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Hey guys,
the replay I'm talking about is right here:
http://drop.sc/replay/3807626
I mostly open with this build and do really good damage with this drop, sometimes even up to 18 scvs. Then usually I die to his next attack, mostly 2 medivacs with stimmed marines. I realized I need more queens so this time I build a ton of them, still I lost clearly. My engagement probably sucked. Even almost everything else. What can you say about my lair timing? What about my upgrades? Should I have expanded earlier? Should I have used ravager or something to stop that?
I've made a ton of mistakes and I would be grateful if you showed me all of them and gicve me some advice :D
I was a decent HotS and WoL player and Ive just recently started to play LotV. I'M still getting used to the new units, timings, compositions and the meta.
EDIT
Here is another perfect example. I kill 14 scvs, go up to a good ecnomoy and just die to a stupid marine widow mine push. What can I do?
http://drop.sc/replay/3807643
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Before even watching your replay, I can tell you that the answer you're looking for is pretty much self evident. If you die even after doing extraordinary damage with your drop, then it tells me that your followup plan must be really weak.
And before we even take a look at your replay, let me just say that if you are asking for a ZvT gameplan, you've come to the wrong place. Go check out one of PiG's guides instead.
(I am in no way trying to be condescending in the following paragraph.)
Instead of asking us what to do, why don't you instead come up with something to do after your drop yourself? Something that you think is optimal given your circumstances. Then, try and optimize it. After you've done so a couple of times, then you should come to TL and ask for help. You said you need more queens - why not work on your build to fit them in? Try it and see what happens. You mentioned your lair timing - that means you probably got it too early. Try delaying it and see what happens. You mentioned that your engagement sucked - you could possibly spend time working on your engagements, but it's probably not going to be as helpful as working on your more glaring weaknesses, so we forget about it. You mentioned your upgrades - are you getting them too early, or too late? Try and figure it out. You mentioned building ravagers - the simplest question is: do you want to build ravagers? Yes or no.
Part of becoming a great SC player is learning to answer these questions yourself. Then you can come to TL to ask the truly difficult questions, and we'll love you for it.
But...if you don't bother asking these questions of yourself and instead ask US, you're going to get a fixed set of responses, the same set of responses I'm about to give YOU after watching your replay:
- Your followup sucked (or any variation). - You need to macro better. - Do a different opener, this isn't worth it (besides the point). - Do something else completely (useless advice).
With all that said, let's take a look. 1ST replay:
- You could sac an overlord at 3:30 to confirm the 2/1/1 or some other funky opener (though his opener abuses that fact and he goes for tanks and a slightly later timing instead).
- Why get the baneling nest so early? If you know his push cannot hit you until at least 5 minutes, why not get a slightly later upgrade or pull off gas after OV speed instead?
- Another question that should be intuitive: if we know the Terran is at home, why bother dropping anything but banelings on his mineral line? We know that if we drop zerglings, he'll have more than enough time to react. You didn't really accomplish anything with your first drop. Five workers is decent, but not game ending. Since you're already getting OV speed, it begs the question: why do the drop at all? Instead, just scout with your OV and make drones! I'm not TELLING you to do this, I'm just asking you to consider it as you work on your build. There is no right or wrong answer, only different shades of optimal.
Now, onto the important stuff. What's going on at HOME?
Right away: you built more queens, but what you DON'T have are more drones! And where is your third base? Your money is also starting to float @5:10, so plan your transitions better. Maybe grab a third BEFORE you do your little ling drop.
You see a 3rd CC @4:30 (!), so you KNOW that whatever timing he's doing is going to have to be pretty conservative. Use that to your advantage and make more DRONES! Remember that you can use your drop to get tons of crucial scouting information.
Ahhh. Your SECOND drop did a good amount of damage, but it is irrelevant if you don't focus more on what's going on at home! Have a plan and know where you want to go. A third base for starters!
You delay your third base for so long that whatever advantage you gained from your drop is lost as you let him slowly catch back up to you in income (he's already way ahead in tech).
You don't get a third base until nearly 6:40! And the worst part is there is, objectively, no good reason why you have waited so long. Try getting your third base by 4 minutes at the latest.
Play with the same set of timings but aim to squeeze out WAY more drones, and see how that plays out.
