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Recently i have been messing with ling bane styles in ZvT. Be it ling bane muta or ling bane corruptor. Overall, i feel that ling bane muta is a much more solid style, and it's easier to use it as a foundation to the midgame ZvT. Overall,i feel that LBM has two major openings in LotV.
The first one occurs right before mutalisks are out. It's when you can be harassed with liberators, double medivac drops, and every single kind of annoying build that the terran can think of. This can be partially circunvented by the use of overlord speed, so you can know exactly what the terran is throwing at you, and has been helped with the queen buff.
The second opening is the one that's probably the most problematic right now, it's the transition to Hive. Right before it's out, you have kind of a big opening where you can't keep getting your mutalisk numbers higher, since the terran probably already started producing liberators, but you can't have enough ling bane to trade effectively against liberator biomine compositions. That's the problem that's harder to solve right now, and i've been testing this and that to try to resolve it.
After playing some games, one of the possible solutions that i have tested is the addition of Lurkers into the army composition, so the transition to the hive can be smoother, since you can start adding corruptors earlier in your composition without worrying about the dead supply, and, at the same time, estabilish an economy and a bank. Besides that, with 4 bases mining gas, you start banking gas while playing LBM, so lurkers are a good gas dump. Later, the lurkers can be used to harass, and to help protect bases that are far away. So, the discussion i want to have is what kind of solutions besides this one are possible, and if lurkers are, in fact, a good solution to the flaw in the LBM composition.
http://replays.sc/974 http://replays.sc/976 http://replays.sc/975
The first replay shows a game where me and the terran are even, since he already had two liberators quite early, on the game i go directly to corruptors instead. The second one is a replay where i'm already ahead, and the lurkers help me cement that lead. The third one is one where the transition isn't exactly smooth, but it still works in the end. Bear in mind that the build isn't exactly refined yet, so, in most games, the transition to hive could happen a lot sooner.
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Losira and Curious recently had success with not transitioning to hive at all (unless they are really far ahead) and instead just massing ling bane in midgame and killing the terran with constant runbys.
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just a small thing (or not really that small, I guess) but I really don't like your build. I feel like there's no reason to go ovie speed against Terran, I personally don't like fast Spire either, you have queens and spores for defense against liberators anyway. I don't have much to say on the actual topic, I feel like LBM is good enough to survive until ultras
On July 21 2016 03:05 Charoisaur wrote: Losira and Curious recently had success with not transitioning to hive at all (unless they are really far ahead) and instead just massing ling bane in midgame and killing the terran with constant runbys. haven't watched the games, but that sounds pretty bad. any Zerg style that relies solely on counter attacks seems very gimmicky and something that might work once or twice but nothing more, for example Stephano's style - good for ladder, terrible for tournaments
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The overspeed is to try to help against the first weakness of LBM. After you're already estabilished, it's kind of easy to keep the ball rolling, but before that it's kind of hard. If you can scout everything that the terran has, and have the perfect response, it's easier to reach the position that you want.
And the problem that i feel with the transition to hive, is that in HotS, there was a point where you just got to this big clump of mutas, and it was what let you fight / transition to hive (if you ever got the Hive, that is). Right now you can't do the same thing, and when the terran gets 5-6 liberators, you won't be able to just start adding corruptors to deal with them, because only ling bane is not enough to deal with biomine at that phase of the game.
Losira and Curious recently had success with not transitioning to hive at all (unless they are really far ahead) and instead just massing ling bane in midgame and killing the terran with constant runbys.
Well... that's probably because LBM is a build that is not really common right now, so the tempo might catch the terran offguard. I haven't watched Losira and Curious, but i saw Solar playing with LBM against Byun, and what was making him win the games in LBM is that he won the first fight, and just kept attacking non-stop, and even then he almost let Byun come back in the game. I don't think it's effective to attack the terran before the late game, because the trades almost always are really unfavorable. And, if they get to the point of 5+ liberators, i don't know if you can buy enough time / trade with the main army.
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I've been playing MLB all of LotV. I just absolutely hate playing the slow roach ravager style. I essentially do the same opening build. However, I switch it up just a little bit. I have never had success with 2 base muta or 3 base straight muta builds. Instead, I go double evo and build up 6-7 queens for injects, creep, and defense. I usually delay the bane nest until I start lair unless I scout reactor factory and think it's hellbats. I open overlord speed as well btw. The main strengths of how I play it off past this point is mostly reliant on sick creep spread and, more recently, overlord drops. When you open overlord speed and fast evo, you can very easily put on counter pressure. Some things that I like to do are putting 8 lings in a drop lord and dropping the terran when he attacks with the double medivac stim timing or a hellbat timing. With overlord speed scouting and a bit of experience, you can time out very very well when you need to drop him. Preferably as he is just about to attack you on your side. Most of the time, they won't have much back at home and force him to either turn around or he will put attention back at home and you can maybe pick off some of his units attacking you for free. Later in the game, I delay spire until after I start +2 +2 and bane speed. At this point, I just kind of load up a couple droplords with 2-3 banes and 2-4 lings. Most players that bane drop just use banelings but, if you put lings in them, you can pick off some scvs that are in the red and force him to react. Most of the time the scvs just die to banes and then they notice and the banes are gone. With the 2-4 lings, you force him to react and can kill more scvs than just 4 banes. To prevent the terran from reacting perfectly to defending, I always wait until he is pushing me or until I'm doing a ling runby just to drag his attention away and I drop in usually his third and nat at same time if possible. It's not a huge investment but can do insane damage and put you in a great spot. This gets very apm intensive and using burrow in combination with it can be even stronger. Once spire is done, I always just build 4-5 corruptors. I'm gonna start trying to utilize lurkers with the drop style. One weakness I have is being able to deal with a big terran push before I get imbalisks out. Lurkers will definitely be a good stepping stone. I usually only stay 5 gas anyway with this style since it's mostly mineral focused.
