You know something? Today I've replied to many Zerg-is-underpowered threads, agreeing a little bit with some, not agreeing with others.
But you know something? The Beta already happened. It's over. The Beta existed so that the game could be balanced, and now that it's over, it's likely we won't see any of the buffs we whine for, and likely won't see any changes until at least HoTS.
So in the meantime, I've created this thread so we Zerg players can be...
PRODUCTIVE!
Instead of raging about Zerg's supposed weaknesses, let's all put our minds into one big theorycrafting hive, and think of what kinds of new things we can do with the Zerg we currently have and probably will for a very long time. Crazy strategies, new ways for using units and spells and abilities that we aren't taking full advantage of, maybe overcome some of Zerg's current problems.
So, without further ado, I present to you my theorycrafting!
Here's an idea I've been throwing around in my head. It has to do with Nydus Worms. Yes, Nydus Worms, those things we hate because they take so long to build and to be killed and we generally use them as a sort of replacement for a big overlord drop. I call it a nydus fork, because, like a chess fork, it forces the opponent to make a decision. He's bound to lose something, he just has to chose what.
So here's how it works. Instead of building one nydus worm, you build TWO. See my trickery? I don't mean build two right next to each other, but I mean build two in very different areas of his territory. You have your units loaded up into the worm. You watch and see his reaction. Even if he scouts both worms, Watch which one he goes for, and just pop your army right out of the other. Do your damage, and retreat. What if decides to split his army to deal with them both? Easy, you only have half an army to worry about now. If he comes back and hasn't killed the other worm, just pop right back out of that and do even more damage. Well, you only have half of an army to fight, you can overwhelm it. Now, I know this strategy won't work all the time, but hey. It seems like it'd work in some situations, especially mech.
Well, now that I've contributed my share for now, go forth my fellow Zerg players, and try to be productive. Just try to think of something that hasn't been done before, don't think too hard about viability. Strategies are born rough, and refined overtime.
As a P player, I've always found burrow to be underused. P almost always goes 2gaterobo, meaning he expands late.
Giving you enough time to burrow a couple banelings at his natural. Sure, it's somewhat of a longshot, but consider this: You come into his main, somehow. Whether drops, air, nydus. You do some damage. He sends his probes/scvs to his newly made natural. You now have ALL his probes...over a bunch of banelings. You just won the game. Thoughts?
Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
i really like that double nydus strat... if i saw it used i'd really think high of that player in terms of strategy that is fairly creative thinking which is exactly what we need, a Terran player here but i like where your going with this and support it if i come up with any idea's i'll be sure to post here
1. Make banelings 2. Do not baneling bust 3. Research burrow 4. Burrow banelings at natural expansion in the mineral line 5. Once workers get transferred, press x 6. Laugh mercilessly!!!
What stops the other player just A-move your base while you are trying to do some cute tricky stuff with nydus? He is going to lose some but you are going to lose it all. Also the 200 gas is quite a lot so you would really have to use them succesfully.
But I agree with you that we really should but our minds together to find something. Now nydus worms are very underused but then again they are very situational "units". I would prefer if we would find some early way to apply the pressure, not just try to survive it.
On August 05 2010 07:40 Piski wrote: What stops the other player just A-move your base while you are trying to do some cute tricky stuff with nydus? He is going to lose some but you are going to lose it all. Also the 200 gas is quite a lot so you would really have to use them succesfully..
Then you just instantly retreat right back out of the nydus network in your base and be there waiting for him =D
The problem with that idea is that you can only spawn one exit from a nydus network at a time (Read: while the first exit is still building). So for this to work you would need two nydus networks plus 2 exits and that gets very gas intensive. I think that would be like 600 gas(?) for something that may or may not work. I'm not too sure on costs.
i thought this was a really cool strat that was used against me, maybe it can be incorperated into your double nydus trick if it failed to work a first time or you had trouble deploying the nydus
Here's an idea, make zerg have 250 max food instead of 200, it feels more zergy like quantity over quality. And if this is too imba, make it an upgrade at hive
This is used already but really needs to be a main strat/tactic of zergs. Sending an infestor and burrowing it and going to their mineral line. Either you can take out like 10 scvs over time/right away or they waste a scan on a single infestor. Then they have to get it too. Pretty good deal, no?
In my experience baneling dropping a mineral line is a bad idea, or at least very risky. The problem is that dropped banelings explode very fast, as in it's near impossible to give them much in the way of commands. If your opponent pulls workers in time there's a good chance your banelings are going to auto-attack in some horrible horrible way that doesn't net you much. I find it much better to drop mostly ling/roach with maybe 2 banelings mixed in.
On August 05 2010 07:45 Tazza wrote: Here's an idea, make zerg have 250 max food instead of 200, it feels more zergy like quantity over quality. And if this is too imba, make it an upgrade at hive
I love how I create a thread so that people can discuss tactics with Zerg AS IT CURRENTLY IS and you go on talking about making balance changes, which is exactly what I created this thread not to do.
All of this has been covered before. Everything here is too much of an investment and too hard to get out in a timely manner once you start playing at higher levels. Sure, they're fun to use once I've secured an advantage, but they're not standard builds I'm going to be relying on for consistency (and yes, if you're going to be doing these strats consistently, you *do* need a standard build that caters to them).
EDIT: I guess I can contribute, though. On maps with open naturals, burrow an infestor and run it to your opponent's base. When he moves out, pop as many infested terrans as you can into his mineral line. It doesn't work on maps like LT because he'll have cannons or a turret at his natural and you can't just go around them, but it's definitely possible depending on his turret/cannon positioning on, say, Metalopolis or Desert Oasis. And it's easily one of the cheaper harassment strategies (100/100 for burrow, 100/150 for infestor).
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
I like the idea, and I've actually messed around with it quite a bit. Haven't been able to get it to work effectively though, unit's just come out of the worm way too slow.
I have actually been thinking a lot about different ways to use Nydus worms. The Nydus fork is something I did think about for a short time, but I have mostly been pondering about the effectiveness of using an entire Nydus Network. The idea came from watching some Zerg on DO (I think it may have been Sen) absolutely out maneuvering a Protoss player simply by having worms everywhere. He was able to pop in and out of different worms and do quick damage and the Toss was almost helpless. I've been wanting to learn to use it and practice with it, but it will take a while before I'm skilled enough to use it to decent effectiveness.
Also, aside from the extreme gas cost, the reason why nyduses aren't used much is that the rush distance in most Blizzard maps is so small that if you nydus his main while he's moving out, he just ignores it and counters yours and kills it faster while your units are still coming out one at a time. And you don't have any defensive units like the lurker/defiler to stall this.
Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
Well I though of a nice trick,but I don't know if it has any use.. 1.Nydus Your opponent. 2. Transfer small force and burrow it around Nydus. 3. If You're not scanned,just let Your enemy kill the Nydus. (Send second small force to make him sure he has dealt with it) 4. Wait till he's near Your base. 5. Bonus points if Your small force was about 5-6 roaches w/ burrow move. Mineral Line /gg
Burrow positioning can be really helpful. Imagine You just saw push coming out. You can quickly burrow/move some roaches in place where they will be able to backstab enemy force. Burrow 2-3 units all around creep. When he is here,attack him with Your small force left,unburrow back stab roaches and other forces. If he thought his force would do this... he was wrong.
