Hey guys. I just started playing again last week after a long break. My problem right now is versus reapers. I never really had to play versus reapers that much when I was active (with the exception of beta/early release), so I never had too much practice with it. I have read the TL overview (2nd edition) of zerg matchups, and 99% of the time, I use the gas opening described there as pretty much everyone I'm playing right now is using a reaper opening.
My problem is, usually there is a reaper in my base before my queen/first lings pop out. I usually lose 3 or so drones at this stage, usually at my natural just after I transfer my 6 or so drones to the natural. By the time my lings/queens are out, and I'm trying to defend, they'll have 2-3 reapers popping in to snipe 2 drones or so, then run, regen, and wait it out. I end up losing a lot of drones most games. I find that when watching the replays, the other player can't really control his base and the reapers at the same time, so he favors his reapers and lets his macro slip. Even with people letting their macro slip, I usually end up way behind.
Sometimes I die outright if the player follows up with some hellions and brute forces into my base with 4 hellions and 2-3 reapers. Sometimes we go into a macro game from behind. Sometimes I can overcome the disadvantage from the early game because I'm a pretty fast player for the rank I'm at (currently gold, was a diamond player when I played a lot). I even had the (un)fortune of playing byunprime earlier on the NA ladder when he was leveling up his account, and he made fending off those reapers/hellions seem flat out impossible.
What can I do to better hold off the first reapers to hold out till zergling speed and enter the game without a big disadvantage?
On March 11 2014 08:11 Arisen wrote: Hey guys. I just started playing again last week after a long break. My problem right now is versus reapers. I never really had to play versus reapers that much when I was active (with the exception of beta/early release), so I never had too much practice with it. I have read the TL overview (2nd edition) of zerg matchups, and 99% of the time, I use the gas opening described there as pretty much everyone I'm playing right now is using a reaper opening.
My problem is, usually there is a reaper in my base before my queen/first lings pop out. I usually lose 3 or so drones at this stage, usually at my natural just after I transfer my 6 or so drones to the natural. By the time my lings/queens are out, and I'm trying to defend, they'll have 2-3 reapers popping in to snipe 2 drones or so, then run, regen, and wait it out. I end up losing a lot of drones most games. I find that when watching the replays, the other player can't really control his base and the reapers at the same time, so he favors his reapers and lets his macro slip. Even with people letting their macro slip, I usually end up way behind.
Sometimes I die outright if the player follows up with some hellions and brute forces into my base with 4 hellions and 2-3 reapers. Sometimes we go into a macro game from behind. Sometimes I can overcome the disadvantage from the early game because I'm a pretty fast player for the rank I'm at (currently gold, was a diamond player when I played a lot). I even had the (un)fortune of playing byunprime earlier on the NA ladder when he was leveling up his account, and he made fending off those reapers/hellions seem flat out impossible.
What can I do to better hold off the first reapers to hold out till zergling speed and enter the game without a big disadvantage?
Reapers can be frustrating to deal with, but the key is having your queens and zerglings in the right position to deal with them. Most players these days get a third and fourth queen before 3rd and sometimes even go up to 6 lings to fend off reapers. As for the initial reaper, it should only be able to potentially kill 2 drones before zerglings pop, so just -> extractor -> spore as they get close to death.
If you're having trouble with the initial hellion/reaper pokes, you can try making ~12 lings right around the time speed finishes (~6:30) and overwhelm the first 4 hellions and reapers. Again, making an earlier 3rd and 4th queen will probably help out immensely; just make sure you're still taking your third by 6:30, before hellions get out on the map!
I'm a high silver Zerg player (been playing zerg since this season and I'm glad I changed races (f**k toss!)) and I really can't find a good comp to fight against bio in ZvT. I usually do a ~12 minute roach timing (not all-in, but it usually kills them if they don't see it coming), but lately Terrans are putting more pressure on me in the mid-late game with deathball bio/drops. What is a good army composition to combat this?
I am also having a bit of trouble dealing with early ZvT hellion harass when I'm trying to get my third base up around 5-6 minutes. I try to make four queens, but when I try to engage them they always go around my queens and into my natural/main.
I'm a high silver Zerg player (been playing zerg since this season and I'm glad I changed races (f**k toss!)) and I really can't find a good comp to fight against bio in ZvT. I usually do a ~12 minute roach timing (not all-in, but it usually kills them if they don't see it coming), but lately Terrans are putting more pressure on me in the mid-late game with deathball bio/drops. What is a good army composition to combat this?
I am also having a bit of trouble dealing with early ZvT hellion harass when I'm trying to get my third base up around 5-6 minutes. I try to make four queens, but when I try to engage them they always go around my queens and into my natural/main.
