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On June 04 2010 05:52 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 04:49 Uthgar wrote:
I don't want to disrespect players who are better than me, but I have to say I dislike this attitude. Its akin to that of a spoiled brat. Exactly. Pro players don't have that much swagger in this argument because they're still 1a-ing into opponent's armies. When is the last time you saw a pro player split his units up against siege tanks or mutas vs thors? Never. In a few months, we'll start to see that stuff emerge, but right now, nobody has the skill to do it. Even the pro-level players still have a lot of improvement to do before mistakes have been minimized enough to comment seriously on game balance. When not a single person on the game tries to split units up against tanks or thors it's hard to make judgments on the strength of mech.
I see players split their Mutas against Thors. You must not be watching top-level Zergs.
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On June 04 2010 05:55 Corwin wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 05:52 iEchoic wrote:On June 04 2010 04:49 Uthgar wrote:
I don't want to disrespect players who are better than me, but I have to say I dislike this attitude. Its akin to that of a spoiled brat. Exactly. Pro players don't have that much swagger in this argument because they're still 1a-ing into opponent's armies. When is the last time you saw a pro player split his units up against siege tanks or mutas vs thors? Never. In a few months, we'll start to see that stuff emerge, but right now, nobody has the skill to do it. Even the pro-level players still have a lot of improvement to do before mistakes have been minimized enough to comment seriously on game balance. When not a single person on the game tries to split units up against tanks or thors it's hard to make judgments on the strength of mech. I see players split their Mutas against Thors. You must not be watching top-level Zergs.
Do you have links? I've watched quite a lot of TvZ and I very very rarely see it.
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On June 04 2010 05:56 iEchoic wrote:Show nested quote +On June 04 2010 05:55 Corwin wrote:On June 04 2010 05:52 iEchoic wrote:On June 04 2010 04:49 Uthgar wrote:
I don't want to disrespect players who are better than me, but I have to say I dislike this attitude. Its akin to that of a spoiled brat. Exactly. Pro players don't have that much swagger in this argument because they're still 1a-ing into opponent's armies. When is the last time you saw a pro player split his units up against siege tanks or mutas vs thors? Never. In a few months, we'll start to see that stuff emerge, but right now, nobody has the skill to do it. Even the pro-level players still have a lot of improvement to do before mistakes have been minimized enough to comment seriously on game balance. When not a single person on the game tries to split units up against tanks or thors it's hard to make judgments on the strength of mech. I see players split their Mutas against Thors. You must not be watching top-level Zergs. Do you have links? I've watched quite a lot of TvZ and I very very rarely see it.
Well first of all your original post said "not a single person in the game" splits Mutas against Thors. That much different than rarely seeing it. Obviously it should be rare, as only very good Zerg players will do it. Anyway, Sen does it in his game featured in Day[9] Daily #125. The first time he does it in the battle at 11:20. Even at mid-level Diamond where I currently play, players sometimes to spread out their Mutas.
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United States38 Posts
Somebody said that the problem isn't walls in an earlier post and I disagree. The entire problem begins with walls preventing any early aggression from Zerg. From that one early game problem it spirals into a huge mech army, but it definitely begins with the inability of zerg to harass in anyway shape or form for the first 5 minutes without going all in.
Why do you see constantly see zerg with huge ground armies in the mid to late game when they know its going to fail miserably versus mech? Why are zerg vs zerg games mass zergling/baneling? Because Zerg is the only race who's mineral line is always open to harass. Zerg is the only race who is always put into a do or die position. If we tech we get overrun, if we don't tech we get destroyed by tech, if we don't build drones we lose the economy war, if we do build drones we risk getting overrun.
Terran is the exact opposite. The moment they wall-off THEY have control of the game. They have control of the game before the game even starts! They can go into the game and before they scout anything zerg is doing they can say I'm rushing banshees. This happens because they don't have to worry about getting attacked. When they build a SCV its safe for 10+ minutes. There will be no hellions, reapers, or banshees harassing them. There will be no vikings sniping their supply depots.
Until terran is forced to balance their army through all stages of the game they will continuously be able to power up the tech tree with no fear of punishment. And unfortunately terrans have realized that if they stop and grab factory units along the way that they auto-win vs zerg.
Playing as zerg is like being in a constant state of fear and paranoia. You know that if you don't build a drone you're going to fall behind in economy, but if you do build that drone and he goes all-in it's over.
