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On April 15 2013 21:43 Kraelog wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2013 20:15 StillRooney wrote:Heya peeps. My ZvP is pretty weak at the moment because I don't really feel that I understand the matchup very well. This game the P went very early third that he cannoned up like crazy and went into total airtoss. I'd love some critique on what my biggest leaks are and what I could have done better. Thanks in advance! http://drop.sc/323604 A few things: Your build order is bad. A hatch first should get killed any FFE protoss with proper cannoning. Aside from that you have 44 drones at 8min when you should have around 60. In ZvP maximizing your 3-base economy is of pivotal importance so your BO needs to improve. A good and detailed guide is TangSc's http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=403783Aside from that he really shouldn't have been able to get that third up. He went for a 3 base FFE with 1 zealot for defense. That should never ever be allowed. Spread your OL to his expo and get lings over there the second he tries something like that. In general once Toss get a maxed air death ball you have lost. Against mass Carrier/VR there simply is no real counter (unless you outplay him with a retarded margin). So you need to kill him before he gets that composition. Either a roach max timing straight through his natural or a SH/Hydra push or nydus his main or whatever you like. But the ZvP matchup has changed in the sense that when Protoss is going air, the longer you wait the slimmer your chances will be.
Thanks for the critique Kraelog, I really appreciate it. Switched to Zerg in HoTS so still learning the ropes. I'll work on scouting and droning. But are you saying that on 2-player maps I should never 15 hatch vs FFE? That makes me a sad panda, there's just something very satisfying about having synchronized queens from the get-go... Oh well.
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On April 16 2013 00:04 Henk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2013 23:39 TheSubtleArt wrote:
Quit WoL over a year ago, came back now for HotS (I was mid-high masters before I quit). I haven't watched any Sc2 games or kept up with the scene so I have no idea what people are doing now.
What's a standard lategame army in ZvZ? Before I quit it was all about roach infestor, now I'm told infestors have been nerfed and Mutas rule the matchup. However I played a guy yesterday who built 2 quick evo chambes for fast upgrades, turtled with spines and spores while massing infestors and pressuring me with mass ling runbys. I outexpanded him but had no idea what to transition into. The mutas turned out to be paperweights vs mass infestors backed by corruptors and hydras. Losing my army that horribly pretty much lost any map control or economic advantage I had, and I eventually lost.
I can see why people are favoring mutas; they give you the map control to outexpand your opponent. That being said, I have no idea what a good lategame army in ZvZ is and how do deal with mass infestors backed by ling / hydra / corruptor. Should have transitioned sooner I guess, but into what?
Also, how viable are vipers vs marine / tank / medivac play? I'm in a train so short answer to both: Zvz: yes, mutas rule. When you get to higher leagues you'll see more muta v muta simply because turtling to infestors doesn't work. When I see the other player is not going for mutas, I stop at 16 mutas and then go for double upgraded lings into a very quick hive. Since he can't move out (if he moves before having an adequate number of hydras/infestors he'll waste a ton of energy on fungaling single mutas) which means you will be able to get ultras in time. Ultras rape infestor/ling/hydra it's not even funny. Vipers are ok-ish vs marine tank, but I'd rather spend gas on more ultras. Most terrans go bio-mine nowadays, I rarely see marine-tank anymore. Vipers are great vs mech, however.
Yea, I was pretty ahead in economy but had no idea what the transition to lategame or when to transition, never considered ultras, Back in WoL mass infestors was pretty much the only way to ZvZ so I have no practice with mutas lol
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I am a platinum zerg in HotS. Does it worth it to practice drone stacking (having 2 drones per near mineral field) or is the additional income too low for risking missing building drones?
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On April 16 2013 00:36 [F_]aths wrote:
I am a platinum zerg in HotS. Does it worth it to practice drone stacking (having 2 drones per near mineral field) or is the additional income too low for risking missing building drones?
Stacking drones is an apm sink. If you feel like you miss more important things because of it, don't do it. Pros do it because there's nothing else to do and it only gives you like ~30 extra minerals or so.
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Well what else are you gonna do in the first 3 minutes? Sure you'll lose some min learning to stack but its a bonus when done correctly.
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On April 16 2013 00:37 Henk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 00:36 [F_]aths wrote:
I am a platinum zerg in HotS. Does it worth it to practice drone stacking (having 2 drones per near mineral field) or is the additional income too low for risking missing building drones? Stacking drones is an apm sink. If you feel like you miss more important things because of it, don't do it. Pros do it because there's nothing else to do and it only gives you like ~30 extra minerals or so.