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
There's nothing stopping him from just building more production facilities, whereas you're wasted 600 gas to stall either 1 Thor (60 game second build time) or 1.5 tanks (40 game second build time), considering adding another factory takes like 60 game seconds to build.
I wish everyone had the OP's mindset of stop QQing and play.
Also, aside from the extreme gas cost, the reason why nyduses aren't used much is that the rush distance in most Blizzard maps is so small
I also wish the maps wernt so small for a number of reasons One being that it would def make Nydus' more viable. There is a lot of potential for Nydus that I would love to see people start using at a high level.
lately I've been using a roach/ling heavy army against especially mech terran. The Idea is spending very low gas but still having a nice ground army. As soon as you hit lair, you upgrade overlord speed and transport. And start attacking the terran both from the front and from the back with ling/roach and maybe some baneling. Depending on what he does, you can continue the same way or start spending the gas thats been filling up on either mutas or more banelings or whatever. I find this to be a very strong midgame strategy. Here are a few replays, I'm only 300~ ish diamond player but you will get the idea.
1. Upgrade ovie sacs and speed. 2. Load Queen. 3. Move to untaken mineral expos of opponent. 4. Ovie generate creep, Queen makes creep tumor. 5. Spread the creep tumors with the regenerating ability. 6. Repeat at all other expos.
Best used against Terran since they need to have a scan to remove the creep tumor. If they get a Raven, it's high up on the tech tree and requires a bit of gas to make as well. You can even sneak a drop into the main of the Terran, lay down 1 - 3 tumors and spread them one at a time into the Terran's base. You'll get scouting, him wasting gas for a raven, or him wasting a scan. If you spread them one at a time and you lay like 3 tumors, you can make him waste 3 scans :D
If you do this early enough, his base is gonna have a bunch creep that he can't build on. And it set you up for a drop where the creep will give you a huge advantage if he doesn't do anything about it.
that means build two nydus networks since one network can only build one worm at a time.
kinda pricy.
though i've had an idea for a while to hide expansions far away and use a nydus network. would prolly make defending it much easier since you can pick any expansion this way and not be forced to get the one with cliffs and such to abuse and big open chokes and then use another worm more like a protoss would put up a pylon close to the enemy base but not so close that they'll destroy it, so if he goes to kill my expansion i'll just push him back with a few hydras/roaches and then use the nydus worm i put up to get my army back into position to attack his natural/other expo etc.
Correction - the game is going to be balanced all the time; sure not with the intensity of the Beta, but tweaking values is perfectly normal to be expected multiple times before expansions.
@Saracen: how do you get infestors so early?
I'd just say zergs need to apply more banelings (efficiently!), more burrow, and more active use of overlords and overseers - for scouting (including passive; with height advantage), spreading the creep, hiding armies, contamination. The latter especially in the following way: prepare enough overseers near his bases; attack with your main force, trade armies; rebuild, simultaneously contaminate all his production facilities, if possible two times in a row; attack again and this time (auto)win. Main zerg advice is to play a lot and learn very well the sense of how many units you need, in order to dominate certain army compositions you face. Avoid trading battles in which you will just give away too many easy units, and kill almost nothing. This just requires experience. Also playing with the other two races helps. In most cases you win by escaping from a battle, until you get the critical number of units to win it. That's to be expected, since Zerg increases army so quickly; it's normal to expect the balance of the game to be such that you are required to gather a ton of units first. Otherwise it would have been just ridiculously easy to play as Zerg.
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
I'd just like to say I highly doubt we "won't see any changes until HotS." I expect the game to be patched, albeit not quite as often, regularly. HotS won't come out for quite a while I would imagine so if imbalances do exist, Blizzard will most likely patch them.
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
There's nothing stopping him from just building more production facilities, whereas you're wasted 600 gas to stall either 1 Thor (60 game second build time) or 1.5 tanks (40 game second build time), considering adding another factory takes like 60 game seconds to build.
The bigger problem is how close Overseers need to get to even cast it on the factory. Usually mine come out after casting with <50% hp.
On August 05 2010 09:06 FabledIntegral wrote: I'd just like to say I highly doubt we "won't see any changes until HotS." I expect the game to be patched, albeit not quite as often, regularly. HotS won't come out for quite a while I would imagine so if imbalances do exist, Blizzard will most likely patch them.
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
There's nothing stopping him from just building more production facilities, whereas you're wasted 600 gas to stall either 1 Thor (60 game second build time) or 1.5 tanks (40 game second build time), considering adding another factory takes like 60 game seconds to build.
The bigger problem is how close Overseers need to get to even cast it on the factory. Usually mine come out after casting with <50% hp.
Sorry this wasn't productive!
I heard some where that HotS isn't coming out until another one and half years, but take it with a grain of salt. As for the overseer strategy, all player have to do is build their buildings closer to their army and away from cliffs.
although i do like the thought behind this and the idea of working it, it is just too costly to attempt in a serious game, imagine the damage you could do with this double nydus, or the damage you could do with 30 banelings (thats roughly the cost, isnt it?), i would love to see the price of worms lowered so they see useage in games, because right now it is just way too expensive of a unit that dies very quickly
On August 05 2010 07:52 Saracen wrote: All of this has been covered before. Everything here is too much of an investment and too hard to get out in a timely manner once you start playing at higher levels. Sure, they're fun to use once I've secured an advantage, but they're not standard builds I'm going to be relying on for consistency (and yes, if you're going to be doing these strats consistently, you *do* need a standard build that caters to them).
This really does to be stressed. I don't post much on TL because I don't have viable answers to the questions that are asked. I'm not saying that no one should post, I just choose not to say much when I know my answer is rarely if ever useful.
I wish people were forced to show their elo and league or something of the sort when posting. Like poker, as you move up less and less things become effective and viable. In gold, perhaps building 2 nydus networks and using them both simultaneously is a great strat. Past that however, it's unlikely to be seen unless a weird circumstance occurs.
I don't like people who say things such as 'Well have you seen any motherships in competitive play?! Obviously not! They're underpowered and need a buff!' Statements like that are both true and false. Perhaps it is underpowered, but even if their was a build that somehow was able to highlight all of it's strengths, a counter build would likely be developed, so on and so on. Thus, the beauty of a RTS game. However, what we must realize and think about are things that could possibly prevent our little trick or strat from working. Ok..so I have a plan to build up an army..use 2 nydus worms and he loses his natural or a majority of his supply depots and production buildings. What if for the next 25 games, you can't even tech to lair because your opponents are so aggressive. What if in these same games you could have won if you would've made 6 more zerglings and moved in with them?
There's more I should write about but thinking of the correct words to use is quite taxing.
TLDR: Different strategies work in different leagues. What works in silver may not work in plat. When thinking of productive things try to think of the bigger picture and how your strategy could be foiled before you're even able to utilize it.
Something productive: Almost always get ling speed.
On August 05 2010 08:29 Calamity wrote: You can even sneak a drop into the main of the Terran, lay down 1 - 3 tumors and spread them one at a time into the Terran's base. You'll get scouting, him wasting gas for a raven, or him wasting a scan.
He's more likely to pull an unit over and kill the tumor while it's being laid down.
On August 05 2010 07:52 Saracen wrote: EDIT: I guess I can contribute, though. On maps with open naturals, burrow an infestor and run it to your opponent's base. When he moves out, pop as many infested terrans as you can into his mineral line. It doesn't work on maps like LT because he'll have cannons or a turret at his natural and you can't just go around them, but it's definitely possible depending on his turret/cannon positioning on, say, Metalopolis or Desert Oasis. And it's easily one of the cheaper harassment strategies (100/100 for burrow, 100/150 for infestor).
