The guide actually used to be based on ling-hydra-lurker. But since this feels a lot stronger and more common in high level play right now for players to use ravager-ling-bane I made the main part of this build about that. The opening remains the same.
This is a somewhat generic ZvP opening here very similar to what you would have seen Nerchio and Snute play over the last few months. I think it's one of the easier styles to open with good practice and focuses around roaches for defence vs adepts into mass ravager-ling-bane off a low extractor count.
With the older ling-hydra lurker variation you basically go all-in hitting multi-prong and timing attacks to deny the 4th base of Protoss forever and steadily overwhelm.
The build opens with a ling elevator for scouting/damage on maps where you can do it, on those maps where you don't want to get it in just skip that fast evo chamber.
Build
1st or 2nd overlord heads to elevator spot
Hatch gas pool (gas-pool-hatch is fine if you’re blocked or prefer it)
1-2 pairs of lings for scouting - Send around edge to avoid first adept and get a scout off
@100 gas pull 2 off gas
32 3rd hatch + overlord
36 evo chamber and go to 8-10 lings (if you can’t elevator on this map skip the evo and just get the lings (14+ if they push out with 2 adepts)
Elevator lings whilst droning + ovies hard
Ling drop should hit at 4:00-4:30
3rd queen whenever you can afford it
Only 1 creep tumor squeezed in at some point for most crucial area of spread (usually connecting bases to help vs adepts
3:50 roach warren + 2nd gas + put back on gas
4:30 Lair + evo chamber if you skipped the evo/elevator earlier (can be delayed to prioritise droning if there’s been some harass/action going on)
@RW 8-10 roaches ASAP (unless scouting says you don't need them eg. vs 2-stargate) @3-base mineral saturation 2xgas (MAX of 4-5 gases all game with this style)
Bane nest isn't important early, you just need to get it in time to get bane speed for your attack. So any time when you've got spare money, preferably soon after your lair starts.
4th base as soon as you can afford it
Double Macro hatch (Just one once you get on top of your spending every game)
5th and 6th base as soon as you have the money
Ways to make this style easier Train yourself to always hotkey “counterattack units” separately so you don’t get your units mixed up e.g.:
First 2-4 lings that run around the map
Your 8 ling drop
With practice you’ll find the rhythm with the ling drop and not stress If there’s a stalker just que up the ovie to drop out its vision or drop right on top of it, or just cancel it.
Gases Take your gases in a set pattern. Make it the first 2 gases in the main. Next two in the natural or 3rd. This way you can saturate one base at a time then “set and forget” no more drones needed
How to learn it:
Practice the first 7 minutes of the game in an empty custom at the start of every day of ladder. Repeat 2-3 times to really get the hang of it.
Don’t micro the drop much - just move it into the mineral line and forget about it until you’ve got more experience
Scouting
Preferably your ling elevator sees everything and you react accordingly. Spores vs SG or potential DTS. Roaches vs Twilight council upgrading glaives.
On maps where you can't elevator try to sacrifice an overlord at 4:00 and otherwise just poke the front actively with lings whilst keeping a ling/ovie watching their 3rd. Process of elimination can give you a very high percentage of safety here.
More info on how Snute uses ravager-lingbane in this Daily:
You can do the same opening with ling-hydra-lurker!
Go up to 6-gases instead of just 4 when 3-base minerals are saturated
@Lair → Straight for hydra den → Straight to lurker den → THEN hydra upgrade after
Hit a big attack with mostly ling-hydra-lurker
Leapfrog your lurkers a few at a time like seige tanks - use shift to que up move + burrow
Use ovie speed to drop 8-16 lings in the main + natural at the same time you hit the 3rd/4th base with your main army
Aim to win with this mid-tier army and positioning, drops and multi-prong. No transition
As always please poke holes, ask questions and so on to help me fill in any gaps or answer any queries!
ive been using a similar build. little more greedy with gasless and double gas 3 mins. so i can get 2 creep queens quicker and spread creep everywhere.
also adding banes later on really help vs chargelots i have found even just a few slow banes.
I noticed you put in 2 evo chambers during your build here. Are you doing double upgrades or just 1? What about getting say +1 melee while your doing elevator while leaving 2 on gas instead of 1. Thoughts?
On August 15 2016 11:09 WarreNSC2 wrote: I noticed you put in 2 evo chambers during your build here. Are you doing double upgrades or just 1? What about getting say +1 melee while your doing elevator while leaving 2 on gas instead of 1. Thoughts?
