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It has come to my attention that Zerg players seem to have concluded that the Zerg has a weak late game in ZvP as the Protoss army seems to incinerate the Zerg army quickly. This is wrong.
What is this?
What this is is a Zerg late game anti-death ball composition for ZvP which mimics a raid group from World of Warcraft in it's composition to great effect. The basic composition is using Ultra/Queen/Hydra as stand ins for Tank/Healer/DPS.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3u3q7.jpg)
How terrifying!
Why that composition?
The ability of Queens to heal 500 health while doing more anti-air DPS than a Stalker (Queens use their anti-air against Colossus and have enough range to fire from behind the Hydralisks (you may even consider not getting Hydralisk range to help your Queens get in range for attacking/healing easier)) and the insane damage output of Hydralisks combined with the ability of Ultralisks to get in your face and stay there, not to mention that they have +6 armour with max upgrades to make their health drop that much slower (they specifically have an extra +2 armour upgrade guys, come on) makes for a lean army where every unit fills a tight role. Just make sure to play with health bars on and spam Transfuse as fast as you can on whichever Ultralisk is taking most damage (the main tank!) and you'll negate the majority of the entire damage output of the enemy army. It may be of note that in these replays I use 100 supply for Zerg, which contains 10 healers, 25 DPS and 5 tanks. Halve those numbers and you've got a near exact WoW 25 man raid composition.
Of course, being a solely Protoss player myself I can only theorize about the composition, you'd have to get there yourself. But what I can do is go into meum's Unit Test Map and pit an army against an army.
Replay
ZvP, 100 Zerg supply, 150 Protoss supply (the Stalker/Colossus/Void Ray "Death Ball")
Upgrades: Hydra range, Colossus range
Outcome: Zerg wins with 54 supply remaining
+ Show Spoiler +
So, thoughts on this composition?
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Needs amazing creep spread to have a chance.
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My thought on this composition are, Fantastic! it forces the protoss player to choose a different playstyle, PvZ is very 1 dimensional if this works well then it should be able to change that people will begin to try Immortals/High temps. Or anything would make me happier PvZ is a bore playing with the same composition everytime.
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well if the unit composition he's calling for requires a more-than-regular amount of Queens, wouldn't you say creep spread is out of the question?
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The tricky part will be getting to it, also what do you upgrade? all 3? or just armour and melee or range attack?
I feel that a standard death ball with a decent number of immortals would do well vs this kind of composition, also you couldnt fight off creep AT ALL as queens are just so slow off creep.
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As day9 would say, that's a nice late game plan, now you have to think about "how to get there".
Btw i watched the replay and basically you microed ( obviously ) hard the zerg units and zero micro the protoss one, i feel that if the voidray focus down the "tanks" instead of the dps you will.. well, wipe 
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On February 20 2011 18:14 L3g3nd_ wrote:
The tricky part will be getting to it, also what do you upgrade? all 3? or just armour and melee or range attack?
I feel that a standard death ball with a decent number of immortals would do well vs this kind of composition, also you couldnt fight off creep AT ALL as queens are just so slow off creep.
As many upgrades as possible would be best. It's worth noting that since you have no air units and the Protoss does, the centralisation of Protoss upgrades means nothing, and if anything he's at an upgrade disadvantage as he now needs more upgrades than you to max out on them.
And as for Immortals, if he makes them, you've successfully stopped the death ball! I'm not sure Immortals would even be a great idea in his situation, as sure you might kill the Ultralisks, but without as many Colossi, the Hydralisks are going to rip you to pieces. Immortal/High Templar sounds like a good mix to counter this army (you can even Feedback the Queens!), but if that's what he's switched to, then this army composition has successfully filled it's role of stopping the so called "death ball" and you're back to playing a reactionary race. And come on, creep spread? You've got mass Queen :D!
On February 20 2011 18:21 Renar wrote:As day9 would say, that's a nice late game plan, now you have to think about "how to get there". Btw i watched the replay and basically you microed ( obviously ) hard the zerg units and zero micro the protoss one, i feel that if the voidray focus down the "tanks" instead of the dps you will.. well, wipe
Yeah, I had to just attack move so I could spam Transfuse, but the Protoss army was 50% bigger in supply which I feel makes up for it.
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On February 20 2011 18:06 SausageLinks wrote:
well if the unit composition he's calling for requires a more-than-regular amount of Queens, wouldn't you say creep spread is out of the question?
