Does anyone know how to go about getting to the swarm host- broodlord-infestor army in ZvP?
I've seen roro and byul use it and would like to know the specifics of how to get there. How many roaches should you make? how many infestors should you make? (before hive or after hive) when should i drop the spire? when should hte static defense be going down? and where should i position my SH?
On certain maps like Habitation Station where there's not much room to do a surround, how do you guys deal with Terrans who go bio+mine? I get really anxious and try to send out small forces of ling/bane to set off mines and kill some marines but unless I can get a good surround i end up losing too much.
What should I be doing with my Mutas assuming it just popped and I have about 4-6 out? Lately I've been trying to have them engage with my lings but that's been a terrible idea since I end up losing so many that I can never build a sizeable Muta force to harass him.
I don't like it when Terran is camping outside my base with widow mines.
On January 12 2014 14:04 mooseman1710 wrote: Does anyone know how to go about getting to the swarm host- broodlord-infestor army in ZvP?
I've seen roro and byul use it and would like to know the specifics of how to get there. How many roaches should you make? how many infestors should you make? (before hive or after hive) when should i drop the spire? when should hte static defense be going down? and where should i position my SH?
Most of these questions do not really have direct answers. The ultimate composition is not something one just 'goes for' like in WoL when people went for broodlords. It is very situational on what the protoss does. My best advice is to have an end game idea of what you want your final army to look like. How to get there is really going to be based upon what your opponent is doing, if he is being very defensive and macro orientated then you can 'rush' your late game composition. If he is begin aggressive you obviously can't. When it comes to when to use static defense and positioning again it will depend really upon what your opponent is doing. I think the best thing you could do is watch some vods from proleague of players using it. Another good one to check out is Stephano's twitch channel, http://www.twitch.tv/egstephano he has been doing some streaming to finish some EG hours he owes. Pretty much all he does is defensive swarmhost verses protoss. Check them out.
On certain maps like Habitation Station where there's not much room to do a surround, how do you guys deal with Terrans who go bio+mine? I get really anxious and try to send out small forces of ling/bane to set off mines and kill some marines but unless I can get a good surround i end up losing too much.
What should I be doing with my Mutas assuming it just popped and I have about 4-6 out? Lately I've been trying to have them engage with my lings but that's been a terrible idea since I end up losing so many that I can never build a sizeable Muta force to harass him.
I don't like it when Terran is camping outside my base with widow mines.
Granted because the maps are more enclosed (outside of Daedalus and Alterzim) with lots of choke points it is difficult to get surrounds. What this means is you need to focus on removing sections of your army and sending it around for sandwiches. The small pathways actually mean you can set some SICK traps. If you can send 25 zerglings around a different path and come behind the enemy it stops them running and banelings absolutely wreck them. On the open maps they can kite ANY direction in order to get away, this makes surrounds some times harder. The smaller paths require more work to get a good surround but it is more rewarding if you do it well.
Unless you have 4-6 mutas before they have turrets and defenses in their bases just stick to using them for shutting drops down. Be very carefully when you are engaging that you do not lose them in fights. As soon as you see them targeting mutas then you pull them back (will force marines to run around while your lings crush them). Once you get 12+ you can start back stabbing bases a bit more boldly.
No one likes terran outside your base with widow mines, the key is to not let them get there. You want to engage them when they move out in mid map because then they do not have time to set mines up everywhere. This also means if you accidentally trade badly you have time to reinforce, whereas at your base you die! Try to keep your creep spread pushed far. My general theory for engagements follows: I push my creep HARD (6 queen build), if he stays off my creep I back stab with mutas and look for small ling openings. If he steps on my creep I engage full on and crush his army, if he runs I stop chasing unless I KNOW I have a huge advantage. One mistake happens often in my own play, I keep chasing and slowly losing chunks of lings to widow mines and eventually lose my ground force and mutas start dieing, then a counter push does damage. Better to take a good engagement, stop sit back macro up again, take another good engagement. Remember that when you try to force an engagement is generally when you will lose. Better to be patient then lose to much.
ZvZ is the dumbest matchup. No skill, no micro, just make mutas and win. Every ZvZ is either I lose to an early rush because I'm trying to macro, or I die because my opponent didn't bother with upgrades, rushed lair, and made a shit-ton of mutas. How do you beat that?
On January 13 2014 06:53 Solar424 wrote: ZvZ is the dumbest matchup. No skill, no micro, just make mutas and win. Every ZvZ is either I lose to an early rush because I'm trying to macro, or I die because my opponent didn't bother with upgrades, rushed lair, and made a shit-ton of mutas. How do you beat that?
Seems like there's skill or you wouldn't die so consistently.
