The HotS Zerg Help Me Thread - Page 201

On September 18 2014 20:15 SC2John wrote:


Not that I know of, but the difference is fairly minimal, about 2-3 drones. You get a faster first inject with pool first, though, so you get ~half an inject ahead of hatch first builds, making it all even out pretty nicely. Personally, I say go hatch first almost every game and just get used to dealing with a lot of pressures.

On September 19 2014 23:08 Tzyx wrote:
Are there any hydra based builds for the ZvT matchup? I had a play around with going massqueen into mass hydra today and did surprisingly well against bio balls. I love using hydras but I was under the impression that they wern't really useable as the mainstay of your army vT. Is there a reason for this? Is it just that they're kinda slow? Thaught they'd get slaughtered by a decent amount of bio, but every time i tried it, they traded out really well. Had a look around, but i can't find anything.. which leads me to believe that there must be a reason that they don't get used in this way much. My terrible plat opponents aren't really a good litmus test i think

On September 19 2014 23:23 Big J wrote:


Hydras on their own are pretty terrible against bio. Supported with ling/bling, ultras or roaches they can however be quite strong.
If a more or less pure hydrastyle worked for you, then you probably just had quite an army advantage.
Additionally, they are really terrible when the opponent reacts with siege tanks (marine/medivac/tank) and it is much harder to defend really good drop play than when going mutalisks.

Basically, an equal supply of stim/shield marines beats range/speed hydralisks, but the marines don't cost gas and additionally have medivac support. Marauders cost 25 gas less and - though they lose supply for supply against hydras - aren't terrible.

If you want to play *something* including hydras, John's Notes on Hyun's Roach/Hydra style are probably a great starting point. To keep your expectations low: this is more a roach than a hydralisk style in my opinion but quite fun to throw in when you get bored of the 25min marine defense macro styles, as it is one of the best, solid Zerg aggressive styles in ZvT.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/445783-sc2-notes-hyuns-roach-hydra-zvt

On September 19 2014 08:57 Jowj wrote:
So the way I see pros doing this is:

Evo chamber + second geyser @5:30-5:45 (it varies depending on their opening build)
Lair @ 6:00-6:15(sometimes 3rd gas)
RW @ 6:20 + 3rd gas (latest timing)

3rd as you can afford it after this. Its hard to nail down a concrete timing since zergling pressure and zergling defense is SO common. You'll defend your 3rd base with ling/bling until your RW pops (right as your lair finishes hopefully) and then you can get 6-8 roaches right away for safety if they are being aggressive.

Here's the build stub for what I'm doing currently, based on Violet/Hyun's safe ZvZ (not their gasless stuff):

15p
16h
17g
@5 min baneling nest
@5:30 second gas
@5:45 evo
~@6:10ish Lair (depends on how many defensive banelings made) + 3rd geyser
@6:30 rw (20-seconds after lair basically)

3rd as possible.

Your 4th gas you don't actually need for a while since 2base saturation on minerals + 3 on gas is perfect saturation for roaches.

Also, WOO i'm blue now!

On September 20 2014 05:10 SC2John wrote:


For beginners, I highly recommend gasless builds. They are fairly safe, structured, and lend themselves to pretty straightforward play. The downside to gasless builds is that they are exploitable by opponents who know what to look for and how to respond, which makes opening gas more appealing in the sense that you can "hide what you're doing" a bit better. Going gasless or not doesn't really affect your ability to hold early pools, but with gas openings, you have the opportunity for counter speedling pressure.

As a whole, gas openings are a bit more flexible, but gasless is much easier to execute and leads to stronger macro timings, so I generally recommend this to newer players. (And most players below masters don't know how to exploit it properly anyway). If you haven't seen Lowko's Gasless ZvZ Build Order video, I highly recommend it.

One more note: gasless openers rely on a walloff to hold of speedling/baneling pressure, so they're a bit harder to do on maps like Nimbus, King Sejong Station, or Foxtrot where the natural ramps are further away or quite a bit larger.

On September 20 2014 13:37 SC2John wrote:


So after you posted this, I went on a quest to prove you wrong and found a few cool things along the way that I'll share. First of all, though, you were right about all of this. However, I disagree a BIT on Sejong Station and Overgrowth, and here's why:



You're right, this IS a two hex choke, but you can block if you have a queen perfectly in the center, and the double queen block is really not that much harder to make work. For all intents and purposes, this is enough to deal with any kind of speedling pressure and even some light baneling pressure; even if you have to double queen block, the second queen gets so little surface area to lings that it's fairly negligible. Against dedicated baneling busts or early ling all-ins, just wall with an extra evo (providing you don't place a creep tumor where I placed it lol).



With this wall, your queen is blocking behind the geyser. However, this particular walloff makes it really really difficult to play into the later stages of the game, as your roaches will get choked up in the area behind the geyser. On another map, this might not be too much of a problem, but the fact that the natural has backdoor rocks makes much more relevant. One could make the argument that you can just kill the evo later and rebuild it, but in my experience, I've always needed both evos going constantly. Therefore, I propose this wall off:



If you do it like this, you don't run into the later problems of having to deal with the later hassle of trying to fit your roaches through a single hex hole. If you get linged, this will hold up fairly well, and you can always fully wall off with a 3rd evo chamber in an emergency:



Note the 1-hex space between the two evos next to the geyser. This is still a full wall, but it allows you to use one hex of the geyser in your wall, allowing you to wall with just 3 evos and a roach warren. All in all, I think this is the proper way to wall on Sejong because it's more versatile and flows into the mid game a lot better.


Anyways, this is just me being obsessive. Thanks for the input, though, it was very informational and helps a lot to narrow things down!

On September 21 2014 03:43 brickrd wrote:
zvp 3 pylon block on the ramp on overgrowth, what did i do wrong? http://drop.sc/386337 not going to whine about the strategy, clearly there's a way to stop it, i just want to know where i messed up.