You mean 30 minerals for the entire game right ? Cauz the drone stacking could even make a worse result than not doing anything at all (providing you make the drone gathering every patch until there is no more). Overall not worth it at all in platinum. Hell even right now i don't bother with that, they're doing a pretty good job with the auto gathering already... :/
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On April 16 2013 00:49 RaiZ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 00:37 Henk wrote:On April 16 2013 00:36 [F_]aths wrote:
I am a platinum zerg in HotS. Does it worth it to practice drone stacking (having 2 drones per near mineral field) or is the additional income too low for risking missing building drones? Stacking drones is an apm sink. If you feel like you miss more important things because of it, don't do it. Pros do it because there's nothing else to do and it only gives you like ~30 extra minerals or so. You mean 30 minerals for the entire game right ? Cauz the drone stacking could even make a worse result than not doing anything at all (providing you make the drone gathering every patch until there is no more). Overall not worth it at all in platinum. Hell even right now i don't bother with that, they're doing a pretty good job with the auto gathering already... :/
Once you hit 16 drones you'll be saturated without drone stacking too. So the only difference is the start of the game until the point where you'll be having 2 on each patch anyway, which gives you like 30 minerals.
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On April 15 2013 20:25 Bearwidme wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2013 14:36 matgopack wrote:Hey all, I'm struggling in ZvZ right now (at Plat level). It just seems that if the game goes past 10 minutes, I win easily- but before then, I usually get stomped by ling baneling attacks. Does anyone have any tips/strategies for the matchup? I'm not having any problems with T or P, or at least not nearly enough. It's just the crazy agressive ling baneling attacks that cause me a ton of trouble  Thanks in advance! You need to understand that just because you can win most 10+min games doesn't make you a better player than the guys who 'cheese'. There's this terrible stigma that macro means you are a superior player to the guy who six pools like a boss however i think there's another type of 'cheese' that a lot of people ignore - it's called greed. You can get away with greed in zvp and zvt (to an extent) because they dont have lightning fast armies, doesn't work in zvz - you have to always be prepared to defend a flood of units. You achieve this with excellent scouting (hard to do) or you play defensive baneling every game and cop the economic hit that comes with that kind of build. You will find that you struggle with the 10+min games because you aren't greed cheesing. Best advice is to DO ling bling all ins, go fucking nuts. Make it your go to build, master it, love it. You'll learn timings, you'll learn when the lings are popping, you'll learn when gas should be going down and then when you go back to the macro game you'll laugh when you see the pathetic excuse that some scrub calls a ling/bling all in and you'll crush it because you know it's coming 30 seconds before it hits and you know the perfect number of banelings you need to stop it. It's about experience, you need to experience it from both POVs.
I understand that I'm not better, I was just indicating that I'm comfortable with mid-late game ZvZ, it's just early game where I have big problems
I think I'll try defensive banelings + evo chamber wall off. I don't like all ins, in general, but if this doesn't work out, I'll try the standard highly agressive style of ZvZ.
Thanks for the help! 
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On April 16 2013 01:23 matgopack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 15 2013 20:25 Bearwidme wrote:On April 15 2013 14:36 matgopack wrote:Hey all, I'm struggling in ZvZ right now (at Plat level). It just seems that if the game goes past 10 minutes, I win easily- but before then, I usually get stomped by ling baneling attacks. Does anyone have any tips/strategies for the matchup? I'm not having any problems with T or P, or at least not nearly enough. It's just the crazy agressive ling baneling attacks that cause me a ton of trouble Thanks in advance! You need to understand that just because you can win most 10+min games doesn't make you a better player than the guys who 'cheese'. There's this terrible stigma that macro means you are a superior player to the guy who six pools like a boss however i think there's another type of 'cheese' that a lot of people ignore - it's called greed. You can get away with greed in zvp and zvt (to an extent) because they dont have lightning fast armies, doesn't work in zvz - you have to always be prepared to defend a flood of units. You achieve this with excellent scouting (hard to do) or you play defensive baneling every game and cop the economic hit that comes with that kind of build. You will find that you struggle with the 10+min games because you aren't greed cheesing. Best advice is to DO ling bling all ins, go fucking nuts. Make it your go to build, master it, love it. You'll learn timings, you'll learn when the lings are popping, you'll learn when gas should be going down and then when you go back to the macro game you'll laugh when you see the pathetic excuse that some scrub calls a ling/bling all in and you'll crush it because you know it's coming 30 seconds before it hits and you know the perfect number of banelings you need to stop it. It's about experience, you need to experience it from both POVs. I understand that I'm not better, I was just indicating that I'm comfortable with mid-late game ZvZ, it's just early game where I have big problems I think I'll try defensive banelings + evo chamber wall off. I don't like all ins, in general, but if this doesn't work out, I'll try the standard highly agressive style of ZvZ. Thanks for the help!
