EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/E5uLPhi.jpg)
Video Version
Table of Content
1.0.......Introduction
2.0.......Build Order
3.0.......Execution
3.1.......Thought process in general
3.2.......How to engage
3.3.......When to push, when to transition...
3.4.......How to defend drops...
4.0.......In comparison to Ling Bling Muta
5.0.......Replays
6.0.......Feedback & more
Introduction top
- Because of recent incidents: I am not the "shokz-guide" guy. My name is iSHOKZ (like iphone)
Hello Teamliquid community, my name is iSHOKZ and I am currently a master player on the EU Server with the race random. Since i saw Stephano using the Roach Hydra in WoL, i thought why not use it in HotS, and so far i have great success with it.
I do also want to mention: No I am not the "shokz" you know from the shokz guides, my name is iSHOKZ, I'm a completely other person and i did not steal that name.
This build is definitely not perfect, but I think it could also be used in grandmasters play, just with better mechanics and macromanagement then in masters. So overall i would call this build viable in all leagues, depending on your level of skill.
Build Order top
- Since every game plays out differently, I will not give you supply-counts for the buildorder, just the timings on when to build what. These timings can be adapted, depending on how the game progresses. So for example the terran pressured you hard with 2 rax reapers, why not build everything 20 seconds later, the terran needs to transition and you need to get your drone-count back to normal.
Save Build
This is the save version of the build. It spawns the first roaches right around a hellion timing of the terran, after a gasless expand. If there are no hellions you can use those roaches to pressure him and even do significant damage vs. a greedy 3CC build.
Timings:
Hatch first
4 Queen Opening
4:50 2x Gas.
Start Roachwarren when you have your first 50 Gas.
Drone until the roachwarren is halfway done, then start 3 overlords
Roachwarren completes -> Build as many Roaches as you can afford (around 9).
Follow this up by getting 2 evo-chambers, a 3rd base, a 3rd gas and a lair on the same time.
More economical build:
Depending on your confidence to defend, or your play-style you can use this buildorder. It is more reactionary, but also more economical focused. Scouting is much more important in this one, to see when you need to produce units.
Timings:
4 Queen Opening
4:50 2x Gas
5:00 3rd Base
6:20 2x Evo Chamber
6:30 3rd + Lair
Start Roachwarren when you start +1/+1 Upgrades
Execution top
- General things: Don't get supply-blocked, build drones nonstop and start producing units only when you need them, have a good creep-spread, hit your injects.
I always get hydra range at first, to out range those widow-mines and also make drop-defense easier.
- Thought process in general top
- In the current ZvT metagame, the terran tends to go for the biomine style, which includes marines, marauder, medivacs and widowmines. In comparison to that, the WoL style used to be Bio-Tank. Those tanks we're the pain to a roach hydra composition, which now got replaced by widowmines. With proper micro hydras out range widow-mines easily, and in fast situations you can even send out a roach in front to tank a shot. Widow-mines don't kill roaches with one shot, but they cost the same, so you come out ahead in a situation like that.
To help our lack of mobility, we use a 4 queen opening to spread the creep.
Biomine play tends to be aggressive, and thats the exact thing we want to face with roach-hydra composition, since we just want to trade consistently. The bigger the biomine army is, and the more medivacs he has, the exponentially stronger it gets vs. roach-hydra.
Get overlord-speed to increase the speed of the overseers. This will help you to deal with widowmines.
If you are very new to this build you can get trouble with managing your resources, since you don't have units that cost only minerals. If you lack on the gas, you can't produce any units. But with more practice you get a feeling for when to take new gas geysers and so on.
In the next chapters I will explain you how to engage with roach hydra. How, when and why to transition. How to defend drops and how to react in certain situations.
- How to engage top
- In general
In general we want to get a complete surround at the terran army, so we have a higher surface area. Furthermore it denies that the medivacs can retreat after the fight. When the medivac numbers are low, roach hydra gets unstoppable. The roaches need to stay in the front, while the DPS unit called the hydralisk will deal all the damage from the back.