In ZvZ If I'm worried about early pressure (like if I'm on two player maps) I'll go pool first. Note that this doesn't mean I'm going 9pool speed or something super committal like that, just a 14/14 or a 15 pool into expo is more than sufficient to stop any rushes, and if I smell an all-in coming and went gas-less, getting that geyser up and running is my biggest priority. Also, one spine crawler never hurt anybody. Basically if you're not comfortable in your ability to defend anything with 15hatch, find the middle ground between eco and agro.
As for dying to mass mutas; if your opponent is rushing to lair, he's going to be ridiculously low on either army or eco - more likely army. Heavy bane pressure can be a good solution since you'll probably be able to do some damage and be able to get your own mutas up, or just take a third and put down spores everywhere while teching to roach/hyrda/infestor if you hate everything a spire stands for.
On January 13 2014 06:53 Solar424 wrote: ZvZ is the dumbest matchup. No skill, no micro, just make mutas and win. Every ZvZ is either I lose to an early rush because I'm trying to macro, or I die because my opponent didn't bother with upgrades, rushed lair, and made a shit-ton of mutas. How do you beat that?
Replays are very helpful, but start with scouting...watch pros play ZvZ, the thing you will notice is that they are CONSTANTLY using zerglings to check out what is going on when they need to. Your opponent will be building one of three things tech/army/economy. If you can find out which one you can respond appropriately. If you sit in your base and do your own thing you deserve to get punished.
Watching pro games a lot, how come in ZvP, we don't see baneling bust as often as we do in ZvZ and ZvT? A lot of the early game all ins are usually just Speedling all in with no Banelings.
On January 13 2014 10:40 geokilla wrote: Watching pro games a lot, how come in ZvP, we don't see baneling bust as often as we do in ZvZ and ZvT? A lot of the early game all ins are usually just Speedling all in with no Banelings.
In ZvT, you use banelings in early-game busts to break down walls. Sentries stop that cold. You're better off hitting earlier in ZvP with lings rather than waiting on banelings or better yet, using roaches to get over a limited number of force fields.
On January 13 2014 10:40 geokilla wrote: Watching pro games a lot, how come in ZvP, we don't see baneling bust as often as we do in ZvZ and ZvT? A lot of the early game all ins are usually just Speedling all in with no Banelings.
What kambing said, force fields are really strong. If you go for a crazy 14/14 opening into baneling bust you can pull it off before a sentry is there, but the fact of the matter is if he scouts he will know instantly what is happening and put preventative measures in.
On January 13 2014 10:40 geokilla wrote: Watching pro games a lot, how come in ZvP, we don't see baneling bust as often as we do in ZvZ and ZvT? A lot of the early game all ins are usually just Speedling all in with no Banelings.
In ZvT, you use banelings in early-game busts to break down walls. Sentries stop that cold. You're better off hitting earlier in ZvP with lings rather than waiting on banelings or better yet, using roaches to get over a limited number of force fields.
But there's only so much Sentries out when a Baneling bust hits right? I mean, how much can you have, considering you need to spend multiple forcefields to wall off the buildings that were just destroyed.
On January 13 2014 10:40 geokilla wrote: Watching pro games a lot, how come in ZvP, we don't see baneling bust as often as we do in ZvZ and ZvT? A lot of the early game all ins are usually just Speedling all in with no Banelings.
In ZvT, you use banelings in early-game busts to break down walls. Sentries stop that cold. You're better off hitting earlier in ZvP with lings rather than waiting on banelings or better yet, using roaches to get over a limited number of force fields.
But there's only so much Sentries out when a Baneling bust hits right? I mean, how much can you have, considering you need to spend multiple forcefields to wall off the buildings that were just destroyed.
In order for you to beat a sentry defense (time wise) you need to do a 14/14. If the P does any normal scout timing then he will see your 14/14 and prepare a defense for it. In order for you to do a baneling bust big enough that multiple sentry's will not hold it then you will be hitting quite late, meaning he has ample time to scout it and prepare extra cannons/voidrays/pheonix's/extra sentries. To be honest, can it work? Yes. It will work well on someone who doesn't actively scout. The reason you do not see it at pro levels often is because every protoss who is playing in proleague probably has had someone try to baneling bust them and knows how to react, making it usesless. When you try to bust a protoss that knows how to deal with you end up looking like terror when playing against parting.
I'm looking for a hotkey layout that makes the manual hatchery inject method a lot easier than having to move your hand all the way to 56789 and whatever. If I use f1 f2 etc then creating control groups requires super long stretches that can make expanding really time consuming to rearrange hotkeys. I tried using the fleet keys method but holding alt all the time is annoying + relearning a whole new set of hotkeys has proven to be quite tough. I've spent an hour or more so far on it and I'm still playing at a bronze league level of how completely different it is than what I'm used to. I currently use something similar to the backspace method but I hate when my queens start running around the map once I get to the lategame.
edit: 2 hours after I began my search I found it!
