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On July 07 2012 03:32 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2012 17:14 chlindell wrote:On July 04 2012 16:17 blade55555 wrote: Hey just thought I would let you know I did read your post and will reply to it just not today. I will tomorrow just to tired right now but again just letting you know I will look at it. Thanks, no rush! Ok here are your mistakes and why you lost: Defensive banelings, you don't need to make 4 that is more then you need. 2 is fine, but don't make 4 unless you know he is doing some sort of ling pressure. Your timings were a bit off, both evo's should be placed at 6:30-6:45 (there was no pressure this game so these shouldn't have been so late). You also have almost 1k minerals which is way to much. You should never be that high. You should always be making drones or make a round of lings and get a third, but yeah should never get so many minerals so early in the game. Just to point out again you still have a ton of minerals, if you aren't making drones you should be making lings/spines. Should be trying to keep that money as low as possible, a macro hatch also. Need to start 2-2 as soon as lair finishes you waited quiet awhile. You don't make enough lings. You were going hive at 12 minutes but with only 8 lings and 68 drones, it's nice to have all those drones but you could have also had a lot more lings. Lings are very important for counter attacking as if he had pushed with a roach push at 9 minutes you might have died as 3 spines and 8 lings, while waiting for reinforcments might have killed you or worse. You should always be throwing in lings as lings aren't like roaches where you can make them last minute and be fine. Since lings are so weak (especially compared to roaches) you need masses of them and want to always be making them. Before your first should you should have waited for the 5 other ultralisks. You had them in production, should have chilled and waited for them and done a 200/200 push yourself. When you see the other zerg throwing down a ton of IT's, run away and wait for them to die. Unless you have such a superior army just wait as you want to engage just the roaches, mass IT support will kill your army so just retreat and wait until they die off before engaging again (then his infestors will have little energy and you will be able to kill him). Banelings were a waste of gas, no need to make them unless they are going roach/hydra. Then you can start going ling/bane/ultra/infestor. At 20 minutes, you had his army. You would have crushed him had you been paying attention. 2-3 fungels would have gotten all his roaches and you had a lot of roach/ling support. The fact that you lost a lot of infestors and 1/4'th your army really hurt you. Then again you also pushed a little premature, while you would have won that battle anyway had you been paying attention you would have beat that, but still should have waited for all your ultra/lings to be out before attacking. I don't agree with your transition into bl's either, that was kind of a waste of money and gave him a huge timing. When he's only on roaches you should just keep going ultra/ling/infestor. Also try doing ling counter attacks to kill drones, possibly snipe an expansion. Always good to do especially when you have a ton of lings  . In general your army control is pretty bad. You don't use enough fungals and you have a ton of infestors, had you been using fungals you would have been killing his army's a lot easier and probably won this game. In general I would work on army control a lot and using fungals. Lots of battles of not using fungals just hurts to much as why have 11 infestors if you aren't going to fungal a lot (or throw IT's down at least) xD.
Thanks! That's a lot of input, much appreciated.
Yeah my macro was slipping a lot there early on, it happens sometimes when they keep poking at me but usually not this bad. I'll try to preemptively make more lings and add another control group for runbys.
Aww, I did have 5 ultras still in production there, can't believe I missed that! That's 30 supply of prime meat and it would probably have won me the fight. Guess I'm not used to the ultra build time yet, not really been using them in any matchup before. I'll try to be more patient before attacking..and less patient before retreating if he blows a lot of infestor energy! Wasn't sure if it was ok to trade a ton of lings for infestor energy so was reluctant to back out and curious about how it would turn out.
I agree that my army control was bad, I was too busy staring at the fights expecting to walk all over his roaches and then trying to figure out what was happening with everything turning green. That and me being slow as molasses. Hopefully it will improve as I get more used to this style.
Do you have any rough guidelines for if/when/how to transition into broods? It's not really mentioned in the guide unless I missed it but you did refer to going ultras into broods as super strong.
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Do you have any rough guidelines for if/when/how to transition into broods? It's not really mentioned in the guide unless I missed it but you did refer to going ultras into broods as super strong.