An engagement can look something like this. Note how I attack him mainly from the back, so he can't retreat. My reinforcements will join the fight in the front.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/FDxIGVD.jpg)
vs widowmines
In the mid-game you should always have the time to out range the mines with the hydra range. As the game progresses, the mine counts get higher. If you want to engage the terran, you can just move-command a roach over the widow-mines to tank the damage. One roach tanks two shots.
vs. tanks
Only engage vs. tanks without vipers if you are very sure you can beat the army. Tanks on the high ground get extremely cost-efficient and should be nullified with blinding cloud in the later stages of a game.
vs. turtle terrans
This is the hardest counter to this build, a terran that does not attack. You want to trade consistently, since the terran army gets stronger over time. But if the terran turtles like crazy there is no way for you to trade cost-efficient.
You need to read this perfectly and react by delaying your units, teching earlier and droning heavier. Use some roach forces to break into his natural in case he turtles at his third, while getting out the vipers and also infestors in addition to your roach hydra. Then you can blinding-cloud or abduct potential tanks, or just demolish a biomine based army.
vs mech:
You're army composition vs. mech does not need to involve hydras since they are very fragile vs. tanks, widowmines and hellbats. Don't try to engage into sieged tank-lines before you have vipers out. Just keep the terran busy bye doing runbyes with roachforces while you tech fast. If he tries to commit you can always go for a basetrade, while getting out vipers. There is no reason for you to leave most parts of your army at home. Just rally them somewhere hidden around his base, wait for him to leave it and then go in to delay his push, kill off any reinforcements, kill of economy and then you will be able to defend his push later on while sacrificing a base (most likley).
Once you have the vipers out, blinding-cloud the mech army, or even abduct units that are to far on the front. By slowly trading energy vs. units you will be able to win. As the game progresses you can transition into Ultralisks, Nydusplay to harass left and right, or also viper swarmhosts.
- When to push, when to transition top
- There are many different situations when you should push out. In general:
When you are at about 160-200 supply
When you killed of medivacs
When there was no early aggression, you are fully saturated and can pump out roach hydra afterwards. Just push consistently and trade.
Transition:
While doing your almost maxxed out push, you should start the hive, get some more drones (because you might not have enough after adding static defense), start more bases, gas geysers, infestor energy upgrade and then the first infestors.
Its a personal preference if you get vipers first, or infestors first. Versus tanks or a low economy game, I recommend vipers. The smaller a bio army, the more effective the vipers get. In games where the terran eco is not crippled, you need to get infestors first because of the overwhelming amounts of bio-forces he will get out.
Once you have (roach) hydra infestor viper the battles will look like this:
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OrYxhjpl.jpg)
Terran can't move, terran can't attack.
- How to defend drops top
- Because our army is not that mobile, we need to make some sacrifices to be able and deal with terran drops.
In the early-mid game, its enough to just have 3 roaches and 1-2 hydraslisks at a base where you expect drops. This will easily defend any kind of single drop. If its a drop with more medivacs, those units will buy you enough time to come back with your army. Most of the time you will see a drop on the minimap and can start roach-production immediately. These roaches will spawn around the time the drop cleared up your anti-drop defense.
In the mid-late game, just add 1 spore and 2 spines on each vulnerable base. Spread your overlords with your overlord speed upgrade and use the creepspread to help reinforce your bases vs. drops, but also to spot drops.
When you are about to hit a strong timing, you can take all your units (including the ones that should defend the drops) and rely on your reinforcements to deal with incoming drops.
If your drop-defense is flawless, you should be able to kill of many dropships with your hydralisks. After that you have such a strong timing window that you will most likely win the game by pushing.
A solid defended base can look like this. Look at the minimap, overlords tell us when drops are coming in to prepare in case its a multiple drop.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JCZpcCX.jpg)
If you add static defenses, replace the drones instantly with new ones.
As a very special map, bel shir vestige allows us to spot almost all drops, just by spreading creep.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5LAyRoF.jpg)
In comparison to Ling Bling Muta Style top
- The most favored style in the zvt match up right now is the Ling Baneling Muta style. There is no korean in the proleague or gsl that has been using roach-hydra vs. terran. So lets compare both play-styles and find out their strengths and their weaknesses and also why koreans tend towards the ling bling muta style.
mobility: lings are way faster than roach hydra, and the mutas can fly
-> ling bling muta is more mobile
army strenght: This point is very hard to tell, without statistics. This also depends on the gamestage. In my opinion roach hydra is way stronger then ling baneling muta in certain situations like low medivac counts, low armysupply counts. Furthermore the new hydra speed and their high dps makes it less likely for medivacs to boost out of the fight.