Just fast expand and go blind baneling nest before speed every game. It's overly defensive but let's you reliably get past the ling/bane wars. 1 bane kills a stupidly large number of zerglings so with defensive banes 2-4 zerglings can theoretically defend against 30 lings. Despite what bear said, defensive banelings have a very modest cost which is more than made up by the freedom to drone up safely. You are also going to get it eventually so just swap places with metabolic boost in your build. The defenses you want for two base is two queens to block the ramp if necessary, a baneling nest and spine crawler. That being said, Eventually you will start picking up reads that will let you start cutting here and there.
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Hey guys, I just hit diamond league last night and am now scared to play before refining some things that I know desperately need work. Two big things I think that would help me is learning better building placement (creating chokes, etc) and baneling control, both for ZvZ. Does anyone have any tips of how I should be doing things?
If this is too vague, for example, I mean I lose way too many banes to single lings sacrificing themselves, then I lose huge packs of lings(or drones) to a single bane. I've never worried much about micro, but I think it's going to start coming up to bite me pretty soon.
I've started to keep banes in my mineral line, which I think will help, but I have a bad habit of using F2 to select my whole army, then I end up taking them out of position. Even on real hotkeys, if I have all of my banes hotkeyed together, I'd still create the same problem in panic mode... well, I guess I could just keep those off hotkey... anyways, any tips would be greatly appreciated!
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On April 16 2013 05:56 Relevant wrote:
Hey guys, I just hit diamond league last night and am now scared to play before refining some things that I know desperately need work. Two big things I think that would help me is learning better building placement (creating chokes, etc) and baneling control, both for ZvZ. Does anyone have any tips of how I should be doing things?
If this is too vague, for example, I mean I lose way too many banes to single lings sacrificing themselves, then I lose huge packs of lings(or drones) to a single bane. I've never worried much about micro, but I think it's going to start coming up to bite me pretty soon.
I've started to keep banes in my mineral line, which I think will help, but I have a bad habit of using F2 to select my whole army, then I end up taking them out of position. Even on real hotkeys, if I have all of my banes hotkeyed together, I'd still create the same problem in panic mode... well, I guess I could just keep those off hotkey... anyways, any tips would be greatly appreciated!
Don't use F2, ever. Hotkey lings on 1, banelings on 2. When he tries to snipe a baneling with 1-2 lings a move with your lings (to somewhere near your banelings/those 1-2 lings) and keep moving your banelings around so they don't explode on single lings. when you want to snipe one of their banelings, attack move, then shiftclick one or two times to remove 2 lings from your control group. Move away with the rest, and press ctrl+1 to get those 2 lings out of your control group. When he's going to attack, walk forward with 2 banelings (2 banelings kill his banelings. If he isn't spreading well, you could snipe 2+ of his banelings.) Make sure you have a spine at your natural. This helps keeping your banelings alive vs sacrificial lings / it can help sniping his banelings.
This will take practice, but it's quite useful.
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On April 16 2013 05:56 Relevant wrote:
Hey guys, I just hit diamond league last night and am now scared to play before refining some things that I know desperately need work. Two big things I think that would help me is learning better building placement (creating chokes, etc) and baneling control, both for ZvZ. Does anyone have any tips of how I should be doing things?
If this is too vague, for example, I mean I lose way too many banes to single lings sacrificing themselves, then I lose huge packs of lings(or drones) to a single bane. I've never worried much about micro, but I think it's going to start coming up to bite me pretty soon.
I've started to keep banes in my mineral line, which I think will help, but I have a bad habit of using F2 to select my whole army, then I end up taking them out of position. Even on real hotkeys, if I have all of my banes hotkeyed together, I'd still create the same problem in panic mode... well, I guess I could just keep those off hotkey... anyways, any tips would be greatly appreciated!
Not letting your banes explode on a single ling is just a matter of multitasking and babysitting your units. Just have your banelings on a seperate hotkey and pay attention to the minimap.. You can also try positioning them behind your lings or spines. Obviously when you're attacking, use move command instead of attack move for your banelings.
Ling / baneling micro is incredibly hard and just a matter of practice. If it makes you feel any better, I reached rank 11 masters in WoL and my ling / baneling micro is still horrible. Again, just practice and adjust your hotkeys to whatever works for you.
