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On March 03 2013 06:35 ZenithM wrote:
Feeding strategies, or even worse, when a guy leaves the game on purpose right away to transfer his income before 5:00, are imo the most effective way to play 2v2, as well as, let's admit it, the lamest. You're essentially on a 2 base economy at the minute 4:00, you can tech very quickly while still have a buttload of units.
1 player on 2 bases is strictly more powerful than 2 players on 1 base, because an investment in tech from this player translates directly into a reward for a 2 base production, and not for a 1 base production. More simply, I think it's generally accepted that a full 2 base economy is more than twice as powerful as a full 1 base economy. It allows much sharper upgrades and tech timings, huge surge of upgraded units that are barely handleable and certainly not meant to be balanced.
The only downside (and why it's still fun to play 2v2) is that the game is only fun for 1 member out of 2, and not much for the feeder (or the leaver). That's why we don't see them more, people play 2v2s for fun, not for rank and glory, in general.
Rant aside, your guide is very cool and I'm glad that you left out the awful feed builds we sometimes see on the ladder :D
some feed builds are good, but it really depends on their playstyle and the type of feed, like 7gate blink feeds and muta feeds can be effective, it really depends on how you like to play though, I personally don't like them though, but the builds I listed in my guide / walkthrough aren't the only builds that are acceptable in 2v2 lol
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Hello puppylisk,
I play competitively for SJSU as the Zerg in our 2v2 for CSL. Thank you for this thread. It has been a huge help. We play PZ and have a really hard time against Grandmaster level ZT teams. We feel we are up against an impossible disadvantage.
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On March 04 2013 17:47 Hatefiend wrote:
Hello puppylisk,
I play competitively for SJSU as the Zerg in our 2v2 for CSL. Thank you for this thread. It has been a huge help. We play PZ and have a really hard time against Grandmaster level ZT teams. We feel we are up against an impossible disadvantage.
To be fair you will always have a really tough time vs ZT, if they are going ling hellion, you can be significantly better and still lose, you just have to play pretty perfectly, you really need them over committing and keep the hellion count low as possible, always be prepared for cloak banshees as well, if the terran takes 2 gasses, he will be going cloak banshee 99% of the time, on maps such as tyrador keep, boneyard, and molten crater, get a forge and 1 or 2 cannons and if they attack you let some of their units in and forcefield off the rest, only if you have enough units to not let them run around your base and kill workers / scout, and go 1 base collosus while your teammate goes ling roach or just roach, or muta feeds can just end the game, but its a dice roll.
But regardless ZT will always be a tough match up as ZP, if you look @ many of the top teams they are almost entirely ZT 
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On March 04 2013 18:43 puppylisk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2013 17:47 Hatefiend wrote:
Hello puppylisk,
I play competitively for SJSU as the Zerg in our 2v2 for CSL. Thank you for this thread. It has been a huge help. We play PZ and have a really hard time against Grandmaster level ZT teams. We feel we are up against an impossible disadvantage. To be fair you will always have a really tough time vs ZT, if they are going ling hellion, you can be significantly better and still lose, you just have to play pretty perfectly, you really need them over committing and keep the hellion count low as possible, always be prepared for cloak banshees as well, if the terran takes 2 gasses, he will be going cloak banshee 99% of the time, on maps such as tyrador keep, boneyard, and molten crater, get a forge and 1 or 2 cannons and if they attack you let some of their units in and forcefield off the rest, only if you have enough units to not let them run around your base and kill workers / scout, and go 1 base collosus while your teammate goes ling roach or just roach, or muta feeds can just end the game, but its a dice roll. But regardless ZT will always be a tough match up as ZP, if you look @ many of the top teams they are almost entirely ZT
Agreed. We usually lose at the Ling Hellion aggression. His hellions zone my lings away and the opponents lings crush my allies stalkers. There's simply nothing we can do. If I go baneling, they can simply bait me to make a ton of them and then leave and be ahead. If I make spines, they can be ahead in a macro game or avoid my spines. If I try to open up with a non-15 hatch, we straight up lose in a build order loss.
Take a look at the highest ranked game we played vs a TZ team. http://www.twitch.tv/cstarleague/b/357694939 at 47:00 and give your thoughts on how we could of handled it better (we won). I felt the Baneling defense is the only way to survive.