Will you survive building that drone?
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If terran is building up the "money composition" then the zerg should have map/expo advantage.
Theoretically, at the 200/200 vs 200/200 zerg will lose. *If* that zerg is spamming spawn larvae properly he should be able to replenish his army decently fast. of course that is situation based.
Only other thing I have to add is broodlords seem to be the only thing that can save me from this.
Z v T @ blistering sands Heres a replay example of me the zerg player continuing to lose to a smaller terran army, but able to replenish my army and then the addition of broods to save the game. The terrans' expo was a bit delayed but he was doing a lot of damage to me.
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On June 04 2010 06:14 bakedace wrote:
If terran is building up the "money composition" then the zerg should have map/expo advantage.
Ok, but does that matter if you cant break the Terran eventually? You can sit in the center for eternity, the idea should not be you can either wait for the Terran to move out and make a mistake (which is hard considering how good siege tanks are unsieged now, how good thors are, how dominant vikings and ravens can be in covering the tanks) or you can wait for them to leave.
You should be able to win. In BW you can chip away at him and replenish and if youre better you will win eventually. In SC2 that seems almost impossible with the way tanks roflstomp anything on the ground and the thor/viking/raven combination is incredibly hard to break.
Right now ultralisks do not appear to be a viable option. Even with the buff their fundamental problems have not been fixed. You can build a cannon that fires 10 inch rounds but if you cant hit your target its still worthless, same thing is happening with the ultralisk.
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In my heart I know that a 200/200 terran mech army vs. a 200/200 zerg ground army is not even close to fair. But that doesn't necessarily mean it requires change.
It takes a long time and multiple bases to be able to build and reinforce a 200/200 army that includes both tanks and Thors as a terran. In my mind, zerg has never been a race that is supposed to let you thrive to that point. Zerg units are weak, numerous, and mobile. Imo, zerg strategy should always include ending the game before this max mech army is even possible.
If your terran opponent cannot expand freely, there is no way his mech is going to be strong enough to own the map.
I have seen my share of top level TvZs as well and it seems to me that when zergs win they end it in early or mid game, not late game. Zerg as a race has a macro advantage in their mechanics and cheaper expansions. To me, this is because they are meant to be able to get decent macro going faster than other races and overwhelm them before the other races are able to fill 200 supply with units that are clearly stronger and more expensive than zerg units.
In the early game, Terran has to wall-in their ramp just to stop from losing in the first 5-10 minutes to an aggressive play from a good zerg player, this is annoying, but it is one of the strengths of zerg that terran must deal with. Terrans do this by defending and taking it to the next phase of the game: midgame. I am proposing take ZvT to a different phase of the game: early-mid game, and try to win there. In my mind, in late game, you are playing terran's game with them, why let them get that strong?
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No thats just a normal showmatch
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I'm sorry but this is kindof retarded. I dont want to flame- but i cant keep my fingers from typing. Stop bitching about mech. Its strong, yes, too strong.... maybe, but probably not. Its slow, and very, very expensive. I used to play T exclusively but started playing random just to improve my mechanics, and now i like zerg best(but im worst with them). Why? because they are SO MUCH FASTER than terran. Everything about them is faster, their units, their macro, their expansions. They require play at a faster pace. A good zerg player should be able to 200/200 by the time a good T player is 100/xxx. Don't believe me? Im at work so i dont have replays, but zerg v terran is all about containment, and even if the T manages to get to 200/200 on 2 bases, he will lose to a 4+ base zerg with 80 larva waiting to spawn. The game balance is not unit balance, its overall balance between the races, which i believe right now exists at least enough to keep the players happy. Im not saying that there arent tweaks that could be made toterran mech, there are, but dont call them broken, cuz they just arent that good.
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Because Zerg is the only race who's mineral line is always open to harass. Zerg is the only race who is always put into a do or die position. If we tech we get overrun, if we don't tech we get destroyed by tech, if we don't build drones we lose the economy war
I can't believe this post. lol
ALL races deal with EVERY one of these predicaments ALL game long. this is starcraft and these are fundamentals of the game. And zergs mineral line is the same as everyone elses mineral line (except your equivalent of the mule can attack -air and ground).