One trick you can do to try and trigger your opponent's banelings to detonate on single zerglings is move your entire zergling group towards his banes, hold shift, left click a zergling out of your control group (using the HUD or w/e at the bottom of ur screen), and then just move the rest of your zerglings away, just dont be too slow about it
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Great, thanks guys! Henk, why do you recommend removing the 2 lings from the control group? Just so I don't accidentally pull them back before they get to the banes?
I'll have to load up some practice maps and get a good grasp on this. People with great control can beat me with much less stuff, and it gets very frustrating.
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http://drop.sc/324261
http://drop.sc/324260
http://drop.sc/324259
Hello.
I've major problems in ZvT currently. I can't get past some of em and I don't know what do do anymore.
I do need advice. What can I improve to get on top of my game?
I have a couple bad habits, please point them out.
I am completely stuck vs Terran and it is bugging me to be this clueless.
(Mid Diamond level)
(GGTracker info : http://ggtracker.com/players/1049954)
Pick my game apart and be kind to lay down some groundwork, I don't know what or what not to work on.
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On April 16 2013 08:25 Relevant wrote:
Great, thanks guys! Henk, why do you recommend removing the 2 lings from the control group? Just so I don't accidentally pull them back before they get to the banes?
I'll have to load up some practice maps and get a good grasp on this. People with great control can beat me with much less stuff, and it gets very frustrating.
Well, by removing them from your group you can them attack elsewhere /move with your main group of lings without the lings you deselected going with it.
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On April 16 2013 00:49 RaiZ wrote:Show nested quote +On April 16 2013 00:37 Henk wrote:On April 16 2013 00:36 [F_]aths wrote:
I am a platinum zerg in HotS. Does it worth it to practice drone stacking (having 2 drones per near mineral field) or is the additional income too low for risking missing building drones? Stacking drones is an apm sink. If you feel like you miss more important things because of it, don't do it. Pros do it because there's nothing else to do and it only gives you like ~30 extra minerals or so. You mean 30 minerals for the entire game right ? Cauz the drone stacking could even make a worse result than not doing anything at all (providing you make the drone gathering every patch until there is no more). Overall not worth it at all in platinum. Hell even right now i don't bother with that, they're doing a pretty good job with the auto gathering already... :/
Depends on the map ofc, but I just did some testing on Bel'shir, droning to 15 supply and checking my minerals at 2:00.
When drone stacking I had 260 minerals at 2:00
Without drone stacking I had 220 minerals at 2:00
There were even more drones very close to handing in minerals in the drone stacking example, so closer to a 45 mineral difference. As you can see, this is extremely huge and everyone should do it.
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On April 16 2013 08:34 Lobbo wrote:http://drop.sc/324261 http://drop.sc/324260http://drop.sc/324259Hello. I've major problems in ZvT currently. I can't get past some of em and I don't know what do do anymore. I do need advice. What can I improve to get on top of my game? I have a couple bad habits, please point them out. I am completely stuck vs Terran and it is bugging me to be this clueless. (Mid Diamond level) (GGTracker info : http://ggtracker.com/players/1049954)Pick my game apart and be kind to lay down some groundwork, I don't know what or what not to work on.
Watching the third replay.
Alright, there are three points that i'm going to discuss here :
1. Build Order
2. Position and Map Control
3. Composition
1. Build Order
WTF IS GOING ON HERE ????? No seriously, wtf !? Like : pool first into three base on 25 drones ? With two gases ? I mean you can be afraid of reapers but still. This build is terrible. If you are so afraid of reapers just take a fast gas and position your zerglings properly. You make 8 lings off of one base for 1 reaper. You need to work on your Build Order a lot.
So this build puts you very far behind. You only reach terran's SCV count at 8 min without losing a single drone (excepted the scouting drone). That's incredibly late, and I don't count the MULES. Then you eventually rocket up on drones, but since your build order was bad, you don't have an army to defend against the small marauder hellion pressure, or even to see it coming. It almost kills your third (and should have if the terran didn't have this terrible micro).
So yeah, Build Order is terribad and puts you behind a lot early on. You need to work on it. If you are scared of reapers, just get fast Metabolic Boost.
Although my build needs some work too, I'll still give it here so you can have an idea of what yours should look like.
15 hatch
16 pool
17 Gas
17 Overlord
18 Queens x2
22 Zerglings two pairs.
@100 gas, Pull out and research Metabolic Boost.
Scout for terran nat at 5 min, if he has nothing there by then, make defenses and units, otherwise make a third and drones and start teching.
