[G] First Overview of HotS Zerg - Page 10

On March 21 2013 04:31 ZenithM wrote:
From my experience, there are no "Terran guides" because Terran is not a race with which you can follow a walkthrough or a flowchart to win your games. At least it wasn't that way at all in WoL.
There is no "tech transitions", "mid-game strategies" to speak of.

With Terran, you choose an opening build (there are plenty of guides about those), then choose a unit comp (and it doesn't really matter what your opponent is doing in real time, you just pick something you're comfortable with, or which is good on the map, or because of I don't know what else pre-game factor you can think of), setup your infrastructure, and then you roll with it because you can't really change it on the fly, and the real show begins. You try to outplay your opponent, which can come from different things:
- Hitting certain timings (unit counts, upgrades, etc)
- Taking good fights and microing them well
- Try to outmultitask and drop several places at the same time, while pushing with your main army on the creep.
- Meticulously push an advantageous position,
- etc..etc..
The point is, you can't really follow a step by step guide to do all that. The guide is basically "micro well, try to drop as fast and often as you can, macro well and chain your upgrades, and good luck".

Terran isn't really the reactive race, you can set the pace by producing certain units and handling them well, forcing your opponent to defend, and imo there isn't really something that can throw you off in the early game, especially in HotS. If a big aggression comes and you scout it, the answer is more or less the same everytime, you make bunkers, repair and try to buy time for your production to kick in and catch up.

In WoL, Terran didn't really have a late game to look forward to to speak of, so you relied pretty much on your "typical bio-centric army" to damage your opponent enough so that he can't get easily to his lategame dream situation. I'm not too experienced in HotS, so it might have changed with certain mech compositions or lategames, but in WoL I never wondered about "what to do now, how I transition" in the middle of the game. What you have to do is pretty straightforward, you have to kill the guy as brutally and mercilessly as you can :D, the actual problem is to execute it, and the few relevant decisions are maybe "when" (at my 2/2? my 3/3? when I have medivacs out? when I have triple factories?) and "where" (tactical, map dependant, and can't really be explained in a textual guide).

I understand the need and the existence of Protoss and Zerg guides, because those can actually provide some elements of game understanding. With Terran, there is not much "understanding" to have to begin with, except having the urge to kill the guy by all means. You must have a very good tactical thinking and very good control, and that's about it.

And I don't really believe you can reverse Blade's guide to get the Terran side of things.
Very nice guide btw, that goes without saying, I just wanted to explain why you might not see a big "Secret Bible of TvP" written by forty blue posters or something.

If you can think of something remotely close to what you would put in a Terran guide, tell me, I would be glad to know if it's indeed guide material or just common sense (like "when he makes mutalisks, try to make turrets, roflcopter").

On March 21 2013 04:42 blade55555 wrote:
Eh Zenith I disagree with you. A terran guide could do wonders in terms of going mech, explaining what to do, how to move out, base trade situation, vs x unit comp, etc.

Can explain bio, rax per base, dropping when is it good when is it bad, etc etc. To say terrans don't need or can't write a guide is just silly imo you could write a guide with a BO, explain things and common situations.

Dunno there are ways to write terran guides there just aren't any to write any which is true, it's not because terran isn't reactive.

On March 21 2013 04:44 Decendos wrote:


this isnt true...like at all. actually T can set the pace of the game like A LOT. T nearly 100% dominates and dicates early to midgame so obv there can be guides and standard builds. momentarely there is just no high level T player that seems to have fun at writing just a guide, but obv it is very possible. every race can follow guides but these guides have to be very long if you want to give a good guidance and overlook since every race has to adjust to what the opponent is doing and cant just blindly build their BO.

On March 19 2013 13:37 Torrathyr wrote:

Terran guide: "Really? Did you watch any of the games at MLG?"
Protoss guide: "Do what MC is doing in PvT and PvP and do what PartinG has always been doing in PvZ"

This Zerg guide is required because up to this point, the only strategy I could think of to deal with Terrans or Protoss was to play as good as life =|

Also, amazing guide, I'm bookmarking it and referring back to it whenever I can

On March 22 2013 04:27 Serenity12 wrote:



I dont think the fact that Korean Terrans were destroying foreign Zergs means that Terran is way more powerful than Zerg right now and therefore they don't need a guide.

On March 24 2013 03:33 blade55555 wrote:


Reason I haven't added new replays to this is because I plan on releasing all my korean replays next week which will have more then enough demonstrations of my zvt/zvp/zvz .

Glad you all like the guide :D

Some point next week I plan on adding in a section (muta/ling/bane into swarmhost/ling/bane/ultra/infestor). Also modifying the how to beat late game zvp now that I do know how and all that fun jazz.