If "grabbing factory units" was "auto win" like you say, im sure every terran would have a few more wins 
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Completely removing the new and improved siege-tank AI really isnt the answer here I think. Perhaps just figure out some strategy to get up close to those tank without losing too many units, what about burrowed roaches? Although I hate to go roaches because of the 2-supply nerf, this could be a counter to a terran tank/thor composition that will keep your mutas away.
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So maybe you could conclude that economy alone won't win you the game? Maybe Zerg shouldn't always FE and be passive while they keep pumping drones?
Saying that drones should be half food because Zergs build 90 of them is stupid since your playstyle itself causes this very problem. Food for food Terran mech usually rapes Zerg, but it also costs them more time and resources to get to that point. Macro'ing up and clashing maxxed out armies clearly isn't the answer for Zerg against mech, which leaves the options of harrassment and timing pushes.
For this I think muta's are ideal, go for a delayed expansion, gain map control. If he goes mech try and snipe his tanks, harass the mineral line and when a Thor lazily walks up run to their expansion or do a queen transfusion pitstop ... with a good amount of muta's and a good split you can even head-on engage the Thors.
Zerg should swarm over the opponent, not engage mech in even foodcount. Maybe Zerg shouldn't all try to macro like Idra and start becoming a bit more tricksy and aggressive. Get burrow, one scan makes it worth the cost. FG the crap out of everything and burrow. Burrow banelings to punish a lack of Ravens or try and snipe the Raven with muta's/ corrupters.
I don't expect Zergs to autowin like this, but IMO its more viable than just pure macro to max armies. It clearly demonstrates how one playstyle won't fit all scenarios. At the beginning of SC2 beta it was more common for zerg to do one base muta, all terrans countered by going MMM, Zergs then decided that muta's sucked because stimmed marines raped them and started to FE with speedlings and sunkens to economically counter the MMM build. Then Terrans where like "Sweet!" they aren't going to pressure me at all so I guess I'll just tech directly into mech and get a critical mass of damage output and then squash the squishy Zerg units (which rely on superior numbers and a quick repleneshing of forces).
But then again, no-one cares what I think, Terran imba FTW! -_-'
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well for starters, it doesn't look like Sheth can Sauron-play at all at any rate. Would love to know what a replay showing a zerg feeding units piece-meal into a tank line has to do with terran being OP. Tbh, looking at that final push that sheth did in the first game, he'd have been able to beat the terran down completely if he'd had another 200/200 wave incoming. He didn't even ever bank larva ffs.
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The first two replays of Sheth vs QXC let the situation get out of hand. He didn't put ANY pressure at all. The first time he engaged the terran was when he had 3/2 upgrades for vehicles, and 2/2 upgrades for air. He then proceeded to make all the units that mech counters (i.e. Zerg ground). Both games corruptors + broodlords would have been enough to weather down the air army for Terran (+fungal growth to force engagements).
Although, Steppes of War is pretty forgiving for Terran mobility since its so small, so there isn't much he could have done after about the 20 minute mark.
In the LzGamer vs Moman game, Moman didn't do any pressure until the 15 minute mark! He didn't even handle that siege tank on his cliff for five minutes... He did a pretty sweet push & fake drop, but then started to play really sloppy, running his roaches into tank lines, chasing hellions while tanks got free shots, getting blocked by auto turrets, etc... He could have easily won that game with a transition to muta or better management of his roaches, or just hanging out and waiting for a bit to compound his advantage. Again, he didn't engage Lz until Terran was 2/0 on upgrades, though. Terran mech upgrades scale so amazingly well against all ground units. I think that might be part of the problem as well (+3 x2 for thor, +5 for tank)
There is a HUGE window early game (before 10 minutes) where Terran mech just doesn't have a lot of meat on them bones, and a lot of different play options can slow down the Thor / Tank build up. My favorite (and I think most effective) is doing a roach harass early game (no fast expansion) w/ a quick movement + tunneling claws (comes in at around 7 minutes, about 8 roaches) & burrow, and while the terran is contained & forced to get medivacs, turrets, or ravens, Zerg can easily expand twice and make up for lost economy time. Siege mode is pretty ineffective against this type of harass, and with the increased regen, if the terran isn't prepared for it he can easily get destroyed. It also helps to hide your roach warrens (overlords + generate creep as soon as lair pops up) so he is a little clueless as to what you are doing. I'm pretty sure this strategy is very viable (I'm 550 diamond currently (21-4), was 1750-1800 plat).