I feel like map design for this is exceedingly awkward. Because a map with an open natural also makes deflecting Hellion harass extremely hard, and Hellions seem like they're far more relevant.
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
depending on mana regen time, you may only need 2-3 if he has one factory? I cant remember mana cost at the moment
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
depending on mana regen time, you may only need 2-3 if he has one factory? I cant remember mana cost at the moment
Ive wanted to try to nydus in the middle of the map furthest from his base so if he pushes my main i can split my force in 2 and attack from the back and front. Hopefully killing colossi or tanks if they are undefended. Havent done it yet tho
i'm a terran player, but let me contribute to zerg. these aren't theorycrafting btw. it's stuff that's been used against me by zerg, that every zerg should do.
* when you hit lair, hide your spire or hydra den by having an overlord spawn creep somewhere and building it under ur lord. zerg players need to know that every time a terran player uses scan, it costs us 280 minerals. contrary to common belief, it's very hard for a terran to scout. This is so important for later games too. zerg typically has map control, so it's so hard for terran to scout zerg's tech except with scan which costs us 280 per cast. so have all your tech structures spread out under overlords so i can't see it all with one scan. when terran doesn't have good recon on what zerg is getting, it fucking sucks. especially for hive tech. hide your infestor mound, ultra cavern, i'd say even fucking make a second spire that you can hidden broodlord tech. if ur infestor mound is hidden, i wont be able to know ur going hive until u have it done. hidden spire upgrade too.
* use your overlord to spawn creep at our expansion. when ur overlord gets chased off, it still takes upwards of half a minute for your creep to recede so we can build our command center there (or land our command center.) this is extremely annoying for our timings.
* your first overlord should be parked outside my gas to see when i build my gas. my gas timing gives away a lot information about what build order i'm doing.
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
This actually is seriously good against terran.
You have a link to this vid? I'd like to see it.
as a terran, i second this. baneling dropping on marine balls is so very effective. biggest reason why i don't go MM.
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
depending on mana regen time, you may only need 2-3 if he has one factory? I cant remember mana cost at the moment
Honestly I think corruption is only there to punish a Protoss or Terran player for forcing a Zerg to get detection. Unfortunately in so many cases Zerg players, even pros, respond to banshees or DTs with detection, push it off, then just let their overseer set there maxed on energy the entire game only using them again when/if they need detection. As a straight up tactic? Not so much.
On August 05 2010 09:53 Logo wrote: If I were playing terran and had the option to spend 200/100 to waste 100/200 of a zerg's money I'd do it hands down every single time.
Zerg could benefit from 1/2 vs 2/1 resource trade off in ZvT, if it means no (or less) tanks for the Terran, while also increasing the speed of zerg's food-supporting scouts, and ensuring detection. The trade is not just the factory, but also all the tanks that are being denied, and could have been built instead.
There are some pretty interesting ideas here, and I liked the OP, so I'll throw a suggestion out there. I was playing a 2v2 on Twilight Fortress (or whatever its called, the really long map with strange lighting), and we had our forces outside the enemies' base. I hadn't spread creep all the way across the big map, so to reinforce with hydras would have taken a significant amount of time. Instead, I made a nydus network and popped a worm out near where our armies were camping outside of their base. I imagine this is not as useful on the smaller maps, but it was definitely worth it to give my hydras/roaches the extra mobility, as the opponents tried to break our contain. They nearly accomplished it, but we had just enough forces to hold em back. If I hadn't had the nydus, a lot of my hydras would have been en route, and we may have lost it.
Long story short, I think using nydus worms to help hold a position and grant hydras more mobility on large maps is an idea worth experimenting with.
In PvZ, use the Nydus Canal as a ploy for him to move his army somewhere. I would imagine that a smart Protoss wouldn't move his entire army to kill it if you placed a Nydus in his main. However, he probably would use his stalkers to hunt it down, considering they are the most maneuverability and he would instinctively want to take the Nydus out quickly. This would lead to a very Mutalisk-harrass vulnerable natural.
I've actually done this one before: Do any type of drop on his mineral line. Doom Drop, Speedling Drop, whatever. The important thing is to bring 2-3 Infestors with you. When he responds to your attack by bringing his units up the ramp, Fungal Growth the units on the ramp, and keep them FGd. This gives you so much more time for your harass to do damage.
If T has Senor Towers, get all your overlords and make them fly into the tower radius. Terran will move his army to all those flashing lights thinking its your army. Then move your army from a different direction. T is outta position, gg.
If T has Senor Towers, get all your overlords and make them fly into the tower radius. Terran will move his army to all those flashing lights thinking its your army. Then move your army from a different direction. T is outta position, gg.
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
On August 05 2010 08:05 GaussWaffle wrote: Assuming Overseers have the same energy recharge rate as sentries, a Zerg player could potentially get 5-6 Overseres, park them outside the opponents base, and constantly corrupt upgrade buildings or key unit producing buildings (you could stop tank production...stop immoral/colossus production...)
It's purely theory craft and is very gas intensive in the early going, but I'll give it a shot and see if it has any merit
Also, if you corrupt assimilators, do they become unminable for the duration?
And when you have no gas left for an army and the oppenent just 1a's into your natural, what good is corruption then? Or is a T gets vikings or a P gets Pheonixes...thats a huge investment for an otherwise unnessary harassment at the cost of any tech ground army. 600 gas could be better spent on spire+4 mutas OR 2 nydus worms in his base. At least you wouldn't look as silly when you get rolled by 5 hellions roasting your all ling army while your overseers do some detecting but nothing else. Play some games and understand that getting non-fighting units with ALL your early game gas is an easy way to die every game.
Since zerg is all about getting the bigger army and being able to continue to flood units into the fight; baneling drops into the mineral lines in the mid game and HUGE. You can cripple the economy to the other player and force them to feel like they have to push now or fall further behind.
On August 05 2010 08:08 Saracen wrote: There's nothing stopping him from just building more production facilities, whereas you're wasted 600 gas to stall either 1 Thor (60 game second build time) or 1.5 tanks (40 game second build time), considering adding another factory takes like 60 game seconds to build.
Maybe, but you could then stall both the production facilities at least for a short time or on an intermittent basis (start at beginning of production and right before end). The longer he has to wait for his big folks to do a push the more prepared you (should) be. It also will provide scouting.
That's not to say it isn't counterable, because it obviously is (have 6 marines stand 4 stalkers stand around the important shit), but it forces a little more play form your opponent
Like I said, I'll give it a whirl (hopefully the opponents I do it with are decent) and if it works I'll show you the replay
This isn't a troll attempt, I'm just trying to be creative. I'm just as despondent as you guys are about current Zerg play.
The nydus is something I've wanted to play more with recently. Even if you're not using it as a "surprise cockbag!" in base deployment, it could provide awesome proxy control to keep the terran even more paranoid about leaving his base. For the most part I've been using doom drops to keep up the pressure but the tech leading to the speedy transporting overlords is more than building the network. It's something I'll have to try out.
theres nothing you can theorycraft. TvZ is god awful and theres nothing you can do about it. Are you gonna learn cute overlord micro to learn about the 5 different lethal builds terran could be doing or are you gonna learn how to prepare for all 5 of them? Zerg is just a half assed race compared to the other 2.....