I realized that setting camera locations is the best way to do it, so f1 f2 f3 etc were appealing but hitting ctrl + those keys were a pain to map. I realized I had a logitech mouse so I remapped the keys on the side of my mouse to ctrl so now I can just hold that and set different camera locations while only pressing one button on my keyboard! Amazing! This is like my fifth post this week that I posted a question yet eventually found the answer myself only after having posted here. Sorry!
I do not currently use separate hotkeys for my hatcheries, though I should really start, for injects however I use camera hotkeys + manual injects (f1, f2 etc). To avoid the time of how long it takes to set up camera hotkeys do it straight away. When you start the game and get your drones in place, overlord sent etc go to the three expansion locations and set your camera location so you do not have to do it later.
I realized that setting camera locations is the best way to do it, so f1 f2 f3 etc were appealing but hitting ctrl + those keys were a pain to map!
I changed it from CTRL+F1-5 to SHIFT+F1-5 to set camera locations, making it easier to set :D I also use space / shit+space for an extra natural or rally camera, meaning I only need space for the first 5~ minutes and it makes the game much easier to handle :D
On January 13 2014 06:53 Solar424 wrote: ZvZ is the dumbest matchup. No skill, no micro, just make mutas and win. Every ZvZ is either I lose to an early rush because I'm trying to macro, or I die because my opponent didn't bother with upgrades, rushed lair, and made a shit-ton of mutas. How do you beat that?
It seems like you aim too much at late game? If you always lose early game, and always win late game, have you considered a safer build to not make you so vulnerable to early attacks, but that still can give you an advantage later on, albeit a smaller one?
I guess you are aware of the rush > macro > safe > rush triangle, where you win if you macro a little bit more than the other guy, but lose if you macro a lot more. So try to scout, and make sure that you get just barely enough units to defend.
I realise it is hard in practice, but that should be the principle as I understand... glgl.
I realized that setting camera locations is the best way to do it, so f1 f2 f3 etc were appealing but hitting ctrl + those keys were a pain to map!
I changed it from CTRL+F1-5 to SHIFT+F1-5 to set camera locations, making it easier to set :D I also use space / shit+space for an extra natural or rally camera, meaning I only need space for the first 5~ minutes and it makes the game much easier to handle :D
I set camera hotkeys to W, E, R, T, 4 over my hatches, and moved inject (and rapid fire for that matter) to Q, and queens on 2. So injecting is: 2, Q, (hold down shift), W, mouse click, E, mouse click etc. Not only can you do fast injects with little hand movement, but you also have your base hotkeys very available, for checking mineral saturation, moving around drones, building stuff, handling drops etc.
Ofc, if you are serious, you go to one the serious completely remapped hotkey version they have in the strategy section.
Oh my fucking god this is amazing. I need to elaborate on this setup for other zergs out there that are having trouble with their setup. The benefit of this setup is that you have Complete Control over where your camera is and you only have to tap a key once in order to get there and there are no awkward hand movements that you have to make in order to set this up. If you have to deal with drops, you can immediately shift to the base that is being attacked without having to scroll across the screen. THIS IS A HUGE BOOST TO YOUR APM because you are able to save time. Time is your most important resource. If you set a rally point, you can immediately add that point as a camera location to shift between your army and that point to make reinforcing a lot neater and more efficient.
Guide:
I'm using a logitech g500 with the standard logitech gaming software for remapping mouse keys. If you can manually remap the keys with regeddit that works too or use some other software. If sc2 allowed you to use bind combinations of keys instead of having to rely on modifiers this would be a lot easier to do with normal setups, but it's still relatively easy to make this work.
You want to map this button (it's 3AM, Idk why I took a photo but why not?) as ctrl. Now you remap camera locations 1-8 as f1 f2 f3.. respectively. Map create location 1,2,3 respectively as ctrl f1, ctrl f2, ctrl f3... etc map camera location 8 as spacebar map create camera location 8 as ctrl spacebar (optional: map ctrl group 0 as w for all your hatcheries and inject larva to s and map stop to caps lock. It lowers the amount of hand movements you need to make to inject, the only downside is that you have a 50/50 Chance of yelling at random people on the internet from time to time. Currently trying to find a better key for stop)
Now you can hit ctrl F to center your camera on hatcheries that you have selected and then ctrl map it to a respective hotkey in addition to mapping any rally point very quickly with ctrl spacebar and instantly find the units you create and go back to the battle.
Voila you now can run around the map with 250 apm and feel like a korean god as you maintain Complete Control over your stuff.
On January 13 2014 18:34 Cascade wrote: haha, congratulations on discovering remapping camera hotkeys!
If you want even more, go to fleet hotkeys or the core and steal some of their tricks, or install one of their ready-made setups!
hf!
I mentioned in a previous post that I knew about them, they always just had some disadvantage and I wanted to find a better setup. Only thing that this setup is missing is a rapidfire key but I have no idea how to set that up.