We are only able to play on the following maps:
Deconstructed: http://i.imgur.com/t7Ibb.jpg
Citadel of Gaia: http://i.imgur.com/0Q0L9h.jpg
Thanks ^_^
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Agreed. We usually lose at the Ling Hellion aggression. His hellions zone my lings away and the opponents lings crush my allies stalkers. There's simply nothing we can do. If I go baneling, they can simply bait me to make a ton of them and then leave and be ahead. If I make spines, they can be ahead in a macro game or avoid my spines. If I try to open up with a non-15 hatch, we straight up lose in a build order loss. Take a look at the highest ranked game we played vs a TZ team. http://www.twitch.tv/cstarleague/b/357694939 at 47:00 and give your thoughts on how we could of handled it better (we won). I felt the Baneling defense is the only way to survive. We are only able to play on the following maps: Deconstructed: http://i.imgur.com/t7Ibb.jpgCitadel of Gaia: http://i.imgur.com/0Q0L9h.jpgThanks ^_^
The best way I have personally found to win against ling hellion aggression is to try to have your protoss ally defend the ramp long enough for you to get a solid number of roaches out on shared base maps and fight in favorable positions, and wait till you have a solid number of roaches, if you are trying to just fight ling stalker vs ling warpgate units, you will almost never win
Watching that match you linked, on that map it seems like your protoss could have opened forge could just wall off 1 side possibly get a forge after robo, 1 cannon on the left side of the ramp and get a few sentries and do a 3 gate expand into robo(cloak banshee), while you expo and go roach.
The thing about ling hellion, it is meant to kill or do a serious amount of damage before you can actually get a sizeable army of t2 units that don't just instantly die do to being out numbered by lings (t1 getting obliterated by hellions), so if you can delay them by a minute with forcefields (only takes 1 forcefield to completely wall so it shouldn't be a problem at all on that map) while you just drone hard before starting roach production you should be in excellent shape, seeing both the lings and hellions will be completely useless units after about the 7:30~ mark, then you guys can just push out and go win but be extremely wary of ling and hellion run bys.
Another note Since you did decide to go banelings, you should have had your ally get a couple sentries and keep your banelings near the ramp, that way if they decide to attack up the ramp your ally can just forcefield them so they are stuck in and can't snipe your banelings and you will get a best possible baneling detonation.
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I like the detail you're giving. I've found top ladder teams going for things like you're mentioning 80% or more of their games, but i would like you to consider another thing. The concept of super units is much more important in teamgames because the unkillable army plays a greater role, due to opponents never reacting as perfectly as a individual player could in 1v1. Honestly you can hold every single all-in strategy you've described by scouting and playing defensively. The calculation is easy after that, the army composition with more super units (tanks, colossi and to a lesser degree brood lords) will win you the fights and the game. If the opponent for example got tanks, you'll win if you've got tanks + colossi.
You don't have to have the economic advantage, it's all about surviving early game while building up you're late game composition.
I've won a 500€ LAN tournament by pursuing this playstyle with my friend, despite being outclassed on a individual skill level by our opponents.
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On March 05 2013 00:41 TigerKarl wrote:
I like the detail you're giving. I've found top ladder teams going for things like you're mentioning 80% or more of their games, but i would like you to consider another thing. The concept of super units is much more important in teamgames because the unkillable army plays a greater role, due to opponents never reacting as perfectly as a individual player could in 1v1. Honestly you can hold every single all-in strategy you've described by scouting and playing defensively. The calculation is easy after that, the army composition with more super units (tanks, colossi and to a lesser degree brood lords) will win you the fights and the game. If the opponent for example got tanks, you'll win if you've got tanks + colossi.
You don't have to have the economic advantage, it's all about surviving early game while building up you're late game composition.
I've won a 500€ LAN tournament by pursuing this playstyle with my friend, despite being outclassed on a individual skill level by our opponents.
Yeah, the thing is I didn't decide to spend a lot of time on this guide due to Heart of the Swarm's release coming rather soon (10 more days) which maybe a few weeks after I will create a mega guide once I learn the ropes, and I will constantly/consistently update it. The things I mentioned were mainly just the opening builds for 2v2, in my HotS guide I will have mid-late game guides, reasoning behind why and when to do things, etc... I'm probably going to spend way more time then I'm comfortable with for my HotS guide
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Nice guide puppy, looking fw to reading the hots version !
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This is an awesome guide. Glad there is some interest in other game types.