From an execution standpoint, the rest of the replay beyond 7 minutes is irrelevant. At 6:45, you only have 34 harvesters. DESPITE having complete freedom to drone and doing economic damage to your opponent, he STILL has an income advantage over you.
TLDR:
It's as I said in the beginning of my post. Work on your transitions, know exactly what you should be doing at every moment of the game. And don't bother coming to TL for help until you've made more than a cursory effort to answer your questions YOURSELF (ie, play games)!
Not trying to be cruel, just giving you a little bit of tough love !
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Thank you very very very much for your answer! Well, I used to play SC2 when there was tons of builds avaiable, tons of threads in this forum and tons of people playing the game. Learning the new meta is harder than it was before lotv. I've just finished watching PiG's video von ZvT (using nerchios style) where he goes for roaches instead of banelings early on.
Well, you are kinda right. I DO ask myself these questions and because Ive played thousands of matches before Lotv and watched every single sc2 event world wide, I know the basics of this game; i know how to spot the errors I make :/ It's just that this new meta (new units, new timings , new eco system and stuff) is so new to me and it throws me off guard. Especially ZvT has changed so much. I am very confident in ZvP and ZvZ (at least against diamond players) but I suck hard against T. So finding the right answer might take a while, that's why I asked TL.
So, you would skip the bane drop completely and focus on drones. How do I stop the 2/1/1 (hits around 5 min, right?)? I've heard that one way is mass queens (like 6-7) and 30 lings. Nerchio does it with roaches I guess, probably more viable against mines as well.
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On October 11 2016 05:04 bretfart wrote:Thank you very very very much for your answer! Well, I used to play SC2 when there was tons of builds avaiable, tons of threads in this forum and tons of people playing the game. Learning the new meta is harder than it was before lotv. I've just finished watching PiG's video von ZvT (using nerchios style) where he goes for roaches instead of banelings early on. Well, you are kinda right. I DO ask myself these questions and because Ive played thousands of matches before Lotv and watched every single sc2 event world wide, I know the basics of this game; i know how to spot the errors I make :/ It's just that this new meta (new units, new timings , new eco system and stuff) is so new to me and it throws me off guard. Especially ZvT has changed so much. I am very confident in ZvP and ZvZ (at least against diamond players) but I suck hard against T. So finding the right answer might take a while, that's why I asked TL. So, you would skip the bane drop completely and focus on drones. How do I stop the 2/1/1 (hits around 5 min, right?)? I've heard that one way is mass queens (like 6-7) and 30 lings. Nerchio does it with roaches I guess, probably more viable against mines as well.
Every time you feel lost, you just have to buckle down and start the process from the beginning! That's how we adjust to new styles of play. The issue with questions like yours isn't so much the question itself as what it is exactly you want. It's not the question, just the way you are asking it. There is a lack of precision.
Why I responded the way I did: + Show Spoiler + TL has a policy where people cannot comment on a replay without watching it. This is enforced (depends on when a mod finally tunes in). The reason why is that people tend to give the same advice over and over, which starts to get pretty annoying and loses any sort of constructive value very fast. But the funny thing is that often times, advice is the same even if you watch all the replays given (timestamps and the like are just factual evidence validating the same old set of advice). To some extent that's just due to the execution heavy nature of StarCraft. But IMO it's more due to a combination of:
- A lack of precision in the question asked, which stems from: - Poor identification of the problems faced ("what went wrong this game" is not a good question any more than "everything" is a good answer - we can't solve either without solving SC). - Most importantly, players tend to have a inflexible, top down sort of mindset towards the game that tends to ignore a large part of how the best players solve problems.
What needs to be clarified: + Show Spoiler +Are you asking for a build to use? Or are you asking for how to improve your build? As I said before, there is no right or wrong way to play - only different shades of optimal. And don't worry, I'm not insulting your credibility as a SC player . We are all students of the game, and in the end we're just here to have a nice discussion. I am just advocating a constructive, critical approach to crafting builds based on "what you want to do" and making your play as optimal as possible based on that. That's it. At the most basic level, you should craft your builds around things which sound satisfying to you. For pros, that something is winning as consistently as possible. And that motivation is where the whole concept of meta begins to spring to life. Now, as I understand it, what you are asking is NOT how to improve your drop build, but how to "win more in ZvT." In which case I would just point you to PiG and be done with it, as you can get far more out of his content than any amount of forum posts.