On August 05 2010 13:31 OHtRUe wrote: theres nothing you can theorycraft. TvZ is god awful and theres nothing you can do about it. Are you gonna learn cute overlord micro to learn about the 5 different lethal builds terran could be doing or are you gonna learn how to prepare for all 5 of them? Zerg is just a half assed race compared to the other 2.....
If you're scouting you only have to prepare for whatever he's deploying at the time. Terran are definitely our hardest match, but it's not broken.
On August 05 2010 08:08 Saracen wrote: There's nothing stopping him from just building more production facilities, whereas you're wasted 600 gas to stall either 1 Thor (60 game second build time) or 1.5 tanks (40 game second build time), considering adding another factory takes like 60 game seconds to build.
Maybe, but you could then stall both the production facilities at least for a short time or on an intermittent basis (start at beginning of production and right before end). The longer he has to wait for his big folks to do a push the more prepared you (should) be. It also will provide scouting.
That's not to say it isn't counterable, because it obviously is (have 6 marines stand 4 stalkers stand around the important shit), but it forces a little more play form your opponent
Like I said, I'll give it a whirl (hopefully the opponents I do it with are decent) and if it works I'll show you the replay
This isn't a troll attempt, I'm just trying to be creative. I'm just as despondent as you guys are about current Zerg play.
I would like to see this working on a higher level of course. I mean, I can totally see a silver player not building extra production facilities and just trying to wait it out. Plus, the gas investment is really off-putting
On August 05 2010 13:31 OHtRUe wrote: theres nothing you can theorycraft. TvZ is god awful and theres nothing you can do about it. Are you gonna learn cute overlord micro to learn about the 5 different lethal builds terran could be doing or are you gonna learn how to prepare for all 5 of them? Zerg is just a half assed race compared to the other 2.....
This is what we in the business of productivity call "not productive"
As for that baneling drop, that is really interesting. I had no idea overlords could drop on the move, which really discouraged me from using drops. That makes the idea of dropping ultralisks on a mech army seem much more appealing to me. Hell, I'll try it sometime should I be presented with the opportunity.
From my experience, as your opponent's skill level goes up and your league gets tougher, these strategies become less useful.
When I was a platinum/gold player these strats were fun and useful. But when I got to Diamond, the opponent's game mechanics are fundamentally much too strong. You gotta have great game mechanics just to keep up, if you get caught doing something cute, THEY WILL take advantage of that information.
The best strategies I can agree with are strategies that don't cost alot, are easy to employ, and do not effect your army/tech growth by much. Double Nydus Worms are just too gas intensive.
I agree with these said strategies:
-Mass overlord movements when he puts up sensory towers. -Overlord creep over opponents expo is a good one. -Using overlord creep to hide tech is another good one.
Here is my own strategy against Terran that you may like: Moving around the map with 2 queens and an overlord for scout/harassment. This is not very costly because most Zergs build multiple queens for air defense and after the early game the queens just sit there doing nothing. Secondly, Overlord speed upgrade is a mandatory upgrade, so this strategy doesn't really cost much gas, if any at all.
The idea behind this strategy is that with 2 queens you can put 1 creep tumor every 12.5 secs (25energy divided by 2 queens = 12.5sec per tumor). The Terran player will be forced to use more scans than he can afford. Which means if you put as many as your queens allows for, he will never have enough scans to destroy them all =)
Example: Harass miners and annoy him with queen attacks, burrow creep tumors everywhere around the map, burrow creep tumors on his expo, Burrow creep tumors in or near his base, Burrow Creep Tumors near his choke, Burrow 2 creep tumors on his expo far enough from each other so that he requires 2 scans to take them both out. Just burrow as many creep tumors, as close to him, as he allows you to. That will force him to ravens or waste scans. Best of all, you will get a lot of good intel from the creep vision and the movement of overlords. If he decides to go for vikings, support with hydras/mutas or just spread creep tumors somewhere else. Whatever you do, Keep Macroing and JUST SPREAD CREEP TUMORS AND NEVER STOP. You'll be surprised at how fast you can spread creep vision in the entire map with 2 puny queens.
On August 05 2010 07:37 Slayer91 wrote: Funsies: Step 1: Make banelings Step 2: Upgrade overlord drop. Step 3: Drop 4 in each mineral line boom boom bye bye scvs! Step 4: Drop over his marines using the baneling carpet bomb trick from psyonic reaver's youtube and then SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZSSSSZ OMGWTFBBQ!!
From my perspective as a spectator it seems that only Terrans seem to be doing harrass regularly. Especially the early Hellion harrass needs to be controlled by the Zerg or he gets so much behind in economy that he will never catch up. But how can a Zerg do something comparable? Terrans are walled in and might have sieged tanks at the front, so sneaking and even burrowing past will not work. So the only ways to harrass left to Zerg are air attacks or ground attacks which bypass the defensive lines (drops / Nydus). There are two reasony why this isnt done atm: 1. Zerg players are too greedy and think that a Nydus worm is expensive (it costs only as much as a shuttle and has a much bigger capacity), 2. the maps are too small to make the attacking army of the defender be able to defend against these drops too easily.
So how *should* you go about harrassing? What should you expect to gain from it?
control early Hellion harrass
choose Nydus or Overlord as harrass mechanic
prepare a few units for harrass with special skills (burrow for roaches / infestors comes to mind)
try to harrass at many places
Expectations: pulling the main army of the opponent away from the front (this wont work with baneling bombs on mineral lines)
Expectations: forcing the opponent to build lots of detecting units / structures or using scans (you need burrow for this and especially the burrowed casting of infected Terrans practically requires this, but large main bases offer A LOT of places to hide)
Expectations: economic damage by hitting the mineral line directly (baneling drop, Mutalisks, Infestor with Fungal Growth and Infested Terran)
Harrass is a lost art to current Zerg players, but it is this tactic which unnerves an opponent into making mistakes. Against a Terran especially it causes the relatively immobile mech to keep moving and thus not entrenched into defensive positions. That adds up into a pure tactical advantage for the Zerg, but the current Zerg tactics only revolve around the "brute force approach". Using harrass should be quite nice as Zerg, because they have several units which seem quite efficient for it. Infestors and Banelings have AoE effects and seem good for worker harras and Ultralisks are awesome even in very small numbers against buildings (and thus harrass would work in late game as well).
So get out and practics harrass you Zerg players ... and stop thinking everything that does not directly increase your damage (burrow, Nydus worms) as expensive.
I was trying a few intresting tactics and had a real success with them:
1. Going roaches with or w/o natural when hitting a lair you do Burrow + burrow move without move speed upgrade because it does not affect burrow move, split roaches in 2-3 group with 3-5 roaches each and go to different parts of opponent bases, especially effective when your opponent got an expo w/o photons or turrets. Whenever you know that your army is going to be scanned - burrow and run from scan zone, you really could survive will all your roaches even after this scan. and btw, scan is still 270 minerals -> almost 4 roaches. You could freak out your opponent alot by popping out and down all the time, its very hard to T to counter it.