Depends entirely on the map. On a map like Antiga Shipyard Broodlords are super strong, since you can more or less wall with spinecrawlers at the chokes, while your Broods shut down any movement in the middle. However, there's plenty of maps where going Broodlords instead of Ultralisks should never happen. It also depends heavily on your opponents build, but I find Broodlords shouldn't be used heavily in this matchup. They're just not worth the immobility versus such a fast opponent. Condemned ridge is a prime example of a map where Broodlords are terrible. Broodlords are too slow to attack a base in any of the corners. The second you move to attack, the enemy Zerg is going to run right into your main bases with Ling/Ultra. Then its just a matter of mopping up the broodlords with a round of corrupters afterwards for an easy gg.
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Do you have any rough guidelines for if/when/how to transition into broods? It's not really mentioned in the guide unless I missed it but you did refer to going ultras into broods as super strong.
When you've secured a lead. It depends a lot on what the opponent does, but in my games generally I get broodlords when I've completely denied the fourth of my opponent a long time with ultras, and EVENTUALLY the opponent gets his fourth (instead of straight up dying to mass ultra/ling/infestor) with mass spines and infestors, with an infestor count too high to deal with using straight ultra, and sometimes if the opponent gets his own ultras, and I'm sort of leading the ultra battles, but then he masses spine/ultra/infestor behind mass spines on 4 bases, you will need a couple broodlords to siege the mass spines, and give you a little edge when both of you are around equal ultra counts and you are on 5+ bases.
Basically, when the opponent has finally secured 4 bases, you have a lead, map control, and he's starting to get a lot of infestors or ultras and ultras alone on your side just won't break through. It should be obvious - you are dominating, he is struggling to get his fourth up, you already have a pretty much pure ultra/infestor army.
It's not like you are going broodlords instead of ultras. It's just he has mass spines, won't leave the game, secured his fourth, and it's just common sense that you will need a couple broods to break through.
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Thank you for the strat..I read over it and I am going to have to give it a try.
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Ok thanks guys, seems I had misunderstood the broods a bit!
In my late game army, is the goal to have like 10 infestors and then just make as many ultras as I can afford or should I always keep a decent ling count in my main army for the DPS? (before broods) Ultras tend to get stuck on each other but on the other hand you can't fungal them and they are super tough. Guess it varies based on his composition but not sure how as it rarely gets late enough for me to experiment with it. If I even get a ZvZ in the first place, just getting terrans atm.
Here are my n00b guesses, feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. Trying to understand this..
vs roach/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras vs roach/hydra/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras, some banelings against the hydras vs ling/ultra/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras, some banelings against the lings vs lots of mutas -> add more infestors, possibly a few hydras for cleaning up? not sure if anyone makes mutas in the late game though vs mass infestor with whatever -> add some broods and make sure to spread vs anything with broods -> same as usual but add corruptors
..and if I'm low on gas I top off with lings. How's that?
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On July 07 2012 21:06 chlindell wrote: Ok thanks guys, seems I had misunderstood the broods a bit!
In my late game army, is the goal to have like 10 infestors and then just make as many ultras as I can afford or should I always keep a decent ling count in my main army for the DPS? (before broods) Ultras tend to get stuck on each other but on the other hand you can't fungal them and they are super tough. Guess it varies based on his composition but not sure how as it rarely gets late enough for me to experiment with it. If I even get a ZvZ in the first place, just getting terrans atm.
Here are my n00b guesses, feel free to correct me where I'm wrong. Trying to understand this..
vs roach/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras vs roach/hydra/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras, some banelings against the hydras vs ling/ultra/infestor -> 10 infestors, mass ultras, some banelings against the lings vs lots of mutas -> add more infestors, possibly a few hydras for cleaning up? not sure if anyone makes mutas in the late game though vs mass infestor with whatever -> add some broods and make sure to spread vs anything with broods -> same as usual but add corruptors
..and if I'm low on gas I top off with lings. How's that?