But I said not to drop banelings? + Show Spoiler + I did, and I didn't. But before we talk about whether or not I would drop banelings, we have to establish what my goal is and the tools I would use to achieve that goal.
I want to reach 80 drone saturation and 6 gas, and then begin trading with my opponent, relying on tons of larva. I don't really care about hive tech that much (besides adrenal glands!), though I will build ultras (not as much as other players, I like to build 5 or so to break PFs). Baneling drops are the last piece of the puzzle for me, not the first. This idea is critical when differentiating between "all-ins" and "macro" play.
There is a chance that my baneling drop will not work, which increases the better player I play. If it doesn't work, I lost money, but not necessarily for nothing. I have to figure out if the psychological breathing room I gain from the baneling drops and chance of damage outweigh the tech hit I'm going to suffer from doing the drops, along with whether or not I get any guaranteed damage.
Why not an eco hit? Well since I want to get tons of drones ASAP, I'm going to construct my build order in such a way that I am minimizing eco damage. Banelings are very good in this regard, since they don't take much larva, but they do cause indirect damage because of how gas expensive they are.
Because banelings cost so much gas, and I have to buy OV speed to do bombs, along with ling speed, I decide arbitrarily that I will be able to get one drop off, and at most two, before I have to redirect all my gas income into teching in order to power up my swarm style.
This thought process culminates in the conclusion that it might just be better for me not to drop banelings, and instead rely on that OV speed I bought to give me scouting information while squeezing in more drones at home. I take it one step further, and just decide not to get OV speed. I want to get a 4 base economy that badly.
But that doesn't mean that dropping banelings + economic focus isn't viable. It just doesn't mesh with my plan. I'd encourage you to explore it, just remember that you can't fixate on the baneling drop while ignoring your economic development without your build, by definition, being all-in.
On the proper mindset: + Show Spoiler + - First, think about what you want to do (your objective). This can be something as complicated as "reach the late game as efficiently as possible where I trade with my opponent and focus on controlling critical bases until I starve them out", or as simple as "tech to ultras." A goal is just a way of framing your problem so that it becomes something you can build towards. - Next, think about what pieces of your gameplan best help you achieve it (more greed? more tech, something in-between). This is where you decide what units you want to use, and what tactics (ie, baneling dropping) you want to supplement with, as well as the general orderings of your build. - Finally you begin to optimize your build until you can trim nothing more away from it. This doesn't just include coming up with a codified build order (the last and least important part). More importantly, it focuses on eliminating redundancy (for my prioritized objectives, if two ideas can serve as a solution, I choose the more efficient of the two, how I decide that is based on my plan)!
This last piece is where the meta is born, and a lot of players fixate on it while neglecting the parts that had to have come before...which means they are ignoring a large part of the SC experience!
On the 2/1/1: + Show Spoiler + Try to think about things differently: what the Zerg wants rather than how to defend the 2/1/1. The goal of high level Zerg players is (usually) to reach max saturation as fast as possible. They try and defend the 2/1/1 with a minimal defense. Counting on their good control, they stick with queen ling and just try to ensure that they are always target firing medivacs when they need to be. But if they mess up (which is easy when a good Terran stims out of the fog of war or you fight off creep!) then all the queens will die very quickly. This is a late game oriented solution that is dependent on control to net you a small drone advantage.
Already there is a new meta evolving (thanks Byun). Terrans are doing the 2/1/1 so often that Zergs are beginning to assume that it is what their opponent is going to do by default. Most use queens / lings to defend. So Byun and other Terrans on KR started adding hellions for a second push (along with 3 medivacs and their original marines) that takes advantage of the fact that Zerg players have streamlined to defend with only queen/ling in order to make as many drones as possible. This is yet another in a long line of secondary Terran timing pushes which abuse the idea that Zerg just want to make drones and rely on a minimal defense before going back to droning.
Just because high level Zergs think that toeing an extreme line of greed to get a strong economy/late game doesn't mean it is the best way to play. It is just the most optimized and most explored. Railgan is a great Zerg who consistently demonstrates alternative styles of Zerg that he creates from the ground up by himself.