The point is to get burrow move asap instead of upgrading roach move speed, it saves you 120 secs!!! or around that
2. Pop out Nydus near your opponents main, get queen to Nydus location and spawn 2 creep tumors to cover the enemy base in creep extremely fast to make your attack much more viable, also setting route from hatcheries to Nydus and this way you are getting "Zerg warpgates"
3. Drop 4 hydras in mineral line while "playing" with enemy army near natural, to not let him leave the position. And similarly you could do mini drop with like 8 lings and 4 hydras to force opponent withdraw his forces from nat and then attack the nat with main army. This one is not very original but it is underused currently.
4. Baneling minefields. I really love to burrow 6--8 banelings in places where T is sure to pass by and not to scan. Place it in places like right after his natural, some ramp near his base, where he does not expect to see such a things, its xtremely effective especially vs MMM or Sentries/HT.
Just imagine 6 banelings unburrow when bunch of HTs/Sentries/Zealots/Marines/Marauders are passing by! And with SC2 movement mechanics they will surely be clumped up. with +1 attack i think 2 banelings kill 1 HT? or you need +2 attack for that after all??
5. Also it is nice to burrow ultras. in end game when opponents goes to attack you ) this helps ultras to get close to your enemy instantly.
6. Using infestors to draw attacks from siege tanks. Its surprisingly that infestor eggs have high target priority and tanks tend to shoot them all the time!!! And splash T's army, its very nice thing imo.
On August 05 2010 07:46 Pandain wrote: This is used already but really needs to be a main strat/tactic of zergs. Sending an infestor and burrowing it and going to their mineral line. Either you can take out like 10 scvs over time/right away or they waste a scan on a single infestor. Then they have to get it too. Pretty good deal, no?
If a Terran duzn't have turrets at his min lines, i'd rather use muta haras. Mutas don't cost as much gas, and aren't quite so squishy like infestors.
On August 05 2010 15:27 Vengeaner wrote: I was trying a few intresting tactics and had a real success with them:
1. Going roaches with or w/o natural when hitting a lair you do Burrow + burrow move without move speed upgrade because it does not affect burrow move, split roaches in 2-3 group with 3-5 roaches each and go to different parts of opponent bases, especially effective when your opponent got an expo w/o photons or turrets. Whenever you know that your army is going to be scanned - burrow and run from scan zone, you really could survive will all your roaches even after this scan. and btw, scan is still 270 minerals -> almost 4 roaches. You could freak out your opponent alot by popping out and down all the time, its very hard to T to counter it.
That actually doesn't sound too bad, you just need some crawlers to hold the MM ball up just enough to get your roaches back if he goes base race mode.
I tinkered with the corruption on overseers, and ya it's just cost-prohibitive...if only if stopped all things the building could do (imagine hitting nexuses and stopping gathering...now THAT would be OP)
I have another strategy I'm starting to experiment with (one that's a lot more useful), but it has to be put to better players and have it go to my late-game transition ideas
I'm sorry but I think I don't share the optism of numerous of these tactics and stuff you guys are talking about, to me it sounds like you are just joking around. A scan isn't 270 minerals btw.
Any type of 1 base play is very easily shut down. It was maybe strong during first week of beta when just making Roaches gave you a few wins but other then that, the only really solid 1 base play is still the all-in baneling bust. You don't see any Zerg going 1 base against any decent player, because how weak Zerg is on 1 base and how easy it is to defend against it.
Why is it easy to defend against you might wonder. Well, Zerg is the only race that has to outexpand their opponent to stand a chance in the long run. So, naturally they expand in the start, but if you don't see an expansion, you don't even have to run up into their base, you will instantly know that some type of 1 base play is coming. So what are the paths that a Zerg can take? Roaches, Banelings, Mass speedling, all countered by blocking your entrance points properly. Bunkering and cannoning is easy and relatively cheap way of blocking off an 1 base Zerg.
Then theres fast lair 1 base play where you go Mutas or Hydralisks, or Roaches with upgrades. Even mass speedling into Nydus Worm is something I've personally tried, with little success though. 1 base into muta was viable in TvZ in BW, but not in SC2, partly because of the new gas mechanic, but partly also because of the fact that you can't micro them around, making Mutas alot less cost effective. The problem with Mutalisks also is that they come out so slow, so if ure opponent is 1 basing like he should be, he should already have more then enough to defend. Roaches and Hydralisks face the same problem. The only thing I could see working out of these is the Nydus Worm thing, but the timing needs to be as fast as possible, and hope they did not scan / scout it. But usually they just have a shit ton of anti-zergling units that you will just send them to your deaths. And all a Terran needs to do is throw 1 scan and it's all over. And if a Protoss scouts properly, he should spot the the speedlings atleast. (This is imot he best case scenario for Zerg.)
Sadly, I don't think there is much creativity to Zerg due to their extremely bland units. Best thing you can do is play around when you get your gas geysers imo. And wether you get ling speed or not and such.
Other then that, copy Idra, because he seems to understand the race better then anyone else, his timings and decision making is of course what allows him to be so good imo.
Kind of like the nydus worm idea, but I did double overlord drop. Basically I made my buddy see the overlords and dropped lings and right as that happened I did another drop in his main with my real army.
He was really confused and tried to pull back and practically got attacked from both sides.
Edit: dammit, browser timed out and lost my novel I was writing here. I'll give the short version.
Effectively Zerg has a few options for harassment, this does not include nydus worms, the closest comparison to nydus worms is a warp prism, and I would take warp prisms every day of the week, especially considering 1, they're mobile, 2 you can build them in your own base, 3 you can make observers from a robo fact, you can't make anything but worms from a nydus canal.
Realistic harassment techniques are as followed, and yes I think they are mostly unexplored. 1) baneling drops vs all 2) infestors vs Z and P 3) ling runby vs Z and P
Muta harass is a great way to lose to terran and zerg, but may become viable vs protoss if they ever switch away from stalker/collosus Roach burrow-move would be nice in mid-game, but by the time its available so are 100 other better uses for your gas. If they could move at their upgraded speed while burrowed, it might prove useful in late-game, but they're so slow right now and the longer games go on, the easier it is to get detection.
Day[9] daily #159 shows pretty well how the Zerg player can "screw up".
no harrass against an immobile army
trying to go head on against an army which is strong against your own army (mass Immortals >> mass Ultralisks)
not enough creep spread out over the map
charging a melee focused army into a ranged army set you at a starting disadvantage and even while the battle is raging the melee units need to reposition to be able to attack again, while ranged units dont need to do that as much
Zerg players really need to analyze the weaknesses of the opponent and then abuse them ... especially the mobility. If they dont they should not complain about it, because the majority of Zerg units is melee range and will suffer a few free shots from their opponents while rushing to attack, so a head on confrontation is NOT the right way to go.
In the Day[9] daily you see 10-12 Ultralisks get demolished by ~8 Immortals, but would the same happen if you put 2 Ultralisks against 2 Immortals? Or would the Immortals kill the Ultralisks before they rip apart a key Protoss tech building? I dont think these results would be as clearly in favor of the Protoss as the battle mentioned above. Killing key tech buildings is an important thing though and if you manage to kill the Robotics Bay for example there is a time window where Protoss can not reinforce his Colossi and your Zerglings might be awesome to kill off Immortals.
Lastly you can make harrassing Ultralisks awesome by burrowing them and requiring the opponent to use resources to detect. If your harrassing units are about to die just burrow them and expand the duration of the harrassment by a lot (unless he already has detectors available, but regenerating Roaches do need a certain amount of dps to be killed while burrowed and they could even spread out in different directions to require more detection).