-> This depends on the situation, but in my opinion Roach Hydra is stronger in most of the situations (maybe we should make some statistic about this, how a roach hydra composition deals with a marine marauder medivac army in regards to their supply. Out of my experience i would say roach hydra is the strongest when the terran is below 130 supply.)
micro / multitasking The ling baneling muta composition tends to clump up and can't outrange widowmines. Because of this you need sick micro to not get some huge mines-hits off. Furthermore you need to work with 3 different units which need to be controlled differently. Roach Hydra armys are well controlled by using just one hotkey.
-> Ling Bling Muta needs more micro and multitasking to be efficient.
Conclusion: Ling Bling Muta has more mobility, but needs more micro and multitasking. But do we really need the mobility if we are no koreans with way to much apm? I am not capable of having that multitasking and micro and will most likley lose a game with ling baneling muta in any fast pasted situation where the widow-mines destroy my army totally.
In comparison to that, roach hydra is a bit like mech as a terran. You don't need to have sick multitasking, even though you have room to use it in certain situations, you simply don't need to have it. Positioning and macro matters more here.
The weakness of the mobility will be compensated by adapting our defense, as mentioned in the section execution.
- http://sc2bc.com/r/3075 - Lategame Eco Opening
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In this game I use the economic opening. Because I played really bad, and did not push at the right times, neither realised the opponent was 3 base, i could not finish him as I should have. That's why the game carries over into the late-game. My Late-game just sucks and i lose. -> This replay shows, good players would have won 3 times, I didn't, I am bad.
http://sc2bc.com/r/3074 - Engage, defend, push , win
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In this game I go for the saver build. I scout whats going on, defend very well, force him to make mistakes while he plays aggressive, punishes it and just a click him.
This game is also available as a VoD by guest casters on influencetv. Remember they both casted for the first time in english (not their main language). So the cast is not representative for influencetv casting
-> VoD Link: http://de.twitch.tv/influencetv/b/387874917?t=66m
This game is also available as a VoD by guest casters on influencetv. Remember they both casted for the first time in english (not their main language). So the cast is not representative for influencetv casting
-> VoD Link: http://de.twitch.tv/influencetv/b/387874917?t=66m
http://sc2bc.com/r/3076 - Showing the strength of low eco
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I use the save build here once again. My macro was pretty bad, and it was one of the first times i figured this build out. But in the end my opponent wasn't good either (masters vs. masters) and he had to much supply wasted in useless drops while i push and snowball his army dead.
http://sc2bc.com/r/3077 - vs. Mech
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He plays mech, i just go for run-byes and attack when he is out of position (pushing) and then trade him dead through better economy
http://sc2bc.com/r/3078 - First testing, into failing, into infestor viper win
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This was one of the first game when i created this buildorder. I was not to sure about when i have push timings and how to engage (never engage into planetarys). You can see I am way ahead and would have won by just pushing into the natural. But my knowledge was not there at the point, so i almost threw the game away. Infestor Viper saves the day.
http://sc2bc.com/r/3079 - Another game vs. mech
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I was caught off guard by 2 banshees, but the hydra timing is very good against something like that. After that i just expanded while producing roaches. By counterattacking i was able to overwhelm his push in the end.
Feedback & more top
- I really hope you liked the guide, whether the video or the text version. I would appreciate any form of feedback and criticism. Have you tested the build yet and did it work out for you? You have some adaptions to make it better? You think this build is bad, tell me why?
Furthermore I would love to see you as a part of the inFluenceTV community
B.net Community Channel (EU) "inFluenceTV" - Ask questions and chat with us !
Our twitch.tv Caster Channel, twitch.tv/influencetv - We provide high level sc2 casting
B.net Community Channel (EU) "inFluenceTV" - Ask questions and chat with us !
Our twitch.tv Caster Channel, twitch.tv/influencetv - We provide high level sc2 casting
Good luck with the build,
iSHOKZ
- More iSHotS ; HotS with iSHOKZ Guides
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