I'm his student(such a good coach) and I recall when he was going over it with me during a live game, ultimately I wanted to get like all ultras with a good infestor count(8-10) whenever I could have afforded it, but blade was telling me to still make lings as a supplement since with adrenal glands they do their share in fights or sniping bases. I always noticed quite a few still live after a major fight. This all works for me since that day, but he can always come in and confirm it a loooooot better than I can with credibility.
TL;DR(From at least what I gathered my lesson and it works for me) make ultras when you can and abuse the quick 5/3 to be aggressive, sprinkle in cracklings and take bases.
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He wasn't doing it at all...
He died because he went infestors, not because of doing 'this build', and he was actually going roach/infestor.
If he had went ling/infestor, his infestors would have popped out in time, and he could have massed spines and potentially held what was just a very minor pressure.
You rarely ever see pros go infestors before hydras in ZvZ (except against muta/infestor 2 base play), but Leenock was probably trying to capitalize on the large map size and be greedier.
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Thank God for Blade. This is a ton of fun and I want to try it out asap!
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First off, I love this build. Second, I defend roach/speed banes all ins by investing some stockpiled gas into burrow.
Burrowed banelings are honestly stupidly good. They arent used much in ZvZ, but a group of 7ish banes and clumps of 2 or 3 make dealing with all ins surprisingly easy. Only do this if you scout the All in though, because it does put you behind in gas for the ultras and upgrades.
Just my perspective. And again, thanks for the build and timings.
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Thanks a lot for this guide, this build made zvz way more fun!
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I don't think this can work ... why upgrades first , if the other player goes for muta your dead. Drone scouting at 9 is bullshup , go hatchfirst everygame. Even with lot of runby/harassment you CANNOT get soo far to beat a roach/infestor army. I wonder if this is an ultra rush(ish) build , on passive games could work but otherwise not really. Learning roach infestor is not hard. Do it guys ! :D
User was warned for this post
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On July 11 2012 16:03 SmuZ wrote: I don't think this can work ... why upgrades first , if the other player goes for muta your dead. Drone scouting at 9 is bullshup , go hatchfirst everygame. Even with lot of runby/harassment you CANNOT get soo far to beat a roach/infestor army. I wonder if this is an ultra rush(ish) build , on passive games could work but otherwise not really. Learning roach infestor is not hard. Do it guys ! :D
Please be a bit more cautious with your assumptions . This strat is played at the highest level, with success (Stephano); so I guess you should be the one learning how to play it, not the other way round .
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On July 11 2012 16:03 SmuZ wrote: I don't think this can work ... why upgrades first , if the other player goes for muta your dead. Drone scouting at 9 is bullshup , go hatchfirst everygame. Even with lot of runby/harassment you CANNOT get soo far to beat a roach/infestor army. I wonder if this is an ultra rush(ish) build , on passive games could work but otherwise not really. Learning roach infestor is not hard. Do it guys ! :D
Um what? How would mutas kill me if I get upgrades first? You do realize that I got this build from the best foreign zerg stephano right? I watched him play high GM players on EU and win vs mutalisk, roach/infestor, etc. Like he's beaten koreans pros with this strategy, he took a game off of symbol (think it was symbol) and beat violet 2-0 or something.
It's not hard to know how to do both styles ^_^. In short you should probably know what you are talking about before saying "just learn roach/infestor this style doesn't work!"
Also again guys I do read all comments here and I do appreciate the nice feedback and everything <3.
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that guy should be banned for such a stupid post. he didn't even watch the reps, watch the reps before you post your criticism.
I've been having trouble with this build when the game is like, he opens early pool, I'm way ahead. One game I lost he went tons and tons of mutas, like a ridiculous amount, but I think I messed up by not taking his 4 gas at like 30 supply seriously or making my gas quick enough to get enough infestors, and another I think I lost because i had my third established, so did he, and he attacked and I went for a counterattack when I could have kept the lings at home, cleaned his army up, then killed his third.
I think against roach play, you really need to mass a ton of spines in your natural, and when third is taken, lay them at third (like make 20 spines at nat). I've been having some loses because I would move out the spines pre-maturely, resulting in a loss when a counterattack, sac my third, and kill his third would have kept me ahead, or not making enough spines at the third. Counterattack if you are setting up your third, defend if your third is up.