From what I have observed, Nerchio is more conservative and makes roaches since he's going to be using them for ravagers later anyway (and it allows him to comfortably take a straight up engagement instead of babysitting his queens). He doesn't want to risk slipping up on control and losing the game. Since he has a meatier army, he can focus more attention on optimizing the little timings of his economy to ensure he gets ultralisks out as fast as possible. Nerchio's also fine with spending gas that could be spent elsewhere initially because he delays his four base saturation in favor of earlier tech, as well as building up gas for ravagers and ultras. This is because he is a safe player. He wants to win in the late game with strong, ultra based pushes, but first he has to ensure that he gets there reliably.
Rather than base your whole style around defending the 2/1/1, I would suggest focusing solely on what you want to do in a ZvT, and build your style bottom up from there. The meta of SC is cyclical. The meta you see in professional ZvTs all revolve around tiny little adjustments and toeing the line of greed. Zerg will start adding banelings, roaches, or some other form of tech in order to defend the marine / hellbat pushes that we'll see more and more of in the next month...
But then the big patch will come out...and Terrans will do completely different build orders...even mech. But that doesn't matter if you start thinking the other way around.
This is a long post, giving my thoughts on a broad range of topics, but I'm feeling overwhelmed with passion today .
>> I realize now that I read as really grumpy in my first post, lol. It was never my intention to be a asshole. I hope this second post clarifies what I meant in my first .
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Hey, I do almost the same build (depending on the map). The issue is your following up. Basically you killed a lot of scvs, so that the only think he can do is attacking you. You have also scouted with your drop that he is going to double drop you. So you need army. You are ahead in terms of eco. At this point you should only make lings and queens (up to 8 or 6 depending of your control). The only thing I do for macro at this point is getting a third, +1 defense as soon as possible and a second evo (+1 attack once i have the gas).
Then there is the fight. You should know exactly where it will come from. Place your overlords all around the possible paths he can take. This is very important since your defense will depend on your engagement. The ideal situation is when he is not able to land because you are already there. If he lands, queens go first (focus medivacs), and then your 30 lings. If there is a mine it can be more tricky, and just try to split.
So basically you should not drone up until you have enough to defend, because you are ahead. With time you will be able to judge how much you need to defend (~30 lings, or more if you are not a korean), although it comes mostly from the engagement itself (queens first !). If you do not realize how far you are ahead, I posted your second replay here : http://ggtracker.com/matches/6832403 Look at the graph mineral income and workers count, and then at the army count: there is a problem. You go full macro although he wants to hit a strong timing.
Once you have enough to defend this timing you drone up. You have 3 bases, 2 queens per base. Add some gases, lair, macro hatch and 4th. Your drone count will go up very fast. More importantly, his second and third timing will be very delayed so that you will be 2/2 and start lair very fast compared to his tech. If you do not loose your drop, don't hesitate to drop lings as soon as he lives his bases. It will gain time to you for upgrades or banelings. I personally stop droping banelings because I want my gas for tech but some continue, it's up to you.
Hope it helps.
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I watched your second replay.
You lost because you had no army. Every unit you made, you sent to its death, while killing none of your opponent's army.
So his army kept growing, and yours stayed at zero. All he has to do then is A-move.
That's all there is to it. You need to be aware of your opponent's army size and react accordingly.
That "lol" at the end was completely unwarranted, by the way. You spent all game killing yourself, you shouldn't have been surprised when you lost.
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I really really wish more posters are like you Qwyn. I get tired of Foxdog, Bronzknee, Avilo, and their ilk.
Your advice goes beyond the game, and is very useful in real life. Create a goal and focus on it. If (and most likely when) you failed to achieve your goal, reflect on your journey and see if there are any small/big adjustments you can do. Make those adjustments and start your goal again. If you do succeed to get your goal, try the same process again to see if it works.
I make all my goals small, like making my wife smile every day or finish all my emails at work before 11am. My favourite one is speak up in meetings at least once.
In SC2 you can try the same thing. Like "always scout at x timing". Completing small goals all the time makes the bigger ones less intimidating, and most times all the small goals lead up to success with the bigger ones.
edit: Don't forget to reward yourself for accomplishing your goals, both small and big. The reward reminds you to continue with the goal.
In SC2, everytime you scout try smiling afterwards. Studies have shown that even forcing yourself to smile increases endorphin in your system to make you feel better.
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