Any tips?
Thanks so much!
After noon sir!
At the moment I still enjoy the ling/bane/muta style vs most bio comps. Just make sure you are getting your upgrades ASAP. I drop my two evos around the same time i'm dropping my 3rd(6min). If the T gets ahead of you on upgrades things can turn badly very quick as you stop trading efficiently. Also make sure your mutas don't die as you'll always need them. I like to focus the medivacs with my muta and just let my lings do what ever while microing my banes to kill marines and not marauders.
I have been trying a roach/hydra/bane/infestor comp thats actually becoming a little more popular and is also a lot of fun to use. But it's a little harder imo to pull off and survive till you have the right unit comps to really engage fully.
As for the hellions its a tough one honestly. If you see them you're going to want to build at least a few extra zerglings(not to "kill" but to scare off) queens do a great job at this but same thing as with zerglings, you dont so much want to chase them down and kill them as much as just scare them off.
Its not the end of the world if a few of them are attacking your newly placed hatch as it takes a while for hellions to do any major damage to buildings and by that time you can just build a few more lings and scare them away. Hope this helps.
Hit me up in game if I can help with anything else.
Hey everyone I have a question. According to TL's liquipedia on Attack Target Priority found here:Attack Priority It says that overlords have the same priority as attacking units. My question is if I am using an army to engage a stalker or marine composition. If order my speed Overlords to fly directly in the middle of their comp, will they tank all of the damage and leave my army to kill his unless he focus fires? Even better is while the overlords are over his army you have them generate creep? Will this work or is the liquipedia wrong?
I'm fairly certain this has been covered before and I probably know the answer already, but I'm just going to ask so I have an exact response: How does one deal with an ebay block in ZvT? It's only happened to me one game, but I was a little clueless on how to deal with it.
I simply went pool first into hatch, but the hatch felt so late. Thoughts?
On March 13 2014 02:16 SC2John wrote: I'm fairly certain this has been covered before and I probably know the answer already, but I'm just going to ask so I have an exact response: How does one deal with an ebay block in ZvT? It's only happened to me one game, but I was a little clueless on how to deal with it.
I simply went pool first into hatch, but the hatch felt so late. Thoughts?
Pool first is a correct response. The ebay puts them behind as well. Just keep droning and make 4-6 lings to kill it off. It sets you both behind a bit, but providing you don't totally overcommit and do something crazy it shouldn't effect you to badly. Also if you see an early scv coming via overlord always be thinking of whether it is coming into your main. If it doesn't send a drone down as soon as possible, if you get there fast you can deny the build time very fast.
Any advice on how to engage or deal with mass bc/viking/raven/tank super late game on daedulus point or w/e its called. I feel like I had a clear advantage and threw the game by waiting longer but I couldnt spend my 10k/10k wisely enough.
Any advice on how to engage or deal with mass bc/viking/raven/tank super late game on daedulus point or w/e its called. I feel like I had a clear advantage and threw the game by waiting longer but I couldnt spend my 10k/10k wisely enough.
seconded. plz help. i know you shouldnt let them get to that but how do i go about doing that? what kind of roach push should i be doing thats not completely all in?
Hi Jehuty, I watched your replay. You actually didn't have an advantage at any point in the game. I know you're asking about the late game and probably don't want to hear about the early game, but you really need to work on how you think about and handle reapers, supply blocks, and droning. If you have an economy established everything becomes much easier. You want 4 bases mining properly by 11 at the latest. You desaturated your mineral lines to get gas - you want to be mining all 16 of every mineral patch asap, and only putting guys into gas as the 16 mineral drones are replaced. You should put your third down after you build that particular inject of drones too. That said, you went into the mid game in an okay-ish position because your opponent did that blind, weak mine/tank hellion push. However, your scouting and decision making for the next few minutes is what lost you the game. If a mech player double expands, you need to see it and contest those bases immediately. Really, he should of been building up, defending his third and taking a fourth slowly and cautiously. He needed to respect that you could make 100 roaches or start producing mutalisks. Either of which would probably of killed him immediately because he is incredibly immobile, so part of the problem here is compositional - again related to scouting.You want to be maxed, harassing using your speed advantage and banking as they take their fourth. Swarm hosts are good, but at that point in the game their role is to force the terran to defend a position while you run around with the rest of your army, denying mining. He was already spreading himself so thin you didn't need to force him to stay in one place because he couldn't cover all that ground anyway - you would be better off using roaches/mutas to deny the far bases. Your swarm hosts instead rallied into a tank line for some time. You need to keep moving them and re-rallying until the terran is fully turtled on 3/4 base. He delayed thors, so mutas probably would of had a chance to kill most of the tanks which would of made the swarm hosts' job much easier. A couple engages of late game engages went alright for you but his bank afterwards was always higher than yours, as a result of him expanding faster than you, which should never happen. The goal of zvmech is to deny their mining forever while you get a massive bank. If they get enough ravens, you need Swarm hosts, infestors, corruptors and vipers with spores underneath, and a bank to remax on corruptors. Place your spores and swarm hosts in position where has has to fight into you, and pre-spread your corruptors and infestors. As he moves into you, abduct as many ravens as possible, then fungal, corruption, infested terrans, and corruptor splitting. He shouldn't have too much left, the rest you can clean up with corruptors or mutas. You should watch Pig's vods. He explains everything as he plays. In this game he beats Taeja's mech on Daedalus point. Additionally, you should watch Soulkey's games against innovation from the IEM Asian Qualifiers. If you want to ask specifics I play on EU - entropy 229. Cheers.