Lings are not the killer unit with this build. Upgrading them is not really worth it since most dps comes from lurkers. Spending 100/100 There could be (if the gas were minerals instead) 4 drones that you could have earlier.
On August 15 2016 11:09 WarreNSC2 wrote: I noticed you put in 2 evo chambers during your build here. Are you doing double upgrades or just 1? What about getting say +1 melee while your doing elevator while leaving 2 on gas instead of 1. Thoughts?
If you play a slightly slower version of it where you're not quite as all-in you can go double evo, though 2nd evo shouldn't come down till 5:30-6:00 probably. The 2nd evo in the build was an error, that's when you drop it IF you skipped it earlier.
On August 16 2016 08:01 EndOfLineTv wrote: Yo pig! thanks for the write up. What are your bench mark goals? such as what is your ideal time, with how much supply of units?
I don't really have set benchmarks in lotv because it's so action-packed and there's so many builds. I just check replays for idle larva on units tab at 4x speed to check for macro mistakes, and compare worker counts. I aim to be relatively even with Protoss early and overtake them around 40-50 workers depending how much they commit to aggression.
I guess a few other goals would be in a clean/passive game to have lurker den finishing at 7:30 to start morphing lurkers and pushing soon after that.
On August 17 2016 14:17 DjayEl wrote: If Im not mistaken, you don't specify when exactly you do research ovie speed?
I don't get it every game, and when I do it's after lair + evo are upgrading when I have spare resources - OR simply to finish right as my attack hits so I can drop lings in the bases. I don't use ovie speed scouting early - usually you can tell if the opponent is cutting something and drop reactive spores/more units to be safe without seeing exactly what it is. Ovie speed is a fine way to play if you prefer that, but it cuts into your economy a lot early on.
I've just edited the build to reflect how to do the more popular and current ravager-ling-baneling off the same opening. The info on Ling-hydra-lurker is still included at the bottom. I also requested a thread name change to reflect the changed content.
Hey Pig thanks for the guide! I am having a lot of trouble zvp lately. How would you react if the toss tries to cannon rush you while trying this? example: They forge first and expand while trying to deny your expos with cannons. I am playing at a Masters 1 level.
On September 30 2016 07:29 Spittle wrote: Hey Pig thanks for the guide! I am having a lot of trouble zvp lately. How would you react if the toss tries to cannon rush you while trying this? example: They forge first and expand while trying to deny your expos with cannons. I am playing at a Masters 1 level.
Heya Spittle. The main reasons cannon rushes aren't used much at pro level PvZ anymore and are considered "bad" is because of a few factors. Of course it can still be challenging to counter, but once you get the hang of it you should end up ahead.
1) ravagers - You can always break out with ravagers for "free" in that even with just 1-2 ravagers you will clear the cannons without losing any units, just apm and a bit of time.
Ravagers also ignore a cannon defending their wall. So their very delayed core makes it very hard for them to be safe against a ravager-speedling counter all-in. Usually they feel forced to go SG--> Oracle to be safe. With this knowledge you can be well prepared.
2) Overlord drop - you can counter by dropping speedlings (or even slowlings!) into their main super early. With their delayed core it's very hard for them to defend this.
3) Starting worker count - It's quite easy for you to just expand elsewhere and very hard for Protoss to both commit enough cannons to stop these expos and stay safe at home without undercommitting to cannons and allowing zerg to save a hatch on low HP.
So yeah usually a combination of ravagers, ling elevators and just general standard "pull drones to stop the rush in the first place" combined makes you pretty solid vs this. There's still the odd game I end up a little behind after one. But I never feel massively behind after a cannon rush even when I lose a base or multiple bases.
If you're still uncomfortable - path your 2nd ovie to see incoming probes and keep an eye on it so you're always ready to pul drones to deal with any cannon rush before it gets out of control.
The two styles, ling bane ravager and the lurker hydra ling, start with quite similar openings. Is there any signs of the early scout which can tell me what style can be better at the given game?
I played hydra lurker ling quite a lot, and it seems like the weakness is an early toss push with a few immortals and gateway units (I mean not just an adept harass, but a real push). And usually I manage to push with hydra lurker due to ling drops which make my opponent split his army into several locations so that he can't micro the disrutpors while I'm initially sieging with my lurkers at his newest base (or pushing between the natural and the third).
What are the weaknesses of the ravager ling bane style, and can I adapt?
