I'm in Bronze league, currently ranked 33. I'm having trouble moving up, and I think it may be due to my lack of strong strategies that I can use. At the moment, I'm overwhelmed by which builds I should learn, and which ones I should avoid.
At the moment, my standard strat is to expand while my early lings attack, and to get Hydralisks ASAP. I try to throw mutas in there too, and I end up with a mess of units, and turn out my opponent has Thor/Hellions and is able to crush my forces, and make me gg.
What builds (obviously not cheesy) should I learn to get higher in the bronze?
You should have a fundamental grasp of the Speedling Expand, which is useful is in all leagues.
I find that at lower leagues, it's not worth going hatch-first, because you might lack the ability to defend it or lack the macro to fully saturate and make use of it.
At heart, the speedling expand is a 14gas/14pool. Remove drones from gas at 100 gas.
When your pool finishes, you should have enough minerals and gas to research speed and start a Queen.
After 2-3 pairs of lings, you should take your natural expansion. Take the watch towers with your zerglings. Constantly scout your opponent's ramp.
Hydralisks are extremely situational, and should never be used in ZvT, where the gas is better spent getting mutas/banelings.
Any replays? They would help me analyze your games more.
Where do you want me to drop replays? I have a few where I won, but several where I lost. I don't know where to put replays though. Anyplace that's a favorite?
9 Overlord 14 Gas 14 Pool 16 Overlord As soon as pool finishes - Build Queen - Get ling speed - Take 2 drones out of gas, leaving 1 in there - Make 4 lings to scout - At 300 mins expand
Go from there. Good against most things, safe.
At bronze, your macro is horrible, which is fine. The key thing is going to be making drones, then some drones, then some more drones. At your level if you die before 200/200, it's simply because you didn't have enough stuff. What you're making is (almost) irrelevant.
I don't see why you would voluntarily go for hydras, but apart from that:
There are the standard openers 15 hatch and 14gas 14pool. In ZvT a good opening build is 15 hatch 15 pool 15 gas or 15 hatch 16 pool 15 hatch, something like that. From there you can transition into anything you like, be it mass ling bane, a third, or 2base muta.
In ZvP there is 2 things you can do: 1.) 15 Hatch. This will leave you open to a cannonrush if the oponent is going Forge expand though, so only do this if you feel comfortable holding of a cannon rush, or have scouted that he isn't going Forge Expand. 2.) Pool first, ranging from 11-pool to 15-pool, where the earlier pools get out earlier zerglings which will allow you to kill the probe/pylon blocking you expansion and maybe punish a player who is getting too greedy with their forge expand(if they go nexus first for example, you might be able to get into the main and be really annoying). From here you can go for gas and then expo, or expo and then gas, whatever you prefer, and from there out proceed as standard against Forge FEs. (if you want to know more about that, or ZvP in general read this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php? topic_id=299170 )
ZvZ: Either 15 hatch or 14/14, but be sure to prepare for some sort of allin, be it roaches, pure ling, or ling bane if you go for 15 Hatch. If you go 15hatch, get up a spine or 2 or 3, maybe 3 queens, and a banelings nest of your own for defensive banelings and keep scouting. Here is a really awesome ZvZ guide for you: http://raa-media.nl/blog/starcraft2/zvz-alpha-omega
On December 31 2011 10:59 Jdog-EZ wrote: Peleus's build seems like something I would try. Kedarking, thankls for all the help, that's a ton of info!
I went Hydras because early air in the PL always crippled me as a zerg, and I really wanted to make sure that I'm safe if he does Void Ray/ Vikings.
Thanks for all the info guys! Going to be great reading for later!
--Jdog-EZ
No problem, and about that early air: Just get up some spores (1-3 per base, depending on how heavy air he is going) and maybe an extra queen or two, and that should suffice.
I second that you should watch the video posted above. I really wish I had a resource like that when starting out. I'm mid diamond and some of the tips he gives in the videos even helped me to improve.
EPT