On March 14 2014 13:46 mooseman1710 wrote: how do i gain an edge in zvz roach vs roach when we are both even?
Better engagements (concave vs. convex). Watch pro's play ZvZ and see how they deal with big engagements.
Roach burrow back stabs. Watch how pros when attacking will send a group of 4-6 roaches into their opponents main. Timing out your main attack to hit at a third/fourth when the roaches draw the opponents army away.
Try and watch some ZvZ's where they roach vs roach. Watch what they are doing with their armies/units when they are maxed, the winner will often always be doing something.
I am high diamond and cant beat P in late game easy, but still die countless times to this shit. I've read plenty of guides/topics about that, and still there is nothing I can do. Every time I see a pro game with the P canoning the commentators say something like "ok, he is just gonna make 1 or 2 cannons cause more would be a waste here..." and it just infuriates me, cause in my games the guys justs canons everything with 5+ canons and commits heavily to this and I just can't understand how it can be beaten cost effectively.
In this game I probably made lot of mistakes, but problem is I cant just imagine a, optimal way to react every time I see a specific canoning pattern. Like sometime you must pull drones, sometimes wait for lings, make a spine or not, wait for roaches etc base on the exact canon count and commitments, which is impossible for me to anticipate.
There MUST be something simple to do to not be behind everytime? Every one seem to agree on the fact that it is very costly for the protoss to do so, that he puts himself behind, I just can't wrap my head around that: how does this puts him behind if he keeps me one 1 fucking base while he expands??
I must be something terribly wrong here, but I have no clue.
I am high diamond and cant beat P in late game easy, but still die countless times to this shit. I've read plenty of guides/topics about that, and still there is nothing I can do. Every time I see a pro game with the P canoning the commentators say something like "ok, he is just gonna make 1 or 2 cannons cause more would be a waste here..." and it just infuriates me, cause in my games the guys justs canons everything with 5+ canons and commits heavily to this and I just can't understand how it can be beaten cost effectively.
In this game I probably made lot of mistakes, but problem is I cant just imagine a, optimal way to react every time I see a specific canoning pattern. Like sometime you must pull drones, sometimes wait for lings, make a spine or not, wait for roaches etc base on the exact canon count and commitments, which is impossible for me to anticipate.
There MUST be something simple to do to not be behind everytime? Every one seem to agree on the fact that it is very costly for the protoss to do so, that he puts himself behind, I just can't wrap my head around that: how does this puts him behind if he keeps me one 1 fucking base while he expands??
I must be something terribly wrong here, but I have no clue.
some things i would mention - 1) when you pull drones you're saying "i think i can kill everything you're building, or at least all the pylons, with drones". if you're not going to shut it down, you're just throwing away mining time. it's possible to hold with a major drone pull (like 10-12 drones), but obviously risky 2) only make spines if you're unable to keep the probe out of your main base (i.e. when they do the "build one cannon on the low ground to protect the pylon on the high ground" thing). the spine is to prevent cannons from going up close enough to hit your hatch, pool, extractor, drones, etc 3) i know as zerg you always feel like you're behind on one base, but when toss commits to a huge cannon rush, it is actually viable to go roaches or sometimes even swarm hosts off of one base. it depends on the situation and how bad the cannon rush gets, and again it's a game sense thing. try studying the resource graphs after your games to see where protoss is at and how much time you have to build army and break out. if you do break out, make sure you scout toss's tech timings and followup. you don't necessarily know when he ended up building his gate, core, etc
I've seen Blade's guides to canon rushes, but still I am not fully satisfied. Thanks for your answer, if you could look at my replay it would be very much appreciated though
But I'd definitely try to panic less and don't pull all my drones if not needed. For information, in my game he did a 3 pylon block on top of my ramp then several canons below the ramp, then more canons to deny another hatch I attempted to build at my 3rd location.
