The HotS Zerg Help Me Thread - Page 265

opisska

Poland8852 Posts

July 14 2015 18:53 GMT

#5281

Two questions from my recent games, where I did not know what composition to go for:

- ZvT, Marauder heavy attacks in early mid-game. I guess I could have scouted better and rusher faster mutas, anything else? Banelings or roaches don't do much. Or go heavy lings with macro hatches?

- ZvP maxed out zealot/void/archon/storm. Is muta and basetrade the only way? Storms melted my hydras, I don§t hink corruprtors would do enough eagainst vodis and they are slow and get also damage from stroms.

gameiseasy

3 Posts

July 14 2015 19:15 GMT

#5282

On July 14 2015 16:22 Beelzebub1 wrote:

Show nested quote +

Mid masters Zerg, I feel the exact same way, robo or twilight tech can either be a safe third or a deadly attack, and if the deadly attack works they can take a free third, if they get ready to do said deadly attack and you prepare they merely expand and tech.

Without Swarm Hosts I am trying my damn hardest to not let the game get to Templars, they hard counter Vipers and we have nothing cost efficient to trade with Colossus/Templar armies in the late game.

Not to cry too hard but Zerg just seems straight up underpowered lately, in both pro and ladder play Zergs are struggling atm

yeh everyone says burrow roaches and stuff but honestly that doesnt work... especially if they go oracle because 1 voidray shuts me down hard and lets not even start on the amount of chokes in this map pool that can easily stall for time....

Beelzebub1

1004 Posts

July 14 2015 21:59 GMT

#5283

On July 15 2015 03:53 opisska wrote:
Two questions from my recent games, where I did not know what composition to go for:

- ZvT, Marauder heavy attacks in early mid-game. I guess I could have scouted better and rusher faster mutas, anything else? Banelings or roaches don't do much. Or go heavy lings with macro hatches?

- ZvP maxed out zealot/void/archon/storm. Is muta and basetrade the only way? Storms melted my hydras, I don§t hink corruprtors would do enough eagainst vodis and they are slow and get also damage from stroms.

Replay? Did he have like a ton of rax with tech labs and starports? That sounds interesting, 2 base Spire would murder it I imagine. I usually struggle with Maruader heavy comps in the late game when they ton's of mines and Thors for anti Mutalisk.

ZvP with that composition is not going to end up well for the Zerg atm lol don't let it get there or use some crazy Broodlod/Ultra/Queen/Infestor/Viper xD

Beelzebub1

1004 Posts

July 14 2015 22:01 GMT

#5284

On July 15 2015 04:15 gameiseasy wrote:

Show nested quote +

I've been tempted to really study some of the later pro games of Life vs. Protoss because he uses it alot with great effect but whenever I try to wing it (Lol therein lies of problem) I end up just doing so badly with it that that it seems useless.

ZvP so tough lately, I don't know what people are smoking when they say this map pool is Zerg favored, Moonlight Madness is a straight ZvP nightmare.

Velthias

1 Post

July 17 2015 15:56 GMT

#5285

In the early games, similar to Protoss and Terran, is it best to make sure you have the least amount of larvae as possible? I'm under the impression that if you have unspent larvae then that's units you could've had, however I do well with my injects and find it difficult to spend all of my larvae. Is this a macro problem, or is this the way Zerg was designed?

Cascade

Australia5405 Posts

July 17 2015 23:49 GMT

#5286

On July 18 2015 00:56 Velthias wrote:
In the early games, similar to Protoss and Terran, is it best to make sure you have the least amount of larvae as possible? I'm under the impression that if you have unspent larvae then that's units you could've had, however I do well with my injects and find it difficult to spend all of my larvae. Is this a macro problem, or is this the way Zerg was designed?

If you expand quickly and spend enough money on other things than drones, such as units, third, queens, spines, gas, etc, then you won't have money to use up your larvae from constant injects. If you anticipate that, lay down a creep tumour instead of an inject that you can't use anyway.

That's the basic principle. Someone more knowledgeable will tell you which openers this apply to.

qqMagnuz

44 Posts

July 18 2015 20:12 GMT

#5287

I need help to understand why this is happening. It was a ZvT game, I am silver and my opponent is Gold.

