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Hi folks, JaKaTaK and I have been studying the importance of nailing your larva injects. We expected to find that injects are super important and that high-level players do it better than low-level players.
We were in for a surprise. Here's the article.
Have a look and let us know what you think!
Thanks to Lings_of_Wiberty, Beta2K, Petered, Shaldengeki and Tenklavir who reviewed earlier versions. Any mistakes still in there are my fault.
EDIT: excerpt, as suggested by CrazyF1r3f0x:
Many in the community think that consistently keeping your Hatches injected with Larva is an important skill for any Zerg player to have. For example, here are some recent discussion threads on allthingszerg. In TheStaircase training methodology, we set benchmarks for several aspects of performance, including spending, supply blocks, and larva injects. In order to set the appropriate benchmarks for TheStaircase, we studied 44,903 1v1 HotS Ladder games from the GGTracker system, across every league and region. If the conventional wisdom is right, and consistent injects are an important skill, then we would expect to find that lower-league players would have trouble keeping their hatcheries consistently injected, and that higher-league Zergs would keep their hatcheries injected a notably higher percent of the time. We were in for a surprise. And as a result, we ultimately decided not to use inject consistency as part of TheStaircase.
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401 Posts
I love counter-intuitive findings like this where empirical data overturns gut-level conventional wisdom. Who would have argued before this that injects weren't the most important thing for zergs? It is THE thing to tell lower league players. "Just hit your injects, every inject, and then a-move your opponent with better macro"
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Might want to include an excerpt or something to beef up the OP
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Finally solid confirmation that Zergs macro is the easiest - we already knew they had it easy with only one production building and easiest tech switches in the game, now we know that they macro mechanic is also forgiving - and note that supposed unforgiveness of zerg mechanics was main argument for zerg's macro difficulty.
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I always thought it was intuitive to think that you needed more larva for the cheaper units and therefore injects were important but as the game progressed, the retention of higher tech expensive units changed the focus of mechanics, Its nice to see a formal experiment though.
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On May 22 2013 03:54 Embir wrote:
Finally solid confirmation that Zergs macro is the easiest - we already knew they had it easy with only one production building and easiest tech switches in the game, now we know that they macro mechanic is also forgiving - and note that supposed unforgiveness of zerg mechanics was main argument for zerg's macro difficulty.
Sigh, did you had to turn this into a balance whine?
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Nice! What would be also interesting is, which pro hits the most Inject per game (85-90% most of the time)
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United Kingdom20305 Posts
You're missing something important in that higher level players will more often use energy for creep tumors etc on purpose with early queens while lower ones are much much more prone to just floating energy, and also one of the biggest things:
Idle larvae, not just inject uptime, but larvae sat next to hatch unused, sometimes preventing more larvae from spawning, it's night and day difference if you cut down on idle larvae time a lot, and there's a massive trend there for higher vs lower levels of play
Higher level players also take bases MUCH earlier (4'th base at 9 min if toss takes third with a stargate is not really uncommon) while lower ones are very prone to sitting on 2-3 hatches and just not injecting
I would never have guessed any kind of results like this, because from watching high master zergs, in the first 10-15 mins of the game they don't really float queen energy - but watching silver-plat league zerg friends, it's common to see them hit with immortal all in or something and have 120 energy on their main queen, and you can just say, wtf are you doing, if you hit all of your injects you even have the money (without factoring in drones that would have started mining earlier etc) to make enough units to amove and win a suprising amount of the time, i feel
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What about the harass factor? Queens are often subjected to harass (in fact, they are pretty much the n°1 priority for any player dropping/harassing), and one may expect that the better the opponent, the harder it is to consistently inject without having your queens killed or fighting with your army.
What do you think?
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This mostly just shows that higher level players expand more aswell as adding macro hatches. Resulting in more bases than queens -> lower numbers. Injects are still INCREDIBLY important in the first couple of minutes.
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Totally makes sense based off of how we've seen pro Zergs perform since release, and its good to see some analysis bring it to light.
I do wonder what a Zerg would look like if they committed to a true "swarm style" where they hit their injects consistently into the late game and sat on lair tech units rather than ultralisks and broods.
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On May 22 2013 03:56 Assirra wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2013 03:54 Embir wrote:
Finally solid confirmation that Zergs macro is the easiest - we already knew they had it easy with only one production building and easiest tech switches in the game, now we know that they macro mechanic is also forgiving - and note that supposed unforgiveness of zerg mechanics was main argument for zerg's macro difficulty.
Sigh, did you had to turn this into a balance whine?
Some reading comprehension issues dude.
Difficulty of playing given race has nothing to do with balance, as long as it is humanly possible to play other races to win. Terran is the most difficult race mechanically, but in right hands it can be powerful tool. Zerg might even not the most powerful race at the moment, it is just the easiest to master, it is the most noobie friendly race by far, as soon as you getting used to its specific mechanics.
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inject is just an example of behaviorism.
I have never like it, but I'm glad it has less importance if the match goes longer.
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EDIT: delete, double post
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On May 22 2013 03:56 Assirra wrote:Show nested quote +On May 22 2013 03:54 Embir wrote:
Finally solid confirmation that Zergs macro is the easiest - we already knew they had it easy with only one production building and easiest tech switches in the game, now we know that they macro mechanic is also forgiving - and note that supposed unforgiveness of zerg mechanics was main argument for zerg's macro difficulty.
Sigh, did you had to turn this into a balance whine?
He's not whining.
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im really happy to see that silver players have better injects than master players in 30+mins games.
i see kinda often that low lvl players still focus on injecting even when they have enough larva and dont fully focus on positioning their army etc.
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Im calling bullshit on this.
I dont think what you showed there means anything. The inject percentage is correlated to the numbers of hatcheries. And in higher level play you have more hatcheries way faster. so after 10 minutes when the master zerg is on 4 base he does way more absolute injects than the silver level player thats still on one base. So thats not an useful comparison.
"Wow, the silver level player hits injects on one base almost as good as master level players on 4 base. I guess injects dont really matter that much." Kappa
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On May 22 2013 04:06 SpikeStarcraft wrote:
Im calling bullshit on this.
I dont think what you showed there means anything. The inject percentage is correlated to the numbers of hatcheries. And in higher level play you have more hatcheries way faster. so after 10 minutes when the master zerg is on 4 base he does way more absolute injects than the silver level player thats still on one base. So thats not an useful comparison.
"Wow, the silver level player hit injects on one base almost as good as master level players on 4 base. I guess injects dont really matter that much." Kappa
they also build macro hatcheries :D
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That's actually really interesting.
I still want to improve my injects though, but it makes me feel better about missing them haha.
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EPT