On August 05 2010 07:29 tfmdjeff wrote: You know something? Today I've replied to many Zerg-is-underpowered threads, agreeing a little bit with some, not agreeing with others.
But you know something? The Beta already happened. It's over. The Beta existed so that the game could be balanced, and now that it's over, it's likely we won't see any of the buffs we whine for, and likely won't see any changes until at least HoTS.
So in the meantime, I've created this thread so we Zerg players can be...
PRODUCTIVE!
Instead of raging about Zerg's supposed weaknesses, let's all put our minds into one big theorycrafting hive, and think of what kinds of new things we can do with the Zerg we currently have and probably will for a very long time. Crazy strategies, new ways for using units and spells and abilities that we aren't taking full advantage of, maybe overcome some of Zerg's current problems.
So, without further ado, I present to you my theorycrafting!
Here's an idea I've been throwing around in my head. It has to do with Nydus Worms. Yes, Nydus Worms, those things we hate because they take so long to build and to be killed and we generally use them as a sort of replacement for a big overlord drop. I call it a nydus fork, because, like a chess fork, it forces the opponent to make a decision. He's bound to lose something, he just has to chose what.
So here's how it works. Instead of building one nydus worm, you build TWO. See my trickery? I don't mean build two right next to each other, but I mean build two in very different areas of his territory. You have your units loaded up into the worm. You watch and see his reaction. Even if he scouts both worms, Watch which one he goes for, and just pop your army right out of the other. Do your damage, and retreat. What if decides to split his army to deal with them both? Easy, you only have half an army to worry about now. If he comes back and hasn't killed the other worm, just pop right back out of that and do even more damage. Well, you only have half of an army to fight, you can overwhelm it. Now, I know this strategy won't work all the time, but hey. It seems like it'd work in some situations, especially mech.
Well, now that I've contributed my share for now, go forth my fellow Zerg players, and try to be productive. Just try to think of something that hasn't been done before, don't think too hard about viability. Strategies are born rough, and refined overtime.
I like the idea, but it costs to much gas to do simultaneously, since each network can only build one worm at a time (so you'd need 2 networks).
What I like to do on big maps is build a worm as simply a method for faster reinforcements (like a forward pylon for a protoss player), and bringing a queen or two with me to spread creep and heal with transfusion. Unfortunately, if I were a better player, I could have been spreading creep tumors all game long and had a queen there without a worm.
On August 05 2010 16:47 Jermstuddog wrote: Edit: dammit, browser timed out and lost my novel I was writing here. I'll give the short version.
Effectively Zerg has a few options for harassment, this does not include nydus worms, the closest comparison to nydus worms is a warp prism, and I would take warp prisms every day of the week, especially considering 1, they're mobile, 2 you can build them in your own base, 3 you can make observers from a robo fact, you can't make anything but worms from a nydus canal.
Realistic harassment techniques are as followed, and yes I think they are mostly unexplored. 1) baneling drops vs all 2) infestors vs Z and P 3) ling runby vs Z and P
Muta harass is a great way to lose to terran and zerg, but may become viable vs protoss if they ever switch away from stalker/collosus Roach burrow-move would be nice in mid-game, but by the time its available so are 100 other better uses for your gas. If they could move at their upgraded speed while burrowed, it might prove useful in late-game, but they're so slow right now and the longer games go on, the easier it is to get detection.
Baneling drops maybe, but that costs so incredibly much gas. 200/200 for transport 100/100 to make OLs useful, then of course the banelings itself etc. I don't thing this is viable at all other then late game when you have 3-4 bases. I saw Sen do something like this, but it seemed very situational.
Infestors are already being used in both vs Z and P. In vs Z it's not unusual to see Infestors if both opened roaches and the game drags on. Unless your suggesting infestors to counter baneling play, well, I don't think that's viable. You will be wasting all this gas and money on teching up, while a person who goes Banelings get full map control, allowing them to expand and transition aswell. Banelings nest isn't that big of a investment. That is of course, if you manage to stay alive / not lose drones.
Infestors were used a lot before NP got nerfed, after that its just simply not worth it most of the time. Fungal Growth can have it's uses though, but mainly as a help tool to kill mass phoenix builds. Against Colossus play, ure better off getting more Corruptors or just mass. But I can see situations where Fungal Growth could help to pick off stray units. Trying to NP a colossus is usually just giving a free infestor away, due to the fact how easily Colossus can stay behind the troops, while a Infestor is forced to come to the frontlines to be able to NP.
Ling runby was also one of the things that died out during the first few weeks of the beta, especially against P. It was one of my favourite ways to win a game against P. They would do the usual 4 gate stuff, I hide my lings, when he moves out I run in his base and rape the probe line. Most Zergs realized this and abused it, which is why any smart Protoss when he is aware that speedlings exist (not a hard thing to check), they will almost always leave a Zealot / Sentry blocking on top of their ramp.
Ling runby in ZvZ is used ALOT when your opponent decides to go for Roaches, and is one of the reasons why Roaches are kinda sucky. You can't possibly move out without leaving Roaches back home or investing in some Creep Crawlers, because the second you leave your base, you will have 20 speedlings raping everything. Which is why it's very normal for a Speedling player go for a relative fast expand to force the Roach player out, or risk getting overrun in awhile. Also speedlings own Roaches till you get a good ball of them.
On August 05 2010 17:02 Rabiator wrote: Day[9] daily #159 shows pretty well how the Zerg player can "screw up".
no harrass against an immobile army
trying to go head on against an army which is strong against your own army (mass Immortals >> mass Ultralisks)
not enough creep spread out over the map
charging a melee focused army into a ranged army set you at a starting disadvantage and even while the battle is raging the melee units need to reposition to be able to attack again, while ranged units dont need to do that as much
Zerg players really need to analyze the weaknesses of the opponent and then abuse them ... especially the mobility. If they dont they should not complain about it, because the majority of Zerg units is melee range and will suffer a few free shots from their opponents while rushing to attack, so a head on confrontation is NOT the right way to go.
In the Day[9] daily you see 10-12 Ultralisks get demolished by ~8 Immortals, but would the same happen if you put 2 Ultralisks against 2 Immortals? Or would the Immortals kill the Ultralisks before they rip apart a key Protoss tech building? I dont think these results would be as clearly in favor of the Protoss as the battle mentioned above. Killing key tech buildings is an important thing though and if you manage to kill the Robotics Bay for example there is a time window where Protoss can not reinforce his Colossi and your Zerglings might be awesome to kill off Immortals.
Lastly you can make harrassing Ultralisks awesome by burrowing them and requiring the opponent to use resources to detect. If your harrassing units are about to die just burrow them and expand the duration of the harrassment by a lot (unless he already has detectors available, but regenerating Roaches do need a certain amount of dps to be killed while burrowed and they could even spread out in different directions to require more detection).
I get annoyed by the above post claiming that the zerg screwed up...
From an ingame viewpoints the zerg played very logically with a sound selection of units.
On August 05 2010 17:02 Rabiator wrote: Day[9] daily #159 shows pretty well how the Zerg player can "screw up".
no harrass against an immobile army
trying to go head on against an army which is strong against your own army (mass Immortals >> mass Ultralisks)
not enough creep spread out over the map
charging a melee focused army into a ranged army set you at a starting disadvantage and even while the battle is raging the melee units need to reposition to be able to attack again, while ranged units dont need to do that as much
Zerg players really need to analyze the weaknesses of the opponent and then abuse them ... especially the mobility. If they dont they should not complain about it, because the majority of Zerg units is melee range and will suffer a few free shots from their opponents while rushing to attack, so a head on confrontation is NOT the right way to go.