At minute 8 I am doubling his workers, 48 to 24 from my hatch-first build and his late-CC. Further, he did no harass whatsoever. No reaper, no hellion. Then at 9:30 I do an attack which kills all his workers on his natural, which makes the worker score 54-20. Basically I am quite far ahead and start upgrades. At this point of the game I am ahead in workers, bases, army value, resource collection rate. But then I try to attack his third and he just counter attacks me. What are some things I have to do better and why did I lose this game when I clearly was outplaying him? Even my creep spread was 1 screen from his base. Felt like a really bad loss, where I lost after heavily outplaying the opponent.

http://www.ggtracker.com/matches/6099149

michael33360148

1 Post

July 19 2015 10:20 GMT

#5288

I think this is a simple question but maybe it isn't. As a zerg, when I get to the supply cap, what is the ideal distribution of workers, queens, and main army?

In ZvT and ZvP, I have it hardwired to outmacro my opponent so I make lots of drones, expand early and often, deny opponents expansions when possible and stay a base ahead. However, when the enemy finally pushes, my supply cap army dies, then I recap my supply once or even twice during the push and still lose.

Is it possible that so much of my supply is committed to workers and queens that my main army is just too weak?

SacredCoconut

Finland121 Posts

July 19 2015 11:20 GMT

#5289

The max amount of workers depends. With some playstyles/units compositions you want more or less drones. But as kinda rule of thumb normally around 4 base 8 gas and on 4th base 10 drones on minerals is most you ever want (16 on the other 3 bases). So 4 bases is the most you can mine at one time, you only take more when you move workers from mined out base.

Cascade

Australia5405 Posts

July 19 2015 13:28 GMT

#5290

Yeah, depends on situation, but in general somewhere between 66 (3 base saturation) to at most a bit above 80 is what you will see the pros do. Occasionally they go a bit higher for a while, up towards 100, if they don't anticipate fighting in a while and will build static defence. Very late game when both players have a large bank and main-nat and even third are mined out, people often go a lot lower, like 40-something or so, to have a larger army for more efficient trades. But in normal games, somewhere in low-mid 70 is pretty close to optimal as I understand. Also a bit depending on style I guess.

Archiatrus

Germany64 Posts

July 19 2015 13:42 GMT

#5291

On July 19 2015 05:12 qqMagnuz wrote:
I need help to understand why this is happening. It was a ZvT game, I am silver and my opponent is Gold.

At minute 8 I am doubling his workers, 48 to 24 from my hatch-first build and his late-CC. Further, he did no harass whatsoever. No reaper, no hellion. Then at 9:30 I do an attack which kills all his workers on his natural, which makes the worker score 54-20. Basically I am quite far ahead and start upgrades. At this point of the game I am ahead in workers, bases, army value, resource collection rate. But then I try to attack his third and he just counter attacks me. What are some things I have to do better and why did I lose this game when I clearly was outplaying him? Even my creep spread was 1 screen from his base. Felt like a really bad loss, where I lost after heavily outplaying the opponent.

http://www.ggtracker.com/matches/6099149

Here are things that came to my mind when watching over the replay:
Ok you were quite far ahead but than you smashed your head again and again against a brick wall.

Attacks:
Look at every engagement you did at his side of the map and ask yourself: what did this attack achieve? Did I trade at least equal? Or did I just kill a major part of my army for literally nothing? And you need more banes and you need them sooner. Mutas are nice, but in my opinion at your level banes are much more important. Would you have had banes every time before his marines where on your side, you would not have lost nearly as much. Banes are a game changer in a fight against pure, probably not perfectly controlled marines. Especially due to your really good creep spread.

Macro:
I liked that you overdroned a little at your nat, when you did not feel save to take a third (you saw no exe from him). It is always better to die with too many than not enough drones. One thing I had to learn not to stop droning even when the third is not up yet. But then you never really had a third. There were never 16 Drones. So every time you inject make sure there are at least 16/24. And you had two potential thirds and you always tried to establish the one TOWARDS the Terran. Do not do this. Sometimes the few seconds your opponent needs to the base can mean a lot more banes finish morphing.

Creep:
I am impressed. A lot better than mine (dia). Keep this up!

