting. It's like someone saying "well judging by your build, I will just hit you with a 7gate all in at 7:30 (cutting gas) and win everytime." I mean clearly when I see this stuff, I react differently. If I see you take all that early gas, I know you are double stargating and I will spore, get all my extractors quickly, and go veryyy heavy hydra. I'll also get an overseer in there and if I scout a fleetbeacon I'll probably get corrupters to go with my hydras.
Yeah thats my point, I'm beating hydras and late hydra drops. I just wanted to point out that you cant bust a double stargate that is played well, thats all. (As long as you didnt rush for the blind 2 base hydra allin), the macro game can go either way, of course, but its my belief (based on many games) that you absolutely cannot bust a double stargate open if all of the gas is spend on voidrays/mothership (unless you do the blind/fast all-in variant)
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
Yeah I think at that point it would just play out into the rest of the game. infestor corrupter HAS to be brutal to deal with...
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
If you scout/ react you are going to be too late, I will have a critical mass of VRs to stack and deal with the Hydras. The 9-10 minute timing you mentioned is I believe the build that I can lose to, but nobody does it because its a blind all-in that can be defended (but still it beats me, I think)
Well I mean the whole point of this game is reacting. It's like someone saying "well judging by your build, I will just hit you with a 7gate all in at 7:30 (cutting gas) and win everytime." I mean clearly when I see this stuff, I react differently. If I see you take all that early gas, I know you are double stargating and I will spore, get all my extractors quickly, and go veryyy heavy hydra. I'll also get an overseer in there and if I scout a fleetbeacon I'll probably get corrupters to go with my hydras.
Yeah thats my point, I'm beating hydras and late hydra drops. I just wanted to point out that you cant bust a double stargate that is played well, thats all. (As long as you didnt rush for the blind 2 base hydra allin), the macro game can go either way, of course, but its my belief (based on many games) that you absolutely cannot bust a double stargate open if all of the gas is spend on voidrays/mothership (unless you do the blind/fast all-in variant)
Yeah I think at that point it would just play out into the rest of the game. infestor corrupter HAS to be brutal to deal with...
On May 02 2012 14:50 BriTadeb wrote: Nice guide, I want to try it But what's up with stargate or double stargate ? You can't really drop when there are 8+ phenix on the field ! Can you upload replay vs immo sentry all-in ?
if they go stargate that is the best thing ever because you just opened with hydra...lol
the 3rd replay I provide is me vs a guy who opens double stargate and he just leaves once he sees my army basically
I'll also find a replay vs immo sentry all in if I can. I don't know what all I have saved but I think I may have a good one of that.
the guy you played went double stargate, made a few phoenix, and then lost them all, and then spent the rest of his gas on a massive double robo tech switch, lol.
At 13 minutes I have 8 Void Rays and 1 Mothership (with bad macro, and a sloppy build) so Roach Hydra I dont think will beat this. I do agree however, that this will work against lots of forcefield based defenses.
Why not just do a pure hydra drop?
Yeah I think at that point it would just play out into the rest of the game. infestor corrupter HAS to be brutal to deal with...
If I saw you going mass void ray/mothership I would just pump out a lot more hydras and I think you would be in trouble.
pure hydra drop doesn't work for 2 reasons here 1. it's too weak. hydras need something to tank some shots 2. hydras are too gas expensive. by the time you max out on hydra you would be wayyy too late and he would have collosus. I do some pure hydra drops but those are at like 9-10 minutes off of 2 bases and are way more all in.
If you scout/ react you are going to be too late, I will have a critical mass of VRs to stack and deal with the Hydras. The 9-10 minute timing you mentioned is I believe the build that I can lose to, but nobody does it because its a blind all-in that can be defended (but still it beats me, I think)
Well I mean the whole point of this game is reacting. It's like someone saying "well judging by your build, I will just hit you with a 7gate all in at 7:30 (cutting gas) and win everytime." I mean clearly when I see this stuff, I react differently. If I see you take all that early gas, I know you are double stargating and I will spore, get all my extractors quickly, and go veryyy heavy hydra. I'll also get an overseer in there and if I scout a fleetbeacon I'll probably get corrupters to go with my hydras.
