On May 06 2021 21:24 Creager wrote:
What did Maru do that was so special in G1? Maybe I've overlooked something but aside from slight deviations (Banshee in G3) they looked pretty similar to me.
Rogues build seems to really hit a weak spot when Terran goes fast 3CC. The problem I see with this strategy (what makes it really tough to hold) is that you need to defend multiple waves of it, but also in somewhat dominant fashion, if you take too much damage and just barely hold you don't get to stabilize and simply die to the next wave or the wave after that. But this also means the Zerg desperately needs to find sufficient amounts of damage in order to keep the ball rolling.
The keypoint IMO that made this work so well for Rogue is that he prepared well for every engagement with spreading his army and really hitting on the spread-out tanks.
I wished Maru had committed to his attack on Rogue's 3rd in game 2 just to see if he could've powered through to kill the hatchery. I think retreating and then taking this ultra-late 3rd was just killing him economically.
Yeah I remember this kind of Roach vs fast 3 CC timing existed even in HotS. But now you have Ravengers who can bile down the Tanks, and after enough attacks you can overwhelm them.
Perhaps the solution was simply to play safer and just focus even harder on surviving, that means more bunkers and cutting SCVs if you need to survive and hold the 3 base, while continuing to tech. Because as we saw, even with Maru being like 25 SCVs vs 60, he did still have a chance to come back. If he had just a couple Bunkers for example, he could have perhaps held just better enough to stabilize and drag it out to a lategame due to Roach/Ravenger falling off.
In G3, Maru was mining with his SCVs at the triangular forward base, instead of having more mine at the linear base he already took, and he pulled his SCVs for both attacks which caused him to lose ~20 SCVs and then ~15 SCVs again. If he could have just had 40 SCVs vs 60, the game would probably have evened out. He could have built 1 more Bunker and had 10 SCVs mining at the safer linear base instead of at the triangular one. A small change like that would have made the difference I think.
Other options include opening with hellion banshee (mainly for banshees), and having enough banshees to deter roach ravenger attacks. Double banshee is even possible, you just shoot them down as they come across the map.
Like Tastosis said, I think BC opener would be similarly fine as long as you don't play too greedy and make sure you don't overdo the hellions, and have Tanks + Marines + Bunker early enough in case they try to rush you when you only have 1-2 BCs.
I think if Maru chose any option to simply get to the midgame, he would have had a better chance at winning. Or again if he just put down a couple more Bunkers it could have been enough too.
(I forgot but in G1, if his WM drops killed a few workers, and he didn't have his 2 Ebays at his nat, he could have evened the game out, since the worker count was like 15 vs 25 after the base trade. Killing 3-4 workers with the first WMs would have made a big difference).
Oxide is also good for Roach attacks, the 3rd is pretty exposed. Maybe Maru should have taken the linear third where he could have put walls up.