So my overall advise: You attacked too often. Do not get me wrong. Keep your opponent on his toes, but the game plan should be: get somehow safely to 3/3 ling/bane with ultras. This composition can roll over a Terran in the lower leagues most of the time. So when you send your army on his side of the map, do not attack if you are not sure you can win the fight. You do not have to fight him on his side. Just poke (preferable at the weakest point and not strongest

). Before and after every poke morph some banes. You should always have some spare ones.
The second point is do not forget your macro after the second base and expand away from the Terran.

gl & hf

Edit: Oh and one additional thing. You see that you have GM SQ value? This can mean two things: either your macro is as good as the one of a GM player.... or you had not enough income aka not enough drones. So if you see this on ggtracker your first thought should not be: "wow my macro was really good". It should be: "did I starved myself by not building enough drones?"

qqMagnuz

44 Posts

July 19 2015 21:33 GMT

#5292

Here are things that came to my mind when watching over the replay:
Ok you were quite far ahead but than you smashed your head again and again against a brick wall.

Attacks:
Look at every engagement you did at his side of the map and ask yourself: what did this attack achieve? Did I trade at least equal? Or did I just kill a major part of my army for literally nothing? And you need more banes and you need them sooner. Mutas are nice, but in my opinion at your level banes are much more important. Would you have had banes every time before his marines where on your side, you would not have lost nearly as much. Banes are a game changer in a fight against pure, probably not perfectly controlled marines. Especially due to your really good creep spread.

I felt I had a really strong lead considering I had very good economy and I was trying to contain my enemy to, at first, only 2 bases. That's why I tried to take fights at his natural because I knew I had decent queen injects to easily build up my army again. However, the attack at his 3rd (planetary) with his several turrets was a bad move. Again, I had the same process. Even if I trade poorly in terms of cost-effectiveness, I will easily rebuild my army. The last fight, where he pushes with a lot of marines he had really impressive marine splits for a gold player. So I easily underestimated how many banes I needed. And mutas are just way too cost-inefficient. Pretty horrific indeed. My opponent had mass marine and only a handful of medivacs. I really thought 2-2 zerglings would be more useful, especially against his slower tech.

Macro:
I liked that you overdroned a little at your nat, when you did not feel save to take a third (you saw no exe from him). It is always better to die with too many than not enough drones. One thing I had to learn not to stop droning even when the third is not up yet. But then you never really had a third. There were never 16 Drones. So every time you inject make sure there are at least 16/24. And you had two potential thirds and you always tried to establish the one TOWARDS the Terran. Do not do this. Sometimes the few seconds your opponent needs to the base can mean a lot more banes finish morphing.

My 3rd was a little late, but I did do a lot with the army I had before I took my 3rd. Actually I killed his entire SCV and all his mules at the natural at about 9 minutes into the game. Also, I had another really big mistake which was most of the mineral patches at my main were gone, but there were still around 16-18 workers on only a single mineral patch or two. Which is why I couldn't rebuild my army after sacrificing it to kill my opponents third. I wanted to take the third towards the Terran, just because I had really good creep spread, and also, the fact that he went a really marine-heavy build which in theory is heavily countered by banes at the ramps where he wants to attack.

Creep:
I am impressed. A lot better than mine (dia). Keep this up!

Thanks. At one point, my creep was 1 screen away from the opponents natural.

So my overall advise: You attacked too often. Do not get me wrong. Keep your opponent on his toes, but the game plan should be: get somehow safely to 3/3 ling/bane with ultras. This composition can roll over a Terran in the lower leagues most of the time. So when you send your army on his side of the map, do not attack if you are not sure you can win the fight. You do not have to fight him on his side. Just poke (preferable at the weakest point and not strongest

). Before and after every poke morph some banes. You should always have some spare ones.
The second point is do not forget your macro after the second base and expand away from the Terran.

You say I attacked too often. Do you think the first push I did at 9 minutes was worth it? I trade 9 banes + 10 zerglings to knock down his bunker wall on the natural. What he loses is 14 workers (3 of them Mules), and about 10 marines and a bunker. He also lost the mining time on his natural for about 2 minutes straight. Would you say that engagement is worth it?

Edit: Oh and one additional thing. You see that you have GM SQ value? This can mean two things: either your macro is as good as the one of a GM player.... or you had not enough income aka not enough drones. So if you see this on ggtracker your first thought should not be: "wow my macro was really good". It should be: "did I starved myself by not building enough drones?"