I still dont really see a solid way to beat this. 1 guy did something where he massed spines with a roach play, and rushed hive quicker than me, so I think it's important to get super super fast hive, I think that was just a mistake on my part not getting hive quick enough...
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On July 11 2012 16:38 Belial88 wrote: that guy should be banned for such a stupid post. he didn't even watch the reps, watch the reps before you post your criticism.
I've been having trouble with this build when the game is like, he opens early pool, I'm way ahead. One game I lost he went tons and tons of mutas, like a ridiculous amount, but I think I messed up by not taking his 4 gas at like 30 supply seriously or making my gas quick enough to get enough infestors, and another I think I lost because i had my third established, so did he, and he attacked and I went for a counterattack when I could have kept the lings at home, cleaned his army up, then killed his third.
I think against roach play, you really need to mass a ton of spines in your natural, and when third is taken, lay them at third (like make 20 spines at nat). I've been having some loses because I would move out the spines pre-maturely, resulting in a loss when a counterattack, sac my third, and kill his third would have kept me ahead, or not making enough spines at the third. Counterattack if you are setting up your third, defend if your third is up.
I still dont really see a solid way to beat this. 1 guy did something where he massed spines with a roach play, and rushed hive quicker than me, so I think it's important to get super super fast hive, I think that was just a mistake on my part not getting hive quick enough... When I do this I always get hive around 11 minutes in a passive game. I guess you can delay it a little bit if you really need a lot of infestors ASAP, but otherwise you can do this most of the time.
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Yesterday while practising with another zerg he did this build on Condemned Ridge. It's a very powerful build but you have to hold out till the ultras have popped.
I advice this build only on large maps such as Condemned cross position, with mass lings (they don't cost gas) you can pressure and keep mapcontrol while you tech up to the ultras.
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^ Why would you say that? It's great on any map, you just herp derp mass spines. You lost a game? it's because you didnt make enough spines or got hive too late.
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On July 11 2012 19:46 Belial88 wrote: ^ Why would you say that? It's great on any map, you just herp derp mass spines. You lost a game? it's because you didnt make enough spines or got hive too late.
Most of the games I lose with this style are because my expansion timing is off compared to any other build. I think it's a bit too general to say: "This build is so good there's only 2 reasons you could have possibly lost"
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It's my opinion right now, after playing standard third before lair in zvz for like a year now, and suddenly losing every time in zvz against ling/infestor. So i stopped playing good macro oriented, and started doing this, because it's stupidly strong. Unlike 2 base lair in every other scenario, you dont have to do damage, because fast ultras are just ridiculous.
You don't need to rush your third with this style. this is what I've found to work:
If your opponent takes, a third, take your own third. If your opponent makes roaches, don't expect to hold it - mass spines in your natural, like 10+, because you are going to re-root them to your third when it's done (this is a lot easier if you spread creep well or spread your overlords so you can instantly creep everything when lair is done). If your opponent attacks, your mass lings go counter-attack and kill his third, since someone making roaches will need his third much more than you will.
Once your third is up, you probably shouldn't ling counterattack much unless you really see a good opportunity to, because you really need your lings to defend your established third. If the opponent doesnt go for hive or a fourth, you should probably add a lot more spines. You should probably start hive right around when your third finishes or you know it's going to finish.
Most games I lose with this style is just not making enough spines, or moving out my spines too early. It's a 2 base style for a reason, and you really need lots of spines. It's not so bad if the opponent goes third before lair, but if the opponent goes 2 base roach, you really need to make a shitton of spines because he'll have a ton of roaches. Which, although is a really bad build you should never see at higher level play, you will probably encounter a lot when the games get really weird because you snipe his third over and over, he snipes your third over and over.
I also used to think 'just mass lings after 50 supply ezpz go sac and focus hatches' but as players seem to be more defensive, I think that it's not a good idea, because you really need those lings at home, or they could have been more spines = faster third, hive.
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