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I do use ling/bane form the start of LoTV as well. I skip muta entirely and as McMonroe22 said 6 corruptors is all i need from spire. Don't get all that liberator threat hype at all. Liberators never bothered me before queen buff as they die to spores and queens.The biggest problem indeed is the midgame and mass biomine pushes (usually denying my forth). This happens mostly when you let terran get away with their eco (cc first/fast 3rd). I can't figure out how to effectively deal with that, but i'm sure it can't be worse than playing roach/ravager. I really can't get how people can play that gimped style. It's abused left and right and slow as duck. You cant be agressive and your moves are extremely predictable. And the whole purpose of it is to survive till ultras. I ve been watching this for half a year already but can't really see where does it have a "huge success" at all. Refering to EU zergs is not a good idea, cause in GSL/SSL/SPL zergs struggle so fcking hard. Can't wait till blizzcon when snute/nerchio will get crushed by korean terrans.
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In Curious vs Bunny, curious skipped 2-2 until after hive was finished, which gave him extra gas for banes/mutas/hive.
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On July 21 2016 03:05 Charoisaur wrote: Losira and Curious recently had success with not transitioning to hive at all (unless they are really far ahead) and instead just massing ling bane in midgame and killing the terran with constant runbys. In a scenario where Fog of War does not exist, your assessment would be correct. However, if Terran does not know you're going to backstab when he moves out, it's not as black and white as you seem to believe. Of course, all Terrans know of the possibilities, but it's a question of expectations (meta).
In general, I think Zergling Bane styles with overlord speed and drop is really cool especially after the recent patch that enabled Queens to deal better with Liberators/medivacs. At least, it opens up possibilities to which Terrans might account more for, thus making standard play better, etc. Fun to see Losira Curious explore it anyway makes for exciting games.
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ive also been wanting to experiment w adding lurkers into my zvt comp. i think the defense and special taktik capabilities it gives makes it worth it, especially since it helps you get hive safer (albeit a bit later)
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It's viable, its just that Liberators in numbers + 3 decimate Mutalisks so you only need to build about 6 - 8 (Never more then 10 anytime I build more then 10 Mutalisks against Terran I just lose because it's wasted gas that could have gone to a faster Hive) to defend against drops.
It's very viable, you can totally play Ling/Bane/Muta especially with stronger Queens allowing for better Liberator deflection.
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The style feels really all-in to me tbh. You needed a large muta clump to get to hive in HoTS like what someone mentioned, but the problem with that in LoTV is that liberators demolish large clumps of mutalisks in moments. And it's not like splitting or magic boxing solve this issue: it's way too much splash and damage to deal with. In addition, the logical transition into late game is to go into ultralisks, but your opponent will already have liberators for those because they made them for your mutalisks. I suppose going into corruptors is the answer but that transition is quite tricky, especially with such a back and forth game this style produces. So you need to win in the midgame because you have no transition.
I understand that blizzard wants to cycle different play styles from HoTS to LoTV, but LBM is a really fun style and there's no reason both can't exist in the meta. For that reason I propose that liberators do 5(+2 vs armored)(+1 per upgrade)x2 damage, which allows this style to go late game a bit more easily. Nerfing liberator speed and air to air range by 1 would also help but I feel like that has too many implications in other areas of the game. The damage bonus being versus armoured also helps remove some overlap between the Thor and the liberator. The change will also help terran deal with mass amounts of corruptors in the lategame to an extent (which isn't a bad thing imo), make its ever so slightly harder to kill phoenixes, and change the air dynamic in TvT
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I think LBM is fine, you just have to play with a low muta count to not get demolished by liberators.
Unmentioned so far is the utility of burrowed banelings and droplords with banes. Forcing scans reduces terran efficiency and drop overlords with banes makes up an alternative for half the old role mutas played.
As for whether you should get a hive and ultras, gunna go with yes. I guess it depends whether the terran accomodates for the style you're playing, if they keep shoving you could probably just build a high bane count and obliterate a push so hard you can carry the momentum into real damage on their side of the map.
Perhaps I'm optimistic though, I don't like the way zerg plays in this matchup right now. These ultra lategame armies don't feel very satisfying, terran gets to do lots of cool micro and multitasking while we try keep ultras from getting stuck on things and hope the ravager shots don't bug out...
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