What exactly does "GM SQ value" mean? My main and natural had good saturation, although my third never quite had full saturation and I also lost it once. How can I determine if my macro is as good as a GM or if I lacked drones?

Thanks for the help.

Edit: I have more games 1v1 with GM SQ, whatever that means. My last game to take an example: http://www.ggtracker.com/matches/6100933 (91 SQ)
Edit 2:
http://www.ggtracker.com/matches/6101015 (106 SQ)

Shuffleblade

Sweden1903 Posts

July 20 2015 00:15 GMT

#5293

On July 20 2015 06:33 qqMagnuz wrote:
Here are things that came to my mind when watching over the replay:
Ok you were quite far ahead but than you smashed your head again and again against a brick wall.

Show nested quote +

Thanks. At one point, my creep was 1 screen away from the opponents natural.

Show nested quote +

I haven't watched your replay so my answers in general, the guy that saw your game can probably answer better.
Personally I used to be so scared of terran before, especially three base+ so I used to attack overly much. I still do that sometimes just like you did I feel I need for "just one more push" to finish or keep him on two bases for just a few more minutes.
This is dangerous, trading lings blings are good as long as you make sure you have enough to hold a counter attack. Thats also why mutas are so good because if you have lings tanking then your mutas can often survive and that in itself makes it so he can't kill you with his counter attack. My advice would be to focus on defending and always make sure you have lots of banelings, as the other guys said they are great.

As for the question of trading lings and blings for workers and buildings I think thats always a great trade as long as you have a strong economy behind it. Three orbital terran has a very resilient economy, always make sure you have at least three bases mining decently before throwing units away for workers

On a totally different note, ZvP has been my worse matchup for as long as I can remember but recently I've been able to do very well against P (Their all-ins are still dangerous as hell) and I have gotten better win % against P than any other race. Just now I just won my first game against a current masters player (Woho) and it was a protoss player to boot.
I'm still a dia scrub but what I do is go early roach warren(safety+mindgame) and then fast +1 +1 melee ling build into lair. Almost every P will think you're going for a roach push but its actually all ling style that goes into late mutas. Usually if they scout my spire while building I'll throw down a hydra den somewhere else and go hydra instead. Lings are usually great at cancelling thirds and from this point I go between hydra-muta-corrputor depending on what he does. If her forces late game you already have air superiority with hydras for vs air support so broods work great especially if you get a few infestors. Just throwing it out there if it might help some other zergs that are struggling vs P right now.

Archiatrus

Germany64 Posts

July 20 2015 05:48 GMT

#5294

Show nested quote +

Thanks. At one point, my creep was 1 screen away from the opponents natural.

Show nested quote +

The first push was fine. You had a good opportunity and you took it. And the thought process of containing him is also fine. But containing would mean: put your army in front of his base, so that he is scared of leaving it. What you did was attacking into the wall several times (and later into the planatary) so that you had no army left. Then he was able to counter and did quite some damage before your banelings finished. Then after your attack on his planetary (and even slightly before) your lead was gone. He already had a fourth and you were effectively only mining from your main and nat. So as the post before me says: be a little bit more cautious with your attacks, be defensive, have always a few emergency banes ready and use your advantage to get an even bigger advantage (3/3 and ultras).

The Spending Quotient is there to help you assess your macro. It takes into account your average unspent resources and your income. It is quite nice, but has some limitations. E.g. it does not take into account, what income you should have at a certain point in the game. You can google it to learn more. But from the look of it, the other two games are actually GM level. The right amount of drones and really low unspent. Very good!

FlyingBeer

United States262 Posts

July 21 2015 16:47 GMT

#5295

In ZvP, I currently feel as though my tech direction has to change dramatically depending on the protoss' choices. Here's how I currently view it:

Warpgate being chronoed - earlier roach Warren (6:00)
Blink - roach/hydra
DTs - fast lair, spores
Phoenix/Oracle - 1 spore crawler per base, sometimes 2
Void Rays - queen/hydra
Immortals w/ 3rd (means early high Templars) - fast broodlords
Immortals with no 3rd - infestors with mass roach
Colossus - broodlords or ultra/hydra/viper/infestor

How can I modify this to simplify my in-game decisions?