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Hmm, ok, one build that I haven't seen mentioned that I have been having a lot of trouble dealing with is...
us: Zx
them: PT
PT shows potential signs of aggression (like three rax in their wall with no addons) but stays one base until the 7-8 minute mark, and then pushes out with a deathball of sentry immortal siege tank marine, using forcefields to protect the tanks and marines.
Like...sure, on paper, kill them before that can happen, but not every partner wants to rush. if I was completely metagaming this, I could drone till the 5 minute mark and then pump units, but droning that long against one-base opponents is definitely not safe, so I usually have only a mild econ advantage.
And all the zerg tech options just seem so bad against this. In 1v1 lings do ok against sentry immortal, but marines kill lings much, much faster than immortals or sentries do, benefitting a lot more from FFs, and Siege Tanks one-shot lings and deal splash. Roaches dislike immortals, dislike siege tanks (especially without speed which I usually don't have), struggle a lot more with those units when there's FFs, and are only mildly cost-efficient against marines. Banelings get FF'd. Spine Crawlers get hit by siege tanks, but at least they delay the push. I've never tried Hydras but I assume they're bad as usual. and I don't think there's enough time to tech to mutas or infestors, but I haven't tried. (Mutas would be a pure counterattack option anyway; fighting sentry marine seems like a bad idea).
Not that I've never held it off (maybe 15% winrate, going spines and lings with some very good ally support like a toss ally going something like 3 gate robo). But I think it's probably the build I'm struggling with the most right now (moreso than ling hellion, which at least dies if they screw up their micro; sure, flawlessly executed ling hellion should never lose 15 lings to one baneling, but you don't exactly need flawless execution to get into masters with ling hellion on NA...).
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Wow, amazing thread, puppylisk
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There's definately a lot of information here but nothing about cross race synergy. I know there are other threads about it but it is missing from this one!
For example, As Zerg/Protoss 2v2 we like to position Overlords early on to allow fast blinking into the back of an enemy base.
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On March 06 2013 09:59 PsychoBob wrote:
There's definately a lot of information here but nothing about cross race synergy. I know there are other threads about it but it is missing from this one!
For example, As Zerg/Protoss 2v2 we like to position Overlords early on to allow fast blinking into the back of an enemy base.
There is a lot of stuff that isn't in this guide, if I included every little thing about 2v2 it would take probably like 20+ hours to write, and I'm not going to spend that much time on a guide for a game that will be outdated in 8 days.
Also positioning overlords is like the basics of zerg, I didn't think I would have to include that, sorry.
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when we played pt my partner would go banshees against terrans and i would go storms. They would stim and scan to kill the banshee and get stormed from the low ground.
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Great guide, very good job.
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Thanks, I just started 2v2 lol i need this
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Good guide. Some notes
Your "14/14 Speedling Expand" is a bit confusing.
25 Energy Queen (1) Creep Tumor, walk Queen to your natural
You mean inject wait 25 energy or creep tumor right away?
from zz vs zt
Both Zergs Should Generally open 15 Hatch, 1 going Ling, Bane, the other Zerg going Roaches
the enemy zerg will most likely go 10 pool. How do you react to that? In a zz team if against zt I feel one zerg should always get some kind of early defensive pool. 10 pool is too fast since you can't really be offensive with it. I think 12 pool with 2 extractors trick (leave one gas for speed upg) is best but I don't have a fixed bo for that. Btw you advise to go 10 pool for zerg in zt vs zz yourself. So it's kind of strange you don't expect that from the opponent.
from zz vs pp
Both Zergs Should open 10pool, and 2 10pools should generally very easily be able to kill off 2 protosses.
I object. pp vs zz is a guaranteed fast scout from p's at decent level (often before pylon). If they share a main with small ramp 2 gates and 1 forge make a complete wall, and if someone gets forge 1st even 6 pools can't break that (they pull workers or make double wall)
Some map selection ideas.
As a tp or tt team you will be facing at least one zerg 55% of the time. And every time that happens you'll wish the map was smaller. So crossing out large maps is a good idea.
If you have zerg in your team and they don't, Tarsonis Ruins is a terrible map due to tight center and how close the opposing naturals are. Unless you have a plan to exploit the rocks at the back, cross it out.