Yeah thats my point, I'm beating hydras and late hydra drops. I just wanted to point out that you cant bust a double stargate that is played well, thats all. (As long as you didnt rush for the blind 2 base hydra allin), the macro game can go either way, of course, but its my belief (based on many games) that you absolutely cannot bust a double stargate open if all of the gas is spend on voidrays/mothership (unless you do the blind/fast all-in variant)
Yeah I think at that point it would just play out into the rest of the game. infestor corrupter HAS to be brutal to deal with...
Infestor Corruptor is indeed the proper response, I've had a lot of games against it and its really interesting.
Really like this build, very nice guide and video.
One thing i was wondering is; say toss's army is balled up in his natural with a few buildings and cannons around, will the drop still work? I can forsee problems like there not being enough room to drop enough units fast enough to overwhelm the protoss army, and instead your roach/hydra gets picked off bit by bit as it drops out.
Have you had any experience in this type of situation? Maybe you should simply drop his army when it's out of position? Or maybe it works fine anyway (haven't tried it yet meself).
On May 02 2012 18:06 Zrana wrote: Really like this build, very nice guide and video.
One thing i was wondering is; say toss's army is balled up in his natural with a few buildings and cannons around, will the drop still work? I can forsee problems like there not being enough room to drop enough units fast enough to overwhelm the protoss army, and instead your roach/hydra gets picked off bit by bit as it drops out.
Have you had any experience in this type of situation? Maybe you should simply drop his army when it's out of position? Or maybe it works fine anyway (haven't tried it yet meself).
in this scenario i would drop in the main and get a favorable concave above the ramp
On May 02 2012 18:06 Zrana wrote: Really like this build, very nice guide and video.
One thing i was wondering is; say toss's army is balled up in his natural with a few buildings and cannons around, will the drop still work? I can forsee problems like there not being enough room to drop enough units fast enough to overwhelm the protoss army, and instead your roach/hydra gets picked off bit by bit as it drops out.
Have you had any experience in this type of situation? Maybe you should simply drop his army when it's out of position? Or maybe it works fine anyway (haven't tried it yet meself).
pretty much exactly what Fogetaboudit said.
It's actually the best scenario when you don't have to drop on top of them because they are at their natural. Simply swoop your overlords into his main and drop right above his ramp. Then he is stuck trying to push up and you have the concave and he loses that battle.
Just remember if he has collosus to back off a tiny bit so you can get them into a place where you can focus them down.
In the meantime, kill off his tech so he can't reinforce!
It's really interesting. This is exactly what I'm trying to do but without the hydras. I do a couple things differently thought: - I don't get Hydras. - I don't get as much upgrade.
This has the effect of hitting really earlier. (I.e. I research drop as soon as my lair finish).
However, as you pointed out, I have also difficulty against stalker push where I have 170+ supply of ling/roaches but get owned by a 115 food army. I'll try to add hydras and drop a bit later and see how it turns out. That'd be cool if you can include others replays as you mentioned.
On May 02 2012 18:06 Zrana wrote: Really like this build, very nice guide and video.
One thing i was wondering is; say toss's army is balled up in his natural with a few buildings and cannons around, will the drop still work? I can forsee problems like there not being enough room to drop enough units fast enough to overwhelm the protoss army, and instead your roach/hydra gets picked off bit by bit as it drops out.
Have you had any experience in this type of situation? Maybe you should simply drop his army when it's out of position? Or maybe it works fine anyway (haven't tried it yet meself).
pretty much exactly what Fogetaboudit said.
It's actually the best scenario when you don't have to drop on top of them because they are at their natural. Simply swoop your overlords into his main and drop right above his ramp. Then he is stuck trying to push up and you have the concave and he loses that battle.
Just remember if he has collosus to back off a tiny bit so you can get them into a place where you can focus them down.
In the meantime, kill off his tech so he can't reinforce!
On May 03 2012 02:49 phzbox wrote: It's really interesting. This is exactly what I'm trying to do but without the hydras. I do a couple things differently thought: - I don't get Hydras. - I don't get as much upgrade.