brickrd

United States4894 Posts

July 21 2015 18:47 GMT

#5296

On July 22 2015 01:47 FlyingBeer wrote:
In ZvP, I currently feel as though my tech direction has to change dramatically depending on the protoss' choices. Here's how I currently view it:

Warpgate being chronoed - earlier roach Warren (6:00)
Blink - roach/hydra
DTs - fast lair, spores
Phoenix/Oracle - 1 spore crawler per base, sometimes 2
Void Rays - queen/hydra
Immortals w/ 3rd (means early high Templars) - fast broodlords
Immortals with no 3rd - infestors with mass roach
Colossus - broodlords or ultra/hydra/viper/infestor

How can I modify this to simplify my in-game decisions?

i would say roach/hydra/viper is viable in the midgame against almost anything including robo tech. it's interesting you say you want to go melee style against colossus because colossus is actually what RHV was originally invented to counter. that's the whole point, you just abduct them. it's just that in the modern meta more often you're blinding clouding a gateway/immo army instead. yes, when they get to templar on a good economy you will soon be fucked, so you either need to all-in really hard or have an ultra or brood transition, which is really hard to do these days, but roach/hydra/viper is still the stable bread and butter ground pounding army. if you want to be aggressive and take a lot of trades and basically all-in for the entire game on RHV, check out Snute vs Classic on cactus valley in IEM, he shows amazing roach/hydra play against storm tech while trading and harassing enough to keep protoss from stabilizing and rolling him over. otherwise check out pig's roach/hydra/viper into broodlord guide here http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/488045-zvp-safe-speedling-opening-roach-hydra-viper-bl

if for some reason you hate vipers then you can just max on roach/hydra and try to win with better macro and better fights where you come from different angles, but you are gambling that protoss will mess up his positioning and FFs. also against greedy 3 base robo play don't rule out spire - mutas are slowly coming back into the meta as protoss tries to get away with more bullshit. if it's not the typical "make a third and then see what happens with a big blink/sentry attack" style and you can sneak out an unscouted spire you can often get a really nice advantage. but obviously be careful if this gets scouted or he's aggressive, because you'll probably just fly into blink or phoenix and have a bunch of useless pterodactyls flying around against standard protoss

as for void rays, if it's defensive turtly mass void rays and you're not going to be super aggressive then you can skip making a lot of hydras and go queen/infestor with lots of bases and economy. the reason for this is if you invest in a big hydra army and you aren't able to break him while he's sitting back on cannons and going up to templar, carriers or tempests, you actually end up with a useless army and you will probably lose. so instead you use the threat of fungal and defensive transfuses and spores to ensure that he can't just snipe bases for free while you bank $$$ to make tons of hive deathballs while trying to abduct or fungal expensive units like you're playing against mech. eventually you probably want to trade some army and/or some bases and then do a stupidly large jaedong muta switch

making infestors against 2 base immortal also seems like a really bad choice, you'll never get them out in time to stop a proper sentry/immortal, and god forbid it's immortal/zealot which hits way quicker. favor mass roach on 2.5 base saturation and transition to hydra and/or roach burrow if you can delay protoss or force him to recall or walk home

TRaFFiC

Canada1448 Posts

July 23 2015 11:44 GMT

#5297

Hey Zergies. How is the ledge on moonlight madness not broken as fuck? For those not familiar I'm talking the one between main and third base, though there are others. First, he can snipe your gas and you can't do anything. Second, you are forced to keep a significant group of ling bane there. Third, you can't clear it with mutas. You essentially have to wait until he feels like leaving. All the while he can drop third or main whenever he wants and just boost back the safety of the cliff.

I'm 2 seconds from vetoing this map, but can be convinced otherwise. A replay would be nice. Di level.

Ej_

47656 Posts

July 23 2015 11:58 GMT

#5298

On July 23 2015 20:44 TRaFFiC wrote:
Hey Zergies. How is the ledge on moonlight madness not broken as fuck? For those not familiar I'm talking the one between main and third base, though there are others. First, he can snipe your gas and you can't do anything. Second, you are forced to keep a significant group of ling bane there. Third, you can't clear it with mutas. You essentially have to wait until he feels like leaving. All the while he can drop third or main whenever he wants and just boost back the safety of the cliff.

I'm 2 seconds from vetoing this map, but can be convinced otherwise. A replay would be nice. Di level.

I just vetoed.