Dayshi vs Elazer - replay set up from start -
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0suoovMS9qxZnBlWDVRYWJkeEk?usp=sharingUnit Counters and how to adjust your composition
An episode looking at the COMMON adjustments to composition made by pros in order to counter all the regular shifts and adjustments in composition.
Remember there’s limitless compositions and unit ratios, and many ways to deal with them. Today we’re talking about the most common stuff in the meta (current strats)
Before we begin to answer the most common bronze-league question:
How to counter voidrays?
Light units (voidrays do bonus to armoured)
“But my hydras just melt!!”
Macro is still important
Even strong counters should be thought of as units that can “deal” with the enemy units when used correctly. But just getting them out doesn’t win you the game. As long as your opponent doesn’t simply mass one unit all game long, you will need to have a balanced “standard” composition, and then make adjustments based on what your opponent is going.
So if you see 1 or 2 voidrays, maybe just ensure you have some marines or hydras mixed in. But don’t ONLY build marines and hydras, as those voidrays might only be 10% of the enemy composition. Only focus on just that single counter if you see ONLY voidrays and lots of stargates… continuing to build void-rays
Ofc carries over to every other scenario
ZvT
Terran side
Bio Base
Adjust both ratio of marauders and marines, and the addition of mines or tanks.
Marine-marauder ratio. Marauders are good at tanking vs ling-bane, but don’t really have enough damage output to be super effective, they just help protect the marines. You want some, but not many.
The “standard” way to play is 1 tech lab, 4 reactors, then 3 more tech labs.
However some players choose to opt for 2, or sometimes even 3 tech labs on their first 5-rax when fighting vs roach-ravager.
On the other end of the spectrum we have Innovation vs Solar in Shoutcraft Kings recently, building 6 reactors and only 2 tech labs at his full 8-barracks production
Widow mines vs ling-bane with this compositon
Marines firepower also very important to gun down the front-running ling-bane so the mines don’t waste their firepower on the front guys and instead automatically focus on the main packs of lingbane rolling in the centre (annotation to micro vod
)
If you don’t have enough marines you often just need to spend most of the time running away and spreading rather than shooting, that’s when zerg rolls over you.
Also why pre-splits are so important. Doesn’t matter how good you are at splitting if your stuff’s running it’s not shooting!
Snute vs Bunny double fact-tank pushes
Uthermal vs Snute double fact-tank push IEM Shanghai:
Tanks or mines?
Usually Terran players will build tanks vs roach-ravager, and mines vs ling-bane. At lower levels hellbats can be fantastic if you spread well as they roast zerglings. However they aren’t good at clearing banelings like widow-mines so they aren’t favoured at high level. Some players prefer to get a fast 2nd factory before going to 7 or 8 barracks. They can use this for double tank production or drilling claws and triple mine production. Both of these suffer against Ultralisks in the late-game as they lack mobility and take away from the earlier marauder count which can kite ultras to death at high level.
Zerg side
Roach-ravager or Ling-bane focus
Both are good bases to your army - you don’t “react” into one or the other. You choose the style you prefer to play before the game starts or very early on.
The important thing is to understand how to adjust.
MLB
Hellbats:
Super heavy baneling count to instantly kill hellbats and allow your lings to roll over everything else.
Because there’s no effective splash except the hellbats and they will die instantly you don’t need to spread and can roll over this army as long as you have the numbers
Shoutcraft VoD again
Mines
Just spreading your army every time you engage and actively spreading forward with your lingbane is big here. (annotation to micro vod
https://youtu.be/gTcdPlk1cds?t=2364 )
Also you want to have more lings, and not so many banelings.
At least 3 lings to every baneling so your lings can close in and wrap around the Terran army
Drag widow mine shots into their army AND away from your banelings
Less clumps of banelings as juicy mine targets
Tanks
Always try to pre-spread to minimise splash damage and flank
More lings, less banes once again, for the same reasons
Thors/liberators
Corruptors rather than mutalisks
If you already have mutas just stop building them
The exception is if you’re already doing lots of damage with the mutas and they don’t have many of these units out yet - in which case you can try to pick them off and use your momentum to fight where they aren’t
Roach-Ravager
Pure bio army
Don’t add banelings!
Dark’s banelings were pre-empting a ghost-switch from bomber to counter his ultralisks
Dark over-estimated the strength of his ultras at defending mass bio with a little fungal support.
More fungal is fantastic
Just need enough RR to do the damage/be the meat alongside the fungal bile combos
Killing them with an attack by using positioning + corrosive bile
^abusing the range of bile and the importance of concaves
Tanks
Focus on flanking
Less infestors - more important to have raw numbers or to tech harder to ultras/broods
More ravagers
not armoured (might change in future patch)
And corrosive bile to kill tanks/force them to lift
You can just fight them without a composition adjustment
Only when they get to a crazy tank count or a really abusive position is it deadly. So normally you just fight to not give them a strong ledge above a base or so on.
And you aim to either win, or get to hive tech before they get 10+ tanks
Mech
Not particularly popular since it has some potent weaknesses however still seen sometimes
Oldschool variant of mech relies on adding more tanks vs ground armies, thors for anti-air (and anti-ultra) and hellbats for defending lings.
Widow mines as bonus anti-air vs corruptors to help defend libs
Iaguz:
[5:14:11 PM] iaguz guzson: I recall in hots the trick was to make the precise amount of tanks which was about 10-15 and no more
[5:14:18 PM] iaguz guzson: and then go into thors and flying units
[5:14:33 PM] iaguz guzson: once vipers are out you don't get to really attack with tanks anymore
[5:15:40 PM] iaguz guzson: the reason why tanks are so essentially early on is that they're the only cost efficient way to avoid dying to roaches
[5:15:56 PM] iaguz guzson: but once you've got a big enough economy and enough mechy units you can beat any ground army without all that many tanks
still nice to hvae a few to pick at crawlers and infestors
Skyterran mech
Dayshi vs Elazer
Libs for anti-ground
Helions for anti-ling
Mines + viking for anti-air
Helions for harassment/to buy time
With either style:
Big push before vipers, or play a very slow, turtley game with lots of PFs, turrets and zoning out areas of the map, because attacking into fungal/PB, abducts and blinding clouds doesn’t tend to work very well.
Zerg anti mech:
Roach-Hydra-Viper
https://youtu.be/UHWDuQf_I28?t=1166Potentially add infestors as well
Vs super turtley you might need to eventually transition to broods, corrupters, static.
QnA