Doing a fast expand build against Terran is a lot more risky now due to mech being so powerful. Zergs forfeit their right to harass early game. This lets Terran comfortably build up a critical mass unit composition that is really really hard to stop (theres no denying this). It is tough to get anything going with drops due to sensor towers + viking fleet.
Roach harass build:
+ Show Spoiler +
Overlord at 10, extractor trick (not sure if this makes it faster or slower, its just something to do for me so I'm not pounding my balls)
pool at 14
extractor at 14
overlord at 15
save up larva for 4-6 lings after pool is done + queen
continuous drone production until 100 gas, get lair
get 2nd gas (at around 24-26)
2nd queen if he is doing a hellion harass to sit on your choke (after lair, at about 4 minute mark)
while lair is morphing, send two drones out of base to make roach warrens on generated creep when lair pops up. Better to have two overlords doing this so you don't waste much time.
while roach warrens are morphing, save up larva (about 6-8) and supply, extra two overlords does the trick
get burrow, tunneling claws, glial reconstitution when roach warrens are done.
morph 6-8 roaches (this puts you at around 45-50 supply), less roaches if you've made an extra queen for hellion harass
Roaches arrive at Terran base with all three upgrades (i've tested on blistering sands, so any 4 player map will gaurentee this) at 7:15 mark.
Macro up + expand while harassing, change tech accordingly.
I think this is a pretty solid build. Even if you don't do much damage, it lets you be a goddamn asshole to the terran. They'll usually have their depot lowered because this is the time where they are moving or expanding. Be patient for the depot to go down. Or if you can bust the front, thats even better (if army composition allows it). Most the times they will have 1 tank out with the 2nd one just finishing, a viking, and 3-4 marines. Not a big deal for 8 roaches, especially with burrowed regeneration. Once you're in his base, tech labs are big targets. Dropping that starport-techlab is huge. If he has a starport and tries switching his factory with it, just burrow a roach under the techlab so he can't land on the add-on. Splitting up the roach army also helps, so he can't really defend it well. If they have an engine bay up, just camp the expansion or go around the turrets. If he scans the burrowed roaches, just unburrowed and move out of the radius, re-burrow. Deny that extra gas that mech desperately needs. I usually tech switch to lings + muta, eventually brood lord + corruptors. Small numbers of tanks have a hard time dealing with the pesky roaches.
If you get in there and you see banshees coming out, quickly grab an extra queen & overseer (probably should cancel your expansion). Maybe grab a hydra den, or spire. Should be hemorrhaging gas at this point, so its easy to grab 2-3 muta and defend against the banshees
Oh, on a side note too, sensor towers don't detect burrowed or burrowed-moving units, so roaches work after the fact, too. if hes not deploying ravens, you can easily surprise a terran or flank them if you're set up properly.
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On June 03 2010 11:06 Wayra wrote:
I think tanks are underpowered, they should have an alternate fire mode that shoots bullets for close range and air like in halo. They should make missile turrets also attack ground and have +3 armor so Terrans can more easily defend against mutas. In addition give ghost a special ability like...nerve gas that kills any biological unit in range, kinda like the emp except for zergs. In addition have vikings be able to plant aerial mines, that work as spider mines but only affect air units. Oh and have the nuclear bombs dropped by banshees and increase the radius and power of nuclear bombs so that it 1 hit any biological unit. Because common, radiation should be lethal to all biological units...in addition, make nuclear craters radioactive for 273 sec. Meanwhile, no creep can grow on it.
I also think that helions are too week, infernal lighter should come already upgraded. Biological units that get hit are on fire. While on fire, it cannot attack. Units on fire slowly dies. In addition, units that are on fire can spread the flames to adjacent units and structures. I think that will add an interesting aspect to the micro for zergs. Have the helions a larger spread or least attack faster. But that would make it slightly imba, so maybe scratch the last idea. Instead have helions fire do extra dmg buildings. I mean it makes sense cause fire should destroy buildings.