In the Day[9] daily you see 10-12 Ultralisks get demolished by ~8 Immortals, but would the same happen if you put 2 Ultralisks against 2 Immortals? Or would the Immortals kill the Ultralisks before they rip apart a key Protoss tech building? I dont think these results would be as clearly in favor of the Protoss as the battle mentioned above. Killing key tech buildings is an important thing though and if you manage to kill the Robotics Bay for example there is a time window where Protoss can not reinforce his Colossi and your Zerglings might be awesome to kill off Immortals.
Lastly you can make harrassing Ultralisks awesome by burrowing them and requiring the opponent to use resources to detect. If your harrassing units are about to die just burrow them and expand the duration of the harrassment by a lot (unless he already has detectors available, but regenerating Roaches do need a certain amount of dps to be killed while burrowed and they could even spread out in different directions to require more detection).
I get annoyed by the above post claiming that the zerg screwed up...
From an ingame viewpoints the zerg played very logically with a sound selection of units.
Sorry, but you really think that trying to do a frontal assault against a solid number of Immortals with lots of Ultralisks is a good choice? There were a number of early smaller engagements and the Zerg knew the Protoss had Immortals AND he did not manage to kill the four Colossi, so the Robo facilities were free to produce Immortals. He also had revealed his Ultralisk tech in a small assault (which was ok and succeeded somewhat), but the Protoss had some survivors all the time. So was it really "not screwing up" to stick to the same plan and simply more units?
On August 05 2010 07:29 tfmdjeff wrote: You know something? Today I've replied to many Zerg-is-underpowered threads, agreeing a little bit with some, not agreeing with others.
But you know something? The Beta already happened. It's over. The Beta existed so that the game could be balanced, and now that it's over, it's likely we won't see any of the buffs we whine for, and likely won't see any changes until at least HoTS.
So in the meantime, I've created this thread so we Zerg players can be...
PRODUCTIVE!
Instead of raging about Zerg's supposed weaknesses, let's all put our minds into one big theorycrafting hive, and think of what kinds of new things we can do with the Zerg we currently have and probably will for a very long time. Crazy strategies, new ways for using units and spells and abilities that we aren't taking full advantage of, maybe overcome some of Zerg's current problems.
So, without further ado, I present to you my theorycrafting!
Here's an idea I've been throwing around in my head. It has to do with Nydus Worms. Yes, Nydus Worms, those things we hate because they take so long to build and to be killed and we generally use them as a sort of replacement for a big overlord drop. I call it a nydus fork, because, like a chess fork, it forces the opponent to make a decision. He's bound to lose something, he just has to chose what.
So here's how it works. Instead of building one nydus worm, you build TWO. See my trickery? I don't mean build two right next to each other, but I mean build two in very different areas of his territory. You have your units loaded up into the worm. You watch and see his reaction. Even if he scouts both worms, Watch which one he goes for, and just pop your army right out of the other. Do your damage, and retreat. What if decides to split his army to deal with them both? Easy, you only have half an army to worry about now. If he comes back and hasn't killed the other worm, just pop right back out of that and do even more damage. Well, you only have half of an army to fight, you can overwhelm it. Now, I know this strategy won't work all the time, but hey. It seems like it'd work in some situations, especially mech.
Well, now that I've contributed my share for now, go forth my fellow Zerg players, and try to be productive. Just try to think of something that hasn't been done before, don't think too hard about viability. Strategies are born rough, and refined overtime.
I like the idea, but it costs to much gas to do simultaneously, since each network can only build one worm at a time (so you'd need 2 networks).
What I like to do on big maps is build a worm as simply a method for faster reinforcements (like a forward pylon for a protoss player), and bringing a queen or two with me to spread creep and heal with transfusion. Unfortunately, if I were a better player, I could have been spreading creep tumors all game long and had a queen there without a worm.
As an alternative to building two Nydus worms you could do a "fake drop" by flying a bunch of Overlords into an enemies base somewhere highly visible and far away from the worm. Your troops could be in either of these drop methods and you dont need a second Nydus Network.
On August 05 2010 07:29 tfmdjeff wrote:So here's how it works. Instead of building one nydus worm, you build TWO. See my trickery? I don't mean build two right next to each other, but I mean build two in very different areas of his territory. You have your units loaded up into the worm. You watch and see his reaction. Even if he scouts both worms, Watch which one he goes for, and just pop your army right out of the other. Do your damage, and retreat. What if decides to split his army to deal with them both? Easy, you only have half an army to worry about now. If he comes back and hasn't killed the other worm, just pop right back out of that and do even more damage. Well, you only have half of an army to fight, you can overwhelm it..
The issue with this is Nydus Worms take incredibly long to build and only have 200 HP. That's 10 marauder shots, 4 Tank shots, or 40 worker attacks to take down. If the opponent scouts the worms before they're built, shutting down both is not a problem at all. If the opponent doesn't scout them, or only finds one, of course you might be able to do some good damage (essentially sacing 100/100 to distract his army for a bit), but it's risky and smells of cheese. If he has tanks properly positioned around his base, it will be difficult.
I agree that Nydus worms are underused, and multiple nydus exits ought to be explored, but as it is the Nydus is incredibly soft and slow to build (and slow to poop out units, which means 100 zerglings coming out of 1 nydus are not very effective). Blizzard, buff plox.
On August 05 2010 07:39 boredcouch wrote: I want to see someone do this:
1. Make banelings 2. Do not baneling bust 3. Research burrow 4. Burrow banelings at natural expansion in the mineral line 5. Once workers get transferred, press x 6. Laugh mercilessly!!!
That rarely work since they always get turrets at expansions
On August 05 2010 16:47 Jermstuddog wrote: Edit: dammit, browser timed out and lost my novel I was writing here. I'll give the short version.
Effectively Zerg has a few options for harassment, this does not include nydus worms, the closest comparison to nydus worms is a warp prism, and I would take warp prisms every day of the week, especially considering 1, they're mobile, 2 you can build them in your own base, 3 you can make observers from a robo fact, you can't make anything but worms from a nydus canal.
Realistic harassment techniques are as followed, and yes I think they are mostly unexplored. 1) baneling drops vs all 2) infestors vs Z and P 3) ling runby vs Z and P
Muta harass is a great way to lose to terran and zerg, but may become viable vs protoss if they ever switch away from stalker/collosus Roach burrow-move would be nice in mid-game, but by the time its available so are 100 other better uses for your gas. If they could move at their upgraded speed while burrowed, it might prove useful in late-game, but they're so slow right now and the longer games go on, the easier it is to get detection.
Baneling drops maybe, but that costs so incredibly much gas. 200/200 for transport 100/100 to make OLs useful, then of course the banelings itself etc. I don't thing this is viable at all other then late game when you have 3-4 bases. I saw Sen do something like this, but it seemed very situational.
Infestors are already being used in both vs Z and P. In vs Z it's not unusual to see Infestors if both opened roaches and the game drags on. Unless your suggesting infestors to counter baneling play, well, I don't think that's viable. You will be wasting all this gas and money on teching up, while a person who goes Banelings get full map control, allowing them to expand and transition aswell. Banelings nest isn't that big of a investment. That is of course, if you manage to stay alive / not lose drones.