This has the effect of hitting really earlier. (I.e. I research drop as soon as my lair finish).
However, as you pointed out, I have also difficulty against stalker push where I have 170+ supply of ling/roaches but get owned by a 115 food army. I'll try to add hydras and drop a bit later and see how it turns out. That'd be cool if you can include others replays as you mentioned.
Yeah I added the hydras because they are such a good defensive unit. The only problem with them of course is that they are slow and weak, so I figured by loading them into overlords and adding roaches to tank, I could get the most use out of them. Not going hydras of course will give you a faster hit so really it just depends how you want to play the style, just like any sort of strategy.
Also, I have added 4 more replays now due to all of the requests.
How many drones do you normally go up to when making hydras? Hyun had about 62 drones and when he saw my ~9:30 third, he only made about 8 roaches and the rest hydra ling (started ling speed after hydra range) and cut the 6th gas. What do you think about cutting roaches upon seeing a 3rd and going pure hydra ling after the first set of safety roaches + a few extra? seemed like it was absolutely unbeatable with my 3rd timing
Also, I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras. I assume that you would only do this attack if the protoss takes a 3rd, and I don't think that drop/speed would pay for itself if you can already attack at different fronts.
On May 02 2012 05:23 GenesisX wrote: This is almost exactly how I play all of my ZvPs, except what I do is take 4 gasses a little earlier, and start drops as soon as lair is finished. O.O Glad to see its not just me doing this haha
When do you drop then?
I start my drops a little later so that I can push out and be ready to drop with a 200/200 army.
Do you drop earlier to keep them in their base so that you can expand behind it? I thought about that some for sure.
I find if you wait for 200/200, you will lose to a good protoss that goes robo first. They will have 2-3 colossus out already with lance completing or sometimes already completed. Dropping ASAP lets you snipe core buildings such as the robo, main nexus, robo bay, or cybernetics core which is what I generally target when dropping.
On May 03 2012 05:49 Alejandrisha wrote: How many drones do you normally go up to when making hydras? Hyun had about 62 drones and when he saw my ~9:30 third, he only made about 8 roaches and the rest hydra ling (started ling speed after hydra range) and cut the 6th gas. What do you think about cutting roaches upon seeing a 3rd and going pure hydra ling after the first set of safety roaches + a few extra? seemed like it was absolutely unbeatable with my 3rd timing
Also, I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras. I assume that you would only do this attack if the protoss takes a 3rd, and I don't think that drop/speed would pay for itself if you can already attack at different fronts.
this is a beautiful question.
Here is my experience with the build as I have done it over at least 30-40 games of practice (and then more ladder) where I tested out ling hydra, roach/hydra, pure roach, roach ling, roach bane, etc...
My drone number differs based on my opponent. Initially I go up to 58-63 workers depending on how well my macro is that game. If I see my opponent investing in air tech I will run another round of drones (and drop some spores) and end up around 70 workers. If I see they are going to 4/5/6 gate me and try to hit early, I will invest in roaches earlier at about 50-55 drones, hold it off pretty easily, and then push out to kill the pylon and force him back. With this I will make another round of drones and usually come up to about 65-70 drones.
Those are the 2 instances that I will drone harder because I know I can and it won't affect my timing really.
I think hydra ling with 11-12 roaches works as well. I have done hydra/roach/ling timings and they also had a good winrate but the main reason I tended away from it and towards roach hydra is because of my 1/2 upgrades that I aim for now (and the concave that I aim for). While lings can be a good mineral dump and tank tons of shots for cheap, they do not get my 2/3 of my upgrades and when I drop at the top of the main ramp they are no help in really providing a concave. on top of this, lings and hydras both MELT to collosus. If he is going collo and I do that attack, there just isn't enough to tank in my opinion once 1-2 collosi get out. That being said, there are some replays/games where I hit a little earlier with the ling hydra roach mix and it can still do a ton of damage, it's just not as much my style at the moment. I think there is still a lot of room for creativity with this build though so I'm glad hyun is doing his own thing and it's working.