Oh and protoss voidrays are wayyyy too imbalanced, have it's range nerf to 2, and make it slower than the viking by .2112
sarcasm win
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On June 03 2010 15:06 Trok67 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2010 14:58 sadyque wrote:
The Moman game only proves balance. Lz actually had better income for the most part of the game. Moman had like 7 bases with no drones and the same income as Lz. If you look at the first battle with the fake drop Lz has a more expensive army than Moman. When lz starts to move down to Mo's expansions 30 speedlings would have wtfpwned all the tanks(either by droppping on them or catching them unsieged). Not to mention that at any time aftert the first battle if the zerg morphed 20 mutas it would have been GG. All the game long Moman uses ONLY 2 UNITS! - roaches and hydras. Lz has tanks, hellions, ravens, vikings and thors. Now what do you expect? A two zerg unit composition army should wtfpwn a well rounded and complete terran army?
lol, the problem is that zerg doesnt have ANY OTHER OPTION than those 2 units. We can invent some other super strong units but they dont exist... infestor = useless against mech mutalisk = completely raped by thors zerglings = raped by hellions and tanks (and also thor since we cant surrond them aswell as before) ultralisk = completely useless (show first 2 replays) broodlords = raped hardly by vikings corruptor = also raped by viking Did i forget any unit ?
yep, banelings. which are useless vs mech
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On June 03 2010 11:06 Wayra wrote:
I think tanks are underpowered, they should have an alternate fire mode that shoots bullets for close range and air like in halo. They should make missile turrets also attack ground and have +3 armor so Terrans can more easily defend against mutas. In addition give ghost a special ability like...nerve gas that kills any biological unit in range, kinda like the emp except for zergs. In addition have vikings be able to plant aerial mines, that work as spider mines but only affect air units. Oh and have the nuclear bombs dropped by banshees and increase the radius and power of nuclear bombs so that it 1 hit any biological unit. Because common, radiation should be lethal to all biological units...in addition, make nuclear craters radioactive for 273 sec. Meanwhile, no creep can grow on it.
I also think that helions are too week, infernal lighter should come already upgraded. Biological units that get hit are on fire. While on fire, it cannot attack. Units on fire slowly dies. In addition, units that are on fire can spread the flames to adjacent units and structures. I think that will add an interesting aspect to the micro for zergs. Have the helions a larger spread or least attack faster. But that would make it slightly imba, so maybe scratch the last idea. Instead have helions fire do extra dmg buildings. I mean it makes sense cause fire should destroy buildings.
Oh and protoss voidrays are wayyyy too imbalanced, have it's range nerf to 2, and make it slower than the viking by .2112
I would play that game.
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On June 04 2010 04:49 Uthgar wrote:
I don't want to disrespect players who are better than me, but I have to say I dislike this attitude. Its akin to that of a spoiled brat. You will never win if you believe you can't win. You may try a 100 games, maybe 200 games (which I doubt anyone here has even come close to doing), and still you can have a positive attitude and say maybe if I tweak this little timing here.
I have played over 4000 games in the better, so I could probably say that I've played more than 200 ZvT games, considering all 4000 games have been Zv Something.
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The problem that I see, and what I believe the OP is talking about, is highlighted in the qxc v sheth game on steppes. Qxc leaves anywhere from 6-10 tanks idle in his base the whole time, meanwhile sheth throws 5-6 200/200 armies, including upgraded ultras, at qxc's army and expansions(not including the tanks defending his main). Qxc loses a tiny amount of food count each time, and once loses nothing at all. A 200/200 zerg army needs to be able to take out 33-50% of a 200/200 protoss or terran army so that their macro can be rewarded when they reproduce that army in 1 round of larva(like sheth was doing).
This would not be a discussion at all if the bases and minerals and all of that mattered, but qxc never needed to use any sort of production capacity to keep up with the zerg macro. He stayed above 180 food the whole time, and didn't use those tanks in his main at all. Any tech switch to corruptors and broodlords leaves a very large window for the terran player to demolish the zerg. Remember also that he has no need for mules since the build is gas locked, so he has near constant scans and with vikings and ravens out he has total map control to scout that tech switch. All theorycrafting aside, there's obviously a problem when a build 100% prevents any ground unit usefullness.
Do we know for sure that the siege tank targetting is an AI function and not a side effect of their attack landing instantly? If there was a travel time and a "missile" effect added to their attacks might that fix a lot of this? It would also change up TvT a lot since ravens would counter siege tanks.
edit: that roach harass build is retarded, skipping ling speed is a good way to lose before they tech past hellions or zealots
Hopefully these showmatches happen if for no other reason than Sen and TLO have been the most innovative players during this beta and it would be great to see them play again before it all goes down.
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EPT