Wouldn't you say opponents would, oh I don't know maybe kill the creep tumors? Floating an observer where your army is going takes a lot less attention than spreading and maintaining creep. To be offensive with this composition you need creep the length of the entire map.
That something not easily accomplished when you have to macro and fend off his pressure etc.
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So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that.
Second thing is Ultras are crap without upgrades, you need maxed upgrades on them to be worth something, so you need to start upgrading them from the begining of the game.
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On February 20 2011 18:22 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 18:14 L3g3nd_ wrote:
The tricky part will be getting to it, also what do you upgrade? all 3? or just armour and melee or range attack?
I feel that a standard death ball with a decent number of immortals would do well vs this kind of composition, also you couldnt fight off creep AT ALL as queens are just so slow off creep. As many upgrades as possible would be best. It's worth noting that since you have no air units and the Protoss does, the centralisation of Protoss upgrades means nothing, and if anything he's at an upgrade disadvantage as he now needs more upgrades than you to max out on them. And as for Immortals, if he makes them, you've successfully stopped the death ball! I'm not sure Immortals would even be a great idea in his situation, as sure you might kill the Ultralisks, but without as many Colossi, the Hydralisks are going to rip you to pieces. Immortal/High Templar sounds like a good mix to counter this army (you can even Feedback the Queens!), but if that's what he's switched to, then this army composition has successfully filled it's role of stopping the so called "death ball" and you're back to playing a reactionary race. And come on, creep spread? You've got mass Queen :D! Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 18:21 Renar wrote:As day9 would say, that's a nice late game plan, now you have to think about "how to get there". Btw i watched the replay and basically you microed ( obviously ) hard the zerg units and zero micro the protoss one, i feel that if the voidray focus down the "tanks" instead of the dps you will.. well, wipe Yeah, I had to just attack move so I could spam Transfuse, but the Protoss army was 50% bigger in supply which I feel makes up for it.
Trust me, 200% increase in army is not better than micro, 50% don't even get started.
The composition you built for zerg is a VERY late game one. Protoss can amass the composition you put out for then a good, solid, 10 min before you. It would be more realistic to use roaches as tanks, as ultra tech (and 6 armor upgrades at it) come VERY VERY late.
Don't get me wrong, that composition well microed can kill an equal supply protoss army (the combination you put) very efficiently. Catz proved it. But if they mix some 2 or 3 HT to feedback your queens, you're probably dead meat, as it kill a queen for 50 energy a pop.
But then again, if the protoss deliberately pull 1 zealot a time ahead of his army (stalkers do alright, but may die a lot faster) it will probably screw your ultra AI and bug then in place until you kill the zealot, meaning you lot a huge amount of DPS from the ultras and sometimes your Hydras/Queens will be so far behind the huge ultras that they won't even hit the stalkers/colossus killing your ultras.
The thing about ultras is that the enemy just needs to pull one unit ahead of his army and screw the AI pathing and they basically out of the fight.
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On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that.
Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive.
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On February 20 2011 18:22 JTouche wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 18:06 SausageLinks wrote:
well if the unit composition he's calling for requires a more-than-regular amount of Queens, wouldn't you say creep spread is out of the question? Wouldn't you say opponents would, oh I don't know maybe kill the creep tumors? Floating an observer where your army is going takes a lot less attention than spreading and maintaining creep. To be offensive with this composition you need creep the length of the entire map. That something not easily accomplished when you have to macro and fend off his pressure etc.
Killing the tumors will pull the army out of position, so you can drop, nydus, ling runby, engage in a favourable position or see it coming.
If he uses part of his army then you can kill it off/push it back easily.
And you can easily replace the tumors.
On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that.
Second thing is Ultras are crap without upgrades, you need maxed upgrades on them to be worth something, so you need to start upgrading them from the begining of the game.
Yeah that's on the money I think I'll explain it abit more though.
Collosi kill hydras really well, ultras kill collosi in a pitched fight, but stalkers are an effective ''unit that dies'' thus meaning the ultras can't kill off the collosi. So you need range damage and melee damage ups to kill off the stalkers.
The ultras will suck up all your queens energy soo fast without armour ups rendering them far less effective. So you need armour ups.
Upgrades take ages to upgrade so you need a lot of time and they cost a lot of gas so you need alot of geysers which means alot of bases, which in turn means it's difficult to defend them all.
