[G] Zerg Tears - Page 19

The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.

We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.

So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?

Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.

Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.

First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)

Tier 1- Roach pressure.
Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings.
55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.

Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this.
Tech lab - 25s
Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)

That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.

Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).

Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).

Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...

Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s
Armory + Thor = 125s
133s = 5 marines
Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).

This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.

While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.

Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...

1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions.
2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.

Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.

The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.

So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.

Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.