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On March 06 2013 03:16 metroid composite wrote:
Hmm, ok, one build that I haven't seen mentioned that I have been having a lot of trouble dealing with is...
us: Zx
them: PT
PT shows potential signs of aggression (like three rax in their wall with no addons) but stays one base until the 7-8 minute mark, and then pushes out with a deathball of sentry immortal siege tank marine, using forcefields to protect the tanks and marines.
Like...sure, on paper, kill them before that can happen, but not every partner wants to rush. if I was completely metagaming this, I could drone till the 5 minute mark and then pump units, but droning that long against one-base opponents is definitely not safe, so I usually have only a mild econ advantage.
And all the zerg tech options just seem so bad against this. In 1v1 lings do ok against sentry immortal, but marines kill lings much, much faster than immortals or sentries do, benefitting a lot more from FFs, and Siege Tanks one-shot lings and deal splash. Roaches dislike immortals, dislike siege tanks (especially without speed which I usually don't have), struggle a lot more with those units when there's FFs, and are only mildly cost-efficient against marines. Banelings get FF'd. Spine Crawlers get hit by siege tanks, but at least they delay the push. I've never tried Hydras but I assume they're bad as usual. and I don't think there's enough time to tech to mutas or infestors, but I haven't tried. (Mutas would be a pure counterattack option anyway; fighting sentry marine seems like a bad idea).
Not that I've never held it off (maybe 15% winrate, going spines and lings with some very good ally support like a toss ally going something like 3 gate robo). But I think it's probably the build I'm struggling with the most right now (moreso than ling hellion, which at least dies if they screw up their micro; sure, flawlessly executed ling hellion should never lose 15 lings to one baneling, but you don't exactly need flawless execution to get into masters with ling hellion on NA...).
1. You always want to FE against TP. Unless there is some crazy cheese, that is why someone should 9-scout. Since you are going 15 hatch that should probably be you. This also allows to get an obs into their main before wall gets up on most maps.
2. Get as much info as you can get before marine gets out and try to deny the 2nd protoss gas for as long as possible. Use overlord to see gas timings after that. If p shows sings of 4gating get that FE mass ling build. If no drone up to 32/36. At that point your ally should do some scouting too (wall, scan, ovi sac). If they show no signs of getting expo your ally should never expo.
3. At around 6:30-7:00 you should have some speedlings from your 1st injects. Run to their wall and poke constantly. When they move out attempt a run by. If they close wall, deny reinforcements. It is very important to micro those lings properly and not lose them. Their kind of rush is almost impossible to exectute if they can't reinforce. Basicly all you need at home is some spines to buy time, queens to tank damage and lots, lots of lings to tank too while your 1-basing ally should do damage. Also getting a lair for scouting if they refuse to move out and for incoming detection so that your ally can concentrate on units is a good idea. After that leave the drones on gas and send to your ally the leftovers if they do move out.
You can't hold this rush alone. Your role is to expo, force them to allin or they will be too far behind, deny reinforcements, from their base and provide lots of meatshields in the fight while the ally is doing damage. There are lots of things your ally can do. As terran defensive tanks hard counter this, cloaked banshee is tricky (if they get obs and react by getting stalkers you will be in a bad position), MM with stimm is great when lings are tanking. So basicly any terran opening works as long as he commits to making units and doesn't expo. Protoss can get immortals-stalkers and some sentries for guardian shield for both of you. Since they cant reinforce besides WG he will be in a very strong position. Mass blinked stalkers i'm not sure about. Colo rush is also an option. Usually by being annoying with lings you can delay this push at least to 9:00, and some more by moving the spine line. But colo can be too late. Darks are not recommended, but if you do get a warp in their main with ovi and proxy pylon about the time they move out. ZZ team is the weakest against this. Your role is the same but the ally should probably get 1 base fast hydra. You really need DPS. And hydra works best with 1 basing.
Also since you are low on tech choices but have quite an eco you can feed you ally. So some 5 gate robo or 3-1-1 with addons is actually viable.
P.S. Also this push is incredibly hard to hold on that Tarsonis map, if you are zerg ban that as you can't deny reinforcements there. The extremely tight center and the proximity of the nats (you just leapfrog tanks 3-4 times and bam you can seige your enemies nat) is just a nightmare for zerg, and especially zz teams.
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Looking forward to a HotS update to this! Thanks for making it so thorough ^^
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Thank you for making this guide, I've been looking a long time for something like this.
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EPT
