Pacifying the Zerg - Page 9

On September 09 2010 10:25 kickinhead wrote:
I blame 4 Factors for Zerg being the "passive" or "reactive" Race in SC2, at least earlier on in the game.

Creep Mechanic/Units too slow off-creep
Well, pretty self-explanatory I guess: Roaches, Hydras etc. are just too slow off-creep, which makes the creep-mechanic more of a defensive ability, at least earlier in the game.

Wall-in's/Force-Fields
Zerg just is not able to take advantage of one of their few fast Units, the Speedling, because runby's, backstabs etc. are a thing of the past thanks to IMBA force-fields on the ramp or wall-in's. Because of that, early pressure by the other races often cannot be punished, which effectively turns attacks that should be all-in's (and are as powerful as all-in's), into pretty solid BO's (4 warpgate-push is the best example IMHO), because Zerg can't counterattack nor backstab the opponent when his army moves out.

Bad T1/T1.5 ranged Units
With roaches being the only ranged T1-Unit, that is extremely slow off-creep and only has 3 range, you simply can't punish the opponent for walling in. You should be able to attack a wall-in if you choose to go for an aggressive strategy, like Hydras could in SC:BW. This way the wall-in would hinder the opponents own Units from attacking down the ramp and would therefore at least have 1 disadvantage. Against all the other races, I just would not recommend walling in, cuz as soon as stuff like Marauders, Stalkers, immortals etc. have vision up the cliff, your wall-in get's torn down. This especially makes counterattacks abolutely bad. Even at T2 with the Hydra, the slow movement-speed of 'em will make a counterattack up the ramp futile.

Zerglings being too weak
With Zerglings doing very low DPS compared to other T1/T1.5-Units, having no range, no Armor, very few health etc, Zerg is just always on the back-foot early on. The other Races have very strong Units and different builds early on against which Zerglings almost always loose (forward 2-gate Zealots, Reapers, Hellions). Because of that, you pretty much have to rely on the "defenders-advantage" (faster reinforcement, faster on creep, having queens to help out or even the drones etc.) to have any chance of surviving the early-game. Zerglings can't even backstab anymore to force the opponent to retreat when attacking early, as described above. If that's not enough: Zerglings are just sooo bad at destroying destructable rocks, so even on Maps like Blistering/Kulas, Counterattacking/Backstabbing with Zerglings is extremely hard to do.

On September 10 2010 03:45 ToxNub wrote:
Hold on, what the hell. This whole thread is such a lie.

It's not a zerg only problem. Nobody can break walls with t1. None of the races can do crap against a proper wall off.

1. Protoss/Terran armies can still be split by forcefield
2. Marauders/tanks/bunkers kill any race trying to break the wall

= Death if you attack his wall

On September 10 2010 04:00 ThePowerHour wrote:

I'm pretty sure the idea of the thread is that the zerg can't wall off, or forcefield, or park bunkers, which makes them unable to turtle in the same regard - but that they're also not able to do any damage early-game and are forced to be on the defensive until the mid-game or later.

On September 09 2010 17:22 David Dark wrote:
wait... wait... wait a minute...

so being able to force terran to wall in with all his units and keep him in his base so you can do whatever you want all over the map just because you have 6 zerglings is not considered as being aggressive?

On September 09 2010 17:38 Rabiator wrote:

Well maybe you might want to try to be VERY DEFENSIVE instead of trying the impossible?

On September 10 2010 02:47 Cheerio wrote:
1) Zerg agression early game is limited.
2) It is not the problem that there is no 5-range unit in t1 for zerg. In tvz the terran will just bunker behind the wall and all ranged unit threat is nulified. In pvz protoss has forcefield threat so you cant bust his ramp so easily even with ranged units. The problem is that zergs cannot wall in themselves which leads early game agression very much one sided.

On September 10 2010 06:44 Rabbet wrote:
^ Burrow needs to be USED... I often let games vs. zerg go into mid game on purpose, and I rarely see diversity in a zerg army(usually just piles of roaches or piles of hydras). Zerg need to remember that rushing to utlralisk or brood lords is not an auto win and that having a balanced army with a few casters can be quite powerful. All of this is quite expected though as zerg do not seem to make it to mid game very often.... and when they do I am sure they have to manually click the fungal growth spell on the screen with the cursor. 1a click won't cut if for the race anymore. Some day they will get there.

On September 10 2010 07:02 cuppatea wrote:


Yep, all those shitty, clueless Zerg players who have reached the same level as you using a race that is almost universally considered to be both weaker and harder to play...

On September 10 2010 08:50 GMarshal wrote:
Everyone keeps complaining about reapers, if only zerg had some kind of flying unit that they had to get anyway and that could be placed around the base to spot for the reapers and some small cheap unit that is fast on creep and could move to the position where the reapers are going to jump to surround them when they arrive and slaughter them...

On September 10 2010 08:56 archon256 wrote:

You don't need to jump to attack, Reapers can just fly along the ground to the natural and attack the hatchery making the Zerg player send all his Zerglings there, then they dart back off the creep and kite the lings, forcing the Zerg to invest in Roaches, which then get countered by the transition into M&M.

The true power of 5 Rax Reapers isn't that the Reapers can win the game by themselves, it's how they can damage the Zerg's economy without killing a single Drone, while leaving the Terran economy untouched (and giving him enough minerals to expand safely!) and setting up for a powerful mid-game push without having to build any additional structures.

On September 10 2010 09:36 GMarshal wrote:


I concede the point of this, when I posted I wasn't actually thinking of 5 rax reaper, I was considering smaller numbers, although I would still contest that 4-5 spines and a queen or two with transfuse at the choke to your nat along with the speedlings to counter the cliff jumping should be workable, although as I don't play zerg and generally avoid reapers in my builds I cannot confirm this.