On October 09 2016 00:02 bulya wrote: The two styles, ling bane ravager and the lurker hydra ling, start with quite similar openings. Is there any signs of the early scout which can tell me what style can be better at the given game?
I played hydra lurker ling quite a lot, and it seems like the weakness is an early toss push with a few immortals and gateway units (I mean not just an adept harass, but a real push). And usually I manage to push with hydra lurker due to ling drops which make my opponent split his army into several locations so that he can't micro the disrutpors while I'm initially sieging with my lurkers at his newest base (or pushing between the natural and the third).
What are the weaknesses of the ravager ling bane style, and can I adapt?
Yeah you can open exactly the same. Only difference is you need to get melee upgrades for ravager-ling-bane. In terms of choosing which style you want to play, I would just pick what style you prefer playing. It's not something where there's any way you can scout and then choose which way you commit - you'd be delaying your own tech so long Protoss could just have everything and you'd miss any aggressive window.
Weaknesses of ravager-ling-bane is that its core is mass ling. So if you're on a map like sejong where it's very difficult to do counterattacks then it's hard to get value out of your mobility. Also if your opponent gets up a good archon/storm count early then your army can fall off pretty suddenly in front-on engagements. You can always adapt to these weaknesses. On Sejong you break the rocks early and look for any weaknesses in the simcity to get the mobility and multiprong to work. You also just look for big frontal attacks that overwhelm before your opponent gets too many archons/storms.
So, working on learning this build. Seems this build could be a viable zvt build as well, no?*
* no because of lack of early queens leaves a huge hole to hellion opening and you end up too low econ unless you do unreasonable damage, but it was fun to test, isn't terrible thou, great info makes holding all-ins real easy from there, makes we want to integrate drops into my zvt more.
Going well in ZvP, toughest part so far is remembering to drop the Roach Warren in time :-)
On October 23 2016 02:48 IcemanAsi wrote: So, working on learning this build. Seems this build could be a viable zvt build as well, no?*
* no because of lack of early queens leaves a huge hole to hellion opening and you end up too low econ unless you do unreasonable damage, but it was fun to test, isn't terrible thou, great info makes holding all-ins real easy from there, makes we want to integrate drops into my zvt more.
Going well in ZvP, toughest part so far is remembering to drop the Roach Warren in time :-)
If you want to adapt it to zvt just play your zvt how you would a normal ling-bane build, but use the same ratio of high minerals, low gas so you can have ridiculous numbers of lings. It's something up to really high level Terrans really struggle with, and even some zergs like Snute were favouring a 5-gas ling-bane-queen into ultra zvt. Most players just all go as much gas as possible by default, so T aren't used to suddenly facing a much larger ling-heavy army.
Hey Pig one Note, i always took damage agaisnt the 7 adept push and the answer was Math, my frined hit the 7 adept timing at 4:30, and a RW takes 39 sec and a raoch 19 sec + 5 sec for get the roaches in position so the timing for the RW is around 3:35, other wsie the adpets walk into you thrid while shading in the second and then you roaches slowly pop. after that adjustment my ZvP got much better, and one question: i face the archon drop into chargelord/blink stalker a lot, best to stop at 60 Droneswith 4 gas 3 mineral lines?
On November 01 2016 17:37 DERASTAT wrote: Hey Pig one Note, i always took damage agaisnt the 7 adept push and the answer was Math, my frined hit the 7 adept timing at 4:30, and a RW takes 39 sec and a raoch 19 sec + 5 sec for get the roaches in position so the timing for the RW is around 3:35, other wsie the adpets walk into you thrid while shading in the second and then you roaches slowly pop. after that adjustment my ZvP got much better, and one question: i face the archon drop into chargelord/blink stalker a lot, best to stop at 60 Droneswith 4 gas 3 mineral lines?
Good adjustment.
I put this roach warren timing in the build because even high GMs on NA/KR would literally be incapable of hitting before 4:50. So I figured the vast majority of people looking at the guide would never get hit till 5:15+. Figured you high level players would figure out how to adjust it if needed
I suck vs archon drop. Generally yeah get like 14 roaches and a few extra queens to try n shut down the imbaprism drops. Pull back ovies on the map so no free snipes etc. If they don't take a 3rd then even 55 drones is maybe excessive. 60 drones absolute max. If they do it off a 3rd base then yeah, 60 drones should give you a very strong army to crush it.
EPT