2. Position and Map Control
Alright, this is where the major problem is. You have no clue where the terran is 90% of the game. You have a total lack of map control due to absolutely no creepspread, save for linking bases, a strange reluctance to contest xel naga towers, and no overlord spread (they are all hovering at your third. Map control is a major factor in ZvT, especially vs BioMine style of play because it relies on dropping a lot. You see every drop the terran does at the moment it hits. You can't do this vs biomine. You will die ! And the better terran gets, the more they drop. And when two drops start flying at the same time, if you can't see at least one of them as it is on the way, you are screwed.
You definitely need to work on that.
Position is related to map control, but even tho the link between the two is strong, it is not the only factor. You do some weird stuff all the time regarding position. For exemple, you take your fourth and put all your army above it. Why ? Do you expect the terran to push a fourth that he doesn't know is there (although he should expect it) or to push a third where he can fight in a choke point, and that is much closer to his base, so he can reinforce quicker. You end up losing a base due to terrible positionning and bad map awareness, and this happens all the time. As you push and kill a lot of scvs, you get dropped and lose as much as you kill, because the lack of map control makes it impossible for you to get there in time.
STOP ENGAGING A TERRAN UP A CHOKE, IT IS ALWAYS BAD, unless you have 100 more supply than he does.
3. Composition
This is sometimes a matter of taste, but your composition doesn't fare very well against biomine. It lacks two things : Harrass capability, and DPS.
You spend a lot of gas on roaches through the game. But roaches are terrible versus Bio. Their slow attack speed prevents them from killing units fast enough. Medivacs almost heal faster than roaches deal damage. This means in a Biomine ZvT, roaches will only be useful for tanking. They add a little DPS but not enough to be effective vs a large bio army. Roaches are only good in small number and thus, in early game.
Harrass capability is usually gained by mutalisk in current metagame. Muta is a very strong mid game choice because it allows you to pull terran attention the same way drops pulls yours. This alone makes them very valuable. They are also useful for picking valueable units such as tanks. Forcing multitask out of a terran is extremely important, it will mess up with their macro and open them to two pronged attacks. They also provide extremely valuable cover to drops. If you refuse to play muta, then you have to rely on even better map control and game sense to know when to attack, where to defend etc.
And you will need another unit to attack medivacs, such as hydras.
Hope this was useful and remember to have fun while playing
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I searched Google/Team liquid for a hour on the build order for the
Roach/baneling all-in, in the zvz match up that is suppose to kill them right before mutas get out.
I'm bored of muta vs muta and would like to mix it up once in a while. I could not find the build order and don't have access to the vods for gsl or pro league.
Is it the same build order as the WOL bane/roach all in vs terran? Would be nice to find the exact timmings/amount of roach/bane, gas timmings for this build that is becoming pretty common in hots on some maps.
If anyone like Blade or the other Gm zergs that help on this thread could send me in the right direction for this build and to use it properly.
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What is considered the 'proper' response to a sentry immortal all-in from a Protoss these days? I'm talking mostly about the ones that move out between 9:00 and 9:30 with three immortals, around 6 sentries, and a warp prism. People keep hailing the swarm host as an answer, but the earliest swarm hosts come out at around 10:15 or 10:20. I've been thinking hydra/ling is correct, as with the speed upgrade the hydras aren't worthless afterwards, but I'm wondering what people have been doing to stop this in hots at a high level. I haven't seen many pros do it in hots, which I find peculiar because it still seems as potent if not moreso with the MSC..
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On April 16 2013 10:50 TFS wrote:
What is considered the 'proper' response to a sentry immortal all-in from a Protoss these days? I'm talking mostly about the ones that move out between 9:00 and 9:30 with three immortals, around 6 sentries, and a warp prism. People keep hailing the swarm host as an answer, but the earliest swarm hosts come out at around 10:15 or 10:20. I've been thinking hydra/ling is correct, as with the speed upgrade the hydras aren't worthless afterwards, but I'm wondering what people have been doing to stop this in hots at a high level. I haven't seen many pros do it in hots, which I find peculiar because it still seems as potent if not moreso with the MSC..
Nothing new in hots vs the standard immortal push, Just being able to identify that the push is heading your way before they move out, and set up zergling/roach flanks and attack them as they move out to force out Force Fields.
Hydras won't do anything you wont have a large number out when it hits.
Swarm host is the answer if you identify the push before hand. You stall the push out by classic wol way of dealing with the push.
If you force out alot of early forcefield, they should not have enough sentry energy to push your base and you can over run them with ling/roach/swarm host, observer wont come till after the warp prism done.
Have not had many issues with the old wol style immortal push in high masters.
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EPT