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Good units, but if there is no creep this ball is terrible.
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looks good in theory, will suck most of the time in actual games. In ZvP, in a macrogame, alot comes down to how long you can delay his third and how well you can trade units as early as possible. this doesnt help with it at all.
also, even when you get there, good protoss players wont let you spread creep right until outside their bases, so you cant even use the usual superior mobility on ground.
and then, once protoss gets to his voidray/colo/mothership combination (maybe with some immortals mixed in because of the ultras..) youre not going to heal fast enough to prevent your shit from dying in a couple of seconds.
so overall, i dont really see this working in situations where you havent already won anyway for whatever reason. if you have any actual proof of it working in highlevel games, i'd be thrilled to see replays.
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On February 20 2011 18:14 L3g3nd_ wrote:
The tricky part will be getting to it, also what do you upgrade? all 3? or just armour and melee or range attack?
I feel that a standard death ball with a decent number of immortals would do well vs this kind of composition, also you couldnt fight off creep AT ALL as queens are just so slow off creep.
Since Ultras are the tanks you should go with full carapace upgrade, full ranged attack for the hydras (they are the DPS and also benefit from carapace upgrade) and queens. If protoss are waiting for a timing attack you could possibly spread your creep really good and when they finaly come to you, you can kill is forces and counter attack.
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I agree wholehearted with what darkforce had to say. That being said, I would love to see someone pull this off. You could make a vod of it and have the famous ony wipe vocals playing in the background! HANDLE EET!
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If someone has a copy of evo chamber, it would be great to see hoe long it would take to reach this build. Just having hydras and lings early or relying on lings+spine crawlers to hold early aggression is not entirely unreasonable, especially with queens out.
This is not a bad unit composition, but it is just that - a unit composition. Let's give it a fair shake and try hard to see if it has actual potential before immediately dismissing it.
For the build to have potential, you should be able to reach certain milestones in time. If we forgo roaches, we have to rely on lings and hydras early. This is not unreasonable. The question then becomes: how do we stop the protoss player from just killing us when he has 3 colossi? To stop this from happening, we need something beyond hydras and lings at approximately 12 minutes.
Sadly, I'm on holiday right now and don't have access to a computer. If I would, I would try developing this idea further. Again, if someone has evo chamber, try to set reasonable milestones and see what you can do. With queens, hydras and lings, it's definitively possible to survive until colossi start being pumped out. The protoss player would not go immortals if he scouts a number of hydras.
Therefore, I would think the success of this build hinges completely on whether or not we get some sort of power unit to bridge the gap between hydra/ling until ultras cone out. We obviously wanted to avoid corruptors and roaches if at all possible, which leaves us really only with infestors as an option. Specifically, I would think neural parasite in addition to fungal growth could work in delaying the push until the ultras pop.
Obviously, this is just informed theorycrafting, but this is how I would approach trying to develop this idea of an unit composition into an useable build. Let's not immediately dismiss the idea - let's try it out and see what elements of it work.
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On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive.
Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something.
What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL
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On February 20 2011 20:44 Alpina wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2011 19:00 branflakes14 wrote:On February 20 2011 18:44 Alpina wrote:
So first thing is that this combo is very gas intensive you should have like 4+ bases to support that. Ultras are the same cost as his Colossi and you don't need that many of them as the idea is they don't die, and Hydras cost the same gas as Stalkers. Not even close to gas intensive. If Protoss can mass 300/200, 250/150 and 125/50 units on 2 bases, I'm fairly sure Zerg doesn't need 4+ bases to do something less gas intensive. Why do you compare ultras to collosi? Few collosi can wipe out every ground unit zerg has with good ground support and good forcefields. Few ultras gonna die until you even come close to toss army. You need a lot of them and upgraded to be worth something. What about bases you are again just theorycrafting. Toss can get a deathball on 2 bases, so you want to say that zerg can go ultras on 2 base? LOL
"Protoss can get a huge 300/200/6, 250/150/3, 125/50/2 death ball off 2 bases but Zerg just doesn't have the resources to do the same." - every Zerg player ever. You'd think creep reduced income from mineral patches or something.
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On February 20 2011 18:00 JTouche wrote:
Needs amazing creep spread to have a chance.
If only that composition had some way of spreading creep...
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EPT