On March 13 2014 02:16 SC2John wrote: I'm fairly certain this has been covered before and I probably know the answer already, but I'm just going to ask so I have an exact response: How does one deal with an ebay block in ZvT? It's only happened to me one game, but I was a little clueless on how to deal with it.
I simply went pool first into hatch, but the hatch felt so late. Thoughts?
The previous answer that I remember (and I think given by blade, and might have been way back in wol) was that it delays the terran just as much, so you just go pool-hatch and call it even. I don't recall how many zerglings were recommended to get the cancel on the ebay, though.
The faster queens should help make up the difference as well; iirc I start the 2nd queen right after the first pops at my main, so that I get an inject on the natural as soon as it goes up.
On March 15 2014 05:03 DjayEl wrote: I'm sorry, the link to my replay should work now.
I've seen Blade's guides to canon rushes, but still I am not fully satisfied. Thanks for your answer, if you could look at my replay it would be very much appreciated though
But I'd definitely try to panic less and don't pull all my drones if not needed. For information, in my game he did a 3 pylon block on top of my ramp then several canons below the ramp, then more canons to deny another hatch I attempted to build at my 3rd location.
honestly i don't think i've ever faced a 3 pylon wall at the top of the ramp (maybe once ever? lol) so i'm not sure i know what the optimal response to that is. one thing i would say is that it's kind of suspicious how long his probe was running around your base. normally when toss knows your pool and hatch are going up, they say "ok, this is standard play" and either pylon block you, stick around and do a standard cannon rush on your natural, or just go home. they don't just run around your base losing mining time. in fact, i would almost start thinking about proxy 2gate in base if i saw the probe dancing around that long, which would prompt me to poke around my main. of course, this is me sitting back in hindsight and watching your replay, but i'm trying to think from the perspective of what i would try to look for to prevent this. for similar reasons, i like to send my second overlord to the natural and keep it there until lings are out
so in theory if you keep on the suspicious probe and you SEE the pylons go up right away unlike in your game, what i would personally do is a big drone pull. at 2:45 you have 14 drones, not including the one building the hatch but including your extractor, which obviously you should cancel when you see the pylons if you're able. so if i saw it, i would have tried pulling 12 drones, 4 to each pylon. assuming you break the wall, if he builds a pylon on the low ground you can just go deny that too because there's no cannon. if a cannon goes up on the low ground, he'll still need to build a pylon since you're busting the 3 at the top. again, with apologies, i don't face this a lot and i'm basically theorycrafting
in your actual situation, where you didn't see the pylons until it was too late (which i'm sure could easily happen to me too), i would drone to 24/6 instead of massing lings, then tech straight to roach. you either bust them all or you don't bust any of them. because you saw them so late, he can have cannons warping in on the low ground, so if you bust a single pylon the cannons will just be powered by the other two anyway, which is exactly what happened to you. i would have my forward overlord scouting protoss's base so i know whether i can push across the map and pressure him or if i should only build enough roaches to bust out and expand. i would have my rear overlord keeping an eye on how many cannons protoss is committing to the natural and also if he's going to try to follow it up with that weird proxy gateway shit they do sometimes, in which case you'll need to add spines and maybe lings. if it's an insane insane amount (and he was almost getting there) i would start considering swarm hosts. he even went nexus before gateway, his tech is so incredibly late and your overlord can walk around his base until like 10:00, so if you scout well and get swarm hosts on the map you can potentially just bust every single cannon for free and then straight up kill protoss with mass speedling. i've seen GMs do the roach and swarm host busts on stream, so this part isn't theorycraft
On March 13 2014 02:16 SC2John wrote: I'm fairly certain this has been covered before and I probably know the answer already, but I'm just going to ask so I have an exact response: How does one deal with an ebay block in ZvT? It's only happened to me one game, but I was a little clueless on how to deal with it.
I simply went pool first into hatch, but the hatch felt so late. Thoughts?
The previous answer that I remember (and I think given by blade, and might have been way back in wol) was that it delays the terran just as much, so you just go pool-hatch and call it even. I don't recall how many zerglings were recommended to get the cancel on the ebay, though.
The faster queens should help make up the difference as well; iirc I start the 2nd queen right after the first pops at my main, so that I get an inject on the natural as soon as it goes up.
Thanks! I think I happened across blade's response too, I just wanted some confirmation. I think it makes sense with the queens and ~4 zerglings. The game that this happened to me in was a weirdass game anyway.
EPT