Infestors were used a lot before NP got nerfed, after that its just simply not worth it most of the time. Fungal Growth can have it's uses though, but mainly as a help tool to kill mass phoenix builds. Against Colossus play, ure better off getting more Corruptors or just mass. But I can see situations where Fungal Growth could help to pick off stray units. Trying to NP a colossus is usually just giving a free infestor away, due to the fact how easily Colossus can stay behind the troops, while a Infestor is forced to come to the frontlines to be able to NP.
Ling runby was also one of the things that died out during the first few weeks of the beta, especially against P. It was one of my favourite ways to win a game against P. They would do the usual 4 gate stuff, I hide my lings, when he moves out I run in his base and rape the probe line. Most Zergs realized this and abused it, which is why any smart Protoss when he is aware that speedlings exist (not a hard thing to check), they will almost always leave a Zealot / Sentry blocking on top of their ramp.
Ling runby in ZvZ is used ALOT when your opponent decides to go for Roaches, and is one of the reasons why Roaches are kinda sucky. You can't possibly move out without leaving Roaches back home or investing in some Creep Crawlers, because the second you leave your base, you will have 20 speedlings raping everything. Which is why it's very normal for a Speedling player go for a relative fast expand to force the Roach player out, or risk getting overrun in awhile. Also speedlings own Roaches till you get a good ball of them.
Just my 2 cents.
Rereading what I wrote, I'm not sure why I used the word "unexplored". Underutilized is what I meant.
Those 3 harassment options are the only valid options in mid game as far as I'm concerned. This takes cost and effectiveness into consideration.
Baneling drops cost a lot. 300/300 for decent ovie drops, 50/25 per baneling, and you'll quite possibly lose the ovie 100/8. But they give your scouts added mobility through ovie speed, your army added mobility through drops, and 3-4 banelings can take out 10 or so SCVs. I would pay twice the price happily. For the cost, you gain a lot of options.
Infestors are good because they're just a good unit. Yes NP is shit now and not worth the research. Fungal Growth still rocks vs just about all army compositions ( not really vs sling/bling though I will agree). As any match moves into mid game, I think infestors should show up in every Z army, kinda sad I don't really see this a whole lot anymore, but it is still used, and we all knew it was there all along. As far as harassment cost goes, you again spend it all in research and tech. 1 max energy infestor can decimate a mineral line, anything beyond that is gravy.
Sling runby is dirt cheap and if you don't have ling speed you messed up somewhere. 20 lings is a whole 500 minerals and 10 supply, they move so fast, and if you have burrow they can be hard to find. Run into enemy base, kill 1 supply depot, run out and burrow in the middle of the map. So hard not to get your money back on lings.
On August 05 2010 07:34 Twistacles wrote: I like you.
As a P player, I've always found burrow to be underused. P almost always goes 2gaterobo, meaning he expands late.
Giving you enough time to burrow a couple banelings at his natural. Sure, it's somewhat of a longshot, but consider this: You come into his main, somehow. Whether drops, air, nydus. You do some damage. He sends his probes/scvs to his newly made natural. You now have ALL his probes...over a bunch of banelings. You just won the game. Thoughts?
Omg!! this is awesome!
Burrowing banelings at his natural, and then when he expands and transfers probes, you unburrow the banelings and destroy all the probes! LOL :D
I only just watches the Razer King of the Beta VODS but I finally saw the return of an old favorite of mine, the zergling snipe team. In ZvP BW it seemed to be common practice to send a control group of crackling to possible expansion sites to quickly snipe the nexus.
I'll spoiler it for people who haven't seen it yet. + Show Spoiler +
Idra Vs Tester, game 5 on Metalopolis. Idra has some speedlings running around and he actually researches adrenal glands. He keeps Tester's army at his base by threatening to do a runby. When Tester does finally move out, Idra runs in and quickly snipes the robotics support facility.
Everybody is saying zerglings aren't what they used to be and adrenal glands isn't worth it and they are probably right. But man was I glad to see that And I was quite amazed at the speed at which it was taken down.
Do you guys think the speedling (or crackling) team can make a comeback or was this just a one time thing?
long time TL forum lurker here, nydus worm insertions into an enemy main remove the need for attacking units to have mobility- a nydus worm assault force could (theoretically) efficiently include queens as the main attacking unit.
queens can be spammed from early on queens dont cost gas, making early dual worm easier queens are cost efficient defenders queens own air depending on your micro, queens can transfuse eachother/the nydus
this queen/nydus build would work even better with infestors (since queen spam saves on gas), which could either be sent with the nydus fork to spam infested terran (if your infestor is the first unit out, it can quickly spam out a tonne of infested terrans to hold the beachhead till your stuff gets out) or to defend in the event of a baserace (keep the infestors in the network and bounce them back to your base for infested terran speedbump in the event of a counterattack)
instead of the traditional approach of "my army vs his army" focus your strategy around base trades with nydus escape. your goal is to scout really well. keep building an army, and wait for his army to go attack your base. when he moves out, attack his main, and plant a nydus at his entrance for a quick escape back to your base after you've crippled it.
focus on an army composition that is effective against buildings, like hydras. also you can try planting a nydus somewhere near his base, but not within his vision. when he moves out to your base, go through the nydus and attack his base for the base trade.
I'm curious, has anyone tried or had any success with using a simcity at the natural to help deflect early-game hellion harassment or zealot aggression? I'm sure that people who have played/watched BW should be somewhat familiar with this setup:
Obviously Reapers limit the usefulness of a similar wall-in in SC2, but I'm curious if perhaps it could be at least a little bit helpful on certain maps that allow for it (admittedly, a lot of the maps seem to make natural walling difficult).
Nydus Worm You can build 1st nydus worm very close to enemy's base and plant 2nd one at the far corner of enemy's base. When it goes RAWRRR, you transfer all your army to 2nd one. When you see enemy's come, you quickly transfer them back to 1st one and attack the entrance.
I'm reading and there are a few misconceptions about the nydus worm, sorry if they were addressed earlier in the thread.
- Nydus networks do not cost 100/100 the exits cost 100/100 on top of the original 150/200
- If an enemy sees it as it's building it can't be canceled = wasted tech because once surprise is used up the worm is pretty useless on the majority of the current mapset due to map size.
- If he catches the worm before your entire force is out having a party in his base (takes awhile to set up that party because units pop out painfully slow) your force either hauls ass back into the worm or they get toasted with your.
- ONE i repeat ONE exit can be built at a time per nydus network, to make multiple exits at the same time multiple networks are required. Expensive to say the least.
- 2 nydus worms + army that can do anything = mid to late game and the opponents base is usually covered by vision and they have a decent force.
- If your army is caught in the nydus network and the network is destroyed before they can all get out (almost had this and a heart attack happen in beta lol) your army dies. *I do not know however if the nydus exits remain after the nydus has been destroyed, it may be possible to save your army after the network has been destroyed. **Liquipedia says exits still remain after network has been destroyed
All that said, i would love some ZvZ BOs suggestions for maps with back doors that create a mid game.
A thing to do in the somewhat late game is to drop 3 changlings and hold position the ramp while using an Overlord drop. If he doesn't notice, you delay his army by a good bit. It is sure to work to buy at least a few seconds of time.
EPT
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