I don't see the point of going up to overlord speed/drop if you are going hydras There are 4 major reasons for this. Now I can say that I have simply gone roach hydra ling and hit lots of timings without drop that absolutely crush, but those feel different and generally work better on more open maps where it's easier to hit multiple fronts. 1. hydras are slow. I think we can all agree that hydras need a speed buff or upgrade option at the hydra den. The overlord speed gives your hydras this speed since they can just carry them everywhere. (PLUS ADDED BONUS: Overlords can drop creep so when you do drops in his base, tell all 20 of your overlords to spread creep and you will get a nice laugh) 2. I watched 10 pro replays PvZ that lasted longer than 15 minutes. After discarding the games that were really weird because of too many units lost early on, the average protoss army at 13 minutes was 120/200 supply. Now I have a 200/200 army at that time with a lot of dps thanks to the hydras. Tell me what is the one thing that protoss was given to makeup for this difference and defend at all points in the game? FORCEFIELDS. How many engagements have you had with a protoss army where you know you would absolutely crush him except for the fact that he had forcefields? Too many to count for me at least. So this is where I decided to completely abuse the fact that we get 25 dropships instantaneously and just get drop/speed to fly right over his army and negate forcefields from doing anything. Not only can you negate forcefields in the engagement, but you can negate simcity and terrain difficulties. Think about playing on shakuras plateau and trying to kill off the protoss base by fighting up the ramp. With sim city, ramps, and forcefields, you simply cannot engage up his ramp. This gives him time to sit back, relax, and make a few collosus until he has that deathball amount that just hurts so much to deal with. By getting drops, you can just fly right past this and drop in a position that is favorable for you instead, thus crushing him and forcing an engagement. 3. Hydras are a great defensive unit but honestly they are a dead tech path and so the longer you sit on them, the less valuable they become. You NEED to trade up to start working towards your later game army and so I decided rather than trading trying to push up a ramp and getting obliterated, why not trade more cost efficiently by dropping into his base. 4. you now have DROPS! If you watch my youtube video I showcase the beauty of having drops by not only dropping on top of his army to avoid forcefields, but also dropping his main and third base mineral lines. The more places that the protoss player has to focus, the more chance of mistake for him to make and the better off you are. From there on out you can continue to do drops (maybe infestor drops late game or ling drops or anything) and this is a part of the game that is pretty much completely unexplored in this match up. Now all of the sudden toss players have to start worrying about drops and worst case they have to throw up cannons at their mineral lines which is less money for their army.
Just wondering, why wouldn't you go for a 12 minute max out, except adding in drops? By this I assume you mean the 12 minute roach max. I have actually done this but there were 2 problems I encountered. 1. This army simply was not defensive enough for me when they did their 2 base all ins. I know that stephano seems to handle those better but I'm not stephano and all those +2 blink stalker or immortal sentry armies would really just be too close in the battle. I could only win that game maybe 50-60% of the time. By getting hydras who have extremely high dps and are a great defensive unit, any 2 base all ins would get absolutely crushed and so I could simply hold it off a lot easier. 2. Roach drops just didn't work out as well as hydra roach drops did to be honest. I played a game where I dropped 200/200 roach on a sentry immortal stalker army (he had about 3-4 immortals) and it simply got obliterated. I mean it wasn't even close. In theory it sounded a lot better but in the actual game itself I simply did not have enough success with it. I definitely think more people should test it out though. Also the 13 minute max times out better with my 1/2 upgrades.
I find if you wait for 200/200, you will lose to a good protoss that goes robo first. They will have 2-3 colossus out already with lance completing or sometimes already completed. Dropping ASAP lets you snipe core buildings such as the robo, main nexus, robo bay, or cybernetics core which is what I generally target when dropping.
I rarely find them to have more than 2 collosus. If they have 3 collosus then they will have no immortals or you are simply hitting too late. Usually when I hit, they have 115 supply or so and it's made up of: 1 collosus, 1 collosus on the way, 3-4 immortals, 7-8 sentries, then some stalkers and a couple zealots to fill in the rest of the supply.
EPT
